8 ms·

Monopoly of what? Some other social networks I use every day or so: Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok and various forums and communities like this one, which in my mind

by nickpp 6y ago

Monopoly of what? Some other social networks I use every day or so: Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok and various forums and communities like this one, which in my mind are pretty similar to a social network. And since WhatsApp is a chat app, how about all the other chat apps I am using? iMessage, Slack, Teams. Does this action has any merit or is it just the usual political posturing and games?

chc 6y ago
Could the average Facebook user readily replace their use of Facebook with LinkedIn or TikTok? I am not a big user of any of those products, but I have the distinct impression that the answer is no.
- CPLX 6y ago
  The revenue generating customers of Facebook are not the social network's users.
- fishtacos 6y ago
  From the FTC.gov[1]: "The antitrust laws prohibit conduct by a single firm that unreasonably restrains competition by creating or maintaining monopoly power. Most Section 2 claims involve the conduct of a firm with a leading market position, although Section 2 of the Sherman Act also bans attempts to monopolize and conspiracies to monopolize. As a first step, courts ask if the firm has "monopoly power" in any market. This requires in-depth study of the products sold by the leading firm, and any alternative products consumers may turn to if the firm attempted to raise prices. Then courts ask if that leading position was gained or maintained through improper conduct—that is, something other than merely having a better product, superior management or historic accident. Here courts evaluate the anticompetitive effects of the conduct and its procompetitive justifications." Does FB unreasonably restrain competition? (My answer is no) Does FB have an alternative? (Mewe/Parler/Gab etc. - Mewe being the most direct alternative) Then courts ask if that leading position was gained or maintained through improper conduct—that is, something other than merely having a better product, superior management or historic accident. - I'd say no. I don't see anything this lawsuit stands on. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
  - jsinai 6y ago
    The lawsuit is about Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram effectively roping in users from other platforms into their advertising ecosystem. The monetisation of your data in exchange for adverts can be seen as the cost of the platforms. By aggressively increasing advertising on Instagram and attempting to take steps to monetize WhatsApp, Facebook are raising prices. As far as I understand the question is whether it is their abuse of monopoly power that allows them to do this. For a time people had few alternatives to Instagram or Facebook, which were effectively in competition with each other. This meant that has Facebook monetised your data more, ie increase prices, users were forced to pay if they wanted to stay on a popular social network. TikTok is a recent phenomenon. Secondly it is not enough to consider the UX cost of switching to another platform but also the network effect. Is Mewe/Parker/Gab really a substitute for me if I don’t enjoy the network effects I have on Facebook or Instagram?
    - fishtacos 6y ago
      "The lawsuit is about Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram effectively roping in users from other platforms into their advertising ecosystem" I don't use Instagram and have used Whatsapp prior to FB acquiring it. There has been no "roping in" of any sort that I have noticed, and while my experience is clearly anecdotal, there doesn't seem to be anything to link to that that I've observed. Perhaps I'm naive, but it would be good to see something concrete in this regard. "The monetisation of your data in exchange for adverts can be seen as the cost of the platforms. By aggressively increasing advertising on Instagram and attempting to take steps to monetize WhatsApp, Facebook are raising prices. As far as I understand the question is whether it is their abuse of monopoly power that allows them to do this." I guess I would call that profit-making, not "aggressive monetization". The alternatives exist and they are all easily accessible. Put yourself in their shoes - would you run a non-profitable enterprise? At what cost? Let's not lose touch with the fact that this is still a capitalistic economy.
    - pbourke 6y ago
      > The monetisation of your data in exchange for adverts can be seen as the cost of the platforms. It will be interesting to see the government prove this for Facebook while ignoring the 800lb gorillas of Google/Doubleclick or Amazon’s ad network.
- mike00632 6y ago
  This is anecdotal but I started using TikTok during the pandemic and it has greatly reduced my use of Facebook. Mindlessly scrolling the TikTok ForYouPage is noticably superior to scrolling the Facebook feed
paulpauper 6y ago
Likely just posturing and games. Looking at the share price, the market is not concerned. This is not at all like the DOJ suing MSFT in 1998. Likely FB will settle or it will be forgotten or overturned by incoming Biden admiration.
- jb1991 6y ago
  Forgotten?
SkyPuncher 6y ago
I'll give an easy example: Requiring users to have a Facebook account to use their Oculus device.
- closeparen 6y ago
  Having a Facebook account is a symbolic/emotional injury to a tech contrarian, but I don’t see the courts particularly caring about that. It’s not like you have to actually spend any time or money on it.
  - rhizome 6y ago
    Is that actually a criteria in antitrust?
    - closeparen 6y ago
      Antitrust could care if other social networks were unfairly disadvantaged because everyone was using the Facebook account that came with their Oculus. Having an entry in Facebook’s users table is a long way from using Facebook for your social networking to the exclusion of competitors.
jb1991 6y ago
> iMessage, Slack, Teams These don’t really compete with WhatsApp, which is cross platform, not tied to an employer, doesn’t require an invitation, subscription, friend network, setup to use, among other things.
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  No, they do compete with WhatsApp, on the basis of those points of differentiation.
  - jsinai 6y ago
    Whatsapp has near universal market penetration globally, especially in countries where most people can’t afford iPhones and use iMessage. Even in countries where iPhones are ubiquitous the cross-platform nature of Whatsapp and the fact that everyone from your friend to your grandmother is on it, makes it dominant. Yes you could use Slack to message your friends like you would on Whatsapp. The experience won’t be the same, and setup will be a hurdle. But would you use Whatsapp to replace Slack at work? I think the term “compete” is used very broadly here.
    - patothon 6y ago
      > Whatsapp has near universal market penetration globally, especially in countries where most people can’t afford iPhones and use iMessage. do you have data to back up that claim?
      - jsinai 6y ago
        Fair point, I should have provided some sort of link. See the graph showing Top Messaging Apps by Country. South America, Africa, Asia is mostly Whatsapp. If you combine FB Messenger and Whatsapp, then FB controls most of the messaging market share in most regions, with a few notable exceptions like WeChat in China. https://www.similarweb.com/corp/blog/mobile-messaging-app-map-january-2019/ https://www.similarweb.com/corp/blog/mobile-messaging-app-ma... And as an alternative source: https://www.messengerpeople.com/global-messenger-usage-statistics/ https://www.messengerpeople.com/global-messenger-usage-stati...
burtonator 6y ago
The term 'monopoly' is confusing because the pedantic definition is that there's only one player but this isn't the legal definition. It's not actually illegal to be a monopoly but to illegally abuse your market position leading to anti-competitive behavior. Unfortunately, it's never enforce properly as the FTC doesn't have any teeth. I think the only way we're going to solve this is to actually TAX these companies appropriately. This is one of the major reasons they metastasize.
- pbourke 6y ago
  This case seems like a really stupid way to try to do some consumer protection versus writing laws that do it directly. I’m still confused as to which “market” is harmed: advertisers? Facebook users? other social networks? If the market is Facebook users, what’s the precedent in asserting this level of harm to a market that consists substantially of non-paying users of an inessential service?
  - lambda_obrien 6y ago
    > an inessential service Several people will say, "try not having a Facebook account and participating in X," where X is some mandatory part of your life, such as your children's schooling, keeping up with relatives, job-related stuff, social clubs or organizations, etc. It might not be impossible, but it's an undue burden in some cases.
    - GreenWatermelon 6y ago
      Yup, pretty much. It's impossible to keep up with college affairs without Facebook, as a Facebook group is the primary method of communication and organization. It was even worse before the pandemic, since there were no MS Teams or Google Classrooms for each subject. If an assignment was released, it was the representative's Job to male sure it reaches everyone. Guess what did they use? Oh the assignment is delayed? TA announces on Facebook group. Midterms Time table? College Facebook page. All college-wide announcements were made through its Facebook page. Facebook is practically essential for college life. You could say it's the College's fault, but that's not our discussion. What's important is that I can't delete my Facebook without causing a lot of pain in the ass for myself.
CPLX 6y ago
This is a constant misconception in these discussions but antitrust litigation and penalties don't require there to be a monopoly. The allegation here is anti-competitive behavior. There are plenty of things you an do that are anti-competitive and illegal without actually achieving a monopoly. The classic example is price fixing but there are many others. Unsurprisingly, the actual linked article in this thread spells out these allegations of anti-competitive actions on Facebook's part.
DLay 6y ago
A monopoly over your personal relationships, I suppose. Twitter, TikTok, and HN all thrive on strangers communicating with each other.
rhizome 6y ago
You might read up on the Trusts era that brought about the Sherman Act[1]. Trains? Horse carriages and wagons were still available, not to mention boats. However, these are not equal modes of travel, though they are "similar" in that they are transportation, and so it's not about internet-based communities per se. It's the fact that Facebook is "Facebook" that is the problem. That you can't imagine Facebook's equal being viable in any way, other than to mention the wagons and horses of the internet. This is not to comment on a level of sophistication, but features. What can you sell on TikTok through TikTok? It's a category error to equate them with FB. Facebook has cultivated this state of affairs, and they have gone out of their way to interfere with the success of companies it views as competition.[2] This is even before we get to the use of Facebook to create negative externalities, for which it provides powerful tools. On purpose. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act_of_1890#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act_of_1890#... 2. https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/29/in-antitrust-hearing-zuckerberg-admits-facebook-has-copied-its-competition/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/29/in-antitrust-hearing-zucke...
- chillacy 6y ago
  By this definition it seems like every social media app, by virtue of it being different, is a monopoly of its own? Eg: Twitter is “Twitter” that is the problem.
  - notimetorelax 6y ago
    If they interfere with the competition, that is.
  - 8K832d7tNmiQ 6y ago
    Basically, yeah.
  - rhizome 6y ago
    I don't understand, are you saying something like "Oreo has a monopoly on being Oreos?" If so, that's a pretty naive and narrow conception. In other words, "no, that isn't the problem."
kieranmaine 6y ago
Maybe it's to do with social network advertising? (https://marketingland.com/almost-70-of-digital-ad-spending-going-to-google-facebook-amazon-says-analyst-firm-262565 https://marketingland.com/almost-70-of-digital-ad-spending-g...) I have no knowledge in this area, so just throwing it out there for more informed minds to fill in the blanks.
theptip 6y ago
From the article, the claim is: > illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly "Monopoly" is a term that's fairly overloaded/misunderstood; while in economics refers specifically to a situation where there is a single supplier for a good/service (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Market_structures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Market_structures), in the legal definition "monopoly power" is defined much more loosely, as "the power to control prices or exclude competition" in the US (e.g. https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-2 https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-...), and there are complex tests for monopoly power in the EU including >50% market share which I'm less familiar with. I think common discourse tends to interpret monopoly in the economics sense, which leads to confusion when we look at antitrust enforcement like this. Not to mention that under antitrust laws you don't even need to have (loosely defined) "monopoly power" to be engaging in illegal anticompetitive behaviors. Specifically analyzing those competitors: LinkedIn is a business social network, not a personal social network as they define it. Forums are not "social networks" as commonly defined (graph of relationships). Twitter is a competitor, but they have far less market share, e.g. see https://www.t4.ai/industry/social-media-market-share#:~:text=The%20leading%20platform%20in%20the,with%202%25%20social%20media%20market https://www.t4.ai/industry/social-media-market-share#:~:text... which puts Facebook at 69% of social media users, (a monopoly in most definitions), while twitter is at ~8%. Somewhat confounding because users can be on both, but the magnitudes are what's important. TikTok is a valid competitor too, but again they don't have nearly as dominant a position as Facebook <25% of FB's MAU according to https://datareportal.com/social-media-users?rq=tiktok https://datareportal.com/social-media-users?rq=tiktok. I think Ben Thompson has the best analysis of antitrust as it pertains to Facebook, as he deeply understands the market dynamics that give Facebook and other large tech companies their market power, e.g. see https://stratechery.com/2017/manifestos-and-monopolies/ https://stratechery.com/2017/manifestos-and-monopolies/.
madeofpalk 6y ago
> Monopoly of what? "Social advertising". https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1336762362821443585 https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1336762362821443585
bagacrap 6y ago
WhatsApp is a social network because it has stories.

by nickpp 6y ago

chc 6y ago

Could the average Facebook user readily replace their use of Facebook with LinkedIn or TikTok? I am not a big user of any of those products, but I have the distinct impression that the answer is no.

CPLX 6y ago
The revenue generating customers of Facebook are not the social network's users.
fishtacos 6y ago
From the FTC.gov[1]: "The antitrust laws prohibit conduct by a single firm that unreasonably restrains competition by creating or maintaining monopoly power. Most Section 2 claims involve the conduct of a firm with a leading market position, although Section 2 of the Sherman Act also bans attempts to monopolize and conspiracies to monopolize. As a first step, courts ask if the firm has "monopoly power" in any market. This requires in-depth study of the products sold by the leading firm, and any alternative products consumers may turn to if the firm attempted to raise prices. Then courts ask if that leading position was gained or maintained through improper conduct—that is, something other than merely having a better product, superior management or historic accident. Here courts evaluate the anticompetitive effects of the conduct and its procompetitive justifications." Does FB unreasonably restrain competition? (My answer is no) Does FB have an alternative? (Mewe/Parler/Gab etc. - Mewe being the most direct alternative) Then courts ask if that leading position was gained or maintained through improper conduct—that is, something other than merely having a better product, superior management or historic accident. - I'd say no. I don't see anything this lawsuit stands on. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
- jsinai 6y ago
  The lawsuit is about Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram effectively roping in users from other platforms into their advertising ecosystem. The monetisation of your data in exchange for adverts can be seen as the cost of the platforms. By aggressively increasing advertising on Instagram and attempting to take steps to monetize WhatsApp, Facebook are raising prices. As far as I understand the question is whether it is their abuse of monopoly power that allows them to do this. For a time people had few alternatives to Instagram or Facebook, which were effectively in competition with each other. This meant that has Facebook monetised your data more, ie increase prices, users were forced to pay if they wanted to stay on a popular social network. TikTok is a recent phenomenon. Secondly it is not enough to consider the UX cost of switching to another platform but also the network effect. Is Mewe/Parker/Gab really a substitute for me if I don’t enjoy the network effects I have on Facebook or Instagram?
  - fishtacos 6y ago
    "The lawsuit is about Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram effectively roping in users from other platforms into their advertising ecosystem" I don't use Instagram and have used Whatsapp prior to FB acquiring it. There has been no "roping in" of any sort that I have noticed, and while my experience is clearly anecdotal, there doesn't seem to be anything to link to that that I've observed. Perhaps I'm naive, but it would be good to see something concrete in this regard. "The monetisation of your data in exchange for adverts can be seen as the cost of the platforms. By aggressively increasing advertising on Instagram and attempting to take steps to monetize WhatsApp, Facebook are raising prices. As far as I understand the question is whether it is their abuse of monopoly power that allows them to do this." I guess I would call that profit-making, not "aggressive monetization". The alternatives exist and they are all easily accessible. Put yourself in their shoes - would you run a non-profitable enterprise? At what cost? Let's not lose touch with the fact that this is still a capitalistic economy.
  - pbourke 6y ago
    > The monetisation of your data in exchange for adverts can be seen as the cost of the platforms. It will be interesting to see the government prove this for Facebook while ignoring the 800lb gorillas of Google/Doubleclick or Amazon’s ad network.
mike00632 6y ago
This is anecdotal but I started using TikTok during the pandemic and it has greatly reduced my use of Facebook. Mindlessly scrolling the TikTok ForYouPage is noticably superior to scrolling the Facebook feed

paulpauper 6y ago

Likely just posturing and games. Looking at the share price, the market is not concerned. This is not at all like the DOJ suing MSFT in 1998. Likely FB will settle or it will be forgotten or overturned by incoming Biden admiration.

jb1991 6y ago
Forgotten?

SkyPuncher 6y ago

I'll give an easy example: Requiring users to have a Facebook account to use their Oculus device.

closeparen 6y ago
Having a Facebook account is a symbolic/emotional injury to a tech contrarian, but I don’t see the courts particularly caring about that. It’s not like you have to actually spend any time or money on it.
- rhizome 6y ago
  Is that actually a criteria in antitrust?
  - closeparen 6y ago
    Antitrust could care if other social networks were unfairly disadvantaged because everyone was using the Facebook account that came with their Oculus. Having an entry in Facebook’s users table is a long way from using Facebook for your social networking to the exclusion of competitors.

jb1991 6y ago

> iMessage, Slack, Teams These don’t really compete with WhatsApp, which is cross platform, not tied to an employer, doesn’t require an invitation, subscription, friend network, setup to use, among other things.

jdminhbg 6y ago
No, they do compete with WhatsApp, on the basis of those points of differentiation.
- jsinai 6y ago
  Whatsapp has near universal market penetration globally, especially in countries where most people can’t afford iPhones and use iMessage. Even in countries where iPhones are ubiquitous the cross-platform nature of Whatsapp and the fact that everyone from your friend to your grandmother is on it, makes it dominant. Yes you could use Slack to message your friends like you would on Whatsapp. The experience won’t be the same, and setup will be a hurdle. But would you use Whatsapp to replace Slack at work? I think the term “compete” is used very broadly here.
  - patothon 6y ago
    > Whatsapp has near universal market penetration globally, especially in countries where most people can’t afford iPhones and use iMessage. do you have data to back up that claim?
    - jsinai 6y ago
      Fair point, I should have provided some sort of link. See the graph showing Top Messaging Apps by Country. South America, Africa, Asia is mostly Whatsapp. If you combine FB Messenger and Whatsapp, then FB controls most of the messaging market share in most regions, with a few notable exceptions like WeChat in China. https://www.similarweb.com/corp/blog/mobile-messaging-app-map-january-2019/ https://www.similarweb.com/corp/blog/mobile-messaging-app-ma... And as an alternative source: https://www.messengerpeople.com/global-messenger-usage-statistics/ https://www.messengerpeople.com/global-messenger-usage-stati...

burtonator 6y ago

The term 'monopoly' is confusing because the pedantic definition is that there's only one player but this isn't the legal definition. It's not actually illegal to be a monopoly but to illegally abuse your market position leading to anti-competitive behavior. Unfortunately, it's never enforce properly as the FTC doesn't have any teeth. I think the only way we're going to solve this is to actually TAX these companies appropriately. This is one of the major reasons they metastasize.

pbourke 6y ago
This case seems like a really stupid way to try to do some consumer protection versus writing laws that do it directly. I’m still confused as to which “market” is harmed: advertisers? Facebook users? other social networks? If the market is Facebook users, what’s the precedent in asserting this level of harm to a market that consists substantially of non-paying users of an inessential service?
- lambda_obrien 6y ago
  > an inessential service Several people will say, "try not having a Facebook account and participating in X," where X is some mandatory part of your life, such as your children's schooling, keeping up with relatives, job-related stuff, social clubs or organizations, etc. It might not be impossible, but it's an undue burden in some cases.
  - GreenWatermelon 6y ago
    Yup, pretty much. It's impossible to keep up with college affairs without Facebook, as a Facebook group is the primary method of communication and organization. It was even worse before the pandemic, since there were no MS Teams or Google Classrooms for each subject. If an assignment was released, it was the representative's Job to male sure it reaches everyone. Guess what did they use? Oh the assignment is delayed? TA announces on Facebook group. Midterms Time table? College Facebook page. All college-wide announcements were made through its Facebook page. Facebook is practically essential for college life. You could say it's the College's fault, but that's not our discussion. What's important is that I can't delete my Facebook without causing a lot of pain in the ass for myself.

CPLX 6y ago

This is a constant misconception in these discussions but antitrust litigation and penalties don't require there to be a monopoly. The allegation here is anti-competitive behavior. There are plenty of things you an do that are anti-competitive and illegal without actually achieving a monopoly. The classic example is price fixing but there are many others. Unsurprisingly, the actual linked article in this thread spells out these allegations of anti-competitive actions on Facebook's part.

DLay 6y ago

A monopoly over your personal relationships, I suppose. Twitter, TikTok, and HN all thrive on strangers communicating with each other.

rhizome 6y ago

You might read up on the Trusts era that brought about the Sherman Act[1]. Trains? Horse carriages and wagons were still available, not to mention boats. However, these are not equal modes of travel, though they are "similar" in that they are transportation, and so it's not about internet-based communities per se. It's the fact that Facebook is "Facebook" that is the problem. That you can't imagine Facebook's equal being viable in any way, other than to mention the wagons and horses of the internet. This is not to comment on a level of sophistication, but features. What can you sell on TikTok through TikTok? It's a category error to equate them with FB. Facebook has cultivated this state of affairs, and they have gone out of their way to interfere with the success of companies it views as competition.[2] This is even before we get to the use of Facebook to create negative externalities, for which it provides powerful tools. On purpose. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act_of_1890#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act_of_1890#... 2. https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/29/in-antitrust-hearing-zuckerberg-admits-facebook-has-copied-its-competition/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/29/in-antitrust-hearing-zucke...

chillacy 6y ago
By this definition it seems like every social media app, by virtue of it being different, is a monopoly of its own? Eg: Twitter is “Twitter” that is the problem.
- notimetorelax 6y ago
  If they interfere with the competition, that is.
- 8K832d7tNmiQ 6y ago
  Basically, yeah.
- rhizome 6y ago
  I don't understand, are you saying something like "Oreo has a monopoly on being Oreos?" If so, that's a pretty naive and narrow conception. In other words, "no, that isn't the problem."

kieranmaine 6y ago

Maybe it's to do with social network advertising? (https://marketingland.com/almost-70-of-digital-ad-spending-going-to-google-facebook-amazon-says-analyst-firm-262565 https://marketingland.com/almost-70-of-digital-ad-spending-g...) I have no knowledge in this area, so just throwing it out there for more informed minds to fill in the blanks.

theptip 6y ago

From the article, the claim is: > illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly "Monopoly" is a term that's fairly overloaded/misunderstood; while in economics refers specifically to a situation where there is a single supplier for a good/service (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Market_structures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Market_structures), in the legal definition "monopoly power" is defined much more loosely, as "the power to control prices or exclude competition" in the US (e.g. https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-2 https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-...), and there are complex tests for monopoly power in the EU including >50% market share which I'm less familiar with. I think common discourse tends to interpret monopoly in the economics sense, which leads to confusion when we look at antitrust enforcement like this. Not to mention that under antitrust laws you don't even need to have (loosely defined) "monopoly power" to be engaging in illegal anticompetitive behaviors. Specifically analyzing those competitors: LinkedIn is a business social network, not a personal social network as they define it. Forums are not "social networks" as commonly defined (graph of relationships). Twitter is a competitor, but they have far less market share, e.g. see https://www.t4.ai/industry/social-media-market-share#:~:text=The%20leading%20platform%20in%20the,with%202%25%20social%20media%20market https://www.t4.ai/industry/social-media-market-share#:~:text... which puts Facebook at 69% of social media users, (a monopoly in most definitions), while twitter is at ~8%. Somewhat confounding because users can be on both, but the magnitudes are what's important. TikTok is a valid competitor too, but again they don't have nearly as dominant a position as Facebook <25% of FB's MAU according to https://datareportal.com/social-media-users?rq=tiktok https://datareportal.com/social-media-users?rq=tiktok. I think Ben Thompson has the best analysis of antitrust as it pertains to Facebook, as he deeply understands the market dynamics that give Facebook and other large tech companies their market power, e.g. see https://stratechery.com/2017/manifestos-and-monopolies/ https://stratechery.com/2017/manifestos-and-monopolies/.

madeofpalk 6y ago

> Monopoly of what? "Social advertising". https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1336762362821443585 https://twitter.com/CaseyNewton/status/1336762362821443585

bagacrap 6y ago

WhatsApp is a social network because it has stories.