If everyone indeed "knew at the time" then why did the FTC allow the acquisition to go through in a 5-0 vote?
They were busy doing things like bringing freedom and democracy to Afghanistan, having a financial crisis, stuff like that. Very important stuff. Social media? Oh yes I think my grandson told me about that.
Kind of stinks of less than valid motivations based on the timing of bringing this up over a decade after the fact.
- If I’m the politician, then I need to keep the company on the edge until the end of the trial where I promise them to be acquitted;
- If I’m the CEO, I need the trial to go through and acquit me, because it guarantees me against future trials.
On substantially identical charges, where the principle of double jeopardy holds sway.
Not specifically related to this case, necessarily, but if you let an acquisition go through and discover a decade later that it was, in fact, anticompetitive (and intentionally so), presumably you would still try to break up the resulting monopoly, even if you didn’t predict it would happen?
A) that would be considered bad law now.
B) despite all branches of government going after Alcoa (Congress passing a special law to support the case mid way through), nothing happened upon remanding the case to the lower court due to the successful argument that other companies began competing
C) that would never happen now primarily due to only anticompetitive practices being scrutinized, not merely having the ability to control prices. But now I see where the confusion comes from, a 13 year saga in support of the Sherman Act
D) it’s so interesting how much the country changed solely from trying to differentiate itself from communism. So its gone to more of an extreme of private maximum extractable value.
if you impulsively steal something and get caught, you are not guilty of planning to steal something, but you are guilty of stealing it.
monopoly is the same.
In 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported that FTC officials in 2012 had concerns about the deal raising antitrust issues. However, they were apprehensive about potentially losing an antitrust case in court if they sued to block the deal.[2] If they would lose then on the merits of trying to enforce the Clayton Act, it would set a precedent that likely could not be undone.
[1] https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/facebook-instagram-deal-down-747m-...
[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-ceos-defend-operations-ahe...
But before 2013 there were methods on both iOS and Android for an App to get a list of all OTHER installed apps on the device.
Facebook had the means to know exactly at which rate each app was growing and how many of the users they have to share with it, the facebook app itself was gathering this info.
They could gather enough data to even calculate how much user-attention they lose after each app is installed on a users' device.
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Onavo was then acquired in 2013, right when Apple started to lock-down those app-scanning methods with iOS7.
So it appears that the company was acquired to be able to KEEP doing something they have already been doing before that with the facebook app.
They could argue that the decision was made based on declarations that did not align with the private conversation that Zuckerberg had at the time, as those emails came out since.
Hell, even I wasn't this cynical back in those days. I was shocked as late as 2018 when Facebook began using SMS phone numbers for advertising, something they'd promised not to do (for obvious reasons.) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-said-to-use-peoples-ph...
I almost had one once, some time in the very early 2010s. After first login, the first prompt I saw was for my email account's authentication details, so that Facebook could "find my contacts for me."
I forget the exact language they used, but I know a boundary test when I see one, and I completed neither that nor any other further onboarding step, but immediately "deleted" the account - understanding this would not actually remove any information, but would deny me at least the temptation to develop what I could see would become a dangerous habit.
I don't exactly think I blame people who were slower to catch on, which is a relief, considering that appears at one time or another to have been about half the species and it would be a lot of work. But I would incline much less to say that mistrusting Facebook as early as 2018 would have been cynical, than that still to have trusted them so late seems remarkably naïve.
Also the FTC is not exactly known for enforcing antitrust law very strictly.
To anyone on the side of anti-trust, it was clear even without that email as to how much Instagram and WhatsApp were growing, and thus Facebook was Standard Oiling.