[HN Gopher] Facebook shouldn't be allowed to buy Giphy, says UK ...
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Facebook shouldn't be allowed to buy Giphy, says UK regulator
Author : elorant
Score : 105 points
Date : 2021-08-15 15:42 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >The CMA provisionally found that Facebook's ownership of Giphy
| could lead it to deny other platforms access to its GIFs
|
| It's GIFs? Since when did Giphy own anything that it distributes.
|
| The idea that gifs are centralized is absurd.
| rvz wrote:
| Yeah. It sounds like a terrible argument. I'm sure the same
| Gifs are available on Imgur and gfycat.com as well.
| stirfish wrote:
| >Since when did Giphy own anything that it distributes.
|
| Copyright law confuses me too.
| the-dude wrote:
| "Facebook is allowed to buy Whatsapp if it does not merge the
| identities / keeps WA separate from FB" ( EU ).
|
| Well, what the heck. I thought they really said that. But this :
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_14_...
| does not say so.
| 0235005 wrote:
| This hopefully seem like the beginning of the end for the
| Facebook monopoly and excessive acquisitons.
| varelse wrote:
| In one corner, we have technologically behind the curve
| government bureaucrats and mediocre lawyers, in the other, we
| have bottomless pockets and the best lawyers money can buy...
|
| Fight!!!
| echelon wrote:
| We seem to have forgotten victories like GDPR, CCPA, and the
| Microsoft anti-trust case.
|
| The Microsoft anti-trust case took the wind out of
| Microsoft's sails and kept the web free just long enough for
| new giants to emerge. (And Microsoft remains a 1T+ company.
| If anything, it made them _stronger_ because they had to
| diversify and fight harder.)
|
| If we (or Europe) try it again, we might see more wealth in
| more companies. More experiments. More innovation. Less moat
| defending, taxation, walled gardens, and comprehensive
| surveillance dragnets.
|
| Having Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon own everything
| makes them all complacent iterators, data hoarders, tax
| collectors, and small business/innovation cripplers.
|
| The anti-trust hammer is a powerful tool. It elevated our
| entire industry. We (through our elected officials) should
| wield it.
| varelse wrote:
| Yeah good luck with that Outlook. I think Steve Ballmer is
| the one who knocked the wind out of the sails and the sales
| of Microsoft more than the antitrust lawsuit but maybe I'm
| just crazy.
|
| My own experience with Microsoft during the naughts was
| shortly after having unified Windows NT and consumer
| Windows through Windows XP, they scrapped it for a
| glorified CPU/GPU hardware land grab called Vista. And
| everything sucked again for another 5 years 100%
| unnecessarily.
|
| As for GDPR and CCPA. Yeah, thanks a whole hell of a lot.
| The tech companies are just as creepy as they ever were,
| but now I have to fill out a form to acknowledge how creepy
| they are. So privacy, very security.
|
| Go split Amazon into Amazon retail and Amazon Web Services.
| Go split Microsoft into Microsoft OS, Microsoft gaming,
| Microsoft office, and Microsoft Cloud Computing. Go smash
| Google into 10 or more independent companies. Pull any one
| of those things off and I'll be impressed. Otherwise it's
| all sound and fury to me but I guess it keeps the
| bureaucrats gainfully employed and off the streets so
| there's that.
|
| The funny part is that the whole Microsoft antitrust thing
| was about Internet Explorer, which was always a crap-tastic
| web browser, and it has now more or less died off of
| natural causes because Google outcroptasticed them and
| Mozilla, despite abundant internal funding, squandered it
| all.
| missedthecue wrote:
| What exactly does Facebook have a monopoly on?
| croes wrote:
| Social network in large parts of the world.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Ok I'll try to be serious how exactly monopoly over GIFs would
| endanger users of social networks and industry in general? Except
| Facebook gathering your GIFs usage data. Facebook would know what
| GIFs you use that's a big problem isn't it?!
|
| Why did they allow acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp then?
| Makes zero sense to me.
|
| And if Facebook is not allowed to buy other social networks then
| Chinese will buy them. And then again we will be in the same
| situation just like we are with TikTok and Huawei. Data going to
| CCP and not to Corporate America. I prefer Corporate America over
| CCP to be honest.
| croes wrote:
| FB could track a lot more through Giphy just like they do with
| their like buttons. It's too late to do something against the
| acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram but maybe they have
| learned that's a huge mistake to let FB acquire such services.
| They are not obliged to repeat their mistakes.
| barbazoo wrote:
| IP address and gif search term might be a valuable data point
| to add about a person.
| ljm wrote:
| With the Slack integration, someone using `/giphy searchterm`
| will send over things like: slack enterprise ID, team ID,
| user ID, the team's domain, their name, the slack workspace's
| name, etc...
|
| Facebook could quite easily use that data to draw more
| connections between people. Who they work with, who they
| might know within the same teams and enterprises, etc. etc.
| ec109685 wrote:
| No, that's incorrect. The giphy command is created by Slack
| and doesn't share any data with Giphy [1].
|
| [1] https://medium.com/delta-cx/facebook-bought-giphy-but-
| doesnt...
| crtasm wrote:
| That says "...designed to give Giphy nearly zero data.",
| unclear what is still shared.
|
| Signal goes to great lengths to preserve privacy with
| their giphy integration: https://signal.org/blog/signal-
| and-giphy-update/
| ljm wrote:
| And at what point does FB use their considerable might to
| replace Slack's giphy bot with one that FB makes?
|
| The article basically says that Slack made a special case
| for Giphy, and so they decided that Giphy in particular
| doesn't get the same treatment as your typical slack bot
| or slash command.
|
| So, all FB needs to do is block that integration and
| either force their own or negotiate a new setup with
| slack. "You have a command called giphy and giphy is our
| trademark, so stop."
|
| The article you link to explains all of this, so I don't
| think you've refuted my point, really, except to say that
| it doesn't happen _right now_.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Facebook already has it with or without Giphy.
| croes wrote:
| If you don't use any FB services they don't, but with Giphy
| any messenger using it could be forced.
| pg_bot wrote:
| This seems like retaliation for the success of their previous
| acquisitions of instagram and whatsapp. GIFs are not a money
| maker, and almost anyone could build a competitor to giphy
| without hassle. There's no secret sauce, none of their content is
| protectable, and there's no moat that can protect whatever
| advantage they have. Plus it sounds like their business was
| already under duress, so why block an acquisition for any other
| reason than spite or incompetence?
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| I always thought it was because Giphy is integrated into a
| bunch of mobile keyboards and third party chat services. These
| services would never integrate a Facebook gif service because
| of the implication. So giphy's entire valuation lies in being a
| trojan horse for an established surveillance capitalist.
| ljm wrote:
| That's my read on it: Facebook gets giphy, and they reach
| into all kinds of things they currently can't see. I'm sure
| the giphy integrations in slack, discord, telegram, etc.
| would become fresh sources of data depending on what the bot
| APIs give you in a request.
|
| They start learning who you're working with in Slack, and you
| start seeing them in your friends suggestions. I don't think
| there's any reason to expect that FB would act in any kind of
| good faith with this stuff - why else would you buy a gif
| hosting platform if not for the entrenched integrations and
| their access?
| jjulius wrote:
| Completely agree with this take. It's unsettling.
| EGreg wrote:
| Because Facebook has a habit of buying companies that cement
| their reach. When Google bought YouTube, they were a massively
| money-losing business. It is now one of the main properties
| that gives Google an actual advantage on the Web.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Facebook already has way too much power over the data of way
| too many citizens, and they continue to buy up data lakes left
| and right. _This_ is what is upsetting European regulators and
| anti-trust agencies.
|
| The article quotes the CMA:
|
| > Alternatively, it could change the terms of this access - for
| example, Facebook could require Giphy customers, such as
| TikTok, Twitter and Snapchat, to provide more user data in
| order to access Giphy GIFs. Such actions could increase
| Facebook's market power, which is already significant.
|
| And then, as if to show that the author hasn't understood a
| tiny bit of the issue at hand, he writes:
|
| > Putting aside the logic that someone would switch to using
| Facebook because of GIFs (I love GIFs as much as the next
| person, but come on), the CMA argues that Giphy was in the
| process of building up an ads business that would have competed
| with Facebook.
|
| It's not "building an ads business", the issue the CMA has is
| that everyone and their dog, including people not on Facebook,
| uses Giphy - which means that if Facebook were to buy Giphy
| they could scoop up _an awful lot_ of data.
| [deleted]
| emodendroket wrote:
| Spite and/or sending a message/being seen to send a message to
| Facebook seem like likely factors.
| leros wrote:
| What happens if only the UK says this but the US allows it?
| detaro wrote:
| What the US thinks is not really relevant to what UK regulators
| do. Facebook still has to deal with their actions one way or
| the other.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Good. Many services use giphy and I don't want to need a Facebook
| account to use gifs.
| berkes wrote:
| Even if you can keep using it without such an account, it is
| another datasource for Facebook. Another way to track you in
| your daily use of tech.
| [deleted]
| Traster wrote:
| I think this is actually a great decision by the UK regulator.
| I'm not convinced it'll be effective, but I think it's the right
| move. You can't have the largest encumbent in a space start to
| hoover up its suppliers to the detriment of its competitors.
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(page generated 2021-08-15 23:01 UTC)