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And the inexorable march towards tech companies owning everything continues. I wish anti-trust law wasn't such a joke across the globe.

Nextgrid 6y ago
In this case I'm not sure anti-trust would help? Giphy doesn't have a monopoly and the product is straightforward to replicate by doing the same thing they did - ie scraping and stealing content at scale.
- atonse 6y ago
  It would because giphy is a great proxy to find out what people are CURRENTLY talking about, or how they are feeling, based on the gifs they're searching for. This can fuel better ads. So consolidating this stuff further could have that effect. To me it is so creepy how much of even our casual thoughts outside of facebook now are going into facebook servers. There's just no escaping these data addicts. That's the concern.
missedthecue 6y ago
Big company != monopoly. Facebook does not have a monopoly on anything, and neither does Giphy.
- Sevaris 6y ago
  See, I said anti-trust. Not anti-monopoly. Anti-trust was, traditionally, about preventing market distortions by market actors that are becoming too big and powerful. It wasn't solely about monopolies. The whole "we're not a monopoly" shtick has been pushed by corporations in recent decades as if that absolved them completely from behaving in anti-competitive ways, and for some reason your average schlub has eaten it up, hook line and sinker, and politicians are more than happy to cut them slack because of lobbying. Especially now, when you have companies like Giphy being tied into services across the globe and providing a surprising amount of data about users and usage patterns, the idea of monopolies is completely obsolete. It's time to bring back the idea of companies not being allowed to much reach, power and control over all aspects of our lives, as well as being able to use it to assert control over competitors and users alike.

Nextgrid 6y ago

In this case I'm not sure anti-trust would help? Giphy doesn't have a monopoly and the product is straightforward to replicate by doing the same thing they did - ie scraping and stealing content at scale.

atonse 6y ago
It would because giphy is a great proxy to find out what people are CURRENTLY talking about, or how they are feeling, based on the gifs they're searching for. This can fuel better ads. So consolidating this stuff further could have that effect. To me it is so creepy how much of even our casual thoughts outside of facebook now are going into facebook servers. There's just no escaping these data addicts. That's the concern.

missedthecue 6y ago

Big company != monopoly. Facebook does not have a monopoly on anything, and neither does Giphy.

Sevaris 6y ago
See, I said anti-trust. Not anti-monopoly. Anti-trust was, traditionally, about preventing market distortions by market actors that are becoming too big and powerful. It wasn't solely about monopolies. The whole "we're not a monopoly" shtick has been pushed by corporations in recent decades as if that absolved them completely from behaving in anti-competitive ways, and for some reason your average schlub has eaten it up, hook line and sinker, and politicians are more than happy to cut them slack because of lobbying. Especially now, when you have companies like Giphy being tied into services across the globe and providing a surprising amount of data about users and usage patterns, the idea of monopolies is completely obsolete. It's time to bring back the idea of companies not being allowed to much reach, power and control over all aspects of our lives, as well as being able to use it to assert control over competitors and users alike.