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Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court

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431 points c420 | 1 comments | 14 Apr 25 13:18 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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Aunche ◴[14 Apr 25 23:59 UTC] 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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Larrikin ◴[15 Apr 25 02:20 UTC] No.43688421[source]▶
If it was some insignificant photo sharing app with 13 employees why did they pay a billion dollars for it? Everyone knew when the sale closed exactly what they were doing.
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lbrandy ◴[15 Apr 25 03:44 UTC] No.43688795[source]▶
It's fun to see everyone arguing about what "everyone" thought.. when... we can just... look... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840 is a fun thread from 2012.

The top reply to the top comment has some useful quotes for the purposes of this discussion...

> This is not going to be one of the best tech acquisitions of the next decade.

> Instagram is a photo service in a sea of other photo services.

> Bookmark this comment. See you in 2022.

Heh.

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MichaelDickens ◴[15 Apr 25 05:27 UTC] No.43689238{3}[source]▶
I think you are being selective. I looked at the top 10 top-level comments and by my judgment:

1. bullish 2. bullish 3. neutral 4. neutral 5. neutral 6. neutral 7. bullish 8. bearish 9. bearish 10. neutral

Of the top top-level comments, you have to go all the way to #8 to find a bearish comment.

Replies to the top comment are more bearish because they're directly responding to a bullish sentiment.

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1. TimPC ◴[15 Apr 25 13:45 UTC] No.43692616{4}[source]▶
On the other hand the top ten comments as a whole are 3 bullish, 5 neutral, 2 bearish which is certainly not an overwhelming sentiment in any direction. That's despite the fact that bullish comments on start-ups tend to get more votes because it's a start-up community.