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Comment by aaron-lebo | Hacker News Reader

It makes me weirdly happy as an American to see it happen. What happens when instead of massive, boring, soulless, mediocre corporations like Facebook serving 2 billion sharecroppers, we've got multiple or even dozens of smaller networks serving regions and niches? That has the potential for innovation we can't begin to understand. Facebook is akin to McDonald's not only spreading internationally but also replacing all other restaurants once it gets in a country. Who likes Big Macs that much?

It's why we should criticize the actions of any power (whether the Us, China, the EU, Russia) to control citizens and eliminate smaller cultures. Maybe melodramatic but it's exciting. The growth of Chinese networks is interesting, wonder how they would develop under a democratic government? Further innovation or do they only exist because of that environment as you suggest?

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Don't worry, Tencent is just as much souless and bigcorp than facebook. I would say even more comparing what my friends have said about working at tencent vs facebook.

what do your friend say about Tencent vs Facebook?

Tencent is a pretty bad place to work at, how they constantly discarded their work projects, have typical chinese work hours where people sleep under their desk despite being huge co and said other friends who worked there had a bad time. They did like their immediate co-workers although.

While friends and coworkers who work(ed) at facebook have had a much better time, with far more perks, interesting projects work not thrown away and a much better work life balance.

I don't get this excitement we have to control other people's lives. We should not interfere with voluntary transactions. Free markets serve niches not Govts

What happens when ... we've got multiple or even dozens of smaller networks serving regions and niches?

I think there are already more than two dozen smaller niche social networks.

What we need is p2p social networks. Huge potential in the tech and it 'just' needs polishing. Salmon protocol for comment threads for example is way more powerful than what we use today (it publishes comments across subscriber networks so you could have a conversation being pieced together across separate social networks). Maybe if some big users with a lot of early adopters like reddit and HN got behind that as a movement and started adopting the tech we would see some traction.

>Facebook is akin to McDonald's not only spreading internationally but also replacing all other restaurants once it gets in a country.

Sources for McDonlads replacing all other restaurants. Maybe you haven't traveled as much but for me I always check out local McDonalds, hardly actually eating there. One of the reason they have been successful is adopting local tastes. Costa Rica has Gallo Pinto in addition to fries as options. Serbia has this crazy Crispy meat thing.

With McDonalds I know what the product is and I pay for it. With Facebook it's a little less clear what they are doing. One certainty with FB, we are the product.

With FB they are a little nefarious, especially the Free Basics thing. Google is doing similar things with Google Fiber and the defunct ballon idea.

You misunderstood OP's use of the word "akin."

I concur with your McD thinking. I think you've got FB and Google wrong. I'm not saying they're saints, but in their self interest, they serve their customers. So they've their customers' interests in mind

If people cared about privacy that much, they should use some other network. People weigh the trade-offs of benefits vs costs and still choose to use FB and Google.

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