Mark my words:
Just as the robber barons a century ago has lead to antitrust law, today's "data" robber baron tech giants will lead us to data competitive law 15 years from now.
Facebook charged with misleading EU on $22B WhatsApp merger
41–50 of 76 posts
Re: Facebook charged with misleading EU on $22B WhatsApp merger
#42> it being fined up to one percent of its annual turnover Now they're fines we should be proud of. Not like the pathetic smack-on-the-wrist fines they've dished out to banks and Google that they can earn back in milliseconds.
J.P. Morgan was fined $13 billion, which is hardly a slap on the wrist. The biggest fines in corporate history have been in the US; take the big tobacco civil cases, for instance.
Re: Facebook charged with misleading EU on $22B WhatsApp merger
#43Mark my words: Just as the robber barons a century ago has lead to antitrust law, today's "data" robber baron tech giants will lead us to data competitive law 15 years from now.
And just like then, the data robber barons will probably be trillionaires by the time that happens, because by then they will have used the data to create super-intelligent AI, which will then create that wealth for them. At that time it won't matter what laws will be passed. The damage will have already been done and their personal trillion dollar wealth will have already been created.
Re: Facebook charged with misleading EU on $22B WhatsApp merger
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook uids based on email address, WhatsApp on phone number. Please show me the SQL one-liner to join those tables...
Select * from fb_users join wp_users on wp_users.id = fb_users.phone_number A really basic query that will give you all the fb users who have listed their phone number. Also i just realized while typing this, i think fb started allowing logging in using your phone number around the time they bought whatsapp. So even the profiles that didn't give their phone number to fb, they could get it via this logging system. ( I…
FB does not require phone numbers so you are just decorating with data that most users do not provide to FB. Not the same thing.
Not saying FB could not join the tables given how much data they have, but it is not nearly as simple as this.
Re: Facebook charged with misleading EU on $22B WhatsApp merger
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Select * from fb_users join wp_users on wp_users.id = fb_users.phone_number A really basic query that will give you all the fb users who have listed their phone number. Also i just realized while typing this, i think fb started allowing logging in using your phone number around the time they bought whatsapp. So even the profiles that didn't give their phone number to fb, they could get it via this logging system. ( I…
FB does not require phone numbers so you are just decorating with data that most users do not provide to FB. Not the same thing. Not saying FB could not join the tables given how much data they have, but it is not nearly as simple as this.
And that's why i said users who have listed their phone number.
They can get phone number from users who use their phone number to log in but not have listed it in their profile (me), people who have enabled 2FA or from messenger. It's just a simple sql join. Ofcourse not at FB scale but this is me thinking about this problem for 10 seconds and also i'm in probably not even as intelligent as the dumbest guy working at fb.
Re: Facebook charged with misleading EU on $22B WhatsApp merger
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funnily, I'd be okay with that. I guess I'm just an old fogey though.
Or just educated in history. Really, what is the longest period of time a country has existed without a repressive regime coming to power and abusing the institutions and populace?
I don't know exactly how long, but I'd venture to say it's one of the small extremely homogeneous European countries like Switzerland or Denmark.
It's an interesting question to ponder about in your free time.
Re: Facebook charged with misleading EU on $22B WhatsApp merger
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you read the case decision, specifically paragraphs 137 - 140 it becomes even more ridiculous: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/cases/decisions/m721... This quote sticks out as a bit of an exaggeration regarding the difficulty of this operation: "Notably, integration of WhatsApp's and Facebook's networks would require matching WhatsApp users' profiles with their profiles on Facebook (or vice versa). This wo…
The quote basically says that this task is complicated because it requires an equivalent of a SQL one-liner that any CS undergrad should be able to write. Where would Facebook/WhatsApp find experts that good?
Yeah, this would be really simple, and even without this, I do not believe that fingerprinting the phones and using that as an ID to join identities is that complex these days?
Re: Facebook charged with misleading EU on $22B WhatsApp merger
#48I don't see why this is different than any other acquisition involving combining two userbases. Unless it's about the scale.
Because they lied, they said they would never associate the whatsapp data with the facebook one (and funnily enough HN believed them).
> and funnily enough HN believed them
That reeks of a very cheap excuse to just bash HN given the dramatic generalization you're throwing around.
Re: Facebook charged with misleading EU on $22B WhatsApp merger
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funnily, I'd be okay with that. I guess I'm just an old fogey though.
Or just educated in history. Really, what is the longest period of time a country has existed without a repressive regime coming to power and abusing the institutions and populace?
And without a massive war? The USA has had 151 years of uninterrupted peace.
Just as an example---because the old rivalry was USA vs USSR---Russia has endured two devastating and traumatic world wars, a revolution, a civil war, and Stalin. And they still rivaled US power throughout the cold war.
I think Americans really overstate the effectiveness of their economic and political system, and understate the huge advantage they have geographically.
Re: Facebook charged with misleading EU on $22B WhatsApp merger
#50I wish the US had laws like the EU that protected the consumer.
If the US had the same taxation and regulatory environment as Europe you wouldn't have Facebook in the first place lol
I used to work at Hyves, the biggest social network in the Netherlands at that time. Hyves started around the same time as Facebook. The company sold to a publisher and they ultimately closed it down. There are multiple reasons why Hyves failed taxation and regulatory environment is not one of them.