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Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

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Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#51

Post by aswanson »

toxik wrote: post #50
throwaway_quote wrote: post #45

> For example, when Mr. Zuckerberg met with the founders of startups, including Evan Spiegel, chief executive of Snap, and Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare Inc., he presented them with two scenarios: either they accept the price he was offering for their companies, or face Facebook’s efforts to copy their products and make operating more difficult, according to people familiar with the conversations. In both…

I don’t see the problem with this. Isn’t it fair market competition? Facebook had (and has) deeper pockets and more users, so they won against Snap and Foursquare. Their acquisition of IG and WA were great moves too, it’s almost impossible to escape the Facebook and Google internet.

It's rather easy. Delete your fb and use bing + ddg. Done.

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#52

Post by aswanson »

moron4hire wrote: post #21
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, Ashley Madison, the "dating" site. Not sure why you seem to be implying that the article is using a euphemism, as literally the next phrase in that sentence is "which caters to married people seeking affairs".

I don't know if you are aware of the specific details of what Ashley Madison did, but basically they were using bots to convince men that there were actual women interested in meeting (if only the use paid the membership fee to enable messaging), when by-and-large there were none. It was a scam. I mean, most dating websites use a series of tricks of messaging and "matches" to trick people into thinking there are more…

lol, I didnt know that. It was basically an extortion racket.

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#53

Post by atarian »

throwaway_quote wrote: post #45

> For example, when Mr. Zuckerberg met with the founders of startups, including Evan Spiegel, chief executive of Snap, and Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare Inc., he presented them with two scenarios: either they accept the price he was offering for their companies, or face Facebook’s efforts to copy their products and make operating more difficult, according to people familiar with the conversations. In both…

Steve Jobs made a similar offer to Dropbox.

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#54

Post by Kuinox »

aswanson wrote: post #51
toxik wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see the problem with this. Isn’t it fair market competition? Facebook had (and has) deeper pockets and more users, so they won against Snap and Foursquare. Their acquisition of IG and WA were great moves too, it’s almost impossible to escape the Facebook and Google internet.

It's rather easy. Delete your fb and use bing + ddg. Done.

Then you go on your news outlet and meet your friendly facebook "like" button that keep stalking you.

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#55

Post by VHRanger »

toxik wrote: post #50
throwaway_quote wrote: post #45

> For example, when Mr. Zuckerberg met with the founders of startups, including Evan Spiegel, chief executive of Snap, and Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare Inc., he presented them with two scenarios: either they accept the price he was offering for their companies, or face Facebook’s efforts to copy their products and make operating more difficult, according to people familiar with the conversations. In both…

I don’t see the problem with this. Isn’t it fair market competition? Facebook had (and has) deeper pockets and more users, so they won against Snap and Foursquare. Their acquisition of IG and WA were great moves too, it’s almost impossible to escape the Facebook and Google internet.

There are many economists that think the acquisition of IG should have warranted antitrust.

This is a good case on it:

https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#56

Post by ssivark »

toxik wrote: post #50
throwaway_quote wrote: post #45

> For example, when Mr. Zuckerberg met with the founders of startups, including Evan Spiegel, chief executive of Snap, and Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare Inc., he presented them with two scenarios: either they accept the price he was offering for their companies, or face Facebook’s efforts to copy their products and make operating more difficult, according to people familiar with the conversations. In both…

I don’t see the problem with this. Isn’t it fair market competition? Facebook had (and has) deeper pockets and more users, so they won against Snap and Foursquare. Their acquisition of IG and WA were great moves too, it’s almost impossible to escape the Facebook and Google internet.

I think it's more nuanced, and goes beyond just the content of the quoted excerpt. While copying the features (acceptable market competition), did Facebook leverage/abuse their monopoly status to prevent users from migrating to the upstart with better features? Further, are users being kept on Instagram using better features, or by abusing network effects? If it's the latter, then I would consider that a clear target for antitrust litigation. And preventing users from switching products while you catch-up (or not) seems squarely in that ballpark.

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#58

Post by fasicle »

xwdv wrote: post #22

Classic. Not a day goes by that Evan Spiegel doesn’t regret selling Snap for a cool 7 billion to Facebook and just moving on with his life, so they throw out crap like this as some kind of revenge by social mob justice. He drank too much of his own koolaid.

SNAP have had a great last 12 months, market cap up to 23.65B

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#59

Post by negrit »

xwdv wrote: post #31
debt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SNAP has $23 billion market cap you dolt.

For now, but that could easily change if they have some bad quarters coming up. I’m bearish.

So because you're bearish you think that SNAP's CEO regrets his decision?

Re: Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier

#60

Post by khawkins »

toxik wrote: post #50
throwaway_quote wrote: post #45

> For example, when Mr. Zuckerberg met with the founders of startups, including Evan Spiegel, chief executive of Snap, and Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare Inc., he presented them with two scenarios: either they accept the price he was offering for their companies, or face Facebook’s efforts to copy their products and make operating more difficult, according to people familiar with the conversations. In both…

I don’t see the problem with this. Isn’t it fair market competition? Facebook had (and has) deeper pockets and more users, so they won against Snap and Foursquare. Their acquisition of IG and WA were great moves too, it’s almost impossible to escape the Facebook and Google internet.

If these features were critical enough that you could found a company on them, then clearly they brought innovation to the scene. If they had not come along, it's unclear as to whether Facebook would have ever introduced those features in their products.

"Fair market competition" is the idea that products compete on their own merits, not that you can leverage your market position to destroy competitors. "Deeper pockets" is certainly antithetical to fair competition even if it's a reality we must sometimes accept. Exploiting the fact that you have "more users" should probably also be looked at as anti-competitive since it certainly doesn't benefit consumers by locking people into exclusive platforms.

Are we really going to resign ourselves to the idea that FAANG will now and forever own nearly all the internet? What good are the "principles" of "free market competition" if we allow consolidation to effectively eliminate the market?

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