Why? It’s fine if you don’t derive value from their product, but clearly others do, and if they were to go under something else just as evil, if not more, would immediately take its place. Is it not more worthwhile to fix the issues with society that make Facebook unpleasant?
That's a fools errand for the most part. The underlying issue is human behavior and lack of emotional development/awareness. You can connect any interface to a database and as long as the goal is "look at me" in any form, this will happen, eventually.
I doubt "FB going out of business" would have the effect you think. There would then be a vacuum where other actors to fill -- actors who have not experienced the lessons ($5 billion fine) that FB has.
I just don't buy the idea of "start a company, making tens of billions, then your company goes out of business" is a warning. Just like I don't think Adam Neumann's situation is a warning to anyone.
Michael Lewis relates a story about how people use Liar's Poker as inspiration, rather than a warning. Us humans are very self interested -- if there's an opportunity, people are going to take it.
> There would then be a vacuum where other actors to fill
> if there's an opportunity, people are going to take it.
Good, we need more platforms (preferably decentralized) to cultivate free thinking and public form. Not a centralized entity that bends to the will of domestic and foreign governments and angry mobs.
You might be right, although I don't think it's nearly so certain. Why wouldn't each niche community just become an even greater echo chamber when they are decentralized and don't have to follow the same community guidelines? Seems to me, you'd be looking at a lot of communities like /r/thedonald.
I think the action taken with /r/thedonald contributed more to what you are warning against (echo chambers) [0].
"Community Guidelines" can mean anything or whatever confirms to the CEOs biases.
From the article
"Current CEO (and Reddit co-founder) Steve Huffman stepped in as CEO following Pao's departure. He's had his own tussles with r/The_Donald: in 2016, he admitted to modifying posts from users on r/The_Donald after they repeatedly sent him expletives. "
And
"Others on Twitter have taken issue with Huffman's letter regarding Black Lives Matter as well, with the Twitter account for r/BlackPeopleTwitter quoting Reddit's tweet with an image of a Guardian headline that reads, "Open racism and slurs are fine to post on Reddit, says CEO."
Why is it worthwhile to "fix" society's "unpleasant" aspects? And who, exactly, determines which aspects are "unpleasant"?
Much better from my perspective to have multiple huge "big corporates" protest each other to the point of landing economic body blows. That's the tried and true "let the market solve the problem" solution.
A large percent of the world has little to no money. They have no real choice except to accept free with all the consequences. Not using a service like facebook may not be realistic when the percentage of a group using it gets above a useful/necessary threshold.
