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RE: Antitrust - on the right track. Consumer's can't solve this from the ground up. What's needed is to prevent certain kinds of key acquisitions. The law aroun
by platz 9y ago
RE: Antitrust - on the right track. Consumer's can't solve this from the ground up. What's needed is to prevent certain kinds of key acquisitions. The law around acquisitions is too permissive in an age of network effects; acquisition laws were fine pre-internet but don't solve their intended purpose anymore. Normally, the market corrects against the biggest players because the biggest players are slow to change culture and their business. But, acquisitions are the mechanism by which the big players are preventing themselves from being disrupted by smaller, more nimble players. If the big players can simply buy up any new comers (who will want a deserved pay-out for their efforts) on the scene, they maintain complete control regardless of what consumers want. Otherwise, any "alternative practices" you try to foster will simply be crushed, if they ever become a large enough threat.
Facebook acquiring Instagram is a perfect example.
- acover 9y agoWhat about a consumer group to assert pressure? Edit: a consumer group could have monopsony powers and be capable of negotiating concessions. Such as an open api.
- briandear 9y agoConsumers already can do that — they can refuse to use FB products — but they don’t. So a consumer group is pretty useless without enough consumers to actually exert their power.
- owly 9y agoThis is exactly right. Consumers could organize a week without Facebook event, including deleting the app from their devices. If a significant number of people participated, FB would get the message.
- acover 9y agoBoycotts aren't the only option. Consumers have boycotted products in the past. Consumer pressure has worked against Facebook in the past. I agree that it is an unlikely and difficult solution. I don't see an easy one.
- rwnspace 9y agoI am boycotting Facebook, but I only interact with 5% of my 'friends list' on a regular basis, so it's hard to get the message out, y'know?
- briandear 9y agoAs a very free market libertarian, I actually agree with this completely. Facebook buying Insta was a very anti-competitive situation. It wasn’t a purchase for a particular tech — it was a purchase specifically to capture a competitor. Grabbing WhatsApp is an even more severe example — it effectively gave Facebook ownership of a vast percentage of messaging networks — both their own and WhatsApp. Google is a harder one though because Google doesn’t rely upon network effects to the same extreme FB does — meaning, my dad’s search engine choice has no impact on me — but my dad’s messaging client absolutely does. It’s relatively easy to start a new search engine — it’s close to impossible to start a new general purpose messaging system or social network — at least not one that survives.