[HN Gopher] Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court
___________________________________________________________________
Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court
Author : c420
Score : 194 points
Date : 2025-04-14 13:18 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| dang wrote:
| Other articles posted about this:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/technology/meta-antitrust...
| (https://archive.ph/8wOPP)
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/14/media/meta-ftc-trial/index.ht...
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/13/meta-zuckerberg-ftc...
|
| (I've omitted the HN links this time because there weren't any
| comments yet. Someday we're going to do proper URL bundling and
| karma sharing for cases like this, where multiple submitters post
| good articles on the same underlying story.)
| iambateman wrote:
| Karma sharing would be huge. That's a great idea and I think
| would increase the overall quality of links a lot. At least
| worth a shot.
| thierrydamiba wrote:
| This is a pretty fun link:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders
|
| The leaderboard system is interesting because they don't
| actually show numbers for the top 10(to de-incentivize
| farming battles I assume).
|
| If you look at the top profile, tptacek, you can see they
| have a little over 400k karma and they are active(posted two
| days ago).
|
| Thanks to Thomas people like him who make this site fun!
| luminadiffusion wrote:
| Zuck waved the white flag, settled the frivolous Trump libel
| lawsuit, and made several trips to kiss Trump's ring - now he is
| getting skewered anyhow. Deliciously ironic.
|
| "Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself
| for nothing."
|
| -- Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I wouldn't write off a leniency due to their aforementioned
| arse kissing. A trial doesn't mean a they'll be found guilty,
| let alone given any tangible consequences.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The DOJ has continued to indicate it intends to require
| Google spin off Chrome and obviously the tariff game has done
| no favors to Apple.
|
| Giving Trump money appears to be a game for suckers.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Those who were in prison and paid for a pardon got their
| money's worth. No take backsies on those. The one grifter
| was released from paying back millions to the people he
| defrauded - he made money by paying Trump if looked at as
| simple arithmetic. https://www.msn.com/en-
| us/news/other/donald-trump-pardons-ni...
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Too bad Joe Exotic doesn't have enough money I guess...
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Yeah, for reasons I still don't understand -- probably
| because it's driven by Peter Thiel's Deep Incel Thoughts --
| JD Vance and co. were big fans of Lina Khan's FTC antitrust
| moves during the Biden administration.
| zombiwoof wrote:
| Imagine if instagram took down Facebook as a separate
| company and leadership
|
| Same for WhatsApp
|
| Both companies had amazing founders who could have
| thrived if Facebook didn't take them out
|
| We would have a tech landscape of two independent
| companies and "meta" being just another Yahoo or MySpace
|
| Facebook didn't innovate it crushed innovation.
|
| Fuck them and I hope Trump scewers Zuck
| userbinator wrote:
| The growing hatred for Big Tech is largely bipartisan.
| aylmao wrote:
| In fact, wouldn't a trial where they aren't found guilty
| would probably be better a better outcome for Zuckerberg than
| no trial at all?
| paxys wrote:
| The judge is an Obama appointee and is the same one who
| ordered Trump to halt illegal deportations to El Salvador.
| Trump has publicly called for him to be removed. If the
| administration wanted a lenient ruling, he is the last judge
| they would rely on.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| If Meta loses then Trump will use selective enforcement for
| leverage.
| nradov wrote:
| This is a civil trial, not criminal. There is no way to find
| a defendant "guilty".
| input_sh wrote:
| This has been brewing since 2020, trials of this scale take
| time to build: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trade_Comm
| ission_v._Me....
|
| If anything, he was kissing Trump's ass _because_ he knew it
| was about to reach trial. The date was known since November.
| paxys wrote:
| That's the point. Big tech kissed Trump's arse in the hopes
| that he would end the antitrust investigations. Meta
| literally bribed him to do so. Now Trump is just doubling
| down on them.
| bamboozled wrote:
| He can just pay his way out of this now, you know that.
| goatsi wrote:
| He's being blamed for stealing the 2020 election from Trump, so
| no donations or ring kissing seem to be enough.
|
| https://www.semafor.com/article/04/14/2025/trump-officials-s...
| alex1138 wrote:
| I think Whatsapp is the clearest possible case that can be made
| of any company? They violated the condition of not sharing user
| data with Facebook
|
| Willing to listen to other opinions on other companies, but
| surely Whatsapp
| changoplatanero wrote:
| That was a voluntary pledge the company made to the users,
| right? It wasn't a legally binding commitment that there would
| never ever be any data sharing.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Dear Users, in our Terms of Service, we tell you that we
| won't share your data.
|
| Psych, it wasn't legally binding.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Correct. A promise is not legally binding unless there is
| some sort of payment in return. The exception is if you can
| prove you suffered monetary damages from relying on that
| promise, which is basically impossible for data sharing.
| lovich wrote:
| I can't sell my data to willing buyers for the same price
| anymore, because Meta illegally shared my data which
| reduced its value, and that's on top of the lost revenue
| I could have made selling my data to Meta if I was
| whatsapp only user.
|
| Oh wait, I forgot those arguments only apply when
| companies are getting the government to go after people
| sharing files
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _promise is not legally binding unless there is some
| sort of payment in return_
|
| If I recall correctly, I gave them a worldwide, perpetual
| license to some data.
|
| > _if you can prove you suffered monetary damages_
|
| This is a separate question (that of calculating damages)
| from that of whether there was a breach _per se_.
| devrandoom wrote:
| It came with a threat that you'd lose your account of you
| didn't approve. That's hardly voluntary.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| > "The FTC's lawsuit against Meta defies reality. The evidence at
| trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows:
| Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned
| TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others," Meta spokesperson
| Chris Sgro said in a statement.
|
| Everyone knew at the time that Facebook bought Instagram because
| it threatened Facebook's dominance, and hindsight shows that
| exactly that happened. There's a huge swath of people that
| dropped off FB and now use Insta, but Meta owns both. It was a
| great move but it was absolutely anti-competitive at the time.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Now the real thing that has to be seen is whether Mark
| Zuckerberg is "masculine" enough to escape from "the matrix".
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They're also directly behind some of the anti-TikTok push;
| again, trying to kneecap their competition.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/report-facebook-hi...
| wikipedia wrote:
| Over the last ~3 years I've been passively following the
| negative PR campaign against TT by Meta; a lot of the outrage
| felt a bit manufactured, specifically the outlandish claims
| like the 'slap a teacher challenge' which, upon
| investigation, didn't actually exist [0]
|
| [0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/slap-a-teacher-tiktok-
| challe...
|
| https://archive.ph/ERLFo - Facebook paid Targeted Victory, a
| PR firm, to malign TikTok
|
| https://archive.ph/wYuvL - A whistleblower's power: Key
| takeaways from the Facebook Papers
|
| https://archive.ph/rWDA4 - Mark Zuckerberg says TikTok is a
| threat to democracy, but didn't say he spent 6 months trying
| to buy its predecessor
|
| https://archive.ph/H8SIk - Before Mark Zuckerberg Tried To
| Kill TikTok, He Wanted To Own It
|
| https://archive.ph/liFKi - FACEBOOK'S PLAYBOOK TO BEAT
| COMPETITORS HAS HAD TO CHANGE WITH TIKTOK
|
| https://archive.ph/9XSqi - Facebook Tries to Take Down TikTok
|
| https://archive.ph/LWTHf - Reuters: Factbox: Facebook and
| TikTok's fraught history - quick look
|
| https://archive.ph/H3dfJ - Facebook Parent Company Defends
| Its PR Campaign to Portray TikTok as Threat to American
| Children
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Plus they tried to buy other companies that they thought
| posed a threat (snap, etc?)
| unreal37 wrote:
| The government is claiming that Facebook bought Meta and
| Whatsapp because it couldn't compete with them.
|
| Is that illegal? I don't understand! Every company that buys
| another company buys it because it adds something to their
| business. It's a ridiculous claim.
| Retric wrote:
| It's an argument for how to break up the company not just a
| complaint about what happened. Companies that buy a supplier
| or customer frequently didn't compete with that supplier so
| breaking them off wouldn't break up the monopoly.
|
| Whatsapp was purchased as a competition _and therefore_
| there's a solid case for spitting the company along that
| line. Split off Instagram and things look even more
| competitive.
| pengaru wrote:
| > The government is claiming that Facebook bought Meta and
| Whatsapp because it couldn't compete with them.
|
| s/Meta/Instagram/
| miltonlost wrote:
| Yes, trying to beat your competition by buying them is
| incredibly illegal and should be illegal. If you have 70% of
| a market and an up-and-comer is now at 25% but growing, a
| market leader purchasing their competitor to maintain their
| market position is an anti-competitive move and why we don't
| and shouldn't allow every single horizontal or vertical or
| conglomerate merger.
|
| >it because it adds something to their business. It's a
| ridiculous claim.
|
| "It" and "Something" are incredibly vague and meaningless.
| Their vacuousness is what allows you to not understand the
| illegal behavior.
| jasode wrote:
| _> , trying to beat your competition by buying them is
| incredibly illegal _
|
| If you weren't aware, it's actually legal to buy a
| competitor. It just has to pass antitrust review.
|
| E.g. In 2006, the government approved Google acquisition of
| Youtube which competed with Google Video: https://www.googl
| e.com/search?q=google+2006+acquisition+yout...
|
| Companies buy/merge competitors all the time that passes
| FTC legal review. E.g. Boeing acquired competitor McDonnell
| Douglas. Hewlett-Packard acquired Compaq Computer.
|
| And sometimes US government encourages mergers. E.g. US
| asks stronger bank buy a weaker competitor bank. It's been
| leaked that the US Govt is encouraging competitors Intel
| and AMD to merge ... so the USA semiconductor industry can
| be stronger and thus, less dependent on Taiwan TSMC and
| stay ahead of China.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=us+government+encouraging+i
| n...
| bakugo wrote:
| > Every company that buys another company buys it because it
| adds something to their business.
|
| The point is that they didn't acquire those companies to add
| to their business, they acquired them because their continued
| independent existence detracted from their business. Also
| known as competition.
| paxys wrote:
| If everyone indeed "knew at the time" then why did the FTC
| allow the acquisition to go through in a 5-0 vote?
| surge wrote:
| This is what I don't get, the FTC is suing because the FTC
| allowed something to happen, when the platforms had even more
| dominance than they do now?
|
| Kind of stinks of less than valid motivations based on the
| timing of bringing this up over a decade after the fact.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I guess theZuck didn't donate enough to the campaign
| eastbound wrote:
| The trial has to go through in all cases of bribing:
|
| - If I'm the politician, then I need to keep the company
| on the edge until the end of the trial where I promise
| them to be acquitted;
|
| - If I'm the CEO, I need the trial to go through and
| acquit me, because it guarantees me against future
| trials.
| throwanem wrote:
| > I need the trial to go through and acquit me, because
| it guarantees me against future trials
|
| On substantially identical charges, where the principle
| of double jeopardy holds sway.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| In the same jurisdiction*
| throwanem wrote:
| Whom do you mean to believe nothing has changed in the
| intervening thirteen years? Or should every crime not
| instantly obvious to all interested parties receive
| similarly favorable treatment once it _is_ finally known?
| borski wrote:
| Something being predicted poorly, hypothetically, doesn't
| mean you can't rectify a past mistake, right?
|
| Not specifically related to this case, necessarily, but if
| you let an acquisition go through and discover a decade
| later that it was, in fact, anticompetitive (and
| intentionally so), presumably you would still try to break
| up the resulting monopoly, even if you didn't predict it
| would happen?
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Mistake shouldn't be based on outcome. If Instagram
| failed, would they still have the antitrust case?
| blackguardx wrote:
| Take a look at the Alcoa case from 1945 [0]. The courts
| ruled that Alcoa was an illegal monopoly even though it
| acquired that status legally.
|
| [0]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Alcoa
| ideashower wrote:
| At the time, Instagram had 80 million users, it had no
| monetization strategy and was profitless[1]. I suppose this
| made it seem less of an immediate competitive threat to
| Facebook's business model, especially with the presence of
| other smaller photo sharing platforms by Google etc.
|
| In 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported that FTC
| officials in 2012 had concerns about the deal raising
| antitrust issues. However, they were apprehensive about
| potentially losing an antitrust case in court if they sued
| to block the deal.[2] If they would lose then on the merits
| of trying to enforce the Clayton Act, it would set a
| precedent that likely could not be undone.
|
| [1] https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/facebook-instagram-deal-
| down-747m-...
|
| [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-ceos-defend-
| operations-ahe...
| miltonlost wrote:
| Partly our regulatory system unfortunately was timid and
| defanged and philosophically approving of a lot of mergers in
| general (neoliberalism + Laissez Fair Conservatives). The FTC
| didn't do the discovery to get the smoking gun email of
| Zuckerburg saying how he was doing the buyout specifically to
| "neutralize a potential competitor," (as The New York Times
| reported).
|
| To anyone on the side of anti-trust, it was clear even
| without that email as to how much Instagram and WhatsApp were
| growing, and thus Facebook was Standard Oiling.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| A move being anti-competitive and it being against anti-trust
| law are not the same thing. You also need to establish that
| the defendant is improperly exercising their own size/market-
| power to force the deal through which is a much higher bar.
|
| Also the FTC is not exactly known for enforcing antitrust law
| very strictly.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| I think "everyone" in this case means: people who knew the
| business and had an adversarial perception of Facebook's
| intentions. This was apparently not how the FTC thought at
| the time.
|
| Hell, even I wasn't this cynical back in those days. I was
| shocked as late as 2018 when Facebook began using SMS phone
| numbers for advertising, something they'd promised not to do
| (for obvious reasons.) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-
| said-to-use-peoples-ph...
| throwanem wrote:
| I've never had a Facebook account, other than a burner for
| the brief time I spent investigating VR via Oculus Quest 2.
|
| I almost had one once, some time in the very early 2010s.
| After first login, the first prompt I saw was for my email
| account's authentication details, so that Facebook could
| "find my contacts for me."
|
| I forget the exact language they used, but I know a
| boundary test when I see one, and I completed neither that
| nor any other further onboarding step, but immediately
| "deleted" the account - understanding this would not
| actually remove any information, but would deny me at least
| the temptation to develop what I could see would become a
| dangerous habit.
|
| I don't exactly think I blame people who were slower to
| catch on, which is a relief, considering that appears at
| one time or another to have been about half the species and
| it would be a lot of work. But I would incline much less to
| say that mistrusting Facebook as early as 2018 would have
| been cynical, as that still to have trusted them so late
| seems remarkably naive.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| The combination of neoliberal laissez-faire economics along
| with how strongly tech supported President Obama's campaigns
| meant that the industry got to run amok for a decade. It's
| easily one of the biggest stains on his presidency in
| hindsight.
| michaelt wrote:
| The government just kinda forgot that competition law existed
| for a few decades.
|
| They were busy doing things like bringing freedom and
| democracy to Afghanistan, having a financial crisis, stuff
| like that. Very important stuff. Social media? Oh yes I think
| my grandson told me about that.
| noslenwerdna wrote:
| I didn't know the FTC got involved in Afghanistan
| ideashower wrote:
| I tried to answer that here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43686919
| fallingknife wrote:
| It was a tiny 1 billion dollar acquisition of a company with
| less than 50 employees. If everyone knew at the time how
| dominant Instagram would become, that "everyone" sure didn't
| include the founders and investors in Instagram.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| Facebook, wary of someone doing to them what they did to
| MySpace, was going around buying anyone who might be the next
| thing. It wasn't necessarily clear that Insta would blow up
| in the way it did but it was clear that was Facebook's
| motivation for buying.
|
| Also "tiny 1 billion dollar acquisition" is not how I'd
| characterize what was the largest acquisition FB had made up
| to that point: https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.c
| om/2012/04/09/...
|
| > Though Facebook is known for smaller acquisitions,
| Instagram's surging momentum likely compelled the social
| network to swiftly put together a billion-dollar offer.
| thegreatpeter wrote:
| Mira just raised $2B for her company pre-revenue and pre-
| product.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Tech valuations were lower across the board in 2012. Meta
| 15x'd its market cap since then, and Google 10x'd its
| valuation, despite both companies still holding
| essentially the same market position today as they did
| back then. If anything both have a weaker position today
| than in 2012.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| Meta's position is much better, they own Insta and
| Whatsapp now! Diversification!
|
| Google rise makes less sense but their position as king
| of search seems even more concrete than ever before
| (although LLMs might threaten that if they don't stay
| competitive I guess).
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Meta revenue also went up 15x (actually maybe more?). So
| implying the valuation has not risen
| borski wrote:
| All funding was lower in 2012, across the board.
| Moreover, inflation hadn't skyrocketed, valuations
| weren't as foamy, etc.
| jupp0r wrote:
| There is also the question of cause and effect. Did Instagram
| grow to what it is today because of a decade of investments
| from Meta?
| devrandoom wrote:
| Back in the day, Android allowed any app to see what other
| apps were installed. That's how Facebook saw the threat from
| Instagram so early.
| jessekv wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43518866
| simonsarris wrote:
| Some context for those interested:
|
| https://www.techemails.com/p/mark-zuckerberg-instagram-
| fours...
| spunker540 wrote:
| Actually Instagram was iOS only at the announced time of
| acquisition. It was a pretty big bet at the time and almost
| no one believed it was worth $1B.
| fallingknife wrote:
| You know who else knew how many devices Instagram was on?
| Instagram. And yet they were willing to sell. There is no
| conspiracy here. There is nothing nefarious. Facebook made
| a good bet.
| alex1138 wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I know Facebook
| (and probably also Instagram) degrades photo quality by a
| lot, something Flickr doesn't do
|
| That plus scary TOS changes Instagram did immediately
| after acquisition
| jjallen wrote:
| This implies that every horizontal acquisition is anti-
| competitive, does it not? If not I would love to read why not.
| michaelt wrote:
| If there are 7 different grocery stores in driving distance
| of my house and two of them merge, I've still got a choice of
| 6 stores so there's still reasonable competition.
|
| If there are 3 different grocery stores and two of them
| merge, though? That's a different matter.
|
| And if 1 of the remaining 2 is the zero-waste organic store
| that only rich people and hippies use? It might not even be
| providing all that much competition.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| There are far, far, far more than just 7 photo sharing
| apps/websites within the same number of clicks as Facebook
| and Instagram.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The thing that makes something a competitor is the
| ability to act as a substitute. That means grocery stores
| that are 1000 miles away don't count. For photo sharing,
| what makes something a viable substitute is having a
| sufficient network effect, so photo sharing services with
| hundreds of users aren't a substitute for ones with
| millions.
|
| This implies that mergers between large services that
| have a network effect should _always_ be prohibited, but
| why is that even a problem unless your goal is to thwart
| competition?
|
| It would also create a useful incentive: Federated
| systems (like email) have a single network that spans
| entities. If Microsoft wants to buy Hotmail, they're not
| buying a separate network so you don't have to be worried
| about it even if they each have 25 million users as long
| as that's not too large a percentage of the billion
| people who use email. So then companies would _want_ to
| participate in federated systems instead of creating
| silos like modern social networks do, because then they
| would be as strictly prohibited from doing mergers.
| snovymgodym wrote:
| Yeah, but we're talking about 2012. Instagram was small and
| wasn't making any money, and feature-wise it barely
| resembled what it is today. Going just by US sites in 2012
| Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube, and
| Reddit were all large competing social networks (or social
| network adjacent sites/apps).
|
| Seems like in your analogy there were plenty of grocery
| stores left.
| immibis wrote:
| Didn't they give kids a free VPN service then use it to
| spy on which apps they used the most, to predict who
| their next competitor would be?
| henryfjordan wrote:
| Yes, every horizontal acquisition is anti-competitive.
|
| Antitrust violations are a higher bar, you must improperly
| flex your dominant market position to violate the law. For
| that the government would have to show that FB offered an
| unreasonable price that nobody sane would match or that they
| threatened to cut off Insta links from FB if they didn't
| sell, something like that.
| megaman821 wrote:
| Can you show me something from that time that shows this was
| the dominate sentiment? Because I remember everyone laughing
| the Facebook would pay so much for such a simple app.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| here's a Techcrunch article from the time:
| https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/09/facebook-to-acquire-
| instag...
|
| > Last year, documents for a standalone Facebook mobile photo
| sharing app were attained by TechCrunch. Now it seems
| Facebook would rather buy Instagram which comes with a built-
| in community of photographers and photo lovers, while
| simultaneously squashing a threat to its dominance in photo
| sharing.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Sherman Antitrust Act fits on a single sheet of paper. Does
| the statute say anything about the sentiments of the blogs
| you read?
| chourobin wrote:
| This is a joke, everyone made fun of FB paying 1 BILLION
| dollars for Instagram, they didn't even have an android app at
| the time.
| paxys wrote:
| I don't understand the FTC's strategy here. Their entire case
| hinges on the fact that the judge will accept that Instagram,
| WhatsApp, Snapchat and MeWe (?) are direct competitors of
| Facebook in the "personal social networking" space while TikTok,
| YouTube, X, iMessage and all the rest aren't. Unsurprisingly that
| is what Meta's legal team is spending all of its efforts
| debating. I really can't see the judge allowing such a cherry-
| picked definition of what Facebook's market is.
| scialex wrote:
| I mean it's not much more unreasonable then the argument that
| iphones and android phones don't compete but courts bought
| that.
| granzymes wrote:
| A court didn't buy that: the district court and 9th Circuit
| both held that iOS and Android compete in the Epic v. Apple
| case.
|
| A _jury_ however found that the relevant market in the Epic
| v. Google case was just Android. Google is understandably
| appealing that to the 9th Circuit.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The definition of a trust isn't a business with no competitors.
| In fact, a business with no competitors is legal. Antitrust law
| limits "anti-competitive actions," which are possible even for
| commodity producers in an efficient market.
| gruez wrote:
| That's basically every antitrust case. Is Window's market IBM-
| compatible PCs/laptops, or does it include Macs and chromebooks
| as well? What about other computing devices like
| tablets/phones, given that many households (especially in
| poorer countries) don't even have PCs/laptops?
| iambateman wrote:
| > Meta could have chosen to compete with then-upstart photo
| sharing app Instagram in 2012, a senior FTC official said on a
| call with reporters ahead of the trial, but instead it bought it,
| and did the same with WhatsApp.
|
| This has a potentially very-chilling effect on acquisitions,
| which are a major source of liquidity for lots of secondary
| companies.
| zombiwoof wrote:
| Maybe these companies should be built to last not be acquired
| into monolithic borgs
| lenerdenator wrote:
| But then they'd have to compete and not just shovel more
| money into the pockets of major individual shareholders,
| along with the retirement and pension funds of a generation
| that needs to drastically scale back its post-career
| ambitions.
| throwanem wrote:
| "Post-career." Good optimism.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| The large tech firms get a surprisingly large amount of hate on
| antitrust issues on this _website for startups_ so I appreciate
| your point bc I think it's often missed.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's almost as if people want to create companies that
| satisfy somebody's need, instead of pretending to be large so
| it gets brought...
| burkaman wrote:
| Creating a chilling effect on acquisitions is the whole point
| of antitrust law.
| jchw wrote:
| I'd kill for a chilling effect on acquisitions. Every single
| fucking time something I like gets acquired, it takes anywhere
| between a few months to a couple years before it is completely
| ruined. Maybe if we're lucky, Microsoft will acquire Discord
| and run it into the ground the way they did with Skype. (Then,
| we can all go back to IRC, right? ... Right, guys?)
| fallingknife wrote:
| If that were true then acquisitions would be great for
| competition.
| jchw wrote:
| Well in most cases you just ate your competition, so
| there's not a whole lot to care about.
|
| The hardest part of competing with encumbants, especially
| when it comes to stuff like social media and IM, is
| acquiring users, due to those coveted network effects. When
| you look at what happened with Discord, it was able to
| swoop in when there was somewhat of a vacuum building with
| Microsoft-owned Skype being completely shit, MSN and AIM
| falling way out of fashion, and IRC... continuing to be
| IRC. Then they took advantage of something relatively new;
| they could lower the barrier to entry. Most existing IM
| networks required you to download a client to really use
| it, but Discord, just being a web app, you could log in
| from a browser and get the full experience. And if you
| needed to jump in quickly, you could literally just enter a
| name and start using it immediately, at least in the early
| days.
|
| That doesn't happen often. What usually happens is the
| company that acquires the software makes use of the asset
| they actually care about (the users they just paid for) and
| now they don't have to do all of that hard work of actually
| acquiring the users by making a better product and
| marketing it. (Nevermind that they're almost certainly
| better-resourced to do that than the company that they are
| acquiring.) A large minority of users are very unhappy with
| the enshittification of the service, but most users don't
| really care much since they are pretty casual and a lot of
| them may not have even known things to be much better
| anyways. Microsoft squandering Skype seems to be the result
| of a lot of things at once, ranging from incompetence to
| the complexity that the P2P nature of Skype brought with it
| (at least early on.)
|
| For example, look at Twitter. Elon Musk could do basically
| anything wrong but it has such a long history and so many
| users that it really is hard to squander it entirely, even
| after making many grossly unpopular moves. Don't get me
| wrong, Mastodon and Bluesky are doing fine, and it's also
| fine that neither of them are likely to ever really take
| over the number one spot in their niche; they still
| function just fine. But Twitter will always be the place
| where basically everything happens among them, even if the
| people who care the most absolutely hate the shit out of
| it.
|
| I wish more acquisitions did go like Skype, only much
| faster.
| singron wrote:
| Post-acquisition products can still dominate their market
| even if they have declining quality. E.g. they can be
| bundled with other offerings from the parent company. This
| is exactly the point of anti-trust.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| When you build a company, if you're looking to cash out and
| work on something else, it's either going to be by selling
| shares or getting acquired. Getting acquired can certainly be
| much less of a headache and risk vs going public or finding
| private investors to buy out a portion of your shares.
| dpoloncsak wrote:
| Its more likely we like the things we like because they're
| still in their "Acquire users" phase, and haven't run out of
| VC funding yet. Once they they get acquired, they quickly
| transition to the "squeeze every penny out of those users"
| phase we all know and love.
| jchw wrote:
| Personally, I always liked things that never had an
| "acquire users" phase, or VC funding, but those things are
| less shiny (and frankly, less user-friendly.)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Once they they get acquired, they quickly transition to
| the "squeeze every penny out of those users" phase_
|
| Instagram had less than a tenth of its current user base
| when it was bought [1].
|
| [1] https://time.com/4299297/instagram-facebook-revenue/
| immibis wrote:
| Objection: relevance
| surge wrote:
| TBF Skype wasn't profitable when MS bought it, it every much
| was in the line of make something everyone wants to use and
| figure out how to make money later. Skype was more or less
| free to use and it didn't make enough from paid services to
| cover its operating costs if I remember correctly. So it was
| always someone buys it or it dies.
|
| The point of many of those companies is to get bought out and
| then get enshitified or stripped for its IP and integrated
| into for profit products.
|
| Discord is very much in the same boat of build user base,
| then either sell or lock people in and charge a lot. It's
| current model is unsustainable. It will get bought out or
| enshitify eventually, there's no other sustainable model
| unless every user starts handing them money every month like
| its Netflix.
|
| People here used to know this, are we getting an eternal
| September? Comments are getting more and more "reddit" like.
| jchw wrote:
| > People here used to know this, are we getting an eternal
| September? Comments are getting more and more "reddit"
| like.
|
| What?! I _do_ know this, and take great offense to the
| insinuation that my comment is "reddit"-like. I didn't
| feel it necessary to iterate over how VCware works since,
| as you said, everyone already gets that part.
|
| Anyway, the "this place is getting more like Reddit by the
| day" thing has been a Hacker News staple for (well) over a
| decade too. Check the end of the HN guidelines, you'll have
| a chuckle.
| surge wrote:
| Sorry, just I thought anyone lurking here for a while was
| pretty familiar with the whole model of "offer service
| for free to gain user adoption, then sell out or pivot".
| Most of these services that we enjoy simply aren't
| sustainable and are running on borrowed time (or VC
| money).
| anonymars wrote:
| I'm confused, is familiarity with it somehow an argument
| for it?
|
| As I understand, the complaint was that things get ruined
| once acquired. Great, we all know that it's in part
| because of unsustainable business models in the hope of
| getting acquired*. Does that mean we have to like it?
| Wouldn't it be nice to encourage companies to have
| sustainable business models?
|
| *But also not entirely. Even if you build a sustainable
| business model, for you it's throwing off profit and
| that's gravy for you. But once someone buys it from you,
| suddenly _they_ are in the hole and have an investment to
| recoup, especially if they overpaid. And so the
| temptation arises to goose things to pay back that
| investment more quickly
| dmonitor wrote:
| > Discord is very much in the same boat of build user base,
| then either sell or lock people in and charge a lot. It's
| current model is unsustainable. It will get bought out or
| enshitify eventually, there's no other sustainable model
| unless every user starts handing them money every month
| like its Netflix.
|
| I haven't looked at their financials, but I wouldn't be
| surprised if their current subscription offerings targeting
| power users were enough to support the service.
| xixixao wrote:
| Capitalism doesn't tend toward "enough", it tends towards
| maximizing profits.
|
| (Saying this without judging it as bad or good, simply
| how it is)
| guestbest wrote:
| I don't think we can go back to some things like ircd or mud
| talkers because they are too "chatty" to users. People like
| simplified centralized services with on screen discovery in
| the form of popups. The small internet will have to stay
| small
| jchw wrote:
| That'd be more than fine with me, except the small internet
| competes for attention with the rest of the internet and
| gets slaughtered by their attention-sucking applications
| with shiny animations, spammy push notifications,
| gamification and manipulative FOMO-inducing tricks. This
| means that the "small internet" for any given niche is
| very, very small, even compared to what it would've been a
| long time ago on a vastly smaller internet.
|
| User retention aside... Nobody can even _find_ the small
| internet. It 's out there and there are search engines, but
| even if Google magically wasn't utterly ruined by SEO SPAM,
| people just don't Google their special interests as much
| directly anymore. (I can tell from search analytics!) So
| aside from a struggle to keep users engaged in small
| communities, there's also not very many users entering
| smaller communities either, certainly not enough to
| counteract the bleed.
| jjulius wrote:
| >This means that the "small internet" for any given niche
| is very, very small, even compared to what it would've
| been a long time ago on a vastly smaller internet.
|
| This has been my lived experience with a few places the
| past couple of years, and I _love it_. It 's a completely
| different experience from the "pop web" that most people
| use and it's amazing.
|
| >Nobody can even find the small internet. It's out there
| and there are search engines, but even if Google
| magically wasn't utterly ruined by SEO SPAM, people just
| don't Google their special interests as much directly
| anymore.
|
| I know that my example can't speak for most/many other
| places, but the regional hiking forums I frequent (same
| places I alluded to above) come up _a lot_ on search
| engines. Whether you 're looking for "[region] hiking",
| or looking up "[name of] trail", or anything related to
| it, the pages pop up towards the top quite frequently.
| It's how I found them, and there does seem to be a steady
| number of new users joining.
| jchw wrote:
| Maybe it actually can be alright for a niche as
| relatively large as hiking, but I think it has done some
| real damage to smaller niches, which seem to struggle to
| maintain active forums.
| jjulius wrote:
| That's a fair point. WATMM, for instance, is finally
| calling it quits.
|
| https://forum.watmm.com/
| dylan604 wrote:
| Sounds like someone just hasn't come up with the right app
| to act as an abstraction layer over the protocol.
| bathtub365 wrote:
| The other big problem with IRC is that if you have a
| connection interruption you miss messages.
| jjulius wrote:
| We don't always need to know everything that happened all
| the time, whether it's online or meatspace happenings. If
| my IRC connection dropped back in the day, and there was
| something that happened in that timeframe that was
| _truly_ worth hearing about, I 'd find out eventually.
|
| There's something to be said, at least in my opinion,
| about keeping a healthy dose of ephemerality in our
| lives.
| immibis wrote:
| Phones interrupt the connection every time you close the
| app, and if there's even a way to avoid this (yes on
| Android, no on iPhone) the user sees a notification that
| something is running in the background (fine) and their
| battery life is 80% less (not fine). The way IRC works is
| just inherently incompatible with the way mobile devices
| work, since IRC assumes stable endpoints. And because
| it's a protocol not a product, this can't be fixed.
|
| Even if a new protocol was created which fixed this, the
| necessary design change would bring so much baggage that
| it would become Matrix. To solve the unstable endpoint
| problem, servers need to store messages until all
| endpoints retrieve them (which is never, for channels of
| non-trivial size, since at least one client isn't coming
| back) or time out (how long do you set that? a week? If
| you're holding all messages permanently, you might as
| well never time out clients).
|
| The obvious storage design will hold each channel's
| messages once, not once per client connection buffer.
| Which means a lot of things: you might as well send it to
| new clients when they join; each message will have an ID
| so you might as well support replies and emoji reactions;
| you have to moderate it for illegal content; since
| messages have IDs, you might as well retract moderated
| messages on clients. At the end of the design process,
| what you have is nothing like IRC any more.
| jjulius wrote:
| Regarding my comment, IRC was just a quick little example
| - to focus on that is to miss the forest for the trees.
|
| The lack of connection _is the point_.
| googlryas wrote:
| What makes you think the products you like will even be
| launched, if the acquisition pathway to success is not
| available?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _has a potentially very-chilling effect on acquisitions_
|
| I don't buy it. An independent Instagram would have both been
| another potential acquirer _and_ a pocketful of cash for
| investors who might fund another round.
| dehrmann wrote:
| It's actually worse that that. Making acquisitions hard is one
| thing; changing the rules post hoc is another.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Antitrust law explicitly allows the government to unwind
| acquisitions if they are later determined to be
| anticompetitive. How else would you deal with a company like
| Meta who has done exactly that?
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Good. We need companies that produce economic value, not
| landlords seeking rent.
| skizm wrote:
| What's the point of getting FTC approval of an acquisition in the
| first place if they can just go back a decade later and undo it?
| lenerdenator wrote:
| That's just the concept of judicial review.
| colonwqbang wrote:
| They can't just undo it but they can challenge it in court.
|
| But you are right, in a way the FTC is appealing their own
| decision [1]. US politics can be quite mad at times.
|
| [1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-
| releases/2012/08/...
| jrapdx3 wrote:
| > "US politics can be quite mad at times."
|
| No question about the truth of that statement.
|
| However, though the FTC approved the acquisition 10 years
| ago, the current FTC commissioners have evidently concluded
| that in the interim things have changed. Whether the court
| agrees with the FTC's logic remains to be seen.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Conversely: if Facebook lies their ass off to the FTC to get
| their mergers approved, why should we accept those lies as
| immutable truth?
| skizm wrote:
| Is that what the FTC is claiming happened?
| bogwog wrote:
| > What's the point of getting FTC approval
|
| Efficiency? The people at the FTC reviewing mergers can't be
| experts of every corner of the economy, but if they catch an
| illegal merger during the approval process it can be blocked
| early without having to go to court.
|
| An illegal merger is illegal no matter what. It's the
| corporation's responsibility to not break the law.
| googlryas wrote:
| I'm positive that OP understands the reason for an FTC
| approval. Why did you cut the quote off in the middle of the
| sentence? The point is about why it's acceptable for the FTC
| to approve something, and then years later come back and
| change the decision.
| bogwog wrote:
| I was too lazy to add an ellipsis. I was replying to the
| whole comment.
|
| > The point is about why it's acceptable for the FTC to
| approve something, and then years later come back and
| change the decision.
|
| I addressed that in my comment (it was the entire point of
| my comment, actually)
| vaxman wrote:
| https://youtu.be/cvVBY4QuA5w
|
| I hope Mark issues a public statement that he is dropping his
| emergency arbitration against her and will allow her book to
| Publish. I get why he did it, but it didn't work and now it is
| hurting more than helping. There is no such thing as Bad PR --but
| an open wound is a different story. (I am on his side in that I
| don't neurotically hold people accountable for being dbags back
| in their 20s and early 30s when they aren't that person
| anymore...google for "brain development at 30" to see why.)
|
| PS: Was at a startup that was wiped out by Instagram 4.3. This
| was after Mr. SnapEgo reportedly turned down a cool $1B and
| McAfee's lost son snapped up the technically troubled Vine (that
| Mr. FootInHisMouth should probably retool and rebrand as "X
| Prime").
| alex1138 wrote:
| Mr. SnapEgo referring to Zuckerberg?
| vaxman wrote:
| no
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Lots of people behave stupidly in their early 20s, and then
| grow out of it later in life. But the key is: they have to grow
| out of it. I'm not convinced this is true of Zuck.
| goldchainposse wrote:
| Between his fashion accessories and Joe Rogan appearance, I'm
| convinced he hasn't. Five years ago, Cheryl Sandberg would
| call him on it. Today, he's surrounded by yes men.
| vaxman wrote:
| It's biological https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-47622059
| (mankind didn't know this until the relatively recent advent
| of "live" brain imaging). Something similar happened with
| SJobs and today people deify him.
|
| Seriously though, Billy was a FB investor (in addition to
| apparently being a Sith Lord who may have seen an Anakin-echo
| in youngling Zuck) and it's assumed he didExert influence
| during the dark period. It must have been intense for Zuck.
| Can only hope such influence faded with the Epstein scandal,
| but it's too late for Mark to stay in control of Meta now
| anyway, unfortunately you have to take the Bad with the Good.
| Mark's problem now is he's too young to retire and he really,
| it's not like he can spin-off with Reality Labs and keep
| going on the Orion stuff --without leadership, that market
| isLost to Apple now (though Apple's entire C-suite is aging
| out and since Elon is not available anymore..heh yeah: Zuck,
| the next CEO of AAPL --halfway callin' it.)
| goldchainposse wrote:
| > allow her book to publish
|
| You mean "Careless People?" It looks like it's on Amazon.
| vaxman wrote:
| https://www.thebookseller.com/news/meta-wins-bid-to-
| prevent-...
|
| It's very sad. She reported to Congress that she faces a $50K
| per disparagement penalty. Let's say there are 25
| disparagements in the book and it sells 100K copies into the
| Billion+ FB user community. As she pointed out to Congress, a
| disparagement is a truth. $5B for telling truths from seven
| or eight years ago.
| jmyeet wrote:
| So there are two things you should always bear in mind about any
| action taken by the current administration:
|
| 1. Everything is for sale. Any laws, tariffs, regulations, etc
| that negatively affect your interests can be bought off. Pardons
| can be sold. Thanks for the Supreme Court, there is absolutely
| nothing illegal about the President doing this anymore; and
|
| 2. The courts are used to bend individuals and companies to the
| policy and personal interests of the president. Take Eric Adams's
| corruption case. The DoJ wanted to dismiss the case without
| prejudice so it could be re-filed. This threat of future
| prosecution was the point to keep Adams in line. The courts saw
| through this thinly-veiled influence peddling and dismissed the
| case with prejudice.
|
| So Meta is being forced to kiss the ring. That means silencing
| content critical of the administration and allowing right-wing
| conspiracies and hate speech to spread unfettered.
|
| I expect nothing to come of this because these cases all take a
| decade or more to filter through various appeals, remands back to
| the trial court, further appeals and so on. But it will
| absolutely influence how Meta's recommendation algorithms work.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| I don't explicitly disagree with anything you wrote, but this
| action was brought by the Biden administration (technically
| they re-filed because the judge had thrown the original case
| out, which was filed during Trump's lame duck period). Half of
| Trump's support comes from populists, so the FTC has chosen to
| continue the prosecution.
| droningparrot wrote:
| I just want to be able to message people on Instagram without
| getting sucked into reels
| snovymgodym wrote:
| I do not understand what leg the FTC has to stand on in this case
| at all.
|
| I know the company is quite unpopular, but from an objective
| legal standpoint I don't see how you can make an
| antitrust/anticompetitive argument here.
| charonn0 wrote:
| They don't need to be a literal monopoly to be guilty of anti-
| competitive practices.
| granzymes wrote:
| FTC does in fact need to show (directly or through indirect
| evidence) that Meta has monopoly power in a relevant market
| and that it abused that power in order to win a Section 2
| case.
|
| If the relevant market ends up including TikTok or YouTube,
| FTC will be unable to make that showing.
| busymom0 wrote:
| Not a fan of Meta and I don't have IG, Facebook, WhatsApp etc.
|
| However, even in 2012 or so when these acquisitions happened,
| Snapchat was a much bigger thing. And for me, Reddit was a much
| bigger thing than FB.
|
| I think amongst the antitrust trials, this one is the weakest.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I feel the spirit of antitrust being for the benefit of consumers
| has been lost with the recent round of actions. Virtually every
| action a corporation takes is "anticompetitive" because surely it
| wants to defeat the competition. That's the whole point of
| capitalism. We shouldn't be concerned until this is actually anti
| consumer. And it's hard to prove consumer harm for free products
| that aren't really necessary and have many alternatives.
| NHQ wrote:
| This trial is but a showcase for the berg zucker.
|
| Legal proceedings focused on "social networks" and "browser
| market shares" and app stores. These are ridiculous, superficial,
| and meaningless.
|
| If there was really such a thing as a monopoly on social
| networking, you would have to kick people off the networks, not
| just stop the companies operating them. What would change if
| instagram had to become its own company again? The same people
| would own it. And that is why antitrust is a joke, it does not
| prevent the true monopoly of who controls what.
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