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

#351

Post by int_19h » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 12:28 AM UTC

hannasanarion wrote: post #193

strken wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gab (and Voat, and, er, Hatreon) were open attempts to create far-right versions of existing websites. I don't think they're good examples of the inevitability of hatred. I'd hazard a guess that many more people are angry about hate speech on Reddit than about hate speech over email. The difference is that one is a company and the other is a federated standard. If I've understood Tim Berners-Lee correctly, he wants t…

They were not created as such (well, maybe with the exception of hatreon). They were created to be similar platforms, competitors or clones, with a promise of better management/operation/features. See also: Vidme. When you compete with a monolith, your early adopters will be the people thrown off the bigger ship, and most of those people were thrown off for a reason. Very few alt-repreneurs seem to understand this

Gab was very much created with that kind of content in mind. Its creator was specifically concerned with "left-leaning Big Social media monopoly", after Facebook and Twitter started censoring alt-right accounts. Which is not surprising, given his past history:

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/12/pro-trump-ceo-gets-booted-...

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

#352

Post by craftyguy » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 12:28 AM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #287

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instagram isn't really a competitor with Facebook Of course it is. Facebook is losing certain demographics to Instagram. If they were separate companies, Facebook would be under far greater shareholder pressure.

I don't think that's true. I think Facebook is losing customers due to its own downsides, and Instagram is gaining customers on its own Merit. I don't think that there is a zero-sum competition between the two

> I think Facebook is losing customers due to its own downsides, and Instagram is gaining customers on its own Merit

You literally just proved the point of GP.

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

#353

Post by zbentley » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 12:31 AM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #265

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.

Facebook is responsible for most of the world's social networking, so as a consumer, I'd rather not dictate how it wants to run its shop.

> as a consumer, I'd rather not dictate how it wants to run its shop.

Think about that statement. Think about it carefully.

You're a consumer. You and people like you are the entire means by which this company earns its money. You really have no interest in how it does so? Even when it has massively significant (statistically speaking--if not you then hundreds of millions of people like you) influence on your life?

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

#354

Post by int_19h » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 12:31 AM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #343

bepotts wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

People seem to be downvoting you without replying, which doesn't seem very helpful. I'm sure there are some people who fit your first paragraph, but I don't think that's the major issue. The ideal of free speech is that people can honestly disagree, and state their positions, a discuss the issues. Then the best ideas will win out. But our current social media environment does the exact opposite. It appears that the w…

The "red vs blue team" thing is a US thing, and it is created by the structure of our political (and, especially, our electoral) system. First-past-the-post voting, combined with widely open primaries, result in both parties gradually drifting apart over time, and dragging their constituencies with them. That this erupts into verbal (and, occasionally, non-verbal) violence is not surprising, but what you see on social media is the symptom, not the cause.

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

#355

Post by zbentley » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 12:34 AM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #182

arendtio wrote: post #20

I am not sure, but sometimes I think splitting the companies is not even what we need. Instead, companies with > $1 billion annual revenue should be bound by law to built federated platforms and provide the software to participate in such a network. I mean, you could split up Google into Search, Youtube, and Mail. But in the end, Youtube would still use Analytics and provide Search with all the data they need for the…

Instead, companies with > $1 billion annual revenue... That would just turn the issue in to an accounting problem. Facebook would license their logo from Facebook Logo Inc, the like button from Thumbs Up Ltd, their servers from Facebook Servers PLC, and so on. Every one of the companies would make, at most, $999,999,999 in revenue. A much simpler and easier legal solution would be to tax companies based on the number…

> That would just turn the issue in to an accounting problem.

...A type of problem which government agencies the world around have extremely powerful tools to manage and prevent abuse in. Sure, abuse still exists (some of it significant--see "too big to fail" etc.), but such oversight is massively better than nothing, especially where direct to consumer social media/marketing platforms are concerned.

> A much simpler and easier legal solution would be to tax companies based on the number of users (based on an independent audit)

That's just another metric upon which you have to trust an oversight agency. Users might be a better metric than revenue, but it's still going to result in highly imperfect (but, again, better than nothing) regulation.

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

#356

Post by Ibethewalrus » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 1:19 AM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #348

Ibethewalrus wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

When was that "before", though? Stormfront was probably the best-known forum like that before Gab. And it has been around since early 90s, first as a BBS, then as an actual web site.

Mostly before Facebook and Twitter gained mass userbase, before they made it easy for anyone with a smartphone post all their thoughts

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

#357

Post by TimJYoung » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 2:00 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #257

TimJYoung wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but is it being used that way ? Everything that I've seen has indicated that service providers use this law to play it both ways: they actively control what users see through algorithms, but then claim that they are (largely) not responsible for the moderation of questionable content. IOW, they are not just a passive distribution point for information, and, in many cases, actively control the flow of information…

> Yes, but is it being used that way ? Yes, most hosts have and enforce (though imperfectly) content rules as they would be disincentivized from doing without CDA 230. > Everything that I've seen has indicated that service providers use this law to play it both ways: they actively control what users see through algorithms, but then claim that they are (largely) not responsible for the moderation of questionable conte…

I think we're talking past each other here (I understand what CDA 230 is supposed to do, I'm referring to how its been used/interpreted).

Here is, perhaps, a better version of what I'm trying to say:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_comments/2...

Edit: the section re: 230 is towards the end.

Frontline just covered some of this with respect to FB, also.

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

#358

Post by YPCrumble » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 2:03 AM 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…

There is only one medicine in the past 100 years that cured a chronic illness besides penicillin and its derivatives. That medicine was developed by a small biotech company named Pharmasset and bought by Gilead.

So to answer your question, one might say that 100% of medicines that are not addictive pills to treat symptoms were developed by startups.

To be fair, a lot of the addictive pills to treat symptoms were also developed by startups.

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

#359

Post by ilaksh » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 2:43 AM UTC

arendtio wrote: post #20

I am not sure, but sometimes I think splitting the companies is not even what we need. Instead, companies with > $1 billion annual revenue should be bound by law to built federated platforms and provide the software to participate in such a network. I mean, you could split up Google into Search, Youtube, and Mail. But in the end, Youtube would still use Analytics and provide Search with all the data they need for the…

I think you are on the right track, but we can used more advanced distributed systems rather than just federation. For example build off of things like IPFS or Ethereum etc. or custom protocol networks. Then that becomes the platform and network that companies provide physical infrastructure for and build off of. Using more advanced decentralized technolpgies means we would not need to trust all of our data to one entity and also allows for better collaboration on the platform level.

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

#360

Post by jogjayr » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 2:57 AM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #204

jogjayr wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo? Duplex? Photos? Even Chrome is newer than the things you listed.

Waymo got bought, I don't know Duplex, Photos is not exactly innovative, Chrome is just another browser, they existed before

> Chrome is just another browser, they existed before

That's a weak argument. Email existed before Gmail, web search existed before Google Search, maps even online ones, existed before Google Maps, mobile OSes existed before Android.

> Photos is not exactly innovative

That's what I used to think - another photo sharing/storage thingie. But it has all sorts of crazy machine-learning powered features.[1]

1. https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2016/0324/How-Google-Ph...