[ankmathur96]

An aspect of this which has not been very well engaged with is how people see Facebook and its products outside of America. A common response to this from pundits is that it's an American company and therefore American values and perspectives matter more (as if American perspectives are the definitively superior kind). Without question, Facebook-owned products have democratized communication in third world countries (like India for example) and empowered those people to take advantage of the internet and its convenience. There's more than can go into a HN comment here, but an example is street side stores that have hugely expanded their audience by taking orders on Whatsapp. It just wasn't accessible to do this before, and Facebook has made that happen.

At some level, much of the criticism of Facebook (especially DHH) don't even try to put into words what Facebook "breach" they're upset about. Is it Cambridge Analytica? Is it one of the drummed up NYT pieces? If you care about this problem, yelling and waiting for someone to break up Facebook isn't a solution. We need discourse to identity what realistic changes we as a community expect.