4 ms·

The phrase "cutting off the supply of gifs to rivals" may be one of the dumbest things I've ever read in my life. I honestly can't believe someone wrote that in

by ch4s3 4y ago

The phrase "cutting off the supply of gifs to rivals" may be one of the dumbest things I've ever read in my life. I honestly can't believe someone wrote that in a legal opinion. To me this smacks of our leaders, broadly, in the West being too old and too far removed from how people operate and live in the world today. This is like Lindsey Graham, who was once on the senate technology committee, admitting that he had never sent an email in 2015. Truly mind boggling.

Karunamon 4y ago
This kind of barely surface level understanding by clueless bureaucrats (remember "a series of tubes"?) is generally what you sign up for when you ask for regulation in technology. It is the reason I am usually skeptical of such calls for legislation, because the end result could be worse than what we started with.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  I'm inclined to agree. This reminds me of the anti-piracy legislation.
LocalH 4y ago
> The phrase "cutting off the supply of gifs to rivals" may be one of the dumbest things I've ever read in my life. I honestly can't believe someone wrote that in a legal opinion. I would very much doubt that was the actual wording, that's most likely a paraphrasing by the author of this article. The final report is not released yet, but according to the summary pdf linked from https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/facebook-inc-giphy-inc-merger-inquiry https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/facebook-inc-giphy-inc-merger-i... the phrasing is likely to be closer to "On this basis, we consider that Facebook would also have an incentive to foreclose its rivals from access to GIPHY."
- ch4s3 4y ago
  > On this basis, we consider that Facebook would also have an incentive to foreclose its rivals from access to GIPHY. That seems like a slightly more intelligent wording of the same bad argument to me. There’s no real limit on the supply of gifs on the internet, and they aren’t really in particularly high demand. In fact they’re already falling out of fashion with younger users. You’ll be hard pressed to find many people under 25 using them at all.
  - duckmysick 4y ago
    > You’ll be hard pressed to find many people under 25 using them at all. What do they use instead?
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      From what I've seen, text. I've heard a lot of younger folks call gifs "cringe". It seems like a dead trend, even millennials I know have mostly stopped using them.
      - duckmysick 4y ago
        It seems like we've come full circle then. Maybe we can expect text emoticons (the ones with a hyphen for a nose) making a comeback soon.
        viridian 4y ago
        They never went away, they just started being used ironically, but yeah, I do think we've already entered a post-ironic phase of text emotes :-)
  - notahacker 4y ago
    There's no real limit to the supply of gifs on the internet, and yet Meta spent $600m on a website hosting third party gifs that made almost zero revenue. I don't think they were going to get very far with arguments that nobody cares about gifs... One the other hand, the owner of Giphy absolutely does get to limit which websites get to continue displaying the gifs that several years' of their user-generated content backlinked to Giphy.com Not surprising that some bodies think the party making that decision shouldn't be Meta.
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      > One the other hand, the owner of Giphy absolutely does get to limit which websites get to continue displaying the gifs that several years' of their user-generated content backlinked to Giphy.com I guess my question would be so what? You can cache them on your own system, if you wanted. However, I doubt historical shit posts and reaction gifs have any real value to anyone. Frankly it seems laughable that Facebook paid $660m for Gify in the first place.
saurik 4y ago
I am under the impression that this is kind of true, though, in that you might think of Giphy as a massive pile of user content under dubious or illegitimate licensing, but it actually (ridiculously) is a repository of exclusively-licensed content that is contributed by such groups as motion picture companies (and which is then also what kind of led to the downfall of the concept, as the existence of Giphy and its narrow catalog of official gifs OK'd by marketing and legal departments started to feel stale).
- ch4s3 4y ago
  Gifs in the vein of gify seem like a fad that has already crested, and I'm of the opinion that regulating internet fads is an overreach.
dimmke 4y ago
I laughed so hard when I read this. This is legitimately funnier than most things that are trying to be funny like sketches/standup.
lovich 4y ago
It’s a library of content for a feature that’s considered table stakes for modern chat clients. If it wasn’t worth anything why would Facebook have paid so much for it?
- ch4s3 4y ago
  > considered table stakes for modern chat clients I'm not so sure about that. I rarely see anyone using them anymore and have read reports that usage is declining. Even if it is table stakes, nothing stops you from rendering gifs without gify integration.
  - lovich 4y ago
    Nothing stops you from starting a new service for any sort of content library. The moat is in the content creation/curation, and in this case that content is centered around gifs. If you want to get really reductive we could point towards any sort of content based business on the internet as merely moving files over http/https but I don’t think anyone would find it reasonable to compare Netflix and Kindle’s book library as competing in the same market
    - squeaky-clean 4y ago
      > Nothing stops you from starting a new service for any sort of content library. Content licensing does. Try creating an alternative streaming platform that has the entire Netflix library and see how quickly you get shut down. Facebook can't sue you if you create a rival gif service. None of the value is in their "content". All the value is in the search and ui
      - ch4s3 4y ago
        > All the value is in the search and ui I'm pretty sure that value is approximately $0.
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      Why would you even want to for gifs? The value seems super low compared to the effort. What value did gify even provide facebook? The data is probably next to worthless. Gifs in text chat seem like a fading fad, and are probably a bad user experience. The whole thing seems like a huge boondoggle, and the idea that it gives facebook any leverage anywhere is laughable.

by ch4s3 4y ago

Karunamon 4y ago

This kind of barely surface level understanding by clueless bureaucrats (remember "a series of tubes"?) is generally what you sign up for when you ask for regulation in technology. It is the reason I am usually skeptical of such calls for legislation, because the end result could be worse than what we started with.

ch4s3 4y ago
I'm inclined to agree. This reminds me of the anti-piracy legislation.

LocalH 4y ago

> The phrase "cutting off the supply of gifs to rivals" may be one of the dumbest things I've ever read in my life. I honestly can't believe someone wrote that in a legal opinion. I would very much doubt that was the actual wording, that's most likely a paraphrasing by the author of this article. The final report is not released yet, but according to the summary pdf linked from https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/facebook-inc-giphy-inc-merger-inquiry https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/facebook-inc-giphy-inc-merger-i... the phrasing is likely to be closer to "On this basis, we consider that Facebook would also have an incentive to foreclose its rivals from access to GIPHY."

ch4s3 4y ago
> On this basis, we consider that Facebook would also have an incentive to foreclose its rivals from access to GIPHY. That seems like a slightly more intelligent wording of the same bad argument to me. There’s no real limit on the supply of gifs on the internet, and they aren’t really in particularly high demand. In fact they’re already falling out of fashion with younger users. You’ll be hard pressed to find many people under 25 using them at all.
- duckmysick 4y ago
  > You’ll be hard pressed to find many people under 25 using them at all. What do they use instead?
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    From what I've seen, text. I've heard a lot of younger folks call gifs "cringe". It seems like a dead trend, even millennials I know have mostly stopped using them.
    - duckmysick 4y ago
      It seems like we've come full circle then. Maybe we can expect text emoticons (the ones with a hyphen for a nose) making a comeback soon.
      - viridian 4y ago
        They never went away, they just started being used ironically, but yeah, I do think we've already entered a post-ironic phase of text emotes :-)
- notahacker 4y ago
  There's no real limit to the supply of gifs on the internet, and yet Meta spent $600m on a website hosting third party gifs that made almost zero revenue. I don't think they were going to get very far with arguments that nobody cares about gifs... One the other hand, the owner of Giphy absolutely does get to limit which websites get to continue displaying the gifs that several years' of their user-generated content backlinked to Giphy.com Not surprising that some bodies think the party making that decision shouldn't be Meta.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    > One the other hand, the owner of Giphy absolutely does get to limit which websites get to continue displaying the gifs that several years' of their user-generated content backlinked to Giphy.com I guess my question would be so what? You can cache them on your own system, if you wanted. However, I doubt historical shit posts and reaction gifs have any real value to anyone. Frankly it seems laughable that Facebook paid $660m for Gify in the first place.

saurik 4y ago

I am under the impression that this is kind of true, though, in that you might think of Giphy as a massive pile of user content under dubious or illegitimate licensing, but it actually (ridiculously) is a repository of exclusively-licensed content that is contributed by such groups as motion picture companies (and which is then also what kind of led to the downfall of the concept, as the existence of Giphy and its narrow catalog of official gifs OK'd by marketing and legal departments started to feel stale).

ch4s3 4y ago
Gifs in the vein of gify seem like a fad that has already crested, and I'm of the opinion that regulating internet fads is an overreach.

dimmke 4y ago

I laughed so hard when I read this. This is legitimately funnier than most things that are trying to be funny like sketches/standup.

lovich 4y ago

It’s a library of content for a feature that’s considered table stakes for modern chat clients. If it wasn’t worth anything why would Facebook have paid so much for it?

ch4s3 4y ago
> considered table stakes for modern chat clients I'm not so sure about that. I rarely see anyone using them anymore and have read reports that usage is declining. Even if it is table stakes, nothing stops you from rendering gifs without gify integration.
- lovich 4y ago
  Nothing stops you from starting a new service for any sort of content library. The moat is in the content creation/curation, and in this case that content is centered around gifs. If you want to get really reductive we could point towards any sort of content based business on the internet as merely moving files over http/https but I don’t think anyone would find it reasonable to compare Netflix and Kindle’s book library as competing in the same market
  - squeaky-clean 4y ago
    > Nothing stops you from starting a new service for any sort of content library. Content licensing does. Try creating an alternative streaming platform that has the entire Netflix library and see how quickly you get shut down. Facebook can't sue you if you create a rival gif service. None of the value is in their "content". All the value is in the search and ui
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      > All the value is in the search and ui I'm pretty sure that value is approximately $0.
  - ch4s3 4y ago
    Why would you even want to for gifs? The value seems super low compared to the effort. What value did gify even provide facebook? The data is probably next to worthless. Gifs in text chat seem like a fading fad, and are probably a bad user experience. The whole thing seems like a huge boondoggle, and the idea that it gives facebook any leverage anywhere is laughable.