Hacker News Reader

This was only illegal because Microsoft was deemed a monopoly. One could certainly argue that Facebook has a monopoly, but such an argument would definitely be much more difficult than the one against Microsoft.

i see, you've got a point. When we think FB, we should be reminded that FB also owns other major social companies like Instagram and Whatsapp to name a few.

FB might be a bigger fish than we might be aware of.

Thoughts?

> ...than we might be aware of...

It's a 400 billion dollar company and, as the GP noted, most people's default web experience.

to name a few.

Those are the only ones.

>FB might be a bigger fish than we might be aware of.

I think we're aware of the size of the Facebook fish, but you might not be aware of the size of Microsoft at its peak.

Something like 75% of adults in the United States have a Facebook account[1], but at the height of their dominance Microsoft operating systems ran on ~98% of computers [2]. 75% is a lot, but it's probably not a monopoly - especially because Facebook does not make the devices or the OS on the devices. Lots of people use Facebook, but nothing is keeping them using it.

Being popular is not illegal.

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/01/09/pew-survey-soc... [2] https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/8/

Your calculation of FB marketshare seems wrong: the right one should be about the share of people who have social networks accounts.

Right, the question shouldn't be what percentage of people have Facebook (which at 75% is incredibly high), but "what % of social media users have a Facebook account".

Or perhaps it should be "only have a facebook account"....

How many people owned a Windows PC peak Microsoft? 25%?

I think you're right, but I'm not sure where to get those stats :)

I wonder if Bell Telephone is a more apt parallel for FB than Microsoft is. I agree FB is not a monopoly today, so I'm not saying this is the case right now, but if they continue to dominate social networks (both through themselves & their subsidiaries), I could see a day coming when they have an effective monopoly on "online social messaging".

Of course, Bell also had a vertical monopoly in that they owned the physical wires in addition to being the service provider, and I think that was part of what brought them down in the end. Unless FB starts buying ISPs they won't be in the same position.

> Unless FB starts buying ISPs they won't be in the same position.

They tried (are trying?) becoming that in poor countries with their 'free' internet initiative.

The 75% that use Facebook is much bigger than 100% of the people that used computers back in the late 90s.

Yes, but that doesn't really factor into any calculation of "monopoly".

Impact is important as "monopoly" is subjective. For example, in Googles financial filings they can't break down numbers because *the search industry is highly competitive and we face challenges from the many other players in the industry".

So a company might have close to 75% market share in an industry that matters and they would be a lot easier to prosecute vs the company w/ 100% market (a fleshlight, or other trivial niche thing)

By the same token, nobody was ever forced to use Microsoft at their peak either.

I'm only replying because you solicited thoughts. I think you dislike Facebook, and would love for it to be sued/ruled a monopoly/forced to break up. I think people are quite aware of exactly how big a fish they are, and that they are nothing compared to what Microsoft used to be.

More importantly, you could buy a computer and phone and live without Facebook (or Instagram. My life would be poorer without Whatsapp though).

Is Facebook abusing its dominance to prevent competition, allowing it to artificially inflate prices? This was a big argument against Microsoft in the 1990s - they prevented computer retailers selling computers with non-Microsoft operating systems. On that level, I'm hesitant to call Facebook a monopoly.

However, looked at another way, Facebook is now too important to be a private company. It has access to so much data about so many people that the potential for abuse is huge. I wouldn't want to see them become a government owned entity, as the potential for abuse would be just as great (maybe greater) while innovation would inevitably slow down.

But I would like to see a regulator that sits on Facebook's board, can review its source code and order changes.

My dream would be for Facebook to be broken up and turned into a protocol. But it seems that ship has sailed.

Actually, you're allowed to be a monopoly. They were accused of abusing their monopoly status.

Exactly. You can be a monopoly or you can be anti-competitive, but you can't be both.

Would PM if i could, but just fyi, the phrase is https://www.grammarly.com/blog/bear-with-me/ :)

E: Please don't upvote this, it doesn't help the discussion!

thanks, i fixed it (sorry my native language is French, so it felt weird to write "bear" with me, like a teddy bear? Ain't making no sense to me now, thanks!?! (double negative = positive)

Bear also means something like "support/carry", which will be the root of this idiom. i.e. you are asking your listener to carry the weight of your long story in order to get to the point.

I only use Facebook from Chrome or Firefox, never from their app, even on mobile. I think that keeps them nicely contained in an appropriate box, from a technology perspective.

If I need to use FB messenger on mobile, which is rare for me, I'll load their page in desktop mode and use it that way.

You are in the minority unfortunately

But I think the point is that you have the option to use whatever browser you want to use Facebook; you don't have to use their native app.

>If I need to use FB messenger on mobile, which is rare for me

You can also use Trillian.

I've heard some good things about that.

The rarity is my use of instant messaging (outside of SMS/Google Hangouts and Slack)

There's actually a setting to open links in your preferred browser. I changed it so I could keep all my history in one place.

There is? Does it exist on iOS? If so, how do you get to it?

On Android it's Menu -> Help & Settings -> App Settings -> Links open externally.

It's more buried than maybe it needs to be (to be fair there are a lot of obscure settings in this monster of an app), but basically findable.

Rather than crashing the thing, it's probably more productive for web developers with serious compatibility issues just to detect it and tell users how to find the setting.

On Android, if you install a new application that can handle links, Android will ask you the next time you click on a link how you want to handle it.

On Android if you are not a heavy FB user you should be using something like Metal or Swipe.

By convention, many apps on iOS detect whether Chrome is installed. If you click on a link, the application pops up a dialog asking whether you prefer Safari or Chrome and remember the choice. Sadly, this is done completely at the application layer.

Where is this setting?

On Android: App Settings -> Links open externally

>The more I think of it, the more Facebook becomes the equivalent of an operating system for the average user. You can send/receive messages, do image editing, surf the web, but you have no choice of which software to use to do these tasks Once you're in FB ecosystem you're forced to use their array of services.

This is an assertion I see relatively regularly, is it based on a gut feeling or is their some evidence to back it up?

If so what does it really mean - surely all(?) users do some things outside of facebook (email, news websites and so on)? Are you saying that most users will not look anywhere beyond facebook for any service?

There certainly are many people who use facebook but don't have an email account; and many people who use facebook but don't browse the web, especially mobile-only people in the developing world.

Couldn't find good statistics quickly, but https://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-id... is relevant.

Thanks, that's an interesting article.

One big question it brings up for me does this just reflect that people don't know what "the internet" is at all? Like would you get a similar result if you asked "did you use Google?" or even "did you use Chrome?".

Also I don't know about everyone else but a quick glance at my face book feed and the vast majority of stuff is people posting articles from various blogs and talking about them. Do those respondents really never click and visit anything outside the facebook eco-system?

The median visitor of HN should consider themselves not representative of the median worldwide internet user, we're a demographic that is very different than the majority in most aspects.

This includes your friends and contacts - if you look at the people around you and observe that everyone does/has X, it's still quite likely that most people worldwide look to people around them and observe that everybody has/does not-X. For us, personal experience is not really representative of reality (coincidentally, this is a common problem for startups and their market understanding), we often have to intentionally go much beyond our normal circle of contacts to see how the majority of "normal" users actually behave. Blogs are a particular example - actually, for most of general public, there's such thing as independent blogs; and most content providers are available without leaving e.g. the facebook ecosystem, insomuch that a regular reader can be unaware that it's "not facebook".

It's kind of similar to sociology/psychology, where studies often inadvertently are WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) but the global average/median is very different from that.

    the vast majority of stuff is people posting
    articles from various blogs and talking about them

If a user were to only discover those articles via Facebook, and only see them within the Facebook app's browser, would they be savvy enough to know that these blogs aren't part of Facebook?

Issues of monopoly aside (as that's already been responded to) there is the addition difference that Facebook isn't the ones bundling a browser as they're just using the mobile OS's stock browser APIs.

I've stopped using FB app long ago (I think it was when news about their "clever" way of abusing microphone came out). I do use web version on iOS though and it also sucks, just in different ways. At least it does not suck my battery.

While you a right about "app store" kind of apps being forbidden (I've worked on one few years ago. We knew it was doomed, but higher-ups wanted to try anyway) what do you base your "OS system" comment on? I'd say WeChat is even more OS-like and still does fine.

They are slowly trying to become the IoT. All of their applications try to, discreetly, integrate with each other.

For example, Messenger now has a "Share your Day" option which is nested at the very top blocking a huge chunk off.

What happened to just messaging users?

> What happened to just messaging users?

Snapchat happened.

A few years ago, Facebook wanted all posts to be completely public, in order to combat Twitter. Now they want to be Snapchat.

If they can't buy a rising competitor, they try to become it.

Is the "share your day" feature not a public facebook post?

That was my assumption, and in that case I have no idea how it competes directly with Snapchat--Facebook basically invented that feature.

Instagram copied Snapchat as "Stories". Messenger now demands you put any picture you send to anyone in an Instagram story and shows it to all your friends in the Messenger app, despite it not being messaging.

No, "share your day" only show up in the messenger app and they only show up for a limited time. It is basically the same as Snapchat stories. They even put a camera button front and center of messenger that defaults to publish the pictures as a story.

I will never install their ugly applications in my cell phone. Just mobile browsing is enough.

iOS won't let you change the default browser (neither the default everything).

relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1118/