Tim Berners-Lee says tech giants may have to be split up • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by jhall1468 » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

elisaado wrote: post #107

learc83 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that if Facebook and Twitter are large enough, they can buy the next thing that becomes cool before it has time to beat them--like Facebook did with Instagram and WhatsApp.

This is the reason why breaking them up will help.

Yeah, that worked so well for for the bells. 8 is now, what 3? And while there was some network effect for telecom, it was nowhere near the same degree as with social networks. No open API's means you're never going to see splits have any desirable effect, as the consumers will simply flock to 1 or 2 platforms.

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

#272

Post by alexandercrohde » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 6:32 PM UTC

rdsubhas wrote: post #240

zug_zug wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose tech companies were no longer legally allowed to use the network effect (i.e. they had to provide open-access to their public data via API). Then this would enable alternative front-ends on twitter. This would then enable me to filter messages by positivity, or whichever criteria I choose (e.g. non-Russian-bots, non-shills). This is turn would then change the whole ecosystem. It would remove the perverse ince…

This looks a bit optimistic or underestimating real life tradeoffs. There can be an API, yes. But if you want to filter by positivity, you have to expect the company to actually implement that in the API. Otherwise, do you expect to get all billions of tweets over an API and then add positivity on top? You can't have sustainability, performance and "open for everything" on one single API, there are tradeoffs and cons…

I think these are good questions. But I also think there are good answers.

One solution is for my client to sentiment-analyze as a filter after the api-call and downrank that way (much like reddit/HN downrank controversials).

Maybe a more generic solution is to allow parties to "tag" twitter accounts. Clients could then make intelligent deductions based on tags (e.g. "political," "controversial," "satirical," "pg13").

I'm sure many other people have many other smart ideas.

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

#273

Post by beambot » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 6:33 PM UTC

rusk wrote: post #246

the_af wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody uses email any more That's not my experience. I use email. At work they use email. My mom uses email.

Yeah I think I made my point kind of stupidly. Email is just "there" at this stage. Your emails appear in your inbox and you're not really constrained by a provider. I was taking aim more at the comparison with twitter and facebook which require constant engagement. With email you just get it the way you want it, on your terms mostly.

> With email you just get it the way you want it, on your terms mostly.

Sounds pretty perfect.

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

#274

Post by zipwitch » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 6:46 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #230

Xixi wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When AT&T was a monopoly and you had to rent your phone from them at an outrageous price, you could also walk away. But having to either walk/drive around or send slow mail to communicate was not very efficient. Perfectly doable, mind you, but very inconvenient. Sometimes the cost of walking away is just too steep, so abusing a dominant position becomes very easy and tempting. I don't think Twitter or Facebook are an…

Walking away from AT&T was hard because of the expense of building a phone transmission network, and (I suppose) because of some patents they held. Walking away from Twitter is much easier, because multiple global instant or near-instant messaging systems exist, including completely open and user-controlled systems, and even building a new such system is reasonably easy for a group of competent people.

The cost of getting everyone you wish to communicate with using the new system is non-trivial.

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

#275

Post by mbesto » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

cambaceres wrote: post #133

maxxxxx wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we generally should discourage growth of any company beyond a certain size. I don't see any societal value in these large companies but a lot of disadvantages.

Big companies add huge value to all our wellbeing. 1000 companies with a revenue of ten million dollars can afford to spend little to nothing on research, while one company with a revenue of ten billion dollars can spend a lot. How many startups comes up with new medicines, for example? Furthermore, you are implying that all that people do has to be done with the societal value in mind. What about the value for indiv…

> How many startups comes up with new medicines, for example?

Is that a serious question? The answer is plenty, you just don't hear about them because they're bought up once the FDA approves their medicine.

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

#276

Post by jdmichal » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

jcadam wrote: post #118

noetic_techy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only have 2 choices for mobile OS, dominated by Apple and Google.

I'm willing to admit now that I actually liked Windows Phone and wish it had become a viable platform.

I'm on my Lumia 920 right now, due to my Nexus 5x finally biting the dust. I still love the OS. Most of the apps no longer work, my signal is crap, etc. But I still like the OS.

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

#277

Post by notacoward » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 6:48 PM UTC

cambaceres wrote: post #133

maxxxxx wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we generally should discourage growth of any company beyond a certain size. I don't see any societal value in these large companies but a lot of disadvantages.

Big companies add huge value to all our wellbeing. 1000 companies with a revenue of ten million dollars can afford to spend little to nothing on research, while one company with a revenue of ten billion dollars can spend a lot. How many startups comes up with new medicines, for example? Furthermore, you are implying that all that people do has to be done with the societal value in mind. What about the value for indiv…

Those $10M companies don't do research because they are research. The founders have an idea, they try it out, if it works they get acquired by a big company that doesn't do nearly as much of its own research as it used to because this is easier. Sometimes the big companies deliberately let groups of employees leave to try something, with IP and funding and legal indemnification, then buy them back if it works. So plenty of research actually occurs, and it's the big companies that don't need to be part of funding it.

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

#278

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

cambaceres wrote: post #133

maxxxxx wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we generally should discourage growth of any company beyond a certain size. I don't see any societal value in these large companies but a lot of disadvantages.

Big companies add huge value to all our wellbeing. 1000 companies with a revenue of ten million dollars can afford to spend little to nothing on research, while one company with a revenue of ten billion dollars can spend a lot. How many startups comes up with new medicines, for example? Furthermore, you are implying that all that people do has to be done with the societal value in mind. What about the value for indiv…

> How many startups comes up with new medicines, for example?

Lots, and lots try and fail (the ones that succeed, or even make it past the first few big hurdles, often get acquired by the big players, because buying work that's done is less risky than early research...)

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

#279

Post by notacoward » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #237

I wish it could be made more apparent to people that Twitter and FB are not mediums for communication, but mediums for marketing broadcasts. Everyone with a significant following (let's say 100,000) is selling something. Software, home goods, consultants with online courses, meme pages angling for a TV deal, something. Yes, you can still use it to communicate with a core group of people whose tweets you enjoy. You ca…

> Twitter and FB are not mediums for communication, but mediums for marketing broadcasts.

Why not both? There are plenty of people having legitimate, personally meaningful conversations on both. There are plenty that use both for marketing. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

> You can also do that on Slack, Discord, even phpBB forums

...except that people mostly don't. They seem better able to discover and maintain their online friendships and communities on the bigger platforms, for whatever reason. They went into the market and they chose. Who are you to second-guess them?

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

#280

Post by Xixi » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #230

Xixi wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When AT&T was a monopoly and you had to rent your phone from them at an outrageous price, you could also walk away. But having to either walk/drive around or send slow mail to communicate was not very efficient. Perfectly doable, mind you, but very inconvenient. Sometimes the cost of walking away is just too steep, so abusing a dominant position becomes very easy and tempting. I don't think Twitter or Facebook are an…

Walking away from AT&T was hard because of the expense of building a phone transmission network, and (I suppose) because of some patents they held. Walking away from Twitter is much easier, because multiple global instant or near-instant messaging systems exist, including completely open and user-controlled systems, and even building a new such system is reasonably easy for a group of competent people.

That's looking at it from a purely technical perspective. A 20% better Twitter or Facebook (from a technical perspective) is certainly comparatively easy to do, but would still have an approximate value of nil. The value of Twitter or Facebook is not technical (though running services at this scale is technically very challenging): it comes from the people using it. Building another Facebook, even with marginal improvements, is never going to be enough to make enough people switch.

So is the case for AT&T: even if you could build a network competing with the AT&T one it would still have been a largely useless endeavor, unless you could also force AT&T to be interoperable with your network.