• Summer Game Fest and ‘Not-E3’ 2025 schedule: All conference dates and times

    Summer Game Fest 2025 returns in June to fill the vacuum left by E3 — may it rest in peace — and will be joined by a long list of showcases from the likes of Xbox and tireless independent organizers who will put on shows like Day of the Devs and Wholesome Direct.

    This year’s Summer Game Fest and Not-E3 extravaganza may look a little lighter, though. Publishers like Sony, Nintendo, and Ubisoft haven’t yet confirmed their brand of events — PlayStation Showcase, Nintendo Direct, and Ubisoft Forward, respectively — but some of that may change as we approach what would normally be E3 season.

    In this guide to Summer Game Fest and not-E3 2025, we’ll run down the conference schedule, with dates and times across time zones in North America and Europe, and what to expect from each one.Summer Game Fest 2025

    Where to watch: YouTube, TwitchWhen it starts: Friday, June 6, at 2 p.m. PST/5 p.m. EST/10 p.m. BST

    Summer Game Fest 2025 kicks things off on Friday, June 6. Geoff Keighley’s annual showcase of the big games coming in 2025, 2026, and beyond will stream live from the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles. SGF 2025 is expected to run about two hours.

    With its focus on the types of games that would normally be reserved for E3 showcases past, expect the biggest reveals of AAA sequels, surprises, and world premiere exclusives to show up at Summer Game Fest 2025. Also, probably expect an appearance from Hideo Kojima. Here’s everything that was announced at SGF 2024, for an idea of what to expect.

    Day of the Devs: Summer Game Fest Edition

    Where to watch: YouTube, TwitchWhen it starts: Friday, June 6, at 4 p.m. PST/7 p.m. EST/12 a.m. BST

    The Summer Game Fest edition of Day of the Devs will stream live on June 6, at 4 p.m. PST/7 p.m. EST/11 p.m. GMT, immediately after SGF 2025 wraps. Day of the Devs, a non-profit co-production from Double Fine Productions and iam8bit, will reveal and highlight some of the best, most creative indie games from a wide variety of creators. Looking for something original and maybe a little weird? Then don’t miss this show.

    Wholesome Direct 2025

    Where to watch: YouTube, TwitchWhen it starts: Saturday, June 7, at 9 a.m. PST/12 p.m. EST/5 p.m. BST

    You wanna get cozy? Let’s get cozy. Wholesome Direct returns Saturday, June 7, promising “a vibrant lineup of artistic, uplifting, and emotionally resonant games from developers of all sizes from around the world.”

    Future Games Show Summer Showcase

    Where to watch: YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, TikTokWhen it starts: Saturday, June 7, at 1 p.m. PST/4 p.m. EST/9 p.m. BST

    The Future Games Show Summer Showcase promises to highlight “some of the most exciting games on the horizon,” with world premieres, exclusive game demos, developer interviews, and new trailers from more than 40 games. Confirmed to appear are Supermassive Games’ Directive 8020, Hangar 13’s Mafia: The Old Country , and Crisol: Theater of Idols from Blumhouse Games. Actors Laura Bailey and Matthew Mercer will host this year’s Future Games Show Summer Showcase.

    Xbox Games Showcase 2025

    Where to watch: YouTube, Twitch, FacebookWhen it starts: Sunday, June 8, starting at 10 a.m. PST/1 p.m. EST/6 p.m. BST

    Microsoft’s Xbox Games Showcase 2025 will be streamed live on Sunday, June 8, starting at 10 a.m. PST/1 p.m. EST/6 p.m. GMT. The Xbox team promises a look at upcoming titles from Xbox Game Studios and third-party partners.

    Immediately following the Xbox Games Showcase, Obsidian Entertainment will get its own The Outer Worlds 2 Direct showcase, offering a deep dive into this year’s highly anticipated sci-fi RPG sequel.

    PC Gaming Show

    Where to watch: YouTube, Twitch, FacebookWhen it starts: Sunday, June 8, at 12 p.m. PST/3 p.m. EST/8 p.m. BST

    PC Gamer’s PC Gaming Show will show PC games — and nothing but PC games — on Sunday, June 8. Organizers say that this year’s PC Gaming Show will be “brimming with exclusives, announcements, world premieres and behind the scenes developer interviews,” viewers can look forward to over 50 games on PC, Steam Deck, Linux and MacOS this season of summer events and broadcasts—in the one and only show designed solely to celebrate all things PC gaming.” Some 50 games will be showcased, with publishers Ubisoft, Failbetter Games, Devolver Digital, and Astra Logical confirmed to appear.

    PlayStation State of Play/PlayStation Showcase

    Sony Interactive Entertainment hasn’t announced a PlayStation Showcase or State of Play event for the Summer Game Fest/Not-E3 season, though it typically holds one in late May or early June. According to frequent leaker Jeff Grubb, Sony has a State of Play showcase in the works for sometime in June.

    Nintendo Direct

    Nintendo also typically has a Nintendo Direct presentation sometime in mid-to-late June, though the company has not yet announced such an event for 2025. But since Nintendo is about to launch Switch 2 on June 5, don’t be surprised if it has more to show regarding the next-gen console’s lineup near or after launch.
    #summer #game #fest #note3 #schedule
    Summer Game Fest and ‘Not-E3’ 2025 schedule: All conference dates and times
    Summer Game Fest 2025 returns in June to fill the vacuum left by E3 — may it rest in peace — and will be joined by a long list of showcases from the likes of Xbox and tireless independent organizers who will put on shows like Day of the Devs and Wholesome Direct. This year’s Summer Game Fest and Not-E3 extravaganza may look a little lighter, though. Publishers like Sony, Nintendo, and Ubisoft haven’t yet confirmed their brand of events — PlayStation Showcase, Nintendo Direct, and Ubisoft Forward, respectively — but some of that may change as we approach what would normally be E3 season. In this guide to Summer Game Fest and not-E3 2025, we’ll run down the conference schedule, with dates and times across time zones in North America and Europe, and what to expect from each one.Summer Game Fest 2025 Where to watch: YouTube, TwitchWhen it starts: Friday, June 6, at 2 p.m. PST/5 p.m. EST/10 p.m. BST Summer Game Fest 2025 kicks things off on Friday, June 6. Geoff Keighley’s annual showcase of the big games coming in 2025, 2026, and beyond will stream live from the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles. SGF 2025 is expected to run about two hours. With its focus on the types of games that would normally be reserved for E3 showcases past, expect the biggest reveals of AAA sequels, surprises, and world premiere exclusives to show up at Summer Game Fest 2025. Also, probably expect an appearance from Hideo Kojima. Here’s everything that was announced at SGF 2024, for an idea of what to expect. Day of the Devs: Summer Game Fest Edition Where to watch: YouTube, TwitchWhen it starts: Friday, June 6, at 4 p.m. PST/7 p.m. EST/12 a.m. BST The Summer Game Fest edition of Day of the Devs will stream live on June 6, at 4 p.m. PST/7 p.m. EST/11 p.m. GMT, immediately after SGF 2025 wraps. Day of the Devs, a non-profit co-production from Double Fine Productions and iam8bit, will reveal and highlight some of the best, most creative indie games from a wide variety of creators. Looking for something original and maybe a little weird? Then don’t miss this show. Wholesome Direct 2025 Where to watch: YouTube, TwitchWhen it starts: Saturday, June 7, at 9 a.m. PST/12 p.m. EST/5 p.m. BST You wanna get cozy? Let’s get cozy. Wholesome Direct returns Saturday, June 7, promising “a vibrant lineup of artistic, uplifting, and emotionally resonant games from developers of all sizes from around the world.” Future Games Show Summer Showcase Where to watch: YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, TikTokWhen it starts: Saturday, June 7, at 1 p.m. PST/4 p.m. EST/9 p.m. BST The Future Games Show Summer Showcase promises to highlight “some of the most exciting games on the horizon,” with world premieres, exclusive game demos, developer interviews, and new trailers from more than 40 games. Confirmed to appear are Supermassive Games’ Directive 8020, Hangar 13’s Mafia: The Old Country , and Crisol: Theater of Idols from Blumhouse Games. Actors Laura Bailey and Matthew Mercer will host this year’s Future Games Show Summer Showcase. Xbox Games Showcase 2025 Where to watch: YouTube, Twitch, FacebookWhen it starts: Sunday, June 8, starting at 10 a.m. PST/1 p.m. EST/6 p.m. BST Microsoft’s Xbox Games Showcase 2025 will be streamed live on Sunday, June 8, starting at 10 a.m. PST/1 p.m. EST/6 p.m. GMT. The Xbox team promises a look at upcoming titles from Xbox Game Studios and third-party partners. Immediately following the Xbox Games Showcase, Obsidian Entertainment will get its own The Outer Worlds 2 Direct showcase, offering a deep dive into this year’s highly anticipated sci-fi RPG sequel. PC Gaming Show Where to watch: YouTube, Twitch, FacebookWhen it starts: Sunday, June 8, at 12 p.m. PST/3 p.m. EST/8 p.m. BST PC Gamer’s PC Gaming Show will show PC games — and nothing but PC games — on Sunday, June 8. Organizers say that this year’s PC Gaming Show will be “brimming with exclusives, announcements, world premieres and behind the scenes developer interviews,” viewers can look forward to over 50 games on PC, Steam Deck, Linux and MacOS this season of summer events and broadcasts—in the one and only show designed solely to celebrate all things PC gaming.” Some 50 games will be showcased, with publishers Ubisoft, Failbetter Games, Devolver Digital, and Astra Logical confirmed to appear. PlayStation State of Play/PlayStation Showcase Sony Interactive Entertainment hasn’t announced a PlayStation Showcase or State of Play event for the Summer Game Fest/Not-E3 season, though it typically holds one in late May or early June. According to frequent leaker Jeff Grubb, Sony has a State of Play showcase in the works for sometime in June. Nintendo Direct Nintendo also typically has a Nintendo Direct presentation sometime in mid-to-late June, though the company has not yet announced such an event for 2025. But since Nintendo is about to launch Switch 2 on June 5, don’t be surprised if it has more to show regarding the next-gen console’s lineup near or after launch. #summer #game #fest #note3 #schedule
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    Summer Game Fest and ‘Not-E3’ 2025 schedule: All conference dates and times
    Summer Game Fest 2025 returns in June to fill the vacuum left by E3 — may it rest in peace — and will be joined by a long list of showcases from the likes of Xbox and tireless independent organizers who will put on shows like Day of the Devs and Wholesome Direct. This year’s Summer Game Fest and Not-E3 extravaganza may look a little lighter, though. Publishers like Sony, Nintendo, and Ubisoft haven’t yet confirmed their brand of events — PlayStation Showcase, Nintendo Direct, and Ubisoft Forward, respectively — but some of that may change as we approach what would normally be E3 season. In this guide to Summer Game Fest and not-E3 2025, we’ll run down the conference schedule, with dates and times across time zones in North America and Europe, and what to expect from each one. (This story will be updated with new events and details as they are announced.) Summer Game Fest 2025 Where to watch: YouTube, TwitchWhen it starts: Friday, June 6, at 2 p.m. PST/5 p.m. EST/10 p.m. BST Summer Game Fest 2025 kicks things off on Friday, June 6. Geoff Keighley’s annual showcase of the big games coming in 2025, 2026, and beyond will stream live from the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles. SGF 2025 is expected to run about two hours. With its focus on the types of games that would normally be reserved for E3 showcases past, expect the biggest reveals of AAA sequels, surprises, and world premiere exclusives to show up at Summer Game Fest 2025. Also, probably expect an appearance from Hideo Kojima. Here’s everything that was announced at SGF 2024, for an idea of what to expect. Day of the Devs: Summer Game Fest Edition Where to watch: YouTube, TwitchWhen it starts: Friday, June 6, at 4 p.m. PST/7 p.m. EST/12 a.m. BST The Summer Game Fest edition of Day of the Devs will stream live on June 6, at 4 p.m. PST/7 p.m. EST/11 p.m. GMT, immediately after SGF 2025 wraps. Day of the Devs, a non-profit co-production from Double Fine Productions and iam8bit, will reveal and highlight some of the best, most creative indie games from a wide variety of creators. Looking for something original and maybe a little weird? Then don’t miss this show. Wholesome Direct 2025 Where to watch: YouTube, TwitchWhen it starts: Saturday, June 7, at 9 a.m. PST/12 p.m. EST/5 p.m. BST You wanna get cozy? Let’s get cozy. Wholesome Direct returns Saturday, June 7, promising “a vibrant lineup of artistic, uplifting, and emotionally resonant games from developers of all sizes from around the world.” Future Games Show Summer Showcase Where to watch: YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, TikTokWhen it starts: Saturday, June 7, at 1 p.m. PST/4 p.m. EST/9 p.m. BST The Future Games Show Summer Showcase promises to highlight “some of the most exciting games on the horizon,” with world premieres, exclusive game demos, developer interviews, and new trailers from more than 40 games. Confirmed to appear are Supermassive Games’ Directive 8020, Hangar 13’s Mafia: The Old Country , and Crisol: Theater of Idols from Blumhouse Games. Actors Laura Bailey and Matthew Mercer will host this year’s Future Games Show Summer Showcase. Xbox Games Showcase 2025 Where to watch: YouTube, Twitch, FacebookWhen it starts: Sunday, June 8, starting at 10 a.m. PST/1 p.m. EST/6 p.m. BST Microsoft’s Xbox Games Showcase 2025 will be streamed live on Sunday, June 8, starting at 10 a.m. PST/1 p.m. EST/6 p.m. GMT. The Xbox team promises a look at upcoming titles from Xbox Game Studios and third-party partners. Immediately following the Xbox Games Showcase, Obsidian Entertainment will get its own The Outer Worlds 2 Direct showcase, offering a deep dive into this year’s highly anticipated sci-fi RPG sequel. PC Gaming Show Where to watch: YouTube, Twitch, FacebookWhen it starts: Sunday, June 8, at 12 p.m. PST/3 p.m. EST/8 p.m. BST PC Gamer’s PC Gaming Show will show PC games — and nothing but PC games — on Sunday, June 8. Organizers say that this year’s PC Gaming Show will be “brimming with exclusives, announcements, world premieres and behind the scenes developer interviews,” viewers can look forward to over 50 games on PC, Steam Deck, Linux and MacOS this season of summer events and broadcasts—in the one and only show designed solely to celebrate all things PC gaming.” Some 50 games will be showcased, with publishers Ubisoft, Failbetter Games, Devolver Digital, and Astra Logical confirmed to appear. PlayStation State of Play/PlayStation Showcase Sony Interactive Entertainment hasn’t announced a PlayStation Showcase or State of Play event for the Summer Game Fest/Not-E3 season, though it typically holds one in late May or early June. According to frequent leaker Jeff Grubb, Sony has a State of Play showcase in the works for sometime in June. Nintendo Direct Nintendo also typically has a Nintendo Direct presentation sometime in mid-to-late June, though the company has not yet announced such an event for 2025. But since Nintendo is about to launch Switch 2 on June 5, don’t be surprised if it has more to show regarding the next-gen console’s lineup near or after launch.
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  • #333;">Why one obscure app could help crumble Meta’s empire
    If the question, “Who is Meta’s biggest rival?” were on a Family Feud survey, TikTok would likely be the winning answer.
    In the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust case against the Facebook and Instagram owner, the government’s response probably wouldn’t even make the top 10: a small blockchain-based platform called MeWe.
    MeWe looks a fair amount like Facebook at first glance, except that you make an account using the Frequency blockchain — which the company explains is a decentralized protocol that lets you move your social connections to other (mostly hypothetical at this point) apps that support Frequency.
    The company says 20 million users have joined, but when I make a MeWe account and log in, I scroll through my autopopulated feed and think, “Who are these people?” I search for a few of my Verge colleagues, figuring if anyone has tried this obscure app, it might be one of them, but I come up short.
    I try some public figures: Tim Cook? Jeff Bezos? Mark Zuckerberg? There are some accounts with these names, but it seems unlikely they’re the ones I have in mind.The claim that MeWe is a closer competitor to Facebook and Instagram than TikTok might be baffling if you’re not steeped in antitrust law or the specifics of the FTC’s complaint.
    Meta CEO Zuckerberg testified he hadn’t even heard of the app before this case was filed.
    But the FTC has spent the past three weeks laying out its logic.
    Using Meta’s own internal discussions about how it views itself and its competition, it says that Meta has historically, and to this day, competed in a market for connecting with friends and family online — and when it saw its dominance in that space threatened by the rise of Instagram and WhatsApp, it bought them to squash the competition.Whether Judge James Boasberg buys this could determine who wins the case — if the FTC can also show that Meta acted illegally through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp to solidify its alleged monopoly power.Antitrust law is supposed to ensure fair competition, which usually means that people have options for a useful class of goods and services — what’s known as a relevant market.
    The FTC says that here, that market is “personal social networking services,” or PSNs: spaces where a core purpose is helping people connect with friends and family.
    While there are many online platforms that overlap with Meta’s services, the FTC argues that virtually none of them serve that market.
    If internet users want to find and hang out with people they know — as opposed to, say, watching influencers or making work connections — then it’s Mark Zuckerberg’s way or… in the government’s telling, Snapchat, BeReal, and MeWe.
    Beyond that core definition, PSNs have some other unique features and norms: The apps feature a social graph of users’ friends and family connections, as opposed to mapping users primarily based on their interests.
    Users can look up and find people they know in real life.
    And they come to the app to share personal updates with those people.Facebook and Instagram increasingly display videos and photos from influencers and celebrities, but the FTC argues personal social networking remains a core service.
    It used Instagram chief Adam Mosseri’s testimony to most clearly make this point.
    In that testimony as well as posts to his own Instagram account, Mosseri said that it’s still important for the app to connect users with their friends.
    The FTC argues that even if that use case is a smaller portion of what Meta’s apps do these days, it’s still a significant need users have that can virtually only be fulfilled by Facebook and Instagram.
    While someone might connect with people they know in real life on LinkedIn, they likely won’t primarily share personal updates there.
    And while they also could follow and interact with people they know on TikTok or YouTube, they’re more likely to passively watch videos from people they don’t.Meta says this is an entirely wrong way to think about it.
    Social media platforms compete for users’ time and attention, so whether a particular app is squarely aimed at so-called friends and family sharing is beside the point.
    Facebook and Instagram have evolved to show more content from people like influencers, shifting further from the use case the FTC says Meta has illegally dominated.
    The company has already landed some important points that could help its case, and it will get more time to push back on the agency’s framing when it calls its own witnesses in the coming weeks.But as the FTC’s case-in-chief continues into its fifth week, its argument for Meta’s dominance is becoming a lot clearer.Why do people use Facebook?When defining a market, each side is trying to answer a key question: why are people choosing one particular company’s product? A lot of goods and services compete with each other in some sense, but this doesn’t mean they serve the same niche.
    In the case of sodas, for example, “you could buy lemon-lime, but many people would never see that as a close substitute for buying Coke or Pepsi,” says George Washington Law professor and former FTC Chair Bill Kovacic.
    In the tech world, Netflix has claimed its biggest competitors are Fortnite and sleep — but those comparisons probably wouldn’t stand up in court.The FTC says that outside of Facebook and Instagram, only apps like Snapchat and MeWe can fulfill a users’ desire to broadcast personal updates with friends and family online.
    To make its case, it brought in a string of executives from other social media companies to explain why their apps can’t quite scratch the same itch for users.
    Strava’s former VP of connected partnerships Mateo Ortega testified that sure, users of the fitness-tracking social media app could share baby photos on the platform, but they probably wouldn’t unless it was in a running stroller.
    “It’s all about fitness, and while you can post other stuff, it just doesn’t seem as relevant,” he said.
    “You could buy lemon-lime, but many people would never see that as a close substitute for buying Coke or Pepsi”Pinterest’s former head of user growth Julia Roberts testified that users who come to Pinterest “expecting it to be like other social media apps … tend to be confused about how to use the product.” That’s because the app is so much not about connecting with other people that it works much differently from other social media platforms.
    Pinterest is more about finding things users are interested in, she said, so “following is not a big part of the Pinterest experience.”TikTok has a tab where users can watch videos from their friends — identified as people who mutually follow each other.
    But head of operations Adam Presser testified only about 1 percent of videos watched on the platform are there.
    The company doesn’t think of itself as competing with Meta’s apps for personal social networking, he testified.
    And even though side-by-side screenshots of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts look identical, Presser said, “when you click out of this view for these other platforms, you would get to essentially what I think of as their core business,” which for Instagram, includes a feed and stories that often contain at least some content from family and friends.At times, Meta’s cross-examination of rival company executives showed the limits of apps’ similarities.
    When questioning Apple director of product marketing Ronak Shah, Meta sought to show that group chats in Apple’s messaging feature could serve as a social media feed for friends and family sharing.
    But Shah testified that feed would be limited to 32 people at most, and users can’t just look up each others’ profiles like they would on social platforms.
    Still, Meta pointed out, Apple’s messages app is listed under social media on its own app store.However, Meta also made important arguments about why the judge should question the FTC’s framing.
    It pointed out that some documents from TikTok and YouTube owner Google claiming their products are very different from Meta’s were submitted to foreign officials to try to avoid getting drafted into potentially frustrating regulations.
    It also pointed out when TikTok briefly went dark in the US ahead of a (now-aborted) ban, users flocked to Meta apps, showing consumers see it as a substitute on at least some level.
    That’s because, Meta argued, competition for users is really about winning their time and attention.Companies can “sometimes make mistakes.
    They misjudge who their users are”But X VP of product Keith Coleman testified it’s not that useful to think about competition this way.
    Instead, “it’s much more helpful to understand what people are trying to accomplish in their lives and to try to help them accomplish that.” Under former CEO Jack Dorsey, then-Twitter leaned into focusing on news and users’ interests, Coleman testified, because that’s why people were coming to the platform.
    Coleman was later surprised at how his own website characterized the product in its help center as a “service for friends, family, and coworkers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages.” “I can’t believe that’s on the website,” he said.
    “That’s pretty wacky.”This point was “a caution that not everything a company writes down or says is necessarily decisive in establishing what the boundary of a market is,” Kovacic said.
    Companies can “sometimes make mistakes.
    They misjudge who their users are.”There are real ramifications for internet users here.
    Going back to Netflix’s comparisons, if the streaming video service went down, some people would probably be happy to play a video game or get a few hours of shut-eye instead.
    But others would be frustrated that they couldn’t watch a movie, which is why it’s good that Hulu, HBO, and Amazon Prime Video also exist.
    The FTC’s argument isn’t that Meta owns the only social apps on the internet, it’s that the company faces little competition for a service many people specifically want — so the fact that you probably don’t know anyone using MeWe is sort of the point.How will the judge decide?Ultimately, Boasberg’s market definition — whether it’s Meta’s, the FTC’s, or his own — will come down to a few things: how Meta views itself, how competitors see it, and his own intuition, says Kovacic.
    ”Notice how much the FTC has been questioning Meta witnesses on the basis of its own internal documents,” he says.
    “Does the story in the courtroom match the story of your own internal documents?” So far, the documents have shown that Meta has clocked that at least some portion of users come to its products to connect with family and friends, but also that the rise of TikTok has had it looking over its shoulder.
    In September 2020, Meta told its board that Instagram revenue would be “meaningfully lower” than planned in the second half of the fiscal year because TikTok was drawing users’ attention.
    But other internal documents have shown Meta’s well aware that at different points in time, users have come to its apps to connect with family and friends, and worriedly took note of other apps entering that space.
    In a 2018 presentation, Meta found that the highest percentage of surveyed users said they come to Facebook, Instagram, and Snap to “see daily casual moments” and “see special moments.” By contrast, users came to Twitter’s feed for news and YouTube’s for entertainment.
    And even as Instagram expands into entertainment, the FTC notes that it still advertises its sign-up page as a place to “see photos and videos from your friends.”“Instagram will always need to focus on friends”In a 2018 email, Zuckerberg told Mosseri that “Instagram will always need to focus on friends.” And even though a lot has changed in the social media landscape since then, Mosseri testified that to this day on the app, “friends are an important part of the experience.” Even though users may share fewer of their own updates on Facebook and Instagram, Mosseri admitted that two friends talking in the comments of a public figure’s post counts as an interaction between friends — and one that Instagram actively tries to facilitate.Meta has argued that this special focus on friends and family sharing makes up a shrinking portion of its offerings as it works to compete with fierce rivals like TikTok.
    But the FTC says it’s still significant enough to monopolize.
    It’s a scenario that came up in another major tech monopolization case, Kovacic says: the late-1990s lawsuit US v.
    Microsoft.
    In that case, Microsoft argued the Justice Department was ignoring how computing would soon move beyond the personal computer to the Internet of Things, meaning it couldn’t truly lock up the computing ecosystem as much as the government alleged.“Judge Jackson in the Microsoft case said, yeah, those things are happening, but not happening fast enough to deny you real market power in this PC and laptop-based market that the Justice Department is emphasizing,” Kovacic says.Still, he adds, a market niche can at some point become so small that it’s no longer significant in the eyes of antitrust law.
    “You can have a process of change that ultimately renders the market segment unimportant,” he says.
    “And the hard task of analysis for the judge is to say, has it already happened?”See More:
    #666;">المصدر: https://www.theverge.com/antitrust/665308/meta-ftc-antitrust-trial-market-definition-tiktok-mewe-snap" style="color: #0066cc; text-decoration: none;">www.theverge.com
    #0066cc;">#why #one #obscure #app #could #help #crumble #metas #empire #the #question #who #biggest #rival #were #family #feud #survey #tiktok #would #likely #winning #answerin #federal #trade #commissions #antitrust #case #against #facebook #and #instagram #owner #governments #response #probably #wouldnt #even #make #top #small #blockchainbased #platform #called #mewemewe #looks #fair #amount #like #first #glance #except #that #you #account #using #frequency #blockchain #which #company #explains #decentralized #protocol #lets #move #your #social #connections #other #mostly #hypothetical #this #point #apps #support #frequencythe #says #million #users #have #joined #but #when #mewe #log #scroll #through #autopopulated #feed #think #are #these #people #search #for #few #verge #colleagues #figuring #anyone #has #tried #might #them #come #shorti #try #some #public #figures #tim #cook #jeff #bezos #mark #zuckerberg #there #accounts #with #names #seems #unlikely #theyre #ones #mindthe 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    Why one obscure app could help crumble Meta’s empire
    If the question, “Who is Meta’s biggest rival?” were on a Family Feud survey, TikTok would likely be the winning answer. In the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust case against the Facebook and Instagram owner, the government’s response probably wouldn’t even make the top 10: a small blockchain-based platform called MeWe. MeWe looks a fair amount like Facebook at first glance, except that you make an account using the Frequency blockchain — which the company explains is a decentralized protocol that lets you move your social connections to other (mostly hypothetical at this point) apps that support Frequency. The company says 20 million users have joined, but when I make a MeWe account and log in, I scroll through my autopopulated feed and think, “Who are these people?” I search for a few of my Verge colleagues, figuring if anyone has tried this obscure app, it might be one of them, but I come up short. I try some public figures: Tim Cook? Jeff Bezos? Mark Zuckerberg? There are some accounts with these names, but it seems unlikely they’re the ones I have in mind.The claim that MeWe is a closer competitor to Facebook and Instagram than TikTok might be baffling if you’re not steeped in antitrust law or the specifics of the FTC’s complaint. Meta CEO Zuckerberg testified he hadn’t even heard of the app before this case was filed. But the FTC has spent the past three weeks laying out its logic. Using Meta’s own internal discussions about how it views itself and its competition, it says that Meta has historically, and to this day, competed in a market for connecting with friends and family online — and when it saw its dominance in that space threatened by the rise of Instagram and WhatsApp, it bought them to squash the competition.Whether Judge James Boasberg buys this could determine who wins the case — if the FTC can also show that Meta acted illegally through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp to solidify its alleged monopoly power.Antitrust law is supposed to ensure fair competition, which usually means that people have options for a useful class of goods and services — what’s known as a relevant market. The FTC says that here, that market is “personal social networking services,” or PSNs: spaces where a core purpose is helping people connect with friends and family. While there are many online platforms that overlap with Meta’s services, the FTC argues that virtually none of them serve that market. If internet users want to find and hang out with people they know — as opposed to, say, watching influencers or making work connections — then it’s Mark Zuckerberg’s way or… in the government’s telling, Snapchat, BeReal, and MeWe. Beyond that core definition, PSNs have some other unique features and norms: The apps feature a social graph of users’ friends and family connections, as opposed to mapping users primarily based on their interests. Users can look up and find people they know in real life. And they come to the app to share personal updates with those people.Facebook and Instagram increasingly display videos and photos from influencers and celebrities, but the FTC argues personal social networking remains a core service. It used Instagram chief Adam Mosseri’s testimony to most clearly make this point. In that testimony as well as posts to his own Instagram account, Mosseri said that it’s still important for the app to connect users with their friends. The FTC argues that even if that use case is a smaller portion of what Meta’s apps do these days, it’s still a significant need users have that can virtually only be fulfilled by Facebook and Instagram. While someone might connect with people they know in real life on LinkedIn, they likely won’t primarily share personal updates there. And while they also could follow and interact with people they know on TikTok or YouTube, they’re more likely to passively watch videos from people they don’t.Meta says this is an entirely wrong way to think about it. Social media platforms compete for users’ time and attention, so whether a particular app is squarely aimed at so-called friends and family sharing is beside the point. Facebook and Instagram have evolved to show more content from people like influencers, shifting further from the use case the FTC says Meta has illegally dominated. The company has already landed some important points that could help its case, and it will get more time to push back on the agency’s framing when it calls its own witnesses in the coming weeks.But as the FTC’s case-in-chief continues into its fifth week, its argument for Meta’s dominance is becoming a lot clearer.Why do people use Facebook?When defining a market, each side is trying to answer a key question: why are people choosing one particular company’s product? A lot of goods and services compete with each other in some sense, but this doesn’t mean they serve the same niche. In the case of sodas, for example, “you could buy lemon-lime, but many people would never see that as a close substitute for buying Coke or Pepsi,” says George Washington Law professor and former FTC Chair Bill Kovacic. In the tech world, Netflix has claimed its biggest competitors are Fortnite and sleep — but those comparisons probably wouldn’t stand up in court.The FTC says that outside of Facebook and Instagram, only apps like Snapchat and MeWe can fulfill a users’ desire to broadcast personal updates with friends and family online. To make its case, it brought in a string of executives from other social media companies to explain why their apps can’t quite scratch the same itch for users. Strava’s former VP of connected partnerships Mateo Ortega testified that sure, users of the fitness-tracking social media app could share baby photos on the platform, but they probably wouldn’t unless it was in a running stroller. “It’s all about fitness, and while you can post other stuff, it just doesn’t seem as relevant,” he said. “You could buy lemon-lime, but many people would never see that as a close substitute for buying Coke or Pepsi”Pinterest’s former head of user growth Julia Roberts testified that users who come to Pinterest “expecting it to be like other social media apps … tend to be confused about how to use the product.” That’s because the app is so much not about connecting with other people that it works much differently from other social media platforms. Pinterest is more about finding things users are interested in, she said, so “following is not a big part of the Pinterest experience.”TikTok has a tab where users can watch videos from their friends — identified as people who mutually follow each other. But head of operations Adam Presser testified only about 1 percent of videos watched on the platform are there. The company doesn’t think of itself as competing with Meta’s apps for personal social networking, he testified. And even though side-by-side screenshots of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts look identical, Presser said, “when you click out of this view for these other platforms, you would get to essentially what I think of as their core business,” which for Instagram, includes a feed and stories that often contain at least some content from family and friends.At times, Meta’s cross-examination of rival company executives showed the limits of apps’ similarities. When questioning Apple director of product marketing Ronak Shah, Meta sought to show that group chats in Apple’s messaging feature could serve as a social media feed for friends and family sharing. But Shah testified that feed would be limited to 32 people at most, and users can’t just look up each others’ profiles like they would on social platforms. Still, Meta pointed out, Apple’s messages app is listed under social media on its own app store.However, Meta also made important arguments about why the judge should question the FTC’s framing. It pointed out that some documents from TikTok and YouTube owner Google claiming their products are very different from Meta’s were submitted to foreign officials to try to avoid getting drafted into potentially frustrating regulations. It also pointed out when TikTok briefly went dark in the US ahead of a (now-aborted) ban, users flocked to Meta apps, showing consumers see it as a substitute on at least some level. That’s because, Meta argued, competition for users is really about winning their time and attention.Companies can “sometimes make mistakes. They misjudge who their users are”But X VP of product Keith Coleman testified it’s not that useful to think about competition this way. Instead, “it’s much more helpful to understand what people are trying to accomplish in their lives and to try to help them accomplish that.” Under former CEO Jack Dorsey, then-Twitter leaned into focusing on news and users’ interests, Coleman testified, because that’s why people were coming to the platform. Coleman was later surprised at how his own website characterized the product in its help center as a “service for friends, family, and coworkers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages.” “I can’t believe that’s on the website,” he said. “That’s pretty wacky.”This point was “a caution that not everything a company writes down or says is necessarily decisive in establishing what the boundary of a market is,” Kovacic said. Companies can “sometimes make mistakes. They misjudge who their users are.”There are real ramifications for internet users here. Going back to Netflix’s comparisons, if the streaming video service went down, some people would probably be happy to play a video game or get a few hours of shut-eye instead. But others would be frustrated that they couldn’t watch a movie, which is why it’s good that Hulu, HBO, and Amazon Prime Video also exist. The FTC’s argument isn’t that Meta owns the only social apps on the internet, it’s that the company faces little competition for a service many people specifically want — so the fact that you probably don’t know anyone using MeWe is sort of the point.How will the judge decide?Ultimately, Boasberg’s market definition — whether it’s Meta’s, the FTC’s, or his own — will come down to a few things: how Meta views itself, how competitors see it, and his own intuition, says Kovacic. ”Notice how much the FTC has been questioning Meta witnesses on the basis of its own internal documents,” he says. “Does the story in the courtroom match the story of your own internal documents?” So far, the documents have shown that Meta has clocked that at least some portion of users come to its products to connect with family and friends, but also that the rise of TikTok has had it looking over its shoulder. In September 2020, Meta told its board that Instagram revenue would be “meaningfully lower” than planned in the second half of the fiscal year because TikTok was drawing users’ attention. But other internal documents have shown Meta’s well aware that at different points in time, users have come to its apps to connect with family and friends, and worriedly took note of other apps entering that space. In a 2018 presentation, Meta found that the highest percentage of surveyed users said they come to Facebook, Instagram, and Snap to “see daily casual moments” and “see special moments.” By contrast, users came to Twitter’s feed for news and YouTube’s for entertainment. And even as Instagram expands into entertainment, the FTC notes that it still advertises its sign-up page as a place to “see photos and videos from your friends.”“Instagram will always need to focus on friends”In a 2018 email, Zuckerberg told Mosseri that “Instagram will always need to focus on friends.” And even though a lot has changed in the social media landscape since then, Mosseri testified that to this day on the app, “friends are an important part of the experience.” Even though users may share fewer of their own updates on Facebook and Instagram, Mosseri admitted that two friends talking in the comments of a public figure’s post counts as an interaction between friends — and one that Instagram actively tries to facilitate.Meta has argued that this special focus on friends and family sharing makes up a shrinking portion of its offerings as it works to compete with fierce rivals like TikTok. But the FTC says it’s still significant enough to monopolize. It’s a scenario that came up in another major tech monopolization case, Kovacic says: the late-1990s lawsuit US v. Microsoft. In that case, Microsoft argued the Justice Department was ignoring how computing would soon move beyond the personal computer to the Internet of Things, meaning it couldn’t truly lock up the computing ecosystem as much as the government alleged.“Judge Jackson in the Microsoft case said, yeah, those things are happening, but not happening fast enough to deny you real market power in this PC and laptop-based market that the Justice Department is emphasizing,” Kovacic says.Still, he adds, a market niche can at some point become so small that it’s no longer significant in the eyes of antitrust law. “You can have a process of change that ultimately renders the market segment unimportant,” he says. “And the hard task of analysis for the judge is to say, has it already happened?”See More:
    المصدر: www.theverge.com
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    WWW.THEVERGE.COM
    Why one obscure app could help crumble Meta’s empire
    If the question, “Who is Meta’s biggest rival?” were on a Family Feud survey, TikTok would likely be the winning answer. In the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust case against the Facebook and Instagram owner, the government’s response probably wouldn’t even make the top 10: a small blockchain-based platform called MeWe. MeWe looks a fair amount like Facebook at first glance, except that you make an account using the Frequency blockchain — which the company explains is a decentralized protocol that lets you move your social connections to other (mostly hypothetical at this point) apps that support Frequency. The company says 20 million users have joined, but when I make a MeWe account and log in, I scroll through my autopopulated feed and think, “Who are these people?” I search for a few of my Verge colleagues, figuring if anyone has tried this obscure app, it might be one of them, but I come up short. I try some public figures: Tim Cook? Jeff Bezos? Mark Zuckerberg? There are some accounts with these names, but it seems unlikely they’re the ones I have in mind.The claim that MeWe is a closer competitor to Facebook and Instagram than TikTok might be baffling if you’re not steeped in antitrust law or the specifics of the FTC’s complaint. Meta CEO Zuckerberg testified he hadn’t even heard of the app before this case was filed. But the FTC has spent the past three weeks laying out its logic. Using Meta’s own internal discussions about how it views itself and its competition, it says that Meta has historically, and to this day, competed in a market for connecting with friends and family online — and when it saw its dominance in that space threatened by the rise of Instagram and WhatsApp, it bought them to squash the competition.Whether Judge James Boasberg buys this could determine who wins the case — if the FTC can also show that Meta acted illegally through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp to solidify its alleged monopoly power.Antitrust law is supposed to ensure fair competition, which usually means that people have options for a useful class of goods and services — what’s known as a relevant market. The FTC says that here, that market is “personal social networking services,” or PSNs: spaces where a core purpose is helping people connect with friends and family. While there are many online platforms that overlap with Meta’s services, the FTC argues that virtually none of them serve that market. If internet users want to find and hang out with people they know — as opposed to, say, watching influencers or making work connections — then it’s Mark Zuckerberg’s way or… in the government’s telling, Snapchat, BeReal, and MeWe. Beyond that core definition, PSNs have some other unique features and norms: The apps feature a social graph of users’ friends and family connections, as opposed to mapping users primarily based on their interests. Users can look up and find people they know in real life. And they come to the app to share personal updates with those people.Facebook and Instagram increasingly display videos and photos from influencers and celebrities, but the FTC argues personal social networking remains a core service. It used Instagram chief Adam Mosseri’s testimony to most clearly make this point. In that testimony as well as posts to his own Instagram account, Mosseri said that it’s still important for the app to connect users with their friends. The FTC argues that even if that use case is a smaller portion of what Meta’s apps do these days, it’s still a significant need users have that can virtually only be fulfilled by Facebook and Instagram. While someone might connect with people they know in real life on LinkedIn, they likely won’t primarily share personal updates there. And while they also could follow and interact with people they know on TikTok or YouTube, they’re more likely to passively watch videos from people they don’t.Meta says this is an entirely wrong way to think about it. Social media platforms compete for users’ time and attention, so whether a particular app is squarely aimed at so-called friends and family sharing is beside the point. Facebook and Instagram have evolved to show more content from people like influencers, shifting further from the use case the FTC says Meta has illegally dominated. The company has already landed some important points that could help its case, and it will get more time to push back on the agency’s framing when it calls its own witnesses in the coming weeks.But as the FTC’s case-in-chief continues into its fifth week, its argument for Meta’s dominance is becoming a lot clearer.Why do people use Facebook?When defining a market, each side is trying to answer a key question: why are people choosing one particular company’s product? A lot of goods and services compete with each other in some sense, but this doesn’t mean they serve the same niche. In the case of sodas, for example, “you could buy lemon-lime, but many people would never see that as a close substitute for buying Coke or Pepsi,” says George Washington Law professor and former FTC Chair Bill Kovacic. In the tech world, Netflix has claimed its biggest competitors are Fortnite and sleep — but those comparisons probably wouldn’t stand up in court.The FTC says that outside of Facebook and Instagram, only apps like Snapchat and MeWe can fulfill a users’ desire to broadcast personal updates with friends and family online. To make its case, it brought in a string of executives from other social media companies to explain why their apps can’t quite scratch the same itch for users. Strava’s former VP of connected partnerships Mateo Ortega testified that sure, users of the fitness-tracking social media app could share baby photos on the platform, but they probably wouldn’t unless it was in a running stroller. “It’s all about fitness, and while you can post other stuff, it just doesn’t seem as relevant,” he said. “You could buy lemon-lime, but many people would never see that as a close substitute for buying Coke or Pepsi”Pinterest’s former head of user growth Julia Roberts testified that users who come to Pinterest “expecting it to be like other social media apps … tend to be confused about how to use the product.” That’s because the app is so much not about connecting with other people that it works much differently from other social media platforms. Pinterest is more about finding things users are interested in, she said, so “following is not a big part of the Pinterest experience.”TikTok has a tab where users can watch videos from their friends — identified as people who mutually follow each other. But head of operations Adam Presser testified only about 1 percent of videos watched on the platform are there. The company doesn’t think of itself as competing with Meta’s apps for personal social networking, he testified. And even though side-by-side screenshots of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts look identical, Presser said, “when you click out of this view for these other platforms, you would get to essentially what I think of as their core business,” which for Instagram, includes a feed and stories that often contain at least some content from family and friends.At times, Meta’s cross-examination of rival company executives showed the limits of apps’ similarities. When questioning Apple director of product marketing Ronak Shah, Meta sought to show that group chats in Apple’s messaging feature could serve as a social media feed for friends and family sharing. But Shah testified that feed would be limited to 32 people at most, and users can’t just look up each others’ profiles like they would on social platforms. Still, Meta pointed out, Apple’s messages app is listed under social media on its own app store.However, Meta also made important arguments about why the judge should question the FTC’s framing. It pointed out that some documents from TikTok and YouTube owner Google claiming their products are very different from Meta’s were submitted to foreign officials to try to avoid getting drafted into potentially frustrating regulations. It also pointed out when TikTok briefly went dark in the US ahead of a (now-aborted) ban, users flocked to Meta apps, showing consumers see it as a substitute on at least some level. That’s because, Meta argued, competition for users is really about winning their time and attention.Companies can “sometimes make mistakes. They misjudge who their users are”But X VP of product Keith Coleman testified it’s not that useful to think about competition this way. Instead, “it’s much more helpful to understand what people are trying to accomplish in their lives and to try to help them accomplish that.” Under former CEO Jack Dorsey, then-Twitter leaned into focusing on news and users’ interests, Coleman testified, because that’s why people were coming to the platform. Coleman was later surprised at how his own website characterized the product in its help center as a “service for friends, family, and coworkers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages.” “I can’t believe that’s on the website,” he said. “That’s pretty wacky.”This point was “a caution that not everything a company writes down or says is necessarily decisive in establishing what the boundary of a market is,” Kovacic said. Companies can “sometimes make mistakes. They misjudge who their users are.”There are real ramifications for internet users here. Going back to Netflix’s comparisons, if the streaming video service went down, some people would probably be happy to play a video game or get a few hours of shut-eye instead. But others would be frustrated that they couldn’t watch a movie, which is why it’s good that Hulu, HBO, and Amazon Prime Video also exist. The FTC’s argument isn’t that Meta owns the only social apps on the internet, it’s that the company faces little competition for a service many people specifically want — so the fact that you probably don’t know anyone using MeWe is sort of the point.How will the judge decide?Ultimately, Boasberg’s market definition — whether it’s Meta’s, the FTC’s, or his own — will come down to a few things: how Meta views itself, how competitors see it, and his own intuition, says Kovacic. ”Notice how much the FTC has been questioning Meta witnesses on the basis of its own internal documents,” he says. “Does the story in the courtroom match the story of your own internal documents?” So far, the documents have shown that Meta has clocked that at least some portion of users come to its products to connect with family and friends, but also that the rise of TikTok has had it looking over its shoulder. In September 2020, Meta told its board that Instagram revenue would be “meaningfully lower” than planned in the second half of the fiscal year because TikTok was drawing users’ attention. But other internal documents have shown Meta’s well aware that at different points in time, users have come to its apps to connect with family and friends, and worriedly took note of other apps entering that space. In a 2018 presentation, Meta found that the highest percentage of surveyed users said they come to Facebook, Instagram, and Snap to “see daily casual moments” and “see special moments.” By contrast, users came to Twitter’s feed for news and YouTube’s for entertainment. And even as Instagram expands into entertainment, the FTC notes that it still advertises its sign-up page as a place to “see photos and videos from your friends.”“Instagram will always need to focus on friends”In a 2018 email, Zuckerberg told Mosseri that “Instagram will always need to focus on friends.” And even though a lot has changed in the social media landscape since then, Mosseri testified that to this day on the app, “friends are an important part of the experience.” Even though users may share fewer of their own updates on Facebook and Instagram, Mosseri admitted that two friends talking in the comments of a public figure’s post counts as an interaction between friends — and one that Instagram actively tries to facilitate.Meta has argued that this special focus on friends and family sharing makes up a shrinking portion of its offerings as it works to compete with fierce rivals like TikTok. But the FTC says it’s still significant enough to monopolize. It’s a scenario that came up in another major tech monopolization case, Kovacic says: the late-1990s lawsuit US v. Microsoft. In that case, Microsoft argued the Justice Department was ignoring how computing would soon move beyond the personal computer to the Internet of Things, meaning it couldn’t truly lock up the computing ecosystem as much as the government alleged.“Judge Jackson in the Microsoft case said, yeah, those things are happening, but not happening fast enough to deny you real market power in this PC and laptop-based market that the Justice Department is emphasizing,” Kovacic says.Still, he adds, a market niche can at some point become so small that it’s no longer significant in the eyes of antitrust law. “You can have a process of change that ultimately renders the market segment unimportant,” he says. “And the hard task of analysis for the judge is to say, has it already happened?”See More:
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