291–300 of 736 posts
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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.
Why? WhatsApp today is a great messaging app platform with end-to-end encryption.
But it was pretty good before they bought it, too. And widely used, IIRC was clearly the biggest in some parts of the world.
Not a lawyer, but I'm really curious to see how this plays out. This case has a lot of confounding factors: * 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 cr…
This is the thing I have a hard time understanding, as far as I'm aware the FTC approved all this, these were not forceful takeovers. What would be the precedent if regulatory approvals could be challenged with a change in administration?
That's like someone is approved for a license to own a gun, then that person uses the gun to commit a crime, and then their license is revoked. Then someone points the finger at whoever it was that approved that person for a gun license.
What would be the precedent if a merger approval gave you a free pass to be anti-competitive?
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…
But these aren't the complaints being bade, at least not the ones in the lawsuits we know of so far. The Google lawsuit, for example, targets its practice of paying companies to make it the default search engine in order to maintain it's monopoly on search. It isn't seeking Google divest from its ad business.
That being said, there's no reason search can't be separated from the ad business.
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And what about their tracking through a huge chunk of popular websites? Shadow profiles and all kinds of shadey stuff.
Install the uMatrix extension. Blacklist anything from facebook.com and fb.com. Now their tracking pixels can't see you.
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> There's no way to provide access to the social graph in a privacy preserving way. If we're not okay with other companies having access then why is it okay for a single company to have that access? Do you know and trust every facebook employee including those that don't work there yet with your data? Do you trust that that data will be securely handled when the company is sold after declaring bankruptcy? I think you…
I think the accidental straw-man is actually your reply. People give Facebook their access willingly and they know what information they input into Facebook. Should Facebook have all the info your bank has for instance? Or auto mechanic, your realtor? This is a slippery slope of logic of shared data for all leads to.
Some of these "social graph" features will do things like link two people as friend suggestions if they both have your phone number in their contacts book, even if you haven't consented to Facebook building up some information about you.
This doesn't sound like willing access & knowledge of what information you provide to Facebook.
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…
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The comment says "there's no way." I can think of at least one which involves a user manually downloading the data and then manually uploading it to another service.
This is one of the things GDPR tries to achive. > To further strengthen the control over his or her own data, where the processing of personal data is carried out by automated means, the data subject should also be allowed to receive personal data concerning him or her which he or she has provided to a controller in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable and interoperable format, and to transmit it to another…
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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.
Imagine, for instance, trying to get actual USD (NOT USDT!) for BTC when that fever dream ends.
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…
Amazon promoting its own brands is completely different from a supermarket offering its own brand items. You're confusing a bazaar with a retail store; the two are nothing alike legally or economically.
The supermarket pays for everything on its store shelves (except, rarely, for certain new products on a consignment basis in which case it only sales for units actually sold). Thus, it is irrelevant to the manufacturer whether the supermarket promotes their store-brand product or the name brand product; they've already been paid by their primary customer. Moreover, in essentially all cases, the name brand also made the store brand.
In contrast, Amazon not only sells alongside its third-party sellers, it uses its access to their sales data to come up with its own competing products. Notably, and very importantly: Amazon does not pay for the third-party sellers products available on its website, the third-party sellers have to pay that.
The manufacturers get paid either way (by the retailer, third-party seller, or Amazon if Amazon.com is the seller). But in the case of Amazon, the third-party sellers on Amazon's website get screwed, and that is where the antitrust concern lies.
I get it, if I buy the competition, then I'm reducing my competition. If I'm a car wash and I buy another car wash across the street, arguably our services overlap 100%. But maybe the acquired carwash was $4 more expensive and served a more luxury clientele. Is that a competitor or not a competitor or both?
How can you also ever prove that a company being acquired was truly a competitor? What percentage overlap on products and services would be necessary to deem that company a competitor?
My bet is that there is a lack of science here and surplus of qualitative judgment. Educate me please... :)