<unlike-us> Tim Wu: What comes after Facebook?

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what we most need now is a new generation of social media platforms that 
are fundamentally different in their incentives and dedication to 
protecting user data.

If we have learned anything over the last decade, it is that advertising 
and data-collection models are incompatible with a trustworthy social 
media network. The conflicts are too formidable, the pressure to amass 
data and promise everything to advertisers is too strong for even the 
well-intentioned to resist.

One set of Facebook alternatives might be provided by firms that are 
credibly privacy-protective, for which users would pay a small fee 
(perhaps 99 cents a month). In an age of “free” social media, paying 
might sound implausible — but keep in mind that payment better aligns 
the incentives of the platform with those of its users.

“network effects” are not destiny.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/opinion/facebook-fix-replace.html

--G