Why on earth the debate on Facebook has been framed as monopoly and breaking the monopoly ? The internet is infinite so there will be no monopoly.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/nick-clegg-on-breaking-up-facebook.html

Rather, social networks structurally lock in their users, let’s talk about abusing locked-in users and acting against facebook in order to protect the rights of locked-in users. In the end we should be talking of ownership od data, social graphs etc

This guy claims instead that Facebook  should be regulated as a monopsony of our attention, but in this case isn’t the monopsony a consequence of the more fundamental lock-in mechanics? He cares for the effect on media monetization though ” The problem there is that Facebook has also usurped much of those outlets’ advertising, negating the monetization potential of the very distribution they provide. (That’s largely the result of an advertising paradigm that Google created and Facebook expanded on, which flipped the power in advertising from publishers selling audiences—the readers of a publication—to advertisers targeting specific individuals based on their own data, or that of intermediaries like Facebook. The publisher went from a media price-setter to a price-taker, and prices plunged.) ”

https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-not-monopoly-but-should-broken-up/

Sabine Hosselfeder “I think an easy way to solve at least some of the problems with Facebook would be to allow a third-party plug to sort your news-feed. This would give users more control and also relieve Facebook of some responsibility. ”

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-trouble-with-facebook-and-what-it.html

happy to share this idea with someone 🙂 I should keep track of people thinking this

Uber loses money but gets 8 bln funding with IPO

Uber drivers complain of falling compensations

Cities complain of growing traffic, Uber competitor of public transport

still, money piles up awaiting maybe (surely) awaiting to monopolistic power (network egffects, increasing economies of scale) when either one:

screw drivers

replace them with AI

screw clients

screw the cities force them to ban private cars

never know what monopolists could do, what are the policy option now since costs are falling on various categories ?

Economist article Public Distress

 

 

Waymo robotaxis for hire in Phoenix via Lyft

Google has invested in Lyft, Lyft is tanking on the stock market. Uber is listing soon, Google is invested there too, 4 bln among the 2 companies. Tesla is uberizing

Rodney Brooks says no way 1 million level5 roboTesla on the road in 2020, he says we’ll see none

it is funny how ride hailing and autonomous driving are entangled in a whirlwind of smart technology and smart money, looks like the place where everyone exponential and blitzscaling should be right now. Looks risky, too

Quantum computing overhype  https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/21/quantum-computing-is-a-marathon-not-a-sprint/

scooter sharing economics Bird edition https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-bird-scooters-money-profit-strategy-20190505-story.html

Tesla chip 4 years ahead with hardware analysis https://ark-invest.com/research/tesla-fsd

scooter injuries https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/05/head-injuries-broken-bones-plague-e-scooter-users-as-more-data-rolls-in/