in 2005 Myspace held a nearly 100% monopoly on social media.

2009 facebook had the nearly 100% monopoly on social media.

in 2020 we have facebook, instagram, and twitter. as well as other lesser used platforms.

if we add number of posts daily we'd see about 50% owned by facebook/insta, 50% on twitter.

so in 15 years or so these "monopolies" have settled, for now, on about 50% market share. one had nearly 100% 10 years ago, the other didn't exist.

trying to keep up with tech rises and falls with legislation is going to be seen by history as very silly. it's like putting a leash on a bear, just for show, he'll still eat ur face if he gets hungry.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Jun 17 2020 09:55am

Yep. YouTube is great for video hosting, but sucks ass for streaming, which is why most streaming now goes through Twitch.

There really is no argument to be made that these companies are monopolies. It's just a thin attempt to move the goalposts because conservatives are losing.

Instagram is owned by facebook. It seems so far that since the digital age has started the pecking order has largely been settled. Like FB was king shit 10 years ago and they remain so.

I think a better example is a company like google. At this point they have solidified themselves as the directory of everything. They're even used a verb as in 'just google it'. Displacing a giant like that is an impossible task, you could have all of their competitors banding together and they'd still probably fall short. You can't really expect the free market will somehow regulate itself to what we think is fair in today's world. What we're seeing is more centralization. The walmarts, googles, amazons, facebooks are very clearly coming out as the winners. This type of anti competitive environment doesn't benefit anyone but these companies in the long term.

Legislation is absolutely needed or in another generation or two there will be no main street and we will just have a handful of corporations which own everything.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Jun 17 2020 10:12am

Having one dominant company isn't a bad thing. Google will lose their dominant status if they start making bad decisions and stop being a good website, and in the world of technology staying "the good website" is an incredibly difficult and expensive task.

The argument isn't "Google is big", that doesn't hold water with breaking them up or mandating that they not censor views. The argument has to be "they are a monopoly".

We've seen many times just in the past 30 years that kings can be quickly dethroned if they refuse to innovate and piss off their userbase. MySpace no longer exists because they largely had a policy of "build it and leave it" which made their website more difficult to use compared to facebook. Google dethroned Yahoo to get their current dominant position, and they've maintained it by spending billions on constantly upgrading their search engine technology and integrating advertising in a way that isn't offensive to the userbase.

If you want mainstreet back, the solution is to go back to pre-1990 regulation and start breaking up big companies of all types. This isn't a problem with tech companies, it's been a problem since we stopped breaking up large companies and started allowing mergers. Still, that's not gonna happen because to get the political will to do so would require first getting rid of corporate influence on politics, which people who think we should break up media companies generally refuse to acknowledge.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jun 17 2020 10:20am

The argument is that they are a monopoly tho.

Comparing a niche company like MySpace which catered to basically teenagers who want to show off songs and colorful profiles to google doesn't make sense. Google is to us what libraries & newspapers etc were for literally all of history. They decide what you can check out of the library because literally they've become the only library in town.

The entire history of monopolies is that they can make exploitative decisions and stop being 'good' and still retain control.
Unlike the dotcom gold rush of competitive sites crowding each other out, Google rose in a time of tech companies branching out aggressively to pervade every facet of tech and make themselves too big to become unpopular. You can't just choose to boycott Google these days, what, are you going to give up not just your search engine but Google maps, your gmail account, youtube, captchas, ads, translation, chrome, pay, play, analytics, etc? Google became that monopoly by becoming big not just in their primary field but becoming big in as many fields as they could. They are to the folks on the web today what the workers had at their company store in old days. MySpace never left its original footing.

So you've never met someone with no cellphone, computer, or television? Something tells me you should.

if u legislate away their monopoly they'll just loophole you. they'll "break up" like TV media did, where its still all owned by a tiny number of people but different channels with separate boards all moving in the same direction anyways.

the simple fact that facebook has rebranded half it's energy into Instagram, and the not yet fact of TikTok getting bought out by twitter/facebook, show this is what will happen. they'll break up, and still Zuck/Jack will get the cash, and all of their companies will do the same thing.

if i wanted to start a steel company that had 100% of the business of my area i couldnt, but if i want to start 10 steel companies that each get 10% i can. with social media it's just an extra URL and another stooge board to see it through.

you're essentially trying to use a socket wrench on a motherboard. the computer is broken, your attempt it noble, but destined to fail. facebook can put 100x more money into exploiting loopholes than the state, and they're able to act in real time. the govt neither has the funds nor do courts/legislation work in real time.



harsh words like that are a good way to get yourself removed from my Top 8.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Jun 17 2020 10:37am

A private website is like a book within a library. The library is public, free, open, virtuous. The books on the shelves can be exotic filth, political banter, news, encyclopedia, porn w/e. Are we saying that the 'book' Google now has to take on responsibilities of the library?

Note: If Google is messing around with DNS, or their Android web traffic flow, that is a HUGE deal. Messing with search results on their private domain on a DOT com is normal. Perhaps users need to learn to check sources, look around a bit?

This post was edited by RedFromWinter on Jun 17 2020 10:38am

i used to have to climb on the shelves to reach the filth, now i just click "OVER 18, AGREE!" and im in. (laughs in child's voice)

This post was edited by thesnipa on Jun 17 2020 10:41am