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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

#31

Post by arrosenberg »

btmoney06 wrote: post #27
kthxbye123 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s over a hundred and twenty years of antitrust enforcement in this country. Why does HN insist on reinventing antitrust law from their own intuition about what “anti-competitive” means?

There’s over a hundred and twenty year of antitrust law that says that conduct is improper if it leads to higher prices for consumers. Why does Yale insist that antitrust can apply when prices are 0?

That philosophy emerged only 50 years ago in the 70s with the Chicago School of Economics, led Robert Bork and other ideologues.

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

#32

Post by bretpiatt »

btmoney06 wrote: post #27
kthxbye123 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s over a hundred and twenty years of antitrust enforcement in this country. Why does HN insist on reinventing antitrust law from their own intuition about what “anti-competitive” means?

There’s over a hundred and twenty year of antitrust law that says that conduct is improper if it leads to higher prices for consumers. Why does Yale insist that antitrust can apply when prices are 0?

The real price to consumers isn't zero for Google or Facebook.

Both platforms charge other businesses to advertise, because of the limited options businesses have to advertise they can charge high prices.

Those advertising costs get passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices on products.

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

#33

Post by rydre »

btmoney06 wrote: post #27
kthxbye123 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s over a hundred and twenty years of antitrust enforcement in this country. Why does HN insist on reinventing antitrust law from their own intuition about what “anti-competitive” means?

There’s over a hundred and twenty year of antitrust law that says that conduct is improper if it leads to higher prices for consumers. Why does Yale insist that antitrust can apply when prices are 0?

Price in this case is calculated by the amount of Ads you have to see, the effect on mental health because of Facebook's physiological experiments on its users, Facebook not obeying laws of smaller countries where it operates in, Facebook not paying taxes in other countries, owning Instagram - effectively the second largest competitor to Facebook is also owned by Facebook, too late to take anti discriminately actions for ads (if they were smaller and feared a boycott, they would take earlier precautions) etc.

We need to look beyond the "Price = 0" narrative when we're investigating things that in this new era are free.

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

#34

Post by Ozzie_osman »

alexmingoia wrote: post #7

The only practice listed in the paper that could be construed as anti-competitive is acquiring other “social networks.” However, it’s a stretch to consider every website that a user can use a competitor to Facebook. It’s not like Facebook acquired a MySpace or anything. But why are acquisitions anti-competitive? Nothing forces the competitor to sell. Acquisitions prove people can compete. It’s a contradiction to say…

> It’s not like Facebook acquired a MySpace or anything.

I'd say Instagram and WhatsApp are pretty close.

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

#35

Post by boomboomsubban »

alexmingoia wrote: post #7

The only practice listed in the paper that could be construed as anti-competitive is acquiring other “social networks.” However, it’s a stretch to consider every website that a user can use a competitor to Facebook. It’s not like Facebook acquired a MySpace or anything. But why are acquisitions anti-competitive? Nothing forces the competitor to sell. Acquisitions prove people can compete. It’s a contradiction to say…

The paper lists five different things as anticompetitive, why do you disagree with their assessment? Allowing Vine to use your API and then blocking it after Twitter acquired it seems anticompetitive.

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

#36

Post by anymoonus »

rorykoehler wrote: post #30
btmoney06 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is dead on. Moreover, I find it a bit funny that the authors consider WhatsApp to be a social media platform, but not iMessage. Similarly, they consider YouTube to be a social media platform, but not Twitch (or any of the paid services like Netflix). If they were intellectually honest, Facebook's market share would be nowhere near what they claim.

I'm a heavy Apple user and have been for over a decade and still don't understand why iMessage exists? WhatsApp and iMessage aren't comparable.

What fraction of this week's WWDC was spent on iMessage?

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

#37

Post by pwdisswordfish2 »

oska wrote: post #21

I think the very unhealthy dominance of Facebook will only start to properly recede when countries outside the USA start to block its use. This is a highly predatory company that takes away sovereignty in each nation's cyberspace and it really only makes sense for foreign countries to block it and either let their own national corporate replacements emerge (as China has done) or foster the use of open social networks…

Sounds about right as Facebook have admitted they cannot grow anymore in the US. Any growth must come from outside the US.

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

#38

Post by smt88 »

btmoney06 wrote: post #27
kthxbye123 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s over a hundred and twenty years of antitrust enforcement in this country. Why does HN insist on reinventing antitrust law from their own intuition about what “anti-competitive” means?

There’s over a hundred and twenty year of antitrust law that says that conduct is improper if it leads to higher prices for consumers. Why does Yale insist that antitrust can apply when prices are 0?

Facebook's consumers are businesses, and their price is not 0.

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

#39

Post by smt88 »

Cyclone_ wrote: post #10

Diaspora had the idea of decentralized social networks a while ago by having interoperability between social networks. It never really took off, but I think it would be a good way of limiting 1 social network from getting too powerful.

I assume you mean legislation requiring social networks to be interoperable.

This is a good idea and is common in other industries. The problem is that an interoperable social network effectively has an open API with no rate limit. It's tough to solve the technical side of that in a user-protecting way.

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

#40

Post by YarickR2 »

rydre wrote: post #33
btmoney06 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s over a hundred and twenty year of antitrust law that says that conduct is improper if it leads to higher prices for consumers. Why does Yale insist that antitrust can apply when prices are 0?

Price in this case is calculated by the amount of Ads you have to see, the effect on mental health because of Facebook's physiological experiments on its users, Facebook not obeying laws of smaller countries where it operates in, Facebook not paying taxes in other countries, owning Instagram - effectively the second largest competitor to Facebook is also owned by Facebook, too late to take anti discriminately actions…

Instagram is a Facebook competitor ? That's a sick joke; those two social networks have less in common than birds and mammals
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