Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#31

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 8:06 PM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #24

40acres wrote: post #4

As talked about in this article, I think the main catalyst to increased anti-trust scrunity will be a mind shift away from the "consumer welfare" view of anti-trust. For the most part, big tech companies provide amazing service. I can't think of another industry that has a product as good as the tech companies of today have. Yes there may be some fakes on Amazon, and DDG in some use cases may be better than Google, b…

It's also particularly hard to break up attack company because of the value of their digital real estate. You can break Google up into as many companies as you want, but whichever one owns google.com has been basically unaffected. It's unclear how you'd break them up in such a way as to meaningfully increase competition in a search market where consumers reflexively turn to Google.

I don't agree with this at all. If you break up youtube from google, I think people will treat those very separately - they serve very different purposes. Same with facebook and instagram.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#32

Post by stcredzero » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 8:06 PM UTC

malka wrote: post #5

x220 wrote: post #3

Would trust-busting do any good? The main reason no practical alternatives to Facebook exist is the network effect. The main reason that competitors to Google don't do well is that people will just use the search engine that returns the most relevant results (unless your internet connection is censored). The only practical solution is regulating ethical behavior of these incomprehensibly powerful corporations.

if such things are meant to be monopolistic, then the state should manage it.

if such things are meant to be monopolistic

I think there's a very important truth in this sentence!

then the state should manage it

Do states have such a good track record with Internet tech.? I'm thinking of Korea and their mandated shopping encryption ActiveX.

IoT security is another are where lots of bad things are happening and an argument for state management could be made. How about the control of all IoT things, like webcams and smart assistants, go through government infrastructure? That way, they can 1) enforce security practices and 2) actually implement Orwell's total surveillance state from 1984.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#33

Post by jerf » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 8:08 PM UTC

dwater wrote: post #15

40acres wrote: post #4

As talked about in this article, I think the main catalyst to increased anti-trust scrunity will be a mind shift away from the "consumer welfare" view of anti-trust. For the most part, big tech companies provide amazing service. I can't think of another industry that has a product as good as the tech companies of today have. Yes there may be some fakes on Amazon, and DDG in some use cases may be better than Google, b…

I was just watching an interview between Scott Galloway and Richard Kramer discussing if the big 4 will be broken up. An insight I hadn't heard before was that anti-trust in the US is based on consumer harm, and since consumers get services from these companies for free, by this measure there can't be consumer harm. However, if you consider the advertisers (who are actually funding everything) are the consumers, they…

That is by far the easier avenue. You can try to come up with some sort of amorphous definition of harm to the consumer w.r.t. excessive tracking and stuff, but you come up against the problem that the government is actually pretty cool with all that stuff. It'll be wrapped up in a prettier bow for public consumption, but that's the fundamental problem.

If you don't look at the public face of the companies and look at their balance sheets and income statements instead, you get a very different view of things, and they certainly look monopolistic and/or monopsonistic in some key areas. (Monopsony is the buy-side equivalent of a monopoly, where a market has only one buyer.) Advertising is a pretty significant one. An example of monopsony is that right now, while there's a crapton of places you can host your own video streams, only YouTube is an effective mechanism for monetizing them, which is why they can get away with all their shenanigans.

Once you look at it from the balance sheet perspective of these companies, and potentially from a monopsony perspective, there's a lot of avenues for a highly-active government attack against these companies, even if they never claim "the general public" is a direct victim.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#34

Post by tracker1 » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 8:08 PM UTC

x220 wrote: post #3

Would trust-busting do any good? The main reason no practical alternatives to Facebook exist is the network effect. The main reason that competitors to Google don't do well is that people will just use the search engine that returns the most relevant results (unless your internet connection is censored). The only practical solution is regulating ethical behavior of these incomprehensibly powerful corporations.

> The only practical solution is regulating ethical behavior of these incomprehensibly powerful corporations

Unfortunately, regulating ethics tends to lead us to exactly what is starting to happen... Even centrist and center-left commentators and journalists are starting to see some fallout from the gatekeepers of money/donations/subscriptions online. Most of it is far-right targeted, but there's some bleed and it may expand.

I'm not a fan of extremist points of view. I'm more opposed to censorship as I feel it's far more dangerous than letting idiots talk. When a handful of companies serve as the gatekeepers to the world, it's more important that censorship is minimized, even if they are "private" companies.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#35

Post by kevin_b_er » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 8:08 PM UTC

kryogen1c wrote: post #7

As a self-defined libertarian, I think one of the most critical functions a government is responsible for is anti-trust and Monopoly busting. This is one of the critical issues of our time, but is only a symptom of the corruption of Congress, which is a deep topic in it's own right. Free markets are like any hierarchy, and if theres no regulation mechanism the powerful will dominate the less powerful. I think history…

This doesn't sound like a liberatarian, at least not in the US. The one with the strongest competitive greed who wins the most money/power is viewed as the end-goal and the most successful under the ideology. Thus, a monopoly is really the end-goal of US libertarianism for they had the highest wealth and are assumed to have the highest drive to have the most wealth. Libertarianism opposes that the will of the people should constrain avarice or rich and powerful. Greed is always good under libertarianism. The philosophy is particular popular for the rich because it is a tool to prevent the will of the people from constraining their power through wealth.

So, Libertarianism blames regulation itself as the cause of monopolies because they look mainly at regulatory capture, which is done through greed-based corruption of government. Libertarian philosophy would view reducing the regulation, and thus any constraint on Facebook's avarice, as the solution to Facebook's monopoly.

So, you shouldn't, as a libertarian, propose trust-busting regulation for Facebook, as this is the opposite of libertarian.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#36

Post by twblalock » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 8:08 PM UTC

lumberjack wrote: post #30

Zecar wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want the state in charge of managing communications between friends and family members?

There are technological solutions that could maximize privacy but they are not in use because the private service provider needs to snoop in on your conversations to build a profile of your life. With a public service we could have a system engineered to maximize privacy. Not to mention real transparency and oversight that is no possible with private services.

With a public service we would have a system engineered poorly, like healthcare.gov. The government can't do that kind of thing well.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#37

Post by jerf » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 8:10 PM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #24

40acres wrote: post #4

As talked about in this article, I think the main catalyst to increased anti-trust scrunity will be a mind shift away from the "consumer welfare" view of anti-trust. For the most part, big tech companies provide amazing service. I can't think of another industry that has a product as good as the tech companies of today have. Yes there may be some fakes on Amazon, and DDG in some use cases may be better than Google, b…

It's also particularly hard to break up attack company because of the value of their digital real estate. You can break Google up into as many companies as you want, but whichever one owns google.com has been basically unaffected. It's unclear how you'd break them up in such a way as to meaningfully increase competition in a search market where consumers reflexively turn to Google.

Carving up a company is never easy. I'd say, clone out the search engine entirely, and as to the question of who owns google.com, the answer may well be "none of the above"; it could just turn into a page that offers you a randomly-sorted list of the baby Googles.

Business being what it is, even if you simply fork Google, both new halfs are immediately going to seek out some way to differentiate themselves, so I think it's less silly than it sounds.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#38

Post by ilaksh » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 8:12 PM UTC

Good article. I hope that trust-busting becomes popular again.

The article did not mention technological intervention in this situation. I believe we will eventually move past the technopolies and decentralized technologies will play a large part.

In my opinion the power and scope of some companies overlaps with or even effectively supercedes government in some ways. To me these are demonstrations of the obsolescence of current government structures.

The all-encompassing networks provided by these monopolies are extremely useful and I believe the main reason we tolerate them. They provide a platform.

Decentralized technologies are becoming increasingly capable and popular. The only realistic alternatives to the giant monopoly companies are platforms built on decentralized technologies. I also suspect that for government to be able to keep up or be effective it also needs to be decentralized and possibly integrated in some way into the decentralized systems or metasystems.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#39

Post by Barrin92 » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 8:12 PM UTC

40acres wrote: post #4

As talked about in this article, I think the main catalyst to increased anti-trust scrunity will be a mind shift away from the "consumer welfare" view of anti-trust. For the most part, big tech companies provide amazing service. I can't think of another industry that has a product as good as the tech companies of today have. Yes there may be some fakes on Amazon, and DDG in some use cases may be better than Google, b…

> I can't think of another industry that has a product as good as the tech companies of today have.

The first step towards saner attitude towards tech is stopping with this glorification of tech.

With the exception of Google or say wikipedia, who have made knowledge accessible in unprecedented manner, modern technology companies (the name is imprecise, because it is really just digital technology) have not as much impact as we think they have.

I can think of a lot of technology products that are much older that have much more impact. The car for example, or something as trivial as the soap, or penicillin and vaccines or the conveyor belt.

If we measure the impact of technology by its influence on economic growth and productivity, human welfare and health, then most 'tech companies' don't make it high up the list. It's not clear that social media actually enhances welfare or productivity. Slack, one of the most valuable companies in recent years, is a reskinned IRC that eats more RAM. I'd say if hard benchmarks are any indication, we're de-innovating.

Sure, there's the argument hat AI is around the corner and soon we'll see an explosion in wealth and pull out of our sluggish growth, but I'll believe it when I see it. Up until then I think the first step is to bring the tech hype down to sane levels.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#40

Post by colemannugent » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 8:13 PM UTC

kryogen1c wrote: post #7

As a self-defined libertarian, I think one of the most critical functions a government is responsible for is anti-trust and Monopoly busting. This is one of the critical issues of our time, but is only a symptom of the corruption of Congress, which is a deep topic in it's own right. Free markets are like any hierarchy, and if theres no regulation mechanism the powerful will dominate the less powerful. I think history…

The libertarian argument against government breaking up monopolies is pretty simple, we believe that most monopolies were created by the government in the first place.

Here are some pretty standard arguments:

https://mises.org/wire/many-ways-governments-create-monopoli...

https://mises.org/library/myth-natural-monopoly

I'm curious, is there a particular sect of libertarianism that you identify with? I don't think I've heard any of the mainstream branches make the argument you did, and I would like to see how your line of thinking fits into the larger libertarian cannon.