Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrkramer | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't make sense who authorized Instagram and Whatsapp acquisitions at the first place? FTC [1]

It isn't Zuck's fault nobody else is as competitive as Facebook is.... I look at you MySpace and Twitter.

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/08/ftc-c...

"The Federal Trade Commission has closed its nonpublic investigation of Facebook's proposed acquisition of Instagram, Inc., without taking any action. Accordingly, the deal may now proceed as proposed."

"The Commission vote to close the investigation was 5-0."

View on HN

For perspective, the acquisition was before IG had ads and before Facebook was publicly traded. How was the FTC supposed to magically see the future anti-competitive actions (like blocking vine)?

That same perspective shows that the industry has evolved since then. If FTC can't be held accountable for not predicting the future neither can Facebook. Of course, I don't believe this at all since anyone in the industry knew exactly why Facebook would buy Instagram, especially the FTC.

> If FTC can't be held accountable for not predicting the future neither can Facebook.

Something tells me the FTC isn’t going to be amenable to “gotcha” arguments

Are we not holding the government to a higher standard than private companies now or what? The FTC's entire job is to do these types of analyses. It's unfortunate that we're so used to the government being dismally incompetent in every way.

> It isn't Zuck's fault nobody else is as competitive as Facebook is

FTC seems to be arguing that at least part of the reason why that is the case was the employment of illegal tactics by Facebook.

"It isn't Zuck's fault nobody else is as competitive as Facebook is.... I look at you MySpace and Twitter."

Social Networks have natural Monopolies.

Not that I believe FB is necessarily a monopoly in the economic sense, but it's not quite right to talk about 'competition' in systems that are designed to have one winner.

If there were 5 Twitters for example, one of them would eventually dominate, one way or another.

IANAL, but my understanding is legally, they can decide not to sue/block it. This is not the same thing as affirmatively approving it.

I thought new evidence came to light that FB used illegally obtained metrics about IG and Whatsapp that allowed them inside information about the accusations.

Something about the FB mobile app siphoning off mobile data about other app usage

Does one mistake demand another?

lol there's no mens rea

Reply on news.ycombinator.com