Posted on 05/27/2020 9:56:09 AM PDT by Zenyatta
Too many words. Abnormal fits better. Thanks, now go away.
Not many at all.
We've already seen it. All it takes is a semi-organized effort to boycott their advertisers and they fold.
Nor Twitter.
Between the two of them, Twitter and Facebook have, for all intents and purposes monopolized social media - a term that didn’t even exist 20 years ago. That’s the key difference between Twitter and Facebook and other sites like Freerepublic. It’s not enough to say “Nobody’s stopping others from competing with them”. By their nature, these companies have essentially evolved into public utilities. If there were 20 Facebook-like companies people could choose to belong to, the collective value of those companies would be much less than one Facebook. That’s because people look to Social Media platforms to connect them to as many people as possible. That’s their main feature, and it’s what most attracts people to them. Without that, they lose their value, and that’s the main reason Myspace died an early death.
Nobody forced people to ditch Myspace for Facebook. It happened organically, as people didn’t want two Facebook-like companies, and they collectively voted for Facebook to be the one place where they could connect to virtually anyone they wanted to.
Social media is an example of a natural monopoly. It doesn’t need to be enforced in order to develop. People seek it out and it results from the inevitable collective choice of the consumer to have just one source for the product.
Common sense, as well as our anti-trust laws, recognize the potential dangers that can develop from monopolistic control of an industry. We are seeing those dangers being played out in social media. They can either be addressed through regulation, or through direct government ownership, but they need to be addressed as they profoundly effect something most important in a free society - the free exchange of ideas.
True, and we need to be aware of the dangers. Anti-competitive behavior is probably the biggest one in this case since the services are free so price gouging isn't likely (unless you're an advertiser).
...they need to be addressed as they profoundly effect something most important in a free society - the free exchange of ideas.
Here's where I think the argument fails. The techs may have a natural monopoly in parts of the social media space but the fallacy is that social media is the only way to exchange ideas.
Not being able to share all my wisdom in a Twitter post doesn't prevent me from sharing it in a dozen other ways.
The Constitution says we have a right to speak, not to be listened to.
Thanks for your interesting and well thought out response. I still tend to weigh in on having some control or regulation of social media due to its vast size, but your counter argument is reasonable and has some merit to it.
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