back to article US watchdog pokes Facebook a second time: Meta faces fresh monopoly lawsuit

The Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust complaint that Facebook, er, Meta operates as a monopoly will be heard by the courts after the US watchdog's initial lawsuit was dismissed. In December 2020, the FTC accused Meta of "illegally maintaining its personal social networking (PSN) monopoly through a years-long course of …

  1. Pseu Donyme

    Network effect at work

    The sort of thing Facebook is ends up as a monopoly because of the network effect where, in essence, users attract each other and where a competing upstart wouldn't get anywhere as the people you want to aren't there; as a natural monopoly of a sort it ought to be run as a public utility.

    An ideal approach could be splitting Facebook itself into two parts:

    - a regulated utility providing the technical core of the service on a common carrier basis, and

    - an user facing part operating under competition

    i.e. the former would used trough a well-documented API by the latter which would be just one of competing implementations paying fees to the regulated part. In practice, I suppose, regulating the existing monolith will have to do. Also, there is obvious opportunity to improve competition by cleaving off Instagram and WhatsApp.

    1. Tom Chiverton 1 Silver badge

      Re: Network effect at work

      Regulation is a terrible idea, because it makes it harder to compete, or places a cap on the size of a competitor

      1. Pseu Donyme

        Re: Network effect at work

        The premise is that there is an inescapable monopoly i.e. no competition to begin with so all that can be done is to regulate the monopoly to limit its abuse. Ideally, perhaps, competition could be brought to the user-facing part resulting from the split suggested above, but the core part would still have to be a regulated utility completely independent from Meta.

      2. AVee

        Re: Network effect at work

        Regulation does not make it harder to compete. Bad regulation written by lobbyists does that.

    2. jmch Silver badge

      Re: Network effect at work

      Imagine this - force FB to implement an open API so that any client (which could be 3rd party software or open-source) can access it's core functionality: authentication of a user, retrieve a friends list, send posts, receive posts from anyone on the friends list or being followed.

      No FB algorithms prioritising what gets in your feed. No receiving BS from anyone not on your contact list. Anyone wanting the 'full' FB experience can still do so through FB's own interface with all the junk, muck and BS that goes with it.

    3. Graham Cobb

      Re: Network effect at work

      I disagree about the need to run as a public utility. Network-effect lock-in can be better addressed by having open protocols and interfaces and competing providers. I.e. the model used by both email and the web.

      I would also like to see Meta formally prevented from operating both the service and the user agents. Just like email and the web, the companies providing the service should be separate from those providing the apps.

      I might wish, for example, to use Mozilla as my app provider (assuming they offered one) and Google (not that I ever would!) as my social networking service provider, while my friends continue to use Meta's Facebook service but with a Microsoft app. All with interoperability.

    4. The Basis of everything is...

      Re: Network effect at work

      Facebook as a utility? I always thought that utilities were essential services you really can't live without in a modern society, e.g. water, sewerage, electric. And I guess phone/internet these days.

      It's a strange world out there for sure.

      1. elwe

        Re: Network effect at work

        I manage just fine without sewerage and water from a utility company, and without Facebook of course. Although I have failed at avoiding WhatApp. Water comes piped in from a private source and I have my own sewerage treatment plant as both are really required, but don't have to be from a utility source.

        Facebook and WhatApp are things you could do yourself, I certainly have my own WhatsApp like messaging system, but I wouldn't get very far trying to persuade contacts to use it. That is why I see Facebook as far more in need of regulation than the utilities. People may say the utilities are a matter of public health, but it has clearly been shown that regulating Facebook is required for the health of a democracy.

  2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    But of course

    Target the person criticizing you and state that they have an axe to grind. That paints them as biased and, therefor, unreliable. Well done, Zuck, your minions have been properly assimilated and are emulating your despicable mindset of explaining away any problem with strawman arguments.

    Unfortunately, it's not because you don't like being criticized that the criticism is not justified. And, if it is justified, it doesn't really matter if the person criticizing is biased or not.

    For example, I am heavily biased against FaceBook. However, when I state that FB has enabled genocide, it doesn't matter if I am biased. It is a fact (unfortunately).

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