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Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

theguardian.com

61–70 of 183 posts

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#61

What’s funny is they’ll end up selling it to some IAC-type conglomerate with a huge data brokering business, and far poorer security and privacy practices, but which will escape the eye of lazy regulators who will keep looking to target splashy American brand names to score political points.

> far poorer security and privacy practices Poorer than Meta? Is that even possible?

This is exactly the problem.

Plenty of folks who’ve worked at small startups that haven’t faced regulatory scrutiny can tell you about how poor the common data handling practices are relative to the major leagues.

e.g. unilateral write access (no multiparty approvals), no TTLs or deletion guarantees, overly broad access, stale / unmaintained ACLs, copies of production data all over the place, supply chain vulnerabilities, lack of mTLS / endpoint security, etc. etc.

The upside (for end users) of big brand names being big targets is they have a lot more to lose than your average startup that no one will remember when it folds and sells its data.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#62
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> far poorer security and privacy practices Poorer than Meta? Is that even possible?

> poorer security. likely so, Meta does have thousands of competent engineers, ensuring their data remains exactly where they want it to be

> Meta does have thousands of competent engineers, ensuring their data remains exactly where they want it to be

do they, aye? https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/security/meta-probe-533-...

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#63
post #36

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.

Giphy's primary functionality is pissing off people trying to use Google Image Search to find an actual .gif file only to find nothing but silent videos pretending to be gifs.

> nothing but silent videos pretending to be gifs.

Actually a good use of tech, does google image search allow searching silent videos ?

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#64

> The regulator said Meta would be able to increase its “already significant market power” by cutting off the supply of gifs to rivals, or demand more user data from them in order to keep using Giphy. I’m imagining a future in which Meta cuts off the winter supply of GIFs to the European Union, setting the populace into a restive period of incoherent communication. Perhaps the EU, UK, and US should establish strategi…

The phrase "cutting off the supply of gifs to rivals" may be one of the dumbest things I've ever read in my life. I honestly can't believe someone wrote that in a legal opinion.

To me this smacks of our leaders, broadly, in the West being too old and too far removed from how people operate and live in the world today. This is like Lindsey Graham, who was once on the senate technology committee, admitting that he had never sent an email in 2015. Truly mind boggling.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#66

> The regulator said Meta would be able to increase its “already significant market power” by cutting off the supply of gifs to rivals, or demand more user data from them in order to keep using Giphy. I’m imagining a future in which Meta cuts off the winter supply of GIFs to the European Union, setting the populace into a restive period of incoherent communication. Perhaps the EU, UK, and US should establish strategi…

When the NAFO have defeated the orcs in the current conflict, they will need a new enemy.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#67

At first I thought Giphy might have been a UK company, but no. It's an American company founded in New York. Ignoring the merits of the judgement—ridiculous as they are—does no one sense terrible outreach in issuing a ruling on a merger about two companies which are in no way related to the country issuing it? This has terrible repercussions for the American tech economy. Every big tech company would think twice befo…

You do realize that the US applies that the same sort of regulatory business processes for overseas companies that wish to operate in the US.

In fact, the US "reach" into overseas trading including banking and other business processes is much more intrusive than any EU or non-US business regulation of US companies.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#68
post #64

> The regulator said Meta would be able to increase its “already significant market power” by cutting off the supply of gifs to rivals, or demand more user data from them in order to keep using Giphy. I’m imagining a future in which Meta cuts off the winter supply of GIFs to the European Union, setting the populace into a restive period of incoherent communication. Perhaps the EU, UK, and US should establish strategi…

The phrase "cutting off the supply of gifs to rivals" may be one of the dumbest things I've ever read in my life. I honestly can't believe someone wrote that in a legal opinion. To me this smacks of our leaders, broadly, in the West being too old and too far removed from how people operate and live in the world today. This is like Lindsey Graham, who was once on the senate technology committee, admitting that he had…

This kind of barely surface level understanding by clueless bureaucrats (remember "a series of tubes"?) is generally what you sign up for when you ask for regulation in technology. It is the reason I am usually skeptical of such calls for legislation, because the end result could be worse than what we started with.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#69
post #53

> The regulator said Meta would be able to increase its “already significant market power” by cutting off the supply of gifs to rivals, or demand more user data from them in order to keep using Giphy. I’m imagining a future in which Meta cuts off the winter supply of GIFs to the European Union, setting the populace into a restive period of incoherent communication. Perhaps the EU, UK, and US should establish strategi…

This is all the EUs fault. They were warned multiple times that they need to get home grown GIF supplies, instead of importing all their GIFs from the US or Russia. And now that the pipeline for dashcam videos is gone, what do they have? Nothing but a few PNGs that they sadly try to animate in a poor imitation of a GIF. (sarcasm gif goes here)

> that they need to get home grown GIF supplies, instead of importing all their GIFs from the US

As an Amish idk how to feel about this.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#70

At first I thought Giphy might have been a UK company, but no. It's an American company founded in New York. Ignoring the merits of the judgement—ridiculous as they are—does no one sense terrible outreach in issuing a ruling on a merger about two companies which are in no way related to the country issuing it? This has terrible repercussions for the American tech economy. Every big tech company would think twice befo…

> Every big tech company would think twice before acquiring another company .

Great! As an American, I'm thrilled there are governments in the world that still place people & competition at a higher priority than Mark's wallet. My government has completely given up on the idea of anti-trust enforcement.

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