Why should facebook care? They are a "monopoly" that you willingly submitted yourself to. They created a great service and you bought into it. If all your friends are on facebook then that's you and your friends' own damn fault.
"It's not fair! Facebook has a responsibility to its users! I demand them to do such and such!"
So what if facebook was never around? You are in debt to them for such a great service, they never forced you to become so dependent. People lived for tens of thousands of years without social networking, and they'll continue to do so.
I can't help but think this blame mentality is the root of a lot of problems with the intended discourse, here.
The issue at hand isn't whether or not Facebook has the power to do this, but rather that the system is intrinsically moronic in that it involves no checks and balances. It is trivial to abuse.
You don't like a company's Facebook fan page, and you can have it removed with a little effort into building an email. You don't actually have to prove anything, just wave your hands.
In essence, you seem to be defending the right of Facebook's public users to disable accounts and pages on Facebook on a whim. Is that correct?
I am defending Facebook's right to deal with the stuff it publishes however it wishes. You don't have a contract with Facebook that they store and display your content, as you would a book publisher or private hosting service. With Facebook you voluntarily post your content, and they voluntarily publish it for free. They have no obligation to you to keep it up there for any reason whatsoever.
If you want to guarantee the stability of your content, you need to get a contract or host it yourself. Facebook doesn't owe you anything.
On the contrary - Facebook owes it's users everything. Without them, Facebook does not exist. Every user provides Facebook with content, which Facebook then monetizes using ads. Every user also views those ads, directly earning Facebook money.
To assume that since there is no legal contract between a user and Facebook, Facebook has no need to treat its users well is simply untrue. The users make Facebook, not the other way around.
Did you read through the FB Terms of Service back when you signed up?
When I last read through that (and which was admittedly a few years back), the ToS indicated that whatever you uploaded became available to FB in perpetuity, and for whatever purpose FB wanted to make of it.
Put another way, if you didn't pay for something, then there's a good change it's you that's what's being sold.
This comment is a complete non-sequitur response to the previous comment. It's completely true, but in no way addresses the points raised.
The Terms of Service are irrelevant to the idea of whether "it's the users that make Facebook". Put it this way: how useful would Facebook be if you were the only user?
The grandparent is talking as though Facebook has a legal obligation to do right by its users. This is not true, as far as I can tell. As hammock says, it can do whatever it wants with the stuff published, to the extent that it doesn't do something libelous with it.
Of course, it's not a good PR or long term business strategy to screw with lots of its users, but talking as though it must do things when it really doesn't have to is the issue that the parent is responding to.
I'm not sure which comment you're talking about, but falcolas' comment specifically says "...since there is no legal contract..." - the comment is clearly talking about a non-legal "need" for Facebook to treat it's users well. This has nothing to do with ToS.
If someone says Facebook "must" do something, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're implying a legal requirement. It is more likely that they're talking about something that, in the opinion of the commenter, is required to stay successful long term - regardless of the legalities.
Why should Facebook care? They should care because they need that content (obviously not individually, but in aggregate).
There's an implicit agreement here - the user puts time and effort into providing content to Facebook that Facebook users want to see, and Facebook puts that content in front of lots of people. If the risk of Facebook reneging on the deal becomes seen as too high, fewer content creators are going to take up the offer.
That's the problem, Facebook and other virtual monopolies don't care because they don't have to.
> You are in debt to them for such a great service, they never forced you to become so dependent.
No. I'm not in debt to them.
My ad views and clicks cancel the debt for the provided service. And my patronage further adds to push that balance in my favor.
In a way, you can say that Facebook and Google are in my debt.
> "It's not fair! Facebook has a responsibility to its users! I demand them to do such and such!"
There is a difference between a startup, a small-to-medium size business, and a monopoly.
Once you become a monopoly the rules change, since by definition you are the only option there is. Understand that we are not dealing with a business that cornered some niche. That's not a monopoly. What we are dealing with are businesses that are involved with billions of lives. They do have a responsibility, yet they accept none. It's a clear case of indifference, lack of understanding, and perhaps ego at the top of these orgs.
It would be difficult to prove that Facebook has a monopoly on social media, there are many alternatives. The way Facebook handles these things is exactly the way their users want them to handle it. Facebook provides a part of the internet that is 'safe'.
Facebook and Zuckerberg's responsibilities are to their shareholders. As far as I can tell they've been taking that responsibility pretty seriously.
Furthermore, Facebook is not a monopoly in any meaningful sense of the word, they definitely don't have more than 50% of the ad revenue on the internet. As a person who consumes Facebook's services for free you really have no leg to stand on as to what Facebook is legally obligated to provide you for free.
How can you argue that kicking people off Facebook is a monopolistic practice that unfairly prejudices it's competitors? It would seem to me that the more widespread this practice becomes at Facebook the better it's competitors would do.
> It would be difficult to prove that Facebook has a monopoly on social media, there are many alternatives.
There are also many alternatives to Google.
Except to the webmasters, since Google brings in 95-98% of a website's traffic.
> they definitely don't have more than 50% of the ad revenue on the internet
I don't see why you're injecting ad revenue into this.
> As a person who consumes Facebook's services for free you really have no leg to stand on as to what Facebook is legally obligated to provide you for free.
I have stated nothing of the sort.
> How can you argue that kicking people off Facebook is a monopolistic practice
I have not stated nor argued anything of the sort.
What I have stated is that after you get to a certain size and market share (monopoly) where you begin to effect the lives and welfare of people, society, and businesses, "public good" rules begin to apply to you (or should be applied to you).
No one is asking for free services. What we are asking for is fare treatment and fare processes.
"It's not fair! Facebook has a responsibility to its users! I demand them to do such and such!"
So what if facebook was never around? You are in debt to them for such a great service, they never forced you to become so dependent. People lived for tens of thousands of years without social networking, and they'll continue to do so.