A federal Judge recently dismissed “anti-competitive”/monopoly charges against Facebook
The problem is that just being a very popular platform doesn’t make you a monopoly – e.g. Walmart is not a monopoly simply because a lot of people shop there and they are hard to compete against
FB allows people to easily connect with each other and share information – which is not monopolistic in any form.
from a business standpoint FB is selling access to those peoples information. SO FB isn’t doing anything different (from a legal standpoint) than what a popular tv network does – which again is functionally “build an audience” and then sell advertising to that audience.
Google and Facebook allow “targeted advertising” – which ends up being very cost effective for “business users”
BUT if you are a “content producer” you need to remember that FB is not your friend or partner. The wise content producer is NOT going to use FB as their primary platform
i.e. FB is a great platform to acquire/build an audience (at a price) – but then the first step for the “wise FB business user” should be to connect with that audience OUTSIDE of FB – after all FB can cut off your access to THEIR platform as they wish.
from an “anti-trust” issue FB (probably) isn’t a “monopoly” – as in they are not actively being “anti competitive” — their moderation is questionable, and they are obviously biased and they might be engaging in “illegal discrimination” – but that is a different legal argument …
btw: how you “successfully compete with FB” is similar to “how a small retailer successfully competes with Walmart (or Amazon)” – step 1 is to understand that you (probably) aren’t in the same business
Walmart is a logistics company that specializes in “low costs” – the “core business” for Amazon is (probably) “I.T. services” (in the form of AWS), but they are also a logistics company
While the local hardware store is in the business of “selling service” – which means “individual attention” and/or “high level of customer interaction.” … sure that local hardware store charges a little more, but they are nice to deal with
Remember FB is not selling a unique product – they are selling access to an “audience.” FB provides services to that audience BUT the “audience” is the product not FB
Quick how does “local newspaper” compete with the NY TImes? well, NOT by trying to do better national news coverage – “local newspaper” needs to concentrate on having “local news” – and a lot of pictures of “local people” doing “local stuff”
oh, and WHEN something better comes along – users can leave FB with minimal effort. Of course Mr Zuckerberg et al realize all of the above and that is why they make an effort to make people “FB dependent”