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Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

theguardian.com

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Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#21

Post by gambiting »

petercooper wrote: post #3

Regardless of the merits of the case, it's interesting to see that a UK watchdog is able to exert such power over a US corporation. There's more background here: https://taxjustice.net/2022/01/18/the-uk-is-breaking-up-face... – they seem to be giving Brexit the credit for UK regulators able to make independent decisions from the EU's own competition regulators

Which is of course complete nonsense and UK has had a competition regulator that was effective and able to operate independently of EU even before Brexit. Every EU country can set the rules what companies can operate in every member state and how, and obviously UK was always able to do this.

(For a simple example - look at France constantly fining and regulating US tech giants without having to ask Brussels for permission)

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#22

Post by benwad »

hunterb123 wrote: post #14
tjpnz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why care what the UK has to say about US matters? Because the UK could ban Meta from operating there if it didn't comply.

FB should call their bluff and tell them to spin up a version of China's great firewall and try to block people then. I guess UK does already have a firewall with it's nanny-state porn filters though. I can see it now, "All of UK blocked FB today because of meme gif service purchase" Great headline, wonderful use of regulation /s Meanwhile you have actual problems going on and a crashing economy, but at least we prev…

The UK doesn't need to block Facebook, they can just ban advertisers from buying any ad space on there. FB could still provide a service in the UK but it wouldn't make them any money.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#23

Post by [deleted] »

hunterb123 wrote: post #14
tjpnz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why care what the UK has to say about US matters? Because the UK could ban Meta from operating there if it didn't comply.

FB should call their bluff and tell them to spin up a version of China's great firewall and try to block people then. I guess UK does already have a firewall with it's nanny-state porn filters though. I can see it now, "All of UK blocked FB today because of meme gif service purchase" Great headline, wonderful use of regulation /s Meanwhile you have actual problems going on and a crashing economy, but at least we prev…

[deleted]

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#24

Post by somehnacct3757 »

tehwebguy wrote: post #18

This is the funniest thing ever to me. Everyone who thinks about this for more than a moment realizes Giphy has never had any value at all. They might as well be licensing different types of burps.

If you think about it for more than 2 moments you will see that owning Giphy allows Facebook to see which chat apps you're using (via the api key for the app's Giphy integration) and who you're talking to on them (by attaching an id to each gif similar to how tracking pixels work in email.) Most chat clients automatically load images, triggering the tracker.

This gives Facebook unprecedented visibility into the user counts, usage patterns, and social graph of any chat app with a Giphy integration. These apps compete with Facebook's own chat apps.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#25

Post by robertlagrant »

benwad wrote: post #22
hunterb123 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB should call their bluff and tell them to spin up a version of China's great firewall and try to block people then. I guess UK does already have a firewall with it's nanny-state porn filters though. I can see it now, "All of UK blocked FB today because of meme gif service purchase" Great headline, wonderful use of regulation /s Meanwhile you have actual problems going on and a crashing economy, but at least we prev…

The UK doesn't need to block Facebook, they can just ban advertisers from buying any ad space on there. FB could still provide a service in the UK but it wouldn't make them any money.

> they can just ban advertisers from buying any ad space on there

So for example, Apple US couldn't buy ads on Facebook, because it shows ads to UK users? How do you envisage this working?

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#26

Post by i_have_an_idea »

somehnacct3757 wrote: post #9

It's funny that digital billboard space is the main reason they cite. To me the much bigger threat was that Giphy had integrations into many other chat and messaging apps which Facebook also competes with. Buying Giphy gave them new insight into competitor usage. Facebook could see which chat apps you were using and who you were talking to on them. All they had to do was fingerprint the gifs you sent to your friends

you know they can already buy that data from ad networks, right?

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#27

Post by trinovantes »

tjpnz wrote: post #4

>"We will continue to evaluate opportunities – including through acquisition – to bring innovation and choice to more people in the UK and around the world." How do the people writing this shite sleep at night?

What makes you think it's not written by GPT3?

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#28

Post by tjpnz »

robertlagrant wrote: post #25
benwad wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK doesn't need to block Facebook, they can just ban advertisers from buying any ad space on there. FB could still provide a service in the UK but it wouldn't make them any money.

> they can just ban advertisers from buying any ad space on there So for example, Apple US couldn't buy ads on Facebook, because it shows ads to UK users? How do you envisage this working?

The idea would be to prevent UK residents from purchasing ads or other products and services from Meta. There are various ways of enforcing that.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#30

Post by p0pcult »

petercooper wrote: post #3

Regardless of the merits of the case, it's interesting to see that a UK watchdog is able to exert such power over a US corporation. There's more background here: https://taxjustice.net/2022/01/18/the-uk-is-breaking-up-face... – they seem to be giving Brexit the credit for UK regulators able to make independent decisions from the EU's own competition regulators

This has been going on since way before the internet--Texas used to have de facto veto power over public school textbooks, because the Texas Board of Education (or whatever it was named) was the single largest buyer of textbooks. If you're a big enough buyer, then you start to claim some amount of monopsony power.
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