not a utility, was Parler

Mon Jan 11 22:38:45 UTC 2021

On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 4:23 AM Rod Beck <rod.beck at unitedcablecompany.com>
wrote:

> Declare Facebook a public utility and eliminate advertising by replacing
> with a fee or what you call a tariff. Breaking up does not always work.
> Facebook is like a natural monopoly - people want one site to connect with
> all their 'friends'. No one is going to use several Facebooks as social
> media platform. They want one.
>
> Regards,
>
> Roderick.
>

I think you would quickly find that Facebook became a much emptier place
the moment you started charging standardized tariffs to access the service.

How many people here would shell out $10/month to scroll endlessly
through their timeline, or wall, or whatever facebook calls it these days?

I don't even use Facebook for free these days; charging a tariff?  Yeah,
that's going to result in a ghost town pretty quickly.

People want one *free* site to connect to all their friends.  They've
already
learned that it's a non-starter trying to get their friends to join them on
a
platform that charges a monthly tariff.

It's only a natural monopoly because the advertising is subsidizing the
free nature of it.  Take away the free aspect, and suddenly it's not a
very natural monopoly at all.

Matt
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