←back to thread

Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court

(www.axios.com)
431 points c420 | 2 comments | 14 Apr 25 13:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.496s | source
Show context
henryfjordan ◴[14 Apr 25 19:16 UTC] No.43685057[source]▶
> "The FTC's lawsuit against Meta defies reality. The evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others," Meta spokesperson Chris Sgro said in a statement.

Everyone knew at the time that Facebook bought Instagram because it threatened Facebook's dominance, and hindsight shows that exactly that happened. There's a huge swath of people that dropped off FB and now use Insta, but Meta owns both. It was a great move but it was absolutely anti-competitive at the time.

replies(19): >>43685508 #>>43685515 #>>43685646 #>>43685767 #>>43685806 #>>43685820 #>>43686547 #>>43686628 #>>43686655 #>>43687439 #>>43687599 #>>43688044 #>>43688162 #>>43688335 #>>43688415 #>>43689802 #>>43689816 #>>43690767 #>>43703847 #
paxys ◴[14 Apr 25 20:09 UTC] No.43685767[source]▶
If everyone indeed "knew at the time" then why did the FTC allow the acquisition to go through in a 5-0 vote?
replies(8): >>43685818 #>>43685857 #>>43685861 #>>43686018 #>>43686108 #>>43686238 #>>43686843 #>>43686925 #
1. matthewdgreen ◴[14 Apr 25 20:44 UTC] No.43686108[source]▶
I think "everyone" in this case means: people who knew the business and had an adversarial perception of Facebook's intentions. This was apparently not how the FTC thought at the time.

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...

replies(1): >>43686597 #
2. throwanem ◴[14 Apr 25 21:37 UTC] No.43686597[source]▶
I've never had a Facebook account, other than a burner for the brief time I spent investigating VR via Oculus Quest 2.

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.