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from the how-did-that-work-for-ma-bell? dept.
Facebook leak hints at its defense against a government-ordered breakup:
According to the leak, Facebook would contend that its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp passed FTC scrutiny without objections, leading it to pour massive amounts of money into both projects as it integrated them into its operations. A breakup would require spending billions and running separate systems that reduced security and hurt the user experience, Facebook would claim.
Facebook has declined to comment on the apparent leak. In the past, it has pushed for extra regulation (albeit limited) in place of a breakup.
[...] Facebook might have to offer some kind of defense before long. The FTC is rumored to be readying an antitrust lawsuit by the end of 2020, and the House could release its antitrust investigation results later in October. Neither is likely to be particularly kind to Facebook, and a split-up could easily be on the table.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2020, @03:55PM (13 children)
I'll even toss in some Hitchen's for them
I know it'll cost billions to break 'you' up; that's part of the point, it's part of the deterrent for you to not do that anymore.
As for security or the user experience, I'll refer to Hitchen's razor. Although I'm sure they'll come up with some pre-cooked numbers about user experience since that's as subjective as "how to do X" when asking Slackware users(*)
(*) For those not old enough, the joke goes: If you ask 10 Slackware users how to do X, you'll get at least 11 answers.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday October 05 2020, @06:15PM (12 children)
The real question is how you break up a social media site without destroying it due to the network effect.
With the baby bells, they did breakup by region and created a regulatory framework around network neutrality.
I don't think that would work for facebook. You'd have to re-engineer the core platform to allow some kind of distributed social network.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2020, @06:30PM
Why? What would be bad about this? Social Media does not have a guarantee to existence, if it deads, it deads.
Again, so what?
Look, I'm not trying to argue against you as an individual, so don't take this personally. I just happen to fall in the camp of "ok, maybe these things, at such a scale, really shouldn't exist, and then it's fine that these things die because they really shouldn't exist in the first place".
A bit like multi-billionaires, if you will...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2020, @07:01PM
The baby bells all interconnected with each other. You could call from one region to another without any more trouble than a typical long distance call.
Do the same thing with Facebook. Set up multiple divided companies, each running a different social networking domain. They must all interconnect with each other. A person on one domain can invite a person on a different domain to their event. And anyone can create their own domain that interfaces with any of the others, like Mastodon.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 05 2020, @07:36PM (8 children)
You care . . . why?
Seriously, if Facefook is outright destroyed, and completely forgotten, what difference will it make to any of us? Assets will be sold off to various debtors, competition, startups, or whoever. Facefook will be replaced in short order. Life will go on. And, hopefully, government and users alike will demand that the replacement(s) are better regulated and more responsible.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday October 05 2020, @07:59PM (4 children)
I care because the network effect would create another monopoly.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2020, @08:07PM
"Better stick with the devil you know ..." and all that, I guess?
But what if I told you that we could eliminate the devils altogether?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2020, @08:14PM (2 children)
I don't think "the network effect" means what you think it means. I think you meant "the downstream effects".
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday October 05 2020, @08:32PM (1 child)
In the context of social tools "The network effect" refers to the natural market advantage afforded to the largest connected network of people, maximizing the incentive of other people to join the same network, leading to natural monopolies.
"The downstream effects" barely makes sense in context.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2020, @09:16PM
I cede... you are correct.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2020, @10:09PM (2 children)
Every person that I know would care if half of their family members and friends are taken off of Facebook and moved onto a competitor and they can no longer communicate with all of their family all over the world. That's who would care.
People that communicate via facebook do so freely right now. If there are to be multiple social media platforms that everyone is forced to switch to and they cross communicate it should also be equally free for everyone to cross communicate or else everyone that has to pay would equally care.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2020, @10:30PM (1 child)
So what you're saying is that there's a solution to this problem? Great, let's get busy!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2020, @10:50PM
The real question is why is it a problem in the first place?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday October 05 2020, @08:47PM
With the Baby Bells, what they did was a substantial *reduction* in regulations because telecom was now a competitive industry in a way it had never been before. And as for the network effects, what happened in relatively short order was that the largest of the Baby Bells wasted little time in buying up the other ones, to the point where AT&T has been reconstituted but now has fewer regulations they have to follow. It's sort of like trying to defeat a blob monster by slicing it into parts: They'll just come back together again at least as powerful as before.
As for fixing up the core platform, all that would be necessary would be something along the lines of Diaspora*, where the hosting and rules about what you could post are distributed rather than centralized, but it's a protocol that allows people to traverse between hosting / rules setups as desired. The reason FB won't like this, of course, is that this is harder to data mine for ads.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2020, @04:22PM
Facebook, like any substantial social network, IS FUNDED by the US-ian government, for surveillance purposes.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2020, @04:56PM (1 child)
You don't upset God Emperor Trump without retribution, you simply don't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2020, @05:10PM
Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2020, @05:34PM (3 children)
That would be another just slap in the face of the European Commission (and I don't mind, they need slapping). The EU approved WhatsApp's merger on the condition that the two systems would remain in independent operation, and it already fined Facebook once for doing what everyone in tech already saw coming.
But to now argue against carving up the moloch on the sunk-cost argument that they spent a lot of money doing what they already told the EU what they wouldn't do... They must be betting on the assumption that a politician's memory has term limits too.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 05 2020, @05:48PM (1 child)
Great post. I'm somewhat anti-EU, and seeing the commission slapped around would make me feel good. But, that's beside the point.
The big tech companies steamroll smaller governments, and do whatever the hell they want to do. All the while they lie and mislead larger governments, bribe officials, and generally do whatever the hell they want.
It's past time that the US, EU, Russia, and even China put all these tech companies in their place. And, while doing so, they should welcome all those first and third world nations around the world to join in. Maybe we don't all get fair representation in government, but NO ONE gets fair representation in a corporation. Not even the stockholders in many cases.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2020, @06:19PM
Be best my brother!
apk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 05 2020, @05:50PM
It doesn't? I thought the memory extended to "until it's no longer expedient for me".
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday October 05 2020, @08:38PM
You realize the FTC is corrupt/incompetent, remove the top 2-3 layers of management, and try again.
I remember first being concerned about mergers back in the Clinton administration when oil companies started merging like horny rabbits (I was in my 20s then). Those mergers should have never happened, let alone the media consolidation that has taken place since then.
Oh, problem. The FTC is no more nor no less corrupt than the rest of the system. These people are so out of touch they not only don't recognize corruption, they see it as business as usual. Never mind if you or I did the same thing we'd get long prison terms.
I came. I saw. I forgot why I came.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday October 06 2020, @03:54PM
If you're going to break up Facebook, it should be done the way I suggested Microsoft should have been broken up.
First, other people suggested: break Microsoft up into OS, Applications, etc, etc
But No! That's just several big divisions that can still act monopolistic.
But how to do it correctfully: Break
MicrosoftFacebook up into multiple competing entities. Back in the day it would have been Microsoft A, Microsoft B and Microsoft C -- each of which started out with ALL of the combined IP and products. The idea is that they are now in competition with each other. They can differentiate their products with improvements. Now a drawback to that is that it is in the end users' interest to maintain compatibility. Otherwise a customer becomes a slave to one of the three offshoots.But this problem wouldn't happen so much with a Facebook A, Facebook B and Facebook C. Because they are online and you don't have software installed on the end user's computer.
But then there is the problem of 'network effect'. How valuable would a star trek sub space communicator be if you had the only one in the whole world?
But then, the three Facebook offspring could have interchange agreements, sort of like how SMS messages can go from AT&T to Verizon.
But then, only an idiot would begin or end a sentence with "but".
Is there a chemotherapy treatment for excessively low blood alcohol level?