Every time Facebook buys a social media company that is pretty much what he's doing. People on WhatApp, Insta, ConnectU etc did not join Facebook and yet they still ended up on Facebook.

(See "What information does WhatsApp share with the Facebook Companies?" on https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/security-and-privacy/how-we...)

This has nothing to do with the web, and if anything it's a general antitrust case.

In this particular case, the incentives are as follows. Initially, facebook set up the game so that the condition of every agent, as well as the global equilibrium improved if people used facebook. Later on, facebook changed things around, so that the global equilibrium became suboptimal.

They built an especially attractive service (judging by user numbers). Everybody else is free to build services in whatever way they fancy.

    Facebook did not have special powers to change the 
    rules. They built an especially attractive service
    (judging by user numbers)

They maintain dominance primarily through the power of network effect. You are free to switch away from Facebook, but doing so is useless unless a significant portion of your network switches as well.

FB's end user experience is still good (I'm talking strictly about their engineering and UX here, not their business practices and other board-level decisions) and they have expanded it by adding things like their marketplace. If that experience ever got bad enough I'm sure people would start itching to switch.

But as things are, a competitor would not merely need to be as good or even 50% or 100% better. More like 500% or 1000% better if they wanted to overcome the momentum of FB's network effect.

Another thing that's boring is false equvalences. There are tons of other "highways", ie platforms that allow for communication like facebook does. People don't choose them.

And of course the other platforms, they should keep improving and bringing those number of clicks down, and polishing up the UI, etc. But I just mean that they are already up there in terms of usability, at least in the same league.

PS. Heck, people can't even be bothered to spend 5 minutes listening about and 5 clicks installing adblock/ublock... I suppose that's Zuckerberg's fault too. /s

That's one reason your "free choice" defense of Facebook is inadequate. Yes, people "choose" to use Facebook. Yes, they are techncially free to stop using it. But, when the cost is high, is the choice really free?

If an individual's social and professional life depends on a platform because that's what everyone else uses, they cannot in practice switch to another platform even if that is their preference. You might as well argue that someone from a disfunctional family gets a new family. Or that someone living in a disfunctional state emigrates. They can do these things in theory, but in practice they are not completely free to do them.

A mandated API for interoperability would go a long way. Just like with e-mails. We expect people with Gmail addresses to be able to get in contact with someone who does not have Gmail.

Turned off my Facebook for awhile. Losing access to photos about caused a family riot.

I think it's almost entirely FOMO that is keeping people on these horrible "social" platforms. Best decision of my life was to leave.

But the second paragraph looks like you blamed facebook for making locally optimal decisions and making the system stuck in a suboptimal Nash equilibrium :)

It is also strange to hear that if you have a landlord who is weird by asking for facebook account - that the assumption is that it's Mark Zuckerberg's fault? Shouldn't you blame the landlord for that?

This is a bad-faith argument used by ethically dubious people to justify their shady business practices. Perhaps that's you, or perhaps you've spent too long listening to them. In any case, it's not an argument to take seriously and certainly not one that merits in-depth discussion.

It's like saying roads are not free, because there are only 2-3 car brands driving on it. If that's a problem, it's not about the roads.

    How is the web less free, just because 
    there is one huge social network that 
    people like to use?

We are on the verge of a single company -- Google -- assuming de facto sole control of what used to be the "open web" as its last viable competitor, Mozilla, fades away.

This is possible because, generally speaking, nobody cares about the open web. Even most of us in the tech industry no longer care.

That is where Facebook comes in. We no longer care because companies like Apple and Facebook have successfully shifted us into the "app mindset" in which the open web is irrelevant.

I care deeply about the open web, but I'm a minority.

I would love to understand the downvotes on this comment.

And while I did join WhatsApp by my own choice, I did not chose for Facebook to buy it up to get my data that way.

[0] https://www.theregister.com/2018/04/17/facebook_admits_to_tr...