221–230 of 736 posts
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> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Copy+pasting the rules is even more boring, just move on
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…
Unencumbered API access to the social graph is exactly what led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and promising to restrict API access was part of Facebook's settlement with the FTC.
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> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Copy+pasting the rules is even more boring, just move on
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And then it would eventually come back together. See ATT. https://money.cnn.com/infographic/technology/att-merger-hist...
But are there not multiple phone companies now instead of just one?
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?
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…
I agree and find the attempt at a breakup a bit frustrating. This is an action that could have profoundly disruptive effect and it's not really clear what the positives or negatives would be. For instance, FB has invested massively in trust and safety people operations and AI. What happens to that investment when IG is spun off? Laying out laws and regulations so the market works as intended (no doubt with adjustment…
Isn't this also true for Facebook itself as related to how dependent they are on revenue and at what cost that comes to the users who help generate it (by being presented as "eyeballs" to the advertisers)?
We used to let kids play with dry cleaning bags, until we discovered they were idiots and can suffocate on them.
The realization today is that parents were the actual idiots, not the kids.
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Why? WhatsApp today is a great messaging app platform with end-to-end encryption.
...and known backdoors, due to their custom implementation of the Signal encryption protocol.
Honestly, while I have my doubts about this succeeding, it nevertheless feels like the big tech suit most likely to succeed. Amazon promoting its own brands isn't much different from a supermarket offering its own brand items. Apple isn't a monopoly in phones because of Android. And Google's search is so inherently tied to selling ads as a business model that separating them is a difficult argument -- plus search com…
Google lost its Adwords case in the EU: using data gathered via the adwords advertising monopoly to support its search monopoly. $1.5bn fine. Google will happily pay this for anything that meaningfully strengthens their position in this market.
Besides the fine, all they have to do is stop doing the specific, narrow "monopolistic behaviour" that prosecutors were able to prove. This just isn't how monopoly works, and modifying some specific behaviour doesn't affect much.
Whack-a-mole is almost pointless. Antitrust is about structure, inherently. If antitrust action doesn't lead to structural changes, I don't see any point in it.
Similar cases will likely be prosecuted against Amazon (and google) in multiple jurisdictions with the adwords case serving as a (very narrow) template for prosecuting data/marketplace monopolism. Hence amazon. We can probably expect a similar result. A cost-of-doing-business fine and some updated policies about sharing data between the marketplace and retail arms.
If prosecutors prove both a monopoly position and monopolistic abuses (it did, and will), this needs to be deemed proof of a broad problem. Other monopolistic abuses need to be assumed. The fix needs to address the problems, known and unknown broadly. For example, by separating the marketplace and participant (adwords & search; amazon marketplace & retail) into seperate businesses.
In this FB case, it's about buying all the competition: whatsapp, instagram, etc. A fine or a policy update don't fix this. Force a sale of these companies. Ban FB from acquiring companies entirely, or social media companies at least.
Ultimately, the regulator has already failed here. Those acquisitions should not have been allowed in the first place.
Antitrust isn't about punishing bad behaviour. It's about dealing with bad structures.
That said, it does feel like antitrust cops are working up to it, gradually.
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> FB buying up the competition probably helped too. Which the FTC could have stopped at any time.
The prior administration was very cosy with Google and Facebook, which helped even more.
I don't follow usa politics all that closely, so i'm honestly curious how specificly were they cozy?