We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#41

Post by visarga » Wed, Aug 30, 2017, 7:21 AM UTC

Veratyr wrote: post #2

I totally agree that Google, Facebook and Amazon have too much power and too little accountability. However they're all global companies and as bad as they are, I trust all of them more than I trust the US government (I am not American). Can you even imagine how their business would work when these are state entities? You're no longer buying ad placements from a marketing company, you're buying them from the US gover…

Maybe nationalization is a bad way to go about it, but these companies are too large, they have too much power over society and society needs to exert power back onto them. So there should be some kind of external oversight when decisions that affect millions of people are being made.

I think governments are inefficient and corrupt, but companies are absolutely free to do as they please when deciding how to change products that affect society. Also, there is much more spying freedom in the private sector. This is why there should be a mechanism to oversee what happens with our data.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#42

Post by visarga » Wed, Aug 30, 2017, 7:27 AM UTC

flukus wrote: post #25

ben_jones wrote: post #21

Why don't we just nationalize the compute power? There is a billion dollar barrier to entry to offer services like Youtube for free. Nobody is going to do it because they don't have a giant Ad company to subsidize it.

Why nationalize what we can distribute? There is no reason a future youtube has to be centralized and many good reasons that it shouldn't be.

I am amazed that there is no open source, distributed search engine to rival Google. We let Google get too much data about us. Search engine research has advanced a lot, we can use that.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#43

Post by aestetix » Wed, Aug 30, 2017, 7:28 AM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #7

> For the briefest moment in March 2014, Facebook’s dominance looked under threat. Ello, amid much hype, presented itself as the non-corporate alternative to Facebook. Okay, this is a terrible opener. Ello never appeared to have any greater traction than as a hipster fad, much less posing a material threat to Facebook. Also, you can not nationalise any of the companies listed, because they are not British nor of Comm…

When Ello first arrived, I saw it as a very welcome competitor to Twitter/Facebook, and was using it. The questions of "how will Ello make enough money to survive?" came up. I was one of the vocal supporters of a paid account, as I would gladly pay them $5 a month just to help them continue to exist. In the end they took money from VCs, at which point I promptly stopped using them.

I can't speak for anyone else, but their move to take VC money instead of my money is largely what killed their traction for me.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#44

Post by orblivion » Wed, Aug 30, 2017, 7:29 AM UTC

The scary thing is that you'll find conservatives are going to come on board with this, if you pay attention to ruminations recently. They're very concerned about censorship. I am as well, but I'm too libertarian to want the government to be the solution.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#45

Post by Animats » Wed, Aug 30, 2017, 7:29 AM UTC

What if we had tax brackets for corporations, as we do for individuals? Tie them to market share? As market share goes up, so does the tax rate.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#46

Post by panic » Wed, Aug 30, 2017, 7:29 AM UTC

Facebook in particular should really be governed by its users, whether that's indirectly under the public ownership of a democratic state, or directly through some built-in form of democratic governance. Nobody should have so much power without some form of accountability.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#47

Post by visarga » Wed, Aug 30, 2017, 7:31 AM UTC

FB, Google, Amazon should be split on many levels. The companies, the datacenters, the data. Especially the user data. The new system should federated, like email and SMS, with account and user data portability.

There should be public access to the unique datasets these companies collected from user interactions - all done in a privacy conscious way, for the betterment of sciences and society.

We can't let this valuable, unique data (that only exists in the largest companies of their field) benefit only those companies. It's our data, ultimately.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#48

Post by ringaroundthetx » Wed, Aug 30, 2017, 7:31 AM UTC

Flashback time, anybody remember when AIG insured multiple claims on the same pieces of property which were overvalued and unable to be paid for by an individual plebe's income, and got Congress to use everyone else's money to pay for this business practice by having the Treasury/Fed buy shares of AIG?

And then AIG used the surplus floated capital to give bonuses to the executives and traders, because that quarter happened to be awesome, numerically.

And then AIG was part of a lawsuit that sued the Treasury/Fed under the expropriation clause of the 5th Amendment because the value of the shares was not deemed correct?

Well. ultimately the Fed made like an 80 billion profit, 1/12th of what they make from annual tax collection, so if they keep that up maybe they won't even levy income taxes to fund the Federal Government's general operations anymore.

With that logic, nationalize all the things because I can't stand paying for the general operation of this plunder.

Partial sarcasm.

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#49

Post by naibafo » Wed, Aug 30, 2017, 7:32 AM UTC

mmmnt wrote: post #32

Veratyr wrote: post #2

I totally agree that Google, Facebook and Amazon have too much power and too little accountability. However they're all global companies and as bad as they are, I trust all of them more than I trust the US government (I am not American). Can you even imagine how their business would work when these are state entities? You're no longer buying ad placements from a marketing company, you're buying them from the US gover…

I guess the idea is that each country or region has its own Google, Facebook or Amazon - Not that it all belongs to the US government. I would also argue that they are US companies first and global companies second. Their main focus is always USA and their spirit is also very American for the good and the bad. Strategy for the rest of the world is made in the USA. All important decision are made in the USA. Most inve…

According to [1] 75% of Facebook Users are located outside the US. And According to [2] India has more Facebook Users than the US. The statistics differ somehow, though they both should be current, but the point remains: Facebook is very much a global company. I am sure that you can find similar statistics for Google or Amazon.

[1] https://brandongaille.com/facebook-user-statistics-by-countr... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/268136/top-15-countries-...

Re: We Need to Nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon

#50

Post by org3432 » Wed, Aug 30, 2017, 7:34 AM UTC

Nationalizing doesn't mean the decisions won't be for the benefit of a single person, a single person can manipulate them regardless, and the people will support it.