Mr Kobayashi
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 1 Oct 2020
- Messages
- 17,373
If Trump owned Twitter it never would have got off the ground. And a social media platform that banned everyone who disagreed with its owner would find itself very quickly superseded by other platforms, unless it was allowed to engage in anti-competitive, monopolistic practices. That's why a well-regulated market is the best solution all round.
Those rules don't apply to the winner takes it all arena of Big tech. Trump would have never been able to run Twitter into market dominance that's true, but hypothetically he could have behaved like the Mad King after inheriting or acquiring it.
Twitter has behaved in anticompetitive practices, just look up Twitter acquisitions. They have acquired numerous companies who developed add-ons to their ecosystem or bullied them into submission when they have refused to do business by threatening IP action (twitpic) is an example. Not as successful as Facebook with whatsapp and Instagram but the same playbook in action.
I agree about the bolded part, the current situation is that tech companies have lax regulations or special rules that exempt them. At the moment Facebook have escaped antitrust action because the USA's position is to allow monopiles in tech because it's the only viable model, and they want American companies to have market dominance.