8 ms·
Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- koakuma-chan 1y agoSome things are fine if done under the table, but aren’t fine if spoken out loud.
- n4r9 1y agoArguably it's unacceptable either way, but only one of those ways can be evidenced in court.
- koakuma-chan 1y agoFrom the way this article reads Zuck is being derided specifically for getting caught.
- croes 1y agoIt shows a certain arrogance. Some kind of too big to fail
- n4r9 1y agoThat's certainly true. But this is Cory Doctorow who invented the concept of enshittification. I'd be super surprised if he thought anti-competetive behaviour is fine as long as you get away with it. My take is that he's saying "Not only is Zuckerberg a greedy asshole, but he's even stupid enough to make it provable in court."
- BlueTemplar 1y agoProbably with some shades of 'shameless' / "everybody I know is doing it, and if it's normal it can't be illegal" too.
- EchoVivaldi45 1y agoI agree, I got the same impression when I was reading the article.
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- bwb 1y agoCorrection: Some things are hard to prosecute if done under the table, and are not fine if spoken out loud :) Ethics are essential in every decision, not because you can get in trouble legally, but because you are part of a society of people like you.
- fifticon 1y agohe will probably have to buy trump a yacht to get out of this one.
- 3np 1y agoI think he's gonna have to offer up the naming off his child at minimum.
- ceejayoz 1y agoThat’s more Musk’s thing.
- starspangled 1y agoReally? Musk has offered naming rights of his offspring or personal gain on more than one occasion?
- diego_moita 1y agoIt is a joke with a reference. Famously, when Zucka was desperate to enter the China market he met with Xi Jiping at a dinner and asked him to chose a name for his child. In Chinese tradition that is a great honor reserved only for grandparents. Xi famously declined and Facebook never set foot in China.
- bflesch 1y agozuck already offered naming of his child to Xi Jinping and he was refused
- wyclif 1y agoPretty sure Trump can buy as many yachts as he wants without Zuck's help
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- AndrewKemendo 1y ago“Competition is for losers” - A talk from Peter Thiel hosted by Y combinator (https://youtu.be/3Fx5Q8xGU8k?si=3anUMopHSJ4nKk2R https://youtu.be/3Fx5Q8xGU8k?si=3anUMopHSJ4nKk2R) Timestamp 13:50: “If you’re a startup, and you want to get to a monopoly, start with a really small market and you take over that whole market and then you find ways to expand that market in concentric circles” Last I checked Zuckerberg is doing precisely what Thiel taught him to and has done it with preternatural skill. This is the standard for how you’re expected to act as a technology “leader” - which the majority of VC backed unicorn goal founders (like every FAANG founder) have been executing since day zero.
- badgersnake 1y agoIt sounds like you’re saying the only way Y combinator makes money is when it’s illegal. So let’s RICO them then I guess.
- tlb 1y agoBy itself, becoming a monopoly can be legal & ethical. But once you have a monopoly, you're not allowed to do certain things like buying competitors for the purpose of crushing them.
- deeThrow94 1y agoI think the ethics of private enterprise is far from sorted long, long before getting to market-manipulation. Particularly in the US, where you're essentially obligated to take peoples' money at any cost.
- Juliate 1y agoWhat verifiable existing/attempting monopoly today is ethical?
- tlb 1y agoThey are about as ethical as non-monopoly businesses. Which is to say that some are bad and most are OK. I guess some people think all business is unethical, but for those people monopolies don't change the sign.
- rvz 1y agoThe anti-trust regulators have targeted almost all but one of the FAAMG companies and that is Microsoft, who certainly knows how to avoid a break-up of their entire company. The rest have not dealt with totally removing their cases entirely, so it makes sense for the FTC and the DOJ to target everyone else first before lastly bringing up a massive case against Microsoft. Perhaps that is their strategy in all of this.
- croes 1y agoHow about renaming FB to Trumpbook?
- diyftw 1y agoThere's a reason there's no M in FAANG. Unlike those "upstarts", Microsoft is more like the Lockheed Martin or GE of tech. There is so much Microsoft software in use in the gov't (especially the DoD) that it would be precarious to prosecute/regulate them.
- balls187 1y ago> Microsoft is more like the Lockheed Martin or GE of tech This analogy is apt in so many ways (in addition to the prevalence of MS software in the .gov setting)
- rvz 1y agoThat isn't the reason nor is that a convincing argument to not enforce anti-trust laws against a particular company. So one is allowed to have a monopoly in government software and the rest are not? Reducing competition is one of the goals of a monopolist and anti-trust laws applies to all, no exceptions. Don't you think there are other companies competing against Microsoft for government contracts like Amazon, Google or even Palantir that includes software? Also, Apple isn't some "upstart" either.
- snovymgodym 1y ago> There's a reason there's no M in FAANG. Yeah, there's a very simple reason: the FAANG acronym was coined around 2013 when Microsoft was still in a rut, Ballmer was still CEO, and their stock was still down from its dot-com bubble peak.
- andrewaylett 1y agoThe article talks about writing things down as if it's a negative, but surely we should applaud it? I don't want the lesson to be "don't write things down", I want it to be "don't break the law".
- wanderingstan 1y agoNegative only for Zuckerberg. The implication is that he was so arrogant and incompetent that he made a mistake (writing) that monopolists in other fields knew to avoid. Incriminating talk “should” happen only in person or on the phone if you don’t want to get busted.
- klabb3 1y ago> I don't want the lesson to be "don't write things down", I want it to be "don't break the law". That would be great if the law was functional. US antitrust law is a low-level IQ test, whose only function is to catch the occasional stray careless CEO admitting to the crime, ignoring corporate training 101. The article puts it well: > It's damned hard to prove an antitrust case: so often, the prosecution has to prove that the company intended to crush competition, […] It's a lot easier to prove what a corporation did than it is to prove why they did it. In other words, think happy thoughts when crushing the competition. Like when Bezos was feeling charitable selling baby products at a massive loss until diapers.com was starved to death[1], and then jacking up the prices. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diapers.com https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diapers.com
- casey2 1y agoYou are constantly breaking the law. The lesson here is to stay popular and keep the right palms greased.
- arcticfox 1y agoThis article would have been much better if it was at least a bit more direct. At the most crucial juncture, instead of including Zuck's own words, the author wrote the author's interpretation of his words and then an analogy. > At this point, Zuck's CFO – one of the adults in the room, attempting to keep the boy king from tripping over his own dick – wrote to Zuck warning him that it was illegal to buy Insta in order to "neutralize a potential competitor." > Zuck replied that he was, indeed, solely contemplating buying Insta in order to neutralize a potential competitor. It's like this guy kept picking up his dictaphone, hitting "record," and barking, "Hey Bob, I am in receipt of your memo of the 25th, regarding the potential killing of Fred. You raise some interesting points, but I wanted to reiterate that this killing is to be a murder, and it must be as premeditated as possible. Yours very truly, Zuck."
- sbarre 1y agoI mean this has been Cory's writing style for years. It should be no surprise. I think he included, or linked to, enough direct quotes and references to allow him to editorialize as well, and get across his disdain (that many other share no doubt). This is the man who coined the term "enshittification" after all.
- sameermanek 1y agoI guess truth social is going to find itself in a multi billion dollar buyout soon.
- EchoVivaldi45 1y agoThis article is trying way too hard to dunk on Zuckerberg for… doing normal CEO things. The whole premise seems to be that writing down your thoughts, asking questions, or being transparent in internal emails is somehow a huge self-own. But that’s just how people work—especially when you’re running a massive company and making fast, complex decisions. You write things down, explore ideas, get feedback. Acting like that’s a confession is lazy analysis. The real problem here is that the author treats normal business strategy—like acquiring a rising competitor—as some kind of criminal mastermind move. Whether or not that should be legal is one debate. But pretending it’s shocking that a company would consider eliminating competitive risk? Come on. That’s what businesses do. If you want to critique the system, critique the system—not the fact that someone used it. Also, the smug “ha ha, he wrote it down!” attitude is incredibly counterproductive. All it does is teach executives to stop documenting anything real. It punishes transparency and rewards corporate vagueness and CYA behavior. If that’s what we want more of, congrats—we’re on track. The piece doesn’t offer any actual insight into how companies operate or how antitrust should evolve—it just ridicules someone for not being lawyerly enough in private. That’s not analysis, it’s court fan fiction.
- caboteria 1y agoI'll defer to Stringer Bell: > Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy? "Normal CEO things" don't include committing crimes, and they are only a "huge self-own" when they document those crimes.
- alex1138 1y agoLook - he hasn't made any of his acquisitions any better and Whatsapp especially is a clear slam dunk antitrust case I'm less interested in some of the political hatchet jobs people do against his company (namely Facebook) but his product sucks and it's been unusable for years
- dana321 1y agoHe bought the competition, it should be an open and shut case.
- neuroelectron 1y agoCory was great reading when I was a young adult but I've gotten older and he is still the same age. Not sure which is better, tbh.
- neves 1y agoThe (good) movie Social Network makes a Fair portrait of Zuck and his awful personality traits. It's really terrible to have somebody like him as the head of a powerful corporation that almost controls our minds.
- redleader55 1y ago> head of a powerful corporation that almost controls our minds. I find this line of thinking disingenuous. No one is forcing anyone to participate in social media. At the same time, no one is responsible for others participating in social media. So what makes the CEO of Facebook so evil? My theory is that he's dislikeable as a person, regardless of what his company is making money from.
- fallingknife 1y agoThat movie was made almost entirely based off of the story as told by people who were at the time suing Mark Zuckerberg. It is the farthest you can get from fair.
- jsnell 1y ago> Did Zuck buy Insta to neutralize a competitor? Sure seems like it! For one thing, Zuck cancelled all work on Facebook Camera "since we're acquiring Instagram." I don't get this bit. That seems to be supporting exactly the opposite of the author's thesis. If the acquisition had existed only for "neutralizing a competitor", they would have continued work on their existing products in this space, no? Canceling their existing product and keeping the acquisition is more in line with them realizing Instagram was a service they couldn't hope to catch up with. It'd also be consistent with them wanting to carve out a larger niche for Instagram, by reducing the overlap between the two on Facebook's side.
- bagacrap 1y agoIt proves that Instagram is a /competitor/ and that Facebook (camera) lost the competition prior to the buyout.
- mrcwinn 1y agoI understand this case is about Facebook and not Instagram, but these quotes might offer another perspective. >they appear to be reaching critical mass as a place you go to share photos >[Instagram could] copy what we’re doing now … I view this as a big strategic risk for us if we don’t completely own the photos space. In a way, this is effectively saying that Instagram could itself become a monopoly (or put differently, come to monopolize). Right? Isn't that what Meta fears? It makes me wonder if, at least in the case of social networks, there's a natural tendency toward monopolization. In other words, is there not LESS utility to the consumer if we have a bunch of small, competitive social networks duking it out? I'm not here to excuse Meta and certainly this is the case for federation. I guess I'm left wondering, what exactly was Meta supposed to do?
- BlueTemplar 1y agoThere's a natural tendency towards monopolization in companies in general. But competition is good, as the alternative is stagnation (especially once a company gets powerful enough to sway governments). Likewise, platforms are evil, and social network platforms in particular probably shouldn't be allowed to exist. Protocols don't have this fragmentation issue that I guess you are aiming at but never stating directly. Facebook shouldn't have engaged in anticompetitive practices.
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- belter 1y ago"...At this point, Zuck's CFO – one of the adults in the room, attempting to keep the boy king from tripping over his own dick – wrote to Zuck warning him that it was illegal to buy Insta in order to "neutralize a potential competitor." Zuck replied that he was, indeed, solely contemplating buying Insta in order to neutralize a potential competitor. It's like this guy kept picking up his dictaphone, hitting "record," and barking, "Hey Bob, I am in receipt of your memo of the 25th, regarding the potential killing of Fred. You raise some interesting points, but I wanted to reiterate that this killing is to be a murder, and it must be as premeditated as possible. Yours very truly, Zuck...."
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago"In Zuckerberg's defense, he's not the only tech CEO who confesses his guilt in writing (recall that FTX planned its crimes in a groupchat called WIREFRAUD)." Any similarity with other "tech CEOs" seems inculpatory more than exculpatory.