The system of "liberal democracy" has already created an environment where we're totally locked in with a few very large corporations -- Google, Meta, Apple, PayPal.
Are you looking at it as someone doing business with them or as an end user?
I agree that if you're an app developer, you cannot ignore Apple, but as an end user many people can (and do) completely ignore Apple, Facebook and Paypal.
Google can be avoided, but it's significantly more work to do so.
But wouldn’t that be true even if other social networks existed, but your friends and family all still chose Facebook?
(That is pretty much why Facebook is the only big one still around -- Myspace and Google both tried and failed. People had choice, and they picked a winner.)
Putting it another way, concentration and popularity don't mean there are no choices. It just means that the majority of consumers have chosen one or two of the options. That's different from the WeChat situation.
Another difference: you are free to avoid Facebook, even if your friends and family are on it. A lot of people do. Just ask them to phone you or use email. However, in China, if you don't have a WeChat account there are a lot of places where you just won't be able to pay for things because WePay is the only accepted form of payment.
Imagine if every restauraunt, retailer, etc. in your city would only accept Google Pay -- and they wouldn't even take cash. That is what an unavoidable service actually looks like.
yes, the problem is the walled garden that these services create.
Just ask them to phone you or use email
i can ask them, but i can't force them. reality is that without facebook i am excluded from a lot activities because i can't demand that everyone accommodate my unwillingness to be on facebook.
the same is true on wechat. there are a lot of groups that simply do not exist outside of facebook or wechat, and a lot of social contacts and activities would simply stop if i were to leave.
having someones phone number or email means i can contact them if there is something important, but it doesn't mean that it will get me invited to activities. that only works for a handful of very close friends and relatives, but not for the wider circle of loose friends and acquaintances.
wechat pay is not as bad actually. i usually avoid using it (if only to test how they react) and in most cases there was no problem to use cash as an alternative. there were a few exceptions where someone at the counter used their own wechat account to pay for me and i gave them cash in private, but i can't remember that i was ever refused service. especially as a foreigner, people are more likely to believe that i really can't pay with wechat.
if we had multiple social network with a significant user base then most interesting groups would be active on all of them and i could choose. it would also be easier to argue that i don't want to be on more than one service instead of giving the impression that i am a luddite that rejects modern technology.
I would have said the same a few years ago, but my experience has drastically changed.
My family has a whatsapp chat (yes, Facebook, but could easily be Signal) where all the child photos, news sharing, etc happens.
Of my friend group, almost no one actually posts on Facebook anymore. Looking at the feed now, it's:
- the one guy that actually does post the occasional rant
- gaming group post
- someone is going to an event
- skeptics group post
- event I'm going to posted an update
and then a bunch of updates from companies or organisations I follow
The way I see it, we haven’t ever really had a liberal democracy. Rather we’ve always had a conservative minority with different rules for the rich and powerful from the rest of us. The New Deal was an attempt at a liberal democracy with a united working class, but that only lasted till the civil rights movement started to extend the benefits of liberal democracy beyond white people. That gave conservatives the wedge they needed to divide up the working class again.
Since then, the working class has been arguing among itself while the rich and powerful reap the rewards. I’d call that conservative capitalism, not liberal democracy.
One could argue that the New Deal was an attempt to stave off revolution from a desperate working class, at a time when revolution was the main trend in the world. The long-term effects certainly benefited the capitalist class far more than the workers; I think the current environment speaks for itself.
