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I’m imagining someone at the FTC has to set up an oculus for their kid and they snapped. https://t.co/zJQjvBowGR
— OutlawLaserRoboGeek (@jrmoorman) December 10, 2020
Facebook’s bad week just got worse... https://t.co/8e1HowEGFY
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) December 10, 2020
Facebook’s bad week just got worse... https://t.co/8e1HowEGFY
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) December 10, 2020
Facebook's been hit with another antitrust complaint. This time it's for tying Oculus use to Facebook accounts. https://t.co/kqHcapn1iy
— Martin SFP Bryant (@MartinSFP) December 10, 2020
Facebook hit with antitrust probe for tying Oculus use to Facebook accounts https://t.co/HzHQ2NlqFk via @techcrunch @riptari
— Ryan Browne (@Ryan_Browne_) December 10, 2020
Today, the Bundeskartellamt has initiated abuse proceedings against Facebook to examine the linkage between Oculus virtual reality products and the social network and Facebook platform.
— Luis Alberto Montezuma (@montezumachavez) December 10, 2020
Here's the press release: https://t.co/bCRTOkmLKM
Credits: @1Br0wn
? ?? Federal @Kartellamt has just open abuse proceedings against Facebook over the link between Oculus virtual reality products and the social networkhttps://t.co/qhIdT2TVSA
— Jacob Parry (@jcbcp) December 10, 2020
????Mark Zuckerberg's letter to employees: "Today's news is one step in a process which could take years to play out in its entirety. In the meantime, you shouldn't be communicating about these cases or related issues except with our legal team."
— CeciliaKang (@ceciliakang) December 10, 2020
IMO way to stop this level of predatory behavior is to charge management & have them face 10 years in prison. Do that to @Zuck et al and everyone will get in line. @Facebook @FBIWFO
— Tim Hogan (@TimInHonolulu) December 10, 2020
‘It’s Hard to Prove’: Why Antitrust Suits Against Facebook Face Hurdles https://t.co/i9K7injKKX
What odd framing "lawmakers & consumer advocates did not address a hard-to-deny factor: The cases against Facebook are far from a slam dunk". So don't bother with hard cases? Good analysis otherwise. Suit could also ⬆️ transparency @MikeIsaac @ceciliakang https://t.co/sfj7lyx14b
— Dr. Courtney Radsch (@courtneyr) December 10, 2020
After a decade of moving fast and breaking rules, Facebook must face consequences. The company’s abusive practices harm competitors and consumers, trampling on privacy protections for far too long.https://t.co/rDn8qvJWHz
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) December 10, 2020
This week keeps getting better! Alright FTC, do Oculus next. https://t.co/Moj7TkDy9j
— Robert Long (@arobertlong) December 10, 2020
I’m curious to see if this probe (in Germany) will have any impact on the US antitrust suit filed yesterday regarding WhatsApp and Instagram. https://t.co/ndW90zDy3m
— Jesse Damiani (@JesseDamiani) December 10, 2020
At the time of the acquisition Oculus offered distressed users an assurance that “[y]ou will not need a Facebook account to use or develop for the Rift [headset].” https://t.co/1zxxkUXn1m https://t.co/hAb0QM8VKQ
— Kurt Opsahl (@kurtopsahl) December 10, 2020
i make the case for instagram to be set free. let it loose from the branding nightmare that is facebook. zuck must def knows insta would thrive on its own and fb would wither without it, which i agree!https://t.co/cihAHgR3Kh
— Ashley Carman (@ashleyrcarman) December 10, 2020
Wowww the FTC calls for the Facebook and Instagram acquisitions to be unwound. pic.twitter.com/lpslx7nWti
— Sarah Frier (@sarahfrier) December 9, 2020
Key analysis of the lawsuit to breakup Facebook. The filers did their homework, prepared a strong case, and with all the political winds in their sails, might very well prevail. Truly an exciting time for countering Big Tech monopolies. Cheers to the decade of reckoning! ? https://t.co/0q6fSaER38
— DHH (@dhh) December 10, 2020
If you are the Facebook software engineer who sent this internal email in 2013, I like your style and would love to Zoom with you pic.twitter.com/d8njEOKEaz
— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) December 9, 2020
Zuck understood something the rest of the world didn't: The power of a "social graph" that could shape behavior and neutralize competition. @ashk4n: "But it’s not the innovation he’s getting dinged for. It’s that he was kind of an asshole in the way he wielded that knowledge"
— Drew Harwell (@drewharwell) December 10, 2020
This is huge!! Have you been harmed by Facebook’s illegal behavior? Let the world know! https://t.co/xema2wgWMF
— Movement for a People’s Party (@PeoplesParty_US) December 10, 2020
Comment from Facebook GC Jennifer Newstead:
— rat king (@MikeIsaac) December 9, 2020
"This is revisionist history. Antitrust laws exist to protect consumers and promote innovation, not to punish successful businesses." pic.twitter.com/zAAH3JYYQD
Of course, they WERE anticompetitive. We know, because Zuck - who specializes in tripping over his own dick - sent out memos extolling the acquisitions' anticompetitive advantages, proving he hasn't learned a thing since he traded incriminating IMs about founding FB.
— Cory Doctorow #BLM (@doctorow) December 10, 2020
19/ pic.twitter.com/Nn9o1VLAJI
Very proud of the Facebook antitrust complaint drafted by my former colleagues at the New York State @NewYorkStateAG -- it obviously took extraordinary amounts of work. Who said the States don't matter? Have a read: https://t.co/qWmxchz8EW
— Tim Wu (@superwuster) December 10, 2020
I applaud this effort to end Facebook’s monopoly. Their greed knows no bounds, and they’ve used their power to try and control too much of political and economic life all over the world. The only thing that will stop Facebook is to say “enough is enough” and break it up. https://t.co/lRaqvNwj3T
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) December 10, 2020
#BREAKING: I'm leading a bipartisan coalition of 48 attorneys general in a lawsuit against @Facebook to end its illegal monopoly.
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) December 9, 2020
We are taking action to stand up for the millions of consumers and many small businesses that have been harmed by Facebook’s illegal behavior.
A major mistake that the press is making about Facebook: The FTC @FTC never "approved" the mergers of Instagram / WhatsApp. It declined to bring an enforcement action at the time. As in any law enforcement, that is irrelevant to future prosecution (See, eg, Jeffrey Epstein)
— Tim Wu (@superwuster) December 9, 2020
i believe what @FredWilson is suggesting here is that FTC require open API access rather than breakups -- pretty interesting idea, altho not sure the FTC knows what that really means.
— Dave McClure (@davemcclure) December 10, 2020
still seems tough to be implement but i like the angle. https://t.co/RU72k94hvu
And Oculus, please https://t.co/rREBFngaD7
— Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) December 9, 2020
We're reviewing the complaints & will have more to say soon. Years after the FTC cleared our acquisitions, the government now wants a do-over with no regard for the impact that precedent would have on the broader business community or the people who choose our products every day.
— Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) December 9, 2020
"prosecutors must show that Facebook bought rivals like Instagram & WhatsApp with the express purpose of killing off the competition. Then they must argue a theoretical: Consumers and the social media market would have been better off without the mergers."https://t.co/O40eHC8U9F
— @tiffanydcross (@TiffanyDCross) December 10, 2020
For years, @Facebook has been illegally crushing competition and building a powerful monopoly.
— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) December 10, 2020
No company should have this much unchecked power, period. pic.twitter.com/yTKXpYht4N
Saying Instagram and Whatsapp were inevitable success stories is intellectually bankrupt at best or intentionally manipulative at worst https://t.co/dP7lSG9hgZ
— Sar Haribhakti (@sarthakgh) December 10, 2020
It's funny how quickly people forget what the situation was like when Facebook actually bought Instagram https://t.co/oIhljDnAvO
— Mike Masnick (@mmasnick) December 10, 2020
New: The government’s antitrust case against Facebook seeks a villain in Mark Zuckerberg. Enforcers are casting the billionaire executive, once one of tech’s most "darling superstars," as a sneaky and rapacious brawler who vowed to crush the competition https://t.co/C6cpXHJqyp
— Drew Harwell (@drewharwell) December 10, 2020
The longer this legal battle draws on, the more integrated Facebook will become with Instagram and WhatsApp, and the harder it will be to break them up. I explain: https://t.co/GvcKM9XVEF
— Sarah Frier (@sarahfrier) December 10, 2020
In @WIRED, I argue the Biden administration should do more than just litigate the antitrust suits against Facebook and Google. To tame corporate dominance, the FTC should enact bright-line rules to restrict mergers and outlaw unfair competitive practices https://t.co/VbRsnQViMg
— Sandeep Vaheesan (@sandeepvaheesan) December 10, 2020
This is one that I could support.
— Mike Hay (@Hay) December 10, 2020
Requiring a COMPANY login for unrelated products is foul, especially when that opts you in to a tracking network. https://t.co/G3jvO4Jbjn
Easy to forget that at the time the conventional wisdom was that Facebook was massively overpaying for Instagram in a clear sign of a tech bubble. I happen to remember because this is basically the only thing I’ve ever been right about. https://t.co/VniCJ4sP6A
— Matthew Yglesias ? (@mattyglesias) December 10, 2020
This is how Facebook in particular has turned the sludge of highly-engaging swamps of conspiracy theories and tribal hate farms into gold mines. Whatever it takes to keep those eyeballs glued. Then the targeting machine mints the cash. It's truly diabolical regime.
— DHH (@dhh) December 10, 2020
My initial thought is "well because it's bogus" but I'm looking for a more reasoned analysis here https://t.co/MHUXZGqkps
— Yaël (@YaelOss) December 10, 2020
If you feel sympathy for FB about the antitrust case, read this ... then ask yourself if a functioning democracy — the US in 1966, for example — would allow this company to exist in its current form. https://t.co/VeyAz521BG
— Roger McNamee (@Moonalice) December 10, 2020
"How do you prove people are being harmed by a product that’s offered for free? Judging by the complaint filed by the states, which is more thorough than the FTC’s, the answer will hinge on privacy." https://t.co/SIeBQmxcye via @GiladEdelman
— Lauren Masks Are Goode (@LaurenGoode) December 10, 2020
If Facebook's Diem (nee Libra) ever launches, Facebook will almost certainly want to tie Novi wallet access to your Facebook account. They already tried this with Oculus. https://t.co/CIu15T9zWJ
— David Gerard ?? (@davidgerard) December 10, 2020
1. Solid complaints from FTC & 48 AGs suing Facebook for violating antitrust laws -- and requesting divestitures/breakups, among other forms of relief. Hopeful that it marks yet another step forward in the growing efforts to rehabilitate antitrust laws & recover antimonopoly.
— Lina Khan (@linamkhan) December 10, 2020
While focus is on Facebook, the ultimate remedy is to destroy the value of their monopolized access to user data: OUTLAW ADVERTISING TARGETED WITH PERSONAL DATA. It's this regime of advertising that has enabled the Facebook/Google duopoly on online ads to destroy everyone else.
— DHH (@dhh) December 10, 2020
Replace “Facebook” with surveillance capitalism, and its spot on.
— Aral Balkan ? (@aral@mastodon.ar.al) (@aral) December 10, 2020
(Hint: it’s not just Facebook, it’s all of Big Tech.) https://t.co/JfawnJNfUG
Facebook and Google has destroyed the value in building a audience around high quality content, localized reach, or any specific niches, because their data troves have rendered even the worst content as good as the best, as long as the eyeball clock is ticking.
— DHH (@dhh) December 10, 2020
Antitrust enforcement is easiest when activities are illegal per se. You don’t have to prove economic harm in these instances. It becomes much more difficult to prove consumers are somehow worse off because IG is owned by FB instead of other alternatives https://t.co/Vd2V6HNcRa
— Shawn DuBravac, PhD (@shawndubravac) December 10, 2020
#SweeneyWasRight Glad to see savvy countries like Germany act against the Oculus Quest 2 account requirement, and the States wake up with their calls to break Facebook up. @TimSweeneyEpic was absolutely right to warn us in 2016. https://t.co/43ye7qgEQW
— Brian Peiris (@brianpeiris) December 10, 2020
If Facebook is forced to divest Oculus, then Oculus won't survive. Apple is about to come and to compete you need advertising-focused subsidies.
— Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) December 10, 2020
So, watch what you wish for.
You might hand the entire world to Apple.
What’s more, Facebook is doing similar thing, but luckily EU is taking care of this: https://t.co/snGB7MO1ce
— Gusto Bunny ?️? (13K) (@GustoBunny) December 10, 2020
Wife being alive will make it harder to prove husband’s murder charges. https://t.co/GqQNNGz67C
— Patrick Hedger (@PatHedger18) December 11, 2020
Tech companies not being monopolies will make antitrust cases harder to win https://t.co/3KxgEtNEHb
— Neeraj K. Agrawal (@NeerajKA) December 11, 2020
Recommended read: @scottros explores how the 'Pentopoly's [FB, Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft] tangled web of oligarchic competition places a tough burden on the government's antitrust cases"
— The Real Facebook Oversight Board (@FBoversight) December 11, 2020
via @axios https://t.co/Z8kisdL0hB
A taster ?⬇️⬇️ pic.twitter.com/FmQjqwvCHf
Lol. Where G/FB lobby couldn’t make “triopoly”
— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) December 11, 2020
into a thing, now they’re hoping “pentopoly” takes off. There are two major antitrust lawsuits here right now. We originally isolated the “duopoly” for a reason. It’s not a “techlash,” it’s two companies. https://t.co/NkXT7j1VhF
Regulators trying to restrain Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft's power face a bedeviling challenge: It's tougher to make a "monopoly" charge stick to companies that are busy competing with one another. https://t.co/QPAD3Yy2Xf
— Axios (@axios) December 11, 2020
We can have democracy or we can have Facebook, but we can't have both.
— Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) December 11, 2020
Read the interview they’re reading (nervously) in Silicon Valley (on Hacker News).https://t.co/ke60nIhs3D pic.twitter.com/MbXk4s6fSZ
And you know this line of his resonated with me deeply:
— Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) December 10, 2020
"As a society, the way we do business is the way we do justice."
Write that one on your forearm.https://t.co/ke60nIhs3D
We can have democracy or we can have Facebook, but we can't have both.
— Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) December 10, 2020
? A special issue of The Ink, on what the new antitrust case means. Featuring @matthewstoller.https://t.co/ke60nIhs3D
So yesterday I'm on the phone with @matthewstoller, asking him deep questions about his life, when the Facebook case drops.
— Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) December 10, 2020
Which is like texting with the pope when the Second Coming comes.
So I began to ask him about it, and he really made me think.https://t.co/ke60nIhs3D
What would you prefer to exist?https://t.co/ke60nIhs3D
— Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) December 11, 2020
What @matthewstoller helped me see, above all, is that monopoly is mistakenly thought of as a policy issue when in fact it represents an existential question of whether we are actually a democracy.https://t.co/ke60nIhs3D
— Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) December 10, 2020
'The Wrath Of Mark': 4 Takeaways From The Government's Case Against Facebook https://t.co/7btJ1yP5Rk
— Jeffrey Levin (@jilevin) December 11, 2020
Facebook has been hit with twin lawsuits alleging it abused its power to crush rivals. https://t.co/E1LdKIPkG2
— Morning Edition (@MorningEdition) December 11, 2020
What political leaders, advocates, and scholars are saying about yesterday’s state AG @Facebook antitrust suit (including my enthusiastic 2 cents):https://t.co/B1HpDys04P
— Sarah Miller (@sarahmillerdc) December 10, 2020
Good news, Germany is opening an antitrust probe on Facebook for requiring their VR headsets to have a FB account. I would go even further and go after them for banning offline driver installations, ensuring it's bricked if you don't connect to them.https://t.co/U5ICnA62By
— Accursed Farms (@accursedfarms) December 11, 2020
Who cares? No one cares that an oculus account is tied to a facebook account. Everyone cares about the totalitarian technocratic coup that rigs elections.https://t.co/ykGVrdq5Vu
— Zach Vorhies (@Perpetualmaniac) December 10, 2020
페이스북 VR 제품 오큘러스와 페이스북 계정 연동을 강제한 것 관련해서 독일에서 반독점 조사중
— lunamoth (@lunamoth) December 10, 2020
Facebook hit with antitrust probe for tying Oculus use to Facebook accounts | TechCrunch https://t.co/4xDXUPI8n8
독일 연방담합청, Facebook이 오큘러스 VR 사용에 자사 계정을 강제한 것이 반독점 위반 사항인지 검토하겠다 밝혀. https://t.co/C00lFCSonl
— YUKI.N (@nagato708) December 11, 2020
Wonderful news. @Enscape3d users should not have to create a stupid effing Facebook account to use a VR headset for commercial purposes. https://t.co/dJXH7Pz20B
— Phil Read (@PhilRead) December 11, 2020