4 ms·

Honestly I don’t think this will end well for the regulator. I am not a lawyer, but I am guessing that if Facebook blocks giphy usage in the UK there is very l

Honestly I don’t think this will end well for the regulator. I am not a lawyer, but I am guessing that if Facebook blocks giphy usage in the UK there is very little the UK regulator can do to them. I see that as the likeliest scenario as they won’t want to sell giphy. This will only make the regulator look foolish. The average person won’t understand why Facebook owning giphy is a problem (it’s not a social network) but they will be annoyed when they lose access to giphy in slack, WhatsApp and other platforms that use it in.

klelatti 5y ago
So FB harms their UK business and gets a big fine. UK FB goes without GIFs - not a huge deal!
- danuker 5y ago
  > without GIFs I'd say they're not GIFs, they're embedded mini-websites with their own tracking cookies and JS and whatnot. If only they were GIFs.
  - klelatti 5y ago
    Good point!
  - viro 5y ago
    thats not how gifs work ffs
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      Giphy is much more than a GIF though. Here's a link for example: https://media0.giphy.com/media/mlvseq9yvZhba/giphy.gif https://media0.giphy.com/media/mlvseq9yvZhba/giphy.gif If you load it in a browser you get an entire HTML page full of spyware - it is not a GIF. They're detecting the user agent and deciding whether to send spyware or not - only curl'ing the link gives you the raw GIF by the looks of it.
michaelt 5y ago
> This will only make the regulator look foolish. I'd say the opposite: If a regulator can't regulate something as trivial as a gif sharing website we might as well shut down the regulator, because they can't do shit.
- erulabs 5y ago
  The presupposition there is that regulating something trivial should be easy, and regulating something important should be hard. I would suggest exactly the opposite is what we should aim for.
morelish 5y ago
What? How will blocking giphy in the UK help? From the regulator “ Facebook’s acquisition of Giphy would reduce competition between social media platforms and that the deal has already removed Giphy as a potential challenger in the display advertising market” So the finding is Facebook has too much control in the market. Blocking giphy just shows how much control they would have if the acquisition is completed. If anything, blocking giphy makes it worse. Will this pan out well for the regulator? Who knows, who cares. But it shows if your business gets a bad reputation like Meta has, you’ll find regulators starting to kick you about.
lvs 5y ago
> I am not a lawyer ... This will only make the regulator look foolish. Look in a mirror. Evading the regulator would require exiting the UK market entirely.
avianlyric 5y ago
How does blocking Giphy in the UK remediate the situation? If they don't want to sell Giphy, then I imagine the regulator will start fining them and seizing UK based assets, including any revenue they derive from UK companies, or via UK based banks and payment processors.
funshed 5y ago
Blocking giphy does not solve anything, just means more fines or other action by the regulator.

klelatti 5y ago

So FB harms their UK business and gets a big fine. UK FB goes without GIFs - not a huge deal!

danuker 5y ago
> without GIFs I'd say they're not GIFs, they're embedded mini-websites with their own tracking cookies and JS and whatnot. If only they were GIFs.
- klelatti 5y ago
  Good point!
- viro 5y ago
  thats not how gifs work ffs
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    Giphy is much more than a GIF though. Here's a link for example: https://media0.giphy.com/media/mlvseq9yvZhba/giphy.gif https://media0.giphy.com/media/mlvseq9yvZhba/giphy.gif If you load it in a browser you get an entire HTML page full of spyware - it is not a GIF. They're detecting the user agent and deciding whether to send spyware or not - only curl'ing the link gives you the raw GIF by the looks of it.

michaelt 5y ago

> This will only make the regulator look foolish. I'd say the opposite: If a regulator can't regulate something as trivial as a gif sharing website we might as well shut down the regulator, because they can't do shit.

erulabs 5y ago
The presupposition there is that regulating something trivial should be easy, and regulating something important should be hard. I would suggest exactly the opposite is what we should aim for.

morelish 5y ago

What? How will blocking giphy in the UK help? From the regulator “ Facebook’s acquisition of Giphy would reduce competition between social media platforms and that the deal has already removed Giphy as a potential challenger in the display advertising market” So the finding is Facebook has too much control in the market. Blocking giphy just shows how much control they would have if the acquisition is completed. If anything, blocking giphy makes it worse. Will this pan out well for the regulator? Who knows, who cares. But it shows if your business gets a bad reputation like Meta has, you’ll find regulators starting to kick you about.

lvs 5y ago

> I am not a lawyer ... This will only make the regulator look foolish. Look in a mirror. Evading the regulator would require exiting the UK market entirely.

avianlyric 5y ago

How does blocking Giphy in the UK remediate the situation? If they don't want to sell Giphy, then I imagine the regulator will start fining them and seizing UK based assets, including any revenue they derive from UK companies, or via UK based banks and payment processors.

funshed 5y ago

Blocking giphy does not solve anything, just means more fines or other action by the regulator.