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FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

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Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#331

Post by granzymes »

gamblor956 wrote: post #299
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…

Amazon promoting its own brands isn't much different from a supermarket offering its own brand items. 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…

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.

That might be true if Safeway is going to buy the same number of cereal boxes from you every quarter, but that's not what happens. Stores adjust their purchases based on what sells, so if Safeway starts promoting their own cereal then they will start buying less of yours.

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.

Supermarkets frequently charge slotting fees to appear on their shelves.

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.

Supermarkets often have contracts where they can return stock to suppliers if it is defective or not selling well and do not always own their stock.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#332

Post by Siira »

I don’t think Facebook is at fault for being smart and buying promising fledgling companies. What is needed is to make the big networks interoperable, probably by offering an API like Telegram does. The API could be priced according to usage, starting for free for small companies.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#333

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

mindcrime wrote: post #283
x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tim…

So there aren't things known between my friends and I that we wouldn't want divulged to a third-party?

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#334

Post by fortran77 »

annadane wrote: post #87
Grazester wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the same note, a relative asked me the same thing when they IPO.I thought if Google could make money selling ads why couldn't Facebook. I bought in at IPO price for them. I sold for them about 2 years ago when the price was dropping due to privacy scandals.

Why the hell is HN so downvote happy?

/r/LOLHackerNews

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#336

Post by jskajakzkjx »

annadane wrote: post #310
uoaei wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://thehackernews.com/2017/01/whatsapp-encryption-backdo... In short, their implementation allows to change the encryption keys of users without their consent to arbitrary, known keys. The protocol won't re-encrypt sent messages, but there is nothing in the protocol forcing the app to show a notification that your encryption key has changed, which amounts to a man-in-the-middle attack. Any subsequent messages sen…

Wasn't this specific story debunked? (Don't shoot me, I'm genuinely asking)

The headline is false (“WhatsApp Backdoor allows Hackers to Intercept and Read Your Encrypted Messages”), in the sense that hackers can’t actually read and intercept WhatsApp messages. Normally the reporting of a security vulnerability includes a POC of an exploit. There isn’t one here, because hackers haven’t been able to exploit it. If an activist saw this story, got scared of WhatsApp, and decided to use SMS or Telegram instead (especially if they didn’t use the opt-in secret chats feature, which most people don’t), their security got weaker.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#337

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#338

Post by actuator »

gamblor956 wrote: post #299
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…

Amazon promoting its own brands isn't much different from a supermarket offering its own brand items. 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…

So many inaccuracies in this.

> it uses its access to their sales data to come up with its own competing products.

Every retail chain has data on what gets sold inside and where it was kept, how it was promoted etc. They can very well use this data and most probably are using it.

> Thus, it is irrelevant to the manufacturer whether the supermarket promotes their store-brand product or the name brand product;

Only till the time when their store brand starts selling much better and consumers develop a relationship with that.

> But in the case of Amazon, the third-party sellers on Amazon's website get screwed, and that is where the antitrust concern lies.

Isn't this very similar to the third party sellers having their own Shopify store and someone discovering it through Google Search/FB Shop instead of Amazon Search. The only argument that makes sense here is the usage of data.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#339

Post by wvenable »

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…

> But FB, IG and WhatsApp are clearly separate products, all very much monopolies in their markets

What is the "market"? Things people do on their phones? What are they precisely monopolizing?

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