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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

#181

Post by dotandgtfo »

scarface74 wrote: post #167
dotandgtfo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good for you. Anecdotally I'd lose touch with casual acquaintances/friends and spontaneous meetups if someone had to send me an SMS to get in touch with me, and people under 30 will corroborate that.

I wasn't saying anything about government regulations, don't put words in my mouth.

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

#182

Post by scarface74 »

brlewis wrote: post #177
scarface74 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let’s go with Mary Kay and Tupperware....

AFAIK invitations to Mary Kay and Tupperware parties are not lies. Your friend actually does want you to go.

I remember way back in the day my parents were invited to a “dinner party”. It wasn’t until they got their that they found out that it was a pitch to some MLM scheme like Mary Kay.

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

#183

Post by scarface74 »

dotandgtfo wrote: post #181
scarface74 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good for you. Anecdotally I'd lose touch with casual acquaintances/friends and spontaneous meetups if someone had to send me an SMS to get in touch with me, and people under 30 will corroborate that. I wasn't saying anything about government regulations, don't put words in my mouth.

So just like any other product, if you choose not to use it, you don’t get to take advantage of it.

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

#184

Post by scarface74 »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #178
scarface74 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So who would buy these companies if not some other company where the a acquisition would have “synergies”? Why would VCs invest in companies if they didn’t expect an acquisition? The chance of a company actually making it to a successful IPO is slim.

Doesn't that just demonstrate that the market is distortionary then? If they can't IPO and they can't be profitable on their own then they aren't creating real value and so the existence of Facebook and other companies that act as acquirers is value destroying rather than value creating.

Are you willing to say that YC isn’t creating anything value?

Both Android and iOS were the results of acquisitions of unprofitable VC funded companies. How many people who participate on HN are employed by a VC funded, unprofitable company? How many startup founders right here or desperately trying to get VC funding?

Every major feature of the iPhone is the result of an acquisition - multitouch, fingerprint sensors, Face ID, Siri, maps, chip design, Shortcuts, etc.

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

#185

Post by justaguyhere »

scarface74 wrote: post #106
justaguyhere wrote: post #98

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 states are never a good idea. But lets say we prefer nanny state and lets say it works with FB. There is no guarantee that it will always work with every other shitty FB, or if it works, it might become China like, which is worse.

The best long term solution is to educate people - make them understand how much of their privacy is being violated, how much harm social media is causing (broadly speaking here, I know social media can be good too, once in a while) etc. If the general public understands these, they might stop/reduce willingly giving so much of their data to FB.

That said, not many people seemed to care (outside of tech circles) when Snowden happened :(

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

#186

Post by jeffreyrogers »

scarface74 wrote: post #184
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't that just demonstrate that the market is distortionary then? If they can't IPO and they can't be profitable on their own then they aren't creating real value and so the existence of Facebook and other companies that act as acquirers is value destroying rather than value creating.

Are you willing to say that YC isn’t creating anything value? Both Android and iOS were the results of acquisitions of unprofitable VC funded companies. How many people who participate on HN are employed by a VC funded, unprofitable company? How many startup founders right here or desperately trying to get VC funding? Every major feature of the iPhone is the result of an acquisition - multitouch, fingerprint sensors,…

No, I'm not saying that at all. Obviously some acquisitions have been tremendously valuable. Many of those acquisitions could also have existed on their own. But the net effect of something can be negative even if individual things are positive.

My criticism was scoped only to the practice of big tech companies buying up competitors and unprofitable businesses. I think this is value destroying over the long term, though it obviously creates value for the people involved.

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

#187

Post by netcan »

scarface74 wrote: post #176
netcan wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nan…

Facebook doesn’t have coercive power to force me to do anything. The government does. It’s not Libertarianism. It’s a fundamental distrust of governments.

That's what I mean. Your distrust should extend to things that have the same qualities as "government." At the more monopolistic end of the spectrum, and in many real life examples, they're a type of government... in the sense that they govern. This can also be true of very powerful religious institutions.

Power, coercive or otherwise, is more complex than that.

If all media is state media, that's something to seriously distrust. If all media is FB, the church of england church... same problems. Whether or not media is "coercive" is uninteresting semantics.

Whether it's big tech or ccp "soft power" is a technicality. Abusable power is abusable power, and being nannied is a symptom.

Sure, you can still kinda hide from Facebook. Takes a little effort, but whatever. You can also get around the great firewall, if you really want to. A lot of chinese people do, some of the time. Most of the time though, most people read the state approved internet. Most of the time, most people are within the influence of the FB machine... and it's still gaining power.

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

#189

Post by stale2002 »

beagle3 wrote: post #51
alexmingoia wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram didn't have to sell. Less competition isn't the same thing as preventing competition. For example, imagine three restaurants competing. Two of them make an agreement with a common supplier to shut out the third competitor. That is what I think of as anti-competitive.

Snapchat refused to sell, and Facebook pushed 3 different Snapchat competitors at the same time as a result, none of which were a success on their own - but which did make a significant dent in Snapchats growth. This is a “I’ll push you out of the market by taking a loss” behavior, similar to MS inclusion of IE in Windows. Whether or not NS or SC was/is a good product is irrelevant. This is the behavior that antitrus…

I don't consider FB releasing more products to be bad for consumers. And consumers are really the only thing I care about.

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

#190

Post by stale2002 »

scarface74 wrote: post #162
beagle3 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Instagram had no business model when it was acquired.

They would have created one, by doing the obvious thing. Selling ads.

I don't think they would need FB to figure out that they need to do that.

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