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Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court

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431 points c420 | 2 comments | 14 Apr 25 13:18 UTC | HN request time: 1.478s | source
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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.

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fallingknife ◴[14 Apr 25 20:14 UTC] No.43685820[source]▶
It was a tiny 1 billion dollar acquisition of a company with less than 50 employees. If everyone knew at the time how dominant Instagram would become, that "everyone" sure didn't include the founders and investors in Instagram.
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devrandoom ◴[14 Apr 25 21:02 UTC] No.43686302[source]▶
Back in the day, Android allowed any app to see what other apps were installed. That's how Facebook saw the threat from Instagram so early.
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1. fallingknife ◴[14 Apr 25 21:59 UTC] No.43686780[source]▶
You know who else knew how many devices Instagram was on? Instagram. And yet they were willing to sell. There is no conspiracy here. There is nothing nefarious. Facebook made a good bet.
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2. alex1138 ◴[14 Apr 25 22:03 UTC] No.43686805[source]▶
Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I know Facebook (and probably also Instagram) degrades photo quality by a lot, something Flickr doesn't do

That plus scary TOS changes Instagram did immediately after acquisition