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A comment on Facebook fined €110M for providing misleading information on WhatsApp takeover. Parent comment

Re:Facebook fined €110M for providing misleading information... by jondubois on Thursday May 18, 2017 @10:29AM (#14367485)
>> Market failure: not the "best" product wins, but the one with the biggest advertisement budget behind it

I think this is the most important point. It changes the competitive landscape from being quality-based to being awareness-based.

By driving attention towards their own products, big companies are shifting attention away from more deserving competing products which have a smaller marketing budget.

I think this explains why big companies are so inefficient and yet still maintain their market share.

Advertising allows companies to substitute real quality with perceived quality in order to increase profit margins.

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Re:Facebook fined €110M for providing misleading information... by JumpCrisscross on Thursday May 18, 2017 @10:45AM (#14367624)
> By driving attention towards their own products, big companies are shifting attention away from more deserving competing products which have a smaller marketing budget

You think small companies would benefit from an advertising ban?

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Re:Facebook fined €110M for providing misleading information... by amelius on Thursday May 18, 2017 @11:32AM (#14368077)
You think not?

Remember that products can still be found through search. If there are no ads, there will probably be better "product discovery" websites to fill the gap if necessary. And of course there are the regular channels, i.e., recommendations by friends, forums, review sites, etc.

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