alt Hacker NewsFacebook+Instagram+Whatsapp/iMessage is a "natural monopoly" because of their network effect, just like the older monopolies. You can run a telephone cable to your neighbor, but good luck reaching anyone else. I can run a chat server to talk with a few specific friends too in the same way, but will you be able to use it to talk to a random company/store/stranger?
> It seems like there's a lot of easy to access competition in this space.
If I give you the money to buy and operate the required amount of servers and a couple developers, will you be able to launch a Facebook competitor in the next year? I doubt so.
Fundamentally the idea is that you ought to be able to participate in society without undue hardship solely by the whim of the (power,phone,water,communications) company. I don't think it is that unreasonable to regulate Facebook in that sense.
Also a lot of government agencies themselves basically only post up to date information on Facebook/Twitter. Do you think I should have to go through a hostile third party just to receive information from the government?
> Facebook+Instagram+Whatsapp/iMessage is a "natural monopoly" because of their network effect, just like the older monopolies
They're natural monopolies and yet I don't use any of them and somehow successfully talk to you here, right now. Strange huh, I thought they were a monopoly on internet communication. Can't possibly make a platform for people to talk without Facebook or iMessage and yet here we are. I guess Discord is also really Facebook? Signal? Telegram? I guess this is really just Facebook or iMessage behind the scenes for all of these things?
> If I give you the money to buy and operate the required amount of servers, will you be able to launch a Facebook competitor in the next year? I doubt so.
If you give me less than a week and some budget that scales with users I'll have something thrown together that can scale to at least several hundred thousand users. How long did it take for Moltbook to be made? How much do you think they spent building it? You think they spent years and millions on that? Do you really think it actually cost them that many millions to make Truth Social?
> You can run a telephone cable to your neighbor, but good luck reaching anyone else.
The lines are already run, it's called the internet. We're already all connected to each other. We can reach practically anywhere on the planet with the wire or signal coming into your home. That is a natural monopoly. There is probably only one fiber or coax provider, there's only so much useful RF bandwidth, etc.
If you give me an hour I'll give you a page on the Internet saying anything you want it to say, and everyone in the world (outside of Iran or North Korea) will be able to see it and interact with it.
Competition is a click away. Compared to the industries where there's often only one telephone provider, only one train company, only one major airline, etc.
> Also a lot of government agencies themselves basically only post up to date information on Facebook/Twitter.
Those agencies have websites and other means to disseminate information. They are in no way limited to only Facebook. Many have the ability to make every single phone and radio and TV station say whatever message they need to get across. They have lots of means to get information to you.