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Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook put out, at roughly the same time, 3 products competing with Snapchat and among themselves. See Google chat/messages apps. For that matter Microsoft runs Teams, Skype, and GroupMe.

Google is also a monopolist, and so is Microsoft, and both of them are abusing their monopoly position in one market to try to get into others. Made my point for me. But Facebook did 3 within 6 months after Snapchat refused a buyout offer. That's very different from Google (trying multiple over years to see what/if sticks) and Microsoft (trying multiple over years for different market segments and/or NSA requested pu…

So now a monopolists are everywhere? When is someone going to tell the FTC?

And in the example above. Both Google and Microsoft are “monopolies” but they each have viable competitors....

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

#162

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Apple buys a company at least every couple of weeks. Most companies that Apple buys would never be successful products as an IPO. They were never products that would have ipo’d

You conveniently ignored the "or would have stayed private" part.

So in what world would most of the money losing companies that Apple bought remained private and profitable?

Instagram had no business model when it was acquired.

Could any of the chip design companies remain private? What would have happened to the company that Apple bought that made Workflow - that is now the Shortcuts app - if Apple had just built it in house? Would that have been a better outcome for consumers or the company behind Workflow?

In the case of technology companies, do you also want the government to stop acquihires?

If the government stopped acquisitions, the bigger companies could still just poach all of the employees.

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

#163

Facebook obviously posses some interesting questions on various topics but framing the debate as Facebook collecting "monopoly rents" is ridiculous. I haven't used Facebook since 2010 and I have never used Instagram. If someone in my social network wants to send me some information they have my number and they can txt me. If someone wants to send me a picture they can do the same. I don't use Facebook because ultimat…

You are not the customer. Advertisers are. Google and Facebook are the only games in town for online advertising these days; the fact both are making incredible amounts of money means either competitors aren't good enough, or are being priced out of the market, or squeezed out of it (due to network effects or anti-competitively). For Google - the vast majority of whose income comes from search ads - there is no netwo…

> YouTube does have a network-effect lock in, but AFAIK that's not really a revenue source for google.

Just to clarify, YouTube revenue in 2019 was around $15 billion, which even for Google is not a small number.

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

#164
post #101

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Laws need to be updated to account for the network effects of the data lock position, where you, your data, and network are prevented from easily being mobile. Your digital data should be considered to be equivalent to you having built a house, a big asset, but now you have a big choice to make: abandon it because the state is doing some sketchy things that you don't agree with or want to support by the taxes collect…

Have you ever thought that the reason Facebook is successful is because people choose to use it? No one is forced to use social media.

> Have you ever thought that the reason Facebook is successful is because people choose to use it?

Yes, I have thought that, before I knew any better. Now I know that Facebook became successful by making people think that other people wanted them to use Facebook.

E.g. http://www.krist0ph3r.com/2009/06/reminder-kristopher-invite...

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

#165
post #93

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"People will have vote with their actions if they want things to change." That isn't how monopolies work - while some people can individually make huge sacrificies and not use any Facebook product, in reality that isn't practical and few people will because they are a monopoly. This isn't like buying a car where there are multiple providers who all use the same roads and petrol. Or the mobile phone system, where ther…

It’s now a “huge sacrifice” not to use Facebook ?

Yes, It's a huge sacrifice not to use the primary (and in most cases only) messaging and event organising platform in your local network. And usually that platform is Messenger or WhatsApp. Sometimes it's IG.

And yes, feel free to argue that you can still be reached on SMS, Signal or Telegram or literally any other messaging platform. But good luck convincing even your closest friends and family to join.

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

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever thought that the reason Facebook is successful is because people choose to use it? No one is forced to use social media.

> Have you ever thought that the reason Facebook is successful is because people choose to use it? Yes, I have thought that, before I knew any better. Now I know that Facebook became successful by making people think that other people wanted them to use Facebook. E.g. http://www.krist0ph3r.com/2009/06/reminder-kristopher-invite...

And that’s basically advertising 101. I remember being taught that in a marketing class in graduate school back in 2001.

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/examples-bandwagon-advertisi...

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

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s now a “huge sacrifice” not to use Facebook ?

Yes, It's a huge sacrifice not to use the primary (and in most cases only) messaging and event organising platform in your local network. And usually that platform is Messenger or WhatsApp. Sometimes it's IG. And yes, feel free to argue that you can still be reached on SMS, Signal or Telegram or literally any other messaging platform. But good luck convincing even your closest friends and family to join.

So now we need the government to step in because you can’t convince your friends to use an alternate platform?

I’m part of a non profit that was using FB messenger until one person said they didn’t want to use FB. Everyone switched over to GroupMe.

I have a few ongoing group chats over SMS.

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you ever thought that the reason Facebook is successful is because people choose to use it? Yes, I have thought that, before I knew any better. Now I know that Facebook became successful by making people think that other people wanted them to use Facebook. E.g. http://www.krist0ph3r.com/2009/06/reminder-kristopher-invite...

And that’s basically advertising 101. I remember being taught that in a marketing class in graduate school back in 2001. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/examples-bandwagon-advertisi...

No, advertising 101 is vague lies like "America's favorite mascara". The more specific lie that "Kristopher invited you to use Facebook" takes it to a new level.

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

#169
post #85

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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 regul…

> It's entirely based around regulating 19th century monopolies, This isn't as problematic as you suggest. We don't need an act of Congress to deal with FAAMG. The way the laws are enforced and interpreted has changed in a very meaningful way. Read the A&P cases and ask yourself, "if Congress hasn't changed the law then what's up with Walmart?"[1] The DOJ Antitrust division is asleep at the switch. There are a lot of…

Antitrust legislation & enforcement are inextricably linked, for all sorts of reasons. This isn't just a US problem.

The entire conventional legal approach was (and still is) flawed. First, monopolies tend to form in The way it works is by "proving" anticompetitive and/or monopolistic behaviour, and fining companies.

Take the recent EU ruling (and pending copycat cases in the US) on the adwords "platform monopoly." The idea was that (1) Google controls the search engine marketing platform and (2) they use this control to favour their own search engine. They proved it. Google got a "cost of doing fine."

First, the whole premise is. If a monopoly exists, we state prosecutors shouldn't need to prove monopolistic actions. Monopolistic practices are proof of a monopoly, but the logical premise behind antitrust law is that monopolies are harmful... and we assume that anti-competitive/monopolistic behaviour happens. Let 3rd parties sue privately for specific abuses, but the state should be focused on preventing monopoly not retroactively punishing use of that monopoly.

If prosecutors have to prove individual abuses separately, they will never make a dent. Most "monopolistic behaviours" are not proveable. They may not even be decisions, they're just what happens in a monopoly.

I totally agree with you about bogus "consumer welfare tests." This is academic hogwash, and it's probably there to provide cover for inaction.

Second, "what to do now" is unavoidably hard, subjective and uncomfortable for a court. Cases vary too much.

From a "greater good perspective," FB could just be shut down. As long as data is destroyed, no one but FB shareholders (and employees) lose. I don't mean that they should be shut down, just that there are no external welfare concerns.

Google is more complicated. Alphabet needs to be restructured into 5-6 companies. Google's (high quality and public benefiting) R&D would be in danger. You'd need to enforce non-collusion between infrastructure, content & ad platforms. It's not something a court can do well, using 19th century case law especially. Case law says nothing about whether or not a ruling was a success.

Mostly, antitrust law should deter monopolies from forming in the first place. Monopolies should voluntarily avoided by companies, because antitrust should be something that doesn't pay to mess with. As things stand, monopoly is the best strategy.

Last, a lot of what needs to happen needs to happen outside of strict antitrust bounds. The phone plans available to you are more closely related to political decisions (eg radio spectrum) than the actions of individual companies. Facebook's monopoly, the most worrying aspects of it, rest on data collection and advertising practices that most people find horrible, and believe should be illegal.

Antitrust may not have even been necessary if (a) those mergers hadn't happened (b) personal data hoarding wasn't a free-for-all and (c) advertising was not so unregulated.

I agree about sleeping on the wheel though.

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

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe future generations will realize how shitty FB is and stop using it (one can hope!) A bigger problem is FB owns much better products like WhatsApp - it is easy to quit FB than WhatsApp in my opinion

So you mean the solution to the FB “problem” is people using their own free will and it doesn’t involve the Nanny State?

Nanny-state/libertarian arguments against antitrust are misguided.

I am against a nanny state. Deeply against it. It gets abused of power. is invariably useless and freedom is important for its own sake.

Monopolies extend these problems into the commercial realm. Nanny companies instead of Nanny State. Facebook is worse than most state media monopolies.

It's like living in a company town and complaining about the nanny state. Just let the company rule us in peace.

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