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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?

#81

Post by hanshan »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #71

I'm probably in the minority, but the negatives don't seem that bad when compared to the benefits we get from the tech companies: free email, free or cheap access to information on almost anything you could be interested in, junk entertainment that people seem to enjoy. The negatives are less tangible: giving up your personal data (this is complicated by the fact that the data didn't exist until you used their servic…

>The negatives are less tangible: giving up your personal data (this is complicated by the fact that the data didn't exist until you used their services), targeted advertising, I'm not sure what else there is.

You forgot about the elephant in the room: the imminent danger of cyberwarfare.

The reason the Holocaust was so efficient at mass murder was because of "giving up your personal data".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

These tech companies have aggregated the most detailed demographical and psychological profiles in history on billions of people.

Let's not pretend they're impervious to hackers.

The "weapons of mass destruction" of the future will be algorithms loaded with the dual-use munitions we call "big data".

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#82

Post by vinceguidry »

white-flame wrote: post #26

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 manipu…

While this may be true, there's no guarantee that the government can do the job better. The slow ratchet of regulation is what's right for the industry at the present moment.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#83

Post by hanshan »

wilsonnb2 wrote: post #51
hexadecimal7e wrote: post #12

The problems with tech companies are not that they are big, but people follow them blindly. These companies only work for making money and are not around to help people. This other day a journalist asked a big computer game producing company why they are selling in-game stuff to kids (like Overwatch). They refused to answer. They are not around to help people. A hospital in Tanzania was in dire need for an upgrade of…

In 2016, Google donated $167 million in cash and $1 billion in their own products to charitable causes. Microsoft - $135 million in cash, $922 million in product Cisco - $41 million in cash, $245 million in product AT&T - $112 million in cash, $7 million in product Verizon - $56 million in cash, $32 million in product While these companies are around primarily to make a profit, I'm sure that their $460 million dollar…

That's a lot like saying FB and GOOG are charitable because they give their products away for "free". How much money/data are those product donations extracting from the people they donated to?

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#84

Post by ascendantlogic »

As someone old enough to remember when IBM seemed too huge to ever lose in the market, along came Microsoft. Then when Microsoft felt like it was unstoppable, along came Google and Amazon. Now those companies are reaching the same terminal velocity and a new breed of companies will rise up and dethrone them.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#85

Post by ModernMech »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #71

I'm probably in the minority, but the negatives don't seem that bad when compared to the benefits we get from the tech companies: free email, free or cheap access to information on almost anything you could be interested in, junk entertainment that people seem to enjoy. The negatives are less tangible: giving up your personal data (this is complicated by the fact that the data didn't exist until you used their servic…

It's interesting that you've done the calculus on these same issues, and come up with a completely different answer than me. I weighed free email etc. against giving up personal data etc. and I came down decidedly on the side that it's not worth it. And because there aren't alternatives, I just don't don't do some things anymore, wherever I can. That means no facebook. No smartphone. No twitter. Not IG. No googling as much as I can. Sometimes I just have to be fine with not knowing things that I could easily look up.

Maybe it's age? How old are you? Not to be that old guy (I'm not even old) but I'm old enough to remember a time when I didn't have the internet, and I didn't have a smart phone, and I didn't even have a computer. And life was... well actually okay. It was fine. I got by day to day and I lived. Today, anyone under 25, all they know is life with the Internet and smartphones. I can't even begin to comprehend that worldview.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#86

Post by ionised »

vorpalhex wrote: post #66
hexadecimal7e wrote: post #12

The problems with tech companies are not that they are big, but people follow them blindly. These companies only work for making money and are not around to help people. This other day a journalist asked a big computer game producing company why they are selling in-game stuff to kids (like Overwatch). They refused to answer. They are not around to help people. A hospital in Tanzania was in dire need for an upgrade of…

That's what a company does. That is the entire purpose of a company. They don't owe any social good, they are a profit seeking entity. If you don't agree with a given company, stop giving them profit. Don't like Facebook? Stop using it. Don't care for Microsoft? Stop buying Windows and Office. The only other option for controlling companies is government control - that has never worked out well longterm.

> They don't owe any social good

Where is this written?

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#87

Post by adventured »

lumberjack wrote: post #78
dapf73 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like they are pointing guns at people, are they?

Facebook and Google alone could effectively change "facts" to suit their political agendas. They alone could easily heavily influence the democratic process all over the world. That is far more dangerous than some guys with guns.

Far more dangerous than some guys with guns huh. You mean the hundred million people butchered in the 20th century by governments with guns is better than Google influencing a democratic process. Laughable.

There are no public persons or entities that don't change facts to suit their political agendas. That's true at the partisan individual level, that's true at the politician level, that's true at the federal agency level, that's true at the corporate level, that's true of all news media, that's true across all possible examples and without exception. Unless you can point me to the perfect rational human that can't be swayed by emotion and bias.

Your setup is that if something can't be perfect and without a trace of bias, it must be regulated or broken up (to be regulated and controlled by politicians with bias and agenda). Which is another way of saying: all things must be destroyed because they have the potential for pursuing their own agenda. That's the sole possible logical conclusion of your premise if it's to be followed.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#88

Post by vorpalhex »

atlantic wrote: post #70
vorpalhex wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what a company does. That is the entire purpose of a company. They don't owe any social good, they are a profit seeking entity. If you don't agree with a given company, stop giving them profit. Don't like Facebook? Stop using it. Don't care for Microsoft? Stop buying Windows and Office. The only other option for controlling companies is government control - that has never worked out well longterm.

I'm not sure those are the only two options. Pure capitalism and central control are more like two extremes on a continuum. There is a lot of work being done at the moment to get companies to accept a certain degree of social responsibility for the externalities relating to their activities - things like environmental impact, for instance. So there is an intermediate way forward.

I barely trust Facebook/Microsoft/et al. at an arms length. The last thing I want is them aggressively making choices about what kind of content is ok or not - it seems easy to censor Nazi's but what about brexitors or pro-firearms talk?

Add in a government compulsion to crack down on "bad speech" and we've circumvented free speech. Facebook has a right to not allow some content, but when Governments start setting standards across companies, what then?

In the UK, firearms talk is basically verboten. In the US, that's protected speech. Whose rules does Facebook follow? Or do we have a separate UK facebook?

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#89

Post by vorpalhex »

ionised wrote: post #86
vorpalhex wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what a company does. That is the entire purpose of a company. They don't owe any social good, they are a profit seeking entity. If you don't agree with a given company, stop giving them profit. Don't like Facebook? Stop using it. Don't care for Microsoft? Stop buying Windows and Office. The only other option for controlling companies is government control - that has never worked out well longterm.

> They don't owe any social good Where is this written?

Does the private citizen owe social good?

Unless you have a clear argument that all people have a prima facie duty to always do social good (mandatory volunteering?) then it seems very difficult to claim there's a special duty when multiple people group together. Does that duty affect the bake shop up the road? The bookshop that employs 20 people?

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#90

Post by benologist »

The tech giants have grown too profitable, at the expense of stuff they should be doing like paying taxes, or hiring enough people to oversee click fraud, or hire enough people to oversee counterfeit fraud, or hire enough people to oversee how companies use highly personal data. They hire just enough people to dodge taxes and somehow not be complicit in anything they directly profit from.
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