The government must break it up.
Just like Standard Oil and oil, Microsoft and Windows, or AT&T and telephones, Facebook has a monopoly over identification.
Due to network effects, there can only be one Facebook. In this way, its not just a monopoly, it is a utility.
It is like electricity, water, or the internet. There is only one way to provide it and it would be highly inefficient to do it twice. To create a full database of everyone’s identity and relationships twice.
The government must:
1. Separate the maintaining of the database of identify from the consumption of that information.
2. Create a standard for digital identify verification. Ideally this would actually not be centrally controlled but rather based on blockchain technology.
In this world identity would be nearly a “currency” that you can view from different types of software. The data would be unified across platforms although any individual viewing experience might be different.
This would allow greater innovation on the uses of identity. It would also allow for higher levels of security in the storing and use of identity.
This might lead you to say that we don’t need to wait for the government to do it. That may be true for #2, but to really have that take off, Facebook would need to give up its current database of user connections and hand it over to the public domain.
Since identity is the source of Facebook’s revenue, the surrender must forced.
^Day 184/90 267 words
konrad kopczynski 