U.K. regulators order Meta to sell Giphy
axios.com
axios.com
This overlooks the traditional and perhaps now unpopular reason to start a company: making money by selling something useful. No need to sell the company. By the way, Facebook buys, does not sell.
Any company so arrogant about its market dominance it assumes that the only way for an entrepreneur to succeed in building a company in its market is to sell to them deserves to be broken up.
Businesses that prioritize people over capital.
Let the government do the job of setting the boundaries on the market so they can do what's best for humans, and let businesses do the job of optimizing for victory within the market.
That's where their respective incentives lie, so that's what they do best at.
tl:dr; don't hate the player, hate the game.
Competition is not the only way to get things done. Humans are definitely capable of collective action. You may recall a few weeks ago where hundreds of millions of Americans just said "fuck 2 AM, it's now 1 AM" early one Sunday. How would you harness that?
Make the rules do useful things. If you want business with social conscience, legislate it; don't whine for the uncaring hand of the free market to deign to suddenly show empathy.
How would you accomplish that?
As the old joke goes, there are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
Whether or not something is a lifestyle business is a shuffling around of who owns the business and gets the profit, not at all about how the business operates except as second order effects.
Do you think most modern startups actually do make money?
A great many don't, they lose it hand over fist. Especially those that intend to grow fast and get bought (or IPO) fast. It worked for a number of current big names, and many smaller names that those big names since bought.
They can make a surplus? And then reinvest it to further their cause?
Are there many examples of this extortion?
Casper and Blue Apron plummeted after adjusting pricing because they weren’t providing sufficient value. Uber became profitable. It probably lost some customers. But nobody I know felt extorted by it—those who didn’t like the new prices stopped using it.
Uber is definitely such an example - a lot of taxi companies disappeared because they couldn't compete with the scale of Uber with its subsidised prices.
Now Uber have significantly increased their prices there are a lot fewer alternatives to turn to.
Can you give an example of a city where Uber has a meaningful monopoly? Hell, I’ll even give you Uber and Lyft. Where the alternative modes of transport—be it private cars, public transport or taxis—are non-existent to someone who would have otherwise made use of them?
"Support Local Restaurants! (being puppeted by a massive hybrid restaurant/real-estate conglomerate)"
No, they were called shops. Where the business stops working without the owner-manager’s labor. “Business” referred to industrial-scale activity. (Before the industrial revolution, “commerce” was the broad term including trade merchants and shopkeepers.)
Similar to the industrial revolution’s change in nomenclature, the advent of modern computing has delineated small businesses, which include shops and shop-like tech firms, from enterprises, which are industry-like ones. Mom-and-pops thinking of themselves as businesses is a modern phenomenon.
Your response is through the same exact lens being critiqued. Even today there’s a vast economy of businesses, not shops, that fulfill key parts of the world economy and aren’t building for an exit. The idea that that’s weird/lifestyle is a modern, SV VC phenomenon and has nothing to do with computing nor the industrial revolution at all
This is obvious enough to most people that we sometimes wonder why we call startups businesses. Really they’re a new model of offshore R&D which often amounts to a hole into which to pour capital speculatively in hopes it will grow a tree
That sounds very weird to me because OED has plenty of meanings not related to industrial-scale activity that predate the industrial revolution. For example,
"In general sense: action which occupies time, demands attention and labour; esp. serious occupation, work, as opposed to pleasure or recreation.
c1400 Apol. Loll. 3 Hatyng to be enpliȝed wiþ seculer bisines. 1532 More Confut. Tindale Wks. 826/1 Occupied in honorable businesse. 1600 C. Percy in Shaks. C. Praise 38 Pestred with contrie businesse. 1653 Walton Angler Ep. Ded. 3 To give rest to your mind, and devest your self of your more serious business. ..."
And there's more of those where this came from, like "a task appointed or undertaken; a person's official duty, part or province; function, occupation" (dating back to Chaucer).
There seems to be general agreement that two big problems we're facing in the economy are 1) a slow consolidation of businesses into a handful of mega-corps which span across many markets and 2) an obsession with short-term gains to appease investors and shareholders. Yet the startup world seems to be fixated on "exit strategies" which perpetuate those two problems.
The intractable problem is that corporations with loads of capital are the ones equipped to run businesses long-term. I would love a world where an exit is turning the business over to the employees and a newly hired CEO in exchange for a payout from the business itself but massive corporations will pay more, have cash on hand, and won't default.
In my experience, things tend to get dramatically worse for users when a business is acquired or sold, not better. Long-term sustainability also seems to be significantly decreased by acquisitions, not increased- even when the business isn't closed outright (e.g. Pebble). And, from your second paragraph, it seems like you recognize this too. So, yeah, you might want people who are good at running businesses to do that - but selling a business does not seem to put people who are good at running businesses in charge of it. If anything, it's the opposite.
If the antitrust regulators came down on Microsoft again, I don't think we'd see their lawyers argue that there's no other route for B2B software vendors to cash out except to sell to them.
Even the subject supposed effort to prevent monopolization is not understanding the underlying issue, that competition (a form of freedom) has for all intents and purposes been totally subverted because rather than monopolizing an industry or sector, today's monopolists/cartels realized they should just totally supplant the whole market so people have no choice but to kiss their royal ring. That is something that has effectively been accomplished and society may just have not understood yet what's going on, or likely those who would be expected to ward this off were also totally compromised and corrupted ($$$).
What we need is reinstatement of conditions that lead to are allow competition. That may take on several different forms, e.g., (not to pick on Apple, but to use a recent example) that Apple must provide the same access to core integration (based on reasonable technical specifications anyone can meet) that AirTags utilize to competitors like Tile, including the whole apple device network (AirTags are real reason that SARS-CoV-2 "contact tracing" was snuck in to save us all, btw). Another example; Apple and Google, may not block or ban any user or any app that meets its general and public technical specifications and are not a violation of law and human rights like free expression, whether out vassal lord corporations like what users have to say or if an app is a competitor or does something they don't like or not. The alternative should simply be that Apple and Google can just build their own internet if they wish to violate people's rights on the public internet and communications … at the very least.
This is not something new, but has always been the case. Capitalism is the 2nd iteration of feudalism. When the French revolution threw feudalism into jeopardy, the feudal lords - conservatives who sat in the right wing of the French parliament- hoped capitalism would rescue feudalism and help maintain social hierarchies. Democracy is seen as anti feudal and anti capitalist in its genesis, by giving everyone one vote independent of wealth. Earliest proposals for elections were only for Male land owners.
The founding fathers were capitalists for the most part.
The iconic images of the downfall of Communism was the economic catastrophe, shops with empty shelves, etc.; Capitalism had a similar experience in the Great Depression, was changed by it, but the name remained.
Unfortunately a lot of those New Deal changes were reverted since then. For one, the minimum wage was supposed to be a living wage one could raise a family on.
Do you have a source?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_suffrage#cite_note-V...
The US was the first modern democracy. Were they supposed to go from dictatorial monarchy to universal suffrage in one day or be condemned forever?
If you want to criticize something, criticize the fact that we still don't have universal suffrage. In many states, felons can't vote. Which is cynically claimed as denying them something as punishment for their crimes, but in reality is done to prevent the victims of mass incarceration from becoming a large voting bloc to end it.
It's unfortunately unpopular to point out that we have ample evidence, from history and contemporaneously, that democracy per se doesn't work. It devolves into a populist, majoritarian and often authoritarian mess as reliably as (non-monarchical) dictators fall into chaos.
The men who founded our Republic understood this, which is why they explicitly created a system that balances the strengths and weaknesses of monarchy, oligarchy and democracy. (Hint: they're our three branches of government.) At some point, we wrote that balance out of our cultural history, and we're partly paying the price now.
They're parasitic institutions
I was thinking in mind Cuba or Vietnam. I'm still trying to decide if China is still socialist or not, but there are good arguments in favor (they still control the commanding heights of the economy and are improving life for ordinary people at a rapid pace but things are far from perfect).
These are policy preferences. One can have a liberal, conservative, socialist and/or capitalist monarchy, oligarchy or democracy. The latter talk to how power is divided. The former to how it used.
Naturally, some power divisions tend to lead to certain policy preferences. But that is a correlation
> just trendy neo-feudalist rhetoric
This is the cultural amnesia I'm talking about. These ideas aren't new. From Federalist No. 10:
"From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.
A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.
The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.
The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose. On the other hand, the effect may be inverted. Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people."
[1] https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-1-10#s-lg-box-...
I don't think you can make such a separation so easily. Legislative power is almost dwarfed by the power of capital. When you have a “liberal democracy”, the two parts are in constant conflict. (I don't mean to say socialist democracy wouldn't have similar problems, just that the structure of power is deeper than just elections.)
I think we agree. There is meat between the archetypal framework and the working, practical government. The framework is neutral. But the implementation details are not.
My core point is that more democracy = good is a misreading of American, and in fact world, history. We have a mixed system. Denouncing one system over another for being less democratic is thus a straw man.
The individual American colonies had legislatures for their own territory, with limited powers as defined in their charters. One example is the legislature of Virginia which has had elected members since its inception 150 years before American Independence and still continues to hold elections to this day.
We should spend less time whinging about the people who did better than their fathers and more time doing better than ours.
The people allowing themselves to be consumed by "hate your neighbor" propaganda and mistaking that for a protest movement are getting played. Fight who's above you, not who's beside you.
"the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain [...] had full legal rights to legislate for the colonies. [...] This remains the same for all existing British overseas territories such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands [...]"
You may wish to read this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Overseas_Territories#G...
specifically "Following the Lords' decision in Ex parte Quark, 2005, [...] To comply with the court's decision, the territorial governors now act on the advice of each territory's executive and the UK government can no longer disallow legislation passed by territorial legislatures."
and the sections sketching the legislatures in Bermuda and Gibraltar.
e.g. "Individual overseas territories have legislative independence over immigration"
There is no limit over Parliamentary power. The House of Lords had judicial functions (now The Supreme Court) which allowed it to act as the second highest court in the land under the Privy Council. No court can revoke an act of Parliament. Any limits on Parliamentary power over these territories is by convention. Another interesting aspect of the British constitution is that institutions generally follow agreements even if they lack a legal basis.
Something that might confuse Americans in particular is the use of the term “government”, which, within a British context, refers only to the executive branch of government. Also the idea of a strongly defined clear constitution is rather alien… as are checks and balances on the legislature.
The reason to be critical today is we are _still_ living in that framework! We have to do better.
What would a better structure look like? And I don't think things like national healthcare, less racism, etc. are included, because those could be implemented in the current structure. I think history shows that we have a demonstratively good system. We have high social mobility, high political stability (peaceful transfers of power, Trump notwithstanding), consistently strong economics, world-class institutions, etc. Our system has scaled fairly smoothly from 2.5 million to 325 million and has lasted almost 250 years. Which system has done better?
It's not clear if our system can survive the current polarization, which could be seen as city values vs rural values, and the system is specifically designed to balance those. So if the cities and the rurals both take up opposing, fundamentalist positions and refuse to cooperate, the system is not designed to handle that. But we've had a history of craziness, and so far, comes the times, comes the man. I'll bet on our system over a lot of other extant systems! And change is not always better. (And if the electorate has a lot ideological-driven motivations, as present, the odds of change being worse is pretty high. Ideological-driven change has historically been pretty bad.)
I do think that if you stay within the system of liberal democracy, at minimum we need to implement a more modern constitutional order. We've learned a lot about liberal constitutions in 200 years.
However, practically speaking, the political machinery is so ossified that I think only marginal structural changes within the framework are possible (like court packing, electoral vote compacts etc). Political radicals have to do a lot of organizing to build a mass constituency that can make really dramatic alterations without empowering the right wing.
However, it would be good to recall that during the era of good feelings, a huge number of presidents were slave holders from Virginia. That's who held the balance of power in the country. The constitution itself was a compromise over slavery, modeled after English government (house/senate -> commons/lords, pres/vice pres -> king/heir apparent). Voters were landed white male adults, senators were elected indirectly by the states, as was the president (and still is though we have papered over it!). Supreme court judges were given life terms to enable disruption from below to be smoothed out by prior appointments.
The whole idea of the country was to guarantee rights to the upper class and place the country under new management and diffuse lower class energy via grants of land in westward expansion. The "genius" of the constitution became apparent when the entire thing broke down only ~70 years later in a bloodbath over the issue, slavery, they papered over at the convention which was a direct affront to the rhetoric of the revolution.
Which would make them property owners, and therefore eventually able to vote via the statehood process. Your premise is self-contradictory.
They wanted to do this to relieve popular pressure from below by creating "responsible" landowners that had a stake in the system. The landowners would continue to be white and male, but with an expansion of who gets to participate. The American system repeatedly does this under stress. A system that was actually liberatoratory would work in the interest of the people, not simply respond to threats.
I also don't think this is quite right, either. There were black landowners, specifically in virginia, but other states too like maryland and louisiana, many of whom were yeoman farmers, and even a few who owned slaves, and were successful petitioners to suits heard at the house of burgesses, until the late 18th-century, but eventually it just became too convenient to be lazy and label "black == slave".
You could be a black landowner in connecticut and vote until 1814, well after the constitution was passed. It's kind of a common narrative that the US was born in racism, but I think it was more "the US did not know what to do with the issue of race and grew into racism" which is scarier, if you ask me.
correction: until the early 18th century, which is when the black codes were passed in Virginia. However, several other states allowed free blacks to vote around the time of the constitution.
Yet, we also forget that the world then was not like the world today. Who received comprehensive education back then, the kind needed to run states and countries? Typically, the rich, and within that, men. The inequalities of the world in those times were immense and could not be mended in even one generation. Liberal countries such as USA fought against the powerful forces of British imperialism, with the promise of a better tomorrow for all citizens, however long that takes.
>The constitution itself was a compromise over slavery
If you've ever tried to make significant change in an organization of any type and size (including government), you MUST take inertia into account. What you claim was willful choice, I claim was inertia. Slavery was not banned in the Constitution because a few Southern states would have refused to sign it, their claim being such action would render economic devastation. The very day it became possible, the importation of slaves was federally prohibited by Jefferson. As slavery became increasingly restricted by the federal, the southern states dug in their heels and refused to change their labor practices. The eventual Civil War was one of economics, with the general population heavily propagandized by those wealthy slaveowners wanting to preserve their livelihood.
>diffuse lower class energy via grants of land in westward expansion
Your analysis is overly simplistic. Those grants of land to lower-class citizens ensured the new Western lands would be worked by citizens. It was great opportunity many lower-class citizens jumped on, especially those who didn't own land before. By relocating to a smaller community, a lower-class citizen became immediately more influential in their local community by numbers alone. Yes, it diffuses that energy, but that's not inherently bad. In different terms, I see that decentralization as an intentional, value-adding feature, not an unintentional bug.
False. Contemporary preachers were regularly commenting that slavers were going to hell. They didn't have a different morality, just different economic incentives (i.e. they thought they could get away with it). Luminaries such as Jefferson even expressed that slavery was wrong, though he didn't actually free his slaves during his lifetime. Show respect for people of the past, they weren't stupid. It wasn't even that far into the future that the slavery abolition movement got going in other countries such as the UK.
> Those grants of land to lower-class citizens ensured the new Western lands would be worked by citizens.
The land was Native American land and this was only achieved via genocidal means.
Exactly, slavery was a significant economic factor in the world back then. It is no longer a significant economic factor in the world today. Also, don't think that preachers speak their message without understanding the nature of their congregation. The preacher chooses a message they feel the congregation should hear. Rare is the sermon which chastises the economic means of that church body's membership.
>The land was Native American land and this was only achieved via genocidal means.
Native American tribes were weakened by disease, defeated by technology, and subdued by law (the title of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" captures this point nicely, though I don't agree with all of Diamond's arguments). Would you judge one Native American tribe similarly should they commit genocide upon another tribe and take their lands? Based on your comments here, I suspect no, and I also suspect such is still considered morally wrong but less morally wrong than Western expansion through kinetic force.
Racist laws are morally wrong and must be eschewed. There is no doubt that Native Americans were eventually subdued by such laws, but it took decades of fighting for Native Americans to reach their low point. So, I submit to you a serious question to ponder: if two warring entities are technological equals, is their fighting "better" in some sense?
The Whigs and Tories opposed each other in the UK parliament for a long time precisely because this is not the case.
There is a divide in the UK Conservative Party between Tories and Liberals.
New governments don't do anything but waste public money and create regulations which entrench the current lobbyists as the de-facto standard and prevent new competition from popping up.
(Translating as literally "silver or lead": take this money or take a bullet)
You can certainly build a long-term profitable business, but you wont find VC funding for that.
https://medium.com/@pasql/giphy-is-stealing-from-artists-689...
Other companies that exchange money for goods and services might have better luck.
It's pretty well established truism by now that start-ups are a business model where the founders and angel investors become wealthy once the business sells. It would be interesting to see the breakdown of how many start-ups sellout, continue as an independent entity, or completely fail. Regardless, just because Facebook recognizes the business culture in the SF Bay area is not a persuasive argument for why they should be broken up.
It's a pretty well established truism that startups in most markets would have absolutely no difficulty at all in selling their business via many different exit routes if one particular player wasn't able to go through with an acquisition for any reason. If it was too early to go public the could sell to Instagram Inc or WhatsApp PLC, or a private equity firm that wants to get into a sector where many, many firms have become stable and profitable. Facebook's statement that if they're not allowed to buy, entrepreneurs [in their market] won't be able to sell [to anyone else] is a truism specific to the social media market Facebook dominates, and a direct consequence of it having the sort of monopoly power that gets them scrutinised by the Competition Commission.
This rejects that these businesses required scale to be successful, strengthening the claim that they were not “failed businesses.”
Either way, the acquisition of either should never have been allowed.
You see, when you have 1000 million and you invest 500 million in chunks of 1 million into 500 different companies, practically guaranteeing a return of >500 million [1], then you're taking a huge risk! Almost like the Average Joe/Jane investing on the stock market :-)
[1] Since it's supremely unlikely all 500 companies fail, and it's much more likely that at least 1 of them comes up with a decent return on investment.
For instance, what if the default position was that mergers were banned, except where you could convincingly show that everyone is better off? For instance in dying industries where scale is necessary.
To which the answer seems inarguably "Sometimes." Scale that reduces production costs (and therefore prices), yes. Or prices could be maintained and the increased profits given to shareholders, in which case no.
I think the broader question is "What systemic features exist that make giant companies more efficient than a network of smaller, independent companies?"
And to that, I'd argue that in the 21st century, not many. The market and communication B2B inefficiencies that drove conglomeration in the 20th century have most been reduced to zero.
The only reason to have a hyperscale company these days is to deploy capital at scale in loss-making enterprises in hopes of capturing market share... and I'm not sure that's something that's been healthy in aggregate?
There's still the efficiencies of mass production for physical goods. For digital services that include any element of social network, there's the network effect. I think these are still a significant factor in most markets today. For match-making services in particular, brand recognition is important; otherwise users have difficulty in _finding_ quality from a directory of smaller, independent companies. And arranging effective federation, while possible, is expensive and development of such systems is slow.
Which is essentially the dynamic now, except the B2C last mile companies can parlay their relationship and just buy everything high value upstream of them.
Which... I'm not sure is great for competition.
Anything that moved the market away from one in which all customers are "an Apple customer" or "a Google customer" or "a Facebook customer", with those companies unconstrained in their ability to leverage that, seems better.
People feel that wealthy individuals having majority control over big businesses is a bad thing (Bezos, Zuckerberg, etc), but your proposal would enshrine this in law.
For example think about the case of Steel, inc. vs John Smith. Steel, inc. is a corporation with a broad set of owners (hell, let's make it employee owned). It makes steel. John Smith is a rich guy who has bought controlling interests in a number of privately held businesses which are all in the steel industry.
John Smith will easily be able to outcompete Steel, inc. Steel, inc. is encumbered by your law, while John Smith is not. If John Smith's empire needs an ore mine, he can just buy it. If Steel, inc. needs an ore mine, the only thing they can do is find a new ore deposit, and buy all the machinery needed on the open market.
Your law mandates that all business be controlled by rich individuals instead of groups of shareholders.
John Smith could still buy up controlling shares in various companies, but it's also not a big stretch to regulate that sort of thing too. I don't really buy the idea that we need huge corporations to protect us from the rich.
I'd argue for a world with only limited possibilities for mergers, where mergers are a last resort rather than the goal of a startup. So many companies these days produce absolutely nothing of value in the hopes of being bought out by a big conglomerate.
I doubt that Giphy the Meta subsidiary uses the same IT department as Facebook.
The US is down to three big banks, three mobile phone companies, and three drugstore chains, and they don't compete on price much. If an industry gets below four, maybe the companies should be given the choice of breaking up or converting to a common carrier or regulated public utility.
People always want a simple answer. Intervening in markets can be done successfully in some cases, but as a random member of the public you're never going to come up with a silver bullet.
FB doesn't claim selling the company is the only reason to start one.
But it is a top 3 "exit strategy" for startups, so limiting it would have a chilling effect on startup formation. How big that effect would be is probably a better avenue for counter arguments.
I'd imagine that anyone interested in buying Giphy would fall into one of two categories:
1. Large tech companies for which the same antitrust arguments would apply.
2. Companies that can't afford to pay anywhere near $400M for a GIF sharing service.
Both of which fall under arguments 1 and 2
What makes a free GIF sharing service worth $400M dollars - apart from the data harvesting Facebook can do to better target users with ads.
We don't need to outlaw these sales, just outlaw the integration of data from purchased services, and then you'll see what the true value of the company is.
Giphy is free to sell itself to almost any other company on Earth except FB. This has no chilling effect whatsoever
I'm okay with that. Startup culture is toxic, and the world would be a much better place if the only legal reason to found a business would be to make a steady profit selling your product. If your company only exists so you can sell it (as in the company as a whole) to someone else, your company shouldn't exist.
But I think the regulator makes a good case for why there are very specific factors that suggest that this particular takeover is not a hood idea.
Full statement here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-directs-facebook-to-s...
More realistic interpretation.
Fine except for those that rely on this.
Exactly. Not only should futher consolidation be prohibited under anti-trust, big tech should be forcibly broken up into several businesses.
Shame they didn’t have the balls to stop ARM getting bought originally too.
Because both Facebook and Giphy are active in the UK market.
If they don't want to be subject to UK regulation then they're free to stop doing business in the UK.
Was Giphy even set up to be a business? It's just a database of gifs converted to video, for use in social media posts or Slack channels. Who would ever pay for that, besides a social media behemoth?
If this failed acquisition discourages future advertising/data collection companies it will be a major win for society.
Treating a company - a thing that often dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people depend on for their livelihoods - as nothing more than an assert that can be bought and sold at the whims of a founder is fundamentally gross to me. Sure, not every acquisition leads to layoffs, but many (most?) do and I think that's abhorrent.
I know it's how the world works, but I don't think the culture of starting a company to get acquired for a nice "exit" should be celebrated and I think policy measures that can stop or diminish this culture are fundamentally good.
There is no shortage of exits that screwed the employees.
Everyone knows that they're making a risky bet that might end with the company folding or might result in a big windfall.
No, everyone knows what they are getting into this is a horrible concept and should be pushed back against at every turn. If you want someone to be responsible for another adult petition the government to do it.
here's PG > Our startup, Viaweb, was built to be sold. We were open with investors about that from the start. And we were careful to create something that could slot easily into a larger company. That is the pattern for the future. - http://paulgraham.com/bubble.html
and given YC is the arguably the largest and most influential accelerator - hence why most startups are build to sell to FAANG
Ordinarily, a British regulator telling two American firms what they can and can’t do would create backlash from the U.S. In this case, that would be shocking.
"Gif" as a word has been redefined to mean more than the file format.
This one weird trick venture capitalists hate!
Giphy does not produce the GIFs. It is someone else's work.
Thus the only thing Giphy could sell is its "service" of running a server on the internet that serves GIFs.
How much is that service worth.
But they are not selling that either.
They are collecting (meta)data about users.
Maybe they inject ads.
What an incredible business model. Produce nothing, use other people's work as "bait", collect data, get an inflated valuation and sell the "business". This is almost as good as patent trolling.
Now, with this amazing model, how much revenue does Giphy produce, how much profit. Not even enough to pay for the server costs. It is funded by investors.
This is a game. And regulators can spoil it.
Also what's so special about Giphy? Seems it could be duplicated fairly easily by any serious competitor.
And competition being defined as other social media platforms? Pretty broad definition.
Seems FB hatred is making bad law. And that bad law will bite others not just FB.
They're not buying it for the tech, they're buying it for the user base so they can sell their data to advertisers.
You're not going to watch a movie in gif format, and it would be a derivative anyway.
I suspect this is why Giphy got that license. And I bet it comes with some terms like allowing studios to remove GIFs they don't like, etc..
Y'ever noticed how the "send a GIF" panels in apps (often using Giphy behind-the-scenes as whitelabel) often have the top few rows of "trending" (quotes intentional) GIFs are mostly taken from recent major Hollywood releases? Most of the time it's whatever the most recent Marvel MCU film was - or some other mass-market action film - so if not the MCU then it'll be from whatever Disney's latest Star Wars movie or TV show just-so-happens to be.
...so yeah, that's very likely paid product placement right there. Not only is it free advertising for Marvel, but it's advertising that people actually want to share with each other!
Of course, what gives Giphy its credibility with net-savvy users is that they let people upload and cut their own GIFs. If you instead imagine Giphy as just being a free, maybe even banner ad-free, repository of GIFs but was strictly read-only (maybe have a likes system?) and comprised of only rightsholder-approved GIFs (but imagine the selection was still substantial so 75%+ of the time you'd still be able to find the right reaction GIF for your situation: it's just it'd all be the same well-known actors playing the same roles in all the same kinds of films and TV shows; no user-generated-content or really any material that isn't owned by a Fortune 500 media company) - but would people still use it? I think they would - especially if the E2E user-experience quality is there... as opposed to most other kinds of sites that do tolerate their users committing acts of copyright violation, but plaster the site in the worst online ads of all (because most of their users are smart enough to be offended by homogenized and consolidated entertainment media then they're going to be smart enough to run adblock too).
Disney Co is now at the point where they can choose to give Giphy a sweet deal (e.g. a covenant not to sue or even an explicit copyright license, provided Giphy promotes pro-Disney GIFs) and use Giphy not necessarily for their own direct benefit (i.e. GIFs as advertising new films), but to choose to actively support, fund and promote Giphy to ensure Giphy stays the default place for GIF editing and exchange, but because Disney then effectively "owns" Giphy, they can shut-off and shut-out promotion for all other non-Disney franchises just to ensure Disney laps up people's mindshare and imaginations: soon, in a few decades, Disney will own the rights to all new original thoughts.
It's really not "well it's only a gif, you can't touch me".
There is no separation of powers here, as long as the PM is the PM, he is basically god.
It's time for a new hire/donation/whatever
You're right, a reasonable regulator following the U.S. anti-trust regulations as they were written in the early 1900s would also require Whatsapp, Instagram, and Facebook to all be cordoned off into separate companies at a minimum.
Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsApp is essentially them buying out their competition.
Google running a cloud service is more like renting out excess capacity – which is quite common across industries. Plus there's a lot of competition in the cloud space.
You'll be <<very>> tempted to do things to the platform to favor your own services.
The incentives are so strong I don't think we've even invented things to prevent this on a long enough time scale.
If that were actually the case, then sure.
But it's not. Alphabet's Google Cloud services have whole data centers dedicated to renting to the public and Alphabet's Google and other businesses entities are their own customer.
At a guess: a large existing library of GIFs.
Imgur already exists, and I believe (?) Giphy was created as an answer to it?
Just cause its easily duplicated doesn't mean others can compete. You can easily duplicate Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. But unless you are as big as Facebook, you will not be about to compete. Its called network effect.
tg value proposition is based around a superior user experience, that's what competition is all about.
Facebook/WhatsApp/Instagram have ~3 billion users and Telegram only has 500 million, after FB has been under constant attack for about 3 years and Telegram has received a ton of free advertising as a result.
If you call that easy (after all, that what the comment you were replying to was asking), then everything in this life is easy. Heck, getting resurrected is probably "easy".
When you send gifs to someone, that gif can be tracked. Which means, it can be monetized like other social networks. In fact, their business model is exactly like other social networks.
If FB wanted to use Giphy to squash an upstart competitor, 18 months is plenty of time to accomplish it. So regulators preemptively forbid some kinds of abusable power, especially when the company has abused its monopoly power in the past.
It would be better if regulators could act fast only when needed, but I'm not holding my breath for that to happen.
It's about as long as it takes to figure out that Facebook didn't grease enough palms in order to let this pass muster, and won't be shelling out any more, so they're going to make it public, in the hopes it will spur Facebook to reconsider.
This is as predictable as the dance a company does when they have to fire an executive for shameful behavior, and the resulting PR to-do list dealing with the press and investors.
On the face of it this sounds reasonable but doesn't work in practice.
Precisely what service do they have to offer? What quality standards. How much can they charge? Do they have to innovate or can they let it stagnate. How do you police it? If FB want to limit the service they will (and they have a history in this area).
See also Nvidia / Arm.
So Facebook is buying the ability to see who you talk to in android keyboards, slack, discord, etc
We're talking about GIFs. You know, short messages, memes, practically short text messages. They can literally extract context from those conversations, if a decent enough amount of them are used in the same place.
That would actually be quite a cool machine learning exercise.
They’ll know exactly who is in every single slack channel together, discord server, subreddit, etc etc.
this is anti-trust regulation, not precedent that will be applied to any company. the context is important. they're looking at the scale and business practices of facebook specifically and making a decision that facebook shouldn't own giphy, not that any company can't own a tool that competitors may use.
Also, Facebook UK is a thing.
It's all about economic power. The UK has to think about potential retaliation by the US.
In the end,Trade wars are often bad for everyone. Usually it's beneficial to find a compromise if possible.
Even laws designed curb market abuse through fines can be considered a cost of doing business rather than a disincentive, making it an economic tool for the perpetrators.
If Facebook defied a British order like that, the U.K. could enforce quite a lot through American courts.
Giphy isn't necessarily a direct competitor (and we might disagree with the UK regulators on their assessment of the merger), but just shutting off Giphy in the UK probably wouldn't do what they want. They might want Giphy willing to sell their data to other parties that are competitors to Facebook. If that's the business value of Giphy, merely disabling it in the UK still gives Facebook the worldwide power of Giphy and it would be hard for a NewGiphy to compete with the only advantage being "we have UK data."
It's also up to the UK to determine if such a remedy would satisfy them. Facebook can't disable Giphy and then say "you don't have jurisdiction anymore." That's not how it works. Facebook could pull out of the UK by closing its offices there, but pulling out might involve also not selling ads to UK-based businesses (before Brexit, there's the possibility that Facebook could lean on the common market to continue selling ads).
Basically, disabling Giphy in the UK (or even worldwide) doesn't really solve the issue.
Traditional British media will drum up support for anti-Facebook actions, and the current UK government was elected on a mandate of defending perceived British sovereignty, with economic considerations being less important.[2] The UK government has already engaged in actions that harm its economic interests to safeguard its sovereignty.[3]
1. https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/europe...
2. https://ukandeu.ac.uk/new-polling-reveals-shift-from-immigra...
3. https://www.cer.eu/insights/ten-reflections-sovereignty-firs...
We can assume for certain, I think, that UK regulators operate within a set of rules, and in many cases they will not have the power to interfere with an acquisition between two foreign businesses - for good reason. Regulators in other countries may not have the power to stop this particular deal in the first place.
Maybe the powers of UK regulators need to be further restricted.
The interesting discussion to be had here is about what good policy is, not to say "A country can make whatever laws it likes". Well duh.
We all have an interest in a functional global system. To that end, it is beneficial of countries at times defer to the laws of other nations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comity). Maybe this is such a case. Possibly we would prefer not to have other countries try to interfere with mergers happening without our own jurisdiction too often.
As an American citizen, would you want to restrict regulators from being able to block the business of a company that merged with a CCP controlled company in China?
On what grounds would that business be blocked?
On grounds having being state controlled? I'm not sure US regulators do have that power. On some pretend grounds, to be able to wield it as a geopolitical weapon? Probably not.
On some narrow national security reasons? Maybe.
Any grounds pertinent to American interests, frankly.
overall, the Commerce Clause in article I of the US constitution grants the federal government power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, which includes import / export restrictions. For example you can't really buy things from Iran or Cuba without major restrictions if at all.
if a trade embargo doesn't fall under the realm of "geopolitical weapon" I don't know what does.
My overall point is that details matter for good policy. A regulator having the power to ban a foreign merger for supposed anti-competitive reasons, but really political ones, is not the same thing as, say, a legislative body passing sanctions legislation.
In other words, just because the UK wants to ability to sanction a Chinese business does not mean the Competition and Markets Authority needs to granted the ability to interfere with Chinese mergers.
How much more geopolitical do you have to get? You've been trying to starve an entire country for more than half a century because a bunch of your citizens are pissed off they got kicked out of there 30+ years ago and your politicians need them to win vital nation-wide elections.
Yes, I know about all the Cuban abuses and all that other garbage, but that doesn't make it right because the US is allied to <<soooo>> many other human rights violating countries and it doesn't even bat an eye.
If the US wants their regulators' decisions to carry weight in another country, they can pay for the privilege via trade agreements, same as it ever was.
Companies are a tool that should serve the public, if they cease to serve the public, they should be bought in line, destroyed, or (as is threatened in this case) exiled. A democracy is meant to be for the people, not for profit. Profit is just a motive to try and incentivise things that are valuable for society, when that isn't achieved, regulators should step in to fix it.
Companies that are too large have too much money, and too much power. They are inherently anti-consumer and cause harm to the very fabric of democracy. In any sane world, we would be breaking up a huge number of these large corporations into much smaller pieces.
The electorate has a responsibility to protect democracy and not let companies break the law of the land, they have no responsibility at all to companies.
The sovereignty of the United Kingdom over its own territory and incorporated businesses, through laws created by the British parliament which derives its power from the British people, very straightforward.
And if you think the British people are more sympathetic to Facebook than the British regulators you have another surprise coming
Whether a business is foreign or not is irrelevant as far as its operations in the UK is concerned. Do you think Chinese owned businesses in the US don't have to comply with American law on American soil?
I imagine since jaywalking is legal in the UK (but not in the US) you have similar comments? How could there be a different law about the same topic in different countries!
How is this any different to “in country X there are Y laws”. Giphy could be from Mars and it would make no difference.
And I'd doubt most use of e.g. posting gifs on social media in response to something counts as "satire".
It's too little too late, but it's not exactly a witch hunt.
Things like Giphy are amazing data builders. Think of all the cookies that get placed around the web for FB to use, when a giphy is embeded on a website.
Even the types of Giphy's people use, are useful data points.
curl -v https://media.giphy.com/media/bKgCINrtZWQ39wZCxU/giphy-downsized-large.gif 2>&1 | grep set-cookie | wc -l
0besides who would want to give a cookie to curl UA?
curl -s https://cookies.giphy.com/global-cookies.f54c0b98fd75c8afe8abb8e12bf0d8a9297f480a.html |lessOn Facebook, not big tech in general. Tech is still immensely powerful, popular and politically supported. Facebook is not.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/11/30/facebook-ord...
They would break a promise - surely not?
What, again?
I think the CMA stopped listening to promises from US companies after Kraft completely reneged on their takeover of Cadburys.
Facebook never bought Giphy, it prepared an acquisition whose execution was now blocked.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-directs-facebook-to-s...
In any case, it's very interesting to look at Meta's proposals (which were ultimately rejected) [1]
[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/61a4bfa2e90e0...
Clause 3:
Facebook completed the acquisition of GIPHY on 15 May 2020, but has been required to hold the businesses separate since 9 June 2020, when the CMA imposed an Initial Enforcement Order (which was amended by a Variation Order on 29 June 2021).
Clause 63:
As noted above, we have decided that the sale of GIPHY is the only effective remedy to the SLCs that we have found. While divestiture of the acquired business is not an uncommon outcome when the CMA finds an SLC, divestiture of the GIPHY business poses particular challenges arising as a consequence of the completion of the Merger, and Facebook’s related actions, namely the termination of GIPHY’s revenue function and team, the transfer of almost all GIPHY staff on to Facebook employment contracts and the transfer of GIPHY’s back office functions to Facebook. These actions took place prior to the CMA issuing its Initial Enforcement Order holding the Facebook and GIPHY businesses separate and mean that, in several respects, GIPHY is in a significantly weaker position than it was pre-Merger.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/61a4bfa2e90e0...
there would be wall to wall coverage about facebook deciding the law doesn't apply to them
Facebook certainly has bank accounts in the UK. Its has offices and people working there. The UK could just take from that money.
Yeah, poor little UK, it's only the 5th biggest economy in the world after all, not like the 1st or 2nd!
However, I don't see how companies alone have the power to openly strongarm governments. It would be a pretty foolish move. But withdrawing from a country's market to cut losses can be a correct move.
They wouldn't able to say "Well, you're breaking the law but because you're threating to leave, we will let you get away with it."
Giphy isn't big enough for that, but if for example the CMA requested that of Instagram, then it could be a good business decision to just leave the UK.
Also I do not think the general public will scream at their MP's to fix this problem. Not many people say anything to their MP at all about anything, and hating FB is quite popular.
That wouldn’t do anything, legally speaking. The acquisition was under British jurisdiction when it happened. This is the U.K., not El Salvador. Its system is heavily integrated with America’s. If Facebook blew off the CMA, it could find relief in U.S. courts. Given how unpopular Facebook is, State would be unlikely to intervene on its behalf.
The US has blocked mergers as well, and has retroactively forced acquisitions to be terminated. An example was Grindr selling a 60% stake of the company to the Chinese company Kunlun in 2016, Kunlun purchasing the rest of the company in January 2018, and CFIUS issuing a ruling in March 2019 that a Chinese company owning Grindr posed a national security risk and forcing them to sell the company (although finding a buyer and completing the sale took another year).
Yes, but between actions like this and privacy regulations, being multinational is looking less and less workable. This isn't to say the regulations are bad, just that you can't have 100 jurisdictions with different policies trying to manage your company.
Imagine getting booted from that market. If it is truly some rando govt, your financial impact will be negligible. If not... now you have to justify getting booted to your shareholders.
That could be a very difficult exercise.
But Giphy? Really? I mean, it's not exactly a sticky site. It's basically plumbing.
Also: I disagree that Giphy has no value, it's exactly because of its ubiquitous presence on other sites that it has value for Facebook: yet another way to stalk and profile web users.
That would be breaking news indeed.
For example, it’s fine to drive at 70 mph on a UK motorway (usually), but not OK to do 90. And if you’re repeatedly caught doing 90, you may have your license to drive at all revoked.
> Regulators also determined that the deal was uncompetitive because it shut down Giphy's advertising business, therefore eliminating Giphy’s competition to Facebook's ad business.
Their (Meta nee Facebook) platform really only has Google and Amazon as real competition in the ad market, and potentially Apple and TikTok in the future.
> The CMA found that Giphy’s ad services would have been able to compete with Facebook’s own display advertising services, while also encouraging innovation from other social media sites and advertisers.
> Facebook shut down Giphy’s advertising services at the time of the merger. The CMA said this is a cause for concern, especially because Facebook controls nearly half of the £7 billion ($9.4 billion) display ad market in the U.K.
> Stuart McIntosh, chair of the independent inquiry group carrying out the investigation, said in a statement Tuesday that the deal has already removed a potential challenger in the display ad market.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/30/facebook-owner-meta-told-to-...
Chalk this up to (yet another) weird decision from the CMA.
After Facebook bought Instagram it became the rebranded version of Facebook for women.
For all those who consider Facebook irrelevant, or fading, you should realize that Facebook (Instagram) is the portal through which almost half the population almost exclusively use the internet — it’s AOL and Internet explorer and Yahoo rolled into one.
Incorrect, it could also post to Twitter ;)
So why did Facebook buy it?
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-directs-facebook-to-s...
Summary of final Report (30th November)
https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/facebook-inc-giphy-inc-merger-i...
Case documents:
https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/facebook-inc-giphy-inc-merger-i...
In the social media space, if Facebook has such a monopoly, why have there been a number of competitors that have come along and represented an existential threat in the same way Facebook did to Myspace? Examples: Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and Tiktok.
But this regulatory ruling isn't even about Facebook's dominant business, it's about the potential harm to the advertising business from a $30m easyily-reproducible company. Sure, Giphy had a lot of installs but it's not even the only such company in this space (eg Tenor? IIRC).
And if you're going to go after a company for dominance in advertising and you go after Facebook and not Google? How does any of this make sense?
These companies are also facing competition from competitors who aren't and won't be shackled by the threat of government intervention. Instead, those companies are extensions of the state. I am of course talking about China and the likes of Tencent, Alibaba, Tiktok and so on.
So I'm confused by this move because it seems ultimately pointless. Anyone claiming it's "sending a message" miss the point that this cuts both ways. It can embolden those who oppose regulation as government overreach and this may hurt actual anticompetitive practices rather than potential anticompetitive practices.
All around, this just seems so... dumb.
Yes, using it's dominance to control a market and decide where people get to advertise, rather than people having a choice.
2) If you think Giphy is easily-reproducible, it shows how little you know about things in general.
3) "And if you're going to go after a company for dominance in advertising and you go after Facebook and not Google?"
1 minute of research would show you that the CMA already are and have been at Google's doors too. More recently about Google's power when it comes to third-party cookies; which is for advertising.
The CMA are pretty much always going at the big companies for something.
It seems like you need to understand what you're talking about, before you try and talk about it.
Is Giphy fundamentally different in some way than Imgur, Photobucket, Tenor, Gfycat, or Animoto? Seems like there's a pretty healthy amount of competition in the space unless I just don't understand what makes Giphy special.
What makes Giphy special is the content/user moat that it has.
Anyone can easily create a Giphy website and search engine. You can most probably buy a Wordpress theme for $20 to do it. You can not easily-replicate what Giphy has achieved in regards to content moat and user numbers. I wouldn't call 2 other businesses in the same industry, healthy competition.
The idea that regulators shouldn't regulate because someone (the regulated?) might be upset is laughable. We don't acquit murderers because their community would miss them.
The only people who will oppose this are "captial-at-all-costs," folks who are happy with the continued consolidation of power/resources.
> The idea that regulators shouldn't regulate because someone (the regulated?) might be upset is laughable.
So let me address this straw man by stating what I'm actually saying:
1. The time to block an acquisition is prior to the acquisition;
2. If you placed conditions on that acquisition (which regulators often do), you should need an actual violation of those conditions rather than a theoretical violation;
3. Regulators should focus on actual problems. In the US, the Sherman Act was a result of the Standard Oil monopoly. Standard Oil controlled production, refining and distribution of petroleum products (primarily kerosene). It's just not the same with many of the so-called big tech problems today.
FB's most troublesome acquisition is WhatsApp and even in that case it was a company started by someone who famously got rejected by a job with Facebook in the late 2000s (ie Brian Acton). If you can establish a real threat to a company after that company has a huge lead, it's pretty good evidence that that company doesn't have the wall around their "monopoly" you think they do.
There's a lot of political grandstanding around this now. My point is that companies shouldn't be regulated. It's that rolling back Giphy is just such a pointless exercise of that regulatory power.
The only "geese" that will be hurt by this are those that feed on "engagement", illicit data collection and human misery in general. I'd say those geese can go and burn in hell.
The legitimate tech industry that make real, sustainable products/services in exchange for money will not be affected by this at all.
Only those whose "business model" (if you can call it that) is to get tons of VC cash and either end up as a monopoly or get bought out by a bigger fish is going to be affected, and again I'd argue that's a net win.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to require Giphy UK to cease trading, and force Facebook UK to compete on its own? UK authorities policing UK companies and all.
(Please don’t respond to this as a hot take on globalisation — my comment is a serious question about how the UK competition authority can be most effective, not a wide eyed lamentation on why we can’t have world peace etc.)
Facebook has a significant and legitimate cost centre in Menlo Park, CA.
As in, sure, FBUK sell ads, but the value is backed by a 4billion eyeball set of social networks that didn’t just build themselves.
It is probably closer to £0. VAT is only chargeable on non-business ad sales. Where a Facebook does pay VAT for a sale to a business, that cost is passed on to the buyer, which can claim it back from HMRC. The exception being very small businesses that are below the VAT registration threshold.
I am not a lawyer, but I am guessing that if Facebook blocks giphy usage in the UK there is very little the UK regulator can do to them. I see that as the likeliest scenario as they won’t want to sell giphy.
This will only make the regulator look foolish. The average person won’t understand why Facebook owning giphy is a problem (it’s not a social network) but they will be annoyed when they lose access to giphy in slack, WhatsApp and other platforms that use it in.
I'd say they're not GIFs, they're embedded mini-websites with their own tracking cookies and JS and whatnot. If only they were GIFs.
If you load it in a browser you get an entire HTML page full of spyware - it is not a GIF. They're detecting the user agent and deciding whether to send spyware or not - only curl'ing the link gives you the raw GIF by the looks of it.
I'd say the opposite: If a regulator can't regulate something as trivial as a gif sharing website we might as well shut down the regulator, because they can't do shit.
From the regulator “ Facebook’s acquisition of Giphy would reduce competition between social media platforms and that the deal has already removed Giphy as a potential challenger in the display advertising market”
So the finding is Facebook has too much control in the market. Blocking giphy just shows how much control they would have if the acquisition is completed. If anything, blocking giphy makes it worse.
Will this pan out well for the regulator? Who knows, who cares. But it shows if your business gets a bad reputation like Meta has, you’ll find regulators starting to kick you about.
Look in a mirror. Evading the regulator would require exiting the UK market entirely.
You'd think the UK would be pulling an Ireland and throwing around tax shelter bargains and generally offering sweetheart deals like there's no tomorrow. Trying to bully businesses they desperately need is...brave.
Agreed
Not sure why the UK regulators are even concerned about the Giphy deal, it's small time... like, compared to the Nvidia + Arm deal.
> Meta could probably just pull out of the UK entirely without any serious bottom line impact.
Not sure about that, but there are plenty of options. Meta probably needs data-centers in the UK, but those could in theory move to Ireland at great expense, probably at far more expense than the Giphy deal was worth. Then comes the issue of Facebook employees in the UK, and to what extent their jobs contribute to the UK economy, and what impact that would have for those jobs to move to another country. I'm not sure regulating Facebooks' small-time deals like Giphy is worth the potential risk of losing Facebook in the UK.
Another potential way forward would be to sell Giphy, then create new Giphy-like business unit. I'd argue this is perhaps the least expensive way forward, costing more than it was to buy Giphy, yet much less than the cost of moving UK operations out.
UK is in the top 10 higher number of facebook users.
While it's certainly easy to cite few companies that have better ethics than these major corporations, the attacks of EU&US regulators&politicians feel like it's just both a money-grab and also political talk in order to restore "trust in institutions"(Which is down-trending in EU since 2015 for example) while degrading the influence of these platforms (which again, it's not a bad thing, just an over-looked fact).
EU Regulators: ok
UK Regulators: waaaaait a minute
Honestly, I don't mind the UK's rationale here, but I would still tell them to pound sand, or "sod off". Fairly decent sized market but I would consider denying them service and seeing what happens next. Sure, gives room for a competitor to come in but also breaks their internet in the near term.
It doesn't matter how it makes you feel, or the ideals your animated civics class taught you in School House Rock, countries are in competition with each other for business, and this gives leverage to businesses that exist beyond the governance ideals of any single country.
If I was a decision maker in an organization of that size, I would let them find out how much of their private sector has incorporated products that would make their websites not load if we exited the market, and how much of their communication and communication history is tied up in the products too.
If I was in the government, I would also play the cards I was dealt on behalf of the people and try to break them up.
I don't have strong opinions on anything, I can play any side of this, this is really easy for me.