FTC Sues To Break Up Facebook, Instagram and WhatsUp App

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I’d say the body of the larger technology companies, compared to those making laws in the USA, are part of the younger generation. From having watched the many technology hearings in Washington D.C., a problem we have is that the lawmakers don’t appear to be literate on the technologies for which they are making laws. I would appreciate it if at least some of them had some technology background to help the others in understanding.

I’m not either. The word itself appears to have gotten a bad connotation with some. By definition, the word simply means removing material considered offensive or objection. That happens all the time and isn’t necessarily the abusive activity that some might make it out to be.

I’d agree.

I was having a conversation with my wife on the concept of data ownership the other day. We didn’t actually come to a conclusion. We discussed a person having a printed card with someone’s contact information on it and discussed whether or not the person the card was about should have the right to demand the card be destroyed and obligating the person in possession of it to do so. I would generally say that provided that the information was legitimately gathered (ex: from a phone book, or from asking the person) then the person that has collected that information has no obligation to destroy it. Though my position changes as the contents of the information become more personal or have a higher potential to do damage.

To some degree, technology companies are not much different than this.
 
Engadget.com:

Facebook runs full-page newspaper ads to attack iOS 14 privacy changes​

Small businesses will suffer if they can’t use targeted ads, the company argues.

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Facebook is using full-page newspaper ads to criticize an upcoming Apple policy that will give iPhone and iPad customer the choice over whether advertisers can track them. The company claims in its advertisement that it’s “standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere.” If the policy change goes ahead, it argues, these sorts of companies will be unable to find and target customers with personalised ads. If they can’t do that, their sales will plummet, “adding to the many challenges they face right now,” the company argues in the ad, which Bloomberg reports will be running in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post papers.
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Really, though, this affect Facebook’s bottom line. Facebook, Google, et al make most of their money from advertising. That appears to have shaped a lot of their policies.
 
gam197 said:
Since these Federal Commissioners were put in under Barach Obama and allowed Facebook to grow what are the chance now under a Biden presidency of breaking it up?
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Are you misspelling Obama’s name on purpose?
 
FTC approved the Facebook buying Instagram and WhatsUp Apps.
Now they want to sue.
Non Sequitur.

So SCOTUS approves the breakup, FACEBOOK will not be diminished.
Was Microsoft diminished when it was ordered to break up?
 
RootKitWarrior said:
Was Microsoft diminished when it was ordered to break up?
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Let’s see, the case was brought against Microsoft in May of 1998. They’ve done well for themselves since then.

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And they never broke up.
 
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RootKitWarrior said:
Well I stand corrected.
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Not to jump too deep in the weeds, but the case brought against Microsoft asked that they be broken into separate companies. Microsoft was doing some unambiguously anticompetitive things, such as writing code that would generate fake error messages if certain software from the competition were present and paying companies to not have offerings from their competitors.

That case never received a ruling. Rather, Microsoft presented a solution to the USA and the USA accepted it. The Microsoft Consent Decree.

By comparison, I’ve not seen it alleged that Facebook has been anywhere near as bad as Microsoft. Also, while Microsoft’s market for the sake of the case was undisputed (Desktop operating system) I don’t think the same can be said of Facebook. The FTC has traditionally defined markets through analysis and looking at data such as how the sale of one product affected the sale of another. Ex: The FTC blocked a merger of two refrigerated pickle companies saying it would create a monopoly position because it noted that when the sale of one company went higher, the sale of another went lower. The FTC did not think the merger of a refrigerated and non-refrigerated company would create a monopoly condition.

By contrast, the users of Facebook often don’t pay the company anything. That does lead to some difficulty in defining a market unambiguously. And the use of Facebook doesn’t necessarily mean that another social media company is abandoned. There are a lot of social media companies, each appearing to have their own specialties in their offers. One could define markets such that every social media company is a monopoly of its own.

A bit off topic, but in the case that Epic Games has pending against Apple, it is trying to get Apple’s market defined such that Apple has an illegal monopoly on the sale of iOS applications. I don’t think that approach will fly. Because it makes a monopoly of every company that makes it’s own platform and licenses products for it.
 
StKates said:
I do know tmobile bought sprint so only 3 big phone companies. Personally im happy to never have had a social media account but said i just found out this is closing just as i joined!
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Well I have 2 Facebook accounts.

One I use for Parish members.
One I use for Classmates and Family.

Sorta like the concept of “Separation of Church and State”
 
RootKitWarrior said:
Well I have 2 Facebook accounts.

One I use for Parish members.
One I use for Classmates and Family.
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I have 2 facebook accounts.

One only has only stuff for people to find when they do research from my resume.

The other one has pictures of animals and plants and foods.

I don’t trust the general public to have access to much else.

I have three Twitter accounts. One for resume research, another for general stuff, and a third that isn’t associated with my identity so that I can be more honest (but polite) about some of my thoughts. The company I work for has had lots of clients and prefers we not speak on certain things with our names if it could come back to them. One coworker posted on his blog on why he was switching to Android from Apple and the company asked him to take it down. It wasn’t until 5 years later I found out that Apple was secretly a client of the company.
 
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