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

reuters.com

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

#311

Post by nine_k »

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…

This is correct: if you see that you're taking part in building something you know (or suspect) is a bad thing, you are responsible if you continue to work on that.

This only reinforces my point: if you think it's a wrong thing, walk away from it. Leave that job at Facebook data science division; there's a number of other well-paid data science jobs.

But I'm not trying to talk about what "they" have done wrong, and could have done differently in the past, or what regulators should be doing. I'm talking about something you and me can do right now, and what is completely within our own power to do.

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

#312

Post by CalRobert »

hannasanarion wrote: post #175
CalRobert wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"like how the hell do you make money " Well, you could charge for it. But of course you wouldn't be able to compete with free - you'd have to have competitors who needed to charge too. They do exist but are pretty niche. The WELL comes to mind. www.well.com If it's any help I applaud every newspaper that puts up a paywall, and more are doing it. It only came about when the industry was (is) about to be completely wip…

>Well, you could charge for it. But of course you wouldn't be able to compete with free - you'd have to have competitors who needed to charge too. Are you sure about that? Twitter's annual revenue is 2.4 billion dollars, and they have 300 million users. $0.55/month per user is all it would take to match their current revenue. Sure, when a service is getting up off the ground, you can't beat free, but for one that's e…

And as soon as they do that somebody else will start a free clone to siphon off their users, and people will abandon Twitter. Getting people from $0-$1 is a lot harder than $1-$5. Humans aren't very rational.

For that matter, note that mobile game companies found out it was harder to get all your users to pay $5 for a game than to get 1% of your users to pay hundreds.

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

#313

Post by int_19h »

greymeister wrote: post #218
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.

Thanks for posting this. It's all too often people (like in this article) want to lean on bureaucracy and legislation to fix their problems as opposed to actually doing something about it. Not using Twitter and Facebook has a positive step for my sanity, much like not watching 24 hour cable news was another positive step. I don't need the government to break up CNN or News Corp to solve that problem.

The problem is far broader than that. Other people are still watching cable news or read Facebook 24/7, and what they take away from it guides their actions. When those actions start affecting you, it kinda becomes your problem as well.

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

#314

Post by TangoTrotFox »

moorhosj wrote: post #300
TangoTrotFox wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Everybody says this before elections. Trump was going to 'drain the swamp' and Obama was going to take down k-street influence. Then they get into office, tip their hat, and turn their back until the next election when suddenly they're incredible again, or at least they promise they will be. Obama ended up creating a special executive chair to let a Monsanto VP take control of the FDA, tried to jam the corporate written TPP through in the most undemocratic and secretive way possible, chose not to even try to hold the banks accountable for collapsing the economy, and so much more. Trump's apparently decided his go-to man on foreign policy and national security is none other than John 'Yellowcake' Bolton.

That old joke really is true. How do you know when a politician is lying? Their lips are moving.

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

#315

Post by Ibethewalrus »

dkonofalski wrote: post #233
CalRobert wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"like how the hell do you make money " Well, you could charge for it. But of course you wouldn't be able to compete with free - you'd have to have competitors who needed to charge too. They do exist but are pretty niche. The WELL comes to mind. www.well.com If it's any help I applaud every newspaper that puts up a paywall, and more are doing it. It only came about when the industry was (is) about to be completely wip…

I just had this same conversation with a colleague. The old internet was really the civilized wild west. All the idealogical virtue of sharing and learning was plentiful and you had to have some basic technical skill to contribute or be involved enough to learn how to do it. Now, any curmudgeon can post whatever brain farts pop out with a frequency that only rivals that of their actual mouths.

Exactly this. Before you could ignore the lone racist person in the neighborhood. Now, they can go online, create a forum and gather together...

so much for the promise of connecting the world...

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

#316

Post by int_19h »

tensor wrote: post #306
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 feels like a uniquely engineering perspective. My parents won't filter twitter, they also won't go searching for some complicated front end. In my opinion, the problem of hate spreading is not a technical one, but a social one. These platforms are just better exposing it, but if they didn't exist, or were somehow filtered or modified, then the people would just go elsewhere. You already see this with reddit, whe…

Social media is basically gossip.

The only difference is scale. You had to be a prolific gossiper to spread a message to several dozen people before. Now, it's one click button away for most of us.

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

#317

Post by 8273426374234 »

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…

It's great to be able to stop

When you've planned a thing that's wrong,

And be able to do something else instead

And think this song:

I can stop when I want to

Can stop when I wish.

I can stop, stop, stop any time.

And what a good feeling to feel like this

And know that the feeling is really mine.

--Fred M. Rogers

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

#318

Post by JKCalhoun »

notacoward wrote: post #299
bepotts wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

You're not going back far enough though — personal computers, the transistor, microprocessor....

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

#319

Post by notacoward »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #318
notacoward wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

You're not going back far enough though — personal computers, the transistor, microprocessor....

Um, I did mention Bell Labs (transistors) and TI (microprocessors). PC is a good addition, though.

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

#320

Post by istorical »

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.

The problem that Facebook solves is finding a way to contact someone when all you know is their name. If you don't have a phone number, address, or email but you know First and Last (or even First - if you have related friends), then Facebook still works to get in touch. Whereas phone books for personal numbers aren't really a thing. Facebook is that phone book.
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