Why Facebook Is Suddenly Afraid of the FTC
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
When you reach the size and “market penetration” that Facebook in social networking , Google in search, or Microsoft’s Windows operating system have attained, you can’t go around demanding everyone sign agreements containing clauses that do things like this…
> requiring third-party app developers to agree not to create products that could compete with Facebook.
That’s textbook anticompetitive behaviour, once you pass that fuzzy threshold that defines market dominance in a legal capacity for the sake of antitrust/anti-competition legislation.
Before anyone mentions Twitter. Facebook is dominant in social networking not because Twitter isn’t, but because Twitter and Facebook are different enough it’s unfair to compare them directly and qualitatively, by extension Discord represents a social network platform of a sort, yet it would be hard to say Discord is completing with Twitter… yet they definitely are competing with Facebook because of their internally developed Facebook Messenger and ownership of WhatsApp. Facebook has built or acquired its way into almost all “forms” of social networking and continues to do so any time anything new crops up (see their clubhouse clone) which they are effective at by leveraging their existing position in the rest of social networking, a cycle of behaviour which is synonymous with being dominant in a market. You’re big enough to keep all of it under your control as best you can control it.
Is Discord competing with Skype?
What about Facebook Messenger?
Most of my friend group uses Discord exclusively, after trying all the aforementioned options. We don't feel tied to Facebook whatsoever.
Discord is competing with Skype indirectly, users communicating via voice chat in a private Discord server may have previously used Skype and represent a loss of users for Skype, but at the same time Discord and Skype are targeting their customers differently enough that I don’t see them as “fishing in the same stream” to use an analogy.
Facebook Messenger is competing with Discord because it’s always there, if you have Facebook you have Facebook Messenger, “why use something else?” … Facebook are trying to be good enough to keep users active in their apps instead of any one else’s. Discord are trying to be better at group chat use cases but I don’t see the same focus on direct message style chat between individuals in Discord as I see when watching people use Facebook Messenger.
If you have a Microsoft account you have OneDrive, if you have a Gmail account then you have a YouTube channel, if you have an Apple ID then you have iMessage. This is not a new (nor novel, nor frankly illegal) tactic by big tech, and I honestly doubt the FTC gives a shit. Our current government benefits greatly from the centralization of these services, so disrupting that would be against private (and to a degree, public) interest.
If that sounds like a bad analogy, imagine how the government would treat a single private company that owned more than 70% of the private land in the country. “It’s our gland we should be able to do what we want…” has to break down at a certain point, the alternative is a slow relentless slide into crypto-capitalist (crypto like cryptozoology not cryptocurrency) dystopian oppression.
How so?
I seem to remember after the first time, everyone here was complaining that the initial case the FTC put together was so incoherent there were no surprises it failed. I could be mis-remembering, but that was my general impression though I didn't follow it that closely.
Just sounded like incompetence rather than cronyism, but that could be from decades of underfunding.
They would never admit it, but they also know that Facebook is an important segment of the right wing pipeline, which moves moderate conservatives into the rabid, paranoid, die-hard right wing where they will stay (and vote) forever, which keeps the Overton window moving to the right.
Zuckerberg has a well known bias towards the right, and spent a lot of time schmoozing GOP leadership.
What you're seeing is not any sort of well thought out advocacy of right wing ideology: he and Facebook have sometimes been dismayed when they stepped too far in that direction and have gotten used by political operatives (from this or other countries!). Nobody wants to be a pawn in other people's games, least of all Zuckerberg.
It looks like Zuckerberg leans to the right because he is leaning away from certain parts of the Left: in particular, he's gonna be extremely wary of anything Elizabeth Warren (or to a lesser extent Bernie, the Squad, etc) has in mind concerning regulation and trustbusting.
Zuckerberg's going to treat trustbusters as an existential threat, and I don't believe he has the moral compass to care who he allies with as long as he gets his way. For that reason, Zuckerberg and Facebook can end up allying with outright fascists in hopes of protecting themselves from communists. I don't know if they've got the historical perspective to understand how unwise that is, but I do know they're a key ally for any fascist, anywhere. Right wingers really need Zuck and Facebook, or something like it.
I'm just glad mirrors don't have a memory or a replay button. That would be awkward.
> Nobody wants to be a pawn in other people's games, least of all Zuckerberg.
> It looks like Zuckerberg leans to the right because he is leaning away from certain parts of the Left
I feel this is very likely a spot on portrayal of Zuckerberg’s motivations/ethics. I doubt he has any allegiance to any political party, what guides him is self-preservation of both his creation and himself.
He’s not that different from several famous tech founders before him if we are honest.
Bwahahahahahaha. There really is no way to respond to that statement.