Comment by zethraeus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zethraeus | Hacker News Reader

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> Where's the advantage of instagram, whatsapp and Facebook belonging to one company?

Common-ish arguments for monopolies, as applied to this situation:

* potentially the interoperability you indicate

* infrastructure investment leading to stability

* similarly: best in class client side software

* security / privacy guarantees (yes. I know, ironic, etc. but the fully distributed multi-company alternative is likely worse on these dimensions)

* single point of accountability for the state and law enforcement. (yes. not likely a HN concern. Still valuable to the state and potentially regular consumers.)

* general pro monopoly argument: fewer resources are wasted in competition, and so can be applied to product development and research. i.e. bell labs

IDK how I feel the scales tip in this case, but treating it as cut and dry feels a bit naive.

All of those points would likely be true of independent Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. They are still huge companies, with huge budgets.

If anything, being a centralised conglomerate makes them less stable, less secure. And with less competition, they actually become more wasteful.

The argument’s about societal wastefulness, not FB’s business acumen.

I.e. It’s nontrivial to be more wasteful than it would be to have multiple teams duplicating the same product.

(Strong disagree on your suggestion that the centralisation generally makes them less stable/secure, but granted on the tail risks.)

If we want to talk about "societal wastefulness", then we can probably stop wasting resources on Facebook in the first place.

Sounds good to me. My social media usage is restricted to GitHub and Hacker News. HN is on the chopping block however.

So turn it all into a state run company instead? Your points sound as if that would be a potential solution. But that would have its own issues with somewhat twisted incentive structures.

FWIW State granted monopolies are a common pattern for infrastructure.

Strong +1 on the ensuing twisted incentives.

"* general pro monopoly argument: fewer resources are wasted in competition, and so can be applied to product development and research. i.e. bell labs"

You are arguing for Central Planning. You can't be pro-free market and pro monopoly.

At least government monopoly is theoretically accountable to the voters.

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