FB - Facebook

[LC]

This is f*cking complete destruction of the WWW principles.

Agreed. The founding principle of the internet (the free flow of information) is being assaulted on many fronts. Did you read the piece Liberty posted re: Apple/App Store a week or so back? It is a similar vein. Corporations are carving out chunks of the internet, building walls (and/or paying regulators to do it for them), and charging entrance/exit fees.

A rhetorical question to debate internally (at the risk of over-politicizing), if the internet was not created by government and academia, would it ever have looked the way it does? If corporations "invented" the internet, would it ever have been so widely adopted, or would their tollgates have prevented adoption in the first place?

[Jurgis]

This is f*cking complete destruction of the WWW principles.

Agreed. The founding principle of the internet (the free flow of information) is being assaulted on many fronts. Did you read the piece Liberty posted re: Apple/App Store a week or so back? It is a similar vein. Corporations are carving out chunks of the internet, building walls (and/or paying regulators to do it for them), and charging entrance/exit fees.

A rhetorical question to debate internally (at the risk of over-politicizing), if the internet was not created by government and academia, would it ever have looked the way it does? If corporations "invented" the internet, would it ever have been so widely adopted, or would their tollgates have prevented adoption in the first place?

Yep, I have read and commented on the Apple/App Store article.

I'm not going to comment on rhetorical question. IMO it's very hard to say and discussion would likely cross the political line.

#FreeTheWeb

[Spekulatius]

I just see it as very shortsighted.  You just know these companies are going to prioritize the lowest cost news organizations and punish the high cost ones.  Getting Google to pay you to drive traffic to your site is an uneconomical argument that serves zero purpose.  It hurts FB and Google, it will ultimately cost the news orgns  traffic and gets the government zero.  I'm baffled as to who benefits in the long run.

Its not like FB or Google are competing with these news orgns.   They are a traffic driver not a news producer.

Yes, this makes not sense. I do think it is likely that they find a low cost/ no cost news source and just use this - somebody will cave in for a leg up from the competition. This will lead to less diversity but so be it.

[Krapdivad]

One thing that's stuck in my head about FB is how it's a great cloner.

Mohnish Pabrai had a talk at Boston College how the market doesn't recognize the power of great business cloners. He mentioned Microsoft, Walmart, and Costco as some examples of businesses that were able to find what works and copy their competitors.

Facebook has already shown it can clone the success of their peers:
- FB Marketplace (Craigslist)
- Stories/ face filters (Snapchat)
- Messenger/Whatsapp (iMessage)
- Portal (Facetime)

They've been working on spreading into adjacent industries and had mixed results:

- Virtual Metaverse with Occulus (Roblox/Apple Glasses)
- Dating (Tinder/Bumble/Match.com)
- Gaming (Twitch/Apple/Stadia/etc)
- Facebook Watch (Apple Watch)
- Crypto (Bitcoin)
- Etc

Facebook has shown how good they are at adapting to new circumstances (transition into mobile, increasing security over user data, and ability to block fraudulent accounts/violent videos/inaccurate information). Facebook's ability to constantly adapt, and clone the success of their rivals, with a passionate founder CEO gives it a competitive advantage and long runway in my opinion.

The biggest risks facing FB is increasing competition, anti-trust, regulatory, and tax issues which will require constant resources and attention. This is compounded by the number of different countries, states, and cities that they need to deal with. Facebook also gained a bad reputation for being untrustworthy and for their neutral stance on preventing hate speech. However, history has shown that users and advertisers continue to return to its platforms even though they may "hate" the product. This highlight's the power of Facebook's switching moat.

Looking at it's price now, it looks like a good buy at $250-$260 based on an 18% growth rate.

In terms of FB being a potential multi bagger over the years, it has its already large market cap. It doesn't also doesn't have a fanatical user base like Tesla, Apple, or Bitcoin to provide multiple expansion. However, I believe it does have a large part to play in the increasingly digital social world.

[dwy000]

Have any of those clones actually worked? Asking seriously - I don't use Facebook much.  They bought and paid billions for WhatsApp and I'm not sure it has monetized that well - or at all.  Portal is a disaster (does anyone know anyone who bought one of these?).  Not sure about Marketplace but Craigslist is still the dominant go to there.

They were kind of successful in killing Vine but that has been more than replaced by TikTok.

From a value/monetization perspective, Insta and the Facebook pages still seem to be the only real moneymakers.  Maybe I'm missing something as a non-user.

[Krapdivad]

One thing that's stuck in my head about FB is how it's a great cloner.

Mohnish Pabrai had a talk at Boston College how the market doesn't recognize the power of great business cloners. He mentioned Microsoft, Walmart, and Costco as some examples of businesses that were able to find what works and copy their competitors.

Facebook has already shown it can clone the success of their peers:
- FB Marketplace (Craigslist)
- Stories/ face filters (Snapchat)
- Messenger/Whatsapp (iMessage)
- Portal (Facetime)

They've been working on spreading into adjacent industries and had mixed results:

- Virtual Metaverse with Occulus (Roblox/Apple Glasses)
- Dating (Tinder/Bumble/Match.com)
- Gaming (Twitch/Apple/Stadia/etc)
- Facebook Watch (Apple Watch)
- Crypto (Bitcoin)
- Etc

Facebook has shown how good they are at adapting to new circumstances (transition into mobile, increasing security over user data, and ability to block fraudulent accounts/violent videos/inaccurate information). Facebook's ability to constantly adapt, and clone the success of their rivals, with a passionate founder CEO gives it a competitive advantage and long runway in my opinion.

The biggest risks facing FB is increasing competition, anti-trust, regulatory, and tax issues which will require constant resources and attention. This is compounded by the number of different countries, states, and cities that they need to deal with. Facebook also gained a bad reputation for being untrustworthy and for their neutral stance on preventing hate speech. However, history has shown that users and advertisers continue to return to its platforms even though they may "hate" the product. This highlight's the power of Facebook's switching moat.

Looking at it's price now, it looks like a good buy at $250-$260 based on an 18% growth rate.

In terms of FB being a potential multi bagger over the years, it has its already large market cap. It doesn't also doesn't have a fanatical user base like Tesla, Apple, or Bitcoin to provide multiple expansion. However, I believe it does have a large part to play in the increasingly digital social world.

Just finished watching Mohnish’s latest talk at Peking university. He went further into what he calls “spawners.” He classified FB as having an “embryonic spawner DNA” which means FB  has shown the ability to acquire a company and grow it. More important than the batting average of these acquisitions was the continual frequency of these bets that sometimes leads to the big winners (I.e. Instagram). FB has shown that they have the ability to continually invest in businesses outside of the core Facebook which keeps the company flexible and young throughout the future.

[Parsad]

Canada is planning to do Australia next.

So basically WWW is dead.

Cause hey, Sanjeev, when are you gonna pay Canadian and Australian media companies for all the links to their pages on CoBF?

And in case CoBF ever links to my website - lol that would be first - here is my BTC wallet: <censored> so you can start transferring BTC for every link from CoBF to my websites.

This is f*cking complete destruction of the WWW principles.

(If this is too political, please remove KK Thx OK)

Disclaimer: I have a large positions in FB and GOOGL. I am buying more. But it is possibly one of the biggest risks to both companies - and not just to them. F*ck media companies.

Most of the major media companies and tech companies post whole articles...not just links.  I don't think you should have to pay for links, but if you're cutting and pasting, or copying whole articles, yeah...I think they should be paying the writers or owners of the content.  Cheers!

[RichardGibbons]

Most of the major media companies and tech companies post whole articles...not just links.  I don't think you should have to pay for links, but if you're cutting and pasting, or copying whole articles, yeah...I think they should be paying the writers or owners of the content.  Cheers!

In Australia's case, it's certainly the links that are being taxed, not the whole article being copied. If it were the whole article, then copyright law would likely be sufficient for News Corp to get its cut.

[Jurgis]

Canada is planning to do Australia next.

So basically WWW is dead.

Cause hey, Sanjeev, when are you gonna pay Canadian and Australian media companies for all the links to their pages on CoBF?

And in case CoBF ever links to my website - lol that would be first - here is my BTC wallet: <censored> so you can start transferring BTC for every link from CoBF to my websites.

This is f*cking complete destruction of the WWW principles.

(If this is too political, please remove KK Thx OK)

Disclaimer: I have a large positions in FB and GOOGL. I am buying more. But it is possibly one of the biggest risks to both companies - and not just to them. F*ck media companies.

Most of the major media companies and tech companies post whole articles...not just links.  I don't think you should have to pay for links, but if you're cutting and pasting, or copying whole articles, yeah...I think they should be paying the writers or owners of the content.  Cheers!

Sanjeev, not true. I haven't seen a whole article on FB ever (I think that's also true for GOOGL). It's links and maybe abstracts. And, yeah, I would agree that there's some legal ground to fight about abstracts. But it seems the demands are about links.

[dwy000]

We will never know the details but it certainly looks like Australia blinked.  Facebook will invest undisclosed millions into undisclosed commercial agreements with undisclosed media companies.  In return, Australia drops it's mandatory payments requirement as well as the use of Australian arbitration.

So basically, back to business as usual.  I'm sure there was a "donation" to some group along the way.  And both sides get to claim victory.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming...