I'd say a way better approach is what was on HN recently where the chat platforms will have to enable 3rd party integrations effectively breaking the walled gardens. It makes way more sense to collapse the walls than distance and split the gardens
Maybe I misunderstood your reasoning but it seems like you're suggesting that Whatsapp for instance is forced to let third party clients connect to their system? That still gives Facebook access to data I don't want them to have. The whole point is to cut these information brokers entirely out of the loop, not force them into a compromise where they get some of what they want anyway.
I think that’s the worst possible solution. At the moment I have control over whether or not I have any conversations via Facebook’s platform. The forced 3rd Party integration completely takes that away. Facebook will weasel even further into the lives of those who actively try to avoid them.
Nobody said we _should_ focus only on Facebook? This kind of whataboutism is an easy way to deflect from fixing any one company, but if you've got three broken companies and you fix one of them, you've now only got two broken companies to fix.
I'm doubtful if there is any material harm in those companies being under the same roof, and the benefit to consumers may just be that they are free services, but that doesn't have to be demonstrated.
They are not essential services, it's better to just not use them if you don't like them.
Where there needs to be more regulation is in Search Monopoly, Search Result Transparency, App Store Monopolies etc. - there are serious consumer and industry issues there.
I think there is consumer benefit to scale (particularly when it comes to social networks), and I don't see how Instagram and Facebook being separate entities improves or changes anything. They'll have the exact same owners, same employees, same management... the only difference will be that Zucc gets richer and the employee's W-2s will say Instagram Inc instead of Meta inc.
Be careful. You and I aren't consumers of Meta. We're part of the product. You're arguing that advertisers should get a better deal since they are the consumers in this case. Personally I don't like advertisers and seeing them get lower prices, more space etc does nothing for the average citizen imho...
> I want this to be the start of a forced breakup of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram.
okay
> There’s zero benefit to consumers, and a lot of harm.
There's a ton of potential societal benefit in centralization and/or monopoly in theory. There's also a ton of potential downside. What in particular makes this fall in the latter bucket?
Where's the advantage of instagram, whatsapp and Facebook belonging to one company? The only advantage on any side I can see is combining user data and behavior data to improve ad revenue.
You could argue that features can make it easier across products, but each product would be big enough on their own to develop these features at little cost compared to their income. Apart from that there's no potential upside I can see for a user to have these products under one company.
The same applies to Giphy. Right now, messenger companies don't own Gif companies and it's still very easy to use them together. I don't see the benefit here for a user to have them owned by the same company.
"The acquirer may quickly take steps to consolidate its investment by removing the parts of its own business that compete with the target. If the CMA were prevented from making orders that impinged on the acquirer's existing business, divestiture at the end of a relatively lengthy process would, by itself, be incapable of either restoring the status quo at the time of the merger or protecting competition in the relevant market."
It looks like the CMA have the right to roll things back as if the merger never took place to the detriment of the acquirer (Facebook). Its likey Giphy won't suffer any losses, rather Facebook will be forced to compensate it, prehaps the plan all along for the VCs :P
How does such a retroactive block work ? I imagine Meta executives have already taken over the reigns and directed the company towards full integration with facebooks other services. If Giphy had had a project in the works that could disrupt any of Facebooks monopolies than surely that project would be canceled by now and anyone involved would have transferred internally to the relevant Meta subgroup or left.
So if blocking the deal results in Meta loosing control of Giphy but getting it’s money back, wouldn’t that be a great outcome for Meta as they would have achieved their main goal for free ?
Disclaimer: worked for the Austrian cartel prosecutor:
Such (as in: requiring regulatory approval in general, as I cannot legally speak to this deal specifically) takeover deals are structured with a suspensive condition, pending regulatory approval. Until that condition is met, it remains pending and without effect.
That is my understanding from german cartel law (very similar)as well. However how do you structure a deal to take retroactive actions by regulators into account. I don’t know if there is a set of established best practices there, but I‘m no M&A Attorney so this could well be a solved problem.
As much as the Law can bore me at times there frequently are questions such as this that pique my interest again.
Saw your recent (6mo ago) ask HN. Did you end up changing careers or stick with the law ? I‘m in a similar situation.
For the love of god, having a monopoly is not required to be guilty of anti-competitive behavior. Every time the topic comes up somebody says "but FB/whoever doesn't own the entire market so everything is fine", as if it absolves FB from acting like complete and utter pieces of shit socially and in business. News flash, it doesn't fucking matter. They don't need a de facto monopoly to have an adverse effect on competition or their consumers/users.
Facebook makes money from mining the data you generate while using their platform.
If you're not using _their_ platform, you're not making _them_ money.
To combat WhatsApp and Instagram, Facebook tried the Facebook App. It didn't work (people still used WhatsApp and Instagram a great deal more than the facebook app). Instead of figuring out why, they just bought the platforms out and forcefully integrated them.
Which clearly violates the Clayton Act.
"But why didn't the FTC intervene" because old people don't understand tech and new things will always confuddle the outgoing gatekeepers.
Those purchases gave them data they previously didn't have access to. Which gave them MUCH more control in the advertising market.
I expect boomers and the like to not understand this, but to hear "facebook isn't a monopoly" on HN is fascinating.
How else do you describe the centralisation of the internet via Google and Facebook? Innovation? Really? Despite all the evidence in leaks and statements?
So Facebook hoovering up Instagram and WhatsApp is fine, but we draw the line at, of all things, GIFs? Seems like backwards priorities and tokenism to me.
Giphy hosts images on thousands and thousands of other websites.
They're buying analytics access to further enable them to profile their users, sell that as an advertising platform.
Instagram, WhatsApp give deep profiles into their users but they're pretty up front about what they can do. CDNs need to be treated in special ways. They can leak information back to someone like FB and deanonymise activity.
> Facebook controls 40 to 50 per cent of the UK display advertising market according to the CMA. Giphy had offered paid advertising in the US and the CMA argued that, absent the merger, Giphy could have gone on to expand that service into the UK — something the company has denied.
I'm guessing its related to this point.
However,
> . In a response to the CMA’s provisional findings Meta accused the watchdog of “engaging in extraterritorial over-reach”
And yet the EU is also doing the same,
> In Brussels, EU officials are looking at new ways to examine mergers that fall outside their scope on the basis of revenues alone
Meta/FB has a legal presence in the UK and offers services in the UK. It needs to operate according to UK Law.
In practice, I don't know what the reality of this will mean. Does Giphy continue to operate as a separate company in the UK then? How's that going to work?
I'd love any pointers to precedent for how this plays out from here.
1. The acquisition was >1 year ago. (And there's some question of whether FB followed the correct process.)
2. The antitrust concern is in one major market with a ton of political and regulatory power — but still one of many. (Are there international trade agreements that inherently make this ruling impactful outside of the UK?)
3. The acquired company was very unlikely to find a better outcome, and would have been fairly likely to require costly restructuring for lack of this one.
I don't take this super seriously — because giphy feels replicable and, well, it's gifs. But curious if anyone else sees impactful competitive/strategic concerns, or if the matter at hand is really just political precedent setting.
Mostly I feel bad for giphy people. Hope they're nicely contractually protected.
In any acquisition an assessment of the regulatory risks has to be part of the process for the vendor. They took a risk in selling to FB and that risk hasn’t paid off. No one is entitled to the ‘best’ price if it involves something which falls foul of competition law.
And on competition - will anyone else be interested in GIFs if the dominant social network owns the market leader?
> “Companies are not required to seek CMA approval before they complete an acquisition but, if they decide to go ahead with a merger, we can stop the companies from integrating further if we think consumers might be affected and an investigation is needed.”
> He added: “We warned Facebook that its refusal to provide us with important information was a breach of the order but, even after losing its appeal in two separate courts, Facebook continued to disregard its legal obligations. This should serve as a warning to any company that thinks it is above the law.”
What if Meta obtain a monopoly on the supply of funny gifs.
> "At that time the CMA argued Meta could cut off its rivals’ access to gifs, and demand platforms like TikTok or Snapchat hand over more of their data in order to access gifs, consolidating power in Meta’s hands."
It... it seems like that may be a fair summary of the regulator's concern :/
Things will become very sad on the other social networks.
Zuckerberg is ruthless in his determination to own all the funny gifs and good times.
It’s not fair cause nothing will be left for Twitter, making it all just people yelling at each other and no one laughing at funny cats and memes.
If this deal is not stopped then Zuckerberg will have bought much of the worlds supply of laughs. He’s shown he’s willing to use those laughs against us.
It’s a dystopian future that I’m glad the UK is standing up against. Thank god there’s a democracy that stands against such devastating overreach.
We suspect zuckerberg’s grand plan is to lock away all the worlds laughs in a big vault so no one can get them, and finally the world will be under his control. Unless The Incredibles are sent in to Facebook headquarters to break in and steal the worlds sense of humor back.
Giphy is integrated in smartphone keyboards for hundreds of millions of devices, and it is a fast track to a large trove of personal data for Facebook.
whatsapp was/is a "market leader" in community watch groups, literally embedded in the city landscape. with the facebook acquisition suddenly all these local groups became a data mining and selling property, with the participating folks a captive population.
greed has overfloweth, lack of any moral compunction is the rule of the game.
fine but this usually bites back in ways not immediately obvious. so don't ask why the world is going to hell one crisis at a time.
Definitely not. This kind of brand whitewashing should be ignored as much as possible and whenever the 'new' brand is mentioned it should be followed by major former brand in brackets ('Facebook') to ensure that people aren't duped.
Only if you're gullible. Facebook is the company, Facebook.com and Instagram.com are the major web properties, Mark Zuckerberg is the man behind all of these. Any attempt to whitewash this should receive solid pushback.
Readit News
Does one encryption scheme have to mandated as the standard scheme?
Would be great not to have six chat apps open all the time.
I'm doubtful if there is any material harm in those companies being under the same roof, and the benefit to consumers may just be that they are free services, but that doesn't have to be demonstrated.
They are not essential services, it's better to just not use them if you don't like them.
Where there needs to be more regulation is in Search Monopoly, Search Result Transparency, App Store Monopolies etc. - there are serious consumer and industry issues there.
okay
> There’s zero benefit to consumers, and a lot of harm.
There's a ton of potential societal benefit in centralization and/or monopoly in theory. There's also a ton of potential downside. What in particular makes this fall in the latter bucket?
You could argue that features can make it easier across products, but each product would be big enough on their own to develop these features at little cost compared to their income. Apart from that there's no potential upside I can see for a user to have these products under one company.
The same applies to Giphy. Right now, messenger companies don't own Gif companies and it's still very easy to use them together. I don't see the benefit here for a user to have them owned by the same company.
Downsides:
* Higher risk - a bigger database to attack.
* A very big single point of failure
* Slows down innovation
* Less private
Upsides (for society):
* ???
Usually we dont ask "What in particular makes this fall in the latter bucket?"
"The acquirer may quickly take steps to consolidate its investment by removing the parts of its own business that compete with the target. If the CMA were prevented from making orders that impinged on the acquirer's existing business, divestiture at the end of a relatively lengthy process would, by itself, be incapable of either restoring the status quo at the time of the merger or protecting competition in the relevant market."
It looks like the CMA have the right to roll things back as if the merger never took place to the detriment of the acquirer (Facebook). Its likey Giphy won't suffer any losses, rather Facebook will be forced to compensate it, prehaps the plan all along for the VCs :P
Such (as in: requiring regulatory approval in general, as I cannot legally speak to this deal specifically) takeover deals are structured with a suspensive condition, pending regulatory approval. Until that condition is met, it remains pending and without effect.
Ben Thompson explained why it’s not a monopoly well:
https://stratechery.com/2021/regulators-and-reality/
Facebook makes money from mining the data you generate while using their platform.
If you're not using _their_ platform, you're not making _them_ money.
To combat WhatsApp and Instagram, Facebook tried the Facebook App. It didn't work (people still used WhatsApp and Instagram a great deal more than the facebook app). Instead of figuring out why, they just bought the platforms out and forcefully integrated them.
Which clearly violates the Clayton Act.
"But why didn't the FTC intervene" because old people don't understand tech and new things will always confuddle the outgoing gatekeepers.
Those purchases gave them data they previously didn't have access to. Which gave them MUCH more control in the advertising market.
I expect boomers and the like to not understand this, but to hear "facebook isn't a monopoly" on HN is fascinating.
How else do you describe the centralisation of the internet via Google and Facebook? Innovation? Really? Despite all the evidence in leaks and statements?
They would have to find a suitable buyer, and presumably if Giphy has been gutted then it's worth considerably less than Meta paid.
They're buying analytics access to further enable them to profile their users, sell that as an advertising platform.
Instagram, WhatsApp give deep profiles into their users but they're pretty up front about what they can do. CDNs need to be treated in special ways. They can leak information back to someone like FB and deanonymise activity.
> Facebook controls 40 to 50 per cent of the UK display advertising market according to the CMA. Giphy had offered paid advertising in the US and the CMA argued that, absent the merger, Giphy could have gone on to expand that service into the UK — something the company has denied.
I'm guessing its related to this point.
However,
> . In a response to the CMA’s provisional findings Meta accused the watchdog of “engaging in extraterritorial over-reach”
And yet the EU is also doing the same,
> In Brussels, EU officials are looking at new ways to examine mergers that fall outside their scope on the basis of revenues alone
In practice, I don't know what the reality of this will mean. Does Giphy continue to operate as a separate company in the UK then? How's that going to work?
If companies don't want to comply with UK regulation they are, of course, free not to participate in the UK market.
1. The acquisition was >1 year ago. (And there's some question of whether FB followed the correct process.)
2. The antitrust concern is in one major market with a ton of political and regulatory power — but still one of many. (Are there international trade agreements that inherently make this ruling impactful outside of the UK?)
3. The acquired company was very unlikely to find a better outcome, and would have been fairly likely to require costly restructuring for lack of this one.
I don't take this super seriously — because giphy feels replicable and, well, it's gifs. But curious if anyone else sees impactful competitive/strategic concerns, or if the matter at hand is really just political precedent setting.
Mostly I feel bad for giphy people. Hope they're nicely contractually protected.
And on competition - will anyone else be interested in GIFs if the dominant social network owns the market leader?
There are more than questions - FB was found guilty and fined for not following the correct process.
> He added: “We warned Facebook that its refusal to provide us with important information was a breach of the order but, even after losing its appeal in two separate courts, Facebook continued to disregard its legal obligations. This should serve as a warning to any company that thinks it is above the law.”
Good thing brexit has prevented the UK from all those crazy euro rules and regulations.
> "At that time the CMA argued Meta could cut off its rivals’ access to gifs, and demand platforms like TikTok or Snapchat hand over more of their data in order to access gifs, consolidating power in Meta’s hands."
It... it seems like that may be a fair summary of the regulator's concern :/
Zuckerberg is ruthless in his determination to own all the funny gifs and good times.
It’s not fair cause nothing will be left for Twitter, making it all just people yelling at each other and no one laughing at funny cats and memes.
If this deal is not stopped then Zuckerberg will have bought much of the worlds supply of laughs. He’s shown he’s willing to use those laughs against us.
It’s a dystopian future that I’m glad the UK is standing up against. Thank god there’s a democracy that stands against such devastating overreach.
We suspect zuckerberg’s grand plan is to lock away all the worlds laughs in a big vault so no one can get them, and finally the world will be under his control. Unless The Incredibles are sent in to Facebook headquarters to break in and steal the worlds sense of humor back.
Giphy is integrated in smartphone keyboards for hundreds of millions of devices, and it is a fast track to a large trove of personal data for Facebook.
greed has overfloweth, lack of any moral compunction is the rule of the game.
fine but this usually bites back in ways not immediately obvious. so don't ask why the world is going to hell one crisis at a time.