> Facebook used data provided by the Israeli analytics firm Onavo to determine which other mobile apps were being downloaded and used by the public. It then used this knowledge to decide which apps to acquire or otherwise treat as a threat
Checking out your competition is pretty standard among all businesses, as is buying out the ones you can't beat.
> there was evidence that Facebook's refusal to share data with some apps caused them to fail
Sharing or not sharing data with another app is likewise not an unusual decision. FB is not a public utility - they can not work with other apps for any reason, or no reason at all. And this is a particularly ironic thing to point out, considering that the main thrust is complaining that they _did_ share data with other apps. So it's bad if they do share data, but also bad if they don't?
To me, this would be Facebook taking advantage of their stronghold on the market to continue to dominate the market.
Let's remember this is not Facebook's data, this is their users' data. It should be up to the User who they can share their data with, but they weren't given the choice to use their data with an app because Facebook decided they didn't like the way the other business competes with them in some aspect or how they aren't making money out of the third party app. An example is Facebook won't grant Influencer Marketing Companies access to their API even though the user (The Influencer) wants them to have the data so they can get paid based on the views, shares, comments, and likes of the posts they've been contracted for. User has a legit desire to share that data to the point where they will take screenshots, GDPR deletions, etc to fulfil the need for that data to be shared. Facebook's reason for not allowing them access is simple, they don't make any money out of the deal.
So if they refuse to allow you to share your data with people you want to share it with, that is bad. Sharing your data with companies you don't want to share with is also bad.
No, it's not - short of a change in law it is Facebook's data. Facebook collected, maintained , and analyzed the data. It's their data, the fact that their users allowed Facebook to collect it does not change that fact.
GDPR allows users to view the data Facebook collected about them. If users want manually request their data from Facebook and provide it to competing apps they can. But this is the user's prerogative, not Facebook's.
Actually, for a lot of it they can't. The GDPR downloads are incomplete and are missing lots of data like many other GDPR downloads.
And in some cases these aren't competing, they just aren't making Facebook money so Facebook denies them access and tells them what they need to do to add Facebook to process so they can get access.
And if I can tell Facebook to delete something and they have to do it, they do not own it. Facebook are not in control of the data, they have access to it, but they can't share it without permission, they can't sell it without permission, they can't do alot of things. This, to me, means they do not own the data.
Facebook continues to play a game of "how much can we mislead them to get our way".
The ability to tell Facebook to delete your data does not grant you ownership of that data. You do not have the right to tell Facebook to let some 3rd party to access it using Facebook's infrastructure (which seemed to be the claim made by the original comment I responded to). The fact that the government forces companies to abide by certain regulations does not mean that the company is not the owner of the things that are regulated. A company might have it's interview records audited to investigate discrimination. Does that mean the company does not actually own or possess these interview records?
How is it a violation of privacy to tell a user with which other users they have communicated in the past?
It's not just telling the user. Once they info is published said user can turn around and tell it to the rest of the world. Some people have already published their requested data, it seems unlikely that people publishing said data face consequences.
Sure, nothing is stopping people from scrolling through chat logs screenshotting them. But that's difficult to do at scale, so there's de-facto limits on how much info can leak this way. Also consider the situation in which you unfriend someone, thus preventing them from seeing past chat logs - I think, I haven't used Facebook in a long time. If that person does a GDPR request should the company deliver data that the user is otherwise prohibited from viewing? If GDPR does mandate this it seems like a legally-mandated side channel attack.
> No, it's not - short of a change in law it is Facebook's data.
Er, actually it is. Under GDPR, and under previous data protection rules that lacked meaningful enforcement, users own their data. Companies at most get to "borrow" and/or keep it safe for them.
Alas, this fundamental fact seems to not have quite made it everywhere yet..
https://digitalguardian.com/blog/tackling-gdpr-challenge-1-e...
We know that FB makes connections between you and other users even if you've never made those connections yourself. We've heard about the shadow profiles, etc. These are all data points that FB generated on their own. It seems like this is the information that is valuable. Information gleaned from ML analysis of images posted would also be their own. That has way more value than the image itself would. FB is doing way more under the hood than just slurping in the data users posted, and then displaying it back to them.
One could also argue that the User already has all their own data, they just didn't collect it very well. So really they're trying to use FB as their data collection platform - which FB is free to do or not, as they choose.
This seems so ludicrously backwards to me. How is my decision to upload my data to Facebook a meaningful claim that they should run their platform in a particular way for my convenience, even if there's no business justification?
Allow me a tortured metaphor :)
Imagine you own a very popular art museum and you let any artist display their work there for free. Visiting requires a free membership, but visitors must apply for it. Competing museums and galleries are always trying to get a membership so they can come through and scope out which artists are most popular and then woo them away. You reject those memberships.
How on earth is this unfair to anyone?
Now, letting those competing museums in is obviously better for the artist, but does that give them any right to demand it? You're providing this space for them for free! You're providing a huge audience to them, for free! What possible justification do they have for demanding that you let your competition come strolling through and hurt your business just so it'll make their life a little better? If you don't like it, you can pull your work from the museum at any time.
So many of the critiques of companies like Facebook and Apple come down to people wanting all the benefits that these platforms provide, but without any terms, inconvenience, restrictions, or tradeoffs. Ridiculous.
Popular art museums generally run with allowing entry without requiring membership. They make up for that by collecting donations or entry fee, running a comparatively expensive cafe, and ensuring everyone leaves via the gift shop. They might heavily promote, and employ people to individually sell memberships, or give free membership in exchange for monthly gift shop and offers spam. One or two might be a little too heavy handed in promoting membership over visit.
They don't plant a bug in your pocket without knowledge, or consent to learn what other art museums and galleries you are visiting to assess if they are a worthy target of restriction or takeover. They don't insist on knowing your entire contact list and SMS history just to look at the pictures. They don't ban employees of other galleries and museums from visiting. Not least because 9 times out of 10 they would not know if they worked for a different city's gallery.
That's enough torturing. ;)
One of the above is a fair exchange, that can be freely and knowingly chosen. The other is using undisclosed and underhand methods to get extra leverage. That, by definition, cannot be fair. Turns out it's illegal too.
This is one of the very rare cases where I wish the UK had a little more of the US's litigious culture. In my 50 odd years it's the first and only case. Normally I wish for the reverse. :)
How much would Facebook cost if users has to pay cash? I think the Economist did a survey on this topic with Google search and the average price people were willing to pay was $1,500 a year. If Google switched from monetizing user data and advertising to charging money, how much human productivity would be lost because some people can't afford a good search engine? How much would this exacerbate academic difficulties of poorer student if we add the fact that their classmates can search online information more effectively because their parents can afford Google search?
The lack of tangibility of paying for products with personal data instead of money can be irksome, but it has created an unprecedented ability to build large, complex services while delivering them free of (monetary) cost to the end user.
That aside - FB never gave users that choice. Where many media services - including AOL, streaming media companies, and newspapers (and the Economist) survive by charging a subscription, FB has never attempted to use that business model.
Why? Because FB has always been a data harvesting and user monitoring/profiling operation that happens to operate a social media front, rather than vice versa.
Ditto Google for search.
And "telling users about it in some capacity" is very different to giving users a list of buyers and full details describing what their personal data was used for.
Realistically, no one outside the industry - and not that many people in the industry - understand where this data ends up and what it's used for.
Pretending otherwise is casuistry and special pleading. There is no way users can estimate the true value of their data, either individually or in aggregate - because the value is determined by buyers who remain hidden and unnamed, and neither FB nor the buyers are obliged to explain any part of the process.
There is no informed consent here. It's a perfect corporate asymmetry, and very much designed that way.
Also, the value of this information isn't secret: Google and Facebook are public companies and publish their revenue numbers, no? It's not hard to divide by the number of active users to get an average value per user.
They don't plant a bug in your pocket without knowledge, or consent to learn what other art museums and galleries you are visiting to assess if they are a worthy target of restriction or takeover. They don't insist on knowing your entire contact list and SMS history just to look at the pictures. They don't ban employees of other galleries and museums from visiting. Not least because 9 times out of 10 they would not know if they worked for a different city's gallery.
I'm not defending all of Facebook's practices. In particular, any surreptitious attempt to collect sensitive user data without permission, or in violation of permission, is terrible. We might differ on what constitutes "sensitive user data" or "permission" but whatever.
Regardless, that's not what we're actually talking about here, and if the museum in question did ask for user consent to a full cavity search before going through, I don't think that actually changes the calculus of what's fair for them to provide to their competitors.
Look at the T&Cs sometime. Once you upload something, it's theirs. Once they sniff something off your phone, it's theirs. Once you look at something in another tab while FB is open, it's theirs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998#Data_...
Because they’ve been so careful about following other laws?
According to Facebook TOS, you own the data but grant them an open-ended licence to use said data.
[the following paragraph does not assert that FB is a monopoly, it is agnostic]
The law says that a company with a monopoly needs to act a bit like a public utility. Recall what Microsoft did to Netscape -- was there anything wrong with that? Is a company allowed to take action against a competitor? The normal answer is "Yes". But different rules apply if the government can prove that a company has monopoly power in some market. Actions that are allowed among normal competitors are no longer allowed once a company has near monopoly powers. I think fast growing tech companies get into trouble because the founders doesn't realize how much the company has grown. Bill Gates could use aggressive tactics during the 1980s because Microsoft was still small. He got into trouble in 1994 because he didn't realize how much Microsoft had grown, and how much the rest of the world suddenly regarded it as a behemoth. Therefore he was no longer allowed to pursue the aggressive tactics that he'd previously been free to use.
Arguably, the same reality has now caught up with FaceBook.
Facebook is unusually large and lawless. Their favoring industry incumbents decreases the economy’s dynamism. If you want to compete with Airbnb, now, you must not only launch a better product. You must also curry favor with Facebook. That’s a lot of trust for society to put in a company with a track record of terrible judgement. (This is also why we regulate monopolies.)
I think this point is, at least partially, arguable. Take "political media." FB is so dominant and powerful in this arena that excluding individuals or parties is very close to denying people their rights to free speech and/or associon.
Idk if you can make that case about apps, because their app platform is not that important, but you could make it about Android or ios... maybe Aws.
To be clear-- they marketed Onava as a VPN service to protect your personal data from spying and then they spied on your personal data to figure out what products you were using.
Yeah. I'm guessing they have a bad business model.
The selective access to competing apps, based solely on this information, is antitrust though. If the apps violate rules that apply to everyone, that's different, but that doesn't appear to be the case?
Edit: turns out Onovo had access to specific, proprietary data, acquired through it's own shitty apps, which facebook acquired. This is pretty shady.
Facebook bought Onavo in 2013 [1].
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2013/10/13/facebook-buys-mobile-analy...
Yes. Onavo built “consumer-facing apps to help optimise device and app performance and battery life on iOS and Android devices” [1] while piping their users’ data to Facebook.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2013/10/13/facebook-buys-mobile-analy...
If you build an app that relies solely on Facebook login and access to Facebook data as key parts of your business model then are you really a competitor?
There's a huge difference between "build your own OS" and "build your own website login".
It's not a very tall order to create a social website that doesn't use FB login. Social websites should not by default have a right to all of facebook's users. They should have to build that user base themselves.
Your first point and most of the others others may or may not be illegal. If they are legal, what the MPs need to do is their jobs.. make laws. But, most are not directly related to company size and/or market share.
Your second point does sound like a trust and I think you're right to link this to the WhatsApp sale.
But... Regardless of the FB/WhatsApp conclusion, that is a one-off that won't lead to much systemic change whether it's a fine or an order to de-merge.
What we need (imo) is a whole new approach to antitrust that doesn't hinge on a definition of monopoly.
Companies beyond a certain size should just be put under a different set of obligations than smaller ones. They should be assumed to have market power by merit of their size.
When it comes to gdpr and such, these need to be written differently for large companies. Basically, no more equality before the law for companies. What we get in return is rule of law.
Other factors matter far more than size.
In any case, half my point is that pricing power is not the operative definition of market power anymore. If xonmobile can/do have all sorts of influence on governments, job markets and such. They can do tax stuff a restraint can't.
What I am proposing is that the definition of a monopoly is not useable, for policy. It's fine as an economic & academic concept, not as a legal one.
Market fundamentalists are so used to advancing arguments like this without being challenged that they have become almost completely divorced from the scientific method entirely.
Maybe being forced to share this kind of proprietary data, in this specific type of circumstance, will actually promote a more diverse marketplace with higher innovation. Maybe it won't.
Either way you don't just get to assert it.
And given that the person you're responding to is stating something that most economists would agree with, I think the impetus is on you to tear it down with "the scientific method" if you think the prevailing wisdom is wrong.
TLDR: don't provide proof for flat-earthers.
If you were in fact an economist yourself, perhaps you would have recognized market fundamentalism as a term with a specific meaning, often used by economists:
> It's impossible to have a discussion about anything if some things are not taken as axiomatic.
You mean you personally find it impossible to have a discussion with someone who disagrees with you on the axioms of economics because it means you can't frame the argument in your own terms, which would be that there is no alternative to what you are espousing.
My only point was that you may have better success railing against the conventional wisdom by providing an actual argument that it's wrong, not by ranting and raving about the existence of prevailing wisdom itself, and demanding that everyone provide a detailed proof every time they reference it.
You should check out the works of Milton Friedman, you might find them interesting!
Think about how much data Amazon has about all the suppliers and products they've sold over the last twenty years. Should they be forced to hand it over to anyone who wants it just because of the fact that its size and exclusivity makes it very valuable?
What about the governments databases on everything under the sun? Should all of that be public?
Maybe the answer to the above questions is yes, I don't know, but I don't think it's axiomatic.
I think the issue I have is with the idea that Facebook is successful, and therefore can no longer prevent their competitors from blatantly taking advantage of them. But I'm not sure where to draw the line.
If Visa and Mastercard decided for whatever reason that they wanted to kill some small banking chain and not allow payments for them or their customers to go through their network, that would be bad. But I don't think that means that they have to let an upstart competitor credit card startup have access to the huge multi-billion-dollar network they've built up, does it? Even if they might extend that network to other entities that don't compete with them?
In nature, random mutation leads to greater genetic diversity and speciation. In some mathematical optimizations, introducing random noise can help avoid getting stuck in local maxima.
Maybe economic growth, but how is innovation promoted by limiting access?
It also has the same limitations: If there's no competitive advantage to having proprietary data, then what's the point of developing the tech and services to try and obtain it?
There wouldn't be any point, and it would be totally fine.
Your phrasing obviously comes with the interpretation that if a split-up would bankrupt a part, it shouldn't be done. Why should this be taken into consideration?
Secondly. It has value. A different party could invest and keep it going. Why is it important that it sustains itself?
Of course, if you just wanted to punish facebook by destroying shareholder value, or you're certain WhatsApp users will move to an FB competitor rather than to FB itself, you might not care if WhatsApp stays in business post-breakup.
My impression of the situation is that Facebook bought WhatsApp for its data and user-base; not because it was competition.
What _will_ happen is that other free services will pop up and be used, and some users will migrate to those. Which is a good thing. We'll have actual competition on the field instead of a single dominant player.
That the Signal Foundation is now basically funded by interest earned on money made from that very WhatsApp sale is quite poetic.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/story/signal-foun...
If you want make Farmville with FB login go ahead, but if you try to make "FB 2.0" with FB Login and all friend connections preserved but keep all the ad revenue yourself obviously Facebook is gonna put their foot down.
$200 billion, and a review in 12 months time?
That's 5 years revenue. $100 per user, sounds reasonable. Facebook can put in an easy "claim your $100" button on their site. Would that just be a "cost of doing business"?
Depends how big you think. FB had revenues of $40bil. So let's fine them $50 billion.
It's not clear what this means. Is it an API that returns '403 forbideen' or more of a case of lack of competitive information
> Yes, within a day of Vine’s launch, Facebook pulled the ability for Vine users to find Facebook friends who were also using the new app.
> there was evidence that Facebook's refusal to share data with some apps caused them to fail
Stuff like this should trigger the EU Commissioner for Competition to withdraw the authorization that “allowed” FB to acquire Whatsapp and should force a split between the two entities. A fine (no matter how big) will be seen by FB and its investors just as “cost of doing business”. Facebook in its current form needs to be split up back again.