Facebook is hosting on their servers that they own and/or lease which gives them a right to exclude, much like a store, bar, club or mall owner.
I have foregone quite a lot of social things because I refuse to use it. That much is fine by me but it is not fine for most people. “Most people,” by FB’s own numbers, are a captive audience. They do not get to decide if they go shopping in the mall.
This is why Cory Doctorow’s point on forcing FB to open up is the most useful one. It is the most straightforward way to turn FB into a utility.
You have a temporary problem socializing in some circumstances without Facebook, which is entirely solvable by you alone. Facebook is nowhere near a monopoly on its core functions, but certain groups, scenes or networks of people may choose to use it exclusively. You are being screwed over by their choices and blaming Facebook for it.
Also I don’t read Doctorow. No reason in particular, but if you want to cite him, cite him properly and bring his words here into the discussion.
This needs explanation.
If Facebook were forced to open their API, then it would be possible to not use their news feed. "Unfollow everyone" would then be the default. That in turn allows people to build on their "platform" without entertaining any of the "viral" stuff. In particular, everyone who uses FB because it's easy to organize "events" on it won't have to get snagged in all the toxic things that are going on. That is effectively defanging the danger that it currently poses to society.
At the end of the day, organizers are trying to organize. It is hard to ignore FB's reach in this manner. You cannot blame organizers for having to use FB. They are subject to market competition and may not have much of a choice in the platforms they use.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not backing you on this. That’s neither a just nor good use of government power.
> This needs explanation.
An information platform as a utility citizens are assumed or expected to have under the thumb of bureaucrats is a valuable propaganda tool in the hands of any government.
I don't care what you say, any person CAN live without Facebook. Yes it might be painful for some, but in a free market society, some company (most likely many disparate companies), will cover those needs.
I haven't had a facebook since 2012 and there are exactly 0 things I've noticed missing out on because of it. This includes all 4 years of college and moving states multiple times during this timeframe.
LinkedIn feels far more essential to me unfortunately.
Once deplatformed, there’s no equivalent line-of-sight.
The mall is a beautiful, shiny, clean building where you go to hang out with your friends. The shops in the mall are there to lure you to go buy stuff. You aren't paying the mall, but by being there, you're likely to buy something at J. Crew or the food court.
If the mall had an anti-mall lunatic out front, they'd surely remove them too.
When did so many people internalise the fiction of companies as their new feudal overlord?
1. Which countries are these?
2. If we were to take that as a given, do these countries see that as a problem?
3. What would be their remedy, in your eyes, if an American corporation is found to have a monopoly in their jurisdiction but not in the United States?
When answering, mind that the Rule of Law is not particularly high in Vietnam to begin with.
And a core fundamental principle of property rights is the right to exclude.
For example, the right to exclude certain classes of people is different renting a room of your house vs. renting a whole apartment.
The ability to exclude is again different for service providers. It sometimes also depends on their size. e.g. larger banks are obliged to provide a free basic bank account.
If social media monopolies are seen as excluding people without good reason, their monopoly status might attract attention for regulation in the same manner.
The damages in this case are more abstract, but Facebook arguably has cause to exclude. That said I am much more open to debate the merits of this particular exclusion rather than whether Facebook can exclude at all.
I’m also going to go out in a limb and point out that Facebook does not in fact have a social media monopoly, certainly not in the United States which would be the jurisdiction here because in order for that to be true, everything from Twitter, TikTok and iMessage to WeChat and YouTube and Snapchat would simply have to not exist.
Social networks tend to have overlapping user bases, with people on both Facebook and Twitter, or Facebook and Snapchat, or some other combination. Nobody has yet convinced me where and how Facebook has any sort of monopoly because they’re too focused on the large user base and that in itself is just not a good argument. Feel free to take a stab at it though.
Mainly because if FB was a store, it'd be a store where the patrons are not buying stuff from the store, but are themselves the product.
i.e. FB offers a messaging/contact service for "free" - with the caveat being that FB gets to glean startling - and valuable - amounts of information about its patrons.