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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

#201

Post by beagle3 »

scarface74 wrote: post #161
beagle3 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

Google are already being investigated for antitrust violations in both the US and Europe at the very second. Amazon and Apple likely will be very soon, if headlines are to be believed. Microsoft was found to abuse its monopoly before.

Someone apparently told the FTC and the European authority.

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

#202

Post by beagle3 »

stale2002 wrote: post #189
beagle3 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Microsoft’s release of IE was horrible for customers and likely set the web back 5-10 years. You might not have witnessed the damage that the “free” “competitive” IE 6 caused, but I assure you it was a lot of damage both directly to consumers and indirectly through the direct costs to developers.

They wouldn’t do it if it didn’t benefit them, and as a rent extracting monopolist, it’s always at the expense of the rest of society.

You might not see it if you don’t look while it’s happening. Ask someone who lived through the IE times.

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

#203

Post by scarface74 »

beagle3 wrote: post #201
scarface74 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

Google are already being investigated for antitrust violations in both the US and Europe at the very second. Amazon and Apple likely will be very soon, if headlines are to be believed. Microsoft was found to abuse its monopoly before. Someone apparently told the FTC and the European authority.

Let’s see how far that gets. We see how little it did for Microsoft. Microsoft is still just as dominant in PC operating systems and Office software as it was in 2000 and is still one of the top 5 most valuable companies - as it was 20 years ago.

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

#204

Post by scarface74 »

beagle3 wrote: post #198
scarface74 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they hadn’t run out of money first. Also advertisers don’t want to deal with every mom and pop website. If they did, you wouldn’t have the pervasiveness of as networks. What are the chances that they could have grown organically? Do you really want the government to tell founders that they couldn’t accept Facebook’s $1 billion dollars? Would you want the government telling you who you couldn’t sell your property t…

That’s already the case that the government limits these transactions, and for good reasons. Democracies and free markets are good at many things, but staying free is not one of those things. If Google and Facebook decided to merge tomorrow, the government would stop them, for good reasons. If Verizon and AT&T decide to merge, similarly so. I was only suggesting that these restriction apply more strictly; and indeed…

You mean like they stopped Sprint and T-Mobile?

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

#205

Post by cambalache »

hkai wrote: post #97
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.

But you don't have a choice. Either it's Facebook, which is relatively transparent and can be sued, regulated and criticized in the media. Or it's another social network that you have absolutely no recourse against.

Hi Mark nice of you passing by.

> Either it's Facebook, which is relatively transparent

Nice joke to break the ice.

> and can be sued, regulated and criticized in the media

Well, the same applies to any other App, and yes this include tik-tok or Wechat. China jurisdiction is not supranational. The situation inside China is different.

> Or it's another social network that you have absolutely no recourse against.

If the network is operating legally in your country then you have resource. If you go out of your way and sign-up to the Somalian Buccaneers App and they rob you then you are fucked but it was basically your fault.

As I know people simplify to score fake debate points, I am not saying to install tik-tok or we-chat, I did it for a few days and both are terrible apps with very creepy features. But guess what so are Instagram and Facebook, so I dont use them either. Nobody needs them really.

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

#206

Post by int_19h »

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.

Corporations are creations of governments - they literally can't exist as a separate entity without somebody strong enough blessing it (and then protecting their rights as a separate entity, by force if needed).

Thus, if you distrust governments, you should automatically distrust any and all corporations. In fact, that is one way to deal with monopolies - instead of forcibly breaking them apart, let the government simply stop recognizing and enforcing abstract property rights on capital past a certain limit. That would be a solution that strictly reduces the size and power of the government, but I suspect you'd like it even less than anti-trust.

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

#207

Post by int_19h »

jfengel wrote: post #104
pferde wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suppose it might be worth recognizing that a social media system with access to your private messages both gives them a lot of power, and confuses users. Privacy on social media isn't really trustworthy. If you want to whisper, do it via email, where at least it isn't on Facebook's servers. I don't say anything on Facebook that I wouldn't want on the front page of the New York Times. I don't trust either them or ot…

There's no reason why a social media platform can't implement its private messaging in a way that is functionally equivalent to email in terms of privacy (but integrated with that platform).

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

#208

Post by netcan »

missedthecue wrote: post #196
netcan wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Facebook could disappear tomorrow and consumers would barely be inconvenienced. Correction: If facebook disappeared tomorrow YOU would be barely inconvenienced. I don't think you accurately speak for all of Facebook's 2 billion monthly users and the millions of businesses and orgs that advertise on the platform. (paid or unpaid)

I think you're misunderstanding me. I don't mean that FB sucks. I don't care either way.

I mean this: If toyota were to disappear tomorrow, $250bn worth of car-production capacity would disappear. Fewer cars could be made, at least until new investment in factories and such.

If FB disappeared, people would still have plenty of social media to access... or other forms of media, communication and entertainment.

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

#209

Post by netcan »

scarface74 wrote: post #191
netcan wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 seriou…

Can Facebook have me arrested? Take my property via “civil forfeiture” or “imminent domain”? Can they force me to pay taxes? Do they employ police who can shoot me in the back to make me use their services? Can they hire people to choke me for nine minutes? Do their employees have military styled weapons who can be summoned to someone’s house just by making a false report? Comparing any modern private company’s power…

The only remedy to this is a history lesson. Do you know that the British Empire, and many of your colonies started as chartered monopolies? Not just history either.

Anyway, what do those things have to do with the nanny state? Treating "government" as a monolith is like treating "capitalism" as a monolith.

Comparing a police force to a media organisation is a bad comparison. You made it, not me.

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

#210

Post by scarface74 »

bobwaycott wrote: post #197
scarface74 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those cases cause external harm to other people. Logging into FB and posting memes doesn’t.

I’ve known people who have been harmed by logging into FB. Sometimes it’s the memes, comments, DMs, and disinformation that causes harm. Sometimes it’s Facebook running a social experiment without consent to see if they can alter users’ moods.

So now we are going to regulate every company that allows you to post memes and does A/B testing?

Are we going to have the “Ministry of Truth” to make sure that no direct messages don’t have anything false?

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