Facebook’s war on switching costs

Network effects attract users, switching costs take them hostage.

If you took a drink every time an economist used “network effects” to explain why Big Tech is so big, you’d get very, very drunk.

To be fair to economists, network effects are important to the Big Tech story.

A system is said to have network effects if it gets better when more people use it. That certainly describes Facebook — you join FB because of the friends that are already there, and then someone else joins because you’re there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

But network effects are how FB gets big, not how it stays big. Because even though you might join FB to talk to your friends, the reason you stay there — despite surveillance and FB’s many abusive tactics — is that leaving FB will cut you off from those friends.

There’s no technical reason you couldn’t stay in touch with FB friends without being an FB user. You can switch phone companies or email providers without walking away from the family, community and customers you’re connected to.

FB deliberately engineers its system to block “interoperability” — the ability to plug rival services into its network.