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Advocacy Groups Call for the FTC To Break Up Facebook (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Several advocacy groups have banded together for a campaign that calls upon the US Federal Trade Commission to intervene and break up Facebook into smaller companies -- and more specifically to split off the Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp services from the mother company. The campaign, named Freedom from Facebook, was set into motion today by eight groups -- Demand Progress, Citizens Against Monopoly, Content Creators Coalition, Jewish Voice for Peace, MoveOn, Mpower Change, Open Markets Institute, and SumOfUs, respectively. Through a dedicated website, the eight advocacy groups are urging users to file a petition with the FTC on the grounds that Facebook has become a monopoly. The campaign's motto is "It's time to make Facebook safe for democracy." "Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have amassed a scary amount of power," the campaign's website reads. "Facebook unilaterally decides the news that billions of people around the world see every day."
Then they're definitely not going to break up Facebook, provided of course Facebook throws enough money to politicians and K Street.
Facebook may be quite evil, but it is by no means has a monopoly on social media. It may occupy a particular niche in the social media eco-system. But I am not sure that there can really be more than one in a given niche. For social media to work at all, the majority of people who are interested in social media have to be in the same place.
Put limits on data collection and retention, sure. But break them up? All that'll happen is that another player will fill the niche. And being aware of what had been done to FB, they'll manage to be more evil: they'll do the same thing, but hide it even better.
Check your premises.
Someone recently posted the Facebook earnings figures and it showed the #deletefacebook campaign barely put in a dent. No one except celebrities left the platform en-mass. Look at the list of backers in this particular campaign. It tells us something. I wrote about it here:
https://fightthefuture.org/article/facebook-politics-and-orwells-24-7-hate/
I suspect Zuckerberg plan for a presidential run pissed off some of the old rich. He young, he's a new kid, and the gods of old media wanted to put him in his place. All the focus has been on Facebook, when Google, Apple, Amazon, Adobe and even Microsoft collect just as much data and do the same types of analytics.
Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see Facebook broken apart too; and same with Google. I doubt this campaign will go anywhere though. It's a rich man's pissing contest. We're seeing the top 500 companies fight over relevance, and if anything, Facebook won that last round if you go by influence numbers.
has it really reached a point that we can call it a monopoly?
I admit - the tactics they used to get people to create accounts, from the early days that mostly consisted of not allowing people to view even "public" content without an account, were sort of underhanded, but they got people to create the accounts and those people kept coming back. There are plenty of other social networks out there, and plenty that compete with each of the ones above. They don't fit the proper definition of monopoly.
What keeps Facebook popular isn't the fact they're good, it's that other people are there - once they got a foothold they took off for the same reason Microsoft Office did - not because they're better than the competition, but because EVERYONE ELSE is using it.
I would argue Slashdot itself is a social network, from the early days of the Internet. I was/technically still am on LiveJournal, and despite the fact I don't use it anymore I think it's better than Facebook. I'm also on Minds, Steemit, and Google Plus. They aren't a monopoly.
I would love to see the company break apart, but the part of me that likes to do what's right doesn't want the government to do it. I want them to fall face down in a pile of crap and have everyone leave them of their own accord. Right now the pro-censorship charge being lead by Facebook, Google, and Twitter are driving some of the core participants from these platforms to the networks I've mentioned above and Gab.
As IPFS gains momentum and block-chain based social networks like Steemit as well as privatized nodes on the chains like https://akasha.world/ Facebook is going to fall apart simply because people will be moving onto platforms they know aren't being controlled by a core group of overlords. The only way to stop block-chain based networks is for governments to truly show their tyrannical faces and break down the nodes - that requires going past lines they've tip-toed up to but don't want to cross for obvious reasons.
Once the chain takes off Facebook will be all about your Grandma hitting "Love" on pictures of your kids and your aunt forwarding stupid meme's which are some sort of Internet astrology based on first names and likely hood to be good moms, dads, dancers, or sloppy whatever. In short, it will be nothing but old people who aren't going to learn to use something else.
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"Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have amassed a scary amount of power,"
Google has more power and more information and frankly more opportunities for abuse. Facebook just isn't clever enough to be subtle about it.
Anyway this is nothing more than a stupid publicity stunt that they have to know cannot possibly happen, especially with the current administration and congress. They didn't break up the banks which nobody even seriously argues with the fact that they are a systemic threat to our financial system. If they didn't do that then Facebook certainly isn't going to get that kind of scrutiny here in the US. Maybe Europe could do something but I doubt it.
Facebook unilaterally decides the news that billions of people around the world see every day."
No, people choose to use FB as their news source rather than going to real news organizations. These people believe they don't have the time to read the source material and instead want to be spoon-fed dribs and drabs.
FB is offering the service. That people are too lazy to do their own footwork is not FB's problem.