Live data from Hacker News

FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

ftc.gov

461–470 of 736 posts

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Want is different from entitled.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#462
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is an action that could have profoundly disruptive effect If FB is doing anti-competitive things than disruption is needed. It's not meant to be comfortable. Companies are really good at learning the playing field and then gaming it for their benefits. Tweaks to laws are often easy to work around. Disruption that stops an illegal monopoly is going to be uncomfortable. Especially at first. But, it opens the doo…

But the product provides real value to real people today, why disrupt this? Also weren't these companies free to not accept an acquisition?

Andrew Carnegie provided far more real, unquestionable value to people too. It ended up being worth it. The same can be said for Leland Stanford or most other monopolies. They didn't become monopolies by not providing value.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#463

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…

> Moreover, in essentially all cases, the name brand also made the store brand.

Whoa, what? Total news to me. Source? Or do you work in this sector? This is really interesting.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not taking a stance on the main topic, but this isn’t entirely accurate. I worked at gas stations and managed a grocery store during my early days. It depended on the product. With Frito Lay and Pepsi products, they’d often times put stuff on shelves and we’d only pay for what we sold. Similarly, for certain breads and packaged pastries and other items, anything that didn’t sell by the date on the package would get c…

None of what you said conflicts with how the transactions are actually characterized for legal, tax, and financial purposes.

Suppliers often credit stores for unsold inventory if they want to maintain a relationship with the store. As most B2B transactions are paid via invoices on a net-terms basis, this may mean discounts on future orders or credits against outstanding invoices. But you're store already acquired those products.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#465
post #433
post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exchanges tend to "go down for maintenance" on any big price swing.

Evidence? I've been in crypto a long time and have never experienced this. I'm not saying it's never happened, but implying it's some sort of repeating pattern is simply false.

https://news.bitcoin.com/crypto-exchanges-overwhelmed-on-bit...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2020/05/20/sudde...

https://cryptopotato.com/bitfinex-offline-goes-in-unschedule...

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#466

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?

Yes, the argument is if you split them up their core value proposition is put into question. Apparently a very large group of users are on board with the core value proposition, and you are imposing on that group a ton of assumptions that the regulatory breakup and oversight will end up "working out better for everyone".

These companies are also vulnerable to competition in a fickle market. Tik Tok has gained massive ground and is on a similar trajectory that instagram was on some years ago. For everyone's claiming that FB stifles innovation, we have an obvious counterexample happening literally before our eyes.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#467

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…

There's no way to provide access to the social graph in a privacy preserving way. It's not okay to allow a third party to access the data your friends have shared with you without your friends consenting. 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.

Sure you can - store social graph data on users local machine or some trusted third party, ship the social media application code to the data.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#468
post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably by breaking up big tech companies, there will be more space for innovation, especially for startups.

or we could just make it much easier for people to break off and start their own business

The problem is if you try to monetize it, facebook or google will overnight release a 10x better version for free.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#469
post #62

> The complaint also alleges that Facebook, over many years, has imposed anticompetitive conditions on third-party software developers’ access to valuable interconnections to its platform, such as the application programming interfaces (“APIs”) that allow the developers’ apps to interface with Facebook. In particular, Facebook allegedly has made key APIs available to third-party applications only on the condition tha…

Opening up the social graph seems almost exclusively a privacy concern. The examples you bring up between Instagram / Twitter are primarily about marketing and onboarding new users to competing services. This isn't actually going to lead to much user conversion unless the competing service is actually meaningfully more interesting. If it is meaningfully more interesting, then users will share it on their own (see Tik Tok), rather demonstrating that regulating the social graph is completely pointless.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or we could just make it much easier for people to break off and start their own business

The problem is if you try to monetize it, facebook or google will overnight release a 10x better version for free.

if you water down restrictions like noncompetes it won't matter, the people at fb or goog would just as likely start their own
Post reply on HN