> "Before breaking them up, we should see whether they are not just disrupted by a small player beating them out of the market"
How long do you wait to see if this happens?
E.g. MySpace was the social network back in the day. When was the last time you even heard/thought about MySpace let alone even visited the site? Did we wait long enough for MySpce to die on its own, or should we have acted sooner? Does it matter either way? We've had a couple of recent examples too, like Snap that looked like the unasailable Neu-Facebook a year or two ago, but now is crumbling and losing users rapidly - should we have broken up Facebook before that happened to Snap? Does it matter either way? Facebook is now losing users in western countries too - should we act now to break it up, or wait to see if it is "doing a snap" and will die on its own?
The point I am trying to make is that competitors come and go on the incredibly open and incredibly egalitarian internet that Berners-Lee helped to popularise with WWW. Making arbitrary decisions about when to break up a company without relying on anything apart from hand-wringing "think of the children!"-ism seems unlikely. What would the metric be? Revenue? DAUs? I cant think of a meaningful way to measure when a company is too big and is not going to be disrupted apart from hand-waving and sensationalism-based approaches.
Facebook has no control of the internet as such. Sure they are pervasive but if people stop visiting Facebook, the money dries up. They can profile as much as they like but if there are no eye balls viewing those perfectly targetted ads then there is no money coming in - Facebook cant use their "control" of the intenet to force you to go view their ads no more than Google can use its "control" of the internet to force you to view their ads. You have choices on what to visit. Just like no one chooses to go to MySpace any more.
The solution - as always - has been an ad blocker, rejecting 3rd party cookies, signing out of facebook & google, switching from Google/Facebook services to alternatives (e.g. DuckDuckGo is a good and viable replacement to Google Search; Firefox is a good and viable replacement to Google Chrome, talking to people is a good and viable replacement to Facebook).
Just dont use them, like you dont use MySpace. There is nothing forcing people to use them, and nothing outright preventing a new competitor.
WhatsApp was a startup competitor at one stage too - it competed well enough to grow big enough to compete with Facebook & Google. Sure Facebook brought them out, but what is to stop the next WhatsApp? Likewise MySpace was too pervasive not to use at one point too, yet look at what happened to that when this little cool new thing called Facebook appeared.
Basically it comes down to user behavior, not any explicit "control" that Facebook et al have over individual's use of the internet.
How long do you wait to see if this happens?
E.g. MySpace was the social network back in the day. When was the last time you even heard/thought about MySpace let alone even visited the site? Did we wait long enough for MySpce to die on its own, or should we have acted sooner? Does it matter either way? We've had a couple of recent examples too, like Snap that looked like the unasailable Neu-Facebook a year or two ago, but now is crumbling and losing users rapidly - should we have broken up Facebook before that happened to Snap? Does it matter either way? Facebook is now losing users in western countries too - should we act now to break it up, or wait to see if it is "doing a snap" and will die on its own?
The point I am trying to make is that competitors come and go on the incredibly open and incredibly egalitarian internet that Berners-Lee helped to popularise with WWW. Making arbitrary decisions about when to break up a company without relying on anything apart from hand-wringing "think of the children!"-ism seems unlikely. What would the metric be? Revenue? DAUs? I cant think of a meaningful way to measure when a company is too big and is not going to be disrupted apart from hand-waving and sensationalism-based approaches.
Facebook has no control of the internet as such. Sure they are pervasive but if people stop visiting Facebook, the money dries up. They can profile as much as they like but if there are no eye balls viewing those perfectly targetted ads then there is no money coming in - Facebook cant use their "control" of the intenet to force you to go view their ads no more than Google can use its "control" of the internet to force you to view their ads. You have choices on what to visit. Just like no one chooses to go to MySpace any more.
The solution - as always - has been an ad blocker, rejecting 3rd party cookies, signing out of facebook & google, switching from Google/Facebook services to alternatives (e.g. DuckDuckGo is a good and viable replacement to Google Search; Firefox is a good and viable replacement to Google Chrome, talking to people is a good and viable replacement to Facebook).