The web is at a crossroad and we should promote multiple platforms, old-style blogs, decentralized navigation, classic journalism, etc.
For too many people, Facebook is the web and this is really sad and wrong.
We must find other ways to pay for information and curated content, limiting tracking and defending privacy.
Facebook / instagram / messenger, from what I can see, are just hard charging innovative platforms trying to create products people like. Their businesses could crater pretty easily and the only reason it doesn't is because they keep trying different things.
It's not like search and microsoft's OS dominance / network effects from their Office products.
You don't need to log onto facebook in order to work, you chose to because it's fun and you can connect with friends. Google / MSFT have far deeper hooks.
Facebook has 1.86 billion monthly active users as of Q4 2016[1]. At that time approximately 3.4 billion people used the internet. So a little over 1/2 the internet-using population, and 1/4 of everyone on Earth, has a Facebook account that they access at least once a month. If you drill down a bit about 80% of American adults use Facebook regularly[2]. You may know tonnes of people who don't use Facebook, but I think that's actually quite unusual. Outside of our HN-reading, privacy-interested, technically-competent bubble the overwhelming majority of people use Facebook, and Facebook does have an effective monopoly.
[1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/01/technology/facebook-earnings... [2] http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-20...
However, you cannot start a social network tomorrow and expect to make a reasonable income. People will not join your network, because their friends are not there. Facebook holds a significant part of the world population hostage, because they cannot 'dine' somewhere else. Contrast this with a situation where social networks are federated. You could opt to go to a competing network because their service is better, without losing contacts to your friends.
I would not know if that qualifies as a monopoly legally, but there is clearly a huge difference between McDonalds and Facebook.
They tried to buy Snapchat too.
Some interesting reading on how we might measure the unusual cost of Facebook's monopoly to society.
https://stratechery.com/2017/facebook-and-the-cost-of-monopo...
You people obviously don't use FB< if you did you'd realize that there is huge fatigue on the platform
The reason FB has done well is because they did some smart, viral things, but they can't just iterate like google or msft. They will die very quickly if they do. It's a very tenuous business they have
Of course, but it'd take a long series of significant mistakes by Facebook for them to actually die. While another social network could potentially eat their market Facebook aren't just going to sit idly by and let them. They have the resources to tackle pretty much any threat, so the only way for them to fail is by getting things wrong internally. No one is going to invent a new way of communicating that Facebook can't copy.
Why do you think zuck is working so hard on VR or why he split off messenger - because he knows facebooks survival is limited. What's app and Instagram is more of a threat than FB.
I suspect a lot of Facebook's 'side projects' are driven by what Zuck finds interesting rather than what he thinks is important to Facebook's future.
You people obviously don't use FB< if you did you'd realize that there is huge fatigue on the platform
I don't think it's possible to gauge 1.86 billion people's opinions of Facebook by the things you see when you log in to your own account.
The reason fb is popular is zucks sheer force of Will and not because it's particularly necessary.
LOL, those people will grow up too, and a large percentage of them will join places like FB and even LinkedIn. It's not like what people use in their teens is what they use when they get older, start working, etc.
Besides "What's app and Instagram is more of a threat than FB" is missing the point, as both are owned by FB, the company.
That's a pretty charitable interpretation of Instant Articles.
Those people don't have a need for the web, and, more importantly, the web has no use for them.
If you don't think the web has any use for them, someone else's "web" will. And that web will have a better user experience than yours. Before you know it, people are all using their "web" (see facebook).
The real issue here is how can we enhance the experience of the web we're trying to protect. If someone else has something that's easier to use, people are going to use it.
Facebook is in no way a "better web". I don't use it and I m not missing anything.
I also don't agree that "ease makes it better". The early days of the web were mindbogglingly interesting because it attracted an inquisitive crowd who found ways to make it work (and invented things, if needed). Even today, interesting crowds often flock to low-UX corners of the web (case in point HN).
You and I can probably live without Facebook, but for many, that's literally the only way they connect with friends online. And that's important, because the average user will become what defines the web. Just like trump is the president now, both are things I don't personally like, but that's just the people speaking.
In a way, we (hn users) are also uninteresting -- and the Facebook content are kind of interesting to other people as well. People are different, and we just have different objective functions. In that sense, HN itself is also a "silo". We don't want to be living in silos.