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FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

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Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#181

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…

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

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The monetisation of your data in exchange for adverts can be seen as the cost of the platforms. It will be interesting to see the government prove this for Facebook while ignoring the 800lb gorillas of Google/Doubleclick or Amazon’s ad network.

It's why this is a politicized move by the FTC. No reason to get into politics on this site, but it's pretty obvious.

Even politically it’s just ... weird. Most of the top content on Facebook each month is sympathetic to the current administration. Facebook has arguably played the most ball with them in comparison to other tech companies.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#183
Is it enough to have competing social networks to Facebook? What's the point of competition, isn't it that if one product is bad, someone can make a better one so that people can use that one instead? If I think Facebook is bad, can I use another product to communicate with people on Facebook? The problem is that the network is the product. If we want real competition we need to make sure that competing products can exist within the network. Look at how email works. That's the only way we can have real competition.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#184

When Facebook first went public, an older relative asked me if he should invest in Facebook. My only insight was being an internet user at the time and I said no, there was no reason that Facebook wouldn’t be another MySpace. Facebook's only value was their users and users were historically very finicky and moved around platforms at will. I argued that Facebook would make no money and wouldn’t be around in a couple o…

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.

Funnily enough, the co-founder of Onavo (Guy Rosen) is now Facebook's "VP of Integrity," which probably speaks to FB's (lack of) commitment to integrity.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Acquisitions were no brainer for Facebook. And hindsight is 20/20.

At least in the case of instagram you didnt need hindsight to know it was a good deal. Lots of people thought they price they paid was incredible value on the day it was announced. Plenty of ink has been spilled that year about facebook potentially being in trouble with mobile and instagram seemed at the time to be an obvious solution to the problem.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#186
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, after skimming through the PDF of the complaint ( https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/1910134fbco... ), it appears the FTC is not seeking that remedy. It appears VR is still too small of a market for them to care about.

Seems a bit short-sighted because if Oculus becomes the dominant VR platform that Facebook envisions it to be then it's going to dwarf instagram in terms of economic importance (for advertisers and users) over the long term.

That's a big if, one that hinges on way too many things to be able to successfully argue in court about:

1) VR ever becoming a huge player. It might. It might not. Right now there's no real evidence that VR will actually become a big deal, and Facebook could argue that this is a niche offering that can't be anti-competitive because there's no real market yet.

2) The feasibility of VR technology independent of major vendors. There's a strong possibility that without a huge R&D budget VR will never overcome the hurdles that might keep it out of the mainstream. Facebook could argue that removing Oculus would doom VR to failure in the market.

3) The Sirus/XM merger removed 100% of satellite radio competition (there's only one vendor left after the merger), but both Sirius and XM successfully argued that the market isn't big enough to support multiple vendors. Facebook could argue a similar case, that for the health of the VR market there should be fewer competitors.

I'm not a lawyer so I don't know if any of those would be winning arguments, but based on previous anti-trust cases I've followed that would be the strategy I would expect. And it might be why the FTC didn't go down that path.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is here. It has been a swift decline notable in the last year or so. Sadly. Even fairly uncontroversial assertions of fact are downvoted frequently

What a pretentious (and wildly indemonstrable) take.

What a pretentious (and wildly indemonstrable) comment

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#189
post #151

Facebook has been preparing for this for years: - cross-app communication between Messenger and Instagram - Messenger API enabling business communication on Instagram - ad management for Instagram and Facebook through a centralized platform - WhatsApp business accounts linking to Facebook accounts - Facebook shopping in-app in WhatsApp These are all small and there are many more examples, but an overarching theme is…

They’d a lot of glue, but not much is inseparable. Messenger tying to Instagram, for example, was entirely tactical. A dozen people might miss that feature.

Re: FTC Sues Facebook for Illegal Monopolization

#190

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…

I agree and find the attempt at a breakup a bit frustrating. This is an action that could have profoundly disruptive effect and it's not really clear what the positives or negatives would be. For instance, FB has invested massively in trust and safety people operations and AI. What happens to that investment when IG is spun off? Laying out laws and regulations so the market works as intended (no doubt with adjustment…

> Laying out laws and regulations so the market works as intended (no doubt with adjustments on the way) seems like the far preferable way to ensure healthy competition...

That's what antitrust/monopoly laws do.

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