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Comment by jhbadger | Hacker News Reader

Facebook the company or Facebook the platform? The thing with Facebook owning Instagram is even as Facebook itself becomes less and less relevant to younger generations, the company still owns the platform those younger generations favor. And as Instagram inevitably becomes itself irrelevant, I'm sure Facebook will just buy the next social media platform.

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Instagram has already peaked and is on the down-trend.

TikTok is what the kids are using now - and they're valued at about half of what FB is valued at, so unlikely that FB will be able to buy them.

Maybe FB will buy whatever replaces TikTok.

>Maybe FB will buy whatever replaces TikTok.

It's unlikely that the government would permit such a sale.

If Facebook buys the next TikTok as a small startup when they have minimal market share then the federal government would have no legal basis to block a sale.

Governments can and do change the legal basis, and they all seem to have a problem with Big Tech right now, albeit for inconsistent reasons.

The governments, one should say.

As long as they buy it before it gets big, then the government probably won't protest too much

In light of all the details that has come out with regards to buying out Instagram to prevent them from being a competitor, it's a massive uphill regulatory approval climb even if money is not an issue.

I think Instagram has more staying power than TikTok as TikTok users start aging and the next generation moves onto their own platform. There's a good chance I'm wrong, but my guess is that publishing videos of yourself as a primary communication format gets less appealing with age as social circles shrink.

Personally as a 31 year old male, I could never get into Instagram. Always just felt like a shopping catalogue posing as social media, and the discovery is terrible, no matter how much data I try to feed it.

I love TikTok though, and not only do I feel like it "got me" after only a few hours of use without hearting anything or having any friends that use it. I've learnt about a lot of local events, restaurants and days out - in a way that seems way more organic than Instagram paid influencers.

Honestly, their algorithm has been great for me, in a way that only really Spotify has rivalled.

> having any friends that use it

That’s the point, tiktok is 9gag, instagram is snapchat/facebook/twitter

^ this. I would think of snapchat as a competitor to instagram, but not tiktok. You don’t go on tiktok to talk to your friends or see what’s up. Tiktok is the new 9gag rather.

I still wish Oracle took over TikTok. It would have been an amazing plot twist. Would they come up an Oracle style licensing agreement for all the tweens on TikTok?

Just like how Gen Z realized much faster than millennials that the economy and their future is hogwash, they would learn the consequences of agreeing to an Oracle license agreement much faster than their older peers.

“Tiktok is a national security threat” hahaha. I miss trump.

> “Tiktok is a national security threat” hahaha. I miss trump.

More accurately, it's a potential national security threat, but not yet an actualized one.

> Maybe FB will buy whatever replaces TikTok.

If they're allowed to. There's a lot more antitrust scrutiny now than when they bought Instagram.

Young people look at Instagram the same way they look at Twitter: it's a platform filled with millennials and older people that take it way too seriously.

Even FB will make a wrong turn one day. Every time it buys a new name it gets bigger. Eventually it will be a fat man standing behind a lamp post

It takes a long time for the fat man to die. In the meantime it will drag us all along kicking and screaming until its eventual demise.

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