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Comment by rossdavidh | Hacker News Reader

If Google threatened to withdraw (which they're probably not foolish enough to do), the loss of things like Maps (that many other services depend on) and Gmail and Google Docs and etc. would worry most advanced economies. If Apple threatened to withdraw, it would not be as worrisome, but it would probably anger a lot of Apple fans. I feel like a significant chunk of FB users are only on it because they need to be in order to communicate with friends and family who stopped checking their email. Knowing that FB was not available in their country would make things simpler. FB is about as popular with their own users as, say, your average Big Tobacco company. They can't quit, but if it weren't available they would be better off after a couple weeks withdrawal.

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This analysis does not cover the importance of Facebook in

i) Business pages that are easy to create and maintain for small, local business owners

ii) Facebook events for listing information and keeping in touch with registered attendees, as well as event discovery for users

iii) The importance for certain creators hosting their content and connecting with their user base on Instagram (assuming that would be also cancelled, as it is owned by Meta)

iv) Controversial due to the privacy implications, but a lot of companies rely on paying for Facebook advertisements to survive (which is driving why Meta is valued so highly on the stock market).

A tech-savvy user can create a website (or hire someone to); move to Eventbrite or equivalent; change photo-sharing apps to VSCO or equivalent; and back up their messages.

But many people don't know these are even options, or lack the funds and technical skills to do this (because their specialties are in non-tech fields, for small business owners and people in certain creative fields). The bottom line is that Meta and its constituent of Facebook are valued highly for important use cases that can't be easily dismissed.

> But many people don't know these are even options, or lack the funds and technical skills to do this

Upon Meta’s absence, there would be a robust market response to overcome this “lack of knowledge” gap. Marketing outfits of all sizes and SaaS platforms that handle these things for the non-Meta markets would find new business opportunities and marketing spends would connect consumers to their new options. It would be incredibly fine.

It would reconverge on incredibly fine, but it’s undoubtedly going to be disruptive to people and businesses along the way towards that resettling.

To be fair none of these are such big of a thing around here. Businesses have a website and Google maps, can't remember the last time something linked me to Facebook.

Events being not on Facebook is getting common again because it doesn't make sense to host events in a platform that more than 50% of people in some age groups simply refuse to use.

Not sure about ads, personally I only wasted money on Facebook. I am getting better ad results, with less fishy clicks, everywhere else. (I stopped using FB ads when they started to send traffic from countries I did not order but counted them.)

From my understanding the dependency on Facebook here in central Europe is way less than in some other places.

Yeah. When I read things like US schools expecting parents to have Facebook, I am like "WHAT?!". Facebook isn't required for much at all in Germany. I don't use it, I'm fine. Focused services such as Meetup.com, Doodle, (WhatsApp), Signal, eBay Kleinanzeigen (classifieds), Google Maps... cover the things that I hear people using Facebook for.

Same here in Switzerland. The landscape is totally split up between many small and big companies doing their thing. They also come and go, I never witnessed a deep fixation as HN makes me think the US haves for Facebook.

I can easily say I don't use Facebook and still be connected, don't use eBay and still sell used things, refuse to use Google and still receive emails and be able to find places. There simply is no hard monopoly

That's in the short-term. It could be disruptive in a negative way.

There are probably already a number of EU companies in the space that could quickly be filling in these gaps. It would take some time to settle and have a dominant popular destination/network.

The importance of FB for businesses might be different in Europe - at least based on my personal experience. I've never come across a business relying on FB as primary web presence.

There is a Korean restaurant in my area (Berlin) that only has Facebook, I guess they just don't know better. Facebook only used to be more common (if rare) a couple of years ago, always made me less inclined to visit these places.

Google (maps/profile) is used far more here now in my experience: I think the fact that users can correct opening times and other info themselves etc is a godsend for small businesses and their customers alike.

Facebook is not irreplaceable, since there are alternatives to all of Facebook's features:

> i) Business pages that are easy to create and maintain for small, local business owners

Business directories such as Yelp and Google Maps (Google Business Profile) allow businesses to maintain an online presence comparable to a Facebook page.

Business owners can also build websites without needing advanced technical skills with WordPress.com, Squarespace, or Wix. This takes more work than a directory listing, but designing a site with these tools isn't much harder than making a slide presentation.

> ii) Facebook events for listing information and keeping in touch with registered attendees, as well as event discovery for users

Meetup and Eventbrite do what Facebook events do. Mobilizon is a decentralized FOSS alternative. These other sites already exist, so people would already need a search engine to discover events across all of them.

Users migrating to these sites would need to learn how to use them, but I don't think using something like Eventbrite is significantly harder than using Facebook.

> iii) The importance for certain creators hosting their content and connecting with their user base on Instagram (assuming that would be also cancelled, as it is owned by Meta)

Instagram users would migrate to other social media platforms like Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, and Reddit. Professional photographers would also use photo hosting sites like Smugmug/Flickr or 500px to showcase their photos. Pixelfed is the fediverse equivalent to Instagram.

> iv) Controversial due to the privacy implications, but a lot of companies rely on paying for Facebook advertisements to survive (which is driving why Meta is valued so highly on the stock market).

Brands and advertisers follow their target market. Whichever social media platforms the Facebook and Instagram users migrate to, the brands would use to advertise.

Facebook closing down would inconvenience its users in the short term, but the affected users would adapt by switching to alternatives. The people who don't know about these alternatives would know about them as soon as Facebook leaves, since these services would be publicized by the media and by former Facebook users.

My understanding is that WhatsApp is also super popular in Europe.

WhatsApp is popular in Europe because of its network effects, not because of any unique features it may have. If it were made unavailable, users would switch to Signal, Telegram, or the European-developed Threema.

Businesses would favor this change, since they would no longer have to pay WhatsApp for every conversation they initiate after exceeding their free tier.*

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29711001

Threema is a paid app though so that would not happen imho. For people who care somewhat less about end to end encryption, Telegram is by far the easiest: it just works, everywhere and you have all your data everywhere. I understand that it is a safety feature that it is hard to run the other ones smoothly (independent) on different devices while keeping your history but it is a huge annoyance: in whatsapp you cannot even switch android<>ios with history intact. Matrix (Element in my case) works a lot better with end to end encryption in tact and my history there on all devices but it sometimes 'lost keys' on one of them (? No idea what happens, I did report it) so I have to login again (which is a pita); that is better than the alternatives imho.

Yet many also have a telegram account, some also have signal. There is no big move out of whatsapp because people don't see the advantage of moving. but if whatsapp had to disappear one day, people with already a telegram account would quickly redirect their relatives to it.

It depends on who you ask but Telegram and Signal are just as popular. Most people have more than 1 IM. It's been years when I couldn't contact someone because they just had WhatsApp.

People who chat a lot use something different either way because WhatsApp lacks all the cool features.

> It depends on who you ask but Telegram and Signal are just as popular.

It depends on the countries. Some countries in Europe use Telegram and Messenger a lot (never heard of any where Signal is popular), others are virtually a WhatsApp monoculture.

Not that it matters much. Using phone numbers as ID makes things relatively portable: it makes it much easier to adopt a new app, but if Whatsapp shut down tomorrow everyone would be able to easily find each other on Telegram/Signal. Very different from rebuilding a social network from scratch.

I can't remember the last time someone asked or even mentioned messenger. So yeah it really depends on the country, the circle you are in and more.

But good point. Even thought I don't like the number requirement it will and does it make it easy for people to change.

I agree. I understand the impulse of most people to say that FB is replaceable. But the network effects there are so strong that it's not. If FB leaves, a lot of things would be completely disrupted (not in a good way).

FB was smart enough to go into business fields. A social network is replaceable. But what FB has become is not.

As much as I hate to admit it, they are very good at what they do.

Surely, being literally banned kills the network effects quite quickly?

If they sense blood in the water, you'll have Eurobook in a week, and that's that.

There had been dozens of Eurobook attempts and somehow FB have prevailed. The best any could do was popularity at single country level.

Yeah, but they'll have way better chances if FB isn't around.

But also, it has obviously become a risky business.

I mean, not if they comply judiciously with EU law. It's not like Facebook have been famous for the care with which they have followed all the rules laid upon them.

My thought process was like this. In order for a social network to capture the market, it should attract as many users as possible, because having your friends, relatives, coworkers etc. in a social network is why people use them in the first place. Therefore it will have to be free for users. Therefore it will have to make money in some other way, which will probably have something to do with user data and/or user attention. If they find a way to do that in a way that is compliant with the current EU regulation, the public sentiment towards making business with user data is such that this will likely be seen as circumventing the law as soon as the company will become successful enough. Which in turn will result in more regulation introduced to cover what you do specifically.

What could work is what many (most?) European startups do - pretend to try to capture the market, get acquired by a large company before shit hits the fan and when it predictably fails it's not your problem anymore.

Case in point: China

> If Google threatened to withdraw (which they're probably not foolish enough to do), the loss of things like Maps (that many other services depend on) and Gmail and Google Docs and etc. would worry most advanced economies.

It would inconvenience those who are using these Google services, but the services themselves are easily replaceable.

Google Maps can be replaced with HERE Maps, which has a similar feature set. The absence of Google Maps would also accelerate contributions to OpenStreetMap and its ecosystem.

Gmail and Google Docs have Zoho Mail and Zoho Docs as alternatives, as well as Microsoft's Outlook.com and Office 365. Nextcloud combined with Collabora Online or OnlyOffice also makes a fine FOSS substitute to Google Docs.

Any worry would be in the short term, until companies make the transition to other solutions. I agree that the absence of Facebook would also not pose long-term issues, since users would simply migrate to other social media platforms and businesses would choose other forms of advertising.

The availability of (often worse) alternatives does not mean a transition will not destroy billions of euros worth of effort and disruption of business processes.

I am fairly sure the backlash to losing Google would be significant, even government-ending.

Should a single foreign for-profit megacorporation have that much power over our elected governments?

Yeah, that's how I unplugged myself from Google totally. Gmail can be replaced with any paid or free mail service with IMAP.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30051054

i thought that was just recent

I agree wholeheartedly. I think there would be people who were upset, but it would not be a material loss. Meta repeatedly overestimates the appeal of their products. If Microsoft, Apple, Google decided not to do business you would not only hear an outcry from users, it would in some cases be a material loss and make people's lives worse. I don't think you can say that about any of Meta's products. I quit using Facebook and Instagram years back and the next day was a better day.

If Apple withdrew, there would simply be people buying their products abroad or via the black market. Hardware is pretty portable like that, unlike services. Even apps can be gotten if you just get gift cards for another country’s App Store.

The Great Firewall of China is a perfect example of what happens when Google and Facebook aren’t allowed into a country. Alternatives that the government can better control fill the gap.

There are other maps programs, email providers and the G suite is a mess. Libre office is better.

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