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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

#161

Post by erklik »

sprafa wrote: post #130
krustyburger wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think FAANG is less useful as an abbreviation these days because it includes Netflix. I don’t think Netflix is guilty of much of anything sinister, at least by anyone’s reckoning except certain movie and tv studio executives.

Virtually anybody but Hollywood exec types love Netflix, particularly creatives (the people who actually DO the things). Netflix has been making enormous amounts of content, even for smaller markets like Spain and betting on great people who are making really good shows (see ‘casa de papel’) If you are a creative person you are enthused about streaming because suddenly there’s a huge amount of content being funded. T…

I don't understand why movies like The Wolf of Wall Street would be hard to fund. The talent i.e. DiCaprio, Jonah Hill etc are all great and known actors bound to make a movie succeed, especially DiCaprio. and Scorsese is also a well-known, successful director. Why would producers have any issues funding a movie for them?

Is it the controversial nature i.e. nudity etc that was the problem?

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

#162

Post by mikekchar »

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.

Just thought I'd post a supporting post to contrast the posts saying the move is unfair.

Imagine that Facebook wanted to have that functionality. They offer to buy the companies involved, but the companies ask for an unfair price ("1 million dollars!"). Should Facebook be compelled to pay that price? If they do not wish to pay that price, should they be forbidden from entering the market? Should Snap or Foursquare have a monopoly against any competitor that might be able to out compete them?

We can say that Facebook has a monopoly, but does that mean they should be forbidden from entering any new (to them) markets? We can say that they have a lot more money than their competition. Does that mean that they should be forbidden from competing? I don't think any of that makes sense.

I think what people are concerned about is the idea that Facebook will abuse their market position to compete unfairly. I think it's reasonable to fear that, but I don't think you can shut them down a priori. We don't have thought police yet. You can't be punished for something you haven't done yet.

If the argument is that Facebook should be punished for their past actions and forbidden from entering new markets, that's an argument that at least makes sense (I'm not sure I agree with it, though). I just can't understand any argument that says that lacking such a punishment, Facebook has to refrain from entering markets that they didn't create.

If we had such a mechanism in place, I think the potential for serious abuse would far exceed what Facebook has done to this point. In fact, I think we would be encouraging companies that act even more irresponsibly than the bad actors we have now in the market place. I can't really see an upside.

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

#163

Post by moron4hire »

omega3 wrote: post #93
moron4hire wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I did a study of eHarmony years ago and came to the conclusion that only 10% of all "matches" were people who had the capability of returning a message. Do you mind expanding as to how you were able to establish this?

At the time (mind you, this was 10 years ago) eHarmony had a "tell": paid-member profiles were rendered subtly differently than free ones. I got fed up with using the site and decided I was just going to game it and see what I could learn, so I started taking meticulous notes on what I saw. I took every match that was sent, I kept notes on how I replied, and eventually some patterns emerged. Eventually had it confirmed when a person I was matched with, and went on a date with, decided to let her membership lapse and suddenly her profile was rendered differently.

eHarmony's system only let you message people from a daily, "curated" list of matches. On any given day, you'd get 6 or 7 profiles on your email to review and decide to message or not. I'm sure you just did the math, 10% of 7 is less than one. Less than one viable connection a day.

Once I got past that "90% of these matches are dead ends" hurdle, it turned out about 50% of the people who were capable of replying actually did. I don't remember the exact breakdown, but basically there were a number of questionnaires you why through before getting through to love messages and asking people out. It was essentially a 50/50 filter at each step. IIRC, it was something like a half a percent chance that any profile eHarmony sent you would end up in an actual date.

I suppose dating sites figure, if someone finds their soul mate, they won't need to pay for a membership anymore, so don't actually match anyone, just strong them along for as long as possible.

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

#164

Post by monkeydreams »

skinnymuch wrote: post #148
monkeydreams wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except both companies had deep pockets in this scenario.

Facebook was nowhere near where it is today. It doesn’t even make money the same way with the majority of revenue and profits coming from mobile, with IG being a bigger and bigger factor. And it’s much more international (and monetizing international) now. Google was the giant when they tried Google+.

Before google+ launched Facebook had over 750 million users. It was hardly a small fish.

In either case, though, using market supremecy to crush competition should not be rewarded.

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

#165

Post by xOoOx »

sprafa wrote: post #130
krustyburger wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think FAANG is less useful as an abbreviation these days because it includes Netflix. I don’t think Netflix is guilty of much of anything sinister, at least by anyone’s reckoning except certain movie and tv studio executives.

Virtually anybody but Hollywood exec types love Netflix, particularly creatives (the people who actually DO the things). Netflix has been making enormous amounts of content, even for smaller markets like Spain and betting on great people who are making really good shows (see ‘casa de papel’) If you are a creative person you are enthused about streaming because suddenly there’s a huge amount of content being funded. T…

Why does this read like an ad? I found Netflix content to be of really poor quality. It is a huge datamining machine that creates content based on the data gathered by it's user. I.e. if a lot of people watch TV series including cats and bank robbery thrilled. They will make a show mixing the two. No risk, no originality. Pure mindless entertainment based on algorithm productivism.

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

#166

Post by darawk »

jonas21 wrote: post #117
darawk wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Firstly, those offers will shrink over time as Facebook refines its playbook, and it becomes more and more clear that they can win by copying. Secondly, it doesn't just impact you the founder, it also impacts VCs thinking about funding you. $1-2 billion may be a lot of money for you and me, but if you're a venture capitalist investing $10 million in lots of low probability bets, you need them to have the potential for very high returns.

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

#167

Post by pigeon888 »

jonas21 wrote: post #117
darawk wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fantastic^

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

#168

Post by nailer »

skinnymuch wrote: post #147
randall wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

g-mafia google, microsoft, apple, facebook, ibm, apple

But IBM isn’t that powerful in any direct way any more compared to other tech companies. Oracle and rising powers like PayPal and Salesforce would make more sense. The latter companies still do a fraction of IBM’s revenue and profit. but they’re growing. I wouldn’t be surprised if their market caps are past IBM by now. Unless IBM is being included because of the Red Hat acquisition.

Microsoft isn't that powerful either. Windows is a small percentage of computing and Office simply isn't a big deal. They're also a pretty good company now.

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

#170

Post by mrep »

flycaliguy wrote: post #151
smsx wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that’s a good point, if the alternative is going around and using the acronym FAAG I think we can stick with the original.

GAFA?

GAFAM is what the french use which includes Microsoft [0].

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAFAM

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