Posted on 10/03/2021 11:18:08 AM PDT by RicocheT
I’m the founder of MeWe, the ad-free social network with data privacy and no content amplification or newsfeed manipulation. MeWe competes directly with Facebook. On June 27, 2019, I wrote an op-ed in this newspaper headlined “I Compete With Facebook, and It’s No Monopoly.”
I’ve changed my mind. MeWe continues to succeed, albeit on a modest scale. Two years ago the platform had five million users and no revenue. Today it has nearly 20 million users and is breaking even with millions of dollars in revenue. Yet despite MeWe’s growth, Facebook’s troubling actions over the last two years have caused me to change my position, for six reasons.
So I’ve changed my mind. Facebook is a monopoly like the world has never seen. It has more power to influence, manipulate and change thoughts, opinions, votes and purchase decisions on a global scale than any nation or government. It has an army of lobbyists who stymie effective regulation or oversight.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
It is very convincing that FB unchecked will own your brain or those of your kids/grandkids.
We conservatives support free enterprise but FB is becoming bigger than our government in power.
This article is behind a paywall.
I quit facebook several years ago now.
Anybody still on facebook (or using twitter, or using google, or using apple) should quit immediately.
see post #3
Facebook sells your info to insurance companies and many more companies.
Thanks for the link my FRiend.
FascistBook is for nazis 🤪
Sieg heil
I have been preaching for a long time that Facebook was a de facto monopoly/cartel—good to see the WSJ folks _finally_ figured it out...
We had these debates in the late 1800s and early 1900s—and it took the leadership, vision and courage of Teddy Roosevelt to “bust the trusts”.
I was really hoping we were going to see that in 2017....
I never go on FB myself, but it’s monopoly power still does me harm because so many others use it constantly, and don’t even realize or care that they are being brainwashed.
Try as I might, I can’t insulate myself from the consequences of other people’s mistakes.
I feel that I am on a ship of FB fools, in the middle of the ocean, and it’s sinking.
Sure, since I never visit FB, it has no influence over me directly, and I can pat myself on the back for being so “wise”.
But the problem remains: I’m stuck in the middle of the ocean on this ship of FB fools.
It's only paywalled if you click directly to it. If you paste the title into a Google search and then click on the Google link to it, you will get to the full article.
The trade-off is giving Google the hit versus reading the article.
-PJ
There is usually an archived version, or you can create one yourself, which is what I do these days for most paywalled content.
If jail time were included in the penalty, this disregard for the law might change.
-PJ
The issue with Facebook is not that it is a monopoly. Even if it was broken into smaller business the social media piece would still be operating in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Mark Zukerberg and the moderators of Facebook have a set of deeply held religious beliefs which are loosely known as “wokeness”. By denying access to people with different deeply held beliefs (i.e. traditional conservatives) they are violating the Civil Rights Act and should be held legally liable in court. This is also true for Google, Twitter, and any internet site that removes content or blocks users for purely ideological reasons.
Facebook is among the oligarchs who STOLE (not “saved”) the 2020 Presidential election!!!!
https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
Anyone who says that it is a lie that that election was stolen is themself a great big liar!!!!
Pong
Freegards
after many years of disregarding facebook out of principle I found that I have to have a profile or I cannot view many local vendors that only have a facebook presence.
I made a dedicated virtual machine, and a vpn for it, got a proton email address and signed up with a random name.
a week later my account was suspended for violating their community standards, and if I wanted to get it back I would have to provide a copy of my drivers license.
Note that I had only used facebook to look at their marketplace 3 times for a few minutes, joined no lists and had posted nothing.
Why do people who write stuff in papers seem to be more believed or have a bigger voice than the rest of us who do not write stuff in papers?
Duh. Good morning, WSJ.
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