The Social Media Monopoly

A game we cant stop playing

Social media and social networking have a strong love/hate relationship with its users.

There can be many benefits of social media boom such as networking, content creation, and staying connected to loved ones. However, the negative consequences like cyberbullying, perpetuating a negative self image, and the spread of misinformation, simultaneously grew into the fabric of our society.

After so many new apps and networks have flooded our online environment, it can be nearly impossible to escape social media in one way or another.

Still, the most dangerous part of social media is the Big Tech Monopoly.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifying in Congress, 2019

Monopoly Men

“To put it simply, companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons.”

Last year Facebook, along with other tech giants, came under intense scrutiny over antitrust concerns, as many felt the the company was using its massive amounts of money and data to monopolize the market.

(In other words, Facebook’s main strategy to stay relevant in the tech field is to buy out or copy ideas from its up and coming competitors.)

Facebook existed in a sort of time bubble for the last decade. New platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat were emerging with innovative ways to connect and view content, while Facebook stayed relatively the same. This lack of innovation drove out much of Facebook’s younger audeince. In 2018, three million under-25-year-olds reported that they stopped using the site as often or even quit it entirely.

What was Facebook to do? Use their “copy, acquire, kill” strategy — which is what they did in 2012 and 2014, when they bought out Instagram for $1 billion and WhatsApp for $19 billion respectively. When Facebook was unable to secure the purchase of Snapchat, they came out with their own version of the app’s products in hopes of taking them down.

Sounds unfair, right?

But it’s not just Facebook; other tech giants are using a similar anti-competitive strategies too.

Apple and Google were accused of anti-competitive practices by forcing consumers to use their preprogrammed software, search engines, and apps with the purchase of a product. Specifically regarding Apple, when competitors tried to enter the App Store, Apple was accused of either excluding competitors from entry, copying them directly, or charging them at a ridiculously rate.

What’s The Solution?

The main solution that has been discussed is to break up the big tech companies like Facebook, while others say this wouldn’t change anything in the long run.

Sinan Aral, author of The Hype Machine, is one of those opposed. He believes that breaking up Facebook would inevitably fail due to network effects. He describes network effects as, “the value of a networked platform is a function of the number of people connecting to it.” Meaning, social media has value solely because of the massive amount of people engaging with it. To lessen the value, we must decrease engagement.

However, due to the sheer amount of social media apps, breaking apart big tech companies would not fix anything. If Facebook was broken down into smaller pieces, Sinan believes that the next big app would just take its place and the cycle would continue.

Sinan offers solutions to this issue such as, “making social networks interoperable and giving consumers the right to export their data,” along with “protecting privacy and data,” and “attacking the spread of misinformation.”

My Thoughts

As an avid user of social media, it’s ridiculously easy to block out all of the negative consequences in favor of entertaining content. In fact, that is kind of the entire point.

However, while we have become so ingrained in the social networking world, the giants that control it (be it Big Brother or the Zuckerbergs/Bezos of the world) are reaping the benefits. And with it comes the destruction of the tech market.

To be honest, I don’t know what the best solution is — though I tend to agree with Aral’s suggestions.

What I do know is that social media will be present for the rest of our lives. And, at least for now, we have the option to decide how much of our lives it takes up.

So while the government and the tech giants battle it out to decide the fate of the social media monopoly, I will continue to be a casual player of the game.