21 ms·

Facebook is a monopoly that buys, copies, kills competitors: antitrust committee

399 points by notRobot 6y ago

beagle3 6y ago
Yes, but also "Facebook gives us all the info and leverage we need about everyone : three letter agencies." And that's why nothing will happen to Facebook.
scott800 6y ago
The Internet Of Today is filled with scam due to the world pandemic, the rich are getting richer and you have to follow Quality job assurance, These hackers have helped Individuals Organization to Secure and to Recover their lost files/Password/ funds etc. They Are Hackers for Hire. I am saying leave your problem & your Worries for them to solve for you 100%guarantee* iOS/windows/iPhone/Android Phone Hacking * loans University Grades Iclouds breaching Criminal Records Hacking ATM/Credit Cards Binary Recoveries BTC Mining * Cyber Scam recovery Etc…! T H E R E D H A C K E R G R O U P (V I A )G M A I L Com
scott800 6y ago
The Internet Of Today is filled with scam due to the world pandemic, the rich are getting richer and you have to follow Quality job assurance, These hackers have helped Individuals Organization to Secure and to Recover their lost files/Password/ funds etc. They Are Hackers for Hire. I am saying leave your problem & your Worries for them to solve for you 100%guarantee* iOS/windows/iPhone/Android Phone Hacking * loans University Grades Iclouds breaching Criminal Records Hacking ATM/Credit Cards Binary Recoveries BTC Mining * Cyber Scam recovery Etc…! Email:scottfranklin800@gmail.com text/whatsapp:571 318 9498
s3r3nity 6y ago
ok...so the government approves acquisitions, and then later regrets those decisions. Great way to send shockwaves through the M&A space with governing incompetence: rather than pass reasonable legislation and/or empower an existing department, just have a political theater of a committee process which selectively picks those who haven't lobbied enough _not_ to get in front of that committee.
- ARandomerDude 6y ago
  You raise a good point, though I'll note it's not an either/or proposition. The government botches numerous regulatory decisions. And Facebook is a monopoly that buys or copies (thus kills) their competitors.
  - threeseed 6y ago
    > And Facebook is a monopoly that buys or copies (thus kills) their competitors And yet competitors e.g. Snapchat, TikTok, HouseParty, Telegram, Line continue to appear and flourish.
    - adventured 6y ago
      And you forgot a big one - Pinterest, which is larger than Snapchat, thriving globally and worth $26 billion. Facebook has been entirely unable to slow their growth. I think it's clear at this point that Facebook will continue to lose their social dominance, so long as they're prevented from acquiring any major competitors. Their old-line social network will likely remain as a foundation that everyone joins, because so many people are on it. New networks will keep popping up for the same reason TikTok did, young people hate being where old people are, where their parents and teachers are. That cycle will perpetually repeat (in 15 years TikTok 'dancing' videos will be viewed as laughably cringy by young people, like 1980s big hair and fashion trends were 15 years later). All that's necessary is to prevent Facebook from buying the new networks as they pop up. Instagram might even manage to kill itself trying to be too many things as it clones competitors, turning itself into the F35 of social networks.
      - s3r3nity 6y ago
        You're probably getting downvoted because you're repeating the same line that folks have been saying about Facebook for like 15 years now that keeps getting disproven. It's just the Chicken Little "sky is falling" metaphor. >young people hate being where old people are, where their parents and teachers are. Yes, because let's make large business decisions and technology investments on what 10-12 year olds like.
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
s/Facebook/FAANG/g
- stanislavb 6y ago
  I like how Microsoft isn't bad anymore.
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    FAAMNG
    - waterhouse 6y ago
      https://new.wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=FAAMNG&t=500&a=n https://new.wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=FAAMNG...
    - npteljes 6y ago
      I'm partial to GMAFIA myself, but I'm afraid that it has the same cranky connotation as "Micro$oft" had back in the day.
      - mikro2nd 6y ago
        I've been going with GRAFT when referring to the social-media incumbents. (Strictly speaking it should be GRAAFT, and I can't figure a way to neatly include an 'M'.)
        tehjoker 6y ago
        This tickled me but what does the A stand for? Does M$ (retro!) have a social media platform? They do have a television news station....
        mikro2nd 6y ago
        A = Apple/Amazon - not strictly-speaking social-media, I'd agree, but certainly in on the surveillance-cap bandwagon. Similarly MS.
tomaszs 6y ago
Interoperability may be hard to archive knowing that Facebook lowered drastically reach for posts may by official API versus UI. It was a "bug"... known and lasting for several years. ..
koonsolo 6y ago
So on one hand Facebook is a monopoly and something needs to be done about it. And on the other hand, the only real competitor is Chinese so it needs to be banned. I know my reasoning is not well thought out, but I just find it funny.
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  It's funny because it's true. I mean the only substantial competitors to facebook are VK, telegram and a bunch of chinese companies, all of which would be considered "security threats"
- jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  They want more domestic competition obviously, not foreign.
  - namelosw 6y ago
    It's a winner-takes-it-all industry. Sometimes I have the weird realization that it's the same way if there was no GFW or regulations in China, there would be no Chinese competitors now because those tech giants in China would have been killed by the US counterparts years ago. So domestic competition is not likely to happen anytime soon.
jkw 6y ago
Facebook has been unable to stop new entrants: Pinterest, Snap, Tiktok, Twitter - All global and multi billion dollar companies, and still growing. More to come are: Telegram, Discord, Houseparty, Clubhouse Plus global competition from: Wechat, Weibo, Line Social networks come and go. The space is a lot more whimsical than people think. Remember Friendster, MySpace, AIM. A new challenger will emerge every 3-5 years.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  > Remember Friendster, MySpace, AIM. A new challenger will emerge every 3-5 years. I honestly laugh whenever I hear people still bring up those early social media companies as evidence that social media heavyweights somehow come and go. None of those companies ever came near the global reach of FB. A quick Google search gives a peak user count of MySpace of between 75 and 100 million, for FB it's 2.7 billion. Those companies basically all existed before the vast majority of people were even on any social network, and importantly none of them had real-name policies initially. And the modern challengers you give all have some specific, much smaller niche, e.g. image galleries for Pinterest. There is simply no other social network that has ever challenged Facebook in the "connect all my friends and let me give and see life's updates" space.
  - chosenbreed37 6y ago
    Good point. It may well be true that FB 2.7 billion acts as a moat. What I find interesting is that FB has had a bad rap since it reached the 1 billion mark. But instead of going the number of users has gone up. That being said many of those can't be a active though
  - pmachinery 6y ago
    > None of those companies ever came near the global reach of FB. A quick Google search gives a peak user count of MySpace of between 75 and 100 million, for FB it's 2.7 billion. None of those browsers ever came near the global reach of IE. A quick Yahoo search gives a peak user count of Netscape of around 80 million, for IE it's around 800 million. Not that I believe for one second Facebook has 2.7 billion active individual human users. I've never even used it but I've signed up to about 10 accounts over the years, and everybody I know also has multiple accounts for various reasons. In fact based just on people I know, I wouldn't be surprised if already most people are just using "Facebook" for messenger.
durnygbur 6y ago
Facebook platform is evil and no one doubts it at this point. Amazon is predatory for everyone - merchants, warehouse employees, IT employees, job candidates. Google screwed the recruitment irrevocably and what's worse every minor shop attempts to copy their processes. Microsoft temporarily plays the nice guy. Then we have this whole dating thing entirely owned by one media hegemon. All together pay minuscle taxes. ...and here we are.
- zkid18 6y ago
  > Google screwed the recruitment irrevocably and what's worse every minor shop attempts to copy their processes. Can you elaborate on that?
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  >Then we have this whole dating thing entirely owned by one media hegemon. This scares the hell out of me that one mega conglomerate with it's algorithms has control over your procreation and deep knowledge of your sex life, all linked to your real identity. Personally, I have no dog in this fight since I gave up on online dating and got good at IRL dating(pre-COVID) but I am aware of plenty of men willing to throw their cash and intimate data at these corporations for the hope of meeting someone. Am I alone here to worry about this or am I just too paranoid? If it were up to me, I would regulate the information dating apps collect to the same standards as patients' national healthcare information is handled(in the EU; I don't know about the US/UK but I heard it's not all rozy there).
  - wdr1 6y ago
    > This scares the hell out of me that one mega conglomerate with it's algorithms has control over your procreation and deep knowledge of your sex life, all linked to your real identity. Only if you give it to them?
  - durnygbur 6y ago
    Wait until Tinder bans your "account" which is basically a broad fingerprint of your physical device, Google/Apple account (from the play/app store), phone number, and WiFi details. Then you can turn paranoid.
zpeti 6y ago
Out of all of FAANG, which has had new competitors emerge recently (that are potentially huge threats)? Facebook - Snap, Tiktok, Telegram, Discord, Houseparty (and we still have Twitter, Pinterest, Wechat) Google - Duckduckgo (really?) Amazon - Shopify (really?) Apple - Android (really?)
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  That's a strawman , having wannabe competitors does not absolve them from their anticompetitive practices. "Facebook" is a web-based social network. They weren't competitors to snap-tiktok-telegram-discord . But then they bought instagram, they bought whatsapp, they built a copycat messenger and used facebook+ig to push it to everyone, they copied snap and pushed it to everyone, they copy slack and push it to everyone, they copy tiktok to push it to everyone ... you see the pattern here, using their earlier dominant position to destroy any chance of competition.
  - zpeti 6y ago
    Because - all the companies I listed above are now bankrupt and gone?
    - cblconfederate 6y ago
      they dont need to be bankrupt to be wannabees. Wordperfect and myspace still exist (plus yes, a lot of those companies would go bankrupt without their VC funding)
- treis 6y ago
  Amazon has competition from online stores like ebay, AliExpress, Wayfair, and Overstock. Traditional retailers like Walmart, Target, and Best buy also have online presence challenging Amazon. It's pretty trivial to cut them out of your life. They don't have much that you can't get elsewhere
helsinkiandrew 6y ago
Eventually companies become so large they can't innovate - doing something new is too big a risk (it will eat into existing revenue and may fail anyway) and too expensive (its hard to change the structure and direction of a 10's and 100's of thousands of employees). The only way they continue operating is to outsource R&D - buy companies that have proven a new business model or product, or replicate what they've done. This has been the case since VisiCalc, Wordperfect, Netscape, IBM etc. - is there an alternative for large companies?
cblconfederate 6y ago
Even if it s true, who here thinks that antimonopoly action is going to work? Instead i think they should strike their crucial market advantage: the assumption that user-generated content is free. It should not be, in fact users should be getting paid to have their content featured. A law that would prevent the use of user-generated content for ad purposes without compensating the user would help share the wealth.
kyrers 6y ago
> "The report also recommends that Congress consider any acquisition by the big tech companies to be anticompetitive unless the companies can prove that the merger would be in the public’s benefit and could not be otherwise achieved." I'm sorry, what? Two private tech companies cannot merge if they can't prove it is in the public's best interest? Am I understanding this correctly? What if the influence on public welfare is non existent or minimal, but both companies would benefit from the merger?
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  Look at your quote: it restricts it to "big tech" companies, and as nebulous as it sounds at-present I'd say it's quite easy to say which companies are "big".
  - kyrers 6y ago
    Yeah, I read it correctly but am just now realizing I wrote "tech companies" instead of "big tech companies", my bad. So this is more a move to preven them from bullying smaller tech companies? I can see it from that angle, but it still seems to me that they want the power to block acquisitions. For instance, would the following acquisition/merger be allowed: a big tech company acquiring a small company, which the owner wants to sell, that does not influence public welfare?
    - diggan 6y ago
      If a big company buys another one in order to close it down, not migrate its services with the sole goal of achieving market dominance (monopoly), then yes, the government should have the power to block that acquisition as the public would be worse off with one big company being the only provider of something, rather than N companies providing something. This is why we have free markets, as we want companies to compete with each other, not absorb each other.
      - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
        > If a big company buys another one in order to close it down Apple's business model right there.
beyondcompute 6y ago
Finally there seems to be more widespread realization that large society-influencing corporations could be intrinsically not-such-a-good thing!
- humanrebar 6y ago
  Well, it's more that corporations aren't specially benign. Other hegemonic organizations are usually problematic, too.
ratherbeelse 6y ago
Facebook has been trying to create a monopoly since years. Whatsapp was a messenger app but now it is a part of social media. Instagram was an image sharing app, now it is a part of social media.
jakuboboza 6y ago
Guys what would you do if given monopoly status and no regulation ? Exactly the same thing.
mavsman 6y ago
> "Your only job is to get an extra minute,” the former employee told the subcommittee. “It’s immoral. They don’t ask where it’s coming from. They can monetize a minute of activity at a certain rate. So the only metric is getting another minute.” Not surprising, but a very interesting quote nonetheless.
known 6y ago
"If you don't read newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read a newspaper, you are misinformed" --Mark Twain (b. 1835) Just saying FB...

399 points by notRobot 6y ago

Yes, but also "Facebook gives us all the info and leverage we need about everyone : three letter agencies." And that's why nothing will happen to Facebook.

scott800 6y ago

The Internet Of Today is filled with scam due to the world pandemic, the rich are getting richer and you have to follow Quality job assurance, These hackers have helped Individuals Organization to Secure and to Recover their lost files/Password/ funds etc. They Are Hackers for Hire. I am saying leave your problem & your Worries for them to solve for you 100%guarantee* iOS/windows/iPhone/Android Phone Hacking * loans University Grades Iclouds breaching Criminal Records Hacking ATM/Credit Cards Binary Recoveries BTC Mining * Cyber Scam recovery Etc…! T H E R E D H A C K E R G R O U P (V I A )G M A I L Com

scott800 6y ago

The Internet Of Today is filled with scam due to the world pandemic, the rich are getting richer and you have to follow Quality job assurance, These hackers have helped Individuals Organization to Secure and to Recover their lost files/Password/ funds etc. They Are Hackers for Hire. I am saying leave your problem & your Worries for them to solve for you 100%guarantee* iOS/windows/iPhone/Android Phone Hacking * loans University Grades Iclouds breaching Criminal Records Hacking ATM/Credit Cards Binary Recoveries BTC Mining * Cyber Scam recovery Etc…! Email:scottfranklin800@gmail.com text/whatsapp:571 318 9498

s3r3nity 6y ago

ok...so the government approves acquisitions, and then later regrets those decisions. Great way to send shockwaves through the M&A space with governing incompetence: rather than pass reasonable legislation and/or empower an existing department, just have a political theater of a committee process which selectively picks those who haven't lobbied enough _not_ to get in front of that committee.

ARandomerDude 6y ago
You raise a good point, though I'll note it's not an either/or proposition. The government botches numerous regulatory decisions. And Facebook is a monopoly that buys or copies (thus kills) their competitors.
- threeseed 6y ago
  > And Facebook is a monopoly that buys or copies (thus kills) their competitors And yet competitors e.g. Snapchat, TikTok, HouseParty, Telegram, Line continue to appear and flourish.
  - adventured 6y ago
    And you forgot a big one - Pinterest, which is larger than Snapchat, thriving globally and worth $26 billion. Facebook has been entirely unable to slow their growth. I think it's clear at this point that Facebook will continue to lose their social dominance, so long as they're prevented from acquiring any major competitors. Their old-line social network will likely remain as a foundation that everyone joins, because so many people are on it. New networks will keep popping up for the same reason TikTok did, young people hate being where old people are, where their parents and teachers are. That cycle will perpetually repeat (in 15 years TikTok 'dancing' videos will be viewed as laughably cringy by young people, like 1980s big hair and fashion trends were 15 years later). All that's necessary is to prevent Facebook from buying the new networks as they pop up. Instagram might even manage to kill itself trying to be too many things as it clones competitors, turning itself into the F35 of social networks.
    - s3r3nity 6y ago
      You're probably getting downvoted because you're repeating the same line that folks have been saying about Facebook for like 15 years now that keeps getting disproven. It's just the Chicken Little "sky is falling" metaphor. >young people hate being where old people are, where their parents and teachers are. Yes, because let's make large business decisions and technology investments on what 10-12 year olds like.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

s/Facebook/FAANG/g

stanislavb 6y ago
I like how Microsoft isn't bad anymore.
- tehjoker 6y ago
  FAAMNG
  - waterhouse 6y ago
    https://new.wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=FAAMNG&t=500&a=n https://new.wordsmith.org/anagram/anagram.cgi?anagram=FAAMNG...
  - npteljes 6y ago
    I'm partial to GMAFIA myself, but I'm afraid that it has the same cranky connotation as "Micro$oft" had back in the day.
    - mikro2nd 6y ago
      I've been going with GRAFT when referring to the social-media incumbents. (Strictly speaking it should be GRAAFT, and I can't figure a way to neatly include an 'M'.)
      - tehjoker 6y ago
        This tickled me but what does the A stand for? Does M$ (retro!) have a social media platform? They do have a television news station....
        mikro2nd 6y ago
        A = Apple/Amazon - not strictly-speaking social-media, I'd agree, but certainly in on the surveillance-cap bandwagon. Similarly MS.

tomaszs 6y ago

Interoperability may be hard to archive knowing that Facebook lowered drastically reach for posts may by official API versus UI. It was a "bug"... known and lasting for several years. ..

koonsolo 6y ago

So on one hand Facebook is a monopoly and something needs to be done about it. And on the other hand, the only real competitor is Chinese so it needs to be banned. I know my reasoning is not well thought out, but I just find it funny.

cblconfederate 6y ago
It's funny because it's true. I mean the only substantial competitors to facebook are VK, telegram and a bunch of chinese companies, all of which would be considered "security threats"
jeffreyrogers 6y ago
They want more domestic competition obviously, not foreign.
- namelosw 6y ago
  It's a winner-takes-it-all industry. Sometimes I have the weird realization that it's the same way if there was no GFW or regulations in China, there would be no Chinese competitors now because those tech giants in China would have been killed by the US counterparts years ago. So domestic competition is not likely to happen anytime soon.

jkw 6y ago

Facebook has been unable to stop new entrants: Pinterest, Snap, Tiktok, Twitter - All global and multi billion dollar companies, and still growing. More to come are: Telegram, Discord, Houseparty, Clubhouse Plus global competition from: Wechat, Weibo, Line Social networks come and go. The space is a lot more whimsical than people think. Remember Friendster, MySpace, AIM. A new challenger will emerge every 3-5 years.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
> Remember Friendster, MySpace, AIM. A new challenger will emerge every 3-5 years. I honestly laugh whenever I hear people still bring up those early social media companies as evidence that social media heavyweights somehow come and go. None of those companies ever came near the global reach of FB. A quick Google search gives a peak user count of MySpace of between 75 and 100 million, for FB it's 2.7 billion. Those companies basically all existed before the vast majority of people were even on any social network, and importantly none of them had real-name policies initially. And the modern challengers you give all have some specific, much smaller niche, e.g. image galleries for Pinterest. There is simply no other social network that has ever challenged Facebook in the "connect all my friends and let me give and see life's updates" space.
- chosenbreed37 6y ago
  Good point. It may well be true that FB 2.7 billion acts as a moat. What I find interesting is that FB has had a bad rap since it reached the 1 billion mark. But instead of going the number of users has gone up. That being said many of those can't be a active though
- pmachinery 6y ago
  > None of those companies ever came near the global reach of FB. A quick Google search gives a peak user count of MySpace of between 75 and 100 million, for FB it's 2.7 billion. None of those browsers ever came near the global reach of IE. A quick Yahoo search gives a peak user count of Netscape of around 80 million, for IE it's around 800 million. Not that I believe for one second Facebook has 2.7 billion active individual human users. I've never even used it but I've signed up to about 10 accounts over the years, and everybody I know also has multiple accounts for various reasons. In fact based just on people I know, I wouldn't be surprised if already most people are just using "Facebook" for messenger.

durnygbur 6y ago

Facebook platform is evil and no one doubts it at this point. Amazon is predatory for everyone - merchants, warehouse employees, IT employees, job candidates. Google screwed the recruitment irrevocably and what's worse every minor shop attempts to copy their processes. Microsoft temporarily plays the nice guy. Then we have this whole dating thing entirely owned by one media hegemon. All together pay minuscle taxes. ...and here we are.

zkid18 6y ago
> Google screwed the recruitment irrevocably and what's worse every minor shop attempts to copy their processes. Can you elaborate on that?
ChuckNorris89 6y ago
>Then we have this whole dating thing entirely owned by one media hegemon. This scares the hell out of me that one mega conglomerate with it's algorithms has control over your procreation and deep knowledge of your sex life, all linked to your real identity. Personally, I have no dog in this fight since I gave up on online dating and got good at IRL dating(pre-COVID) but I am aware of plenty of men willing to throw their cash and intimate data at these corporations for the hope of meeting someone. Am I alone here to worry about this or am I just too paranoid? If it were up to me, I would regulate the information dating apps collect to the same standards as patients' national healthcare information is handled(in the EU; I don't know about the US/UK but I heard it's not all rozy there).
- wdr1 6y ago
  > This scares the hell out of me that one mega conglomerate with it's algorithms has control over your procreation and deep knowledge of your sex life, all linked to your real identity. Only if you give it to them?
- durnygbur 6y ago
  Wait until Tinder bans your "account" which is basically a broad fingerprint of your physical device, Google/Apple account (from the play/app store), phone number, and WiFi details. Then you can turn paranoid.

zpeti 6y ago

Out of all of FAANG, which has had new competitors emerge recently (that are potentially huge threats)? Facebook - Snap, Tiktok, Telegram, Discord, Houseparty (and we still have Twitter, Pinterest, Wechat) Google - Duckduckgo (really?) Amazon - Shopify (really?) Apple - Android (really?)

cblconfederate 6y ago
That's a strawman , having wannabe competitors does not absolve them from their anticompetitive practices. "Facebook" is a web-based social network. They weren't competitors to snap-tiktok-telegram-discord . But then they bought instagram, they bought whatsapp, they built a copycat messenger and used facebook+ig to push it to everyone, they copied snap and pushed it to everyone, they copy slack and push it to everyone, they copy tiktok to push it to everyone ... you see the pattern here, using their earlier dominant position to destroy any chance of competition.
- zpeti 6y ago
  Because - all the companies I listed above are now bankrupt and gone?
  - cblconfederate 6y ago
    they dont need to be bankrupt to be wannabees. Wordperfect and myspace still exist (plus yes, a lot of those companies would go bankrupt without their VC funding)
treis 6y ago
Amazon has competition from online stores like ebay, AliExpress, Wayfair, and Overstock. Traditional retailers like Walmart, Target, and Best buy also have online presence challenging Amazon. It's pretty trivial to cut them out of your life. They don't have much that you can't get elsewhere

helsinkiandrew 6y ago

Eventually companies become so large they can't innovate - doing something new is too big a risk (it will eat into existing revenue and may fail anyway) and too expensive (its hard to change the structure and direction of a 10's and 100's of thousands of employees). The only way they continue operating is to outsource R&D - buy companies that have proven a new business model or product, or replicate what they've done. This has been the case since VisiCalc, Wordperfect, Netscape, IBM etc. - is there an alternative for large companies?

cblconfederate 6y ago

Even if it s true, who here thinks that antimonopoly action is going to work? Instead i think they should strike their crucial market advantage: the assumption that user-generated content is free. It should not be, in fact users should be getting paid to have their content featured. A law that would prevent the use of user-generated content for ad purposes without compensating the user would help share the wealth.

kyrers 6y ago

> "The report also recommends that Congress consider any acquisition by the big tech companies to be anticompetitive unless the companies can prove that the merger would be in the public’s benefit and could not be otherwise achieved." I'm sorry, what? Two private tech companies cannot merge if they can't prove it is in the public's best interest? Am I understanding this correctly? What if the influence on public welfare is non existent or minimal, but both companies would benefit from the merger?

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
Look at your quote: it restricts it to "big tech" companies, and as nebulous as it sounds at-present I'd say it's quite easy to say which companies are "big".
- kyrers 6y ago
  Yeah, I read it correctly but am just now realizing I wrote "tech companies" instead of "big tech companies", my bad. So this is more a move to preven them from bullying smaller tech companies? I can see it from that angle, but it still seems to me that they want the power to block acquisitions. For instance, would the following acquisition/merger be allowed: a big tech company acquiring a small company, which the owner wants to sell, that does not influence public welfare?
  - diggan 6y ago
    If a big company buys another one in order to close it down, not migrate its services with the sole goal of achieving market dominance (monopoly), then yes, the government should have the power to block that acquisition as the public would be worse off with one big company being the only provider of something, rather than N companies providing something. This is why we have free markets, as we want companies to compete with each other, not absorb each other.
    - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
      > If a big company buys another one in order to close it down Apple's business model right there.

beyondcompute 6y ago

Finally there seems to be more widespread realization that large society-influencing corporations could be intrinsically not-such-a-good thing!

humanrebar 6y ago
Well, it's more that corporations aren't specially benign. Other hegemonic organizations are usually problematic, too.

ratherbeelse 6y ago

Facebook has been trying to create a monopoly since years. Whatsapp was a messenger app but now it is a part of social media. Instagram was an image sharing app, now it is a part of social media.

jakuboboza 6y ago

Guys what would you do if given monopoly status and no regulation ? Exactly the same thing.

mavsman 6y ago

> "Your only job is to get an extra minute,” the former employee told the subcommittee. “It’s immoral. They don’t ask where it’s coming from. They can monetize a minute of activity at a certain rate. So the only metric is getting another minute.” Not surprising, but a very interesting quote nonetheless.

known 6y ago

"If you don't read newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read a newspaper, you are misinformed" --Mark Twain (b. 1835) Just saying FB...