| "By buying its competitors." Yup. Using its advantage in one market to muscle into emerging markets. Classic monopolist move. The part I'm stuck on is how Facebook (Zuck) has repeatedly attained and leveraged their superior competitive intelligence. For just one example, their basically evil stunt with the Onavo VPN. What Zuboff identifies as surveillance capitalism. I now assume network effects (preferential attachment) leading to winner-takes-all outcomes in all open markets. It's tantamount to a natural law, so why fight it. So I now happily advocate governments regularly harvesting victors by somehow periodically shaking the ant farm for a market reset. What Scott Galloway calls "oxygenating the market". I prefer repeated radical cashectomies, especially targeting windfall profits, but am ok with whatever works. Award the leaders a Presidential Market Victory trophy. Relocate them to the Freedom Markets™ lecture circuit to continue living in comfort and glory. Then divide the spoils. But I don't think such common sensical measures will effectively curtail Facebook and Google. Per Zuboff and others, my current hunch is that we'll need new tools to defang (deFAANG? haha. just thought of that. I slay myself.) these monsters. |