Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful? • Hacker News Board

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#111

Post by eeZah7Ux » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

andy_boot wrote: post #100

wilsonnb2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's another example? This one strikes me as unique because ARM just sells their IP. Sure, our mothers probably haven't heard of ARM but that's more like saying they haven't heard of x86. Our mothers have almost definitely heard of Samsung and Apple, both of whom manufacture a large number of ARM chips. There's even a decent chance they've heard of a company like Qualcomm that's not as well known as Apple or Samsun…

Foxconn, SAP ? These are good examples aren't they. Edit: Not nvidia. Realised OP was asking for None-US companies

No.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#112

Post by tivert » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 4:34 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #101

super-serial wrote: post #99

The ISPs and mobile carriers are too powerful. At least Google/Facebook have to innovate, or buy companies like Instagram or Whatsapp that innovate. ISPs get their billions in revenue from monopoly. All they have to do is buy off politicans and put people like Ajit Pai in power. Now that they've started to acquire tech companies like Yahoo, no one can stop them from giving preferential treatment to their content and…

I'm still baffled by the focus on FANG as too powerful and inescapable, especially from generally left/liberal writers. They're not always friendly or easy to avoid, certainly, but they're far more escapable and far less legislatively malicious than Comcast, AT&T, and their ilk. Obviously lots of people are mad at those companies too, but it's frustrating to see "hit Google with antitrust suits!" getting high-profile…

> I'm still baffled by the focus on FANG as too powerful and inescapable, especially from generally left/liberal writers. They're not always friendly or easy to avoid, certainly, but they're far more escapable and far less legislatively malicious than Comcast, AT&T, and their ilk.

Facebook and Google have are far more powerful and inescapable for writers than for the general public, as those companies are the primary way the public discovers and consumes news media online. A regular person can easily delete their Facebook profile and switch to Duckduckgo, but the same would be suicide for a newspaper: they have to go where the eyeballs are.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#113

Post by s73v3r_ » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 4:38 PM UTC

fredley wrote: post #59

wilsonnb2 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A viewpoint: charity is power. These companies have control over where this money goes, and are likely to spend more on things that make them look good, or provide long term benefit to the company over things that don't. Another approach might be to take the charity money away from the companies, and have those funds distributed to worthy causes by a democratically appointed body instead: giving the money to causes t…

Pedantic point: Elon's not going to fix Flint's water. He's going to offer to install filters on people's homes.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#114

Post by vorpalhex » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 4:38 PM UTC

ionised wrote: post #109

vorpalhex wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I believe everybody part of a society has a responsibility minimise or prevent the harm they do, and this idea that corporations should not have any form of social conscience is actually a fairly recent one. The idea that they are legally obliged only to maximise shareholder value is also a myth I'm pretty sure. We can blame hacks like Friedman for that. His warped ideology doesn't jive with reality.

> The idea that they are legally obliged only to maximise shareholder value is also a myth I'm pretty sure.

The CEO and other officers of a company have a stated, legal requirement to act in the companies best interest in regards to the shareholders. All commercial companies (let's ignore non-profits and such for a moment) are founded to generate profit for their shareholders since that is what in turn attracts shareholders.

> I believe everybody part of a society has a responsibility minimise or prevent the harm they do

That's a nice belief and it'd be great if it was true - but that's not an argument for an a priori duty to do social good. Let's just imagine for a moment that you, yourself, are legally obligated to do social good. What does that look like? Do you have a minimum amount of hours per week you're forced to do free work (eg, forced labor)? Can you get out of that by being forced to give some money to charity (eg, taxes)? What are the punishments if you don't execute your duty? Jail?

Imagine that system scaled up and applied just to everyone - each person individually. Forced labor, some kind of weird mandatory charity tax thing, and the threat of punishment if you don't comply - is that the kind of world you want to live in?

It's easy to demand other people do good. It's much harder to do good ourselves when it's our own time and money.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#115

Post by s73v3r_ » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 4:39 PM UTC

wilsonnb2 wrote: post #64

fredley wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A viewpoint: charity is power. These companies have control over where this money goes, and are likely to spend more on things that make them look good, or provide long term benefit to the company over things that don't. Another approach might be to take the charity money away from the companies, and have those funds distributed to worthy causes by a democratically appointed body instead: giving the money to causes t…

> A viewpoint: charity is power. These companies have control over where this money goes, and are likely to spend more on things that make them look good, or provide long term benefit to the company over things that don't. They are more likely to spend it on things that make them look good, which has absolutely nothing to do with my point that these companies are helping people , even if their primary goal is not to…

"Just so I have this straight - you're saying the reason that the people of Flint haven't had their water problems fixed yet is because the billionaire class only cares about getting something in return from such an action?"

Musk could have easily acted back when it happened. He didn't.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#116

Post by white-flame » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 4:41 PM UTC

vinceguidry wrote: post #82

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.

Certainly part of this is a cultural problem, which is part complacency and part ignorance as to what's actually going on. Laws aren't going to necessarily change that, but they can step in as a last resort when culture doesn't end up addressing fundamental problems of social health or rights issues.

The social media companies effectively propagandize ordinary communication for whatever's most profitable, and the effects can be individually subtle, with large overall effect. While this tends to be accepted at the for-profit media creation level, it seems quite inappropriate and socially unhealthy to apply these to personal communication on social media, because the cultural buy-in to these sorts of things means individuals put themselves into monopolized systems.

Social media is very new in the grand scheme of things, and there are things to figure out. Certainly education on these topics and their effects is important, and possibly more declarations of rights (as opposed to specifically prescriptive regulations) of people's personal communications might be in order.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#117

Post by s73v3r_ » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 4:42 PM UTC

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…

"There is no responsibility attached to it"

That's not true at all. There is always responsibility attached to power.

"The truly sad thing is that you expect them to act responsibly"

Why? Why is it sad that a person would expect other people to act responsibly? Why is it considered fine to have such a low opinion of everyone?

"Companies will (and have) work children to death if it helps maximize output"

And society put pressure on them to change that. And in much of the world, that doesn't happen anymore.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#118

Post by s73v3r_ » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 4:46 PM UTC

sqdbps wrote: post #47

I really don't understand the self destructive desire to domestically pile on our tech firms while they are being shutout of the Chinese market by the government there which apparently appreciates the importance of these firms so much as to support their local companies financially, politically, and intellectually and on the other front the EU is using every tool at its disposal to hamstring US tech firms. Some comme…

I don't believe it's self-destructive to hold our companies accountable for what they do. Many of us also agree with what the EU is doing, and wish our government would get up off it's ass and do the same thing.

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#119

Post by toomuchtodo » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 4:52 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #101

super-serial wrote: post #99

The ISPs and mobile carriers are too powerful. At least Google/Facebook have to innovate, or buy companies like Instagram or Whatsapp that innovate. ISPs get their billions in revenue from monopoly. All they have to do is buy off politicans and put people like Ajit Pai in power. Now that they've started to acquire tech companies like Yahoo, no one can stop them from giving preferential treatment to their content and…

I'm still baffled by the focus on FANG as too powerful and inescapable, especially from generally left/liberal writers. They're not always friendly or easy to avoid, certainly, but they're far more escapable and far less legislatively malicious than Comcast, AT&T, and their ilk. Obviously lots of people are mad at those companies too, but it's frustrating to see "hit Google with antitrust suits!" getting high-profile…

Google and Facebook are allowed to maintain data about me and my life, sell that data to others, and I have no recourse. My broadband and mobile providers see a much slimmer cross section of my life, and are far less capable as data aggregation and warehousing systems comparatively speaking.

Google and Facebook (and Amazon, to a lesser extent) are for-profit surveillance systems at their core. How could you not demand oversight and regulation of such systems in a democracy?

Re: Have the Tech Giants Grown Too Powerful?

#120

Post by krelian » Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #85

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 a…

I find this view as outdated as I find an ultra religious and conservative person's views towards modern accomplishments in gender equality.

Are there some downsides to being connected in the modern digital age? Of course! But on a personal level they are miniscule and the gains outweigh the losses by a huge margin.