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Google, Facebook may have to reveal deepest secrets

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Re: Google, Facebook may have to reveal deepest secrets

#21

Post by sib »

pm90 wrote: post #13
sabalaba wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the valuable projects that we get from FB (AI Research), Amazon (Echo, Kindle, etc.), Google (Brain, Waymo, GMail, Android, etc.), are due to their strong market position and a product that throws off cash. They have this market position because they are the best at what they do. These companies don't have monopolies because of government mandate, they have them because they make the best products. It's frigh…

The fraction of income that goes into research is not that large for the companies that you mention. Lets remember that these are not traditional monopolies, in the sense of Standard Oil. They are much worse, as they are so embedded in the lives of people today. Their status as monopolies will be tolerated by society only as far as they don't exhibit anti-competitive practices.

Top spending by US companies on R&D (latest fiscal year):

  Amazon: $16.1B
  Alphabet: $13.9B
  Intel: $12.7B
  Microsoft: $12.3B
  Apple: $10.0B
For most of these companies, they are spending more than their income on R&D (but less than revenue, of course.)

(Recode/FactSet data)

Re: Google, Facebook may have to reveal deepest secrets

#22

Post by weirdstuff »

pm90 wrote: post #14
alehul wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So where do you suggest we draw the line between what state-sponsored news is allowed vs forbidden to do? Should we only forbid them from buying advertising? Why not forbid their reporting of news altogether? Also, I don't think people have similar complaints about Al Jazeera's reporting on Russian election campaigns? Every major country does this, every election, to every other major country. It's something we live…

> Every major country does this, every election, to every other major country. It's something we live with and I don't get the overreaction. Please don't normalize this kind of behavior. Every country does not do "this". There is no major news agency supported directly by US Federal Funds, except perhaps NPR, but that has been openly critical of the US all the time. And that is perhaps the test of truly independent n…

He's not normalizing anything, he's setting the context which I happen to account for as well; for example our country directly attempted to (and did) influence the Brexit campaign and Scottish referendum – and not just our media but our elected officials.

Our news outlets have been caught colluding with certain candidates – federal funds is one of countless vectors in which governments/elites can steer the news. Think of Donna Brazil, for example. She had to leave MSNBC after forwarding debate questions to Clinton.

Re: Google, Facebook may have to reveal deepest secrets

#23

Post by snarf21 »

sabalaba wrote: post #10
noncoml wrote: post #3

FB, Amazon and Google have to be split up. It is not in the interest of the society or safe to have such huge companies with such huge power. For Google at the very least the search engine has to become a separate independent entity with restrictions on how and what information is exchanges with the rest.

Many of the valuable projects that we get from FB (AI Research), Amazon (Echo, Kindle, etc.), Google (Brain, Waymo, GMail, Android, etc.), are due to their strong market position and a product that throws off cash. They have this market position because they are the best at what they do. These companies don't have monopolies because of government mandate, they have them because they make the best products. It's frigh…

I generally agree with you that they are doing good things but the bigger question is what harm are they doing? We need to stop having these huge mergers. Think what a different landscape we'd have if Facebook didn't own Instagram and WhatsApp. Those companies had a choice, fight FB with limited money or cash out. (I'm not judging them...) Look at Snap. They've said no and so FB threw all their money at duplicating all their features in all their own properties. This is the downside of the products that just throw off cash. All the money and time in the world they can devote to squashing all competition.

It reminds me of the same things that happened with the banks and Comcast. Most people who have Comcast got there because Comcast bought their provider and the investors wanted to cash out, not because people voted with their dollars. The banks got too big to fail, not because everyone rushed to switch all their money to bank X but because bank X bought up all the smaller players with money bet on the bubble.

I think they do need broken up but I would argue all we really need to do is "unmerge" these acquisitions and spin them back out separate. Absolute power has always corrupted absolutely. To be fair, this isn't new. Gates did a lot of the same things but now their foundation is doing wonderful things. However, it is easy to be a philanthropist with spare billions. What I would love to see from one of these founders is to attack one of the world's biggest problems personally and with the same ruthlessness they did their main companies. Musk is the only one who really seems to be "walking the walk".

Re: Google, Facebook may have to reveal deepest secrets

#24

Post by mc32 »

askvictor wrote: post #17
mc32 wrote: post #2

$1.5 billion was spent in the federal election season. 100k was bought by Russian interests and were questioning those 100k when we spend much more destabilizing other governments we oppose. Still, we should look into why a campaign season wastes 1.5 billion on one contest and no one bats an eye, or some do a little but the media couldn't care less. It's one of their cash cows.

Don't dismiss a (even much) smaller amount; if properly targeted it can be a lot more effective than the crop dusting approach that traditional advertising takes.

That's ridiculous.

There is no way that a crack Russian/Ukranian team understand or have better info on the American public than American "pundits" and campaign professionals.

Why couldn't Bernie buy 200k of highly targeted ads and beat Hillary or why couldn't a very well connected Hillary (who has good connections to Russia as well) not buy highly targeted and effective ads?

I don't buy that narrative. There is no way a rag-tag team with $100k beats a political machine with real connections in DC, Wall Street, etc. which happened to also spend over $1billion. It's a ridiculous assertion.

Why don't we, the US, buy these highly targeted ads in a place like Venezuela and get people to vote against Maduro (or any other gov't we don't like).

It just does not work that way. Or, if it were to, the likes of FB and Google are doomed. Whoever this band of propagandists are they can undercut Madison ave and rake in the money for pennies on the dollar from corporate America.

Re: Google, Facebook may have to reveal deepest secrets

#25

Post by dragonwriter »

pm90 wrote: post #14
alehul wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So where do you suggest we draw the line between what state-sponsored news is allowed vs forbidden to do? Should we only forbid them from buying advertising? Why not forbid their reporting of news altogether? Also, I don't think people have similar complaints about Al Jazeera's reporting on Russian election campaigns? Every major country does this, every election, to every other major country. It's something we live…

> Every major country does this, every election, to every other major country. It's something we live with and I don't get the overreaction. Please don't normalize this kind of behavior. Every country does not do "this". There is no major news agency supported directly by US Federal Funds, except perhaps NPR, but that has been openly critical of the US all the time. And that is perhaps the test of truly independent n…

> There is no major news agency supported directly by US Federal Funds

Voice of America is a major global news agency directly funded by the federal government, which, because of concerns of the government propagandizing it's own electorate, was prohibited from broadcasting directly to American citizens until 2013. (Radio Free Europe, etc., used to part of a separate federal government office, too.)

Re: Google, Facebook may have to reveal deepest secrets

#26

Post by sumeno »

bigbugbag wrote: post #7
noncoml wrote: post #3

FB, Amazon and Google have to be split up. It is not in the interest of the society or safe to have such huge companies with such huge power. For Google at the very least the search engine has to become a separate independent entity with restrictions on how and what information is exchanges with the rest.

I would argue that they do not to be split up, but commercial advertising has to be banned from the internet. This would fix pretty much every issue we face now.

That would solve all the current problems because the internet as we know it would collapse overnight and the world economy would be devastated.

Re: Google, Facebook may have to reveal deepest secrets

#27

Post by dmach »

Does anyone know how FB is planning to adhere to GDPR coming into force next year? Google are said to have stopped analysing peoples gmail. Could it be as simple as reducing the variables collected/predicted to a unashamed set that can be shown to users about themselves and could FB afford that?

Re: Google, Facebook may have to reveal deepest secrets

#28

Post by dlp211 »

corporateslave2 wrote: post #20
askvictor wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't dismiss a (even much) smaller amount; if properly targeted it can be a lot more effective than the crop dusting approach that traditional advertising takes.

Do you really believe this? You really think 100k stands up to 1Billion?

Traditional media buys versus well targeted ads on Facebook. You don't need to sway everyone. That 100k stands up a lot more than one would think just comparing the two numbers.

Re: Google, Facebook may have to reveal deepest secrets

#29

Post by RickJWag »

pm90 wrote: post #11
alehul wrote: post #6

It was apparently $100k spent by RT to promote news stories. Why is it so unusual for a news company to spend money promoting news stories on social media sites? This is nothing out of the ordinary (including if a government did try small actions to impact an election), and yet it has become such an intense witch hunt during the 2016 election.

> Why is it so unusual for a news company to spend money promoting news stories on social media sites? Because its not a "news company", it is a known propaganda arm of the Russian Govt. masquerading as a news company. If it was an independent news agency, it would be OK.

I guess that's a step worse than CNN/MSNBC/etc., which were caught in WikiLeaks collaborating with the Democratic National Committee.

We need to more closely regulate what is 'really news' and what is not.

Re: Google, Facebook may have to reveal deepest secrets

#30

Post by throwawaylalala »

mc32 wrote: post #2

$1.5 billion was spent in the federal election season. 100k was bought by Russian interests and were questioning those 100k when we spend much more destabilizing other governments we oppose. Still, we should look into why a campaign season wastes 1.5 billion on one contest and no one bats an eye, or some do a little but the media couldn't care less. It's one of their cash cows.

Total sum is not less than 100k....
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