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Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

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Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#471

Post by brettz »

gundmc wrote: post #256
parineum wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook, Twitter and Google (YouTube) have used that strategy to ignore their obligations to filter their content by getting into some type of "too bug to fail" situation and throwing their hands up when they are asked to do their duty. Those products didn't fill a niche by innovating, they filled a niche by ignoring the obligations that were preventing others from filling the niche.

> Facebook, Twitter and Google (YouTube) have used that strategy to ignore their obligations to filter their content by getting into some type of "too bug to fail" situation and throwing their hands up when they are asked to do their duty I don't think this is quite fair to YouTube. They've spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing ContentID. It's not perfect, but it's without a doubt the most sophisticated sy…

They built it after they got huge and were sued by Viacom and others.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#472

Post by judge2020 »

ehsankia wrote: post #305
degenerate wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google messenger (the default texting app) has a gif search that includes giphy, and Discord and slack also use giphy. What I don't see is what data FB is getting when the gif loads. OK, so they can see I am using giphy in Discord. Now what? edit: apparently wrong/outdated information.

I'm fairly sure this is False. GBoard uses Tenor (the next largest Giphy competitor), which Google also happens to have bought 2 years ago (undisclosed amount of money). I also just tested Messages and can confirm that the results look like Tenor too. For Discord, while they initially used Giphy and has a /giphy command, it now uses Tenor too in the GIF picker.

The only difference with this acquisition and Discord is that Discord might now start proxying Giphy (they previously didn't to save bandwidth).

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#473

Post by raindropm »

ccktlmazeltov wrote: post #461
cecilpl wrote: post #58

Every time Facebook is buying something I feel sad and imagine Facebook like the black plague that will swallow that normal organism.

Why? They have a tendency to better products they acquire, look at whatsapp, instagram, oculus.

True, but they are, well...Facebook. Their stigma is just too strong to be forget/forgive overnight.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#474

Post by djjsjdjsjsjs »

tcbasche wrote: post #457
djjsjdjsjsjs wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grok is a bullshit fucking word that people who have been in the tech space too long use to sound cool and obfuscate an otherwise easy concept. "Do you understand it really well?" is infinitely fucking better than "can you grok that?". The first sentence doesn't have all of the disgusting pretentiousness of a tech interview whiteboarding flame session associated with it, where one person has done the problem 100 time…

who hurt you

Clearly a lot of technical companies that could otherwise benefit from my skills if it weren't for their cadre of gatekeepers ;)

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#475

Post by propogandist »

impalallama wrote: post #353
nullbyte wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS keyboards given “full access” in settings can see literally everything you type. That’s why I don’t use GBoard on my iPhone, also why I don’t enable “enhanced spellcheck” in Chrome.

Hmm, I guess I know why SwiftKey became free. Probably want to check on their privacy policy now

swiftykey (now owned by MSFT) is terrible as it is constantly trying to call back to microsoft services, even with all "personalization" disabled. I've got my phone locked down with multiple "blocks" I can see it constantly trying to phone home.

It's behavior is no different from Windows 10 telemetry. The keyboard does not even work if you disable one of the underlying telemetry services in the app (if you have a rooted device).

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#477

Post by _2d30 »

nimish wrote: post #445
thebradbain wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would any of their options be underwater? Going off of those estimates above, the pot split between shareholders after liquidation preference is 250million. Anyone who has shares is able to cash them out I imagine (how much profit dependent on how many shares someone is granted, which varies obviously but is still a positive net) — unless you’re implying the strike price is less than the share value?

Their last round valued the company at $600MM, so anyone with options at that strike isn't going to make any money.

Only if 409A valuation was at referred price which it almost certainly wasn’t

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#478

Post by raindropm »

kgin wrote: post #314
jondubois wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a great match. They're both hype-mongering companies which add no value whatsoever to society.

Am I out of touch? No, it's the 1.6B daily active users who are wrong.

Hmmm, 1.6B do what exactly? Scrolling mindlessly through algorithm-curated feed that ensure users always got the right amount to dopamine to keep them scrolling for hours? Look around you, people that glue to their screen all the time without realized they are being engineered to do what Facebook want them to do, is that really actually good for society?

Don't get me wrong, I use Facebook once in a while to keep in touch with my friends, and in rare occurrence I even feel "Damn, I'm thankful that Facebook exist" I can see the good in them, but the problem they cause to society cannot be denied. The witch hunt, the cyberbully, the echo chambers, the life's hilight showreel effect, the "do whatever in order to get the Like", etc. (Ugh, I need two A4 to list them all!) These problems may existed since the dawn of internet, but it is amplified by social media, and many of them pioneered by Facebook.

Re: Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M

#479

Post by toomuchtodo »

nokya wrote: post #458
adjkant wrote: post #424

So Facebook basically just bought inside usage info on a ton of direct competition, even if they stop their integration in the future. Messaging: Signal, GroupMe, Telegram, Viber Social Media: Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, Pinterest, Tiktok Dating: Bumble, Tinder Video: Skype Does anyone else kind of feel weirded out that this isn't illegal? Not surprising legally or for a move for Facebook, but this just feels incredib…

I do feel weirded out. Reminds me of WhatsApp's acquisition by Facebook back in 2014: I cancelled my account the minute I learned about this. The only hope is that Telegram acts as a proxy between user searches and Giphy's servers and somehow preserves the privacy of its users.

Signal does this already. Even uses exuberant range requests to simulate padding. Not sure if Signal open sourced this proxy.
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