FTC Urges Courts Not To Dismiss Facebook Antitrust Case (arstechnica.com) 9
The Federal Trade Commission has urged a federal judge in DC to reject Facebook's request to dismiss the FTC's high-stakes antitrust lawsuit. In a 56-page legal brief, the FTC reiterated its arguments that Facebook's profits have come from years of anticompetitive conduct. From a report: "Facebook is one of the largest and most profitable companies in the history of the world," the FTC wrote. "Facebook reaps massive profits from its [social networking] monopoly, not by offering a superior or more innovative product because it has, for nearly a decade, taken anticompetitive actions to neutralize, hinder, or deter would-be competitors." The FTC's case against Facebook focuses on two blockbuster acquisitions that Facebook made early in the last decade. In 2012, Facebook paid $1 billion for the fast-growing startup Instagram. While Instagram the company was still tiny -- it had only about a dozen employees at the time of the acquisition -- it had millions of users and was growing rapidly. Mark Zuckerberg realized it could grow into a serious rival for Facebook, and the FTC alleges Zuckerberg bought the company to prevent that from happening.
Being acquired is the American Dream® (Score:1)
Get rich quick!
Is this the same FTC (Score:1)
Not the date range, you can't blame this one on Trump. We haven't enforced anti-trust law since the 70s, and we're only enforcing it on Facebook, Google, Twitter and other "technology" companies. Curious.
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair Facebook are practicing standard capitalism by buying potential competition. The vast corporation I work for does exactly the same thing, and you're paying for it but nobody cares because we're not a technology company.
Quick Refresher (Score:5, Informative)
Their argument actually seems pretty compelling: they note that Facebook have become (by far) the largest network, they point to strategic acquisitions (calling out WhatsApp and Instagram explicitly) to show how Facebook has aggressively targeted potential competitors and call this out as anti-competitive behavior.
The FTC point out what is "different" about Facebook compared with other potential monopoly operators - the fact that unlike say "Google Search" [in which a user's interaction with the platform is individualised at the point of use] Facebook makes use of what I'll describe here as "social inertia" - the idea that as more associates join Facebook, that has the effect of acting like a feedback loop, making it much, much harder for a new competitor to enter the marketplace.
They also lay out the anti-competitive conditioning, including the changes they have made to their API's that gave them unprecedented control over the way that third parties used and accessed the platform.
Reading this initial complaint carefully, it looks as though Facebook's attempt to have the case thrown out (citing a failure to state harm) was an attempted hail-Mary pass. Much as they would like to see the judge acquiesce and toss the case, the nature of some of the specific complaints - violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, Section 5(a) of the FTC Act, rather put the lie to Facebook's claims that the complaint failed to start harm (these are both explicitly mentioned in Part X of the above-linked PDF, in the "Prayer for Relief".
The fact that Facebook erred with this at a simplistic level doesn't make the outcome a slam-dunk, which is why the FTC seem to be taking the position they have here. It is also worth pointing out that this isn't excusively about Facebook, much as they are front-and-center in this instance. However this goes, and obviously through the inevitable appeals, the decisions and rulings made here [assuming, of course, they are not later over-turned on appeal to a higher court] are going to start the process of establishing Case Law for the arena of social networking.
A bit like the significance of "The SCO Group vs. IBM" and the attempted shakedown of Linux users, or "Oracle vs. Google" and the attempt to claim copyright on the layout of an API, this case could set the contours of what will become a legal battlefield for years to come.
Re: (Score:3)
Just for future reference, what you called "social inertia" is usually called a network effect [wikipedia.org].
No shit (Score:2)
He bought WhatsApp because it was doing better than Facebook Messenger too.
Monopoly??? In what sense? (Score:2)
The idea that Facebook has a monopoly in social networking is a bit ridiculous.
Facebook has between 700 million and 1.8 billion DAUs worldwide
Twitter has 600 million daily active users worldwide.
Snapchat has 300 million daily active users worldwide
TikTok has 50 million DAUs in the US alone.. can't find worldwide stats but it is surely at least 300 million.
Not even going to get into Pinterest and the others.
This is not what a monopoly looks like.
Yes Facebook is the largest but they are far from a monopoly. T
"Superior or innovative product"? (Score:2)
I'm getting active on it, because of friends who can't be bothered to check their email in two weeks.
"Superior or innovative"? Speaking as a recently retired programmer and sysadmin, if I were to walk into faceplant as CEO, I would FIRE EVERY PROGRAMMER, AND EVERY MANAGER WHO DISIGNS AND AUTHORIZED THE WEBSITE.
Not ONE of them is competent. Not ONE of them has any clue. I'd also take away their degrees....
Example: if you're starting a new post, gives you a new line, and posts. Except that if you're postin