• entwine@programming.dev
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    1 day ago

    You must be new around these parts. Facebook (and the rest of big tech) are monopolists. For the past ~26 years, the tech industry has been using illegal anticompetitive tactics to suppress competition and destroy potential competitors. The government has done nothing, because they’re stupid and think “big = good”.

    An example is Instagram. It was a start up that was growing rapidly, and actually became a threat to Facebook. What did Facebook do? They placed a massive bid to buy the company at like 10x their actual market value. It’s an offer so huge that every investor in Instagram would support the deal even if the founders were against it.

    A sane government would see that as an obvious anticompetitive decision, and block the merger. Facebook should instead use that money to improve their own product and compete fairly. Obviously, that didn’t happen, the merger went through, and Facebook is still the owner of Instagram. Users and the tech industry at large are worse off.

    Look at TikTok’s huge success. If they weren’t a Chinese company, they probably would have met a similar fate. Unfortunately for Facebook, they weren’t allowed to buy a Chinese company.

    • anm767@lemmy.nz
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      17 hours ago

      To be honest I prefer one place such as facebook to 108 places they acquired like facebook. Can you imagine having 108 platforms to register at and keep track, because each of your friends prefers a different one?

    • badgermurphy@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      *because they are bribed to think “big = good”.

      Don’t think they’re stupid; they want you to think that. They are greedy, short-sighted, and unempathetic to their fellow man. Their actual intelligence varies widely, but there are brilliant minds among them that lack the psychological traits that prevent our species from wiping itself out.