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

by 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.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      > Frankly it seems laughable that Facebook paid $660m for Gify in the first place. It's another vector for collecting user analytics.
      - ch4s3 4y ago
        I question the value there. Who cares that someone likes Seinfeld clips with George? Is that worth anything at all? You can get basically that data from Experian anyway without all of the hassle.
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        Maybe someone should have told Meta that when they bought Giphy!
        4y ago
- viridian 4y ago
  Can confirm, reacting with gifs is 100% a boomer thing. And when I say boomer I mean anyone born before 1995.

by LocalH 4y ago

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.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    > Frankly it seems laughable that Facebook paid $660m for Gify in the first place. It's another vector for collecting user analytics.
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      I question the value there. Who cares that someone likes Seinfeld clips with George? Is that worth anything at all? You can get basically that data from Experian anyway without all of the hassle.
      - Apocryphon 4y ago
        Maybe someone should have told Meta that when they bought Giphy!
        4y ago
viridian 4y ago
Can confirm, reacting with gifs is 100% a boomer thing. And when I say boomer I mean anyone born before 1995.