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Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

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Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#151

Post by beagle3 »

scarface74 wrote: post #120
beagle3 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snapchat refused to sell, and Facebook pushed 3 different Snapchat competitors at the same time as a result, none of which were a success on their own - but which did make a significant dent in Snapchats growth. This is a “I’ll push you out of the market by taking a loss” behavior, similar to MS inclusion of IE in Windows. Whether or not NS or SC was/is a good product is irrelevant. This is the behavior that antitrus…

Snapchat refused to sell, and Facebook pushed 3 different Snapchat competitors at the same time as a result, none of which were a success on their own - but which did make a significant dent in Snapchats growth. So FB pushed an offering that consumers didn’t want and it wasn’t successful - all of this without government intervention.

It didn't have to be successful to harm Snapchat (which it arguably did), and that's exactly the problem: Facebook put out, at roughly the same time, 3 products competing with Snapchat and among themselves.

You can surely weasel out some explanation for this product strategy that does not include "suffocating Snapchat", but neither Facebook nor any other company that I'm aware of has done anything similar[0]. And the only reasonable reason Facebook will do that, and can afford to, is its monopoly -- the use of which to further itself is likely an antitrust violation.

[0] Apple regularly does multiple competing products - but they are all internal. Only the "winner" is put on the market.

Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#152

Post by Spivak »

eloisant wrote: post #132
scarface74 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that could describe, alcohol, weed, sweets, gambling....

Yes, that why those things are either illegal or heavily regulated.

And games (video and irl), food, movies, books, podcasts, amusement parks.

You're essentially arguing for the regulation of anything that gives humans a dopamine hit. If social media is bad for changing their product so that people use it more then so is Doritos for doing the same so people eat more.

Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#153

Post by rmrfstar »

scarface74 wrote: post #147
blocked_again wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's heavily regulated by parents.

So now we need the government to treat us all like children who are incapable of making our own rational decisions?

scarface74, I have a labor-saving recommendation for you.

Train a GPT-2 on Milton Friedman speeches and Heritage Foundation papers. Let that handle your comments. It will save you some time, and perhaps exhibit a little more civility.

Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#154

Post by scarface74 »

beagle3 wrote: post #151
scarface74 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snapchat refused to sell, and Facebook pushed 3 different Snapchat competitors at the same time as a result, none of which were a success on their own - but which did make a significant dent in Snapchats growth. So FB pushed an offering that consumers didn’t want and it wasn’t successful - all of this without government intervention.

It didn't have to be successful to harm Snapchat (which it arguably did), and that's exactly the problem: Facebook put out, at roughly the same time, 3 products competing with Snapchat and among themselves. You can surely weasel out some explanation for this product strategy that does not include "suffocating Snapchat", but neither Facebook nor any other company that I'm aware of has done anything similar[0]. And the…

Facebook put out, at roughly the same time, 3 products competing with Snapchat and among themselves.

See Google chat/messages apps.

For that matter Microsoft runs Teams, Skype, and GroupMe.

Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#155

Post by scarface74 »

blocked_again wrote: post #150
scarface74 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now we need the government to treat us all like children who are incapable of making our own rational decisions?

Yes. A government taking care of the citizens like parents do would be the best case scenario.

please tell me you are being sarcastic.

Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#157

Post by cptnapalm »

fr2null wrote: post #107
justaguyhere wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe future generations will realize how shitty FB is and stop using it (one can hope!) A bigger problem is FB owns much better products like WhatsApp - it is easy to quit FB than WhatsApp in my opinion

As part of the "future generation" (Maybe? I'm 18 years old), almost none of my peers use Facebook anymore. At least not actively. We do however still use WhatsApp and Instagram. While Instagram and WhatsApp are still used the most, by far, there are some other social media apps that are also heavily used. Most notably Snapchat and TikTok.

I recently signed in for the first time in a long while in order to chat with a friend of mine in the Navy. While my "friend's" list is about 700 people, it looked like no more than a couple of dozen of them actually post anything regularly. That's a big change from 3 or so years ago.

Obligatory anecdotes are not data disclaimer.

Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#158

Post by beagle3 »

noble_pleb wrote: post #144
beagle3 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB's users are not it's customers. It is free for users, in the same way that food is free for cows in a diary. Indeed, the cows did not choose to live that life, but increasingly [not] having a facebook account is not an option. FB's customers are the advertisers. And they pay very good money, or FB wouldn't have had the money pay for WhatsApp, Instagram and its tens of thousands of employees.

>> but increasingly [not] having a facebook account is not an option. but so is the case for google maps, gmail, linkedin, twitter, uber and a zillion other services. Facebook is just like any other web service at the end of the day. >> FB's customers are the advertisers. Even if that's true for arguments sake, I don't see how FB becomes a "monopoly" in that case. There are potentially large # of advertisers buying a…

> but so is the case for google maps, gmail, linkedin, twitter, uber and a zillion other services. Facebook is just like any other web service at the end of the day.

Google Maps, Twitter and a zillion other services give me service without requiring an account, so it definitely is an option (I don't have a twitter account; I do have an old gmail account but I use Saerch, Maps and Youtube logged out and have for ~20 years).

I can hail taxis -- in fact, I'm now staying in a country where Uber is a regulated taxi, and there's no advantage (cost or otherwise) to using an Uber.

Linkedin is trying to force an account on me, but they haven't reached saturation anywhere that it impairs me that I don't have one.

Facebook events, however, and WhatsApp/Messenger, have become in my experience (and most people's by all account) the sole distribution point of a lot of timely and important information e.g. about kids school activities. So it's not just "another website".

> There are potentially large # of advertisers buying advertising space from potentially large # of website owners. How does FB have a monopoly on advertiser spending?

FB and Google have a duopoly due to user reach. It's really as simple as that. It's not illegal to have a monopoly, mind you, and some monopolies are "natural" (e.g., Google's search has classic[0] network effect, yet everyone I know who switched off it came back due to quality issues). But once you do have a monopoly, some generally acceptable actions become illegal.

[0] The fact that Google's users give feedback to Google about the result quality (by virtue of notifying Google which link was actually selected) is a weak network effect - but it only makes the network value linear in the number of users, whereas FB has more of a metcalfe square-of-number-of-users value.

Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#159

Post by beagle3 »

scarface74 wrote: post #135
beagle3 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If M&A became harder, more companies would go public; or stay private and distribute profits as dividends. But the problem is not M&A on its own; the problem is that through M&A, big players are able to stifle competition. I'm sure it's possible to define a reasonable law (about company size, market size and kind) that would make it much harder for today's Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon from acquiring potenti…

Apple buys a company at least every couple of weeks. Most companies that Apple buys would never be successful products as an IPO. They were never products that would have ipo’d

You conveniently ignored the "or would have stayed private" part.

Re: Facebook’s dominance is built on anti-competitive behavior

#160

Post by beagle3 »

scarface74 wrote: post #154
beagle3 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't have to be successful to harm Snapchat (which it arguably did), and that's exactly the problem: Facebook put out, at roughly the same time, 3 products competing with Snapchat and among themselves. You can surely weasel out some explanation for this product strategy that does not include "suffocating Snapchat", but neither Facebook nor any other company that I'm aware of has done anything similar[0]. And the…

Facebook put out, at roughly the same time, 3 products competing with Snapchat and among themselves. See Google chat/messages apps. For that matter Microsoft runs Teams, Skype, and GroupMe.

Google is also a monopolist, and so is Microsoft, and both of them are abusing their monopoly position in one market to try to get into others. Made my point for me.

But Facebook did 3 within 6 months after Snapchat refused a buyout offer. That's very different from Google (trying multiple over years to see what/if sticks) and Microsoft (trying multiple over years for different market segments and/or NSA requested purchase).

Yes, all 3 are monopolists, MS almost got broken down for abusing theirs. What are you trying to say?

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