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Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

insights.som.yale.edu

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Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#81

Post by pferde »

slim wrote: post #54
oska wrote: post #21

I think the very unhealthy dominance of Facebook will only start to properly recede when countries outside the USA start to block its use. This is a highly predatory company that takes away sovereignty in each nation's cyberspace and it really only makes sense for foreign countries to block it and either let their own national corporate replacements emerge (as China has done) or foster the use of open social networks…

We need laws. Operating a social network should be subject to specific rules like : 1- Everything is public, no private messages. 2- Public unlimited standardised API. 3- No denial of access, no censorship, without court order.

I get #2 and #3, but why #1? I like being able to "whisper" to people privately. Private messaging has been part of all communication protocols and pre-web2.0 social networks, and even in real life, you can lean in towards someone and, well, whisper something in their ear.

Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#82

Post by fx32s »

oska wrote: post #77
fx32s wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A state regulated and censored siloed system where you can't communicate across borders hardly seems like the thing to strive for if you want to displace FB. edited to reword as to not assume intentions of op

Please don't misrepresent me. In no place in my comment did I describe WeChat as better to FB (and I'm not interested in taking a position either way). Nor was I promoting this: > A state regulated and censored siloed system where you can't communicate across borders Quite the opposite. I made it quite clear that my strong preference was for the fostering of open social networks & protocols. * edit: the parent commen…

Sorry, I added the edit, I'm quite new to this comment section and assumed it might show my edit by default

Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#83

Post by btmoney06 »

onion2k wrote: post #67
btmoney06 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s over a hundred and twenty year of antitrust law that says that conduct is improper if it leads to higher prices for consumers. Why does Yale insist that antitrust can apply when prices are 0?

Why does Yale insist that antitrust can apply when prices are 0? "Consumers" on Facebook are ad buyers, not users. Prices aren't 0 - Facebook's revenue was $70bn in 2019. That comes from businesses buy ads. Everything Facebook does to dominate the social media space is about selling more ads for more money. That's why they buy competitors, shut down rivals, and aggressively do what they can to drive prices for the ad…

If we’re focusing on ad buyers instead of users, then why isn’t the relevant market just all “advertising companies” (instead of social media companies)? When you compare Facebook to other advertising companies, their market share dwindles. Google holds the advertising throne.

Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#84

Post by input_sh »

deathgrips wrote: post #65
fx32s wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how having national backed social media platforms to the likes china does is a better alternative for end users compared to facebook. If you are a proponent for open speech this will accomplish the opposite since it simplifies state issued censorship. I understand that bashing on facebook is a popular narrative here and they have made significant mistakes but it can hardly be argued the platform doesn't b…

It's a trade off. Do you want to risk being censored by your own country or risk being censored by San Francisco?

Can I democratically elect who will represent me in a Silicon Valley company? If not, I'm going to choose my own country.

I am aware that citizens of more repressive governments might not make the same choice.

Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#85

Post by netcan »

oska wrote: post #21

I think the very unhealthy dominance of Facebook will only start to properly recede when countries outside the USA start to block its use. This is a highly predatory company that takes away sovereignty in each nation's cyberspace and it really only makes sense for foreign countries to block it and either let their own national corporate replacements emerge (as China has done) or foster the use of open social networks…

Small countries can ban facebook from doing certain things. Ultimately, some sovereignty exists even in global commerce. If New Zealand made (eg) political advertising, targeted advertising, or such ilegal, Facebook would stop doing it in New Zealand.

That is treating the symptom, but it is not totally ineffective.

Treating the problem is dealing with the monopoly. The current state of antitrust laws, norms and regulatory pressure is entirely useless. It's entirely based around regulating 19th century monopolies, and tempered by 20th century failings.

Facebook, Amazon, & Google are not Bell. With the old infrastructure monopolies, regulators needed to break up the monopoly without losing the services & capital investments. They needed post-antitrust companies to still be viable.

Facebook doesn't have that problem. Facebook could disappear tomorrow and consumers would barely be inconvenienced. Social media is not in short supply and doesn't require much capital. Facebook didn't need to sink much capital into building it. Their competitors will not need much capital to replace it. All they need is for Facebook to move out of the way.

Antitrust action, at least in facebook's case, doesn't need to be precise. It just needs to be strong.

Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#86

Post by microtherion »

neilwilson wrote: post #74

Facebook always reminds me of a modern version of Compulink CIX - which spent a lot of its time keeping the rest of the Internet out of its internal bulletin board back in the early days of Internet access. Facebook posts not showing up on the search engines and hidden behind a sign up "pay with your privacy"-wall are very equivalent. CIX forums still exist, but they are nowhere near as influential as they once were.…

> Facebook posts not showing up on the search engines

I'm conflicted about this one. Personally, I wish that Pinterest content would not show up in search engine results; I've yet to see one that was useful in any way to me. I could imagine that FB results would be similarly clogging up search results with little value.

Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#87

Post by jacquesm »

deathgrips wrote: post #49
cambalache wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it a competition? Because nobody is winning. Nobody in the world says, oh please Americans come to fuck us because at least you use lubricant.

How do I save comments?

Upvote, then click on your profile name, at the bottom 'upvotes submissions / comments'.

Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#88

Post by onion2k »

btmoney06 wrote: post #83
onion2k wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does Yale insist that antitrust can apply when prices are 0? "Consumers" on Facebook are ad buyers, not users. Prices aren't 0 - Facebook's revenue was $70bn in 2019. That comes from businesses buy ads. Everything Facebook does to dominate the social media space is about selling more ads for more money. That's why they buy competitors, shut down rivals, and aggressively do what they can to drive prices for the ad…

If we’re focusing on ad buyers instead of users, then why isn’t the relevant market just all “advertising companies” (instead of social media companies)? When you compare Facebook to other advertising companies, their market share dwindles. Google holds the advertising throne.

Google's 2019 revenue was $162bn. They're only twice as big as FB by that metric, and they have far less than twice the market share.

Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#89

Post by mclightning »

microtherion wrote: post #86
neilwilson wrote: post #74

Facebook always reminds me of a modern version of Compulink CIX - which spent a lot of its time keeping the rest of the Internet out of its internal bulletin board back in the early days of Internet access. Facebook posts not showing up on the search engines and hidden behind a sign up "pay with your privacy"-wall are very equivalent. CIX forums still exist, but they are nowhere near as influential as they once were.…

> Facebook posts not showing up on the search engines I'm conflicted about this one. Personally, I wish that Pinterest content would not show up in search engine results; I've yet to see one that was useful in any way to me. I could imagine that FB results would be similarly clogging up search results with little value.

That's more on Search Engines to keep up with the changing times. They could introduce exclude Social Media toggle easily for FB.

Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#90

Post by netcan »

alexmingoia wrote: post #26
jlmorton wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antitrust legislation is not designed to protect other companies, it's designed to protect consumers. In the United States, when the Justice Department blocks a merger, it is not simply deciding to disallow the merger. It does not have the power to do so. Instead, the actual mechanism is via antitrust lawsuit. If the merger is likely to reduce competition to such an extent that it would harm consumers, and if the Jus…

I don't think the legal code for preventing acquisitions says anything about consumers. 15 USC §18 says "No person engaged in commerce or in any activity affecting commerce shall acquire, directly or indirectly, the whole or any part of the stock or other share capital and no person subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission shall acquire the whole or any part of the assets of another person engaged…

Are you asking "why is a monopoly bad?" or "why do acquisitions representing large market share promote monopoly?"

The 2nd one is quite obvious. Afterwards, there is less competition and the aquire has increased their market share, buying power, control of a supply chain, platform, infrastructure or some other market dominance position.

The 1st one... Do you prefer a theoretical reason? Empirical examples? rhetorical, political, philosophical? There are lots of reasons why monopolies are harmful.

The legislation itself, and the reasoning behind it was liberal-economics... ie "capitalism." Capitalism, from a pro-captialist perspective, works because of a superior price system. Monopolies break price systems, whether they are public or private monopolies.

There are a lot of other reasons too.

Since this is about digital monopolies and "platform" is a primary form of market dominance.... Compare to WWW-vs-AOL. One was a closed, private, system where a single companies dominates a primary bottleneck. One was open. Do you think the WWW would have achieved what the WWW achieved if they had won that platform war?

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