Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by scarface74 » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 8:44 PM UTC

netcan wrote: post #209

scarface74 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You mean like the government that wants to outlaw end to end encryption, run by President who threaten to “shut down Twitter” because he said something they don’t like.

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

#212

Post by jlmorton » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 9:50 PM UTC

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…

> How have consumers been harmed by the Instagram acquisition? Facebook didn't shut them down, substantially change the product, or force users to use their other products.

Consumers have been fairly directly harmed, actually. Facebook operates a walled garden, without interoperability. You can post from Facebook to Instagram, or Instagram to Facebook, but not Instagram to Snapchat.

It would be nice if social networks were more open, in the spirit of the web. But they're not, and by they're nature, network effects are everything. No one wants to be on a social network that none of their friends use.

Meanwhile, Facebook has been among the most aggressive data collectors, collecting all manner of data on users, and then selling and monetizing that data.

Beyond that, Facebook also controls an extremely large amount of speech in the world, including political speech. All of this is directly harmful to consumers.

If there were several large social networks, both of these might be mitigated, or resolved.

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

#213

Post by beagle3 » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #204

beagle3 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Like they should have in my opinion, yes.

According to Wikipedia[0], """On August 4, 2014, Bloomberg reported that Sprint had abandoned its bid to acquire T-Mobile, considering the unlikelihood that such a deal would be approved by the U.S. government and its regulators""", that is, the government effectively banned it, but Sprint pulled out ahead of time saving everyone time and money.

They recently approved it -- a mistake in my opinion -- but again that just proves my point: This is already the rule. Your position appears to be that the government shouldn't have this power at all, mine is that it should be applied more strictly to enhance competition.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merger_of_Sprint_Corporation_a...

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

#214

Post by beagle3 » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 10:46 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #203

beagle3 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't disagree. Do note that Microsoft had essentially zero lobbying before they were convicted, and a huge army of lobbyists when the punishment was neutered; and Google had a lobbying army from very early in its life.

Are you claiming that this state of affairs is good for citizens at large? I disagree. I believe the function of a government is to make life better for its citizens at large, and that the enforcement wrt Microsoft failed that goal (and will likely fail that goal with Google).

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

#215

Post by Nasrudith » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 11:50 PM UTC

nabla9 wrote: post #148

ankit219 wrote: post #92

Antitrust laws were always based on supply side monopolies, while this is a demand side monopoly, and would be a tricky case for anti trust to prove. If the mandate is to do what is best for customers, then the best solution I can think of is to let FB function as one entity but toughen the norms on data collection. The other thing is Facebook should not inhibit any other social network trying to grow using FB's grap…

>Antitrust laws were always based on supply side monopolies I don't think this is true. The idea that antitrust is only about supply and consumer benefit is extremely limited view. It came in flavor in the US late-1970's and it's known as "Chicago School of Antitrust Law". The defining book of that school is Robert Bork's 'The Antitrust Paradox' (1978).

I wonder were there any historical precidents of antitrust actions taken specifically when there wasn't control over suppply either horizontally or vertically resulting in the end of the chain being unable to compete.

Not taking this as evidence of "it never existed" but genuinely wondering if there was ever an obscure bit of precedence by "pure quality".

Microsoft's privileging of Internet explorer and its were a closer example of just anti-competitive but they also had the overwhelming computer market share sold.

I don't recall of any cases where so much as a patent was revoked just because it lead to far more market dominance than expected from the limited time. Even when it utterly devestated entire industries like what cloth mills did to the literal cottage industry weavers.

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

#216

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 12:03 AM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #214

scarface74 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't disagree. Do note that Microsoft had essentially zero lobbying before they were convicted, and a huge army of lobbyists when the punishment was neutered; and Google had a lobbying army from very early in its life. Are you claiming that this state of affairs is good for citizens at large? I disagree. I believe the function of a government is to make life better for its citizens at large, and that the enforceme…

I am saying it is better to let the market along with people using their free will decide.

Yes MS still has 90% market share with the desktop - but it doesn’t matter. People’s attention and all of the energy and money moved to the web and mobile making alternate platforms viable. Apple alone sells more iOS devices than all personal computers combined. It’s only 15% of the market.

It wasn’t the government that allowed Apple and Google define the current era of computing.

When it comes to office, Google’s offerings and Apple’s offerings are good enough and they are free. Office 365 is an excellent deal compared to paying $600 for Office like you did in 2000.

Most people can get by with an iPad or a Chromebook and Macs are a viable alternative.

As far as Google, outside of Sheets and Maps, I find most of Google’s products second rate. I use alternatives I used Google search for the first time in ages without an ad blocker and I found it to be an abomination.

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

#217

Post by Nasrudith » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 12:05 AM UTC

alexmingoia wrote: post #14

deathgrips wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But why are acquisitions anti-competitive? Because now there's less competition.

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.

Some of anti trust historically has included too much higher of a barrier to effective entry which is how vertical monopolies are coherent as a concept. The issue isn't that owning a chain of iron mines, steel refineries, and factories using the steel stop anyone from running one or their own chains of those things but that to be a competitor a massive amount of capital is required. Effectively creating say an effective hundred million dollar moat to be competitive. In which case the investment might not even be worth the revenue earned as returns diminish as it is either duplicate the production of the leader to match economies of scale or lose by produce more expensive commodities.

I don't quite agree with it philosophically (vertical intergration done right boosts efficency for everyone and done wrong only hurts themselves making it ironically procompetitive for those who don't make the same mistakes) but I can see the logic behind it.

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

#218

Post by camgunz » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 12:33 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #175

camgunz wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are sometimes capable of making rational decisions, but there's a whole industry (advertising, maybe you've heard of it) dedicated to working against that. Think of really any common sense regulation: - Can't use leaded gasoline - Can't use asbestos - Must wear a seat belt - Cannot drive while intoxicated If people always behaved well, we wouldn't need laws. They don't, so we do.

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

How can you say this seriously? Disinformation on FB had a huge impact on the 2016 election in the US.

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

#219

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 3:34 AM UTC

camgunz wrote: post #218

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.

How can you say this seriously? Disinformation on FB had a huge impact on the 2016 election in the US.

So do we want a “Central Department of Truth” to regulate Facebook?

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

#220

Post by stale2002 » Thu, Jun 25, 2020, 4:11 AM UTC

beagle3 wrote: post #202

stale2002 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Regardless, in the modern era, I don't see how any of the free products that FB has released have been bad for society, for the mere reason of them being free.

I hope more companies release free products. As many as possible.

Basically all internet products are free, in the modern era. This is not some crazy, extreme thing. Because it is what literally almost every internet products does.