61–70 of 736 posts
On one hand, forcing Facebook to open up its social graph would have serious privacy implications.
On the other, it would provide an incredible boost to any new social network, which could quickly bootstrap off your existing friends. That's what Instagram did with Twitter and what Vine did with Facebook.
The most important feature of a social network has always been whether your friends/family use it. If any new social network can take advantage of Facebook's social graph via API, that neutralizes this advantage. Now Facebook is forced to compete by being a better social network, not just a bigger one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Splitting those two properties off would be fantastic. I know it's a pipe dream, but an independent Oculus would make me so happy. I suspect this is impossible due to the early nature of the VR market. Maybe just an FTC requirement _not_ to require a FB login?
Oculus doesn't present a monopoly concern in advertising, though.
Oh what’s that? Your eyes looked at the logo on the shirt the hero is wearing, are you perhaps interested in learning more about where you could buy it?
Would be interesting to see a modern day trust busting, wonder how deeply embedded Facebook's infrastructure / P&Ps is for Whatsapp development.
Unless they rewrote Whatsapp from ground up, the two platforms are not mixed. Whatsapp is written in Erlang where Facebook has transitioned from PHP to Hack to the best of my knowledge.
I imagine there are probably a lot of other services that are shared or interact in some way - maybe shared email/notification services, 2fa services, data analytics/BI, monitoring etc...
Monopoly of what? Some other social networks I use every day or so: Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok and various forums and communities like this one, which in my mind are pretty similar to a social network. 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?
Could the average Facebook user readily replace their use of Facebook with LinkedIn or TikTok? I am not a big user of any of those products, but I have the distinct impression that the answer is no.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
doubt it. oculus alone will fade to obscurity
Seems unlikely to me unless you think your children are going to be using computers with flat screens on walls like we do today.
* other companies/entities that can be considered "competitors" (Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc)
* the acquisitions in question (Instagram and WhatsApp) being approved by the suing entity (namely, the FTC) themselves back in the day
I wouldn't be surprised if an outcome of this were to be say, limits against cross-linking acquisitions together or the like in the future. However, having existing companies be forced to be spun out in their entirely... I have a hard time imagining that being the outcome, given the chilling effect it could have on the rest of the industry.