31–40 of 736 posts
Instagram and WhatsApp are old news. The big chip on the board is Oculus. If they can get Facebook to sever Oculus (and Facebook "Reality Labs", something probably created ahead of this to blur the lines at bit) it would be a huge step forward to mitigate huge harms to come from Facebook.
Key line: > The FTC is seeking a permanent injunction in federal court that could, among other things: require divestitures of assets, including Instagram and WhatsApp
From a privacy point of view I agree that it sounds like a good thing and I hope it happens. From an entrepreneurial point of view I wonder how it will affect the future of big tech players acquiring other companies.
Lets hope they push through with it and follow up with Google. Its about time - its ridiculous how incredibly powerful these institutions have become. Question: is there an argument not to split up these gigantic corporations?
Of course, forbidding anti-competitive acquisitions would have helped in that maybe then we'd all be using an independent Instagram under the leadership of its original founders and Facebook would be dying. But that still wouldn't change the fact that it would be more than likely to be a quasi monopoly. That's just the nature of social networks.
> ... Facebook has maintained its monopoly position by buying up companies that present competitive threats and by imposing restrictive policies that unjustifiably hinder actual or potential rivals that Facebook does not or cannot acquire Imagine if FB was broken up like old school monopolies. That would definitely open field to a lot of smaller social media startups. I am worried about consumer privacy impacts becau…
And since WhatsApp is a chat app, how about all the other chat apps I am using? iMessage, Slack, Teams.
Does this action has any merit or is it just the usual political posturing and games?
And nothing will come of this except a slap on the wrist. I have more faith in the EU if fines are to be made big enough to make any difference at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huge. I'm glad Zuckerberg is probably panicking.
Even if they were three separate companies wouldn't Mark still have voting control of all three companies?
When Facebook first went public, an older relative asked me if he should invest in Facebook. My only insight was being an internet user at the time and I said no, there was no reason that Facebook wouldn’t be another MySpace. Facebook's only value was their users and users were historically very finicky and moved around platforms at will. I argued that Facebook would make no money and wouldn’t be around in a couple o…
Key line: > The FTC is seeking a permanent injunction in federal court that could, among other things: require divestitures of assets, including Instagram and WhatsApp
From a privacy point of view I agree that it sounds like a good thing and I hope it happens. From an entrepreneurial point of view I wonder how it will affect the future of big tech players acquiring other companies.
It won't.
The full power of the United States does not reverse all those shares you sold to a big tech company, or sold as a big shareholder of a big tech company.
If the market tolerates a price, based on their own exuberance and view of future revenues, that is fine here, and the incentives will continue to promote near term profits with a who-gives-a-shit slim possibility of cleanup by the regulators.
Corporations are just a conduit for money, and the regulators only enforce actions on the conduit, and thats a maybe.
Would be interesting to see a modern day trust busting, wonder how deeply embedded Facebook's infrastructure / P&Ps is for Whatsapp development.