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FTC Accuses Facebook of Social Media Monopoly, Calls for Divestiture of Instagram and WhatsApp
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Doesn’t Google’s acquisition of Waze fall into the exact same logic? Obviously it’s not about what kind of things a company does, but about whether they cooperate with NSA all of the time.
I wonder how this will affect sites like Parler? I don't plan on using Parler, but gotta wonder.
Do Google next. Lets burn down Twitter as well. We don't want tech oligarchs having so much influence on society.
Since Facebook loves Biden this will probably be dropped as they figure as long as they have this dog on their chain its harmless.
Since Facebook loves Biden this will probably be dropped as they figure as long as they have this dog on their chain its harmless.
Facebook should never have been allowed to buy either Whatsapp nor Instragram and certainly not both.
It they can mange to undo that: good for them.
But should that rebuild trust in Whatsapp and Instragram not spying on its users anymore: I strongly doubt that the corporate culture Facebook gave them will go away at any point in time anymore.
As to a monopoly: there's a few other social networks still out there, so they don't have a monopoly (and if you don't sell stuff to your users, what's a monopoly anyway???). But it's also pointless to try to avoid any social medium dominating all the comparable networks: In the end it are only the networks that survive which "work" for the users. That means it is the one that has (nearly) everybody else they're interested in on that same network that has a chance to survive in the long term.
The only way to prevent that is to force the industry as a whole to create an open standard that all of them use and interoperate on (like the phone network) so you can interact with others on other providers as it it's all just one big network, but you subscribe to only one of them. And you can switch providers if you like etc.
But since the money and incentive to run a social network is in (ab)using their personal data - that's a hard thing to achieve as given the open nature of the data in question would mean all providers still get all the valuable data even if they do not have all that many subscribers to start with.
So no matter what happens it'll never be a good result unless they slam the door shut and bolt it down so that the likes of Facebook cannot use and sell personal data of their users ever again. After that people will have to pay to use it - I doubt there's going to be much left of the social media at that point, but then you could create a competitive market - till then: it's going to remain a privacy hellhole.
The only way to run a clean social network that would be good to use and free to its users would need more public outcry over Facebook, more worry about privacy among the general population, and huge funding that does not come with strings attached ... Good luck on finding that.
It they can mange to undo that: good for them.
But should that rebuild trust in Whatsapp and Instragram not spying on its users anymore: I strongly doubt that the corporate culture Facebook gave them will go away at any point in time anymore.
As to a monopoly: there's a few other social networks still out there, so they don't have a monopoly (and if you don't sell stuff to your users, what's a monopoly anyway???). But it's also pointless to try to avoid any social medium dominating all the comparable networks: In the end it are only the networks that survive which "work" for the users. That means it is the one that has (nearly) everybody else they're interested in on that same network that has a chance to survive in the long term.
The only way to prevent that is to force the industry as a whole to create an open standard that all of them use and interoperate on (like the phone network) so you can interact with others on other providers as it it's all just one big network, but you subscribe to only one of them. And you can switch providers if you like etc.
But since the money and incentive to run a social network is in (ab)using their personal data - that's a hard thing to achieve as given the open nature of the data in question would mean all providers still get all the valuable data even if they do not have all that many subscribers to start with.
So no matter what happens it'll never be a good result unless they slam the door shut and bolt it down so that the likes of Facebook cannot use and sell personal data of their users ever again. After that people will have to pay to use it - I doubt there's going to be much left of the social media at that point, but then you could create a competitive market - till then: it's going to remain a privacy hellhole.
The only way to run a clean social network that would be good to use and free to its users would need more public outcry over Facebook, more worry about privacy among the general population, and huge funding that does not come with strings attached ... Good luck on finding that.
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Any chance that this could happen to Apple? Like something similar? App Store from a third party
Nothing will happen. Nothing ever does with these super-rich companies. Too rich and too powerful - and all of that wealth generated by billions of users - who work for free.
I'm all for this, but I also wonder how much of this is really tied to FB's desire to create a unified end-to-end encryption across the three messaging services.
The only thing "different" is the name of the company. VP's from Apple could kick in the front door of the home of some posters on here, take their first born and steal a beer out of their fridge, and those posters would still be on this site defending Apple.
Apple has major anti-trust issues, across the world, and their actions are far more egregious than Facebook.....all while smiling and saying "we love our customers".
I’d like to know why the government is asking to approve any future purchases. They literally approved of fb purchasing Instagram and WhatsApp. What did they think was going to happen when the big guy purchases a smaller company deemed to be a threat.
I can’t think of a more appropriate response from the government after they allowed those purchases than this.
I can’t think of a more appropriate response from the government after they allowed those purchases than this.
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I agree. This feels like communism/dictatorship to me. The government shouldn’t limit a company’s growth. Facebook is basically being punished for being successful. It’s not fair. Let the market decide.
30%+ of their total ad rev at the moment and rising ~3-4%/year.
Instagram also has a higher ARPU (avg revenue per user), is growing way faster and is attracting a younger audience (Facebook's biggest growth is in the 65+ y/o category and is actually losing young users).
I'd know where to put my money at.
I don’t get it. Isn’t being successful and buying out your competition part of capitalism?
These companies thrive and become too big to fail because of the system (capitalism) promotes, but then they want to crack down when they become too big, which seems against the nature of being pro-capitalism if you punish people or companies when the system works well for them.
I’m not defending Facebook; it would just be nice if our system was able catch this type of stuff earlier on. And why have they allowed all the cable and cellular companies to merge over the years?
The whole system is jacked up.
These companies thrive and become too big to fail because of the system (capitalism) promotes, but then they want to crack down when they become too big, which seems against the nature of being pro-capitalism if you punish people or companies when the system works well for them.
I’m not defending Facebook; it would just be nice if our system was able catch this type of stuff earlier on. And why have they allowed all the cable and cellular companies to merge over the years?
The whole system is jacked up.
I'm absolutely shocked the people still use them knowing they sell your data to the highest bidder. I stopped using them when I first learned they sell my data (I'm their product).
Please make them sell WhatsApp so that it can be safe to use again!
Come on… Apple does purchase small companies from time to time, and does a lot of Sherlocking, but when was the last time they gobbled up a direct competitor? Even a small-ish one. Please name one. Come on, I'm waiting…
And no, the Apple-NeXT reverse-acquisition-sold-as-a-merger doesn't really count… Apple was on the throes of death back then, and NeXT, a technological powerhouse as it might have been since its inception and until its very subsuming as an independent entity, was, at least commercially speaking, a one-trick-pony that probably couldn't stand on its own in the market if something truly better came along (or if, say, Microsoft decided to “embrace-and-extend” its line of business). It's true that the merger hastened the death of WebObjects (Dell execs couldn't bear the thought of running their store on what would become Apple-branded software, for one!), but their continuity as a an independent company might also be untenable in the long run regardless.
And in that lens, the subsequent Power Computing Corp. purchase wasn't much of a power move, either; for all its technical prowess and Mac OS-compatible hardware firsts, with the swarm of new, sexy and affordable first-party Mac hardware Apple would soon unleash on consumers, that company would be dead anyway in a year or two, even if it had access to a Mac OS license still. Also, the Mac OS clone ecosystem wasn't big or mission-critical enough back then for an anti-trust suit to go anywhere (it's not as if that was Microsoft deciding to close down Windows and buy, say, HP or Compaq to make their own vertically-integrated computers and tell the other OEMs to stuff it).
The same goes for Beats; Apple didn't even have a music streaming service back then, Beats didn't sell perpetually-licensed music tracks, and their combined audio hardware barely overlapped (only now are seeing some action in that camp, with the AirPods Max…). And even then, Beats kept some degree of independence, and whatever remains of it still plays (hah!) very well with the PC and Android camps. If there's something which you can't fault Apple for is anti-consumer monopolistic practices in the music market. Quasi-monopolistic leverage in licensing negotiations at one point or another? Sure. Anti-consumer? Nope. And you cannot even fault them that much for devaluing the artists' work; that sad distinction should be reserved mainly for Spotify (they weren't the first nor the last to attempt it, but were the first to do so successfully).
Then there's the whole iBooks Store lawsuit thing. That one ended up being not beneficial at all for consumers, it seems.
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Now it makes sense why Facebook is trying to 'integrate' messenger chat with Instagram chat and Whatsapp, to make the legal claim that the services can't be split for technical reasons. Sneaky bastards.
Thought exercise:
1. If FB was gone, would the world be a better place?
2. If FB was run by someone other than Zuck and Sheryl Sandberg, would the world be a better place?
I think the answer to #1 is yes, but it’s arguable.
#2 is a no-brainer, unequivacal yes. Zuck and Sheryl are the tobacco CEOs of the digital age.
1. If FB was gone, would the world be a better place?
2. If FB was run by someone other than Zuck and Sheryl Sandberg, would the world be a better place?
I think the answer to #1 is yes, but it’s arguable.
#2 is a no-brainer, unequivacal yes. Zuck and Sheryl are the tobacco CEOs of the digital age.
Still less creepy than Facebook's history arc. It started out as a tool for stalking school colleagues, and it stayed largely true to form (if not in function, at least in spirit).
Also, how much of Instagram's transformation was due to its acquisition by Facebook? It's been so long I can barely remember how it was before.
1. Yes, because some other platform, less tainted by sociopathic executives, could've emerged or remained at the top (like, say, the relatively quaint MySpace).
2. Yes. I already answered it in #1, I guess, but maybe they would also not be as monopolistic, and we could also be using a combination of different messaging platforms, or even a common/open standard of some sort. And definitely not two different platforms from the same company, and being forced to migrate to either of those from those social networks whose IM/DM component still lingered on (here I'm obviously referring to Instagram, and I hope this lawsuit still came in time to halt that; reversing that move would probably a pain, if not outright impossible, either technically or socially).
Good, should have never been allowed to buy them in the first place.