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Comment by qnsi | Hacker News Reader

People writing in this thread that FB won't be missed - yeah it won't be missed by average HN user who doesn't use FB. Meanwhile all my friends use Instagram stories, communicate on FB messenger, browse local events on FB events, we don't have good reddit clone in my country so a lot of discussions happen in FB groups.

FB leaving EU would be felt by many. There would be room for a quick copycats, but probably the experience would be subpar without ads cashcow.

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There is no technical solution that FB offers that couldn't be replaced easily.

FB itself seems to forget that its major asset is users and that almost everyone that uses FB, uses it simply because "everyone is there". If FB shuts down in Europe, that hurdle fixes itself.

1. There would be cash flow, the data just would need to stay in Europe.

2. Metas biggest advantage is the fact that social media are a natural monopoly in the sense that you really want to be in the same social network as everybody else. Hence the largest must win.

If meta were to leave Europe, there would be a short phase in which there would be several aspiring alternatives, than the market would consolidate.

FB didn't invent the internet, they are just trying to colonize it, so they can charge rent on the labour of others.

We had chat, messaging, pages. All decentralized. No ads. Just worked. Jabber, email, etc.

FB is a national security issue. If you love your country, you pray or fight for the ban of anything Mark touches.

We even had facebook before facebook in many countries. In Poland - grono.net and then nasza-klasa. They weren't better, but at least they weren't worldwide monopolies.

Now imagine if this vacuum could be filled by competitors that right now don't have a chance to go against a de facto monopoly on social networking? Wouldn't it be lovely to see all the new products that could take over all these domains without the clutter of being Facebook: event scheduling/marketing, marketplaces of used goods, neighbours' community groups and so on?

Why should I feel sad that one major company isn't dominating all these spaces at the same time?

All because FB happens to be there, and happens to be popular within some groups. If it disappeared, however, it would quickly be replaced. The only value it brings is "being popular".

The EU people and businesses will adapt and find other ways to communicate. Many other businesses will fill the vacuum. In a couple of years it will be all settled into a new normal state.

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