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FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

ftc.gov

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Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#281

Post by majani »

burtonator wrote: post #56
nickpp wrote: post #35

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?

The term 'monopoly' is confusing because the pedantic definition is that there's only one player but this isn't the legal definition. It's not actually illegal to be a monopoly but to illegally abuse your market position leading to anti-competitive behavior. Unfortunately, it's never enforce properly as the FTC doesn't have any teeth. I think the only way we're going to solve this is to actually TAX these companies a…

How is it possible to abuse a market position when there are thousands of active competitors threatening to eat Facebook's lunch in each of the areas it leads in? The app stores and web are still full of social media upstarts

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#282

Post by packthetop »

mrits wrote: post #204
sigmar wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For perspective, the acquisition was before IG had ads and before Facebook was publicly traded. How was the FTC supposed to magically see the future anti-competitive actions (like blocking vine)?

That same perspective shows that the industry has evolved since then. If FTC can't be held accountable for not predicting the future neither can Facebook. Of course, I don't believe this at all since anyone in the industry knew exactly why Facebook would buy Instagram, especially the FTC.

> If FTC can't be held accountable for not predicting the future neither can Facebook.

Something tells me the FTC isn’t going to be amenable to “gotcha” arguments

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#283

Post by mindcrime »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #251
civilized wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you could get your own data and the list of people authorized to see it, and pass that to a third party. If you and one of your friends both move to another network, you get to see each other's data. Any problem with this?

What if I don't want you telling folks that you are my friend? Why do you get to divulge this information to a third party that I know nothing about?

Can you stop your real-world friends from divulging your friendship to 3rd parties? Would you even presume to have any standing to do so?

I think a case could be made that knowledge that belongs to A and B equally and that neither has standing to preclude the other from sharing that fact. Of course they could both mutually agree to such an arrangement ahead of time, but outside of such an agreement, I have a hard time seeing the case for "B prevents A from telling C that A and B are friends".

Another aspect of this though, is "how much can A tell C about B without permission from B?" We know that IRL, people do get angry when friends reveal overly personal details about their lives to others, so this is definitely something to consider.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#284

Post by tprynn »

uoaei wrote: post #245
nvrspyx wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just in case you weren't aware, uMatrix has been deprecated and will receive no further development, including fixes. It still runs fine now, but it may not in the future.

Thank you! I was not. The GitHub repo has indeed been archived.[1] Any ideas where to go for similar functionality that will be supported in the future? [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix

uBlock Origin in advanced mode is gorhill's suggested replacement. If you have never used uMatrix before most likely uBlock Origin is what you should be using, and can easily accomplish the "globally block facebook domains" either via blocklists or manually via the advanced mode.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#285

Post by Analemma_ »

s3r3nity wrote: post #267
crazygringo wrote: post #199

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…

I have my doubts, simply because the markets would be significantly disrupted if the government can retroactively “unapprove” a merger over a decade (or longer) after the fact - AFTER the government previously approved it. You’re better off trying to right the wrongs through litigation that sets a better market environment.

It's not like we haven't broken up companies in the past. It did not cause capitalism to collapse.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#286

Post by jsinai »

patothon wrote: post #278
jsinai wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatsapp has near universal market penetration globally, especially in countries where most people can’t afford iPhones and use iMessage. Even in countries where iPhones are ubiquitous the cross-platform nature of Whatsapp and the fact that everyone from your friend to your grandmother is on it, makes it dominant. Yes you could use Slack to message your friends like you would on Whatsapp. The experience won’t be the…

> Whatsapp has near universal market penetration globally, especially in countries where most people can’t afford iPhones and use iMessage. do you have data to back up that claim?

Fair point, I should have provided some sort of link. See the graph showing Top Messaging Apps by Country. South America, Africa, Asia is mostly Whatsapp. If you combine FB Messenger and Whatsapp, then FB controls most of the messaging market share in most regions, with a few notable exceptions like WeChat in China.

https://www.similarweb.com/corp/blog/mobile-messaging-app-ma...

And as an alternative source:

https://www.messengerpeople.com/global-messenger-usage-stati...

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#287

Post by jyrkesh »

romanhn wrote: post #246
dopamean wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the case of instagram you didnt need hindsight to know it was a good deal. Lots of people thought they price they paid was incredible value on the day it was announced. Plenty of ink has been spilled that year about facebook potentially being in trouble with mobile and instagram seemed at the time to be an obvious solution to the problem.

That is not my recollection whatsoever. A quick read through the HN reactions that day ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840 ) shows a mix of bewilderment and belief that this is a defensive play. Very few people actually opined that Instagram represented much actual value.

Yeah, I admit completely that I thought they were massively overpaying for Instagram at the time. I also shared the highest OP's sentiment that I didn't think FB was a good investment for the same reason (that people would migrate from FB to the next thing as fast as folks moved off of MySpace).

I was absolutely and utterly wrong on both accounts. Part of it was definitely wishful thinking, though, as I dislike FB by one or two orders of magnitude more than any other software company.

But yes, I'd say their acquisitions were not completely obvious slam dunks.

They also tried to be Snap, ofc, but my recollection is that Snap refused. Interestingly, folks have probably flip-flopped over the last few years in wondering whether that would've been good or bad for FB.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#288

Post by bogwog »

vosper wrote: post #154
gamblor956 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, after skimming through the PDF of the complaint ( https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/1910134fbco... ), it appears the FTC is not seeking that remedy. It appears VR is still too small of a market for them to care about.

Also, Facebook doesn't have a monopoly on VR - there are several competitors in the market, like HTC and Valve.

Yeah, and that might be because Valve is too expensive for them to buy.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#289

Post by chillacy »

TylerE wrote: post #177
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been giving the wrong answer to "Should I buy Bitcoin" since 2011 or so. I was bearish on Amazon when its stock was at 60 because its P/E ratio was ridiculous. I've learned to just be comfortable with the fact that I'm wrong a lot.

You're not necessarily wrong. It's a long held truism that the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

Either one is right or the market is irrational? Seems like by that logic one can never really be proven wrong.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#290

Post by xxpor »

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…

IANAL, but my understanding is legally, they can decide not to sue/block it. This is not the same thing as affirmatively approving it.
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