Federal Judge Rules Meta's Instagram and WhatsApp Purchases Did Not Stifle Competition (reuters.com) 25
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Meta did not illegally stifle competition when it acquired Instagram and WhatsApp. The decision marks Big Tech's first major victory against antitrust enforcement that began during President Donald Trump's first term. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission had sought to force Meta to sell or restructure the platforms to restore competition among social media networks. Meta argued it faced competitive pressure from TikTok, YouTube, and Apple's messaging app.
Nice to have enough money... (Score:3)
... that you can buy a judge that determines the course of your company.
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... that you can buy a judge that determines the course of your company.
Yeah, I'm having trouble wondering what's wrong with the universe if a judge thinks that Facebook hasn't basically obliterated all competition in social media.
YouTube is not really social media. YouTube shorts tries to be Tik Tok, and Facebook Reels tries to be Tik Tok, but they're fundamentally different things, because short-form video targets an entirely different category of people than social media and largely serves a different purpose — to entertain, not to inform.
Google/Alphabet's social medi
Re:Nice to have enough money... (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook is just more popular. That's not illegal.
It's actually more than that. For a typical website, you would be right. The problem with social media is that it is inherently social. If your friends aren't on the same site, you can't share things with them. People don't join a site that doesn't already have a lot of users, and therefore, there's an almost insurmountable barrier to entry when you end up with one or two entrenched players, in spite of it theoretically being possible to create another site.
And because Facebook is not federated, hides even public content behind a login wall, and makes sharing with non-users generally impractical, they are directly contributing to a situation where even if another company came along and created something that is better, no one would use it, because their friends and family would not be there, because they are all already on Facebook.
In much the same way that the EU basically forced Apple to open up Messages to support RCS for inter-platform communication, the only way Facebook/Instagram will ever realistically stop being a monopoly is if a government forces them to federate with other social media platforms so that you can share with your friends on other platforms. A strong antitrust judgment against Facebook would be a necessary first step towards that.
Besides, Google+ *was* better than Facebook in a lot of ways, IMO. It wasn't enough, though. I created an account, but nobody I knew was on, so I didn't ever post anything, and because people didn't ever post anything, nobody came to use it, and it ended up being a ghost town. The fact that a head-to-head competitor for Facebook emerged, backed by one of the largest companies on the planet, with a significantly better, more capable product, a more flexible sharing model, etc. and still could not successfully compete with Facebook should tell you that no, building a better product will never work.
The only way other sites "compete" is by being entirely orthogonal to Facebook, targeting largely non-overlapping demographics and largely non-overlapping sets of features. But that's not really competing. That's coexisting. I would argue that Facebook has no actual competition, except perhaps in the vague, wishy-washy "competing for eyeball time" fashion, in which case everything online and offline is a competitor.
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even if another company came along and created something that is better, no one would use it, because their friends and family would not be there, because they are all already on Facebook.
User choice, free will. You can't blame Facebook for that.
There's something called a natural monopoly. Social media is likely to be a natural monopoly, in much the same way that the phone company was a natural monopoly before it was forcibly broken up and forced to provide interconnections to other phone companies using shared standards, etc. There's not a whole lot of difference other than the phone company having a higher physical infrastructure barrier to entry.
Regardless, Facebook is not blameless. They bought Instagram, effectively consolidating the potent
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There's not a whole lot of difference other than the phone company having a higher physical infrastructure barrier to entry.
Yeah, there's a huge difference. The phone company monopoly was created by the government, through permits, exclusive contracts, restrictive rights of way, etc.
That's not actually a meaningful difference as far as antitrust law is concerned. With the possible exception of the monopoly being created by doing something illegal (which then becomes a separate violation on its own), it does not matter *how* a monopoly came to be, only that it is, and whether it causes harm to society, to customers, to other companies in the market, etc.
Telephony is still a restricted market, subject to bureaucratic red tape and other logjams that only the richest can overcome.
It's actually not. Any jacka** can buy a block of phone numbers and set up a trunk line. That's exactly why we have so much Caller I
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WhatsApp isn't just point-to-point: it has groups, which is how it was able to create its own network effect. And Apple Messages doesn't come on your phone if you have an Andro
The cancer is spreading... (Score:2)
The Meta[stasize] has infected the courts.
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Except the overwhelming majority of massive corporate consolidation happened under Obama with Obama era appointments.
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Let them fight. (Score:2)
Both of those companies deserve a fate worse than death. . . being owned by The Zuck.
Quite right (Score:2)
They legally stifled competition.
I wonder how much it cost in "campaign contributions"...
Tips (Score:2)
Seems about right (Score:3)
I don't think the US actually enforces anything approaching the spirit of robust anti-trust law now. The goalposts have been moved back so many times, they're on another field now.
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Except Apple and Alphabet got stiff'd. Meta has stronger connections, err corruptions, I guess. Rule-of-law, what's that?
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Do we care ? (Score:2)
Besides the concrete effect, do we care what judges say in these matters ? We are a banana republic run by a very incompetent mafia which intimidates or buys judges. It will take a long time to restore order and the rule of law. And the trust in the USA will never recover to it's pre-2025 levels. Never.