491–500 of 736 posts
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Why? WhatsApp today is a great messaging app platform with end-to-end encryption.
> WhatsApp today is a great messaging app But it was pretty good before they bought it, too. And widely used, IIRC was clearly the biggest in some parts of the world.
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Stop using their free service and block their Javascript. Don't use apps built with their login framework.
The problem is facebook is wiping out the alternatives. In Australia there is a decent buy/sell site called Gumtree but its ultimately doomed as facebook marketplace uses its massive pre exsting userbase to wipe it out. Facebook either buys or crushes all competition which doesn't have billions of dollars to push back.
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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.
There are a lot of sources online, see for exapmle https://hip2save.com/tips/store-brands-made-by-name-brands/.
White labeling is frequently more profitable than selling a name brand product because you don't have to spend money on marketing, but due to the different level of quality in most store brand products, the suppliers generally prefer to leave their brand off the package and put only the legal minimum identifying info require. As a result, unless you actually work for one of the brands involved (the store or the supplier) it's extremely hard to know who the supplier is. But every store brand product you buy in a major U.S. retail chain is made by a manufacturer of a name brand product in the same space.
(On a similar note, most U.S. "craft" whiskey is made by the same distillery. White labeling for the win. https://www.whiskyadvocate.com/different-craft-whiskey-mgp-d...)
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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.
Absolutely. The same could also be said of the closest parallel of Facebook in history, the Bell System.
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They're paid when the product clears. Many big chains like Walmart and Best Buy don't own a significant portion of inventory on shelves or in warehouses. The manufacturers own the inventory up until the products are paid for by the customer.
This is simply false. Chains like Walmart and Best Buy own their inventory (i.e., they hold legal title). They simply might not have forked over the cash yet, which is very different--for a variety of reasons, the actual transfer of cash can take place weeks or even months later. (This is how invoicing works with most companies. If you are an independent contract, you know exactly how this works.) Very few products i…
Legal title is just one of many arbitrary constructs that get applied, typically in a way that’s most advantageous to the more powerful party in the relationship.
Forking or not forking over cash can be a key component of who really holds the business risk (rather than just legal title).
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That's not the problem. The problem is that if I export my social graph and share it with another company, it includes information about who my friends are -- at the very least, it shows that they are my friends. That violates their privacy. Maybe they did not want their relationship with me to be known outside the social network where they established it.
If your friend isn't a user of the company to which the data is exported, then maybe that friend's data could be served from FB's servers, or your own, and only decypted client side. This of course cuts them off from being able to monetize swaths of user data which isn't unilaterally owned by one user, but it would be privacy respecting to your friend wouldn't it? Open protocols with medical-data like regulation righ…
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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 the…
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. You do know that the companies that make the name brand cereals...also make the store brand cereals... It's about market fit. Price sensitive custo…
If my brand is diluted then there's no reason to keep using me to create the store brand. Being the manufacturer of the store brand is just signing my own death sentence.
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From a privacy point of view I agree that it sounds like a good thing and I hope it happens. From an entrepreneurial point of view I wonder how it will affect the future of big tech players acquiring other companies.
It should be forbidden after IPO to acquire other companies because of this kills competition before it has the chance to compete.
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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.
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…
Besides... they will get to sell it, probably at a profit. They got to own it for 8 years, enjoyed the benefits of lowered competition. They will be fine. I agree that this should have been prevented in the first place, but we are where we are.
Controversially, I don't think ordinary rule of law can apply to FAANG-scale monopolies. There's no way to generalize rules, laws or industrial policies when the industry is "social media." Social media is (economically) mostly FB. Any rule, law or policy is basically regulating FB specifically.
Anyway, the danger of a hammer coming out is low. Even if prosecutors succeed, a cost-of-business fine is the most likely result. Even if they do spin out whatsapp & IG... that leaves facebook mostly intact.
I'd also note that the worst case scenario for overzealous trustbusting is basically nothing. At worst you kill FB. This isn't steel production or auto manufacturing. FB could be swallowed by a demon tomorrow and by next thursday any shortage in social media will be filled. We're not exactly short on the stuff.
FB bring in $80bn pa, but that's totally arbitrary to the cost of doing social networking. It could be done for $40bn or $8bn and I doubt the consumer would notice a difference. Again, this isn't auto manufacturing. A car company can't make as many cars with half the revenue. If one dies, we actually have less manufacturing capacity and we'll make fewer cars for a while. None of this applies to social media.