Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort’ Dossier
This article describes Facebook’s aggressive tactics in driving off competition in the social media industry and becoming a Silicon Valley “gorilla.” These tactics include discouraging influencers from promoting their Snapchat accounts on their Instagram pages (Instagram is owned by Facebook whereas Snapchat is a competitor), acquiring startups likely to become competitors in the future, and threatening those that do not agree to sell-out to Facebook to do so or face the consequences of Facebook copying their features. For example, after Snapchat rejected Facebook’s bid for acquisition, the latter released a plethora of features that mimic those of the former, including “stories” and “filters.” These tactics are done to ward off competitors and thus increase revenue and profit.
Knowing this is done to increase Facebook’s returns, we can actually predict that Facebook would engage in these aggressive tactics through game theory. If we assume that, no matter what Snapchat does, Facebook’s returns are higher if they engage in these tactics than if they do not, Facebook would have a pure strategy of engaging in these tactics. This would mean that no matter what Snapchat ends up doing, Facebook would always choose to try to drive off competition in the social media industry as that would mean increased revenue.
Here is a link for the article: