Well, the Warren Campaign was playing them, and they fell right into it. Because, by taking down her ads, they supported her point that they have too much power to control debate.

That is, that they've become a monopoly. So they either need to be very careful not to abuse their monopoly, or be highly regulated, or be broken up.

Edit: Stole from ktjfi. [and spelling]

>That is, that they've become a monopoly.

Facebook has no monopoly on internet advertisement. I'm not a big fan of Facebook but I don't see where it would be a monopolist.

> Facebook has no monopoly on internet advertisement

They do on local political ads. Google searches are no longer effective for targeting those not already political involved. The local papers have been run out of business. Direct mail is expensive and unreliable. Pretty much all roads in this arena lead to Facebook, which makes its willingness to censor opinions unfavourable to it disturbing.

There are strong reasons to break up Facebook into, at the very least, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Dissecting the company along those lines does nothing to curb their cumulative potential effect on controlling what ads a user sees. They all hook into the same ad backend anyways.

> Dissecting the company along those lines does nothing to curb their cumulative potential effect on controlling what ads a user sees

If I can reach my audience through Facebook or Instagram, that’s more competition than Facebook properties alone.

> They all hook into the same ad backend anyways

Hence the call to break them up.

>If I can reach my audience through Facebook or Instagram, that’s more competition than Facebook properties alone.

I mean, if anything, competition will lower the price per contact with potential voter? What problem it will solve?

How in the world is that enforceable, or legal?

Well, there was the Bell System. But arguably that didn't work as planned. And it probably couldn't happen today.

But regulation as a public utility might work.

Wouldn't the point of breaking those into separate companies be to _prevent_ them from hooking into the same backend?

What if they break FB, IG, Messenger and WhatsApp in to separate companies. They also spin out Facebook Ad Solutions Inc. or whatever it’s called to sell ads to all those separate companies along with anyone else who wants to display FB ads. This isn’t to say that this is what will happen, but it’s one potential.

If they are broken up like this Google could sell ads to be shown on those platforms too.

I strongly disagree. Political advertisement successfully worked long before internet existed yet alone Facebook. Voters still live in houses, walk on streets, drive cars on roads, use public transit, watch TV/Netflix/YT/whatever. There are still many ways to reach them. Even if other channels are more expensive it doesn't make Facebook a monopolist.

Standard oil was still a monopoly even though the cart and buggy was still around.

People no longer receive daily, or even weekly, deliveries of newspapers. They no longer crowd around the living room radio, and increasingly avoid the television, which increasingly has neither a cable connection nor rabbit ears.

Like it or not, the world has changed.

The world has changed, but not that much. People do have mailboxes, mailing addresses and receive letters at least once in a while. Again, they drive cars, use public transit, walk on streets, etc. The real life still here, far not everything has moved online. And even for that online part Facebook is not a monopoly.

Influential online company? Absolutely. Monopoly? No.

>People do have mailboxes, mailing addresses and receive letters at least once in a while.

Nothing they receive in their mailbox holds their attention long, the attention market is dominated by digital media.

>Again, they drive cars, use public transit, walk on streets, etc

With headphones in or bluetooth paired. Who the hell reads a billboard? Who pairs their cellphone with their car, or owns headphones? Damn near everybody. Just try to buy a new car without Bluetooth.

Old propaganda distribution channels are dead men walking, and everybody knows it. Unless you're advertising a chicken wings and cleavage bar at the next exit, you're a damn fool for paying for a billboard.

I can name at least three of the snowflake data billboards, I know c3-iot is hiring, and espetus has two billboards (one in San Mateo and one at the 101/80 junction). And I mostly ride the 280, and don't eat that much meat.

Times Square billboards still sell for thousands of dollars a day. Do you have any evidence for your beliefs?

I don't pay any more attention to ads on facebook than I do to ads on billboards, or flyers in the mail. It all goes in the trash figuratively or literally.

My brain has been effectively trained to pattern recognize advertising and filter it out, as it is so ubiquitous and so very rarely actually useful.

Old propaganda distribution channels might be dead men walking, but the new ones are just as much (anecdotally).

With that reasoning an old paper yellow pages means no one can have a monopoly on digital yellow pages or a horse and cart means no one can have a monopoly in the car business.

People aren't saying that you can't do any marketing without Facebook, but if Facebook is letting others use their targeted advertising and not you, they've just increased your advertising costs by thousands of percent, giving Facebook the ability to selectively grant massive advantages to specific groups.

That's the problem here, yes, there are still mail based catalogue companies, but if you're not online, you're at a massive disadvantage.

I just read the App Annie 2019 app report this morning, and the 3 most used apps in Singapore in 2018 were Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook. Though I didn't check for US stats I'm sure they are similar. That is effectively a monopoly.

>That is effectively a monopoly.

Monopoly on what exactly?

Eyeballs

The network effect is unaccounted for by current antitrust legislation, which is pathetically outdated.

Pretty genius strategy, she’ll also gain support from traditional media companies which have been battling Facebook lately.

Especially because they were $100 limited-reach ads. So she got lots of notice from ~no investment.

Except she can run ads on google or Twitter or Snapchat or reddit to her Medium blog. If Starbucks kicks you out you can still get coffee elsewhere. If Comcast kicks me out I have no other choices for internet.

Facebook bills itself as a communications platform which follows rules which this didn’t violate so this is more akin to a newspaper refusing to run an ad which criticized them or a bar evicting someone who politely disagreed with the owner. Even if they successfully avoided regulation as a monopoly I would not be surprised if this led to people suing them for content which they didn’t take down on the theory that once you make arbitrary editorial decisions you’re responsible for everything.

At the very least it would also give pause to all of the media companies whose content has made them so much money, since you’d have to ask which other areas would be meddled with. That doesn’t need to be a legal process to have an impact on their business.

> or a bar evicting someone who politely disagreed with the owner

Is this supposed to be an example of something unreasonable?

Of course a publican can ask anyone to leave their bar for any reason or not reason at all, as long as it's not because of a protected characteristic. I think that's extremely reasonable.

True, but all of these small-business/relatable analogies break down because fb is a monopoly. It would be unreasonable if a polite disagreement with one person excluded you from 90% of bars in your state/country.

It's more like getting kicked out of the most popular bar, where 90% of your friends go. Sure, there are other bars, but you want to go to the one with your friends.

I'd say it's more like getting kicked out of a library for being a republican and therefore not being allowed to ever enter any library in the country again.

How is facebook preventing you from using a different social network (another library)?

The reason I used the library analogy is that at least where I live, library's are only run by the state.

And literally the whole point of this conversation is that Facebook has a monopoly on locally targeted online marketing, they're not stopping you from advertising on Myspace, what's stopping you from advertising on Myspace is that it's pointless.

Sure, technically Facebook doesn't have a 100% perfect, totally clean monopoly with literally no competitors, but that doesn't mean that them owning a significant majority of the targeted local advertising market isn't a monopoly problem and shouldn't therefor be legislated against.

A better analogy would be a bar owner evicting someone who politely disagreed with them, while simultaneously allowing a fascist group to drink, telling punters who complain about them he just serves drinks and will serve them to anyone who he legally can do.

Unreasonable in the sense that even if it’s legal, ejecting someone who wasn’t causing problems is likely to strike many people as overbearing even if they share the owner’s politics. Facebook being arbitrary hurts them because everyone else has to wonder whether something they care about will be next.

Clearly, FB, the multibillion dollar international behemoth that is the go-to platform for communicating to other human beings and makes their money patrolling said communictions isn't quite comparable to your local retailer that's selling widgets. But we don't even need to get to the realm of social and political responsibility to see the problem with FB's behavior in this case - try taking FB at their word: "We removed the ads because they violated our policies against use of our corporate logo. In the interest of allowing robust debate, we are restoring the ads."

Yes, these ads are not in FB's best interest, and they do not have an obligation to do business with any/all potential customers. The problem, of course, arises on two fronts: first, when FB twice approves an ad they themselves claim violates their policies; second, when FB claims to be a promoter of robust debate in reaction to critical press.

> Why shouldn't Facebook take down the ad that's calling for a break up of their Company?

For the same reason that TV stations should have to run ads for candidates that advocate for greater taxes on TV stations.

Facebook operates in a stable environment created by the US' democratic governmental structure. In their role as communication channel, they have an obligation to preserve the process that created the environment in which they arose.

I work in tech and while I might quibble with the wording, there's not one point that I feel is wrong on substance. They have bulldozed competition. They have profited from private information. They have tilted the playing field in their favor.

Ironically, I would have thought this last point was the most arguable. Then Facebook took down her ad. ... Sigh. FB so predictably short sighted sometimes.

The answer to questions 1, 3, and 4 is 'because free speech' (not to be confused with the 1st amendment).

Once a business is large enough to substantially affect which messages can get attention, if they restrict certain messages, they're restricting speech - speech is no good if you can't get anyone to hear you. Facebook isn't big enough to entirely stifle a message, but they can substantially reduce its reach. That's the problem with corporate control of ads and communication - they act as a filter on which ideas they'll let through.

That answers question 2 - if it's a small store, the person can place the ad in plenty of other places, and it'll still get enough attention. But if the store happens to own 80% of all ad space in the town...

Edit: I should clarify - this is all about ethical should/should not, and (as remarked by the child comment) not meant to imply there currently exists a legal basis to force Facebook to run the ads. It's important not to confuse what the law is, with that we'd like it to be.

Your post should not be downvoted. You make good points and even if someone disagrees with them the points do have merit. In the U.S. we regulate political television ads by not allowing stations to refuse to run them. It seems appropriate to think that the same should hold for a company like Facebook. As you say it does have the power to stifle speech and thus society does have a compelling interest in this area.

I believe, but am not certain, that there is no legal basis at this time to force Facebook to run such ads but their actions indicate that perhaps there should be. If for no other reason than to avoid the Streisand effect they should not have banned the ads. It’s a bad public image at a time when should be cultivating public goodwill. But perhaps they’ve calculated that this isn’t necessary.

It's different because Facebook isn't selling coffee, they're selling a "community platform" and publicly insist they support free speech. Warren is demonstrating not "this is a terrible coffee, contrary to the company's claims" but "this is a terrible platform for freedom of speech, contrary to the company's claims".

IF you believe representative democracy, though perhaps fatally flawed, is the best system of government we as humans can muster THEN demonstrating the forum for debate is flawed is more essential than roads and water.

I think Facebook has every right to take down the ad calling for breakup of Facebook.

This would suggest Facebook supports censorship

It's an ad, not organic content posted by users. If the latter were blocked, I could see it as censorship.

Should <insert name of television or radio station> news be required to run ads that are critical of itself?

Users aren't paying Facebook to host their content. FB have zero obligation to continue doing so. They are well within their rights to censor perniciously and arbitrarily.

Yeah, they probably censor child porn, and other things, too. Don't you support censorship?

If Facebook wants to lose it's safe harbor protections, then yes, it has the legal right to censor content.

I doubt that Facebook wants to lose those protections though.

Of course they do, but it looks bad politically.

There are a lot of things that it is perfectly legal to do, which you probably don't want to. Especially if you are a public company.

> Why shouldn't Facebook take down the ad that's calling for a break up of their Company?

Because allowing fb to do so would tend to allow people with power to get more power.

This is bad because concentrations of power will act in their own interest, not the public interest.

I think this was very well played by Warren. You are probably technically correct but it is what their campaign wanted to have happen, so they have good talking points around the control Facebook can assert around the globe, at scale, at will.

> Why shouldn't Facebook take down the ad that's calling for a break up of their Company?

This is surely not the first time someone posted an ad hating facebook, but they do take down all ads that use facebook's name and logos. This makes sense and it's totally normal (and probably automated), though her campaign team probably planned to use the takedown for political gain. By allowing this one, Facebook is doubling down on her game, i would say it is smart move on their part.

From a purely strategical perspective I think Facebook probably did the calculus and realized that the negative press of not running her ads would far outweigh the damage it could do to her campaign. There's a good chance that Warren would have taken them to court, she wouldn't have had a case, and she would have known that, but the publicity for her platform would have totally been worth it. If I was Facebook I'd be essentially "playing dead" with respect to Warren, her entire strategy depends upon positioning herself as David, battling against Facebook's Goliath, for the good of the country. It's a good strategy, people will respond to that story-line, but only if it's interesting, which requires Facebook and the rest of FAANG to fight back, if it's just Warren shouting into the void it'll be boring. Eventually they'll have to respond, but if she doesn't get enough traction with the story he candidacy might be derailed before they have to and it'll all go away.

Should Comcast let me send/post advertisements for a competing ISP using my Comcast Internet service?

It’s different because Facebook has massive power to influence the National conversation by choosing which content to block or not block. Your local neighborhood store does not have such power, ergo, it’s reasonable to treat Facebook differently from the way we might treat a store.

I think it's a intellectually dishonest to try draw a parallel between a local store that has a reach of hundreds (maybe thousands), and a platform that reaches and influences the world-changing (or at least country-changing) decisions of over a billion people.

From a strict business perspective, of course you're right: an independent business that offers a subscription product should be allowed to terminate ongoing uses of that product that it doesn't like.

But from a social and political perspective, FB censoring ads like this makes them look very, very bad, and basically proves the point that they have way too much control over what news and information reaches a troublingly-large number of people.

If the "store" was a newspaper, and it refused to report parliamentary debate on its impartiality...

It's not illegal, but does prove its partiality.

This is a paid advertisement. More like if a newspaper refused to run an ad encouraging you to boycott the newspaper. Which they probably would. A good newspaper would then report on the refusal to run the ad, and the recriminations that followed.

But not if they were the only newspaper, or the newspaper with more than half of the market, because that would make it look like a monopoly abusing its power.

In Europe, public service broadcasters (like the BBC) have no problem giving time to politicians or others who call for the dismantling of public service. If they didn't that would look really bad.

Nobody is calling Facebook immoral for taking down the ad. However, this is a string argument against Facebook being a neutral platform who just want to connect people and should be left alone from regulation.

They're a nigh monopoly and what happened reinforced that point. Thus, they can't claim they shouldn't be treated and regulated as a monopoly with a straight face.

> How is this any different from a person walking into a store and asking to place an ad inside the store calling for breakup or shutting down of said store? What store owner would ever allow such a thing?

I think this is a valid point, but it depends on the community the store is in and what it's selling.

What if it's in a town that just had a school shooting and is selling fully automatic rifles? The store owner doesn't have to allow it, you're right, but I can understand why the store would come under fire (see what I did there?)

But my point is you need to ask your self an important question: should the gun shop owner's right to run a store and earn a living outweigh the demands (a safer community, perhaps?) of the people living in that community, especially if it's a large majority of that community? The answer for me is very clear.

Facebook haven't been going around shooting people, but they have clearly shown themselves to be a very nasty piece of work and I'm personally unsure what value they add to society as a closed, proprietary monolith.

Now think about what Facebook has been doing wrong, and what more wrongs could be planned behind its closed doors, and ask your self the above question: is this for the betterment of society or only the small group of hyper-rich stakeholders?

No, Facebook should not be forced to keep the adverts up. It's their network after all, but the adverts should prompt them to ask themselves the same above question about their own actions and existence, and work with society, not against it, to resolve the problems being presented.

These adverts should open a dialogue, not simply be silenced.

(And on a side note: it's actually quite unsettling to see only a few big ad networks in existence and they can control who gets to advertise what... not good.)

I honestly don't think you should even be taking this comparison seriously at all. It'll just open up this side of the argument to straw man attacks.

One is a store that sells things to customers, another is a company that has productized at-least 1/7 of the Earth's population...

Both are doing something that should raise questions, within their own minds, as to whether they're benefiting society, especially after public outcry.

It doesn't matter what the store is: people should always be questioning themselves and their actions and deciding if they're for the good of all.

That's all I'm trying to say.

Two words spring to mind: Streisand effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Because Facebook has a monopoly.

What’s their monopoly on? Serious question. Too many people like using fb so we break them up? lolwut.

Is fb actively stifling competition? Is there a market failure?

Having a monopoly is not illegal. Using your monopoly to do things you can't do if you're not a monopoly can be illegal depending on the circumstances.

This is probably the biggest myth about US antitrust law. It seems to be almost universally believed, but is very clearly false. See, for instance, what happened to Alcoa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Alcoa

And Warren's proposal aims to change exactly that.

> Is fb actively stifling competition? Is there a market failure?

They bought two of their competitors and copied the features of a third. None of that may meet the definition of "stifling competition," but it's a strategy that did neutralize potential competitors.

With 29% of the world's population logging in to FB at least once a month (2.23 bn "monthly active users" / 7.7 bn), and receiving algorithmically target messages from Facebook and its advertisers, there is tremendous potential for abuse.

> Is fb actively stifling competition?

If they're suppressing the debate, then yes, they are. When it comes to political speech, the democratic governance process is definitely a competitor.

> Is there a market failure?

As long as Facebook is the go-to platform for political advertising and they use their position as the market to influence market positions, then yes, there is a failure. Imagine if the NYSE chairman picked the stock winners every day, not because he's a prophet, but because he literally decided, in advance, who's going to get to move shares today.

> What’s their monopoly on? Serious question. Too many people like using fb so we break them up? lolwut.

Yes, basically. Or at least, they have a partial monopoly on social media.

> Is fb actively stifling competition?

They've been buying competitors. That's classic monopolistic behavior to stifle competition.

> Is there a market failure?

Pretty damn close. Even Google couldn't moose its way in.

I'm pretty sure "partial monopoly" is an oxymoron.

Google doesn’t like to actively compete though. It’s always been very quick to discontinue products, shrug its shoulders, and say “nevermind”.

It would be interesting to see Google release some sort of decentralized open source social networking software connected to Google Play. Something like Android, but for social networks. I could see FB being bothered by that.

Snapchat? TikTok? Discord? Reddit?

Facebook has a monopoly on Facebook.

Sure, they have competitors. But there are no close equivalents with substantial market power.

Their monopoly is on discourse and dissemination of information.

I'm going to sound a bit paternalistic and anti-capitalist here, because I am. Facebook is no longer just a company, it's an institution that should definitely be regulated. It enables the rapid dissemination of societally-impactful information that may or may not be true. There was plenty of fake information on facebook around the 2016 election that influenced uneducated/uncritical/unintelligent voters' opinions of the candidates. Having content curation guidelines that are informed by non-facebook entities almost certainly is needed, imo.

> It enables the rapid dissemination of societally-impactful information that may or may not be true.

This is the exact reason why Russia blocked (or at least tried to) block Telegram, and why Facebook is banned in China.

They own the majority means of discourse and dissemination of information? Newpapers? Television networks? Come on. That's not even close to true.

What percentage of the population can write for a newspaper or appear on TV?

When I say dissemination, I'm not just talking about elites. If the average Joe wanted to reach out asany people as they know and tell them something, tell me how they should do it?

And before someone comes and says that I want to police free speech, no. Not at all. I simply want curation which means a set of processes that are followed for certain categories of speech, and the labeling of potential speech as incorrect or untrue. I don't want to lock anybody up for posting fake news (though wouldn't mind if they were banned)

You're doing a fine job right here. But Twitter seems to be a far better option than Facebook for that kind of scenario.

Average Joe has a facebook account with a network of friends. They do not have a twitter account let alone any followers (Facebook DAU: 1.5 billion; Twitter DAU: 126 million)

Fair point, looking at Facebook as a platform and product I think it has far greater impact than Twitter.

Newspapers and Television networks have SUBSTANTIAL government regulation and oversight not present in Social Media. If you want to put Facebook on that level that those media types are competition, you need to accept that Facebook now gets greater FCC oversight.

Those other things you list...newspapers, television, networks...they all have a Facebook page and distribute their content through FB.

These traditional forms of media are scrambling for likes/comments just as much as the next influencer.

No business would fail if it didn't have a Facebook page. It's not necessary.

Now compare that with Google -- most businesses need to be listed on Google or they will lose significant amount of business. Facebook is nothing by comparison.

Being popular doesn't make something a monopoly.

>Being popular doesn't make something a monopoly.

No and you don’t need to be a monopoly to violate antitrust laws and engage in anti competitive behavior.

> Serious question.

I dont believe you. You know exactly what is Facebooks monopoly.

Your argument is that you’re 100% correct and “you don’t believe” others could have a different opinion.

No offense but why are you on this forum? Do you seriously expect others to conform to your opinions?

The arguments why Facebook is a monopoly are well-known. Feel free to disagree with them, but Im not going to waste my time explaining things to you that surely you already know.

One example of trolling is when someone posts into a thread a 'truth' while calling others liars, then not providing any evidence of that 'truth' when asked.

So either you are trolling, or you'll be so kind as to actually post the arguments for why Facebook is a monopoly so we can ensure we're discussing under a shared context.

That sort of attitude goes against the spirit of discussion imo. Makes for very uninteresting reading :(

I'm trying to figure out what I can get at Facebook that I can't get anywhere else.

A mass of active 'real' users

their users

On what exactly?