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Comment by b0rsuk | Hacker News Reader

I'm afraid it won't work well without extra regulation laws. Even if Facebook is broken, it has shown the way. Before, it was MySpace (although it was never so popular). If someone breaks FB, the strongest competitor living in its shadow will step up.

I think it is the nature of certain services to centralize. Search engines, social networks. Unless someone forces them to inter-operate, it's winner takes all.

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> Unless someone forces them to inter-operate, it's winner takes all.

So you mandate inter-operation at the same time you break up the biggest, just like we've done with every other natural monopoly.

I find it interesting that phone number portability was introduced long ago but no email or social profile portability.

While social media profile portability is generally impossible, almost all email providers will let you export email as a MBOX that you can then import into your new account.

Moving your existing emails is not equivalent to phone number portability. Equivalency would be allowing me to take my gmail address and have it point to Proton Mail instead of Gmail.

On the social network side full portability would mean being able to take your profile off of facebook but still having full interoperability with facebook so that users could still see your new posts and vice-versa.

Ahh, I see what you're saying. The issue here is that most people have a company's name baked into their email address–so the equivalent for phone numbers would be like me having to dial the carrier name along with the phone number. There is a solution for this problem: give everyone an email address on their own domain, and allow the service "backing" it to be swapped out (this is what I do-I have an email on my domain, but it's transparently mapped to a preexisting Gmail inbox). Of course, the barrier here is that people are used to email being free and easy to set up, while this solution requires a domain name registration (so, around $10-$15 a year minimum) and some technical knowledge on how to set up MX records.

This is one of the main reasons why I have a custom domain for personal email. Right now, it forwards everything to gmail. In the future, I can have it forward to a different provider, or a mail server that I run (if I feel particularly masochistic). All of this without having to tell everyone I know to start using a different email address.

The US government should take possession of all Facebook shares and use the profits to fund universal basic income. I don't think anyone would complain... Except a tiny percent of the population who owned Facebook shares but who cares, they're evil/morally bankrupt anyway.

You realize for them to make any profit off of “shares” they’d have to sell them back to someone willing to buy them...

That’s aside from the fact that whole idea is ridiculous to begin with.

The government would own the shares and make money from the dividends. Why is it ridiculous?

The government of many countries have taken possession of many companies and land titles in the past for the benefit of society.

Facebook does not pay a dividend.

And what makes you think if the government did something like that Facebook wouldn’t just pack up and leave the country? They are a global company.

Lol, you realize that the government would have to pay current shareholders the value of their shares, right?

I assume he meant the shares would be seized illegally.

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