We Tested Instagram Reels, the TikTok Clone. What a Dud

Copying competitors directly goes against the idea that “competition is for losers” has. Instead this is Facebook entering a market where TikTok took the “competition is for losers” case - in that they had no competition when they were building it.

If Facebook makes a poorly copied TikTok, then through what mechanisms would TikTok “lose” to Facebook? That’s where anti-trust should look at with care to not lean against network effect, in my opinion.

I’d argue a big tech company has a right to copy, especially if the business is zero-margin/internet enabled. I say that because Amazon eats money to undercut competitors and that could be seen as anti-competitive behavior.

But if the copy beats the original, it should be because the product was better.

Other food for thought. In Slack vs Microsoft Teams, some argue that Slack is significantly better than Teams but discount that Teams has a full product line for organizations to take advantage of.

I would argue that is not anti-competitive.. instead it’s a good product offering. It’s not a lose-lose situation for Slack either. There are nice ways to improve their product offering without taking a similar weight to maintaining M$ Office/Excel and such.

Yet Wechat faces a ban too, right?

Did you read the article? The competition sucks. FB literally has government intervention on it's side and it can't pump our Reels reasonably.