Facebook may not be a monopoly, but on the other hand, that's not a necessary condition for antitrust laws to kick in. A dominant position on the market is enough.
Facebook is the most anti-competitive of them all IMO. "Monopolist" and "anti-competitive" are overlapping yet distinct legal concepts in antitrust law. Facebook had a well known "buy or bury" strategy where they would either buy their competitors or try to destroy them. What is interesting is that IMO FB has had antitrust pressure before google/apple/amazon and this basically froze FB's M&A teams for the past ~4 years. In this time we have seen 4 new promising independent social media networks arise (tiktok, dispo, clubhouse, substack). IMO without the antitrust pressure against FB the current state of social media would be more consolidated, less likely that these 4 new networks would be independent/growing quickly at this stage.
Facebook if antitrust actually does its job properly (notably, give back Whatsapp to Brian Acton and Jan Koum, don't require a log-in to view public Instagram photos, and don't tie the Oculus to Facebook accounts)
Luckily, there are laws against monopolies. I don't see what you mean by Facebook currently having a monopoly, because Facebook is not the only social network.
Given the fact one of their main competitors is Valve, I don't think you have to worry about them destroying their competition financially either. Facebook isn't even really competing with them, FB is going for the low end market.
A non story. Facebook is doing what Facebook ought to be doing. Monopoly is not a bad thing when no one’s rights are being violated. The next innovation will come from someplace other than social media.
Building another Facebook isn’t hard, but the network effect makes it almost impossible. Then they have their acquisition team to ensure that anything that does make it through doesn’t last long. The idea that they’re out there competing on their own merits is silly.
I think that’s one of the big differences - they have a monopoly on the means of production (the userbase), which is less ephemeral than say owning all the steel plants and mines.
Lots of monopolies suck at their core business - because they've lost the need to compete due to either suffocating the competition or growing into adjacent markets to lock down their user base. Facebook can both be incompetent and an economic danger.
I think most people know competition is good for the consumer. I'm saying, competition is also good for the companies themselves. Often in tech you see one company, its employees, or its users lambasting the competition. It is self defeating to wish away all your competition. It is a rare company who can continue to innovate in the face of having no competition. Right now FB doesn't have much competition in the US for its core product -- helping people connect with their friends
Perhaps this is just a recent revelation for me, and talking about it helps form my thoughts. And maybe I'm wrong about FB. I don't use Snapchat or Instagram etc. My sense is that FB is far ahead.
Facebook’s acquisitions were ridiculed by most people at the time. They look like antitrust issues now because they were successfully integrated, something that was not guaranteed.
That's a strawman , having wannabe competitors does not absolve them from their anticompetitive practices. "Facebook" is a web-based social network. They weren't competitors to snap-tiktok-telegram-discord . But then they bought instagram, they bought whatsapp, they built a copycat messenger and used facebook+ig to push it to everyone, they copied snap and pushed it to everyone, they copy slack and push it to everyone, they copy tiktok to push it to everyone ... you see the pattern here, using their earlier dominant position to destroy any chance of competition.
I mean this shouldn't be news. Facebook is a social media company. Given their size they should be developing a competitor regardless of success or failure to hedge their business.
Should we be expecting a Facebook breakup soon? Sure CL and FB have huge userbases, but how are you determining CL in fact is a monopoly and stifling competition? Or is there no competition because no one is successfully (and legally) trying to start their own CL competitor?
What all the other posters said. If Facebook had real competition then it’s likely they wouldn’t be soaring in the stock market while in the midst of so much controversy and negative attention. It’s more likely that their competition would be pouncing on them by offering more distinct alternatives, forcing Facebook to either reform or fade away.
Facebook's not all that good at building new things, though. Most big companies aren't. Partially because they don't need to be.
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