[HN Gopher] Judge dismisses FTC antitrust complaint against Face... ___________________________________________________________________ Judge dismisses FTC antitrust complaint against Facebook Author : ChrisArchitect Score : 171 points Date : 2021-06-28 19:17 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com) | ChrisArchitect wrote: | link to court ruling PDF | | https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.224... | dang wrote: | I replaced https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27666416 in | your comment with the URL it points to. That way people can | click directly to go to the ruling, and we avoid the crankiness | problem with empty thread links (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRa | nge=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). I hope you don't mind! | spoonjim wrote: | If you are going to edit people's posts you should have the | original and edited posts displayed below your post. | dang wrote: | It's rare for us to do anything like this. My guess is that | as long as we tell people that we did it (and why; and as | long as it was for a good reason), it's not something most | of the community would object to. I don't think we need to | build new bureaucratic mechanisms. | | In this case, I could avoided it by posting a different | comment with the same link and pinned that to the top | instead, but then ChrisArchitect wouldn't be getting the | karma for their contribution. That seemed unfair. Hence the | above. | | I do sometimes think about building an edit-and-diff | mechanism for HN comments though! People could suggest | edits to comments and they could be treated like pull | requests. I can't tell if this is a great idea that would | massively improve the threads, or an idiocy. (Edit: I was | looking for a comment where I mentioned this not long ago: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25459870, and found | another one where I mentioned it 7 years ago: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8214456. That's nuts!) | spoonjim wrote: | Yes, but as a matter of policy, all English language | descriptions of what you did will have some wiggle room | for interpretation. For something as serious as changing | another person's words, you should have a special code | path, like text in a special color that says "edited by | moderator." Seeing that someone's post was edited | shouldn't require expanding a reply and interpreting it, | since editing someone's speech is far more delicate and | prone to catastrophic outcomes than merely suppressing | it. | dang wrote: | I hear you, but the problem is that such systems also add | cost, not just benefit. I don't only mean dev and | maintenance costs (although those too), but the cost to | the culture of making this place more bureaucratic. We've | always avoided that. HN is a spirit-of-the-law place, not | a letter-of-the-law one: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRang | e=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... | | Edit: oh one other point: there will always be "wiggle | room for interpretation". The idea of eliminating it is a | fantasy, and trying to build systems to eliminate it is a | wild goose chase. | diogenesjunior wrote: | I think some distinguishing attribute should be displayed | to show that a comment was edited by someone other than | the user. It's apparent to me that comments can be | edited. How can I be certain that mods haven't silently | edited a comment in the past? | dang wrote: | This is the sort of thing I think would be a mistake. I | posted a clear explanation of what I did and why. I | believe that's enough to satisfy the community. It does | leave a tiny minority unsatisfied who don't trust what we | say, but they are not satisfiable. For example, if we | added such a feature, how could you be certain that we | weren't secretly overriding it sometimes? You would | either have to take our word for it--in which case why | not just believe us in the first place?--or you would | need some other system to validate that one. This is how | you get systems upon systems, with no actual solution, | for a problem that doesn't even really exist. The same | issue would recreate itself at every step. | | Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying "just trust us". | Trust is earned. But the way to earn it is to always be | open to questions, answer them as well as we can, and | when people point out mistakes, to admit them and fix | them quickly. That's what we try to do, and it's | important to see that this is informal and social. Formal | and technical methods are neither necessary nor | sufficient for community trust, and it would be a big | mistake to think otherwise, because it would steal | resources away from other things, like human-to-human | communication and making the site itself better, for no | real gain and a lot of secondary costs. | [deleted] | spoonjim wrote: | You're thinking about the culture of your site, I am | talking about the rights of your users. Your users create | the value and deserve it (honestly it should be protected | by law). If you edit the link and then someone takes over | the domain and makes it a porn site, that can cause | direct harm to your users. You need to accept the cost as | part of the cost of doing business, and if you really | edit posts very rarely than the bureaucratic impact | should be minimal. | dang wrote: | This strikes me as an archetypal example of the | legalistic sort of thinking that is popular with a vocal | minority of internet forum users who like to make | litigious arguments, look for problems that don't | actually exist in practice, then demand bureaucratic | systems to "solve" the "problems". I don't believe that | we're violating human rights by operating HN, and the | idea of building software to address such cases as | "someone taking over the domain and making it a porn | site" is an example of what I mean by problems that don't | exist in practice. | | I don't mean to pick on you personally--it's a style of | thinking and arguing that I've encountered on a regular | basis. Being a moderator, and thus a sort of bureaucrat, | attracts arguments from the bureaucratically minded. All | I can tell you is that it's the opposite of how we think | about HN. In my view it would be an enormous mistake, as | in potentially fatal, to let this sort of thinking direct | how we operate HN or what features to add. The way I look | at it, HN users have a right to an interesting forum that | doesn't suck (or at least relatively doesn't suck), | that's a hard problem, and anything that detracts focus | from it is a really bad idea. I get that you think | differently and I don't mean to be disrespectful. But | yes, I am thinking about the culture of HN. | lwhi wrote: | I don't think what you did was awful, especially since | you went to the effort of explaining exactly what was | changed and why. | | However, I also think there should be space for discourse | about the mechanics of the action; however academic that | discussion might end up being. | | Personally, I think a suggestion to the OP encouraging | them to edit the post themself might have been a less | controversial method of achieving the same aim. | [deleted] | nightpool wrote: | I disagree, as a user I think what dang did makes sense and | was clearly explained to anyone viewing. Whether something | does or doesn't have special treatment in the software is | mostly orthogonal to the actual material impact of what | happened, which was clearly minimal here. | desperate wrote: | Not sure how relevant this is since it's a third party app, | but using Harmonic on mobile the original link would allow me | to view the PDF without downloading it (albeit after hitting | an empty HN page) while the direct link requires me to | download the PDF before viewing. | | Tbh I'm just happy to have hacker news, continue as you are. | ChrisArchitect wrote: | yeah fine -- I was trying to account for many ppl just | sharing/submitting the link to the PDF and a whole discussion | ending up on that thread instead of here as I saw the PDF | posted in the wild first | kyrra wrote: | I think this is a good TLDR from WSJ: | | > Judge Boasberg said the FTC's lawsuit was "legally | insufficient" because it didn't plead enough allegations to | support monopolization claims against Facebook. The judge, | however, said the commission can try again and gave it 30 days to | attempt to file an amended lawsuit. | granzymes wrote: | From the opinion, internal citations omitted: | | > The FTC has failed to plead enough facts to plausibly | establish a necessary element of all of its Section 2 claims -- | namely, that Facebook has monopoly power in the market for | Personal Social Networking (PSN) Services. The Complaint | contains nothing on that score save the naked allegation that | the company has had and still has a "dominant share of th[at] | market (in excess of 60%)." Such an unsupported assertion might | (barely) suffice in a Section 2 case involving a more | traditional goods market, in which the Court could reasonably | infer that market share was measured by revenue, units sold, or | some other typical metric. But this case involves no ordinary | or intuitive market. Rather, PSN services are free to use, and | the exact metes and bounds of what even constitutes a PSN | service -- i.e., which features of a company's mobile app or | website are included in that definition and which are excluded | -- are hardly crystal clear. In this unusual context, the FTC's | inability to offer any indication of the metric(s) or method(s) | it used to calculate Facebook's market share renders its vague | "60%-plus" assertion too speculative and conclusory to go | forward. | | https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.224... | | The court also threw out the similar argument from 46 States | (and in a way that the States are unlikely to recover from): | | > First, the States' Section 2 and Section 7 attacks on | Facebook's acquisitions are barred by the doctrine of laches, | which precludes relief for those who sleep on their rights. | Although Defendant purchased Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in | 2014, Plaintiffs' suit -- which seeks, in the main, to have | Facebook divest one or both companies -- was not filed until | December 2020. The Court is aware of no case, and Plaintiffs | provide none, where such a long delay in seeking such a | consequential remedy has been countenanced in a case brought by | a plaintiff other than the federal government, against which | laches does not apply and to which the federal antitrust laws | grant unique authority as sovereign law enforcer. If laches is | to mean anything, it must apply on these facts, even in a suit | brought by states. | | https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.224... | | Relevant to both suits, the Court separately found that the | argument that Facebook violated antitrust law by revoking API | access for other apps that duplicated Facebook features lacked | merit (the policy is not a violation of antitrust law) and came | too late (the implementation when they revoked access was years | ago and there is no ongoing misconduct). | neonate wrote: | https://archive.is/CEVxC | ratsmack wrote: | This makes me wonder if they purposely submitted a weak case to | appear proactive for political purposes, while knowing it would | be tossed out. There is a lot of money that flows from big tech | into the political coffers, so you have to be careful to not | rock he boat too much. | Clubber wrote: | It's certainly plausible. I wonder how many of our | institutions are really "just for show," like the TSA. | Y_Y wrote: | What if we replaced the whole anti-monopoly/pro-competition | apparatus with a sign that just said "Everything is fine, | this is the market working as intended."? | tablespoon wrote: | > What if we replaced the whole anti-monopoly/pro- | competition apparatus with a sign that just said | "Everything is fine, this is the market working as | intended."? | | "This is the market working as intended," does not imply | "everything is fine." | dragonwriter wrote: | > This makes me wonder if they purposely submitted a weak | case to appear proactive for political purposes, while | knowing it would be tossed out. | | I think its more likely that they were confident that what | occurred (complaint dismissed with leave to refile) was the | worst they would get, and the best case was that the court | would accept the weak and easier to prove claims as | sufficient fact allegations to support the case. | markus_zhang wrote: | I wouldn't be suprised that FTC is just a friend. I mean it's | year 2021, they already figured this out in the 19th century. | Animats wrote: | The FTC gets another shot at that, and can probably prevail at | this level in the next round. | | Challenging the acquisitions, though, came too late. | rvz wrote: | ...And Facebook reaches $1TN market cap too. | | To Downvoters: So Facebook DID NOT reach and close above $1 | trillon dollars in market cap after the dismissal of this | antitrust complaint? Are you prepared to refute this claim which | is backed by an article which is from the SAME NEWS SOURCE as the | one in this thread? [0] | | Discuss. | | It seems that having any sort of evidence-based logical | discussion or providing links to a reliable source does not apply | to this orange site and the illogical downvotes and zero replies | to this comment prove this. | | [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/28/facebook-hits-trillion- | dolla... | [deleted] | flunhat wrote: | Some choice quotes from the ruling: | | > The FTC is apparently unwilling to allege that Facebook has | ever (pre- or post-Instagram acquisition) had something like 85% | or even 75% market share; instead it hedges by offering only that | the number is somewhere north of 60%. The question naturally | arises: which firms make up the remaining 30-40%? Although | Plaintiff is correct that it is not required to identify every | alleged competitor in its pleadings, its choice to identify | essentially none is striking. | | > The Court's decision here does not rest on some pleading | technicality or arcane feature of antitrust law. Rather, the | existence of market power is at the heart of any monopolization | claim. As the Supreme Court explained in Twombly, itself an | antitrust case, "[A]district court must retain the power to | insist upon some specificity in pleading before allowing a | potentially massive factual controversy to proceed." Here, this | Court must exercise that power. The FTC's Complaint says almost | nothing concrete on the key question of how much power Facebook | actually had, and still has, in a properly defined antitrust | product market. It is almost as if the agency expects the Court | to simply nod to the conventional wisdom that Facebook is a | monopolist. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | Also; | | > The FTC has failed to plead enough facts to plausibly | establish a necessary element of all of its Section 2 claims -- | namely, that Facebook has monopoly power in the market for | Personal Social Networking (PSN) Services. The Complaint | contains nothing on that score save the naked allegation that | the company has had and still has a "dominant share of th[at] | market (in excess of 60%)." Redacted Compl., P 64. Such an | unsupported assertion might (barely) suffice in a Section 2 | case involving a more traditional goods market, in which the | Court could reasonably infer that market share was measured by | revenue, units sold, or some other typical metric. But this | case involves no ordinary or intuitive market. Rather, PSN | services are free to use, and the exact metes and bounds of | what even constitutes a PSN service -- i.e., which features of | a company's mobile app or website are included in that | definition and which are excluded -- are hardly crystal clear. | In this unusual context, the FTC's inability to offer _any_ | indication of the metric(s) or method(s) it used to calculate | Facebook's market share renders its vague "60%-plus" assertion | too speculative and conclusory to go forward. Because this | defect could conceivably be overcome by re-pleading, however, | the Court will dismiss only the Complaint, not the case, and | will do so without prejudice to allow Plaintiff to file an | amended Complaint. | | Not sure what the FTC's game plan was going into an antitrust | fight without a market share pitch. | FridayoLeary wrote: | Ouch. The judge didn't really hold back there, the guys in | FTC must be stinging. I'm not a fan of FB but it doesn't | sound like FTC deserved to win that case. | aardvarkr wrote: | Thanks for highlighting this part of the text. It's shocking | to see how vague the complaint was and I hope they get their | facts together because this action needs to happen. If I | recall correctly, this antitrust lawsuit was filed | prematurely because trump wanted to claim credit for it and | there was quite a hullabaloo about it at the time. | danpattn wrote: | If the FTC did file prematurely for political reasons they | should've known that the case didn't have a chance. I hope | they kept working behind the scenes on a well-formed one. | Maybe that was the original plan, rush in with a case to | please the Trump administration then follow up with the | actual complaint once they finish it. Then again, this may | be wishful thinking. Incompetence is a much simpler | explanation. | einpoklum wrote: | > If the FTC did file prematurely for political reasons | they should've known that the case didn't have a chance. | | Perhaps they did know the case wouldn't have a chance. | Perhaps there isn't a plan to follow up with the actual | complaint. It's not like the federal government has | seriously pursued anti-trust activity in recent decades. | dathinab wrote: | > Not sure what the FTC's game plan was going into an | antitrust fight without a market share pitch. | | Maybe their plan was to lose to destabilize any later lawsuit | which would have had a reasonable chance of winning? | alfalfasprout wrote: | One important thing to call out here is that even the above two | points don't actually matter in the final dismissal. | Ultimately, it boils down to something simple: time. | | The FTC had nearly a decade to bring something up and it | didn't. This ultimately is problematic because Facebook would | look at this and clearly see the FTC had no problems with its | actions. So to look at Facebook's conduct in the time that has | passed is ultimately unfair to Facebook. Since its actions | since would have been seen as being compliant. | zamadatix wrote: | Pages 50-53 are actually about why the court doesn't consider | it a valid argument against the case, including precedent | against the argument. | thehappypm wrote: | If you think about Facebook the consumer platform, it has a | high market share, but there are a lot of competitors in the | space. Social content site competitors include TikTok, YouTube, | and Reddit. Messaging app competitors include iMessage and even | SMS. | | Facebook the business (selling ads) is a large business but the | largest advertiser is Google, so they aren't even the leader. | twobitshifter wrote: | Hypothetically, Facebook has a monopoly in social networking, | but then they decide to launch a roblox clone tomorrow. Since | they have a new product line where they don't have a | monopoly, we should look the other way? It's true that | Facebook exists in many spaces where they are not dominant | but that does not diminish their dominance - in fact it's | their platform dominance that makes them so dangerous to | smaller companies in other spaces. | graeme wrote: | You're commenting on a thread about reality, not a | hypothetical, where the judge specifically called out | reasoning such as yours that argues Facebook is a | monopolist without defining terms or making concrete market | share arguments. | MattGaiser wrote: | > but that does not diminish their dominance - in fact it's | their platform dominance that makes them so dangerous to | smaller companies in other spaces. | | You have to demonstrate somehow that the dominance exists | in a rigorous way. | whoisjuan wrote: | I honestly think that the idea that social networking is | monopolizable is absurd. | | There are billions of online person to person interactions | that happen outside of Facebook. There are hundreds of | thousands of websites and communities that allow | communication, discussion and sharing of user generated | content. There are hundreds of thousands of online spaces | that provide an outlet to augment a message. | | So if anything, regulators should start by redefining | what's a monopoly because the current definition clearly | doesn't fit the classic narrative around monopolies. | TheAdamAndChe wrote: | Thinking of Facebook merely as a consumer platform seems | overly broad to me. Each of those are social networks, but | they fill a particular niche in the social experience. | YouTube is for asynchronous videos from people you generally | don't directly know, Reddit is for pseudoanonymous | communities, etc. | | Facebook's niche is in one-to-many communication with people | you directly know. It's also arguably one of the stickiest | forms of social network because of the strength of its | network effects. There is very little real competition in | that niche. | nindalf wrote: | Hacker News is a monopoly in the social-news-aggregator- | with-a-tech-focus-along-with-other-interesting-content-and- | strong-moderation-space. dang better watch out for the FTC. | scotuswroteus wrote: | -and-an-emphasis-on-downvoting-me | dageshi wrote: | If you keep narrowing the focus down, every product becomes | a monopoly on its functionality? | crazygringo wrote: | Finding niches is how competition _happens_. Another term | for it is market differentiation. Even if two products | /companies start out identically, they quickly diverge | somewhat. | | Pepsi doesn't copy Coca-Cola's marketing about being a | sexy/mainstream drink, they create their own niche of being | for younger independent personalities. | | When people choose to get their viral news from Reddit | rather than Facebook, or their viral videos from YouTube | rather than Facebook, that's competition period. | TheAdamAndChe wrote: | The difference between Coke and Pepsi is marketing and | flavor, but they directly compete in the same market. The | products they have are virtually the same, only minor | differences. | | The product differences between, say, Facebook and | YouTube are night and day. You wouldn't add an | acquaintance on YouTube and start messaging them through | that platform. I'm not sure you can even message people | like that on it anymore. But you can on Facebook. They're | fundamentally different products, they only align because | they both have some sort of social aspect to them. Kind | of. | kube-system wrote: | This is a matter of perspective. Being intimately | familiar with the differences between YouTube and | Facebook, you can point out many differences. I'm sure if | you were a food scientist or food marketing exec you | could point out many difference between different soft | drinks. These differences are market differentiators, not | evidence of being in an entirely different market. | Outside of the tech sphere, people see social media as a | monolith in the same way that you see the soft drink | industry. | crazygringo wrote: | I'd look at it a different way: "Facebook" and "YouTube" | aren't single products, but rather each one is a | collection of something like 10-20 products that live on | a single platform. | | For "viral videos", Facebook and YouTube (and Reddit) | _absolutely_ directly compete in the same market. | | For "educational videos", YouTube competes with other | platforms. | | While for "tracking social acquaintances" Facebook | competes with the Contacts apps by Apple and Google, as | well as other messaging apps. | | Really there's no such product category as a "Facebook" | or a "YouTube". And Facebook's original product category | -- to keep track of social contacts and post public and | private social messages -- is now only a tiny part of | Facebook. | jjk166 wrote: | Facebook and YouTube are both in the market for users to | show advertising to, and generally every minute spent on | one is a minute explicitly not spent on the other. If | facebook were selling communication with friends, then | YouTube would not be a competitor, but that's not | Facebook's business, nor would anyone argue that Facebook | has a monopoly on talking to your friends. | MattGaiser wrote: | You can define any company as a monopoly if you dig deep | down enough through market segments and features. | cycomanic wrote: | That argument goes the other way as well, you can | construct every company as being not a monopoly by | painting the market segment broad enough. | | I don't think this is a valid argument. | MattGaiser wrote: | At least in the cases of Standard Oil and Bell, you would | have needed to define the markets as energy and | communication (including the post office) for them to not | have had near total control. | | You could state the generalized product they sold and | their total control was evident. | nightpool wrote: | How is "communication" not potentially as broad as | "Social media platform"? Basically every form of digital | communication falls under the banner of social media | platform these days. (The GP comment cites Reddit, | YouTube and SMS--as diverse a set of websites from | Facebook (while still being communication-focused) as I | could imagine) | Retric wrote: | Saying Facebook and YouTube are direct completion seems like | a huge stretch. Google made G+ specifically because as Far as | Google was concerned it lacked a direct Facebook competitor. | | In what way can consumers substitute normal use like sharing | photos with family members on Facebook with YouTube? | kube-system wrote: | As a literal answer to your question, here's how to post | photos on YouTube: | https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7124474 | | But if I understand correctly, determining whether two | companies are competitors is more about their markets, | rather than their feature sets. | | From the ruling text: | | > Although the precise definition of a "Personal Social | Networking Service" is disputed (as that is the market in | which Facebook has its alleged monopoly), it can be | summarized here as one that enables users to virtually | connect with others in their network and to digitally share | their views and experiences by posting about them in a | shared, virtual social space. | | YouTube would fit that definition. | [deleted] | Retric wrote: | That's not even vaguely the same thing. | | Still if in your opinion YouTube was a "Personal Social | Networking Service" then why do you think Google have | made G+? | kube-system wrote: | It's not my opinion, it's what the court said in | plaintext. YouTube undeniably: "enables users to | virtually connect with others in their network and to | digitally share their views and experiences by posting | about them in a shared, virtual social space." | | Competing on features != competing in a different market. | Feature sets and markets are two very different things. | | What definition would you use to define Facebook's | market? | Retric wrote: | Features define the market. | | Spray paint manufacturers aren't in pen market even if | you can "recorded text and images in a durable fashion | with them." Lighting a couch on fire sure produces a lot | of lights but couch manufactures are not part of the home | lighting market. | | EDIT: But let's ignore that. Sure, YouTube has roughly | the share of social networking market as the number of | people posting vacation photos on it. That might just add | up to 0.0001% market share. | kube-system wrote: | If you define the market as [the previous definition] + | [photos], Facebook still has significant competitors. | | I can't think of any definition that would only apply to | Facebook that isn't so narrow as to be unprecedented as a | definition of an entire market. | | Bell was "telephone service". Standard oil was "oil". | What's a comparable definition for the market that | Facebook is in? | jshen wrote: | By that vague definition, any app/site with UGC is a | personal social network which is not a very useful | definition. | root_axis wrote: | They are absolutely in competition, Facebook video content | is _massive_ and there is a ton of video content accessible | only via Facebook. If there is any doubt, jump on Facebook | and start scrolling through their video section. | Retric wrote: | Microsoft and Nintendo are in competition, that doesn't | mean Nintendo in in the office productivity market. | root_axis wrote: | They are both in the video game console market though... | brundolf wrote: | Of all the big tech, Facebook seems like the _least_ | monopolistic to me. They have a totally different set of | issues (ones that we may not have laws to deal with yet), | mainly around having disproportionate power over society and | the psyches of individual citizens. But "monopolist" feels | like a pretty weak case. | xxpor wrote: | Everyone's trying to shoehorn tech into existing frameworks | because they know passing new laws is too hard. As the | judge pointed out though, you can't just make shit up and | expect to get away with it. | ethbr0 wrote: | Facebook the ad business is the monopoly. | | What really needs to happen is to amend monopoly definitions | _in cases where a captive market is present._ | | The issue with Facebook isn't that they own 100% of the ad | market, but that they control 100% of the _Facebook_ ad | market, which is itself large enough to constitute monopoly | concerns. (As with Apple and Google app stores) | | Advertising is trickier than apps in terms of separation, but | my gut says things would be better if companies _with large | captive market share_ were required to wholesale ad space and | targeting via standardized mechanisms. | | And were _specifically prohibited_ from developing any kind | of value add ad products on top of their platforms. | | Just too much conflict of interest. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _isn 't that they own 100% of the ad market, but that | they control 100% of the Facebook ad market_ | | You need to define these terms in a way that doesn't make | everything a monopoly. Because by this logic, my corner | flower vendor has a monopoly on her corner and also on the | flowers she is holding in her hand right now. | ethbr0 wrote: | Submarkets over a certain size, controlled by a single | party | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _Submarkets over a certain size_ | | This moves the problem of defining a market to defining a | submarket. | | Please don't interpret this as my being facetious. In the | days of good and services being sold to consumers, we had | metrics to measure this. The government measured and the | courts incorporated said metrics into antitrust law. | Those measures don't work well in the digital era. These | cases are about proposing new measures and getting them | to stick. | | Mind bogglingly, the FTC didn't propose such a metric. | That's why its complaint was dismissed. I'm curious to | see what they propose, if anything. | twoodfin wrote: | Like the "submarket" of Costco & Costco's shelves? | MattGaiser wrote: | The submarket of Walmart shelves? This would basically | ban any business that sells goods/services from going | beyond a certain size. | [deleted] | Ericson2314 wrote: | Traditional notions of market share were companies selling | commodities (oil, rail travel) with undifferentiated | products. | | Now everything is extremely differentiated so it's hard to | find _any_ products that are clearly competing apples to | apples. The markets of these things overlap funnily such I | almost wonder if the graph of "quasi-competing" products is | fully connected. | | ----- | | The institutional power of these firms isn't just in the | things they sell. It is also in people's dependence on the | non-fungible free services, etc. | | We do need new laws so issues with the courts in some sense | are good to force the issue. | lwhi wrote: | Surely these companies are advertising platforms selling | attention? | NikolaeVarius wrote: | I dislike/hate facebook. I have no idea why anyone thinks they | have a monopoly. I use social services just fine without FB | services | laurent92 wrote: | If the lawsuit were in Brazil, it would be clear: It is | impossible to access a majority of services without Whatsapp. | Most phone numbers / chat services have no alternative except | through Whatsapp, even in the administration. | HatchedLake721 wrote: | What kind of "majority of services"? | bogwog wrote: | I haven't read any of the court documents, and even if I did I | probably wouldn't understand most of it because I'm not a | lawyer. | | But... Facebook has engaged in anti-competitive practices in | the past and continues to do so today. I agree that just | calling them a "monopoly" isn't very helpful, because they're a | big company involved in many different markets. | | Most people hate Facebook nowadays, but their anti-competitive | behavior is not one of the top 3 reasons (probably). | | I think if people focus on this single question: "Is <company> | immune to competitive forces in <market>?", then the question | of should we regulate/how should we regulate/etc becomes much | easier to answer. | ineedasername wrote: | Unfortunate, but per nthe article it looks like the FTC dropped | the ball by not providing enough specificity in it's claims and | assuming the court would agree that Facebook is a monopoly prima | facie. | Dracophoenix wrote: | Because they can't without shooting themselves in the foot. If | the FTC defined a monopoly as widely as Ms.Khan did in her Yale | Law Review paper, they'd alienate the entirety of the F500 and | create a constitutional minefield. It might be litigated for a | few years but ultimately the charge of being an illegal | monopoly, along with any argument built on that charge, would | ultimately be dismissed. What they probably wanted was to send | in to most general and inoffensive charges first and amend | their claims as needed. | AcerbicZero wrote: | It's almost amusing how effective "our" government can be at | pushing certain things through "their" courts, while at the same | time being almost comically ineffective in other areas. Same | government, same courts, different outcomes. | wolverine876 wrote: | The court says that the FTC didn't factually establish that | Facebook has sufficient market power to qualify as a monopoly (as | I understand it). | | In a certain market, Facebook + Instagram have great market | power, but it depends on how you define the market. I'm curious | if anyone has done it, maybe financial analysts, and how they | define it: | | * If the market includes public messaging, such as Twitter, then | Facebook's power is relatively much diminished. | | * If the market includes public forums, such as Reddit, HN, and | every phpBB board, then it's hard to say Facebook controls | monopoly power. | | * LinkedIn provides similar service to professionals | | * Where does Pinterest fit? TikTok? | | Part of the problem is that Facebook competes in all these | markets. In which one(s) do they have a monopoly and how are they | defined? 'Personal user page + social communication'? | jdgoesmarching wrote: | This whole conversation becomes a lot easier if we realize that | two things can be true: | | 1. Facebook has an uncomfortable level of power in advertising, | eyeballs on screens, and proprietary data | | 2. Legals definitions that were created over 100 years ago | mostly focused on price gouging are not going to address this | neatly | LanceH wrote: | The whole conversation is a lot easier if you just define | Facebook as a monopoly. | | #1 is assuming the argument, really. #2 is stating that old | law doesn't work and implying we need new law to let us do | what we want...again, assuming there is a problem, making no | attempt to determine whether there is a legal problem | blsapologist42 wrote: | It's not the job of the judiciary or the FTC to create new | laws. If Facebook is not violating current laws there's | nothing for them to do, it would require new legislation. | gamblor956 wrote: | No, the court says the FTC didn't _allege_ that Facebook has | sufficient market power to qualify as a monopoly. Factual | determinations come later in the process. | | The court dismissed the pleading document (the initial | complaint) due to its inadequacies _but not the case itself,_ | which means that the FTC can file a new complaint with more | detailed allegations. | | The rough order of civil procedure: the complaint, where the | plaintiff(s) makes _allegations_ of fact and law about the | defendant party (or parties). This is followed by discovery, | where the actual fact-gathering occurs, then usually a motion | for summary judgment adjudicated on the facts acquired during | discovery, and finally, a trial on the merits (unless the | parties settle first). | gautamdivgi wrote: | Facebook doesn't have a "market" in messaging or social | networks. To be fair they don't sell messaging or social space. | | Facebook's "market" is advertising in which it isn't the | leader. | | I guess it would be hard to prove a monopoly on something you | don't even sell. | fallingknife wrote: | If the WhatsApp merger is in question, the FTC would have to | define the market very broadly. I don't think there is any case | to be made that FB has monopoly power over the messaging | market, so I don't think they are likely to succeed. | mdoms wrote: | It's such a shame that in the American culture the terms "anti- | trust" and "monopoly" have become so closely coupled. | jjk166 wrote: | A corporate trust is a monopoly or a near-monopoly, so it is | neither surprising nor shameful that the term anti-trust should | be associated with monopolies. | mdoms wrote: | The intent of antitrust law is to prevent anti competitive | behaviour. This may include, but is absolutely not limited | to, monopolistic behaviour. | cogman10 wrote: | Yeah, and it really is unfortunate that monopolistic | behavior is the only place the US (lightly) goes after | anti-competitive behavior. | | ISPs are another example where they should get involved but | don't. I'd love to see the US either turn the internet into | a public utility or trust bust the snot out of big telcoms | like comcast and AT&T. | | Even now, in my local market a new fiber provider is coming | to town, and wouldn't you know it, my ISP prices have | dropped for the first time in years to be ever so slightly | lower than this provider. | theptip wrote: | Lots of questions in this thread asking the obvious-yet-difficult | question of "in what market / in what sense does FB have a | monopoly?" | | I think Ben Thompson has the analysis right here. | | High-level summary: https://stratechery.com/2019/tech-and- | antitrust/ | | Facebook-specific analysis: https://stratechery.com/2017/why- | facebook-shouldnt-be-allowe... | | With the key bit of analysis being (from the latter): | | > Facebook, for its part, had, for better or worse, transitioned | to a public app that not only handled symmetric relationships, | but, at least according to perception, asymmetric broadcast as | well; that, though, left an opening for an app like Snapchat. | Thus Facebook's acquisition drive: the company had already | secured Instagram, giving it a position in asymmetric ephemeral | broadcast apps; Snapchat rebuffed advances, so the company soon | moved on to WhatsApp. | | > The importance of these two acquisitions cannot be overstated: | Facebook has always been secure in its dominance of permanent | social relationships, a position that has given the company a | dominant position in digital advertising. However, while everyone | may need a permanent place on the Internet (all of those | teenagers people say Facebook needs to reach have Facebook | accounts), the ultimate currency is attention, and much like real | life, it is ephemeral conversation that dominates. Facebook, by | virtue of early decisions around privacy and significant bad | press about the dangers of revealing too much, was locked out of | this sphere, so it bought in. | | So if we segment the markets along the lines that consumers tend | to intuitively percieve, FB has monopoly over public symmetric | (personal) social networking. That seems like a coherent market | segment definition to me. Though of course that's a lot of | qualifiers so I could easily see someone objecting that they are | arbitrary/post-hoc. | | As a separate point, perhaps someone with legal expertise can | comment on this one - I'm curious why the FTC's complaint relied | on establishing a monopoly; the Sherman Act doesn't actually | require establishing a monopoly; anticompetitive conduct that | attempts to establish a harmful monopoly is also illegal (e.g. | see https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly- | single-...). It seems obvious to me that FB's acquisitions were | primarily intended to acquire a monopoly (if they didn't already | have one), indeed Zuckerberg explicitly stated that he was trying | to prevent a competitor from emerging in the emails that were in | these court cases. | xxpor wrote: | >anticompetitive conduct that attempts to establish a harmful | monopoly is also illegal | | I think point 3 is the relevant bit: "a dangerous probability | of achieving monopoly power." | | It seems like the judge is basically saying that probability | isn't high enough based on their market share (that the FTC | couldn't even give a good number for). | markus_zhang wrote: | We should dispel the illusionthat large corporations compete | freely with each other so monopoly requires something like 75% | -80% of market share. | | In reality even a (consistent) 20% market share is pretty much | good enough IMHO. You have a bunch of corporations, each taking | about 20% and they will collude 100%. | DannyBee wrote: | You are confused. The law already recognizes collusion claims | and they are unrelated to monopolies (as they should be) | | The FTC did not plead collusion here ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-28 23:00 UTC)