[dalbasal]

For the sake of discussion, lets focus on the idea itself, whatever the motiviations of the politician who's saying it.

>> Users are already getting value for their data - the product showing the ads. People have a choice in whether they want to use gmail and get a free best-in-class email client, backend storage, and worldwide access to their email. The trade is that they're participating in an ad platform that

FB are currently earning $50b pa from advertising, which is largely premised on FB's data collection on and off the platform. What users get is, by-and-large, very similar to what they were getting in 2012, when FB was making $5bn. That 10X increase in revenue (and 10X increase in FB staff/cost) hasn't gone towards making more/better product. It has gone towards making better (often more creepy) ad-tech.

At least with television there is competition, and that means ad revenue has to go towards making more/better programming.

SAAS has negligible marginal cost and often strong network effects. The value of an ad-platform and many uses of data (especially ad-targetting) also scales exponentially. This is leading to bad, monopolistic outcomes.

[ilovecaching]

That's an incredible selective way to look at it. Google search has almost no competition. Social media has Snapchat, Twitter, TikTok, and there's really not a huge bar to entry. New social media apps rise all the time. It's also your opinion that their product hasn't improved over time, and your conjecture that that's where the money is going.

Also in television there is much less competition. The TelCos are the worst monopolies out there. Getting a competitive cable or ISP landscape is a laughable idea in the US.

[jgust]

> really not a huge bar to entry

Critical mass is a huge bar to entry.