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Comment by dalbasal | Hacker News Reader

FB is somewhat of an odd man out... I certainly think reversing acquisitions would be a positive, but...

With Bell, standard oil and past monopolies... the goal was to decentralise while keeping oil and telecom viable. We wanted what they made, and didn't want disruptions.

Do we want what FB makes? Is it scarce? I feel like we would have a sufficient supply of likes, shares, messages and posts regardless. There doesn't need to be a $trn company for those to be supplied.

Generally, I think the issues at stake have evolved. Many of the problems with today's monopolies are power related, rather than efficiency related. I think FB is enormously inefficient, but this is kind of besides the point.

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I think if Facebook got truly broken up worse apps would take its place, particularly in communities outside US jurisdiction. Say what you will about Facebook, but I believe some random FB employee can't just dive through my personal messages without consequences. Having met several, I believe their data scientists go to great lengths to strip PII and generally secure data sets in transit between teams and outside parties. Don't tell me some 3 person start-up is going to get even remotely close to that level of control.

> I think if Facebook got truly broken up worse apps would take its place

Facebook has nothing approaching a monopoly on attention, social media, messaging, anything really. All of their products have serious, billion-dollar, hundreds-of-millions-of-users competitors. Even if they disappeared in a puff of smoke I don't think any competitive landscapes would change much.

Facebook employee here. A significant chunk of onboarding is driving the message through that if you abuse your powers as an engineer to access personal user data, you will be insta-fired without warning. There are a number of checks in place to ensure that employees that don't need access to the data for their specific work cannot get it either.

Additionally, the privacy review process for new products/features is extremely stringent and time consuming. Product teams have been hamstrung significantly, with some engineers I know complaining that they're not even able to get half as much work done as they used to.

> you will be insta-fired without warning.

And not also sued and reported for criminal prosecution?

Because if someone didn't particular want a job at facebook, but interviewed for the experience and got the job or had been working there and wasn't happy there and was ready to quit-- the threat of instant termination alone may not be that much of a deterrent.

> A significant chunk of onboarding is driving the message through that if you abuse your powers as an engineer to access personal user data, you will be insta-fired without warning.

I think focusing on a rogue employee as the threat it missing the mark. The real threat is the ability for huge corporations to legitimize institutional access to data ("business reasons"), and to fight the legal fight if they are caught doing something wrong. Moral hazards of this mode of failure arguably has much more cumulative societal damage (e.g. Cambridge Analytica).

In other words, I worry less about an evil employee reading my messages than a scaled up corporate machinery milking all my data for dollars that feeds the machine back and also can fight any fight at the courts, DC and the public eye.

> Do we want what FB makes? Is it scarce?.. doesn't need to be a $trn company

People want a social network that everyone else is on, that works on all their devices, and isn't full of spam bots or bugs. It takes a big company to do this at scale and the network effect makes useful social networks scarce.

> People want a social network

Do they, though?

Of course they do. Social networks bridge the gap between publishing and communication for the public in a way that has been absolutely transformative in many people's lives, and many people do want that and find that useful. People want to chat with and share media with their friends and affinity groups. They want to follow trending or interesting subjects. They want to post cat pictures and memes.

Outside the SiliValley bubble, though?

Of course outside the bubble. It's really only on HN that social media is assumed to have no redeeming value beyond acting as a platform for corporate mind control, propaganda and culture war, but for most people social media is just a way to communicate and stay entertained. My mother, who can barely even use a computer, keeps in touch with her relatives and gets pictures of her grandkids and keeps up with her COPD support group on Facebook. Obviously social media has value to her and many, many other people.

Do you honestly believe only California techfolk use Facebook?

There's a difference between "use" and "want".

With 2 billion monthly active users… I think a response needs to be far more thoughtful than “Do they, though?”

It takes a big company to do this at scale and the network effect makes useful social networks scarce.

Counterexample: email

Some weird thing about Facebook is it now is basically the default web page for a LOT of small businesses. If you nuked Facebook, you'd nuke the webpages of millions of small businesses.

...not that you'd miss much, as they're usually spartan, but it's worth mentioning.

It's kind of annoying, because an actual webpage is much better IMO, but it is what it is.

The business listing side of Facebook should be broken off as a separate business.

Marketplace is huge too.

Marketplace is basically a Craigslist competitor, taking advantage of their place on Facebook’s platform. I wouldn’t miss it if it were broken off (I’ve got a soft spot for Craigslist).

Facebook the website and Facebook the advertising giant are kinda different things though.

By which I mean that Facebook does not make $trn by supplying likes shares messages and posts.

Perhaps. anchor it wherever you feel it should be anchored, and ask the same question. Whatever it is that FB does isn't scarce.

We would also not lack for ways of selling whatever advertisers on FB are selling. They would be different without FB. Different parties would or wouldn't benefit... Connecting consumers to businesses is not scarce.

I find it very curious how facebook's advertisements (especially on instagram) seem to have a lot more products that are cheap commodity Chinese products, whitelabeled by a glitzy 'startup' brand, and add a 500%+ margin. Very often a quick search can find identical items (maybe without a brand label) on Aliexpress for a fraction of the price.

Google search and on-site ads can be annoying and of questionable relevance, but I rarely see items that are so egregiously ripping off consumers. I dont see this much on twitter promoted tweets either.

What is it about facebook's ad business that encourages such a high proportion of overpriced garbage? Is it the mediums focus on pictures and video that makes these sales work? Is the audience just dumber/less savvy and so these platforms are the only places with enough suckers to do this successfully?

TikTok's sponsored videos seem to be falling into a similar trap to a lesser extent - the markup is less extreme for the few I've looked at out of curiosity.

Do Google and Twitter have some process for quality control to keep the garbage out that Facebook does not? Or is the medium the primary reason for this perceived difference?

In conclusion, I think facebook's advertising arm is likely much more societally damaging than other platforms, and - so long as it continues at current quality level - I would celebrate its demise.

The answer's probably a lot simpler than you think. Dropshipping is hot these days for the "I'm an internet entrepreneur" crowd and the "How To Dropship Guides for $19.99" are all pushing Facebook ads and buying from AliExpress. The readers likely don't even know that there are alternatives: they're just following a script.

The rapid churn when people realize it's harder to make money than it seems means that there is always a new set of people pushing whatever crap is hot that week.

But FaceBook, Instagram and WhatsApp can and should be split into 3 separate companies. That itself will be a positive start.

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