WhatsApp introduces ads in its app

The ad-free one doesn’t have to cost more than the ad-supported ARPU. There’s a pretty reasonable argument to be made that social media services with near-ubiquitous uptake should be regulated as utilities, and regulators could reasonably place the price at cost + a marginal profit margin as determined to be reasonable, like they do for other utilities that are privately-owned.

> Also, don’t forget that at least for now, paid subscriptions to social media apps would need to pay a 30% rent to the platform owner duopoly.

They don’t have to offer paid subscriptions via IAP.

I'll state up front that I'm not much of a socialist, so I realize opinions will vary, but it seems crazy to regulate something so frivolous as a social media site to the point of setting its prices. If people don't like Facebook, their ads, or their pricing, simply not using it is not a life-crippling suggestion the way "don't use the Internet" is.

So I'd support you on regulating broadband ISPs waaaaay before setting the prices X or FB can charge for meme-related services.

The problem isn't access to memes, it's that for various categories of services/interactions, Meta (and presumably WeChat and/or others in other locales) properties effectively are the internet. I've seen all of the following use social media services as their sole method of communication or online presence: amateur sports teams/leagues, gyms, local governments, government agencies, parent/school groups, local service providers (barbers, farmers' markets, restaurants, etc.), online classifieds, community food boxes.

The fact that Meta has intermingled its meme factory with its hosting of the informational/communication platforms for a wide array of local groups/organizations/businesses is something they chose to do, and I'm not willing to accept the excuse of "we make a lot of money from our ad-serving brainrot algorithms so we couldn't possibly charge less than that amount of money for access to the non-algorithmic features on which we've gotten people hooked."

I would argue that it's those people (citizens/companies/orgs) who did the important choosing here, not Meta. It's more cheap and accessible than ever to make a website that isn't dependent on social media, and there are tons of alternatives for connecting groups.

The elephant in the room, I think, is that most people actually feel that Whatsapp, Facebook Groups, etc. have no important downsides. I can't prove it, but I suspect that more than half the people who are involved in such network-effect communication (let's say, all the categories you described, the non-1:1 communication that takes place hosted on Meta platforms) find it to be very convenient, not least because they're already on those platforms by choice for recreation.

THAT is why it's so hard for the minority who philosophically hate ideas like targeted ads are unable to convince the masses to all move to Mastodon, or to one of the hundreds of lesser-known platforms that don't have all the same baggage (in their eyes). It isn't for lack of options. It's because at least a plurality of people are fine with it.

So the argument to effectively nationalize Meta, simply as punishment for getting normies to like their apps so much, because a minority of people just think it's wrong to be good at targeting ads, seems extreme to me.

I don’t find this to be a good representation of my argument - what I’d call for is very much not punishment, it’s a targeted response to fix no more than the identified problem. (The problem being, people aren’t being afforded a reasonable option to function in society that doesn’t involve a large wealth transfer to facebook.)

I don’t think “effectively nationalize Meta” is a fair reading of my position either - there are plenty of autonomous private companies are non-nationalized and that operate in areas where there’s regulation around pricing.

There are so many people out there functioning in society just fine without Facebook. And Facebook tried to have an ad-free Facebook product for EU where people could just pay money for the services they apparently depend on -- a perfectly fair transaction, and the EU fined them for that, now mandating that Facebook has to offer a product to EU users for €0 but is only allowed to monetize it with ads that no advertiser would buy because untargeted ads are a waste of money. See the banner ads of the late 90s. Or I suppose the EU regulators would also be satisfied if FB just provided the services to Europeans as a charity.

I don't have a personal dog in the race, and don't own any shares of Meta, but I think the regulators don't know what they're doing, and as such, would prefer that they don't go too far in the area of social media, advertising and tracking until they figure it out.