Facebook's data gathering hit by German anti-trust clampdown
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Re: Facebook's data gathering hit by German anti-trust clampdown
#2Facebook's statement is... interesting.
> The Bundeskartellamt underestimates the fierce competition we face in Germany
Which competition? The only viable social network in Germany that came close to Facebook was Lokalisten, which shuttered finally in 2016.
Re: Facebook's data gathering hit by German anti-trust clampdown
#3Facebook's statement is... interesting. > The Bundeskartellamt underestimates the fierce competition we face in Germany Which competition? The only viable social network in Germany that came close to Facebook was Lokalisten, which shuttered finally in 2016.
BND seems like it could compete with facebook
Re: Facebook's data gathering hit by German anti-trust clampdown
#4Facebook's statement is... interesting. > The Bundeskartellamt underestimates the fierce competition we face in Germany Which competition? The only viable social network in Germany that came close to Facebook was Lokalisten, which shuttered finally in 2016.
Facebook's response is without question following Peter Thiel's monopolist argumentation position.
If you're a monopolist, widen your pool of competition to include anything you possibly can.
If your employees consume fruit at work, proclaim you're competing with Chiquita bananas (and have a tiny share of the fruit market).
If your employees ever fly on planes, proclaim your position in jets is terribly weak next to Boeing and Airbus.
They're not a social network, they're considerably trailing YouTube with Watch. They're not a social network, they're trailing Craigslist with Marketplace. They're not a social network, they're badly trailing Android and iOS in app marketplaces. They're not a social network, they're badly trailing Amazon and Google in smart speakers and home tech. And so on the lie goes.
Re: Facebook's data gathering hit by German anti-trust clampdown
#5If I remember correctly Facebook was only allowed to buy Whatsapp in France because they promised not to share user data between the two services. The German data protection agency basically didn't say anything only because the french said it already.
Now Facebook does it's mix-and-mash anyways.
I'd have expected to hear something out of France about this. Did I just miss it?
Re: Facebook's data gathering hit by German anti-trust clampdown
#6Facebook's statement is... interesting. > The Bundeskartellamt underestimates the fierce competition we face in Germany Which competition? The only viable social network in Germany that came close to Facebook was Lokalisten, which shuttered finally in 2016.
Facebook's response is without question following Peter Thiel's monopolist argumentation position. If you're a monopolist, widen your pool of competition to include anything you possibly can. If your employees consume fruit at work, proclaim you're competing with Chiquita bananas (and have a tiny share of the fruit market). If your employees ever fly on planes, proclaim your position in jets is terribly weak next to…
Does this argument really work? Nobody says that Facebook has a monpoly in everything they do. They say that they have a monopoly in a very specific area, which should be enough for antritrust lawsuits.
I'm pretty sure that AT&T and Standard Oil also had branches that did not have a monopoly in their respective areas, but that didn't stop the splitting of the companies.
Re: Facebook's data gathering hit by German anti-trust clampdown
#7Facebook's statement is... interesting. > The Bundeskartellamt underestimates the fierce competition we face in Germany Which competition? The only viable social network in Germany that came close to Facebook was Lokalisten, which shuttered finally in 2016.
Domestic data hoarders and advertisers - extremely invasive and territorial. The difference is that none of them runs social networking website or mobile messenger app, thus without consumer facing facade many uninformed assume they don't exist. e.g. their media and retail oligopolies like to roll out their own ad, tracking, and loyalty programs to have full control of the data. They don't let anyone in and are trying to expand, clumsily, to other EU countries.
Re: Facebook's data gathering hit by German anti-trust clampdown
#8What about Google? (With their Adsense, analytics, email, search ... setup ...)
Re: Facebook's data gathering hit by German anti-trust clampdown
#9Facebook's statement is... interesting. > The Bundeskartellamt underestimates the fierce competition we face in Germany Which competition? The only viable social network in Germany that came close to Facebook was Lokalisten, which shuttered finally in 2016.
They named Youtube, Snapchat and Twitter as their competition
Re: Facebook's data gathering hit by German anti-trust clampdown
#10If I remember correctly Facebook was only allowed to buy Whatsapp in France because they promised not to share user data between the two services. The German data protection agency basically didn't say anything only because the french said it already. Now Facebook does it's mix-and-mash anyways. I'd have expected to hear something out of France about this. Did I just miss it?
Facebook has already been fined by the European commission in 2017 to the tune of 110M Euros over this. It is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions Facebook paid for WhatsApp though - so small one suspect Facebook might have already factored it into the cost of the acquisition.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/18/facebook-fi...