Meta owns WhatsApp, which is core infrastructure in many countries now where it has basically replaced the PSTN. If WhatsApp went down without a long transition process first, it would take myriad small businesses down with it. I would love to see harsh punishments and jailed executives, but the world still needs the company for the time being.
The transition mechanism is that your contacts are in your phone address book, and you can call or text them or find them on other platforms indexed by phone number. Although, not for username contacts.
Would it be disruptive? Yes. Would it be world ending? No.
Launch two parallel cases. One against Meta top execs for criminal behavior, the other one as antitrust against Meta for abusing their market position. Two cases at once gives you negotiating power and clearly signals that you're serious about curtailing their influence.
Ideally this results in jail time for Meta execs, but at a minimum divesting them of Whatsapp should be achievable. By the end you should be able to get Meta's businesses operating independently under new leadership.
It’s not meta’s contribution to the world. It can be cleanly extracted from the company. Or a replacement created if need be.
If the collapse of Twitter is any indication, it might just drive people to even worse and more exploitative platforms instead.
> but the world still needs the company for the time being.
You have been caught hook, line and sinker. Flush the koolaid out of your system. I can absolutely guarantee you that if all of Meta disappears tomorrow, everyone will move over to a like-for-like replacement within weeks. I'd be willing to bet everything I have on it.
The world absolutely does not need Meta, period.
Not everyone has SEO-fu, and hiring a contractor is an additional cost for small businesses. At least on Facebook one normally finds what one is looking for.
Angie's List started out this way but I think it has been corrupted since the merger with HomeAdvisor. I could be wrong about that.
Establishing trust would be the tricky part. People are so used to 80% of the internet being scams and clickbait. But that certainly goes for Facebook pages as well.