As a very free market libertarian, I actually agree with this completely. Facebook buying Insta was a very anti-competitive situation. It wasn’t a purchase for a particular tech — it was a purchase specifically to capture a competitor. Grabbing WhatsApp is an even more severe example — it effectively gave Facebook ownership of a vast percentage of messaging networks — both their own and WhatsApp.

Google is a harder one though because Google doesn’t rely upon network effects to the same extreme FB does — meaning, my dad’s search engine choice has no impact on me — but my dad’s messaging client absolutely does.

It’s relatively easy to start a new search engine — it’s close to impossible to start a new general purpose messaging system or social network — at least not one that survives.