Comment by 3np

Comment by 3np 4 days ago

So briefly, Zuck is arguing that the social media which was Facebooks main business of 2010s no longer exists and that Facebook has now pivoted to generic content consumption, competing with YouTube, TikTok, Reddit etc.

The article says FTC is in a bind here.

IMO it's veey simple: Yes, FB shifted their focus and are now a content hose. They still have monopoly on some market(s) - not where they are competing with e.g. TikTok. Local events, marketplace, genuine personal social networks.

That doesn't mean that they don't also compete with TikTok elsewhere, where further market consolidation could be a concern.

Workaccount2 4 days ago

Anyone who uses instagram should be abundantly aware of this. The default behavior of the app became "Serve you all content we think you would like, in the order we think you would enjoy it". This pretty much means "You may or may not see the content of channels/people you specifically follow".

The app went from just showing you a stream of posts from people you follow, to just showing you a stream of posts it thinks you would like.

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kjkjadksj 4 days ago

What is worse is that the feed is generated on the fly. Switch apps for a second and your os kills instagram in the background, and you might not ever find those posts it showed you a few minutes ago ever again.

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- immibis 4 days ago
  
  I have the opposite problem. Every time Instagram starts in the background (allegedly to check for feed updates but probably to get my geolocation) it uses so much memory it pushes out things like my on-screen keyboard. No doubt Meta has figured out ways to manipulate Android to get priority over the keyboard, and only tested it on the very latest phones.
  
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imhoguy 4 days ago

I've singed up to Instagram first time about 2 weeks ago and it is literaly TikTok clone, including no history what I have watched.

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alabastervlog 4 days ago

I use it exclusively for announcements from certain brands with e.g. seasonal rotations or sales (small shops, especially, are often way more consistent about updating one or more social media accounts, often Insta, than their website, if they even have a website) and it's such a pain in the ass for that reason. I don't trust ads or their "algorithm" to promote quality (I reckon they're more likely to promote rip-offs and fly-by-night operations) so I super don't care about anything else they want to show me, even if it's directly related to the kinds of brands I'm following. I deliberately do not do new-stuff discovery in the app, because they have incentives to screw me.
The only thing I want out of it is to see the posts made by the accounts I'm following, since the last time I checked. That's 100% of the functionality I care about, and the app goes out of its way to not deliver it.

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- 3np 4 days ago
  
  And the shops are on FB/Insta/WhatsApp only because that's where users are. Classic entrenchment of network effects is a two-sided matketplace.
  
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LPisGood 4 days ago

They don’t really have a monopoly on local events or marketplace.

Facebook is popular for these things but that’s because Facebook had a big user base, not because they keep competitors from forming.

They have a network effect that smaller competitors don’t. Thus, at the end of the day it’s the user’s choices that keep Facebook a sort of monopoly in those areas.

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wcfields 4 days ago

> They don’t really have a monopoly on local events or marketplace.
Yeah, I'd say from 2004 - 2015 was the heyday for me on local events for small bands, house shows, and punk/DIY venues. Eventually FB Events died out socially by not being able to send invites to mass groups of friends/previous attendees, and attrition, and so on... A real shame for non-major venue events and the DIY scene.
Marketplace is semi-useful still, quasi-better than craigslist, but keeps getting filled with a lot of cruft of drop-shippers and scammers.

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- bitmasher9 4 days ago
  
  I had almost forgotten about the 2004-2015 music scene on Facebook. For me things died down around 2011 when the police started using Facebook to identify and break up unlicensed events.
  
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3np 4 days ago

> Facebook is popular for these things but that’s because Facebook had a big user base, not because they keep competitors from forming.
That's a separate legal argument and as I understand it not necessary to qualify a as monopoly.

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paxys 4 days ago

> They still have monopoly on some market(s) - not where they are competing with e.g. TikTok. Local events, marketplace, genuine personal social networks.

Yes, but none of these are a valid reason to force them to divest from Instagram and WhatsApp.

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