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431 points c420 | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.712s | source
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henryfjordan ◴[] 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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Aunche ◴[] No.43687599[source]
> Everyone knew at the time that Facebook bought Instagram because it threatened Facebook's dominance, and hindsight shows that exactly that happened.

This is something that people can claim to know from hindsight. When Facebook acquired it, Instagram was a photo sharing app that had 13 employees.

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echelon ◴[] No.43688368[source]
Meta doesn't bother me too much.

I'm more concerned with YouTube owning all of social video. Movies are on a dozen streamers. Social stuff is on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, and X. But video essays, independent animation, educational content, cultural critiques, music, video podcasts, trailers, gameplay, research, news - anything long form, serious, interesting - it's all trapped on YouTube as the only distribution platform. And they'll keep getting bigger with no possible alternative due to network effects.

I'm even more concerned with Amazon being a conglomerate [1] that is in online sales, hyperscaler infrastructure, consumer hardware, home automation systems, grocery stores, medicine, primary care, and movie production. And that they can leverage these synergies in grossly unfair ways.

I'm most concerned that the Apple / Google duopoly in mobile, web, and search has entrenched these two players across the vast majority of online transactions, interactions, and computational device usages. They collect margin on everything. They own your devices, they own search, they own the web, they own the apps, they have to be paid off to rank your business, have to be paid off to collect money, they regulate what you can do with your apps and websites, etc. etc. You jump through their hoops. This is their internet.

[1] Especially given the fact that Amazon can subsidize their efforts in these areas from profits in other business units and out-compete viable businesses in those markets. They can offer goods for free with an existing subscription and advertise far and wide across their retail website, plastered on their packaging, and emblazoned on the side of their delivery vehicles. Lord of the Rings got an 80 million dollar advertising package for free, whereas Bong Joon Ho's far more deserving film got next to nothing.

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1. eGQjxkKF6fif ◴[] No.43688473[source]
It all bothers me. Centralization is bad. And if Facebook and Google wanted to just disable somebody's channel or pages, they could.

I think everybody on hackernews gets it. We're all pretty much on the same page.

Ain't nobody able to do anything about it though.

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2. transcriptase ◴[] No.43688778[source]
Not everyone on hackernews gets it. There are quite a few people on here involved with or responsible for the awful things that get brought up, but they’re paid enough to actually convince themselves we simply don’t understand why it’s necessary.
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3. numpad0 ◴[] No.43689917[source]
Laws, content moderation, and moderation obligations had created an insurmountable barrier to entry to fix that. Though abolishing those hard and soft laws can't be a solution for various reasons.
4. gosub100 ◴[] No.43690112[source]
Or they just have a different opinion than you. The GP comment was misleading saying there is "no possible" option due to network effects. You absolutely can upload to rumble or floatplane or other sites that have their own networks. People should be praising YouTubes model to pay the channels for content. In an alternate universe, Microsoft is renting you cloud storage by the gb with 3-tier plans and thousands of people use it to share videos with their families.