FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

Post by sigmar » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 9:04 PM UTC

mrkramer wrote: post #101

This doesn't make sense who authorized Instagram and Whatsapp acquisitions at the first place? FTC [1] It isn't Zuck's fault nobody else is as competitive as Facebook is.... I look at you MySpace and Twitter. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/08/ftc-c... "The Federal Trade Commission has closed its nonpublic investigation of Facebook's proposed acquisition of Instagram, Inc., without taking any…

Post by baby » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 9:04 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #174

ghufran_syed wrote: post #155

I feel like instead of pushing for the companies to separate, congress should pass laws mandating [adversarial interoperability]( https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera... ). Then the data (including the social graph) really would belong to the users, and facebook would have to compete with multiple other “social network clients” that would rapidly emerge. Facebook would lose some monopoly profi…

In an ideal world, I'd like both. Mandated interoperability would help a great deal—but I also don't believe Facebook should ever have been allowed to buy Whatsapp, and it's worth undoing that.

Post by nr2x » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

lbsnake7 wrote: post #30

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…

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #126

lbsnake7 wrote: post #30

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…

In hindsight, i think a big part is that myspace's reach extended mostly to early adopter internet users. Early adopters jump on ships early, but also jump off easily too. Once everyone's parents and grandparents jumped on to facebook, that's a much better moat. FB buying up the competition probably helped too.

Post by crazygringo » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC