Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 177 posts

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

#71

Post by pmachinery »

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…

> 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.

None of those browsers ever came near the global reach of IE. A quick Yahoo search gives a peak user count of Netscape of around 80 million, for IE it's around 800 million.

Not that I believe for one second Facebook has 2.7 billion active individual human users. I've never even used it but I've signed up to about 10 accounts over the years, and everybody I know also has multiple accounts for various reasons.

In fact based just on people I know, I wouldn't be surprised if already most people are just using "Facebook" for messenger.

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

#72

Post by pwim »

mettamage wrote: post #69
durnygbur wrote: post #27

Facebook platform is evil and no one doubts it at this point. Amazon is predatory for everyone - merchants, warehouse employees, IT employees, job candidates. Google screwed the recruitment irrevocably and what's worse every minor shop attempts to copy their processes. Microsoft temporarily plays the nice guy. Then we have this whole dating thing entirely owned by one media hegemon. All together pay minuscle taxes. .…

> Then we have this whole dating thing entirely owned by one media hegemon. Who'd that be? Not familiar with dating apps' company histories. I tried them but I'm experiencing much more success with old-fashioned dating. Tech hasn't disrupted dating for the majority of people, I think. [1] [1] Because I know quite a few people that don't get any success out of it either, while they do get some success with old-fashion…

Match Group owns and operates several online dating services including Tinder, Match.com, Meetic, OkCupid, Hinge, and PlentyOfFish.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_Group

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

#73

Post by rmtech »

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.

Has this happened to you? What was it for? What did you do?

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

#74

Post by durnygbur »

rmtech wrote: post #73
durnygbur wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Has this happened to you? What was it for? What did you do?

After many matches and chats one will be disliked by many, some will react disproportionately. It happened though without a single physical encounter which they can easily detect. I guess the workaround is to unmatch as early as possible? I was also exposed to many spam/scam profiles (promoting their Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube accounts) and Tinder somehow is not interested in combating this.

I'm an average male, I think they don't care that much to have me in their users' pool or I could be prohibitively horny and boring. Who knows.

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

#75

Post by humanrebar »

friendlybus wrote: post #62
durnygbur wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How long until the one drink I had too many at a bar whilst dating turns into a statistically higher insurance premium. Or my church finds out about my in-progress divorce and excommunicates me. The ability for the individual to reveal specific information on their own terms is necessary for social cohesion. Let's not pretend we have transparency on what our information is being used for, nor are we likely to ever ge…

Why belong to a church and hide major life events like divorces from it?

But your broader point is sound. I'd just replace "church" with "nosy extended relative".

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

#76

Post by humanrebar »

beyondcompute wrote: post #61

Finally there seems to be more widespread realization that large society-influencing corporations could be intrinsically not-such-a-good thing!

Well, it's more that corporations aren't specially benign. Other hegemonic organizations are usually problematic, too.

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

#77

Post by dhyreueu »

durnygbur wrote: post #27

Facebook platform is evil and no one doubts it at this point. Amazon is predatory for everyone - merchants, warehouse employees, IT employees, job candidates. Google screwed the recruitment irrevocably and what's worse every minor shop attempts to copy their processes. Microsoft temporarily plays the nice guy. Then we have this whole dating thing entirely owned by one media hegemon. All together pay minuscle taxes. .…

Yeah, everybody thinks it's evil except for the people who use Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp. It's bizarre to me how many upvotes pretending society isn't still embracing FaceBook gets. And when you say this people parrot tired points about how most people "use it because they have to" as if people who thought it was evil, in the the real way, wouldn't be willing to resist the compulsion. I don't think most HN posters are from tough enough places to know what it looks like when people actually think something is evil.

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

#78

Post by ginko »

kyrers wrote: post #60
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ow…

>but it still seems to me that they want the power to block acquisitions.

They don't want that power. They have it.

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

#79

Post by input_sh »

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…

I agree and and I'd like to offer two more incredibly damning evidence of it being a monopoly like no other.

First, there are countries where Facebook is de facto synonym for the Internet. Thanks to its marketplaces, groups, and events, there are places where much of the online economy is heavily based on Facebook.

Second, I'd argue that nearly every mobile provider in the world that offers zero-rating does so by providing access to Facebook's services either free of charge or at a much lower price than the rest of the Web.

Absolutely no other company in history had these two advantages over not just their social media competition, but the rest of the Web as a whole.

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

#80

Post by daniellarusso »

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…

Friendster did sell its patents to Facebook, and I believe Friendster could have ‘lived on’ as a patent licensor.
Post reply on HN