Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 375 posts

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#41

Post by mattlondon »

ajvs wrote: post #34
mattlondon wrote: post #27

> "Before breaking them up, we should see whether they are not just disrupted by a small player beating them out of the market" How long do you wait to see if this happens? E.g. MySpace was the social network back in the day. When was the last time you even heard/thought about MySpace let alone even visited the site? Did we wait long enough for MySpce to die on its own, or should we have acted sooner? Does it matter…

Your solutions are not enough because Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp - they buy out new social media so they're always in control. In Europe at least everyone uses WhatsApp and no-one texts anymore - they're too pervasive to avoid.

Just dont use them, like you dont use MySpace. There is nothing forcing people to use them, and nothing outright preventing a new competitor.

WhatsApp was a startup competitor at one stage too - it competed well enough to grow big enough to compete with Facebook & Google. Sure Facebook brought them out, but what is to stop the next WhatsApp? Likewise MySpace was too pervasive not to use at one point too, yet look at what happened to that when this little cool new thing called Facebook appeared.

Basically it comes down to user behavior, not any explicit "control" that Facebook et al have over individual's use of the internet.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#42

Post by bepotts »

choko wrote: post #16

"But social media, Berners-Lee said, was still being used to propagate hate." This is one of the side effects of an open web, and one I feel we should live with in the interests of freedom. The only alternative of which I am aware is to police speech through some kind of authority. I'm not sure that there is an authority in existence that I would trust with that level of power. In a perfect world, we would be able to…

Complaining about an open web is just a proxy for complaining about establishment ideas being challenged. You see in Britain with the complaints against the Leave Campaign; you see it in the United States with the rise of Trump; you see it in the European Union with the complaints against far-right candidates. The governing elites don't like it when you challenge their assumptions, and instead of making an argument about their positions or governing better, they complain about Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

I'm American and racists have always been here, Trump isn't new. And in Europe, it isn't insane to want to control your borders and not have rules made in Brussels that you must follow made by bureaucrats that aren't accountable to your nation. It's a crazy idea I know, but politicians have problems with these notions and blame the tools the opposition used to organize instead of being better.

Facebook, Google, and Twitter have problems and they need some reforms, but the rise of companies is not nearly the sinister event people make it out to be.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#43

Post by asaph »

nikk1 wrote: post #23
asaph wrote: post #3

> “If you put a drop of love into Twitter it seems to decay but if you put in a drop of hatred you feel it actually propagates much more strongly. And you wonder: ‘Well is that because of the way that Twitter as a medium has been built?’” How exactly is breaking up the tech giants going to solve this problem?

>“Before breaking them up, we should see whether they are not just disrupted by a small player beating them out of the market, but by the market shifting, by the interest going somewhere else,” Berners-Lee said. The implication is that maybe some of the tech giants will one day fall due to their own Achilles Heel. For example, Twitter's case that you cited.

And if that doesn't happen then he proposes breaking up the tech giants, which solves the problem how?

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#44

Post by neaden »

Balero wrote: post #12
growtofill wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with smartphones?

I think the problem is not with smart phones, but with the ecosystem around them. Eg, Apple, and iTunes. Android, and google docs

I think a good example is cars. Imagine having a Ford car that you could only get repaired at Ford dealerships, that only took Ford bumper stickers or other accessories, and only could get filled up with Ford gas at Ford gas stations. I think most people would agree that would be a problem, and we are getting dangerously close to that with smart phones.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#45

Post by obenn »

majani wrote: post #39

I think the main issue that has allowed the likes of Google and Facebook to grow to a dangerous size is the ability to scale globally with minimal resistance from other countries. As time goes by, I start to realize that China's great firewall may have had some visionary thinking behind it, and other countries may follow suit in future to enable their citizens to take part in the digital revolution.

The issue is that the firewall protects the interests of a political regime instead of a capitalist one. It is a complicated topic but I see decentralized technologies as a more viable way of preserving digital freedom.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#46

Post by sharemywin »

* You need to un-bundle features. identity from social feed from storage

* require data, interaction and reputation portability.

- be able to search for a user on twitter by their facebook username(if the user agrees).

- be able to request a transaction or feedback is transferable to other platforms if both users agree.

- look up john smiths reputation on amazon is 5 stars.

* Transparency around security, transparency around pricing and income from your data and an ability to pay to opt out.

- get an invoice we made $30 this month display ads to you.

- $4 from Statefarm, $2 from viagra etc.

* ability to delete data from a service.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#47

Post by WC3w6pXxgGd »

majani wrote: post #39

I think the main issue that has allowed the likes of Google and Facebook to grow to a dangerous size is the ability to scale globally with minimal resistance from other countries. As time goes by, I start to realize that China's great firewall may have had some visionary thinking behind it, and other countries may follow suit in future to enable their citizens to take part in the digital revolution.

Did you seriously just praise the authoritarian control of information in China?

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#48

Post by jillesvangurp »

In general, the current trend of value accumulating in companies with more revenue than the GDP of most countries, is something that is killing diversity. Capitalism with one monopolist is not that much better than communist style centrally run planned economies. Both are inefficient and ultimately self serving.

However, instead of breaking up companies, maybe it is better to constrain their ability to accumulate this much power and wealth. Big companies are treated way too nicely by governments. They get to dodge taxes, ignore regulations, lean on smaller players in the market, lean on politicians to look the other way or legislate in their favor, hoard patents, kill off competitors with unfair behavior, etc.

Just level the playing field and restore competition.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#49

Post by WC3w6pXxgGd »

rickjr85 wrote: post #31
asaph wrote: post #3

> “If you put a drop of love into Twitter it seems to decay but if you put in a drop of hatred you feel it actually propagates much more strongly. And you wonder: ‘Well is that because of the way that Twitter as a medium has been built?’” How exactly is breaking up the tech giants going to solve this problem?

Perhaps what we are seeing is not a problem with technology but a problem with the human condition?

Maybe it's not a problem.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up

#50

Post by wowamit »

asaph wrote: post #3

> “If you put a drop of love into Twitter it seems to decay but if you put in a drop of hatred you feel it actually propagates much more strongly. And you wonder: ‘Well is that because of the way that Twitter as a medium has been built?’” How exactly is breaking up the tech giants going to solve this problem?

It will prevent the hatred to be easily propagated to a large population — control the reach of the polluting voices. Scale of Twitter has given a microphone to these voices which they are exploiting. Hope is with the power split, it will just not be a problem in the first place.
Post reply on HN