It would because giphy is a great proxy to find out what people are CURRENTLY talking about, or how they are feeling, based on the gifs they're searching for.

This can fuel better ads. So consolidating this stuff further could have that effect.

To me it is so creepy how much of even our casual thoughts outside of facebook now are going into facebook servers. There's just no escaping these data addicts. That's the concern.

See, I said anti-trust. Not anti-monopoly. Anti-trust was, traditionally, about preventing market distortions by market actors that are becoming too big and powerful. It wasn't solely about monopolies. The whole "we're not a monopoly" shtick has been pushed by corporations in recent decades as if that absolved them completely from behaving in anti-competitive ways, and for some reason your average schlub has eaten it up, hook line and sinker, and politicians are more than happy to cut them slack because of lobbying.

Especially now, when you have companies like Giphy being tied into services across the globe and providing a surprising amount of data about users and usage patterns, the idea of monopolies is completely obsolete. It's time to bring back the idea of companies not being allowed to much reach, power and control over all aspects of our lives, as well as being able to use it to assert control over competitors and users alike.