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Comment by sigmoid10 | Hacker News Reader

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sigmoid10·

>They have no authority to review a minority investment.

That's just wrong. Partial acquisitions and minority shareholdings don't allow you to bypass antitrust investigations.

See 15 U.S.C. §18 for example. It is similar in the EU.

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You are literally correct, but not engaging in the point. Meta shares in Scale are explicitly non-voting shares. Influence/control post minority investment matters as to whether the deal can be reviewed via Clayton Act. Meta did everything they could to avoid regulatory review with this transaction, and it worked.

The point remains wrong even if you pivot to this argument. Every major competitor has cancelled their deals with Scale AI and there are even rumours that the company will wind down and perhaps eventually stop working while key workers are essentially being absorbed into Meta. This is textbook anti-competitive behaviour and more than enough reason to warrant antitrust investigations by oversight agencies in the major markets.

The current US administration allows you to bypass US antitrust regulations.

But not because of majority/minority reasons as the other comment implies. It would be utterly ridiculous if you could just buy 49% of each of your competitors without any possibility for the government to interfere.

Utterly ridiculous is where we’re at right now.

In the US perhaps, but elsewhere antitrust laws still have some meaning.

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