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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

#111

Post by threeseed »

darawk wrote: post #110
lammalamma25 wrote: post #109

Does anyone else have trouble getting upset about these kind of stories? I can believe anti-competitive behavior is happening, but we're talking about snapchat stories and Instagram trends. It's not like they are a phone company raising prices on their customers or a railroad squeezing shippers. I get why this could be bad for a competitive marketplace, but does this hurt the consumer? What are the net downsides of t…

The downside is that if you know Facebook can and will do this to any competitive threat, you just won't bother to start your company in the first place.

As I mentioned before if your product is so weak at differentiation and defensibility then it doesn't deserve to be launched in the first place.

Facebook can only compete with you if you let them.

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

#112

Post by threeseed »

habosa wrote: post #65
MiroF wrote: post #17

Why is this thread full of commentators attacking Snap for completely unrelated things? Strikes me as odd. FB told IG influencers they might lose their verified status if they link to a SC profile? Seems like that was a mistake on their part, could they really not anticipate future antitrust action?

This is definitely not-nice behavior but is common. On an iOS App Store listing you can't even say the word Android, etc.

Did you check this before you wrote this comment ?

Because there are apps called Android Remote, Android TV, Google formerly had a an Android Wear app and plenty of Remote Desktop apps that mention Android.

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

#113

Post by DSingularity »

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 is until it isn’t. That came when Facebook deliberately targeted these young with policies whose obvious intent is to choke the growth of competitors before they attain critical mass. For example, policies which penalized content producers if they linked to Snapchat accounts.

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

#114

Post by AJ007 »

meowface wrote: post #41
ineedasername wrote: post #28

The headline doesn't really match the story. I don't doubt the likelihood that Facebook engaged in these sorts of things, but from the headline I expected a laundry list of complaints and at least anecdotes to support them. Instead there's only two vague accusation without support that Facebook discouraged influencers from Snap, and suppressed Snap content from trending.

The Onavo thing alone sounds utterly insane to me. I often think criticisms of Facebook and similar companies are overblown, personally, but Facebook really should have, at the least, faced as many repercussions as Volkswagen did for their deceit, if the facts are correct. >One area of focus for the FTC is Onavo, an Israeli mobile-analytics startup that Facebook purchased in 2013. Onavo offered a free mobile app that…

This is the dirty secret of usage analytics. Both Google and Facebook got in trouble with Apple for effectively doing the same thing by abusing internal apps - https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/31/18205795/apple-google-blo...

There is a major free AV vendor logging the usage of their 100m+ users for years and selling that data to third parties, and no one seems to care.

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

#115

Post by caseysoftware »

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.

And throw in https://adnauseam.io/ to taint the underlying ad/tracking data.

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

#116

Post by crispyambulance »

joe_the_user wrote: post #104
soup10 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why people play devil's advocate in defense of scummy behavior by tech companies. Every shitty thing they do should be called out, exposed and condemned. If they know they don't have public support or defenders they will be better behaved.

I don't get why people play devil's advocate in defense of scummy behavior by tech companies. "Scummy behavior" is dumping poison in rivers or working people 90 hours a week. Normal competition is large companies putting smaller companies out of business through greater leverage. I don't care about a random small company getting rewarded for its random innovations. Why should I? The smaller company would probably cru…

    > ...I don't care about a random small company getting rewarded for its random innovations. Why should I?
Actually, the 800 lb gorilla companies DO CARE about random small companies and their random innovations. That's why they try to buy them, sometimes aggressively. Quite frankly, it's how larger companies can get innovation.

As a company grows, true innovation usually gets squelched in favor of derpy project management bullshit. Creative people get burned out and leave, or, in some cases become "a fellow". The main way these big companies can actually innovate is to buy these smaller companies. It might be good for the owners of the small company, some folks cash-out, some get new jobs, some aren't so lucky. Whatever happens a bunch of folks got some great experiences and the satisfaction of creating something new.

I don't see this stuff as a bad thing-- and especially not for social media stuff.

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

#117

Post by jonas21 »

darawk wrote: post #110
lammalamma25 wrote: post #109

Does anyone else have trouble getting upset about these kind of stories? I can believe anti-competitive behavior is happening, but we're talking about snapchat stories and Instagram trends. It's not like they are a phone company raising prices on their customers or a railroad squeezing shippers. I get why this could be bad for a competitive marketplace, but does this hurt the consumer? What are the net downsides of t…

The downside is that if you know Facebook can and will do this to any competitive threat, you just won't bother to start your company in the first place.

I can think of many reasons why I wouldn't want to start a company, but a fear that one day Facebook will show up and threaten to copy me unless I accept a multi-billion dollar acquisition offer is not one of them.

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

#118

Post by xwdv »

mtnGoat wrote: post #99
habosa wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7B and 24B are both effectively infinite money. If I could have the former just for signing my name or the latter but I need to go through an IPO and get slammed in the press every day, I go with the former.

never thought of it this way. if it was laid out as a red/blue pill like that, i'm not sure what id take. i think once you are a billionaire the average person probably just assumes your not nice anyways, might as well triple up the cash.

Well here’s another way to think about: you’re not just “tripling up your cash”, you’re getting a new boss in the form of thousands of shareholders expecting you to meet specific performance goals or else the value of your company goes to shit. Running a public company is hell compared to a private one.

When you take your 7 billion in cash you are free, no one gives a shit about what you do or even cares unless you’re looking to give away some money.

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

#119

Post by underwater »

smacktoward wrote: post #73
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 may be competition, but it certainly isn't fair competition. As you note, Facebook has much deeper pockets than even a well-funded startup. They can afford to build a clone of your product and give it away for free, without any expectation of even future revenue, specifically to drive you out of business. And they can bundle their clone with their already-popular apps, so people never even feel the need to check o…

It's also the exact same playbook Google used against Facebook with Google+.

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

#120

Post by monkeydreams »

underwater wrote: post #119
smacktoward wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be competition, but it certainly isn't fair competition. As you note, Facebook has much deeper pockets than even a well-funded startup. They can afford to build a clone of your product and give it away for free, without any expectation of even future revenue, specifically to drive you out of business. And they can bundle their clone with their already-popular apps, so people never even feel the need to check o…

It's also the exact same playbook Google used against Facebook with Google+.

Except both companies had deep pockets in this scenario.
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