[HN Gopher] Facebook documents offer a treasure trove for Washin...
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Facebook documents offer a treasure trove for Washington's
antitrust war
Author : fortran77
Score : 182 points
Date : 2021-10-25 13:34 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.com)
| strangesongs wrote:
| "Reels users said they sometimes stopped the sessions early,
| finding it hard to hit the 10 minutes required because the videos
| were "stale, boring or repetitive," while TikTok users self-
| reported using the app for hours a day beyond the study. The
| Reels users also found that Facebook's algorithm didn't stop
| showing them content they weren't interested in, and rarely
| showed videos made by people of color to white viewers."
|
| obvious they can't innovate on their own at this point
| [deleted]
| cududa wrote:
| Is your argument that if they got broken up they could innovate
| more to ... get more people to spend more time on new products
| that push them into radicalized rabbit holes?
| pwned1 wrote:
| Are you being facetious? If they can't innovate and they are
| losing customers, how does that support breaking them up? It
| seems to make the opposite point.
| munk-a wrote:
| Lots of monopolies suck at their core business - because
| they've lost the need to compete due to either suffocating
| the competition or growing into adjacent markets to lock down
| their user base. Facebook can both be incompetent and an
| economic danger.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| But FB loses eyeballs when it fails to innovate, which is
| kind of a demonstration that it doesn't have monopoly
| power.
| munk-a wrote:
| So if, when Standard Oil was still operating as a
| monopoly, a single well had decided to refuse to sell to
| them - or even a dozen wells - or a conglomerate of wells
| - that means they'd no longer be a monopoly?
|
| Just because you don't own 100% of a market doesn't mean
| you don't have a commanding position.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| 1) Comparing Tik Tok to a single oil well is laughable.
|
| 2) If someone who owned a single oil well in time of
| Standard Oil could get their oil to consumers and
| profitably sell it, then however big Standard Oil might
| be, then it didn't have a standard monopoly. Of course,
| that's not how things work back then. Standard Oil
| controlled the refineries and so well owners were over a
| barrel. Facebook has tried to control the Internet pipes
| but basically failed everywhere.
| mike00632 wrote:
| Because a company should be able to stand on its own merit,
| not be sustained through entrenched monopoly power.
| mrits wrote:
| As a student of history this means you should go all in on out of
| the money calls.
| adventured wrote:
| There could be substantial lag.
|
| Microsoft went net sideways from 1998 to 2013, and then up ten
| fold since.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Perhaps bet on ten years after regulatory capture makes them
| an entrenched company?
| jonathankoren wrote:
| I still don't understand how Microsoft reinvented itself. Did
| they manage to sell some very large and entrenched companies
| on Azure, or what?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I saw it first hand being in a different F500 company.
|
| Basically all the old tools were written in excel/word/ppt
| and it was cheaper to just subscribe to O365 than to
| switch. Monetizing yearly subscriptions is way more
| profitable than waiting every 5-10 years for people to buy
| the next version.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| subscription models for everything.
| adventured wrote:
| Financially, cloud has become an extraordinary profit
| machine for Microsoft, far beyond anything traditional
| consumer Windows ever has been (for a long time obviously
| it was far and away the cash cow).
|
| Their operating income margin, for a company so massive, is
| mind boggling. $70 billion in operating income from $168b
| in sales (41.6%). By comparison it was 28% in 2013. So
| their margin has rather dramatically re-expanded during the
| Nadella era, like they're a younger company again. I think
| Microsoft is benefiting from not gorging and becoming obese
| again (employee count vs sales) as it did during the late
| Gates years and the Ballmer years. Microsoft could
| trivially load up on people for no great reason other than
| to always be expanding to fill the margin (many companies
| do that), but they seem to have made a conscious decision
| to be more disciplined. I bet that's working in their
| favor, as high levels of bloat usually acts like quicksand
| for larger older companies. They're probably more nimble
| now than when they had half the sales back in 2013. Nadella
| seemed immediately able to relax on the Windows-everything
| philosophy in a way Gates and Ballmer were unable to (they
| were perhaps too wed to the first chapter of Microsoft,
| people get blinded by such biases, even very smart people).
| And to his credit, Gates didn't try to get in Nadella's way
| as he made changes, Gates had been chairman of Microsoft
| from 1981 to 2014, with his stature and financial
| capabilities he could have been a real slag in the way of
| change.
| jedberg wrote:
| They got a new CEO who actually cared about engineers. Some
| of his first acts were open sourcing things, actually
| participating in open source and contributing, and
| supporting Linux.
|
| When Nadella started, I actually said to others that for
| the first time in my career I would consider working at
| Microsoft.
|
| Also they sold the shit out of Azure. Every big enterprise
| contract would include $500,000 of Azure credit for free,
| and the sales reps would constantly remind you that you're
| going to lose your free money. So CIOs would say, "Hey we
| have all this credit we should use it" and then all of a
| sudden their company was using Azure and liking it (because
| it's a pretty great platform if you're already using a ton
| of MS products in your enterprise).
|
| It's no coincidence Nadella was in charge of Azure before
| being CEO. He knows how to make things developers actually
| like.
| jdmichal wrote:
| There's more than this. This covers what might happen at
| a tech company, but what about all those other companies
| that don't employ developers? Well, Microsoft also has
| Azure Active Directory and Office 365. Replacing
| expensive AD and Exchange servers -- and the employees to
| manage them -- with a simple monthly subscription makes a
| pretty convincing case to a lot of companies. Especially
| those that would like to minimize IT as much as possible,
| because it's not a core competency.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Yes, and all of those not-primarily-software industries
| haven't yet caught on that unconditionally using SaaS is
| not a good idea, while at least some software companies
| are realizing this now. In SW land the pendulum starts to
| come back from SaaS-all-the-way, outside SW land it's
| still in full swing to SaaS-all-day-every-day.
| cududa wrote:
| One culture mostly evaporated due to the consent decree.
| The people left fought over resources and fiefdoms of what
| was left/ within new parameters. Ballmer left, Satya built
| a new culture with new values. Sounds pedantic but that's
| truly it.
| [deleted]
| bob229 wrote:
| who cares, we already know that facebook is evil and is
| destroying humanity. These apps simply shouldn't be allowed to
| exist
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| What's weird here is this:
|
| >All told, Facebook has 174 million daily active users in the
| U.S., according to the internal data. By comparison, Google-owned
| YouTube has 122 million
|
| If you want to see basically any video online, from funny cats to
| Facebook depositions, you're using YT. It seems to me that if
| you're an "internet user", at least in this countries I've know
| anything about, you're a "YT user".
| slownews45 wrote:
| This is so weird as a support for the FTC complaint.
|
| My own read. Facebook is fighting for - and likely losing - the
| attention of younger users.
|
| Tiktok and others are doing relatively well.
|
| This is the problem with these networks, they become your parents
| network. Myspace gone, friendster gone.
|
| The FTC claims of monopoly are laughable?
|
| Tiktok seems to be crushing Facebook in downloads and in time in
| app, and now I heard was even crushing youtube (all of these
| folks are competing, youtube has youtube community and patreon
| style features now with chat etc as well).
|
| is facebook huge? For sure. Is it a monopoly? Have folks not
| heard of things like tiktok.
|
| Will be interesting if China goes after tiktok the way the US is
| going after facebook.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Tik tok doesn't double as a customer service for big companies,
| Tik tok doesn't have a market place, Tik tok isn't widely used
| to recruit candidates for jobs.
|
| Tik tok and Facebook are very different social networks.
| Facebook is way more than that actually. A lot of people all
| over the world only browser the internet through Facebook, do
| all their business transaction via Facebook, this is even truer
| outside the west.
| echelon wrote:
| > Tik tok doesn't have a market place
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/29/tiktok-shopping-expands-
| wi...
|
| https://squareup.com/us/en/press/square-x-tiktok
|
| > Tik tok isn't widely used to recruit candidates for jobs.
|
| https://www.axios.com/tiktok-job-hiring-
| tiktok-576f3b99-602c...
|
| > Tik tok doesn't double as a customer service for big
| companies
|
| Not for long.
|
| TikTok is going to eat the world. They'd be stupid not to.
| diveanon wrote:
| TT will be gone in 3 years and replaced by whatever the new
| fad is
| novok wrote:
| Yeah, just like FB and Instagram /s
| Shared404 wrote:
| More like Vine, or MySpace.
|
| Cherry picking examples is not a good argument
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _Tik tok and Facebook are very different social networks._
|
| That's entirely irrelevant to the "is Facebook a monopoly"
| question. If Facebook is losing market share to a very
| different social network, this still shows Facebook doesn't
| have absolute control of it's customers and market. I would
| strong suspect that every rising social network is going to
| be significantly different from the social network it
| captures users from.
|
| Facebook competes with linked-in for business stuff, Amazon
| and craigslist for selling, Tik Tok for youth attention etc.
|
| The main thing is an argument for Facebook being powerful,
| influential and even abusive isn't by itself an argument for
| it being a monopoly as such.
| PeterisP wrote:
| The "anti-monopoly" (anti-trust) laws are not only about
| actual monopolies but rather about having a dominant market
| position and using that for anti-competitive behavior which
| is forbidden not only for monopolies but various dominant
| not-really-monopolies.
|
| Asserting "X is not really a monopoly" is not particularly
| relevant because that's not the standard which matters.
| It's perfectly plausible for a not-really-a-monopoly with a
| large but shrinking market share to abuse a dominant
| position in a particular market (often defined more
| narrowly than you might think) in ways that violate anti-
| trust laws.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Always important to note the philosophy underpinning
| monopoly differs in the EU and the US.
|
| In particular for US law, this part:
|
| > having a dominant market position and using that for
| anti-competitive behavior
|
| For the EU, the question can stop there; in the US,
| there's an additional burden of proof that anti-
| competitive behavior _harms the consumer._
|
| Google is allowed to build a giant search empire because
| so far, courts have agreed that while it's _hard_ to
| compete with Google, the consumer is not harmed because a
| competitor is always a click away and barrier to
| switching is low.
| bogwog wrote:
| A company doesn't have to be a Hasbro monopoly to be guilty of
| illegal anti-competitive behavior. Take the alleged collusion
| between Google and Facebook that was revealed recently: does it
| matter if Facebook or Google are monopolies or not? Hell no!
| It's illegal as hell (allegedly) whether they're multi-billion
| dollar companies or struggling startups.
| sharkweek wrote:
| I'm now officially at "that point" where I was late to Snapchat
| and now I haven't even bothered with TikTok.
|
| Was a very early user on FB (the week it launched at my
| college), but now I can't be bothered to keep up.
|
| My kids are probably young enough to be maybe 2-3 cycles
| removed from whatever the Next Big App is, but I can't even
| really fathom what those might be and I can assure you I won't
| understand them.
|
| I sound like my dad 15 years ago...
| throwawayboise wrote:
| My social media in my formative years was email and usenet. I
| never understood Facebook, never used it.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| All this reminds me of MTV in the late-90s/early-2000s. We all
| watched it, even though we all pretty much hated it. Then,
| something magical happened: the internet became a content
| platform (MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, etc.), and MTV became
| basically irrelevant - my teenage niece-and-nephew don't even
| know what MTV is. And this seems to have happened to Facebook;
| it's still popular with the olds, obviously, but once again, my
| teenage niece-and-nephew don't have accounts on Facebook. They
| laughed when I asked them about it, said Facebook was
| "annoying", just like us olds thought MTV was annoying back in
| the day.
|
| Not really adding much value to this whole conversation; just
| an observation.
| _3u10 wrote:
| When FB came out I thought, who puts their name on the
| internet? This is going to end badly.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Do they use Instagram? WhatsApp? Oculus? Even if none of
| these, they probably still "have" an account, waiting for
| someone to come claim it.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| It's primarily TikTok and Instagram.
| echelon wrote:
| > My own read. Facebook is fighting for - and likely losing -
| the attention of younger users.
|
| 100% agree. Mark's seen the numbers and he knows the
| demographic ship is sailing. That's why he's leaning so heavily
| into Metaverse. He wants his company to compete in
| 3D/VR/AR/games.
| quadrangle wrote:
| The anti-trust stuff is also about Instagram. Isn't FB the
| service losing young folks largely to Instagram?
|
| Anyway, everything about monopoly is about the market space. FB
| has no monopoly in places-to-post-stuff-and-get-attention-
| online... except in the _many many_ countries that FB
| successfully took over where there is near-zero use of the rest
| the internet, but those cases don 't apply to U.S. anti-trust
| law.
|
| FB has more monopoly power in some other market areas. Not a
| complete monopoly, but they have a lot of dominance in the
| market space of targetted social-driven advertising.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Let's reframe: Facebook is competing in the market of having
| their button or Javascript on every webpage if the world.
| Google Analytics, Google Fonts, Facebook, Twitter all 4 have
| features which require JS ("share", "login" or "analytics")
| or can collect page loads and addresses, thus able to collect
| user behavior on websites that are not theirs.
|
| Tiktok only competes on user interests _within their app_ but
| can't collect user profiles elsewhere. In terms of privacy,
| they're harmless compared to FB /Google/Twitter.
| fullshark wrote:
| Even more amusingly the SEC whistleblower protection she's
| claiming is for securities fraud, that FB is committing fraud
| overstating its company health to investors.
| mike00632 wrote:
| You kind of make the case for the FTC, don't you? If Facebook
| were just the Facebook app, website and social network then it
| wouldn't be a monopoly. They would have to try to appeal to
| younger users to compete with TikTok and others. But Facebook
| is way more than just Facebook. Facebook also owns WhatsApp,
| Instagram, and much much more, hence the monopoly power.
| _3u10 wrote:
| Monopoly over what? How does FB force users to use their
| products over their competitors?
|
| Doesn't everyone on what's app have a phone number that's
| known to the people they have on WhatsApp? Couldn't they just
| text each other?
| beebmam wrote:
| I'd like to think that congress is looking at regulating Facebook
| (and social media in general) and not only thinking about
| antitrust law.
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