FTC vs Facebook – a few thoughts:

1) This, plus Visa/Plaid, shows the FTC is treating nascent competition really seriously. The cost of that is making it harder for startups to sell out, and for incumbents with a lot of customers to improve their product.

Founders always have an incentive to hold out against acquisitions that undervalue their product, but acquisitions are often good, and trying to make them harder comes with real costs.

2) If Instagram + Whatsapp are competitors to Facebook, then so are Youtube, Twitch, Slack, Tiktok, Reddit, Discord, Snapchat, etc.

If Whatsapp could have been a competitor of Facebook's, then so can Tiktok or Discord, and Facebook can't really be the monopolist the FTC claims.

3) The complaint treats reduced privacy as a cost of the alleged anticompetitive conduct. But less privacy has benefits, like more relevant ads for users, and more money for content creators.

And lot of users (like me!) just don't care about Facebook having more data about them!

4) It’s mad to assume that (eg) Instagram’s success is independent of having been bought by Facebook. Facebook only paid $1bn for IG – which with hindsight looks like nothing, but at the time seemed crazily high, and was roundly mocked...

Either Zuckerberg is an investment genius who makes Warren Buffett look like an idiot, or the acquisition itself helped make IG what it is today. IMO the latter is vastly more likely.

See Geoff's thread here. The FTC's case makes it sound like it's actually pretty easy to enter the "personal social networking" market! https://twitter.com/geoffmanne/status/1336783759538982913