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Comment by baby | Hacker News Reader

Or maybe we are ready, and there will be some downside. I still believe that the upside of all being able to communicate and find each other so easily balances out the negative side.

I truly believe that shutting down facebook today would be a huge loss for all of us. We can complain but social networks have changed our lives for the good in a multitude of ways.

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We shouldn’t shut Facebook down. That’d be an insane regulatory gesture.

However, imagine Facebook offered an interoperable social graph API—and you’d have a cross-platform client app that lets you get in touch with anyone (including those who deleted their Facebook profiles), meet your significant other, meet friends while traveling, etc. all without being locked into exploitation by a behemoth for advertisement money.

I think that'd be a great idea, but I'm skeptical that this would come any time soon because regulators are not good at pushing for open API regulations. Look at banks, this is only becoming a thing recently, and only in the UK.

Banks is not that great of a example - it really depends on what country you look at. For example in Poland almost all major banks offer Open Banking API which allows access to bank account information through API and some bank's mobile apps allow you to add foreign bank accounts so you can see your balance in a single place. Even if they're competition their mobile apps were made compatible thanks to regulations.

That is not entirely open access, mind you, you still need legal entity approved by local financing regulator - but that proves there is a way when there is a will.

[0] https://developer.ing.com/openbanking/home

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