Should they be allowed to use any amount of money or political influence to crush new ideas and potentially competetive tech or ideas?
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Should they be allowed to use any amount of money or political influence to crush new ideas and potentially competetive tech or ideas?
On their own platform? Yes, absolutely. They should be forced to some level of transparency so that people can see their behavior and decide for themselves if they are fine with supporting this platform and their policies.
I don't like the argument that FB is so big that things like freedom of speech ought to be implemented. If you want civil liberties on a platform it needs to be created and supervised by the state. I know suggesting that social media would be better if it is state-owned is quite the foolish believe, but I think it is an option worth exploring.
As a company in a free market FB can kick me out for saying something they don't like, like any Barkeeper can kick me out of his bar.
However it happened, Facebook and Google together have functional monopolies in two main types of advertising. Do we just have to accept that they can do anything to protect that monopoly now they have it including forming a cartel?
Well we have a "ministry of cartels" (Kartellamt) and other laws that are supposed to prevent monopolies from forming. This never worked though.
Monopolies and Companies pretty much having the power of a state including their own laws, culture, etc. is one of the reasons I have been a socialist for a long time. However I think regulating companies with tight-nit laws, only for the big ones to maneuver through it without actually abiding by the law and small firms suffering because of all the legal hurdles.
Like I said, I think the solution has to be either the free market where facebook just gets replaced by a better competitor (like hive xD) or there needs be a state-sponsored and controlled social media, where freedom of speech is upheld and every citizen has a right to participate. The state controlled social media being in a fair competition with multiple other social media platforms would be my favorite outcome.
Still I wish you good luck with your endeavor even if I would chose a different path.