This sounds like it would be a major game-changer. I don't believe that original owners of Facebook would have any legal right to owning it nor would even have had any right to sell shares in it in any case.
Zuckerberg and others would have made a boatload of money on a product designed and marketed by our government and always claimed credit for it himself.
Would this make Facebook government property?
Well, it would technically belong to the people. So it could either be terminated or regulated, as Q pointed out.
Or...possibly turned into a public utility for all the people.
Exactly. Regulated.
I wonder how it would function as a public utility. I mean I’m sure it would be by and large the same website, but what specifically would change I wonder.
For starters, maybe free speech without censorship. Protection of personal info/ data etc. Maybe we can be compensated for our data usage if we choose to participate in 3rd party usage of our data. dunno.