Mark Zuckerberg fairly obviously bought Instagram and WhatsApp to neutralize a perceived competitor. He isn’t doing that with TikTok, and the FTC’s monopolization trial is why.
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They haven’t “won” until Meta has to pay damages. And even then, that win is hollow because not only will Meta try this again if the penalty isn’t high enough, but they’ll use the advantages of our weak leadership to further avoid any serious repercussions.
This article assumes Tik Tok wants to sell or that they are going to sell to a company that’s basically a direct competitor. I don’t understand this assumption.
Anything short of forcing them to sell IG and WApp is a slap on the wrist.
i think tik tok might be in a position where they must sell in order to continue serving content to American users
The order was announced as White House officials believed they were nearing a deal for the app’s operations to be spun off into a new company based in the U.S. and owned and operated by a majority of American investors,
the extension only happened because after the TikTok CEO, Shou Chew, threw a big party for right wing influencers during Trump’s record breaking $200M
bribe acceptance partyinauguration, Trump mysteriously halted the order (despite being signed into law) to ban the app.from the article:
Top TikTok executives reportedly rubbed shoulders with American tech leaders and handed out business cards at an elite pre-inauguration donor event on Sunday featuring members of the Trump administration, as the app’s future in the U.S. remains uncertain.
Tiktok executives including CEO Shou Chew and vice president Michael Beckerman were reportedly on hand at the event, which President Donald and First Lady Melania Trump hosted at the National Building Museum in Washington. They joined a reported guestlist including Vice President JD Vance, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and conservative megadonor Miriam Adelson.
geeze, it’s almost like the tech oligarchs told Trump to pause the ban until they could negotiate a way to profit more from acquisition of TikTok (or a newly created US based subsidiary that Bezos is trying to invest in) than by outright banning users access to it, cold turkey.
That’s true. But that doesn’t mean they don’t get to choose a better option than Facebook or Google or Amazon. Amazon at the very least isn’t a main competitor of theirs because Amazon doesn’t have a short form video product that’s mainstream. And they can afford to buy Tik Tok. So there’s that at least.
The FTC is the organization that never should have approved these mergers in the first place.
