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A comment on Online Publisher Dependent Upon Facebook Shuts Down, Blaming Algorithm Change (2018). Parent comment

Re:Online Publisher Dependent Upon Facebook Shuts Down, Blam... by philipov on Monday August 23, 2021 @08:54AM (#28275000)
In a sense, he's right that Facebook needs someone to provide content for them. But Facebook has billions of someones to do that for them. They don't need any particular someone, and there will still be plenty of someones left over even if they screw everyone over.

This is why a company being too much bigger than its clients is an antitrust issue regardless of market share; B2B competition isn't the only thing that matters. A market must respond to signals from consumers to be healthy, and it won't do that if the individual customers are insignificantly small compared to the companies in that market. In such a market, collusion between the market leaders becomes more valuable than competition.

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Re:Online Publisher Dependent Upon Facebook Shuts Down, Blam... by ineedasername on Monday August 23, 2021 @09:21AM (#28275268)
why a company being too much bigger than its clients is an antitrust issue

Content producers and Facebook users aren't the clients. Advertisers are the clients, people are the product.

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Re:Online Publisher Dependent Upon Facebook Shuts Down, Blam... by philipov on Monday August 23, 2021 @09:23AM (#28275307)
That's a popular quip, but I think it's actually a form of thought-terminating cliche. If you want, they're clients in the sense that a government torturer's victim is their client.
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Re:Online Publisher Dependent Upon Facebook Shuts Down, Blam... by ineedasername on Monday August 23, 2021 @09:28AM (#28275370)
I think that whoever is paying for something is the true client.

I also think that calling something thought-terminating can, itself, be thought terminating. In this case, a way of dismissing a commonly made point under the assumption that I have not thought through the issue on a much deeper level, but I have done so. We may simply disagree on our conclusions.

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Re:Online Publisher Dependent Upon Facebook Shuts Down, Blam... by philipov on Monday August 23, 2021 @09:30AM (#28275388)
Users of facebook are paying for something, they're just not paying for it with cash. They're paying for it with their personal data.
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Re:Online Publisher Dependent Upon Facebook Shuts Down, Blam... by ineedasername on Monday August 23, 2021 @09:53AM (#28275713)
That's not revenue. From Facebook's perspective, that's an input, a resource they have to obtain. Users are a supplier of raw material that Facebook distills & refines and sells on to the customers that pay them actual money.

Like any business, they have to maintain a good relationship with their suppliers. In this case they have to provide a platform that users return to over & over again. But they optimize their business towards revenue generation, not suppliers.

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