Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case

“Competition is for losers” - A talk from Peter Thiel hosted by Y combinator (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;3Fx5Q8xGU8k?si=3anUMopHSJ4nKk2R" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;3Fx5Q8xGU8k?si=3anUMopHSJ4nKk2R</a>)<p>Timestamp 13:50: “If you’re a startup, and you want to get to a monopoly, start with a really small market and you take over that whole market and then you find ways to expand that market in concentric circles”<p>Last I checked Zuckerberg is doing precisely what Thiel taught him to and has done it with preternatural skill.<p>This is the standard for how you’re expected to act as a technology “leader” - which the majority of VC backed unicorn goal founders (like every FAANG founder) have been executing since day zero.

This article would have been much better if it was at least a bit more direct. At the most crucial juncture, instead of including Zuck&#x27;s own words, the author wrote the author&#x27;s interpretation of his words and then an analogy.<p>&gt; At this point, Zuck&#x27;s CFO – one of the adults in the room, attempting to keep the boy king from tripping over his own dick – wrote to Zuck warning him that it was illegal to buy Insta in order to &quot;neutralize a potential competitor.&quot;<p>&gt; Zuck replied that he was, indeed, solely contemplating buying Insta in order to neutralize a potential competitor. It&#x27;s like this guy kept picking up his dictaphone, hitting &quot;record,&quot; and barking, &quot;Hey Bob, I am in receipt of your memo of the 25th, regarding the potential killing of Fred. You raise some interesting points, but I wanted to reiterate that this killing is to be a murder, and it must be as premeditated as possible. Yours very truly, Zuck.&quot;

The article talks about writing things down as if it&#x27;s a negative, but surely we should applaud it? I don&#x27;t want the lesson to be &quot;don&#x27;t write things down&quot;, I want it to be &quot;don&#x27;t break the law&quot;.

&gt; Did Zuck buy Insta to neutralize a competitor? Sure seems like it! For one thing, Zuck cancelled all work on Facebook Camera &quot;since we&#x27;re acquiring Instagram.&quot;<p>I don&#x27;t get this bit. That seems to be supporting exactly the opposite of the author&#x27;s thesis. If the acquisition had existed only for &quot;neutralizing a competitor&quot;, they would have continued work on their existing products in this space, no? Canceling their existing product and keeping the acquisition is more in line with them realizing Instagram was a service they couldn&#x27;t hope to catch up with. It&#x27;d also be consistent with them wanting to carve out a larger niche for Instagram, by reducing the overlap between the two <i>on Facebook&#x27;s side</i>.

Cory was great reading when I was a young adult but I&#x27;ve gotten older and he is still the same age. Not sure which is better, tbh.

The (good) movie Social Network makes a Fair portrait of Zuck and his awful personality traits.<p>It&#x27;s really terrible to have somebody like him as the head of a powerful corporation that almost controls our minds.

&quot;...At this point, Zuck&#x27;s CFO – one of the adults in the room, attempting to keep the boy king from tripping over his own dick – wrote to Zuck warning him that it was illegal to buy Insta in order to &quot;neutralize a potential competitor.&quot;<p>Zuck replied that he was, indeed, solely contemplating buying Insta in order to neutralize a potential competitor. It&#x27;s like this guy kept picking up his dictaphone, hitting &quot;record,&quot; and barking, &quot;Hey Bob, I am in receipt of your memo of the 25th, regarding the potential killing of Fred. You raise some interesting points, but I wanted to reiterate that this killing is to be a murder, and it must be as premeditated as possible. Yours very truly, Zuck....&quot;

&quot;In Zuckerberg&#x27;s defense, he&#x27;s not the only tech CEO who confesses his guilt in writing (recall that FTX planned its crimes in a groupchat called WIREFRAUD).&quot;<p>Any similarity with other &quot;tech CEOs&quot; seems inculpatory more than exculpatory.

I guess truth social is going to find itself in a multi billion dollar buyout soon.

he will probably have to buy trump a yacht to get out of this one.

The anti-trust regulators have targeted almost all but one of the FAAMG companies and that is Microsoft, who certainly knows how to avoid a break-up of their entire company.<p>The rest have not dealt with totally removing their cases entirely, so it makes sense for the FTC and the DOJ to target everyone else first before lastly bringing up a massive case against Microsoft.<p>Perhaps that is their strategy in all of this.

He bought the competition, it should be an open and shut case.

This article is trying way too hard to dunk on Zuckerberg for… doing normal CEO things.<p>The whole premise seems to be that writing down your thoughts, asking questions, or being transparent in internal emails is somehow a huge self-own. But that’s just how people work—especially when you’re running a massive company and making fast, complex decisions. You write things down, explore ideas, get feedback. Acting like that’s a confession is lazy analysis.<p>The real problem here is that the author treats normal business strategy—like acquiring a rising competitor—as some kind of criminal mastermind move. Whether or not that should be legal is one debate. But pretending it’s shocking that a company would consider eliminating competitive risk? Come on. That’s what businesses do. If you want to critique the system, critique the system—not the fact that someone used it.<p>Also, the smug “ha ha, he wrote it down!” attitude is incredibly counterproductive. All it does is teach executives to stop documenting anything real. It punishes transparency and rewards corporate vagueness and CYA behavior. If that’s what we want more of, congrats—we’re on track.<p>The piece doesn’t offer any actual insight into how companies operate or how antitrust should evolve—it just ridicules someone for not being lawyerly enough in private. That’s not analysis, it’s court fan fiction.

Some things are fine if done under the table, but aren’t fine if spoken out loud.

I understand this case is about Facebook and not Instagram, but these quotes might offer another perspective.<p>&gt;they appear to be reaching critical mass as a place you go to share photos<p>&gt;[Instagram could] copy what we’re doing now … I view this as a big strategic risk for us if we don’t completely own the photos space.<p>In a way, this is effectively saying that <i>Instagram</i> could itself become a monopoly (or put differently, come to monopolize). Right? Isn&#x27;t that what Meta fears?<p>It makes me wonder if, at least in the case of social networks, there&#x27;s a natural tendency toward monopolization. In other words, is there not LESS utility to the consumer if we have a bunch of small, competitive social networks duking it out?<p>I&#x27;m not here to excuse Meta and certainly this is the case for federation. I guess I&#x27;m left wondering, what exactly was Meta supposed to do?