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The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

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Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#111

Post by vorotato »

stale2002 wrote: post #106
khawkins wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even worse than a monopoly, it's the elimination of a market. When you perform a vertical merger you no longer have to negotiate with people at that level of the market. The acquired business now only has to respond to the demands of the parent company and it is only through those demands that market forces act on the child business. Furthermore, since the parent company has removed its demand from the market, t…

I mean, your argument is effectively that vertically integrated companies are so efficient, and lower costs so much, that they force competitors out of business. If I was a lawyer, fighting FOR the company, I would literally use your exact same argument as for why vertical integration is a good thing. Reducing costs, and making the market more efficient is a good thing, not a bad thing. Reducing prices is good, not b…

There's another explanation, that they have the capacity to drive price of entry up. That they have enough money saved that they can undercut their competitors and snuff them out before they can gain any market share. So this is true whether they are efficient or not.

However I'd argue the damning blow is that centralization makes efficient but fragile structures. Its why everyone hates a monolithic codebase.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#112

Post by [deleted] »

JasonFruit wrote: post #72
jacksmith21006 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only seen the right wing go after Google. Not sure I really even know what is left wing? What would you consider left wing?

This sounds glib, but it's revealing: if you're not sure what the left wing is, it's you. Just like for extreme conservatives, for whom they and others like them are "just regular people," "Real Americans", you're so immersed in your half of the divide that the left wing is just "reasonable people," "people who don't suck." That is the problem we're facing.

[deleted]

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#114

Post by dlp211 »

mbillie1 wrote: post #15
trendia wrote: post #12

The Justice Dept has a very strict definition of monopoly [0] -- it requires both 1) the ability to raise prices profitably above that in a competitive market, and 2) anticompetitive conduct. That means that Google receiving 90% of all searches wouldn't automatically imply market power or anti-competitive conduct, and I can't see how Google or Facebook can raise their prices higher than a "competitive market" if they…

Their product is the advertising platform, so the price-raising should be evaluated there. Their consumer "products" eg newsfeed, mail, messenger, search etc are just mechanisms for demographic gathering for the purposes of advertisement sales, or for direct advertisement delivery.

Since Google's entire ad-platform is based on the 2nd bid price auction and they have no control over the prices that advertisers bid, I don't see how they can be raising prices other than making their delivery platforms more valuable to the end consumer.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#115

Post by pitaj »

nickik wrote: post #67
brixon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be a different kind of "monopoly". The government (usually local) granted rights to a single provider in an agreement that they install connections to a minimum user base or geographical area. What would happen otherwise is the providers would only install access in areas that are profitable and not extend further out into the more rural area. What needs to happen is these granted rights should be re-evalu…

> providers would only install access in areas that are profitable and not extend further out into the more rural area That is a argument often made by those ISPs but I don't believe it for a second. In Sweden remote rual villages get together, fund a fiber connection to their village (and quite often actually help dig) where some companies is allowed to lay fiber but is required to allow any ISP to compete. The mark…

Exactly. These franchise agreements are the real culprit behind the issues consumers have with ISPs. I'd much rather have a federal can on franchise agreements than Title II.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#116

Post by scarythoughts »

asdffdsa321 wrote: post #105
jacksmith21006 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only seen the right wing go after Google. Not sure I really even know what is left wing? What would you consider left wing?

Here's a litmus test, how do you gauge your reactions to these statements: African-Americans, in this time and place (America in this decade), commit more crime when compared to Europeans and Asians as a percentage breakdown by race. Women and minorities have plenty of public resources (facilities, social programs, and information) to succeed academically and enter white collar professions. Income taxes, which are cu…

Brilliant. Especially in the tech company Silicon Valley bubble things are all leftist shilling all the time.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#117

Post by rifung »

stale2002 wrote: post #106
khawkins wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even worse than a monopoly, it's the elimination of a market. When you perform a vertical merger you no longer have to negotiate with people at that level of the market. The acquired business now only has to respond to the demands of the parent company and it is only through those demands that market forces act on the child business. Furthermore, since the parent company has removed its demand from the market, t…

I mean, your argument is effectively that vertically integrated companies are so efficient, and lower costs so much, that they force competitors out of business. If I was a lawyer, fighting FOR the company, I would literally use your exact same argument as for why vertical integration is a good thing. Reducing costs, and making the market more efficient is a good thing, not a bad thing. Reducing prices is good, not b…

> vertically integrated companies are so efficient, and lower costs so much, that they force competitors out of business.

I don't think you would want to argue that driving competitors out of business since antitrust legislation is partly designed to prevent that.

My understanding is that using the lowering of costs as an argument works when the government is concerned with consumers but not when it is concerned with competition. I think the US is the former while the EU is the latter?

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#118

Post by ImaCake »

haberman wrote: post #91
padseeker wrote: post #45

It's very concerning that there is so much influence concentrated within such few hands. However I have to ask - would the WSJ would be so concerned if Google or Facebook were conservative leaning outlets? Normally the WSJ defends this kind of duopoly kind of thing - if either Google or Facebook had some sort of right side leaning the WSJ would be preaching to us about the genius of capitalism and the wisdom of the m…

This is exactly why "viewpoint diversity" is something people are increasingly concerned about. The basic premise is: we all engage in motivated reasoning. We all accept weak arguments sometimes if they reinforce or flatter our existing world view. If we shut out all dissenting views, we'll let lots of bullshit go unchallenged because we were never forced to actually defend our beliefs. So I think it's totally fair t…

I would think most news organisations benefit from fractured media platforms more than a duopoly. If merely because they can risk being banned on one platform if they publish a dissenting opinion about that platform. Those high risk articles often get many clicks, so I imagine they want to publish them if the risk is smaller.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#119

Post by solidsnack9000 »

dustingetz wrote: post #103
folksinger wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We make natural monopolies into public institutions. Roads, sidewalks, parks, copyright registrars, postal services, land surveyors, courts, law enforcement, etc, etc. And then we take an active role in their management. Notice the difference between the physical activity of helping to maintain these institutions and the physical activity of sitting at your keyboard and typing into an HTML form and hitting the submit…

Sure you can "nationalize" facebook or the world wide web (by like the UN or something?? these are international Earth-scale entities) But there are a lot of tradeoffs there too and some really chilling consequences.

It might be that nationalising the protocols is enough.

A similar situation arises with the public railways in many countries. Most railways are actually private — the big ones in Japan, the German railway, the various Italian railways. In Italy, multiple companies run trains on the same tracks with competing offerings.

Most of the major European “national” railways can run their trains on each other’s tracks. TGV can go directly to Milan in Italy, and makes multi-stop trips in Switzerland (Basel and then Zurich after crossing the border).

There is a defacto “European railway” that is centrally coordinated but not centrally owned.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#120

Post by jpalomaki »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #4

The solution really is a revitalization of antitrust policy. The reason markets work is because participants in them are bound to a 'race to the bottom' with many other participants doing the same thing. When companies aren't forced to race to the bottom against each other, the conditions of authoritarianism rise. Authoritarian structures don't have to necessarily come from government - monopolies, oligopolies and im…

Problem is that too many people are getting most of their information from a single shared source (or small set of shared sources) which is controlled by relatively small set of individuals. This leads to small amount of people controlling the news feed for the majority, which is kind of an issue in democracy.

For this particular case we have in hand antitrust policies and forcefully breaking Google and Facebook might be the solution. Same kind of issue however could rise even if there was no money or corporations involved at all. Think for example somebody suddenly purchasing Facebook, removing all ads and just running it as free social media site. The users would be still there and owner of the site controlling what they see.

To tackle the problem we should get more creative. One thing that comes to mind is progressive tax on user base (or based on number of people you reach). Making in financially unfeasible to create a platform that covers too large part of the population. I'll skip thinking about the practical problems in implementing this.

Ideal decentralized Internet solves this problem as we tear down the walled gardens. But what if people are too happy with the walled gardens. What if we just end up with another information monopoly - this time running in the decentralized network and outside the intervening hands of any government.

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