
Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier - wyclif
https://www.wsj.com/articles/snap-detailed-facebooks-aggressive-tactics-in-project-voldemort-dossier-11569236404?mod=rsswn
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throwaway_quote
> For example, when Mr. Zuckerberg met with the founders of startups,
> including Evan Spiegel, chief executive of Snap, and Dennis Crowley, co-
> founder of Foursquare Inc., he presented them with two scenarios: either
> they accept the price he was offering for their companies, or face
> Facebook’s efforts to copy their products and make operating more difficult,
> according to people familiar with the conversations. In both cases, after
> the companies rejected the overtures, Facebook soon after released features
> that mimicked the products from Snap and Foursquare.

This seems to be a critical bit

~~~
toxik
I don’t see the problem with this. Isn’t it fair market competition? Facebook
had (and has) deeper pockets and more users, so they won against Snap and
Foursquare. Their acquisition of IG and WA were great moves too, it’s almost
impossible to escape the Facebook and Google internet.

~~~
khawkins
If these features were critical enough that you could found a company on them,
then clearly they brought innovation to the scene. If they had not come along,
it's unclear as to whether Facebook would have ever introduced those features
in their products.

"Fair market competition" is the idea that products compete on their own
merits, not that you can leverage your market position to destroy competitors.
"Deeper pockets" is certainly antithetical to fair competition even if it's a
reality we must sometimes accept. Exploiting the fact that you have "more
users" should probably also be looked at as anti-competitive since it
certainly doesn't benefit consumers by locking people into exclusive
platforms.

Are we really going to resign ourselves to the idea that FAANG will now and
forever own nearly all the internet? What good are the "principles" of "free
market competition" if we allow consolidation to effectively eliminate the
market?

~~~
krustyburger
I think FAANG is less useful as an abbreviation these days because it includes
Netflix. I don’t think Netflix is guilty of much of anything sinister, at
least by anyone’s reckoning except certain movie and tv studio executives.

~~~
sprafa
Virtually anybody but Hollywood exec types love Netflix, particularly
creatives (the people who actually DO the things). Netflix has been making
enormous amounts of content, even for smaller markets like Spain and betting
on great people who are making really good shows (see ‘casa de papel’)

If you are a creative person you are enthused about streaming because suddenly
there’s a huge amount of content being funded. Think about standup comedy and
what Netflix has done for it.

Netflix is run by very smart people who are making very good content that most
Hollywood execs wouldn’t touch. Scorcese’s next film is being funded by them!
It’s nuts that Wolf of Wall Street, The Departed, multiple Scorsese projects
were VERY HARD to fund. Jonah Hill worked essentially for the lowest money you
can work for in a movie (SAG which is the actors union says 20k minimum) in
Wolf of Wall St. Because they couldn’t afford him. Stuff that you look back
and wonder “how the fuck?”

~~~
erklik
I don't understand why movies like The Wolf of Wall Street would be hard to
fund. The talent i.e. DiCaprio, Jonah Hill etc are all great and known actors
bound to make a movie succeed, especially DiCaprio. and Scorsese is also a
well-known, successful director. Why would producers have any issues funding a
movie for them?

Is it the controversial nature i.e. nudity etc that was the problem?

~~~
majani
Movies are an insanely risky business if you look past the top blockbusters.
And right now the blockbusters are almost purely superhero movies, remakes and
reboots, so outside of that it's gonna be hard to get any funding.

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ineedasername
The headline doesn't really match the story. I don't doubt the likelihood that
Facebook engaged in these sorts of things, but from the headline I expected a
laundry list of complaints and at least anecdotes to support them. Instead
there's only two vague accusation without support that Facebook discouraged
influencers from Snap, and suppressed Snap content from trending.

~~~
meowface
The Onavo thing alone sounds utterly insane to me. I often think criticisms of
Facebook and similar companies are overblown, personally, but Facebook really
should have, at the least, faced as many repercussions as Volkswagen did for
their deceit, if the facts are correct.

>One area of focus for the FTC is Onavo, an Israeli mobile-analytics startup
that Facebook purchased in 2013. Onavo offered a free mobile app that
described itself as a way to “keep you and your data safe” by creating a
virtual private network. To do this, the company redirected internet traffic
on Onavo to Facebook’s servers, which allowed it to log every action in a
central database.

>That enabled Facebook to quietly track what users did on their phones,
including which apps they used and for how long, the Journal reported in 2017.
Onavo data was frequently cited in internal research and strategy decks

>At one point, Facebook—through Onavo—was able to see Snap data as specific as
the number of messages a user sent or how much time those users spent in
specific Snapchat features, the former employees said. Facebook couldn’t see
the content of the messages or images. The visibility into Snap usage lessened
considerably after Snap encrypted its app traffic.

>A Facebook spokeswoman said the app was similar to other industry market
research tools.

Facebook literally published MitM (technically "MitMo") malware disguised as a
VPN security app so it could intercept all unencrypted network traffic and
record user actions, in part so they could spy on competing apps (and also,
presumably, to spy on everything you do to serve you more ads and sell your
behavioral data). This is exactly what spyware-distributing criminal
organizations with front companies do, as documented by threat intelligence
firms.

If this actually is similar to any other industry "market research tools", as
they claim, the entire industry is fucked. If you bought a home security
camera and later found out it was secretly sending back everything it saw and
heard so they could sell the video and audio to advertising firms, causing the
banner ads you come across to be tailored to your observed food, TV, and
sexual preferences, the uproar would undoubtedly put them out of business. But
Facebook can just quietly shut things down once there's negative press, and
move on like it never happened. Snap is 100% in the right for compiling all of
this info on "Voldemort".

~~~
AJ007
This is the dirty secret of usage analytics. Both Google and Facebook got in
trouble with Apple for effectively doing the same thing by abusing internal
apps - [https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/31/18205795/apple-google-
blo...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/31/18205795/apple-google-blocked-
internal-ios-apps-developer-certificate)

There is a major free AV vendor logging the usage of their 100m+ users for
years and selling that data to third parties, and no one seems to care.

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lammalamma25
Does anyone else have trouble getting upset about these kind of stories? I can
believe anti-competitive behavior is happening, but we're talking about
snapchat stories and Instagram trends. It's not like they are a phone company
raising prices on their customers or a railroad squeezing shippers. I get why
this could be bad for a competitive marketplace, but does this hurt the
consumer? What are the net downsides of this sort of behavior (not being
sarcastic. I really have trouble thinking of any serious ones)

~~~
darawk
The downside is that if you know Facebook can and will do this to any
competitive threat, you just won't bother to start your company in the first
place.

~~~
jonas21
I can think of many reasons why I wouldn't want to start a company, but a fear
that one day Facebook will show up and threaten to copy me unless I accept a
multi-billion dollar acquisition offer is not one of them.

~~~
darawk
Firstly, those offers will shrink over time as Facebook refines its playbook,
and it becomes more and more clear that they can win by copying. Secondly, it
doesn't just impact you the founder, it also impacts VCs thinking about
funding you. $1-2 billion may be a lot of money for you and me, but if you're
a venture capitalist investing $10 million in lots of low probability bets,
you need them to have the potential for very high returns.

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Seb-C
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190923121641/https://www.wsj.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190923121641/https://www.wsj.com/articles/snap-
detailed-facebooks-aggressive-tactics-in-project-voldemort-
dossier-11569236404?mod=rsswn)

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panpanna
How about a dossier detailing how Spiegel managed to piss on 85% of world-wide
mobile users?

You cannot recover from something like that no matter how many times you
rewrite your app.

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MiroF
Why is this thread full of commentators attacking Snap for completely
unrelated things? Strikes me as odd.

FB told IG influencers they might lose their verified status if they link to a
SC profile? Seems like that was a mistake on their part, could they really not
anticipate future antitrust action?

~~~
habosa
This is definitely not-nice behavior but is common. On an iOS App Store
listing you can't even say the word Android, etc.

~~~
threeseed
Did you check this before you wrote this comment ?

Because there are apps called Android Remote, Android TV, Google formerly had
a an Android Wear app and plenty of Remote Desktop apps that mention Android.

~~~
habosa
When I last published an app it was cross-platform and I was denied for having
"sync with the Android version and the Chrome extension" in my listing even
though that was one of the main value props for my app.

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dymk
Snap can blame Facebook all they want, but what they had was a _feature_ , not
a product, and then they alienated their users with the redesign.

Nobody else is to blame for their own stagnation then failing to reimagine
their product.

I mean, Snap Spectacles, really?

~~~
H8crilA
Not really relevant for the antitrust investigation.

~~~
dymk
The article is about Facebook copying features and draws a connection to Snaps
subsequent downfall.

I’m claiming the downfall was inevitable (no product, bad redesign, those
useless spectacles), and once again Facebook is the scapegoat in all this.

~~~
sweezyjeezy
I think you should reread the article, it has very little to do with copying
features. If Snap are correct then Facebook

\- actively discouraged IG users from discussing Snap

\- prevented Snap from trending on FB

\- used data from an acquisition Onavo to track what users did on other apps
(such as Snap)

Furthermore - whether or not these shady practices were the downfall of Snap
does not absolve FB from doing them.

~~~
privateSFacct
I'm curious - why is facebook required to promote a competing social network?

Did snap promote facebook properly on its network?

~~~
airstrike
> I'm curious - why is facebook required to promote a competing social
> network?

They aren't _required_ to promote, but arguably also can't actively find ways
to prevent it from trending "organically" as that could ostensibly constitute
an anti-competitive practice

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nova22033
>the belief that Facebook was preventing Snap’s most popular content from
trending on Instagram

>Snap executives noted their belief that Instagram was blocking searches of
these Snap-related terms

Real solid data driven analysis here..

>Facebook’s tactics have long engendered concern across Silicon Valley, said
Paul Keable, chief strategy officer at Ashley Madison. The dating site, which
caters to married people seeking affairs, is blocked from advertising on
Facebook, which now operates its own dating feature.

Yes, Ashley Madison, the "dating" site.

~~~
GhettoMaestro
Lol, the same Ashley Madison who screwed over their entire user-base by
failing to secure their database. Please Ashley Madison, lecture us more about
unethical behavior.

~~~
nyolfen
it was not only that, it was revealed they ran bots to chat with users to
convince them they had a shot with beautiful women that made up the bulk of
user activity iirc. no sympathy obviously but it was a total scam

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NN88
I still don't see the problem here. None of these sites actually make or sell
anything besides maybe an ad-platform.

Any cachet they have is based on social viability or popularity... i.e. waning
psychological value, not intrinsic hard tangibility

~~~
duxup
>None of these sites actually make or sell anything besides maybe an ad-
platform.

Why does that matter?

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xwdv
Classic. Not a day goes by that Evan Spiegel doesn’t regret selling Snap for a
cool 7 billion to Facebook and just moving on with his life, so they throw out
crap like this as some kind of revenge by social mob justice. He drank too
much of his own koolaid.

~~~
fasicle
SNAP have had a great last 12 months, market cap up to 23.65B

~~~
habosa
7B and 24B are both effectively infinite money. If I could have the former
just for signing my name or the latter but I need to go through an IPO and get
slammed in the press every day, I go with the former.

~~~
mtnGoat
never thought of it this way. if it was laid out as a red/blue pill like that,
i'm not sure what id take. i think once you are a billionaire the average
person probably just assumes your not nice anyways, might as well triple up
the cash.

~~~
xwdv
Well here’s another way to think about: you’re not just “tripling up your
cash”, you’re getting a new boss in the form of thousands of shareholders
expecting you to meet specific performance goals or else the value of your
company goes to shit. Running a public company is hell compared to a private
one.

When you take your 7 billion in cash you are free, no one gives a shit about
what you do or even cares unless you’re looking to give away some money.

~~~
mtnGoat
oh headache wise, id take the 7b and run for the hills. if it was cash play,
id stick out the shareholder issues at least until i lost on them and they
sent me packing. :)

i would really never want to be "important" at a public company, unless it
came with big golden handcuffs and parachutes.

