Degradation of Social Networks

In the beginning, social networks hold high hopes of enhancing human relationships. Friends and families far apart can easily share photographs, status updates, and whatever intrigues instantly. Events can easily find participants with detailed information. Even corporations may benefit from continuous CRM.

However, market power has driven dominant social networks into degradation. Facebook and Instagram became ad readers. Twitter became a political hack. Only Stack Exchange and the likes remain true to the purpose. It's tasteless to trade greatness for more profit, but market measures success by exchange value, not use value.

It seems tech regulation should be more focused on bringing better value to users, rather than destructive Apple bashing. However, doing so requires politicians to transition from capitalist exchange value calculus to socialist use value calculus. Who dare to be a socialist in USA?

Facebook as a ad reader is worse than its algorithmic manipulation of user connections. Since many people opt out of tracking on Apple devices, irrelevant ads bombard users constantly with only tiny windows for genuine content. Did Facebook ever realize that search ads are much more valuable than content ads? Tasteless!

Due to enormous market power of these dominant social networks, new social networks are hard to break into popularity. Even relatively young apps like LINE all buy Facebook's approach to load user timeline with ads. There is no surprise that these apps all receive low rating in the App Store, but the status quo gives a feeling of hopelessness. Competition or public ownership is no guarantee for better value, but regulators in USA and China don't understand.

As economics is too important to be left to economists, social networks are too valuable to be left to the market.