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i dont think that facebook is a monopoly, they're just the biggest fish in the pond. there's a lot of different ways to do what facebook has done, even if alternatives are struggling to monetize. remember that facebook used to be compared to myspace
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Aug 30, 2017 23:40
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actionjackson posted:Well they could think they aren't monopolies/duopolies, or they could think they are and that they need to be more regulated because of that. e: You also need to ask, "a monopoly of what"? Clearly not a monopoly in the cellphone OS space. Not, technically, in advertising. I do not know what the legal boundary is that makes it a monopoly as opposed to a dominant player.
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Aug 30, 2017 23:48
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Remember monopolies are not inherently illegal. It is abuses of being a monopoly or even merely close to a monopoly that are illegal.Arsenic Lupin posted:
Google effectively holds a monopoly in normal online video content with YouTube for most countries. Sites like Vimeo or DailyMotion just aren't anywhere close to the same level.
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Aug 30, 2017 23:51
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Morally, Google is a monopoly, whether it is legally I do not know, because I am not a lawyer and that poo poo's complicated even for lawyers. Legally is what matters. As to regulation, we need nation-wide data protection and privacy regulations, but good luck with that. My reference for this is this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSrLjb3k1II starts at 3:48, talking about the "feudal internet." smartphone OS - Android 82% IOS 18% Google and FB get 50% of all online advertising revenue, and growing at 16% a year Microsoft/Apple have a duopoly in desktop OS Amazon, Microsoft and Google control the cloud computing market FB and Microsoft (LinkedIn) control social media market I also like the display of services Google has that he mentions (paraphrasing) "physical network, phones, laptop and phone OS, most used browser, private domain servers, PKI certificate authority, has photographed almost all physical spaces on the planet, and handles much of the world's email" If there is something inaccurate with what he is saying here please let me know. actionjackson fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 30, 2017 23:58
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actionjackson posted:
online advertising revenue is a big question mark in my opinion given how its a bit cargo cultish to throw money at ads online. like all those weird 3d videos on youtube shoveled out for toddlers that get millions of views among people who have no purchasing power or market agency like, think about how many ads are shown to facebook bots and fake accounts, or real people with adblock
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Aug 31, 2017 00:05
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What's supposed to be the "emergency" of that though? Most of these things only bear usefulness because of the fact that they're widespread enough to be the only game in town. It's especially silly that it's called "feudal" Feudal was the past where there were dozens of mutually incompatible ways/products/specs to do anything and thus you were very dependent on whoever was in charge of that platform.
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Aug 31, 2017 00:08
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actionjackson posted:smartphone OS - Android 82% IOS 18% Barring maybe the first -- again, I don't know the legal definition -- the rest of those aren't monopolies by definition. A duopoly is completely legal. Until Google buys FB or vice versa, they're on solid ground. There is a difference between "vital service provided by a few companies" and "monopoly". Amazon, Microsoft, and Google owning the cloud computing market is pretty much the best you can hope for : three strong competitors, and companies do move between Amazon and Google (in both directions) fairly often. It's a royal pain in the rear end, but you do have a choice, and it's a choice you can change at any moment. I didn't mention Microsoft because I don't know how hard it is to port in and out.
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Aug 31, 2017 00:36
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Barring maybe the first -- again, I don't know the legal definition -- the rest of those aren't monopolies by definition. A duopoly is completely legal. Until Google buys FB or vice versa, they're on solid ground. No they're not on solid ground. Google already has an 'effective' (pay close attention to this term) monopoly in search engines and public video hosting. Similarly, if either Twitter or Snapchat goes under (which is looking more likely by the day) Facebook will have an 'effective' monopoly of social media, Linked-in technically being a competitor or not. It's not about the type of revenue, it's about how much of the market share of a product or service which you control. If you have enough of market share, and lots of network externalities supporting your control, then competition becomes impossible and then you end up with a distorted market. The EU has already been fielding anti-trust cases against Google for this very reason for the better part of a decade (process still ongoing) and Facebook is next if it keeps consolidating market-share in social media. In a free-market, you are not allowed to seize control of a market to lock out competitors. It doesn't matter if you do it by growth (like network externalities made happen with the rail barons a 100 years ago) or by active collusion between market leaders. It's still very much a crime if someone brings you to court like what happened with Google in Germany. IT companies have mostly been getting away with it because old US congressmen don't really understand the IT-space even today and are being heavily lobbied not to think too much about it. Just watch the video you were linked. VVVVVVV: Fischmech is explaining the monopoly part better than I did. MiddleOne fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 00:53
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Barring maybe the first -- again, I don't know the legal definition -- the rest of those aren't monopolies by definition. A duopoly is completely legal. Until Google buys FB or vice versa, they're on solid ground. You can get hit for illegal abuse of a monopoly or monopolistic practices even if you're only a slim majority of a market, that's why actually being a proper monopoly who owns 100% or 99.9% or whatever doesn't actually matter in law nor is it inherently illegal. MiddleOne posted:Similarly, if either Twitter or Snapchat goes under (which is looking more likely by the day) Facebook will have an 'effective' monopoly of social media A) Snapchat is a loving rounding error in social media, rarely used or even usable as someone's main social media. MySpace is legit still a stronger competitor to Facebook than Snapchat is capable of being (yes, it's still around and active) B) You're ignoring a whole bunch of other countries pretty heavily. fishmech fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 00:54
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fishmech posted:A) Snapchat is a loving rounding error in social media, rarely used or even usable as someone's main social media Other countries don't matter to this discussion. The US and EU are their own markets.
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Aug 31, 2017 00:57
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Thanks to Fishmech and MiddleOne for the explanations.
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Aug 31, 2017 01:00
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MiddleOne posted:Other countries don't matter to this discussion. The US and EU are their own markets. But they do.  These are early 2017 data, for worldwide users. If we're considering Snapchat as a competitor to Facebook, we can't neglect that say Tumblr is also very popular in the US and has much more users than a Snapchat or even Twitter itself. Or how WhatsApp is a more direct competitor with Snapchat and is much more popular. And tons of social networks are only so used by people because of the very fact that you're using them with people in other countries.
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Aug 31, 2017 01:06
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It's US/EU versus China where China is out-of-bounds for Western tech companies.
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Aug 31, 2017 01:23
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fishmech posted:But they do. They do not, and even your graph (which congratulations on literally picking the first result google gave you which seems garbage looking at the numbers) does not show what you think it does. Lets see, on that list Facebook, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram are all effectively Facebook. Linkedin and Skype are both effectively Microsoft. QQ, WeChat, Baidu Tieba, Sina Weibo and QZone are all social medias which are big in China and not the EU or the US so we can rule them out. That means that counting down the active userbases of actual western social medias (again these numbers you found suck and are likely incorrect, what even is an active user, did the guy putting this together flunk statistics?) would theoretically be: Facebook: 4471 Tumblr: 550 Microsoft: 460 Twitter: 317 Snapchat 300 The rest being too small to even bother. That's Facebook at over 2/3rds right there. But you know what gently caress it, if we're going to use Statista we might as well use something actually relevant and more specific than 'worldwide active users'. Once again, these numbers are very likely incorrect but if we're going to use statista we might as well just dive into the poo poo. Lets look at the UK for 2017 of July, oh poo poo is that Facebook at 74.03% market share looking at usage statistics? Man, how could that be.  EDIT: It bears mentioning that any statistics on Social Media is going to contain a lot of lines drawn in the sand by necessity. What is web? What is blogging? What is chat? Do apps count? What is live-streaming? What is snapchat/instagram stories? Etc etc etc MiddleOne fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 01:28
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MiddleOne posted:They do not, and even your graph (which congratulations on literally picking the first result google gave you which seems garbage looking at the numbers) does not show what you think it does. Your argument is moronic. You're summing together independent networks as if if they represent unique users from each other. There's going to be about none of the Facebook Messenger users who aren't Facebook proper users. There are very few Instagram users who don't otherwise use Facebook. A more accurate total of Facebook's reach would be on the order of 2.25 billion, because the vast majority of the users of other Facebook-owned services are already Facebook users. Similarly Microsoft should more properly be 350 or 400 million since a lot of LinkedIn users are already Skype users. And you're counting global Facebook users, so you absolutely have to count the Chinese and Russian and other social networks in making your comparison - there sure as poo poo aren't 1.8 billion people in Europe+US+Canada after all. So it's more like Facebook 2250 Tencent 950 Tumblr 550 Microsoft 375 Sina 340 Twitter 317 Snapchat 300 Baidu 300 Viber 250 (Like FYI, it's currently believed there aren't even 4.471 billion people with internet access at all, your method of just totting up every network as if they were completely unique users is poo poo m8) Edit: And that's besides the fact that social media usage is extremely not zero-sum. Your phone is only going to be iOS or Android at once, but using a Facebook service does not mean you're not also using Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, whatever in the same phone/web sessions. This especially comes in for things like messaging services, where many people expect to use a few at once on their phone in addition to texting perhaps. fishmech fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 01:49
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eschaton posted:Probably automation of incremental backups that are de-duplicated across multiple systems, ease of access to backup snapshots by system/time, and ease of restore. I believe so, you pay for it + a deposit on the drive. You can either send them the drive back or just keep it. It's not really a good wind-down for a backup solution though: They should really refund you the paid time, because a backup that's going to delete has zero value. I have to pay someone else to begin uploading, and until that completes (over american dogshit "broadband" 5 meg up) the other service has zero value as backup. So this exit means I pay twice and still put my data at risk in the interim. I'm always leery of using someone for business when they do a sudden pivot as well, which is why I brought this up here. "Oh poo poo now we're an X provider" is often a sign that the money spigot has dried up and they've got limited time left before liquidation. Are you sure you won't need an emergency restore right when they say "welp we're bankrupt bye!"?
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Aug 31, 2017 02:09
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Tumblr's userbase really, really doesn't matter, because I don't think anybody is expecting Verizon to keep funding its expensive and unmonetized servers.
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Aug 31, 2017 02:30
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This is tangentially coming at what you're talking about, but I read it yesterday and it's stuck with me. https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n16/john-lanchester/you-are-the-product?src=longreads
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Aug 31, 2017 02:31
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Tumblr's userbase really, really doesn't matter, because I don't think anybody is expecting Verizon to keep funding its expensive and unmonetized servers. Twitter's userbase really, really doesn't matter, because I don't think anybody is expecting anyone to keep funding its expensive and unmonetized servers.
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Aug 31, 2017 02:51
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Wake me up when Trump sets a Tumblr page
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Aug 31, 2017 02:59
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fishmech posted:Twitter's userbase really, really doesn't matter, because I don't think anybody is expecting anyone to keep funding its expensive and unmonetized servers.
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Aug 31, 2017 02:59
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Trevor Hale posted:This is tangentially coming at what you're talking about, but I read it yesterday and it's stuck with me. Thanks for sharing that. I'll probably pick up that Wu book. I would completely delete FB except I'm part of a small community of people (insert joke group here) that mostly refuse to communicate over any other medium.
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Aug 31, 2017 03:02
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Of the two, I betcha Tumblr gets shut down faster, because Verizon's shareholders want the cash sink parts of Yahoo closed down ASAP, while Twitter's shareholders are still at the denial phase. I don't expect either to get shut down any time soon. Verizon's going to set up a Flickr-like (another Yahoo property of course) monetization plan that lessens/removes the limits on various sorts of uploads long before that.
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Aug 31, 2017 03:42
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fishmech posted:Edit: And that's besides the fact that social media usage is extremely not zero-sum. Your phone is only going to be iOS or Android at once, but using a Facebook service does not mean you're not also using Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, whatever in the same phone/web sessions. This especially comes in for things like messaging services, where many people expect to use a few at once on their phone in addition to texting perhaps. Social media is extremely zero-sum because social media derive its entire value to you from whom they have on them. If all your friends are using Whatsapp, Snapchat and Facebook Messenger then gently caress, you're already on a 66% Facebook diet. The network externalities of social media makes it more efficient to be on the social media platform everyone else of your group, social circle and language uses. (this by the way is why Youtube effectively cannot be competed with) That's why Russian and Chinese social media sites are irrelevant, because if you're a westerner they're unlikely to contain even a fragment of the people you know when compared to Snapchat (if you're young) or Facebook if you're a human being alive in TYOOL 2017. That's why Facebook bought Whatsapp and Instagram, to condense those network externalities even further. There's still thousands of alternatives if we're talking niche communities and alternate chat solutions but individuals left up to their own whims will graduate to the alternative which is more efficient to them which with so many network externalities at play is almost always going to be the bigger ones. To put this in non-IT terms. Facebook buying up Whatsapp would be akin to Coca-Cola buying up PepsiCo's Beverage division. You'd still technically have alternatives when going into the stores, but over 60% of what you will see on store shelves are now directly Coca-cola brands or brands which are subsidiaries of Coca-cola. Do you as the consumer still have a meaningful consumer choice at this point? Is there competition in the beverage space in any meaningful capacity? MiddleOne fucked around with this message at 08:14 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 08:04
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Social media isn't zero-sum, it's zeo-value 
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Aug 31, 2017 08:08
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mobby_6kl posted:Social media isn't zero-sum, it's zeo-value 
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Aug 31, 2017 09:33
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MiddleOne posted:Social media is extremely zero-sum because social media derive its entire value to you from whom they have on them. If all your friends are using Whatsapp, Snapchat and Facebook Messenger then gently caress, you're already on a 66% Facebook diet. The network externalities of social media makes it more efficient to be on the social media platform everyone else of your group, social circle and language uses. (this by the way is why Youtube effectively cannot be competed with) That's why Russian and Chinese social media sites are irrelevant, because if you're a westerner they're unlikely to contain even a fragment of the people you know when compared to Snapchat (if you're young) or Facebook if you're a human being alive in TYOOL 2017. That's why Facebook bought Whatsapp and Instagram, to condense those network externalities even further. There's still thousands of alternatives if we're talking niche communities and alternate chat solutions but individuals left up to their own whims will graduate to the alternative which is more efficient to them which with so many network externalities at play is almost always going to be the bigger ones. No, you're on a 50% Facebook "diet". You're using 50% Facebook services and 50% Snapchat services in that case. And Russian and especially Chinese social media sites are hardly irrelevant - there's tons of people using a VK or the classmate one in Europe, there's tons of Chinese diaspora people using the Chinese services in other countries - not to mention that huge chunks of Facebook's userbase are in countries where those other services are themselves popular. And gently caress, while we're at it here if you're going to treat Snapchat as a valid comparison to Facebook we might as well count YouTube as a social media too, and almost everyone uses YouTube. And this is leaving aside that you're intentionally ignoring multiple services used in the West in large amounts which are bigger than or similar to Snapchat because you have this dumb "well kids these days only use the Facebooks and the Snapchats" poo poo on your mind. I get you just want to freak the gently caress out about Facebook, but you really have to spin up a bizarre argument to get there - including treating Snapchat as an important service when they're literally on the verge of collapse because their entire sell has been torn out from under them. fishmech fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 16:16
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speaking of Google and monopolies https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt-google-new-america.html Liberal think tank's monopoly policy division publishes things critical of Google, Google threatens to pull funding, monopoly policy division is fired, think tank hilariously claims that it was because of "repeated refusal to adhere to New America’s standards of openness and institutional collegiality.” quote:“We are in the process of trying to expand our relationship with Google on some absolutely key points,” Ms. Slaughter wrote in an email to Mr. Lynn, urging him to “just THINK about how you are imperiling funding for others.”
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Aug 31, 2017 16:29
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If the point of US antitrust law is to protect consumers in the US then the social media sites which are only popular in China should be pretty irrelevant to the law and shouldn't be included in the social media market share calculations. That part of MiddleOne's point seems to make sense to me.
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Aug 31, 2017 17:23
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quote:While she asserted in the email, which was reviewed by The New York Times, that the decision was “in no way based on the content of your work,” Ms. Slaughter accused Mr. Lynn of “imperiling the institution as a whole.”
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Aug 31, 2017 17:24
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silence_kit posted:If the point of US antitrust law is to protect consumers in the US then the social media sites which are only popular in China should be pretty irrelevant to the law and shouldn't be included in the social media market share calculations. That part of MiddleOne's point seems to make sense to me. US antitrust law doesn't give a gently caress that some random person might only use Facebook, though. Since there's a wide variety of social media being used simultaneously by American consumers it's not relevant that he has paranoia about Facebook itself. Also again there's like millions of people using the Chinese social media sites in the US, because of people either from the various Chinese speaking nations directly or their families. And on the flipside - small time social networks are at risk of being involved in anti-trust lawsuits if they start pulling certain poo poo even if only a few million people are using them, at least judging on how antitrust law has been used in other industries over the past century. Because the law isn't about market size. fishmech fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 18:27
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fishmech posted:Also again there's like millions of people using the Chinese social media sites in the US, because of people either from the various Chinese speaking nations directly or their families. And again, irrelevant.
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Aug 31, 2017 18:48
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MiddleOne posted:And again, irrelevant. It's not irrelevant at all. The internet isn't national. Even if you're just talking within the US, like some sort of moron, there's still millions upon millions of people actively using those services.
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Aug 31, 2017 18:53
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fishmech posted:It's not irrelevant at all. The internet isn't national. Even if you're just talking within the US, like some sort of moron, there's still millions upon millions of people actively using those services. Social media are restricted in usefulness to communities you're actually involved in. Are you proposing that if I dislike Facebook I'll learn Chinese and get to know a bunch of Chinese people so that I can then use a competing service with them instead? Do you think that is a reasonable opportunity cost for me as a person? Is this something anyone would ever do?
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Aug 31, 2017 18:58
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MiddleOne posted:Social media are restricted in usefulness to communities you're actually involved in. Are you proposing that if I dislike Facebook I'll learn Chinese and get to know a bunch of Chinese people so that I can then use a competing service with them instead? Do you think that is a reasonable opportunity cost for me as a person? Is this something anyone would ever do? So you don't think all the people in the US who speak Chinese count? It's also interesting how you keep insisting on pretending like the only networks people use in the US are Facebook-owned or Snapchat. Just completely ignoring, once again, huge networks like Tumblr and Twitter, or for that matter YouTube itself. Or the various console and PC gaming networks. Or Skype. Or like 10 goddamn other things that each have millions and millions of users in the US alone.
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Aug 31, 2017 19:07
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St. Kitts is not happy about the Thiel et al. herpes trialquote:Now, the government of St. Kitts and Nevis says that the researchers also did not officially seek permission to test the vaccine, which took place from April to August 2016.
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Aug 31, 2017 19:25
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fishmech posted:So you don't think all the people in the US who speak Chinese count? Please stop arguing with fishmech, his posts are actually starting to make me stupider.
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Aug 31, 2017 20:51
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Off topic, but I'm nerdy enough about geography to be proud to know not only exactly where St. Kitts is on a map, but the capital as well 
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Aug 31, 2017 22:53
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I love how St. Kitts keeps proving to these libertarian assholes that just because you can literally buy citizenship there doesn't mean the government has any interest in putting up with their bullshit.
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Aug 31, 2017 23:02
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That has to be the least entertaining way to contract herpes on a Caribbean island.
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Sep 1, 2017 00:32
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