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

#291

Post by jonathlee » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 7:42 PM UTC

asaph wrote: post #43

nikk1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>“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?

It's harder for 100 companies to collude undetected/unchallenged with no viable alternative than for 1-5 massive/politically-savvy companies to tweak results/ban users to fit their political biases. The larger a company is, the easier it is for it to blow-off any lawsuit losses over bad behavior (or simply have bad customer service) and continue those bad practices.

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

#292

Post by ataturk » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 7:43 PM UTC

zug_zug wrote: post #101

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?

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…

The censorship is the part that gets me. If these are the modern version of the town commons, having private interests censor "unpopular" (but widespread) opinions, is extremely dangerous.

The tech giants are apparently huge echo chambers internally, as is standard in all modern corporotocracies. I would prefer wider society not become like that, it is a step backwards in human achievement. The dangers of a few people being upset is a small price to pay for open exchange of ideas. Let more speech cancel out the hate mongers. Censorship is always a weak hand--it proves that the entity doing the censoring is somehow weak.

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

#293

Post by TomMckenny » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 7:43 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #170

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…

I think that people have an (almost) unalienable power, very strong, and pretty underused. It's the power of walking away. If you find an environment toxic, leave it, and ask your friends to leave it, too. Yes, you have to research alternatives first, and make compromises, at least temporarily. Lately this somehow worked for Facebook. I bet they are going to see that on their bottom line. So, if you dislike the outra…

>the power of walking away.

Very true. But it would be easier to walk away if there were an alternative to walk to. Such as alexandercrohde's proposed site which is essentially a reality/emotion filtered twitter/facebook stream.

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

#294

Post by ilovecaching » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

davemp wrote: post #261

ilovecaching wrote: post #247

> “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?’” No, it's human nature. Stop blaming companies for the imperfections of the human race. If you put us into large groups, we will inevitably gossip, bicker, argue, and kill each other…

This is incredibly fatalistic. Why can't technology be created with human nature in mind? Forms of democracy with checks and balances became so dominant because it acknowledged the deficiencies in human nature. We can certainly blame companies for producing bad/harmful technology just like we can blame forms of government for producing bad outcomes for its citizens. --- On a side note, based on influence and entrench…

> Forms of democracy with checks and balances became so dominant because it acknowledged the deficiencies in human nature.

And those systems have tons of flaws as well. Have you seen the voter turn out in the U.S.? How many Americans are making informed voting decisions.

You're shifting the blame back to the technology. I get it, as a technologist we'd like to think it must be a mistake in the product. But the reality is that our idealistic notions of how the world should be do not match the capabilities of human nature.

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

#295

Post by johndubchak » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 7:45 PM UTC

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?

I doubt breaking them up is targeted to solve this problem at all. I believe the only problem breaking these companies up allows is the emergence of competition and innovation.

As it stands today, it seems that any new technology company with a decent idea/product/service, is heavily incentivized to exit the market by being acquired and left to languish. Nest comes to mind and is only a single example. Another one: I was at ARMTechCon2018 and an up-and-coming RISC-V competitor of ARM was trying to be swallowed by, you guessed it, ARM.

The giants are truly monopolies and there are some of them that are capable of influencing entire economic market segments. Do we want that to continue?

EDIT: Grammar...I sometimes suck at it.

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

#296

Post by johndubchak » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 7:48 PM UTC

Sileni wrote: post #286

nine_k wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is exactly not having to impose regulation. The power to move away is already in the people's hands. You can do it at any moment, without a governmental mandate. The point is to use this power. But first people have to recognize their power, and learn to use it a bit.

No. That's just more software engineer hand waving to avoid taking responsibility for the way their products have changed the emotional landscape for real people in the last couple of decades. It's like saying the CIA wasn't trying to destroy communities when they were handing out crack, because "moral people wouldn't have taken it". Every single person building these platforms knew how addictive they were. It was th…

+1. Totally spot on.

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

#297

Post by rifung » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 7:55 PM UTC

philote wrote: post #251

nostrademons wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook (along with Google, Amazon, EBay, AirBnB, Stripe, etc.) get their strength from the long tail. I had deleted it off my phone and logged out on desktop, but then I heard (via email from my sister, who heard it on Facebook) that my aunt was in a coma and my cousin was posting updates on Facebook. That was enough to bring me back. And my cousin posts updates on FB because it's by far the easiest way to distribu…

I'd argue that communication via email can work just as well as FB. It's a little harder to "opt in" to updates, but with spam filters and other email features, it seems like it can be a lot less noise to have to filter through. But this is coming from someone who doesn't use FB.

I mean it technically can be equivalent but the experience is significantly worse.

One huge problem is that you can't add people's emails with just their name. Another problem is that there's no concept of accepting a friend request.

Sure you can get around it but why bother?

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

#298

Post by amdelamar » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 7:58 PM UTC

m_ke wrote: post #253

flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #249

>Before breaking them up, we should see whether they are not just disrupted by a small player beating them out of the market Like Youtube, Instagram, or WhatsApp perhaps? Jokes aside, I don't see how an internet giant who is flush with cash and data in 2018 would fail to see the next biggest thing and acquire it before it grew large enough to knock them off their pedestals.

Yes, Google, Apple and Facebook know more about these startups than the companies themselves. Google has an insider look at all of your metrics, your market and your competitors through the combination of search, Gmail, Android, Google play, maps, YouTube, Google analytics, adwords and Google Ventures. Same goes for Facebook and Apple. On top of that they are the gatekeepers to the main platforms and can kill you if…

They totally are gatekeepers. And don't forget Microsoft too.

They own the horse-racing arena, and have a horse in every race too.

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

#299

Post by notacoward » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 8:01 PM UTC

bepotts wrote: post #61

noetic_techy wrote: post #4

I agree. Having trillion dollar valuation companies dominate the internet is akin to letting Standard Oil dominate a resource, or monopolies dominate the emergence of railroads. You have to recognize these technological emergence's when they occur, because typically they will be unlike anything we've seen before. I would argue Social Media is one of those emergence's. Smartphones arguably another. Ideally, I would li…

Silicon Valley is responsible for most of the world's innovation, so as a consumer I'd rather we not dictate where firms wanted to set up shop.

Silicon Valley is not responsible for most of the world's innovation. Not even within tech. If the internet started any one place it was at BBN around Boston. The web started at CERN. Microprocessors started at Bell Labs and Texas Instruments. Cellular phones started at Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia. Amazon's up in Seattle, next door to Microsoft, and even Facebook is an import. SV isn't even a player in biotech, clean tech, materials science, etc. The cult of Silicon Valley is getting ridiculous.

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

#300

Post by moorhosj » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 8:07 PM UTC

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #290

travmatt wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could support strong regulation and not have to passively accept being pushed into a false dichotomy!

And whom do you suppose would be writing those regulations? Of course the answer to this question is the very same reason that the tech giants will not be split up. We have a mountain of rules and regulations and anti-competitive behavior, price fixing, and all other sorts of stuff. And then we have Time Warner/Comcast openly agreeing to not compete, charging arbitrarily high prices, and the FTC apparently deciding t…

One of our two political parties is campaigning on a platform to reign in this type of campaign finance influence:

"Democrats would use their first month in the House majority to advance sweeping changes to future campaign and ethics laws, requiring the disclosure of shadowy political donors, outlawing the gerrymandering of congressional districts and restoring key enforcement provisions to the Voting Rights Act, top Democratic leaders said on Tuesday."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/us/politics/democrats-mid...