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Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp Outage

developers.facebook.com

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Re: Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp Outage

#191

Post by csharptwdec19 »

vageli wrote: post #181
dcolkitt wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Saying everything is so integrated that it can't possibly be decentralized is basically proof of monopoly. This doesn't matter from the standard of antitrust law. What most fail to grasp is that being a monopoly is not illegal . It's only illegal to use monopoly power to harm consumer welfare. In this case integration between services is a pretty strong defense against this. Facebook can argue that consolidating th…

> > Saying everything is so integrated that it can't possibly be decentralized is basically proof of monopoly. > This doesn't matter from the standard of antitrust law. What most fail to grasp is that being a monopoly is not illegal. It's only illegal to use monopoly power to harm consumer welfare. Citation needed? I thought, in the US at least, that the government will go after you if you use your monopoly powers to…

It depends on how the Justice department feels, to some extent. GM in the 50s and 60s actually kept an eye on their market share, and sometimes would kill/cutback projects or products that may have threatened going over a certain percentage (around 60%, IIRC.) At that time merely going over that number would have been enough to start an investigation.

Some would argue though that back then DOJ 'cared' more.

Re: Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp Outage

#192

Post by jokoon »

mkl95 wrote: post #65

Whatsapp is extremely dominant in my country, but I keep encouraging friends and acquaintances to install Telegram. As far as I know, there won't be anything preventing FB from geoblocking European users when the company eventually gets in some serious trouble, like it just did in the US.

isn't signal better?

Re: Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp Outage

#193

Post by enos_feedler »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #124
mmmmmbop wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also be a hilarious argument to make after previously convincing the European Commission in 2014 that there is no technical way to integrate Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp user accounts. [0] [0] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/pl/IP_17_...

> convincing the European Commission in 2014 that there is no technical way to integrate Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp user accounts. What was the argument there? It's not like that's solving the halting problem.

I think “technical” here just means something like: one uses phone numbers and the other uses emails. The current technical solution doesn’t make it straightforward to merge. Evolving the technical solution would require product and user facing changes. And probably a lot of edge cases

Re: Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp Outage

#194

Post by speeder »

parliament32 wrote: post #178
l1ghthouse wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know Telegram is less secure and Secret Chats are an opt-in. Security-wise Signal would be better... but: Signal experience isn't that good. Alien from the platform they run on. For example, no system recommendations to send this person a message or share something with them through signal.. Telegram is more a platform native and integrated into the system. Also there is the issue of messages arriving late (not min…

I can share to Signal or contacts-via-Signal, and have been for years... I think this is a you problem. Signal is honestly fantastic as a SMS-replacement app. It sends Signal messages to contacts with Signal and normal SMS to contacts without (Telegram might do the same thing, being able to set it as your default SMS app, I'm not sure).

In Brazil this is a GREAT reason to NOT use it.

In fact phone operators for a while tried to ban whatsapp here, SMS prices in Brazil are just nuts (it is normal for an SMS cost fifty cents or so, sometimes even more, a full SMS conversation can cost you several days worth of food).

Everyone here just uses whatsapp, because of how ridiculous SMS prices are.

Re: Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp Outage

#195

Post by human »

Spivak wrote: post #167
abernard1 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether or not they are a monopoly is orthogonal to the issue of integration. So, I get you here and what you're saying. But companies at this scale argue they're "independently managed" or whatever. With that context, for Facebook , there's really no way of saying that these 3 different brands are independent when it comes down to it. It'd be much like Procter & Gamble saying their 100s of brands were all really d…

At the far end of this reasoning three separate companies that all use AWS share the same underlying infrastructure and all go down when AWS does. It doesn't mean they're not independently managed.

And the same could be said for the electrical grid, the post services, roads, etc. I agree that infrastructure and monopoly are two very distict concepts.

Re: Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp Outage

#196

Post by hnlmorg »

cecilpl wrote: post #156

The subject of the antitrust suits filed against Facebook came up in a Facebook comment thread for me yesterday. Some guy piped up and stated, essentially, that "Zuckerberg is too rich and too big and nothing will happen.". He evidently had never heard of Standard Oil or Ma Bell.

Standard Oil was broken up over 100 years ago and Bell System took 70 years of antitrust complaints (the last case ran through courts for over a decade!) and even then Bell eventually caved and broke themselves up.

Never say never and all that...but it's not like past precedence has shown us the courts are trigger happy when it comes to breaking up monopolies.

Re: Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp Outage

#197

Post by human »

dcolkitt wrote: post #152
abernard1 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I laughed at this because I thought the same thing. Conspiratorial or no, that line of argument won't fly. Saying everything is so integrated that it can't possibly be decentralized is basically proof of monopoly.

> Saying everything is so integrated that it can't possibly be decentralized is basically proof of monopoly. This doesn't matter from the standard of antitrust law. What most fail to grasp is that being a monopoly is not illegal . It's only illegal to use monopoly power to harm consumer welfare. In this case integration between services is a pretty strong defense against this. Facebook can argue that consolidating th…

The biggest challenge for the antitrust lawyers in this case will be to outline consumer harm. In more traditional cases harm is measured in dollars. Here it will have to be measured in privacy, free speech, etc. And that’s a much harder case to make. I even wonder if it’s possible to argue that services for which you don’t pay (Fb, Insta, and Whatsapp) and that are not essential can be considered monopolistic.

Re: Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp Outage

#198

Post by at-fates-hands »

abernard1 wrote: post #55
rattray wrote: post #48

"But senators, we can't break up these three unrelated services because they all use the same messaging infrastructure!"

I laughed at this because I thought the same thing. Conspiratorial or no, that line of argument won't fly. Saying everything is so integrated that it can't possibly be decentralized is basically proof of monopoly.

Agreed.

FYI that's exactly what they did when they broke up Ma Bell into the 7 RBOC's. Same company, same massive infrastructure. They owned everything and the government was still able to break them up.

Re: Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp Outage

#200

Post by blueflame7 »

aaaxyz wrote: post #186
anonymou2 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow... Haven't you heard about the Big Bang?

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

This thread is the most thorough root cause analysis I've ever seen, well done!
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