On a parallel, can't we criticize any decision reducing the market cap of companies as an attack on the retirement portfolios? Say, if we required connected glasses to display a red light of more than x lumens when recording, would that be ok, even if it decreased Meta's market cap?
Any decision that results in a long term net loss across the entire public economy? Yes.
That's something that hurts a lot of people and that hurt should be carefully weighed against whatever the assumed benefit is. Sometimes that's worth it, sometimes it's not
But it's never OK to just hand wave with "well I don't care about that class of people so screw them"
And let's not move the goalposts. OPs proposal was a corporate breakup of massive scale, not a minimum lumens requirement.
At some point, similar to the camera/face recognition debate, it's about a choice of society that we want to live in. I think that's an interesting debate.
That's...I'm not even sure how to respond to that. It would have a large direct and MASSIVE indirect chilling effect. The scale would be historic.
> it's about a choice of society that we want to live in. I think that's an interesting debate.
I fully agree with you! OP apparently doesn't, as he stated he does not care about half of the voices in that debate. That's what I'm taking issue with, not the proposal to break up Meta, which is, as you said, worth a debate!
Like it did with Ma Bell (the effective telephone monopoly)? No. I'm pretty sure it would have the direct opposite (open frontier) effect. The direct steps to break up a company are well telegraphed to the market.
The effect on economy I'm talking about is a functional one, ads and slop will continue to be served on your social network of choice. Second order like "bad vibes" will be forgotten in a month, a quarter at max and then hedge fund managers will move to something else.