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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

#121

Post by ithilglin909 »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #90
narrator wrote: post #8

Which makes me ask the question: do you, gentle Hacker News reader, really want diversity of opinion and why? Do you have unpopular opinions and if so, would you get fired or ostracized for sharing them? Are you practicing crimethink? After all, the only people actually working on alternatives to Google and Facebook are the alt-right who have been de-platformed. Gab.ai is so de-platformed that google doesn't even let…

> Are you practicing crimethink? -A few hundred years ago, being an atheist was "crimethink", as was religious tolerance towards Jews, Muslims, and so forth. -A few hundred years ago, questioning the divine right of kings to rule was "crimethink". -In the early 1600s, Galileo stood trial and was condemned for the "crimethink" of saying the Earth moved around the Sun, in contradiction to the teachings of the Church. -…

You say you want diversity of opinion because you are a "liberal" but mainstream liberalism has next to nothing to do with classical liberalism. Your average urban, coastal "liberal" adheres to their orthodoxies with about the level openness to other opinions as a stereotypical religious zealot.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#122

Post by mcrad »

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…

Nonsense. You think because WSJ is pro-business, they would "normally defend a duopoly kind of thing"?

It is possible to be generally pro-business while also critizing kinda-deceptive business models with kinda-unchecked power.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#123

Post by tscs37 »

humanrebar wrote: post #13

This is the first I heard of the Prager U parental filtering and demonetization. The videos are certainly conservative, both culturally and economically, but the ones I've seen aren't objectionable in any way. In many ways, they are less objectionable than a lot that goes out over the AM radio bands in the U.S. Ars Technica on the story: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/prageru-sues-you... Best I can find…

Some of the PragerU videos are rather disturbing but I'd rather have them public because picking them apart with friends is quite an interesting activity. They are an amazing conversation starter on a variety of topics.

I'd hate it if Google started removing them completely, despite me not even closely aligning to their ideology.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#124

Post by folksinger »

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.

Those tradeoffs are as chilling as a nationalized postal service.

The "chilling consequences" that you are imagining are as speculative as any other work of science-fiction that you've read online.

Ask yourself: where did you get the idea that creating new public institutions would have "chilling consequences"? Did you personally experience this in reality or did you read about it somewhere?

What are the chilling experiences that you've had with public roads, the postal service, or the hall of records that holds the deed to the private property you live on? Do these negative experiences align with the "chilling consequences" that you imagine with a public social media?

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#125

Post by cryptonector »

narrator wrote: post #8

Which makes me ask the question: do you, gentle Hacker News reader, really want diversity of opinion and why? Do you have unpopular opinions and if so, would you get fired or ostracized for sharing them? Are you practicing crimethink? After all, the only people actually working on alternatives to Google and Facebook are the alt-right who have been de-platformed. Gab.ai is so de-platformed that google doesn't even let…

I want diversity of opinions, yes. I want people with opinions I vehemently disagree with to have a platform. In particular, I don't want censors because I don't want other people deciding what I should be exposed to. The solution to speech one does not like is more speech.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#126

Post by jaaron »

Ok, I can't read the WSJ article because it's behind a paywall, but I did read an ArsTechnica story about the issue [1]. With _only_ that information (which isn't admittedly much) it appears to be a run-of-the-mill story of YouTube's content policies running amok. Some see nefarious purposes in YouTube's incompetence, but that cynical view doesn't hold up when one considers how consistently YouTube disappoints everyone.

Seriously, just search for "YouTube demonetization" and you'll find dozens of similar stories that have _nothing_ to do with politics.

YouTube's content filtering and management is a mess and it's always been a mess. Whether it's take down notices, tagging copyrighted content inappropriately, issues with demonetization and advertising, YouTube has consistently struggled with striking a balance between creators, consumers and advertisers.

To take that mess and turn it into some sort of commentary about politics, censorship or a general threat to diversity of thought is cynicism and pandering that's worse than YouTube's alleged sins.

I expect better out (or used to) out of my Hacker News commentary, but alas, few bothered to even look up the basics of this particular story.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/prageru-sues-you...

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#127

Post by platz »

humanrebar wrote: post #16
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…

> The question is have we reached a point where technology and globalization provide such enormous returns to the economies of scale that we can't go back or is all this corporate concentration just due to a lack of government enforcement? At some point, America decided that only horizontal monopolies counted, not vertical ones. Many of our concerns about antitrust would be assuaged if regulators started keeping sepa…

RE: Antitrust - on the right track. Consumer's can't solve this from the ground up. What's needed is to prevent certain kinds of key acquisitions. The law around acquisitions is too permissive in an age of network effects; acquisition laws were fine pre-internet but don't solve their intended purpose anymore. Normally, the market corrects against the biggest players because the biggest players are slow to change culture and their business. But, acquisitions are the mechanism by which the big players are preventing themselves from being disrupted by smaller, more nimble players. If the big players can simply buy up any new comers (who will want a deserved pay-out for their efforts) on the scene, they maintain complete control regardless of what consumers want. Otherwise, any "alternative practices" you try to foster will simply be crushed, if they ever become a large enough threat.

Facebook acquiring Instagram is a perfect example.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#128

Post by freeflight »

nickik wrote: post #70
freeflight wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe the people who complain about these things are just bad at discovering other apps and platforms. Or maybe some people just want to keep their life as simple as possible, attention economy and all? With my mid-30's I don't consider myself "that old", but just the idea of having to manage through a dozen different messenger apps is driving me super anxious just in the same way I like to have all my email accoun…

Nobody is requiring you to use 12 apps. The point is that there are 12 (and actually many more) apps that people could choice if they were in any way unhappy with their current choice. Even search, where google has the clearest leads other offers exists. You can not expect your definition of monopoly to be 'any costumer must be able to immediately switch service without any transaction cost on any of the many, many a…

> Nobody is requiring you to use 12 apps. The point is that there are 12 (and actually many more) apps that people could choice if they were in any way unhappy with their current choice.

I can only make that choice for myself, if my family and peers are on none of these apps, then what gain will I get from switching to them?

> You can not expect your definition of monopoly to be 'any costumer must be able to immediately switch service without any transaction cost on any of the many, many application any company provides'.

I didn't define any monopoly at all, I'm merely pointing out that there's something to be said about keeping it simple and "centralized" with certain things. This is also the same reason why Facebook is one hand good (one centralized place to handle all your online social interactions) but also bad (with that comes a lot of influence).

Why not look for solutions where we still have the advantage of aggregation, without the disadvantage of being dependent on a single party?

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#129

Post by H99189 »

guelo wrote: post #17

Right wing propaganda is so strong and coordinated these days that they can develop a new goal and drive a single message repeatedly across multiple platforms for months or years. This attack on Google is a new right wing message developed this year but they just keep hammering at it across all their channels tailoring their argument to the different audiences and continuously building mind share and momentum.

Turn on virtually any television station, cable channel, read a newspaper, search for political topics on Google and you're going to be absolutely flooded with left-wing messaging to the tune of 10 to 1 vs right-wing.

Re: The Google-Facebook Duopoly Threatens Diversity of Thought

#130

Post by supernovae »

ithilglin909 wrote: post #121
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you practicing crimethink? -A few hundred years ago, being an atheist was "crimethink", as was religious tolerance towards Jews, Muslims, and so forth. -A few hundred years ago, questioning the divine right of kings to rule was "crimethink". -In the early 1600s, Galileo stood trial and was condemned for the "crimethink" of saying the Earth moved around the Sun, in contradiction to the teachings of the Church. -…

You say you want diversity of opinion because you are a "liberal" but mainstream liberalism has next to nothing to do with classical liberalism. Your average urban, coastal "liberal" adheres to their orthodoxies with about the level openness to other opinions as a stereotypical religious zealot.

Without context what you are saying is meaningless. Sure, "liberals" seem closed minded in not accepting racism, bigotry or hate speech but in accepting people for who they are, it's hard to say their opinions are stereotypical at all... I mean the democrats/liberals/progressives agree to disagree more often than not.
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