FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization • Hacker News Board

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#661

Post by Triv888 » Thu, Dec 10, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

bzb6 wrote: post #165

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…

No thanks, I don’t want to spend all day receiving spam via WhatsApp like in the days of irc.

IRC spam?

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#662

Post by jrochkind1 » Thu, Dec 10, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

Is it weird that the FTC can sue for acquisitions that the FTC approved at the time?

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#663

Post by maxerickson » Thu, Dec 10, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #448

Erik816 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only there were some kind of federal agency, maybe a "trade commission" that could have blocked these mergers when they originally happened ....

Thanks Obama. But seriously, by what rationale would you block the purchase in 2012? Instagram only had 25 million users at the time.

You don't just look at Instagram when you evaluate the acquisition, you look at Facebook also.

Facebook was huge, and Instagram didn't represent anything Facebook couldn't just build themselves, other than the growing user base. So there is your rationale, the behemoth shouldn't be completely free to consolidate users. Of course the details of how big is too big and so on are the hard part.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#664

Post by jrochkind1 » Thu, Dec 10, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

aerosmile wrote: post #568

dang wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a stub comment to hold all the replies to the parent. I did not mean to explode an offtopicness charge, and usually turn off replies for these because the same issue comes up every time and the answer is always the same. (When it comes to explaining something, the internet is stateless [1].) Forgot to do so in this case! I'll move them now. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

I get it that HN is all about minimal design, but the need for the parent post (in this and other threads) is a sign that the UI could be improved in this aspect.

Yes, everyone knows that, it just hasn't been done yet.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#665

Post by jonplackett » Thu, Dec 10, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC

mikro2nd wrote: post #647

jonplackett wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way facebook is different is that it isn't just a social network, it IS your online identity. The fact that they make you use your real name rather than just some username is what made it work. And what continues to make it a more permanent part of who you are digitally. Facebook login makes it even more intertwined and hard to remove.

The fact that there are a great number of people not on Facebook whose online identity is just fine is ample refutation of this absurd claim. And Facebook login being "necessary"?... Never used it. Never will.

I'm not saying that. Just that this is why it's been so successful - so far...

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#666

Post by Mary-Jane » Thu, Dec 10, 2020, 2:05 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #701

dang wrote: post #525

There are multiple pages of comments, accessible via the 'More' link at the bottom of the page, or click here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25363366&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25363366&p=3 (This message will eventually self-destruct.)

This is a stub comment to hold all the replies to the parent. I did not mean to explode an offtopicness charge, and usually turn off replies for these because the same issue comes up every time and the answer is always the same. (When it comes to explaining something, the internet is stateless [1].) Forgot to do so in this case! I'll move them now. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Who the heck has time to read all these comments???

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#667

Post by ajharrison » Thu, Dec 10, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

[dead]

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#668

Post by 542354234235 » Thu, Dec 10, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #192

siliconmountain wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want Facebook to stop tracking me, not enable more of it. Which does this enable?

Stop using their free service and block their Javascript. Don't use apps built with their login framework.

This argument is so tiresome. It isn’t a radicle idea that people should be able to engage in basic actives like transportation, commerce, communication, etc. without having to give up their rights to safety, privacy, and other basic standards. “If you don’t want to risk getting poisoned, just don’t shop at that multination store”. How about any store should be regulated to provide a minimum level of safety in the things they sell. How about any communication platform be regulated to provide a minimum level of privacy and data protection for private user information.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#669

Post by wlesieutre » Thu, Dec 10, 2020, 3:02 PM UTC

mrkramer wrote: post #133

wlesieutre wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bought all the platforms people were going to jump to. The "Onvao Protect" traffic snooping VPN to identify what up and coming products people were using was one particularly shady part of this strategy.

You didn't need any traffic snooping to notice millions of Instagram and WhatsApp users. Acquisitions were no brainer for Facebook.

I don't have any inside info here, but they could have gotten much more granular information than how many people were using Instagram and WhatsApp.

For instance, daily time spent in using Instagram on a per-user basis, whether that use was associated with a drop in Facebook use, and how patterns in that relationship broke down across demographics.

I didn't think they were no-brainer acquisitions at the time, but they've certainly turned out to be in hindsight. Was Facebook just smart or lucky, or did they have a lot more data than we did to judge those decisions?

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#670

Post by Applejinx » Thu, Dec 10, 2020, 3:03 PM UTC

SerLava wrote: post #25

mmastrac wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Splitting those two properties off would be fantastic. I know it's a pipe dream, but an independent Oculus would make me so happy. I suspect this is impossible due to the early nature of the VR market. Maybe just an FTC requirement _not_ to require a FB login?

Ugh, yeah Facebook probably bought Oculus thinking: -What if a lot of people use these in the future -What if they're really comfy when they get slim, and people use them all the time, even for essentially web browsing. -Later models can easily have internal and mouth facing cameras so you can smile at people in VR -Let's intimately observe the finest twitch of every expression felt by our users, peering deep into th…

Damn straight. The prospect of how much you can learn about human reactions is INCREDIBLE. Eye and mouth tracking is everything, here: it would be turning a wide variety of human behavior study into Big Data and straightforward machine learning.

What would you do with it? What wouldn't you do with it?