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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

One reason I’m highly skeptical to claims of monopolies, especially in an industry as dynamic and volatile as tech, is in 5 years you already have competition from new upstarts (TikTok) and old hands (Apple and Amazon) that makes claims of digital advertising “dominance” by Google and Meta outdated. The monopoly claims were suspicious from the beginning but now it looks pretty absurd.

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TikTok was only able to compete so quickly because it's literally sponsored and funded by the CCP.

That's like saying every SV tech company is funded by the CIA.

Oh wait..

As if the others aren't government supported and coddled monopolies.

TikTok is better product than Youtube shorts or Instagram reels, money have nothing to do with it, especially while FAANG have more money than ByteDance.

You forget, that YT shorts appeared after TT emergence. It was a try from Google to get some part of TT success.

To be honest, I didn't use TT. Ecept when someone gives me direct link. But I am using YTshorts, coz I am already at youtube watching long vids.

Pretty addictive this shorts are.

I hate TT for trying to force me into registering.

Also I hate TT for baning porn and even erotic couple tears ago.

They can and have swayed elections at the turn of a dial...

The claims of monopoly have always been political. The only company that comes close to a monopoly is Apple due to them locking out third-party apps on their phones.

"Monopoly" is just a shorthand for a range of market dominance abuse. I.e. if an 800lb gorilla abuses you, it doesn't really matter that there are several others 600-700 lb gorillas ready to do the same to you.

https://ethique.rexel.com/en/competition-law/abuse-of-a-domi...

"A dominant position is not defined merely by market share, but by classification as a market leader. Typically, a company is considered to hold a dominant position if it has a market share of more than 40%, but even a market share of 15% may be considered dominant if it is the largest player in a fragmented market. "

Monopoly literally means a single seller. Duopolies and oligopolies are distinct both in theory and practice.

I think they're saying that the word "monopoly" is used colloquially, by many, to simply mean dominant position and that those people don't mean the literal definition. It seems they're just trying to say that the parent comment is arguing about the definition of monopoly rather than the actual point, which is dominant position abuse.

I agree that it's important to recognize the differences between monopolies, duopolies, and oligopolies in theory and practice, as you say, but I also don't think that using the wrong term nullifies validity of the actual point.

Fine, bring back "trust" if you prefer an archaic precision. Antitrust is about trusts, not monopolies.

Did you[r quote] somehow confuse 'monopoly' with 'dominant'?

Unfortunately, in the meantime, the "monopoly" has done huge and world-or-population scale damage in some way. Just think of how the industry has been affected (potentially negatively) by the heavy push and funding by big tech giants of technologies such as React, Angular, and Kubernetes?

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