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

#371

Post by nybble41 » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 3:22 PM UTC

PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #369

nybble41 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with inciting or carrying out justified violence—which is to say, a violent response to similar violence practiced by others. Your examples of murder and theft, for example. A murderer cannot rationally object to being put to death; a thief cannot argue against being fined without self-contradiction. The problem is unjustified violence. And I agree with you that most proposals for new laws (incl…

The problems arises not in the easy to agree laws (murder, theft) or the easy to condemn laws (ban on homosexuality), but with the ones which are debatable on if responding with violence is justified. Many would say that violence against pot dealers isn't justified, but what about heroin dealers? What about opiate dealers? Pot dealers who sell to teens?

If it's "debatable" then it isn't justified. The only universal, objective justification for a violent response is that the other person already did the same thing, and thus cannot claim that responding in kind is wrong without simultaneously condemning their own actions. If you claim that your response is justified on subjective grounds then they can just as easily claim that their actions were justified from their subjective point of view, at which point the whole situation devolves into a case of might-makes-right and justification becomes irrelevant.

None of your "debatable" examples would be justified because the actions you are proposing a violent response to are not themselves violent. Even when the original action is violent, the response must be proportional: applying the death penalty for theft would not be justified because it isn't a response in kind.

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

#372

Post by ummonk » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 10:33 PM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #254

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would you break Apple up into? Apple the device manufacturer and iTunes (or whatever) the streaming content service provider. > Or Facebook? Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp. > I guess you could break up Google Alphabet makes this easy. YouTube, Cloud Compute and the other things. > it's basically a natural monopoly Natural monopolies don’t have to acquire potential competitors to protect their flanks. Facebook m…

Neither do the people above. Apple isn't acquiring any other phone makers. Google isn't acquiring any other search engines. The breakups you suggested would make them slightly smaller companies but wouldn't solve any of the problems. the problem with Google if there is one is that it's the only search engine anybody uses. It's 90% of the market. Taking away YouTube doesn't change that. Instagram isn't really a compet…

Instagram is definitely a competitor with Facebook; indeed its founders recently quit because some of their desired projects (such as long form video) were being quashed to limit competition with the main Facebook platform.

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

#373

Post by ripsawridge » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 12:50 PM UTC

TomMckenny wrote: post #293

nine_k wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The alternative is the real world, where you look into the eyes of the faces around you and put your energy into those relationships more than others. (Not being flippant. I was on FB 9 years, but realizing that I was prioritizing the far over the near was what got me to say goodbye).

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

#374

Post by solarkraft » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

asaph wrote: post #234

solarkraft wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Network effects could maybe be fought via regulation. Force the companies to let others participate in the networks.

Network effects are valuable to users too. Are we sure we want to stifle them?

Are most users happy to be locked into a network? What are the positives?

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

#375

Post by Ibethewalrus » Mon, Nov 05, 2018, 6:45 PM UTC

CalRobert wrote: post #368

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...

Maybe the nice thing about the old internet was that it felt distinct from the rest of life, instead of an integral part of it - or, frighteningly, much of the foundation. Bad things happened on the internet (or AOL, Prodigy, etc.) in 1994 but then I just signed off and went about my day. Also, it felt like something most people hadn't quite figured out yet and, well, of course it was going to attract eccentrics of a…

Wow, you exactly nailed how it felt back then. You mentally switched modes “ok, now I’m online”, and it felt distinctly from “real life”, mostly because accessing it was hard (compared to the present). I think the problem with current internet is that life outside is mostly the same as in 20-30 years ago, and we have artificially overvalued internet presence (youtubers, influencers, online tracking, data leaks, etc)