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Teddy

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,288
Break them up!

Facebook knew this was coming eventually. That's why they've been working so hard lately to weld Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram together. They want to be able to say in court that they can't possibly separate the services from each other.

Yeah Facebook has been integrating them for a while. I think claiming it technology isn't possible won't really work on judges though if they don't understand exactly how the software works.

Can they split off marketplace too? I recently deleted my Facebook and Instagram and I hate how it's starting to replace Craigslist for buying local stuff.

This is a good suggestion for something else Facebook should split off. Leave Marketplace stuff to Ebay and Craigslist.
 

jelly

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
33,841
About time, destroy them.

I fear Facebook are way too powerful and could even fight this well. Imagine if they got caught doing blackmail, they must know everything.
 

Burli

Member
Nov 7, 2017
402
Please, please, please make them divest Instagram, it's been a POS since they consumed it.

The irony of this all is that I can imagine most people will welcome this lawsuit, and the vast majority of those people will also still be using Facebook products. If that isn't evidence of a monopoly I don't know what is.
 

King Kingo

Banned
Dec 3, 2019
7,656
d00.gif


how is it possible to bring suit on a social media platform on antitrust grounds? nobody's making anybody use facebook

The monetisation made by Instagram and WhatsApp goes to Facebook. The data stored by Instagram and WhatsApp is also managed by Facebook.

You see the problem here?
 

jelly

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
33,841
If there was another social network they could buy I'm sure they would gobble them up.
 

Eoin

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,103
Why was there so much disagreement about Warren's "break up big tech companies" plans in the primaries if there's actually this much support?
Though I was relatively happy to see that kind of idea on Warren's list of policies, one important distinction here is that her plan was not to break them up via antitrust (correctly so, as it is not a process that a US President can initiate or control). Her plan was to break them up legislatively. Much of the criticism that she received was not that nuanced, but there is some room for the opinion that breaking up companies via antitrust is fine but breaking up companies via legislation is not fine.

I feel like US awareness of consumer rights and regulated capitalism to keep competition going is at an all time low.
I think it was lower back during the Microsoft case. There were so many people just parroting the line that the government shouldn't be punishing a successful business, or saying that Microsoft couldn't be a monopoly because other products existed, or even disputing the idea that governments had the power to impose restrictions on businesses. There's still a lot of ignorance today but there does seem to be a slightly wider knowledge of the basic points of antitrust.

What case does Facebook have to justify buying Instagram and WhatsApp? It's such a blatant monopoly I don't know how they don't get broken up
Finding some justification that would be accepted in a court setting is going to be difficult for them, because if they had some kind of incontestable evidence that those purchases were just standard business they'd have presented that during the investigation. Anything they put forward in the case would need to not only need to make their case but also needs to match the established history of the investigation. They'll likely struggle with that.

Yeah Facebook has been integrating them for a while. I think claiming it technology isn't possible won't really work on judges though if they don't understand exactly how the software works.
Yes, if the technology is a difficulty the legal process won't stop for that. If the decision is to break up Facebook then the choice for Facebook will be to cooperate to make that process work as smoothly as possible given the technological difficulties, or to stand back and let the process be dictated to them, which could result in one or more of the resulting businesses being unfeasible in the long term. Either way they'd still be getting broken up.
 

BriGuy

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,275
Hopefully I won't have to throw away my Rift S in a year. Never had a Facebook account, never going to get one.
 

ash32121

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,563
split Instagram and WhatsApp, if possible, if possible also split the Marketplace. Hang Facebook dry.
 

Avitus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,898
They should absolutely lose Instagram and WhatsApp at a minimum

How did 4 red states miss the boat on this?
 

hephaestus

Member
Oct 28, 2017
673
Couldn't Facebook just take the pieces of Instagram and WhatsApp that they want, then sell off the shell of those companies to investment groups that will just stack debt on them and declare bankruptcy? Just like toyrus?
 

Eoin

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,103
Couldn't Facebook just take the pieces of Instagram and WhatsApp that they want, then sell off the shell of those companies to investment groups that will just stack debt on them and declare bankruptcy? Just like toyrus?
Only if they want to get the kind of fine where the authorities start off by writing down nine zeroes and then deciding what number they want to put in front of them.
 

hephaestus

Member
Oct 28, 2017
673
Only if they want to get the kind of fine where the authorities start off by writing down nine zeroes and then deciding what number they want to put in front of them.

Fair enough, I have no idea how this all works. Just to me it seems like most tech companies are just names. Since there is no real physical location like oil or railroad. I would have figured it would be easy just to keep the top talent, "fill" the other companies with your lowest employees and sell them off.
 

Kasumin

Member
Nov 19, 2017
1,929
reading the FTC suit. Zuckerburgs own words are so fucking damning.

I'm curious as to what he said, exactly. Having read about how he handled their acquisition of Instagram, though... I can guess the general sentiment.

The integration plan involves building their mechanics into our products rather than directly integrating their products if that makes sense. . . . [O]ne way of looking at this is that what we're really buying is time. Even if some new competitors spring[] up, buying Instagram, Path, Foursquare, etc now will give us a year or more to integrate their dynamics before anyone can get close to their scale again. Within that time, if we incorporate the social mechanics they were using, those new products won't get much traction since we'll already have their mechanics deployed at scale

Nevermind, saw this in your later post. So blatant, lol.
 
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Avitus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,898
Fair enough, I have no idea how this all works. Just to me it seems like most tech companies are just names. Since there is no real physical location like oil or railroad. I would have figured it would be easy just to keep the top talent, "fill" the other companies with your lowest employees and sell them off.

The brand has the market share. FB would also be barred from simply creating another identical service or maintaining one.
 

Eoin

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,103
Fair enough, I have no idea how this all works. Just to me it seems like most tech companies are just names. Since there is no real physical location like oil or railroad. I would have figured it would be easy just to keep the top talent, "fill" the other companies with your lowest employees and sell them off.
To some extent this is a real problem. It will not be easy for Facebook to split out an entity called "Instagram" that looks and acts like Instagram and runs independently of Facebook. If they were left completely to their own efforts to comply with an instruction to split out Instagram and Whatsapp, they might be tempted to play some kind of corporate shell game.

However, they won't be left to their own efforts. If there's a legal case that results in an order for them to break up, that'll be a monitored process and the people monitoring it will have visibility of the corporate structure of Facebook and the new companies before and after the splits. They'll also know roughly what percentage of Faebook's technical resources were devoted to Instagram and Whatsapp (accurately defining that may be difficult, but they will at least very broadly know the minimum level of resources the new companies would need, so would know if Facebook tried to split off less than that).

There'd likely also be significantly more internal motivation to make the split work than you might expect. The new companies would create their own corporate hierarchies, meaning there'd be promotion opportunities for many people. Even within Facebook's higher levels, by the time the process came to an end (which could be years from now including appeals etc) executives would view the experience as painful and want to get it over with as quickly as possible with the minimum potential for further legal problems. There'd be very solid reasons to want to make the split work out on each side of the split.
 

Deleted member 49482

User requested account closure
Banned
Nov 8, 2018
3,302
This would be huge for consumers, especially if similar actions were taken against some of the other Big Tech companies. But not only that, an antitrust ruling such as this would hopefully have a chilling effect, at least for a while, on these tech companies buying out competition and using monopolistic powers to move vertically and horizontally into related businesses.
 

bigmit37

Member
Oct 27, 2017
393
Florida
How would you break up apple?

Decouple software and hardware two separate entities.
Both are way too big and offer too many advantages. Their ecosystem is Only getting bigger and bigger with more iot products.


Some personal thoughts:

Additionally APP store should to be more open to various different types of app stores.
They can have their own App Store which they guarneeyes high quality, but its need to be opened to other APP stores that follow certain guidelines. However I think with progressive apps, I think its possible to bypass some restrictions.
developers should t need to pay $100 to put their own apps on heir phone for more than 3 days(this was a problem last time I made an app)
Hardware peripherals seem to be very closed as well.

They ecosystem is only going to get bigger with more iot hardware, so having both software and hardware closed while being so big, means you are locked into both system with no customization. Apple can continue to copy successful iot products like peloton. bike and couple them with products from their ecosystem (phone, watch, glasses), to make the product more compelling. With Apple so big, other companies has no chance unless they have enough money to make that many successfully products.

this is the same thing google and Facebook have done with adverisiting:

data isnt just Instagram but from the entire profile they have created across all of thei products. so their ads are more successful due to the data from all of their products.

Apple needs to allow more competition within their system, it's the quality of their products that should be selling points, not closed ecosystems.


.
 

Lexad

Member
Nov 4, 2017
3,041
Decouple software and hardware two separate entities.
Both are way too big and offer too many advantages. Their ecosystem is Only getting bigger and bigger with more iot products.


Some personal thoughts:

Additionally APP store should to be more open to various different types of app stores.
They can have their own App Store which they guarneeyes high quality, but its need to be opened to other APP stores that follow certain guidelines. However I think with progressive apps, I think its possible to bypass some restrictions.
developers should t need to pay $100 to put their own apps on heir phone for more than 3 days(this was a problem last time I made an app)
Hardware peripherals seem to be very closed as well.

They ecosystem is only going to get bigger with more iot hardware, so having both software and hardware closed while being so big, means you are locked into both system with no customization. Apple can continue to copy successful iot products like peloton. bike and couple them with products from their ecosystem (phone, watch, glasses), to make the product more compelling. With Apple so big, other companies has no chance unless they have enough money to make that many successfully products.

this is the same thing google and Facebook have done with adverisiting:

data isnt just Instagram but from the entire profile they have created across all of thei products. so their ads are more successful due to the data from all of their products.

Apple needs to allow more competition within their system, it's the quality of their products that should be selling points, not closed ecosystems.


.
And what about Sony, Nintendo, and Xbox? That has far sweeping implications beyond just Apple
 

StallionDan

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,705
Do the same with match.com and their billion dating companies/apps which all use the same shit methods of dating.
 

Weltall Zero

Game Developer
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
19,343
Madrid
again... nobody's forcing you to use instagram or whatsapp and there are viable alternatives. I'm no facebook fan but I am not confident in this suit

Besides the point already mentioned that that's not how antitrust laws work... if you actually want to use social media, are there any actually viable alternatives to Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp? Social media is by its very nature momentum-based; you can't simply say "fuck Facebook" and switch to another product, because all your friends still use Facebook. Plus the entire point of the lawsuit is that Facebook buys out any actual alternatives that ever gain enough critical mass to become viable.

Illegal monopoly, lmao. This will be laughed out of court.

Random Era poster more knowledgeable of antitrust laws than 48 attorney-generals, news at 10.
 

Dis

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,934
I can use Instagram and Whatsapp without using Facebook so no.

I mean yes you can avoid the Facebook app but Facebook is still swallowing all that user data they care about for making money, there is no competition because if I use Instagram Facebook is still calling the shots on my data and as consumers you have not many options of other companies and if you're an advert company then Facebook doing that to any other social media company that could have been a threat to them means you aren't left with many options there either, so not sure why you think just by avoiding the fb app you somehow avoid Facebook?
 

samoyed

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
15,191
I mean yes you can avoid the Facebook app but Facebook is still swallowing all that user data they care about for making money, there is no competition because if I use Instagram Facebook is still calling the shots on my data
It is the software equivalent of this:
57ebc2d7077dcc0f208b7830
 

Dis

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,934
It is the software equivalent of this:
57ebc2d7077dcc0f208b7830

To an extent yes, but in those different companies you have products that are all competing with the other huge companies in the same markets, with Facebook they straight up just buy whatever competition became a threat, now there literally isn't much in terms of that market for competition, it's what Facebook and twitter as the two big ones really? That's why the Facebook situation is worse than that pics situation, both suck but at least there are a number of big companies competing, with Facebook we could have had multiple competing companies by now if they hadn't just bought up anyone that could have threatened their position, I still don't know why the hell it was even allowed in the first place, it was stupid to allow them to buy the other companies and the amount of damage Facebook has done since to the whole world is proof that in future this shit needs to be stopped sooner.
 

Skytylz

Member
Oct 25, 2017
779
Splitting more of these companies would be great.
Google can split off youtube and it's related products. Keep maps and search. Gmail, docs, etc could also be there own thing maybe.
Amazon and microsoft should have their cloud businesses pulled out. Google too honestly.
 

FPX

One Winged Slayer
Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
2,273
OOh my god, please.Whatsapp is the only FB poison I have on my phone, I don't have a choice because literally everyone I know is on it with the exception of ONE friend, who I text.
 

Alvis

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,222
Spain
Facebook knew this was coming eventually. That's why they've been working so hard lately to weld Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram together. They want to be able to say in court that they can't possibly separate the services from each other.
They intentionally created that problem by themselves. So now solve it ;)