91–100 of 285 posts
If Zuckerberg has any game at all, he will welcome this investigation, 'educate' the regulators, and then build a regulatory moat around Facebook that no one can breach. The big four banks did this after 2009, and they are even more entrenched and systematically important than they were before. Expect Facebook to borrow liberally from their playbook.
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Perhaps part of that was that IE was really bad at it's job and as users were told about Chrome and Firefox and they tried it and it was much faster - they switched because IE was not nearly as good. Facebook is pretty good at it's job - despite questionable practices. If Facebook started to suck from a user perspective (a bit like MySpace did) - users would move to another thing in a shot.
I would disagree with the claim that Facebook is "pretty good at its job" -- the News Feed is completely full of ads and "suggested content", notifications have become complete noise at this point, and even Messenger has ads in it now, and makes it difficult to get to your actual list of online friends. In 2011, Facebook was good at its job, with a chronological news feed, meaningful notifications, and a messenger pa…
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Remember Digg? Unlike the companies you listed, FB is user-facing - just like Digg. If users happen to decide that a company is not "cool" anymore or dispase its public figure(Zuckerberg), it may actually go away. Remember IE(stands for Internet Explorer)? Using Firefox and later Chrome became a crusade and the almighty brand of the richest person in the world that holds the monopoly on computers platforms bled to de…
> Remember Digg? Unlike the companies you listed, FB is user-facing - just like Digg. Digg was abandoned because it broke itself. The codebase that all those users knew and depended on was completely trashed (the original author hangs out here sometimes), the site dropped a number of its key functions, and the user experience was redesigned to maximize Digg's ability to show ads, no matter how obnoxious that got, wit…
That case is about an almost identical twin, but I would also consider sites that are not so similar but serving the same function. I haven't had a Facebook account so not sure what it is exactly, but people are happy as long as I have Whatsapp.
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Remember Digg? Unlike the companies you listed, FB is user-facing - just like Digg. If users happen to decide that a company is not "cool" anymore or dispase its public figure(Zuckerberg), it may actually go away. Remember IE(stands for Internet Explorer)? Using Firefox and later Chrome became a crusade and the almighty brand of the richest person in the world that holds the monopoly on computers platforms bled to de…
> Remember Digg? Unlike the companies you listed, FB is user-facing - just like Digg. Digg was abandoned because it broke itself. The codebase that all those users knew and depended on was completely trashed (the original author hangs out here sometimes), the site dropped a number of its key functions, and the user experience was redesigned to maximize Digg's ability to show ads, no matter how obnoxious that got, wit…
I don't see how there could ever be any viable competition. Facebook already has many of the top engineering minds in the world who are pushing the edge of what computers are capable of, not to mention the largest database and neural network of human behavior ever created.
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I'm not sure Digg had enough money lying around to just buy the next "cool" thing that comes along, as Facebook has done a few times now.
It’s a turgid fantasy that you can predict, buy, and incubate the next big thing reliably. If that were true, there would be no failed VC’s.
Facebook isn't the VC company, Facebook is who those companies hope to sell to later.
>Foremost among these tools is enforcement action against companies that fail to honor their privacy promises This is the crux of the issue. The problem is that when Facebook asks for "location information", the consequences of this are not being conveyed to the user. The user might think, "ah they want my location for the weather recommendations and event suggestions in my neighbourhood". They do not realise how som…
If Zuckerberg has any game at all, he will welcome this investigation, 'educate' the regulators, and then build a regulatory moat around Facebook that no one can breach. The big four banks did this after 2009, and they are even more entrenched and systematically important than they were before. Expect Facebook to borrow liberally from their playbook.
Can you elaborate on exactly how "big four banks" built a regulatory moat that no one can breach?
>Foremost among these tools is enforcement action against companies that fail to honor their privacy promises This is the crux of the issue. The problem is that when Facebook asks for "location information", the consequences of this are not being conveyed to the user. The user might think, "ah they want my location for the weather recommendations and event suggestions in my neighbourhood". They do not realise how som…
The consequences of using a store loyalty card are not known to the general public either. Yet all transactional information is sold off to third party data brokers and aggregated into profiles where they keep track of you in minute detail. It isn't exactly fair that Facebook is going to be punished while the rest of the industry hides behind its fine print.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Remember Digg? Unlike the companies you listed, FB is user-facing - just like Digg. If users happen to decide that a company is not "cool" anymore or dispase its public figure(Zuckerberg), it may actually go away. Remember IE(stands for Internet Explorer)? Using Firefox and later Chrome became a crusade and the almighty brand of the richest person in the world that holds the monopoly on computers platforms bled to de…
"Companies and products sometimes fail" doesn't really address the claim "the market doesn't seem to punish gross misconduct or negligence." Re: GP's examples, Uber is a "user-facing" company, and the Wells Fargo and Bank of America scandals involved consumer services. Also, it's not like companies are incapable of making conscientious decisions with regard to other companies with which they do business.