> Information products are not like paperclips. Each piece of information is by definition unique, and its value to the consumer is predicated on that uniqueness.
A piece of information is not unique. You and I can both know that 2+2=4. We probably both know what the president looks like.
That's the complication.
There's nothing preventing you and your family from being part of multiple social networks. There's nothing stopping a site from being listed in both Google and Bing. None of that information is necessarily unique.
Here's the real rub. Whether or not your friends are on multiple social media networks isn't controlled by Facebook; it's controlled by your friends.
I think it's going to be really hard to argue that Facebook has a monopoly because people use them and refuse to create accounts elsewhere. Facebook isn't taking away your choice to connect with your friends, your friends are. The accounts are free, and Facebook isn't going to ban you for having a Mastodon account.
I still think we need a more open environment. I just think we need a new concept for what's happening instead of trying to logically torture the situation to fit a heavily abstracted notion of a monopoly. And then we need to ban that concept.
A piece of information is not unique. You and I can both know that 2+2=4. We probably both know what the president looks like.
That's the complication.
There's nothing preventing you and your family from being part of multiple social networks. There's nothing stopping a site from being listed in both Google and Bing. None of that information is necessarily unique.
Here's the real rub. Whether or not your friends are on multiple social media networks isn't controlled by Facebook; it's controlled by your friends.
I think it's going to be really hard to argue that Facebook has a monopoly because people use them and refuse to create accounts elsewhere. Facebook isn't taking away your choice to connect with your friends, your friends are. The accounts are free, and Facebook isn't going to ban you for having a Mastodon account.
I still think we need a more open environment. I just think we need a new concept for what's happening instead of trying to logically torture the situation to fit a heavily abstracted notion of a monopoly. And then we need to ban that concept.