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Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

nytimes.com

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Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#21

Post by flukus »

aalleavitch wrote: post #10

The problem isn’t that they’ve grown too powerful, it’s that they either haven’t recognized their own power or have willfully rejected the responsibility attached to it.

> or have willfully rejected the responsibility attached to it.

There is no responsibility attached to it, at least not legal responsibility. Even that isn't enough for anyone that gets to powerful and beyond enforcement.

The truly sad thing is that you expect them to act responsibly. Companies will (and have) work children to death if it helps maximize output, if you expect them to act benevolently then prepare for disappointment.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#23

Post by pimmen »

tomjen3 wrote: post #19
pimmen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically this post. The whole debacle around Cambridge Analytica and political ads on Facebook is basically the consumers saying; "Congratulations Facebook, you conquered news publishers by piggy backing my cousin's puppy pictures! Did you know I expect responsibility from publisher's? As in, when I see slanderous information slung around at near the speed of light, someone better take responsibility for it."

Fine, Facebook would say, we don't care.

Their response was not ”we don’t care” to the Cambridge Analytica and political ads scandal because when they didn’t respond at all at first the public became angry and politicians threatened with regulation. That’s why Zuckerberg eventually did appear before Congress and the EU parliament.

To do otherwise is to guarantee regulation, and then Facebook would really care.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#24

Post by Y_Y »

flukus wrote: post #21
aalleavitch wrote: post #10

The problem isn’t that they’ve grown too powerful, it’s that they either haven’t recognized their own power or have willfully rejected the responsibility attached to it.

> or have willfully rejected the responsibility attached to it. There is no responsibility attached to it, at least not legal responsibility. Even that isn't enough for anyone that gets to powerful and beyond enforcement. The truly sad thing is that you expect them to act responsibly. Companies will (and have) work children to death if it helps maximize output, if you expect them to act benevolently then prepare for…

This is one of the central questions of our age.

In an ideal capitalist free market companies are almost necessarily amoral (Friedmann doctrine ), they can only make choices based on profit. In real life you have barriers to entry and PR concerns that let companies at least pretend to waste some profit-making opportunities on doing good.

I don't know if the right answer is consumer unions, or benevolent government regulation, or giving up and making do with what we have, but this discuss I see on this issue seems so polarised (not unique) that progress will be hard to come by.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#25

Post by musage »

matt4077 wrote: post #20
wjnqx wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The tech giants are exploiting a US trademark-law provision that lets them effectively claim a trademark in secret." Jamaica and some other countries don't maintain searchable databases, allowing companies to register trademarks abroad in secret and then point to those registrations when claiming the mark in the US. Source: https://qz.com/808846/why-jamaica-knows-about-apples-new-pro...

Patents != trademarks

The actual point still stands though (though it is in response to something that doesn't even stand on it's own, but hey). Replace "patents" with "trademarks", which is not necessary for the structural integrity of the argument either way -- and follow the HN guidelines about the strongest interpretation of a comment.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#26

Post by white-flame »

The "tech giants" are creating and controlling core forms of communication, both interpersonal and broadcast/public. That's too important and fundamental to the health of society to allow it to be arbitrarily engineered, filtered, and slanted for maximizing profit.

If they were acting like common carriers, it would be a completely different issue. But they're not; they have business models that necessitate the manipulation of communication.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#27

Post by flukus »

Y_Y wrote: post #24
flukus wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or have willfully rejected the responsibility attached to it. There is no responsibility attached to it, at least not legal responsibility. Even that isn't enough for anyone that gets to powerful and beyond enforcement. The truly sad thing is that you expect them to act responsibly. Companies will (and have) work children to death if it helps maximize output, if you expect them to act benevolently then prepare for…

This is one of the central questions of our age. In an ideal capitalist free market companies are almost necessarily amoral (Friedmann doctrine ), they can only make choices based on profit. In real life you have barriers to entry and PR concerns that let companies at least pretend to waste some profit-making opportunities on doing good. I don't know if the right answer is consumer unions, or benevolent government re…

> This is one of the central questions of our age

Is it though? We've got a couple of hundred years of case history now and been proven time and time again they kind of depravity companies will do.

It seems we finally kind of got the balance right post world war 2 and it's all been backwards since.

I can usually see the other sides point of view but it's starting to feel like the other side are anti-vaxers where I understand their fears (the same corporatism fear I'm expressing here) but can't grasp how they reached their conclusion.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#28

Post by dingo_bat »

ronnier wrote: post #3

I'm OK with giant tech companies. America isn't the only place in the world and doesn't hold a monopoly on tech. If it's not American tech giants, it'll be Chinese or some other countries tech giants.

> America ... doesn't hold a monopoly on tech

Certainly seems that way.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#30

Post by Kurtz79 »

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #5

Looks like old media is feeling threatened.

You are being downvoted but, regardless of whether the argument has merit (it does IMHO), it is a fact that traditional media companies have been negatively affected by the rise of the new tech giants, and can be scarcely objective in the matter.

Some of the biggest support to the recent copyright law rejected by the EU, came from traditional news outlets.

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