Precis

It is time to imagine a post-Facebook world | Financial Times
https://www.ft.com/content/4618786f-e3f1-4361-891e-03a2aac6a682

Yet Facebook is like a baby trying to grasp a soapy basketball. The company has no chance of ever fully getting to grips with toxic content given its monetisation model and global scale. How can Facebook monitor the deluge of noxious content in dozens of languages and cultures it does not understand? In Myanmar, and elsewhere, the company stands accused of allowing its services to be used to incite ethnic violence.The best hope of constraining the company may lie in more imaginative competition and more local networks. Breaking up the Facebook parent might solve nothing if the “baby Facebooks” operated in the same way.

Network Effects Are Overrated – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/04/business/dealbook/network-effects.html

Even among the companies that have come to define the sector — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google — only Facebook’s franchise was primarily built on network effects. Yet all these companies seem to appreciate the public relations and investor relations value of pushing the platform folklore. Internal email correspondence unearthed by congressional investigators revealed that their C.E.O.s understand both the extent of their vulnerability and the value of the mythology. Confronted with the challenge of explaining away various competitive threats, Facebook’s vice president for corporate finance and business planning proposed a solution: “We need a simpler ‘platform’ story.”

Network Effects Are Overrated – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/04/business/dealbook/network-effects.html

Even among the companies that have come to define the sector — Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google — only Facebook’s franchise was primarily built on network effects. Yet all these companies seem to appreciate the public relations and investor relations value of pushing the platform folklore. Internal email correspondence unearthed by congressional investigators revealed that their C.E.O.s understand both the extent of their vulnerability and the value of the mythology. Confronted with the challenge of explaining away various competitive threats, Facebook’s vice president for corporate finance and business planning proposed a solution: “We need a simpler ‘platform’ story.”