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

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

#151

Post by s3r3nity »

adventured wrote: post #9
threeseed wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And Facebook is a monopoly that buys or copies (thus kills) their competitors And yet competitors e.g. Snapchat, TikTok, HouseParty, Telegram, Line continue to appear and flourish.

And you forgot a big one - Pinterest, which is larger than Snapchat, thriving globally and worth $26 billion. Facebook has been entirely unable to slow their growth. I think it's clear at this point that Facebook will continue to lose their social dominance, so long as they're prevented from acquiring any major competitors. Their old-line social network will likely remain as a foundation that everyone joins, because…

You're probably getting downvoted because you're repeating the same line that folks have been saying about Facebook for like 15 years now that keeps getting disproven. It's just the Chicken Little "sky is falling" metaphor.

>young people hate being where old people are, where their parents and teachers are.

Yes, because let's make large business decisions and technology investments on what 10-12 year olds like.

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

#152

Post by s3r3nity »

pwinnski wrote: post #103
pyrrhotech wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is not predatory to me. It has greatly improved my life from a convenience and cost perspective. They also recently raised their wages for all warehouse employees such that it's one of the best places to work for unskilled labor in many locations. Amazon has made many small time merchants rich through their platform, and it's software engineers are among the highest paid in the industry, so I have to strongly…

The US House committee that spent 18 months investigating cataloged an extensive report[0] on Amazon's predatory ways, and reading it one quickly realizes that not everyone feels warm and fuzzy toward the company as you do. There's a lot. The section on Amazon begins on page 248, and is very readable. [0] https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_dig...

Just theater - no legislation.

Too many senators / congress people have Amazon warehouses with 1000's of jobs in their backyard, and would never support breaking them up on weak committee recommendations.

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

#153

Post by anoncake »

kyuudou wrote: post #126
anoncake wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really a problem with the EU. Its member states still compete with each other too much, companies shouldn't be able to shop around for the laxest labour laws like that.

I disagree, consumers should be able to decide if they want to buy a product or not and do their due diligence investigating the producer. The countries where labor is cheaper benefit by getting more work and ultimately they uplift themselves. Now, if it comes out that such labor is abused or managed corruptly and so forth, that is a product I will not knowingly or willingly buy.

In the real world, customers don't actually do that and in fact cannot for everything they buy. Regulation is simply more efficient and effective.

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

#154

Post by tehjoker »

mikro2nd wrote: post #85
npteljes wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm partial to GMAFIA myself, but I'm afraid that it has the same cranky connotation as "Micro$oft" had back in the day.

I've been going with GRAFT when referring to the social-media incumbents. (Strictly speaking it should be GRAAFT, and I can't figure a way to neatly include an 'M'.)

This tickled me but what does the A stand for? Does M$ (retro!) have a social media platform? They do have a television news station....

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

#155

Post by wdr1 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #49
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. 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…

> 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.

Only if you give it to them?

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

#156

Post by pwinnski »

s3r3nity wrote: post #152
pwinnski wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US House committee that spent 18 months investigating cataloged an extensive report[0] on Amazon's predatory ways, and reading it one quickly realizes that not everyone feels warm and fuzzy toward the company as you do. There's a lot. The section on Amazon begins on page 248, and is very readable. [0] https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_in_dig...

Just theater - no legislation. Too many senators / congress people have Amazon warehouses with 1000's of jobs in their backyard, and would never support breaking them up on weak committee recommendations.

This is step one. It is possible that step two will die on the floor, but this report made it out of committee, which is farther than I expected it to get, so I'm not quite so pessimistic about step two.

Right now one party wants to go after the big tech companies for what seem to be the wrong reasons, while the other party doesn't seem to have the will to go after them at all. But in the end, we got a report with good recommendations, so we'll see if bad motives can bring about some good results.

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

#157

Post by kyuudou »

anoncake wrote: post #153
kyuudou wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, consumers should be able to decide if they want to buy a product or not and do their due diligence investigating the producer. The countries where labor is cheaper benefit by getting more work and ultimately they uplift themselves. Now, if it comes out that such labor is abused or managed corruptly and so forth, that is a product I will not knowingly or willingly buy.

In the real world, customers don't actually do that and in fact cannot for everything they buy. Regulation is simply more efficient and effective.

>Regulation is simply more efficient and effective.

And that efficiency and effectiveness benefit an elite few. If people continue to "wake up" globally, becoming increasingly empowered by technology and democratizing philosophies, they will come to the logical conclusion that they can "vote" with their currency. Companies will definitely fucking pay attention if people stop buying their shit.

For example, I've taken the "buy local as possible" ethic to its logical extreme, realizing for example that I have to make compromises for things like consumer electronics. "The real world", as you say. But I think it's defeatist to just buy the cheapest junk you can afford in complete disregard of its means and origin of manufacture unless that's the only solution.

Just today, I was shopping around where to buy Sid Meier's Memoirs book since I just learned about it today on HN. I could elect the easy, lazy, one-world-ruled-by-Bezos path and click Amazon to save a few cents and get it delivered a day less, or I could go the slightly less convenient but more positive route of Indiebound.

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

#158

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

diggan wrote: post #63
kyrers wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If a big company buys another one in order to close it down, not migrate its services with the sole goal of achieving market dominance (monopoly), then yes, the government should have the power to block that acquisition as the public would be worse off with one big company being the only provider of something, rather than N companies providing something. This is why we have free markets, as we want companies to compe…

> If a big company buys another one in order to close it down

Apple's business model right there.

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

#159

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

kyrers wrote: post #65
diggan wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a big company buys another one in order to close it down, not migrate its services with the sole goal of achieving market dominance (monopoly), then yes, the government should have the power to block that acquisition as the public would be worse off with one big company being the only provider of something, rather than N companies providing something. This is why we have free markets, as we want companies to compe…

Yeah I understand that perspective, my question is what happens if the owner of said company wants to sell?

How many technology companies of note have a single owner (or even a single majority owner)? Every single one of those I can think of is a micro-ISV (or similar) and lacks a multi-million-person-sized user-base.

Those same types of companies also tend to not sell-out to a mega-corp that simply wants to shut it down - if they really need the money they could presumably sell it to a competitor that would actually capitalize on their investment.

In a more general sense, I would like to see moves towards laws and regulations prohibiting more detrimental-to-the-public business activity - we already ban loss-leaders in many circumstances, so it's not a stretch to ban (or rather: to retroactively punish) buying out the competition simply to shut it down.

What's interesting to me is that our industry has plenty of examples of big corporations buying competing companies and products - and keeping them running despite internal competition and even cannibalizations, such as Autodesk and Discrete (3ds vs. Maya), Adobe and Macromedia (GoLive, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, FreeHand), even Microsoft too (Microsoft Works vs. Microsoft Office).

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

#160

Post by athms »

jasonv wrote: post #109
leetcrew wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if having a warehouse in germany is so unattractive that it's better to put them in poland and ship everything across the border, isn't that more of a problem with germany than amazon? edit: okay, that was a bit glib. but isn't complaining about this sort of thing at odds with the idea of an integrated european economy?

Reno is in the same spot. The number of Tesla, Walmart and Amazon trucks clogging I-80 at all hours of the day is astonishing. It also clogs the highway and impedes traffic. I wish they could put a toll or ban trucks from 7am to 7pm so people can get over the hill without tracking trains of trucks. Not sure how this could be solved without an effort of some kind, but as far as o can tell, there are zero policies guid…

I am sure Nevada's lack of income tax and the tax breaks the state gives, plus Reno's proximity to California is the reason logistics is centered there. Reno sells itself as the West Coast shipping hub.

Pretty much everything I order from Amazon these days comes from Nevada even though I am in Silicon Valley. I know Amazon has several warehouses in California, but I have never seen any order originate from California. The company probably uses them as local distribution points for its own shipping service.

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