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Comment by VWWHFSfQ | Hacker News Reader

antitrust? Is twitter a monopoly now?

At least traditionally, you don’t really have to clear a particularly impressive bar to be found in violation of antitrust law, mostly just behaving in an anti-competitive manor.

See this is where it's confusing to me. What's the difference between anti-competitive and regular business behavior?

When I go to X department store, they'll happily look up how items are priced on their website for price matching, but they won't look at the website for Y department store to whom they would also price match. Is that anti-competitive?

That's a long way around to what level do businesses have to help you in sending you to a competitor?

Attempts to monopolize is illegal too.

Antitrust laws is not about waiting for a monopoly to establish itself and then deconstructing it, but about preventing one.

I think most people would agree that there's no way to compete with the social media giants. Regardless if it has better features, thanks to the network effect, Mastodon will always have a small fraction of users compared to Twitter.

US antitrust's main consideration is price, the EU's is price and "fairness" to competition.. so, maybe the EU could get involved but the US probably never will.

Not all antitrust laws require you to be a monopoly to break them.

Who are the competitors? What is their market share?

Facebook. Instagram. Reddit. Or do you just mean 300 character micro blogging platforms? Then yes. They have a monopoly on that industry.

It’s the only Tweet in town.

A company doesn't have to be a monopoly to engage in monopolistic practices.

of course it is a monopoly.

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