A silhouetted head behind prison bars; the bars are being pried apart by Facebook 'Thumbs Up' icons.

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1. Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Monday, 30-Aug-2021 07:09:59 UTC Cory Doctorow

   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

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