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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

#111

Post by ch4s3 »

saurik wrote: post #103
ch4s3 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am under the impression that this is kind of true, though, in that you might think of Giphy as a massive pile of user content under dubious or illegitimate licensing, but it actually (ridiculously) is a repository of exclusively-licensed content that is contributed by such groups as motion picture companies (and which is then also what kind of led to the downfall of the concept, as the existence of Giphy and its na…

Gifs in the vein of gify seem like a fad that has already crested, and I'm of the opinion that regulating internet fads is an overreach.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#112

Post by notahacker »

ch4s3 wrote: post #92
LocalH wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I would very much doubt that was the actual wording, that's most likely a paraphrasing by the author of this article. The final report is not released yet, but according to the summary pdf linked from https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/facebook-i…

> On this basis, we consider that Facebook would also have an incentive to foreclose its rivals from access to GIPHY. That seems like a slightly more intelligent wording of the same bad argument to me. There’s no real limit on the supply of gifs on the internet, and they aren’t really in particularly high demand. In fact they’re already falling out of fashion with younger users. You’ll be hard pressed to find many pe…

There's no real limit to the supply of gifs on the internet, and yet Meta spent $600m on a website hosting third party gifs that made almost zero revenue. I don't think they were going to get very far with arguments that nobody cares about gifs...

One the other hand, the owner of Giphy absolutely does get to limit which websites get to continue displaying the gifs that several years' of their user-generated content backlinked to Giphy.com

Not surprising that some bodies think the party making that decision shouldn't be Meta.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#113

Post by ch4s3 »

duckmysick wrote: post #108
ch4s3 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On this basis, we consider that Facebook would also have an incentive to foreclose its rivals from access to GIPHY. That seems like a slightly more intelligent wording of the same bad argument to me. There’s no real limit on the supply of gifs on the internet, and they aren’t really in particularly high demand. In fact they’re already falling out of fashion with younger users. You’ll be hard pressed to find many pe…

> You’ll be hard pressed to find many people under 25 using them at all. What do they use instead?

From what I've seen, text. I've heard a lot of younger folks call gifs "cringe". It seems like a dead trend, even millennials I know have mostly stopped using them.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#114

Post by brippalcharrid »

nickdothutton wrote: post #29

We must not allow a GIF gap to develop.

The best time to develop a Strategic GIF Stockpile would have been 20 years ago; the second best time is now. Horrors would await if our geopolitical adversaries gained the upper hand and had the ability to restrict our access to memetic weaponry during a time of crisis.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#115

Post by jmyeet »

This story is just bizarre.

First and foremost, the time for objecting to an acquisition should be before it closes, not after.

Second, forcing a company to "unbundle" like this is really an antritrust action and the bar for that should be pretty high. Objections to acquisitions can be done on potential issues. De-merging a company should pretty much be based on actual not potential violations (IMHO).

Third, all of this is over Giphy. There are alternatives (eg Tenor). This is not a market any company (other than maybe Apple and Google by virtue of owning the platform) can dominate. There's no network effect like there is with WhatsApp or Instagram. This was not a large company. Giphy was miniscule.

Fourth, creating a GIF keyboard and support in your apps is pretty easy. I imagine this is what Meta is going to do instead. So what's been achieved exactly?

Lastl, government power and attention is limited. Please let's use it for something useful. This doesn't affect anyone. This doesn't help anyone. Let's do things that do.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#116

Post by nextaccountic »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #44
beckingz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the repercussions are more competition and less large companies buying smaller companies and running them into the ground?

No, the repercussion is that a country other than America is deciding whether or not one American company is allowed to buy another American company. Then replace America which the country name of your choosing.

Did you know that American sanctions are applied even to non-American companies doing business with non-American companies?

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#117

Post by sofixa »

hunterb123 wrote: post #96
sofixa wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why care what the UK has to say about US matters? Because US regulators are too lazy/corrupt/starved to do the job they exist to do. Someone has to reign in oligopolies amassing even more power and dominance, and it obviously isn't going to be the US, so whoever wants to step in, be our collective guest. This time it was the UK, next up is the EU Digital Markets and Digital Services Acts. And yes, there are much mo…

> Because US regulators are too lazy/corrupt/starved to do the job they exist to do. Personally the fact that the US regulators aren't wasting time monitoring gif repo purchases is a good thing in my book. > Someone has to reign in oligopolies amassing even more power and dominance Quite a hyperbole for a gif repo purchase. Can FB purchase Tenor then? Who could purchase Giphy, any other social media giant? This is al…

> Personally the fact that the US regulators aren't wasting time monitoring gif repo purchases is a good thing in my book.

Good thing they're spending that time productively... Not blocking any egregious merger/acquisition from the past decade?

> Quite a hyperbole for a gif repo purchase. Can FB purchase Tenor then? Who could purchase Giphy, any other social media giant?

Facebook, or any other social media giant, shouldn't be allowed to expand in distributors to their competitors. Giphy is used by everyone, Facebook tracking Telegram users isn't something anyone needs. Anyone can purchase Giphy as long as it doesn't give them an unfair advantage, so nobody in the chat market.

> This is all virtue signaling because they know certain people will eat it up.

Who are those certain people?

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#118

Post by runlevel1 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #89
bombcar wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Excuse me, I feel compelled to point out that it's FIG in France.

Funny enough, in French its full name is "Le Graphics Interchange Format"[^1]

[1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#119

Post by duckmysick »

ch4s3 wrote: post #113
duckmysick wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’ll be hard pressed to find many people under 25 using them at all. What do they use instead?

From what I've seen, text. I've heard a lot of younger folks call gifs "cringe". It seems like a dead trend, even millennials I know have mostly stopped using them.

It seems like we've come full circle then.

Maybe we can expect text emoticons (the ones with a hyphen for a nose) making a comeback soon.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#120

Post by viridian »

ch4s3 wrote: post #92
LocalH wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I would very much doubt that was the actual wording, that's most likely a paraphrasing by the author of this article. The final report is not released yet, but according to the summary pdf linked from https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/facebook-i…

> On this basis, we consider that Facebook would also have an incentive to foreclose its rivals from access to GIPHY. That seems like a slightly more intelligent wording of the same bad argument to me. There’s no real limit on the supply of gifs on the internet, and they aren’t really in particularly high demand. In fact they’re already falling out of fashion with younger users. You’ll be hard pressed to find many pe…

Can confirm, reacting with gifs is 100% a boomer thing. And when I say boomer I mean anyone born before 1995.
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