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Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case

#31

Post by JKCalhoun »

dimal wrote: post #18
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #7

“Competition is for losers” - A talk from Peter Thiel hosted by Y combinator ( https://youtu.be/3Fx5Q8xGU8k?si=3anUMopHSJ4nKk2R ) Timestamp 13:50: “If you’re a startup, and you want to get to a monopoly, start with a really small market and you take over that whole market and then you find ways to expand that market in concentric circles” Last I checked Zuckerberg is doing precisely what Thiel taught him to and has d…

It goes deeper than that. All publicly traded corporations are morally obligated by the Friedman Doctrine [0] to do stuff like this. If something returns value for shareholders (and monopolies do) then a CEO must do it. This is how the whole system is supposed to work. Of course, there's no reason that capitalism must to work this way, but this is the toxic form of capitalism that we've unwittingly chosen. Thiel just…

> All publicly traded corporations are morally obligated by the Friedman Doctrine to do stuff like this.

That's a strange way to put it. As though it is the Right and Good way to run a company — and also as though the Board's/CEO's hands are somehow tied.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case

#32

Post by balls187 »

diyftw wrote: post #19
rvz wrote: post #12

The anti-trust regulators have targeted almost all but one of the FAAMG companies and that is Microsoft, who certainly knows how to avoid a break-up of their entire company. The rest have not dealt with totally removing their cases entirely, so it makes sense for the FTC and the DOJ to target everyone else first before lastly bringing up a massive case against Microsoft. Perhaps that is their strategy in all of this.

There's a reason there's no M in FAANG. Unlike those "upstarts", Microsoft is more like the Lockheed Martin or GE of tech. There is so much Microsoft software in use in the gov't (especially the DoD) that it would be precarious to prosecute/regulate them.

> Microsoft is more like the Lockheed Martin or GE of tech

This analogy is apt in so many ways (in addition to the prevalence of MS software in the .gov setting)

Re: Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case

#33

Post by [deleted] »

dimal wrote: post #18
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #7

“Competition is for losers” - A talk from Peter Thiel hosted by Y combinator ( https://youtu.be/3Fx5Q8xGU8k?si=3anUMopHSJ4nKk2R ) Timestamp 13:50: “If you’re a startup, and you want to get to a monopoly, start with a really small market and you take over that whole market and then you find ways to expand that market in concentric circles” Last I checked Zuckerberg is doing precisely what Thiel taught him to and has d…

It goes deeper than that. All publicly traded corporations are morally obligated by the Friedman Doctrine [0] to do stuff like this. If something returns value for shareholders (and monopolies do) then a CEO must do it. This is how the whole system is supposed to work. Of course, there's no reason that capitalism must to work this way, but this is the toxic form of capitalism that we've unwittingly chosen. Thiel just…

[deleted]

Re: Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case

#34

Post by Xelbair »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #7

“Competition is for losers” - A talk from Peter Thiel hosted by Y combinator ( https://youtu.be/3Fx5Q8xGU8k?si=3anUMopHSJ4nKk2R ) Timestamp 13:50: “If you’re a startup, and you want to get to a monopoly, start with a really small market and you take over that whole market and then you find ways to expand that market in concentric circles” Last I checked Zuckerberg is doing precisely what Thiel taught him to and has d…

Sure, but in non-digital markets we had a term for most common growth hacking tactics for attaining that niche monopoly.

Dumping. Operating on loss for years, just burning money to capture a market and then jack up prices and make competition unfeasible.

Which is illegal in most cases when it comes to physical goods. of course it depends on the region you're in - it is extremely illegal with sky high fines in my country for example.

Having the attitude to reach that goal is fine, but the goal itself(monopoly over segment of a market) should be impossible to reach. Whenever it happens markets get distorted to the detriment of all customers.

The whole point of capitalism is to put stress onto system for self-improvement - you need to produce better good, make it more efficient and cheaper, and find perfect balance between price and performance - to run economy as efficiently as possible while basically 'crowdsourcing' resource allocation computation over every market participant.

As soon as that stress is gone, you're back to Guilds system where nothing is dictated by market forces, just at whim of current entity in power.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case

#35

Post by EchoVivaldi45 »

This article is trying way too hard to dunk on Zuckerberg for… doing normal CEO things.

The whole premise seems to be that writing down your thoughts, asking questions, or being transparent in internal emails is somehow a huge self-own. But that’s just how people work—especially when you’re running a massive company and making fast, complex decisions. You write things down, explore ideas, get feedback. Acting like that’s a confession is lazy analysis.

The real problem here is that the author treats normal business strategy—like acquiring a rising competitor—as some kind of criminal mastermind move. Whether or not that should be legal is one debate. But pretending it’s shocking that a company would consider eliminating competitive risk? Come on. That’s what businesses do. If you want to critique the system, critique the system—not the fact that someone used it.

Also, the smug “ha ha, he wrote it down!” attitude is incredibly counterproductive. All it does is teach executives to stop documenting anything real. It punishes transparency and rewards corporate vagueness and CYA behavior. If that’s what we want more of, congrats—we’re on track.

The piece doesn’t offer any actual insight into how companies operate or how antitrust should evolve—it just ridicules someone for not being lawyerly enough in private. That’s not analysis, it’s court fan fiction.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case

#38

Post by realo »

jampekka wrote: post #30
dimal wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes deeper than that. All publicly traded corporations are morally obligated by the Friedman Doctrine [0] to do stuff like this. If something returns value for shareholders (and monopolies do) then a CEO must do it. This is how the whole system is supposed to work. Of course, there's no reason that capitalism must to work this way, but this is the toxic form of capitalism that we've unwittingly chosen. Thiel just…

> Of course, there's no reason that capitalism must to work this way There kinda is. Capital is allocated to where it makes most profits, and most profits go to companies maximizing shareholder value. In aggregate this makes the profit maximizing companies more likely to survive. Sure this can be perhaps mitigated by e.g. legislating other duties to companies, but I'd say it's very hard even in theory, let alone in p…

So... Capitalism is bad for the people , communism is bad for the people.

What _is_ good for the people? Canada?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case

#40

Post by n4r9 »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #8
n4r9 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably it's unacceptable either way, but only one of those ways can be evidenced in court.

From the way this article reads Zuck is being derided specifically for getting caught.

That's certainly true. But this is Cory Doctorow who invented the concept of enshittification. I'd be super surprised if he thought anti-competetive behaviour is fine as long as you get away with it. My take is that he's saying "Not only is Zuckerberg a greedy asshole, but he's even stupid enough to make it provable in court."
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