[downer61]

This is basically the worst possible course of action. Facebook is neither a utility nor monopoly. Facebook will be irrelevant in a generation or less. Even if Facebook manages to leverage the network effect of its alternative subsidiaries, there will always be the treadmill of evolving trends, and there’s not such thing as one true mode of electronic social interaction.

[Terr_]

> Facebook is neither a utility nor monopoly.

I agree: I don't have the same concerns with Facebook as with, say, a monopoly ISP.

That said, in both cases I think there's an opportunity to define customer data as containing a responsibility and liability, so that collecting it is a double-edged activity and there are potential repercussions causing companies to guard its dispersal with more care.

[barkingtoad]

I'm trying to think of what it is, exactly, that Facebook has a monopoly on. The nearest I can come up with is: Facebook has a monopoly on Facebook users.

The followup question would be: how can that be broken up?

[jld]

Many (most? all?) newspapers have a firewall between ad sales and news/editorial. Since news and editoral on FB is pretty much the news feed, I think duplicating the newspaper model here might be something like so:

One could split Facebook into a "connecting the whole world" company that Zuck talks about constantly and the ad company FB actually is.

The ad company would have exclusive license to fill of all the ad slots on the platform, and the social company would request ads through some kind of interface which had strict privacy controls. The ad company would take a cut and pass the rest of the cash to social network.

Just one way I think it could splitting the company could work.

[saudioger]

You could spin off an easy dozen companies out of existing Facebook services.

[wvenable]

Seems somewhat ridiculous to allow companies to acquire other companies/services just to force them to spin them off.

I'm for regulation, if you can come up with sensible ones. But targeting a specific company to be split up doesn't seem like it actually solved the problem in the long run. I mean look what happened with AT&T -- we're almost back to complete consolidation again.

[Lionsion]

> Seems somewhat ridiculous to allow companies to acquire other companies/services just to force them to spin them off.

Not really. If Facebook can answer "we're sorry, we'll change and fix it" to every problem, why can't a regulatory regime do the same? E.g. "We're sorry we allowed this acquisition to go through, but it turned out to actually be anticompetitive and our prior mistake doesn't change that..."

> I mean look what happened with AT&T -- we're almost back to complete consolidation again.

The unfortunate thing with AT&T is the regulators, over time and political changes, weren't consistent. I don't think we really want a politically lowest-common-denominator regulatory regime, but that's what we have.

[Slansitartop]

> I'm trying to think of what it is, exactly, that Facebook has a monopoly on. The nearest I can come up with is: Facebook has a monopoly on Facebook users.

Perhaps Facebook could be thought of as a monopoly because 1) it has no clear, direct competitors, and 2) it's taken action to buy up anything that could become one [1]?

[1] successfully with Instagram and WhatsApp, and attempted with SnapChat

> The followup question would be: how can that be broken up?

It could be divested of Instagram and WhatsApp, for starters. I think its core facebook.com could also be split up in a way to increase competition further: randomly divide its users between multiple successor networks with a mandate to provide an open API for inter-operation.

[BurningFrog]

Even if you accept that, if FB buys up any aspiring competitors, that makes it profitable to compete with it.

[millstone]

Maybe Facebook.com fades to irrelevant, but Facebook.the.company evolves to dominate that treadmill, purchasing or replicating any threats for a long period. In this scenario Facebook is not a classical static monopoly protecting its rentier status, but instead a dynamic monopoly whose massive resources enable it to leapfrog from one trend to the next. Facebook-the-company is clearly aware of the history of its predecessors and is poised to pivot.

[Slansitartop]

> Facebook will be irrelevant in a generation or less. Even if Facebook manages to leverage the network effect of its alternative subsidiaries, there will always be the treadmill of evolving trends, and there’s not such thing as one true mode of electronic social interaction.

Maybe so, but Facebook has shown a willingness to spend the money to acquire control of those evolving trends to maintain its dominance (see: Instagram, Whatsapp, and the failed attempt to buy Snapchat).

At a minimum I think it should be divested of Instagram and WhatsApp.

[unicornporn]

> Facebook will be irrelevant in a generation or less.

A lot of harm can be done in one generation. Don't you think the history shows us that?

[apotheothesomai]

What history teaches us is that past generations have been ruined by serious things, like war, political upheaval, disease, and economic collapse, not by a frivolity in their social lives like FB.

Modern marketing has ensured that everyone in the US born after the'80s has grown up in an environment of marketing saturation, but modern marketing/propaganda was invented in the early 20th century. (Thanks, Edward Bernays) It changed our lives and the way we think, from Fascist propaganda to Coldwar rhetoric, and to the belief that orange juice is a breakfast drink and the engagement ring is a thing.

FB is one of thousands of powerful entities continuing the tradition, but of course, data mining has reached obscene levels, but FB is only one of many players.

[sgtmas2006]

While they're only one of many players, they are a big player, and from experience it's mostly boomers that use Facebook. They have a lot of power, but I do not think they should be broken up. Things have been allowed to be this way, and I doubt they will change for the better.

[ovao]

While true, I think it’s worth remembering that history is being written constantly. Facebook’s position and scale has no precedence, and we’re just now really beginning to understand what the consequences of such a position can be. Today’s event was historic in its own right (even though I think it was mostly unproductive).

We’ll emerge from this a little wiser, and maybe with some new regulations. Whether regulation is good or bad I can’t say, but this is all very much a learning process as a society and, to some potentially great extent, as an industry.

Frankly, I think crossing this line was necessary.

[quotemstr]

And even more harm can be done in the attempt to avoid harm. Ever read Sophocles?

[downer61]

I’m being extremely generous with that approximate duration of relevance.

Look at Microsoft. Windows’ golden period lasted from 1998 until 2006 with the release of Vista. With the release of Vista, Microsoft’s strangle hold on relevance disintegrated in a summer. And now what? Microsoft technically “exists” but who cares?

We are witnessing Facebook’s Vista moment right now. Donald Trump is Facebook’s Windows Vista.

Think about that for a second.

[onetimemanytime]

>>Facebook is neither a utility nor monopoly. Facebook will be irrelevant in a generation or less.

assuming what you said is true, should we allow the next FB a generation of leeway too? A generation here and a generation there...