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Facebook is a monopoly that buys, copies, kills competitors: antitrust committee

cnbc.com

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Re: Facebook is a monopoly that buys, copies, kills competitors: antitrust committee

#51

Post by matkoniecz »

Cymruboogaloo wrote: post #30
jkw wrote: post #25

Facebook has been unable to stop new entrants: Pinterest, Snap, Tiktok, Twitter - All global and multi billion dollar companies, and still growing. More to come are: Telegram, Discord, Houseparty, Clubhouse Plus global competition from: Wechat, Weibo, Line Social networks come and go. The space is a lot more whimsical than people think. Remember Friendster, MySpace, AIM. A new challenger will emerge every 3-5 years.

Facebook stole pretty much wholesale, Stories from Snap, The timeline from Twitter, and now reels is its Tiktok clone. They've recently introduced "rooms" which is its theft of Houseparty not Zoom which everyone thought. Facebook is a horrible company which hasn't come up with and original idea in years. It now uses its "sign in with facebook" button to see which apps people are using before copying them completely a…

I would be happy about FB dying, but what is wrong with copying good interface ideas?

I hate FB, but I hate making such stuff patentable/copyrightable/unreusable/uncopiable even more.

Re: Facebook is a monopoly that buys, copies, kills competitors: antitrust committee

#52

Post by viraptor »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #20
viraptor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gates is doing PR for himself. I've not seen him say anything relevant about MS in a really long time.

Gates is the richest person in the world. I assure you, he has a team of PR people dedicated to improving his image and the image of the source of his wealth (Microsoft.) The fact that this is downvoted and somehow controversial is proof of their campaign’s effectiveness...it’s how the media works, people.

> dedicated to improving his image and the image of the source of his wealth (Microsoft.)

Why? Can't find the more recent value, but by 2017 he was down to ~1% stake and he was effectively transferring the amounts sold to the foundation. Why would he care significantly about the image of MS at this point?

The last significant article mentioning Gates and Microsoft I can find is him departing the board in March. And not a lot before that either. Can you point at his significant MS PR?

Re: Facebook is a monopoly that buys, copies, kills competitors: antitrust committee

#53

Post by ceilingcorner »

viraptor wrote: post #52
ceilingcorner wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gates is the richest person in the world. I assure you, he has a team of PR people dedicated to improving his image and the image of the source of his wealth (Microsoft.) The fact that this is downvoted and somehow controversial is proof of their campaign’s effectiveness...it’s how the media works, people.

> dedicated to improving his image and the image of the source of his wealth (Microsoft.) Why? Can't find the more recent value, but by 2017 he was down to ~1% stake and he was effectively transferring the amounts sold to the foundation. Why would he care significantly about the image of MS at this point? The last significant article mentioning Gates and Microsoft I can find is him departing the board in March. And n…

The point of PR is to not be obvious.

And of course he would be interested in making MS look better, it’s the source of his wealth and will forever be associated with him.

Re: Facebook is a monopoly that buys, copies, kills competitors: antitrust committee

#54

Post by 7952 »

jkw wrote: post #25

Facebook has been unable to stop new entrants: Pinterest, Snap, Tiktok, Twitter - All global and multi billion dollar companies, and still growing. More to come are: Telegram, Discord, Houseparty, Clubhouse Plus global competition from: Wechat, Weibo, Line Social networks come and go. The space is a lot more whimsical than people think. Remember Friendster, MySpace, AIM. A new challenger will emerge every 3-5 years.

A new entrants champions a new feature or approach. That is then adopted into an existing product which can grow due to network effects. This can then expose the feature to a massive audience in a more culturally neutral form. So YouTube adds short video, Microsoft add Slack style chat to Office, and everyone adds Zoom style video calls. The original product slowly try's to build a wider platform, but is unable to compete on the same level.

Re: Facebook is a monopoly that buys, copies, kills competitors: antitrust committee

#55

Post by chosenbreed37 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48
jkw wrote: post #25

Facebook has been unable to stop new entrants: Pinterest, Snap, Tiktok, Twitter - All global and multi billion dollar companies, and still growing. More to come are: Telegram, Discord, Houseparty, Clubhouse Plus global competition from: Wechat, Weibo, Line Social networks come and go. The space is a lot more whimsical than people think. Remember Friendster, MySpace, AIM. A new challenger will emerge every 3-5 years.

> Remember Friendster, MySpace, AIM. A new challenger will emerge every 3-5 years. I honestly laugh whenever I hear people still bring up those early social media companies as evidence that social media heavyweights somehow come and go. None of those companies ever came near the global reach of FB. A quick Google search gives a peak user count of MySpace of between 75 and 100 million, for FB it's 2.7 billion. Those c…

Good point. It may well be true that FB 2.7 billion acts as a moat. What I find interesting is that FB has had a bad rap since it reached the 1 billion mark. But instead of going the number of users has gone up. That being said many of those can't be a active though

Re: Facebook is a monopoly that buys, copies, kills competitors: antitrust committee

#56

Post by kyrers »

> "The report also recommends that Congress consider any acquisition by the big tech companies to be anticompetitive unless the companies can prove that the merger would be in the public’s benefit and could not be otherwise achieved."

I'm sorry, what? Two private tech companies cannot merge if they can't prove it is in the public's best interest? Am I understanding this correctly?

What if the influence on public welfare is non existent or minimal, but both companies would benefit from the merger?

Re: Facebook is a monopoly that buys, copies, kills competitors: antitrust committee

#57

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

kyrers wrote: post #56

> "The report also recommends that Congress consider any acquisition by the big tech companies to be anticompetitive unless the companies can prove that the merger would be in the public’s benefit and could not be otherwise achieved." I'm sorry, what? Two private tech companies cannot merge if they can't prove it is in the public's best interest? Am I understanding this correctly? What if the influence on public welf…

Look at your quote: it restricts it to "big tech" companies, and as nebulous as it sounds at-present I'd say it's quite easy to say which companies are "big".

Re: Facebook is a monopoly that buys, copies, kills competitors: antitrust committee

#58

Post by jonplackett »

durnygbur wrote: post #50
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Then we have this whole dating thing entirely owned by one media hegemon. This scares the hell out of me that one mega conglomerate with it's algorithms has control over your procreation and deep knowledge of your sex life, all linked to your real identity. Personally, I have no dog in this fight since I gave up on online dating and got good at IRL dating(pre-COVID) but I am aware of plenty of men willing to throw t…

Wait until Tinder bans your "account" which is basically a broad fingerprint of your physical device, Google/Apple account (from the play/app store), phone number, and WiFi details. Then you can turn paranoid.

Yikes to Tinder enforced celibacy!

Re: Facebook is a monopoly that buys, copies, kills competitors: antitrust committee

#59

Post by jonplackett »

jkw wrote: post #25

Facebook has been unable to stop new entrants: Pinterest, Snap, Tiktok, Twitter - All global and multi billion dollar companies, and still growing. More to come are: Telegram, Discord, Houseparty, Clubhouse Plus global competition from: Wechat, Weibo, Line Social networks come and go. The space is a lot more whimsical than people think. Remember Friendster, MySpace, AIM. A new challenger will emerge every 3-5 years.

What facebook has that none of the others do not is a value almost like infrastructure. They ARE your online identity in a way that pinterest/snap/twitter are not. Wechat is comparable (probably even more than FB) but only in China.

What FB has been able to do is smooth out those up and down waves by acquiring challengers (Insta/Whatsapp). They tried to buy snap too but when that didn't work they just copied features and now also copying TikTok.

So I don't think they're subject to those equalising forces as has been the case previously (and which do still affect everyone else - RIP Vine).

Re: Facebook is a monopoly that buys, copies, kills competitors: antitrust committee

#60

Post by kyrers »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #57
kyrers wrote: post #56

> "The report also recommends that Congress consider any acquisition by the big tech companies to be anticompetitive unless the companies can prove that the merger would be in the public’s benefit and could not be otherwise achieved." I'm sorry, what? Two private tech companies cannot merge if they can't prove it is in the public's best interest? Am I understanding this correctly? What if the influence on public welf…

Look at your quote: it restricts it to "big tech" companies, and as nebulous as it sounds at-present I'd say it's quite easy to say which companies are "big".

Yeah, I read it correctly but am just now realizing I wrote "tech companies" instead of "big tech companies", my bad.

So this is more a move to preven them from bullying smaller tech companies? I can see it from that angle, but it still seems to me that they want the power to block acquisitions.

For instance, would the following acquisition/merger be allowed: a big tech company acquiring a small company, which the owner wants to sell, that does not influence public welfare?

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