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Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

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

#61

Post by haberman »

stcredzero wrote: post #29
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 main reason no practical alternatives to Facebook exist is the network effect. Doesn't it creep you out that one company has a monopoly on the social graph? When we busted up Ma Bell, we basically put into place standards for interoperation. What if we had a law mandating social graph companies open themselves up for interoperation once they reach some critical threshold of size? Basically, the idea is that once…

> What if we had a law mandating social graph companies open themselves up for interoperation once they reach some critical threshold of size?

To me that sounds like legally-mandated proliferation of sensitive user data. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is essentially a case of Facebook being too open with their data.

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

#62

Post by tivert »

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.

> Would trust-busting do any good? The main reason no practical alternatives to Facebook exist is the network effect. ... The only practical solution is regulating ethical behavior of these incomprehensibly powerful corporations.

While I think regulation definitely needs to be on the table to control the perverse incentives that would affect all Baby Facebook's, I don't think the network effect makes Facebook resistant to trust-busting. If a breakup mandates the successors to:

1) share the core IP (e.g. the Facebook brand and facebook.com, etc),

2) create and participate in an open federated social network protocol to blunt future network effects, and

3) divide Facebook's current userbase in a way that does not follow the contours of the social graph

...then I think the network effects will be muted enough to prevent the current monopoly situation from reoccurring.

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

#63

Post by twblalock »

stcredzero wrote: post #29
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 main reason no practical alternatives to Facebook exist is the network effect. Doesn't it creep you out that one company has a monopoly on the social graph? When we busted up Ma Bell, we basically put into place standards for interoperation. What if we had a law mandating social graph companies open themselves up for interoperation once they reach some critical threshold of size? Basically, the idea is that once…

> What if we had a law mandating social graph companies open themselves up for interoperation once they reach some critical threshold of size?

If we open up Facebook's data to other companies, what makes you think those companies are willing and capable of securing the data and respecting user privacy?

Facebook having all of that data is bad enough. Requiring Facebook to share it with other companies would not make that data more secure -- but it could definitely make it less secure.

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

#64

Post by blub »

ucaetano wrote: post #55
mtgx wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone one else would've bought YouTube. Or Vimeo would have become the #1 video site, and then maybe Microsoft or Amazon would have bought it. Still better than Google alone owning most of the biggest traffic sites.

> Someone one else would've bought YouTube Google is probably the only non-telco who owns significant infrastructure. So other than Google, the only other option for YouTube would have been a telco. Are you sure you'd want a telco owning YouTube? Can you imagine how awful it would be? Vimeo is owned by IAC, who then owned AskJeeves, TripAdvisor, HotWire, LendingTree and today owns Tinder, OkCupid, Match.com, The Dail…

Any of the above options would be better than the current reality, where Google is basically controlling video on the internet. They're long past their days of innocence.

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

#65

Post by michaelchisari »

tivert wrote: post #62
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.

> Would trust-busting do any good? The main reason no practical alternatives to Facebook exist is the network effect. ... The only practical solution is regulating ethical behavior of these incomprehensibly powerful corporations. While I think regulation definitely needs to be on the table to control the perverse incentives that would affect all Baby Facebook's, I don't think the network effect makes Facebook resista…

4) Require the baby facebooks to coordinate an open standard federated social networking profile that is managed through a non-profit consortium.

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

#66

Post by int_19h »

colemannugent wrote: post #40
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'v…

As a former libertarian, you're speaking for one particular subset of libertarians, not all of them. There are some that believe that in a pure unregulated market, monopolies would simply not arise in most cases, yes. There are others who believe that they will naturally arise, but it's okay, because that just indicates that the market has reached peak efficiency. And there are yet others who believe that the important part about markets is their freedom (as defined by Smith originally, i.e. free competition), and lack of regulation can hamper that.

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

#67

Post by kauffj »

Rather than trust busting, why not start with relaxing the federal laws which forbid the development of third-party applications?

The limits on third-party apps are legal, not technical. It is not technically challenging to build an application that collects Facebook credentials and then presents alternative views and features. It could, for example, finally be possible to see a time-ordered view of your friends' posts (Facebook doesn't allow this since it reduces engagement).

The development of such applications would serve as a threat and check on the market dominance of Facebook. A popular third-party application could consider adding its own features that Facebook does not have. It would also reduce Facebook's revenue.

What stops this? In the US, it is primarily the CFAA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act). Once Facebook formally tells a company to stop accessing their servers, they are in violation of federal law if they continue to do so.

It seems premature to pursue trust busting action while we still have federal laws that encourage and cement the dominance of a single provider.

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

#68

Post by yonran »

The moat that each tech company owns is its network. Rather than trust-busting these companies up into their different businesses, I think it would promote more competition to impose network interoperability requirements once the network is entrenched for too long.

A useful example is craigslist: a company with virtually no innovation for decades that still dominates the classified listings space. Other companies that try to offer a better experience face the hurdle of creating their own network or attempting to scrape craigslist’s items (and then being kicked off by their lawyers). What regulation would allow meaningful competition? A policy that requires craigslist to provide an API to competing firms for reading and writing at a reasonable price, and a requirement that changes to the network not favor craigslist vs. other firms.

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

#69

Post by AlexandrB »

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 think the main catalyst to increased anti-trust scrunity will be a mind shift away from the "consumer welfare" view of anti-trust.

I don't think it even requires that. If we're paying for these services with our information and attention, more sophisticated tracking and increased data collection are a form of price increase. The anti-trust argument only requires that put a price tag on the data collected or inferred by Google/Facebook and it becomes obvious that "prices" have been going up for years because of monopoly power.

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

#70

Post by ucaetano »

treis wrote: post #59
ucaetano wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone one else would've bought YouTube Google is probably the only non-telco who owns significant infrastructure. So other than Google, the only other option for YouTube would have been a telco. Are you sure you'd want a telco owning YouTube? Can you imagine how awful it would be? Vimeo is owned by IAC, who then owned AskJeeves, TripAdvisor, HotWire, LendingTree and today owns Tinder, OkCupid, Match.com, The Dail…

>Google is probably the only non-telco who owns significant infrastructure. So other than Google, the only other option for YouTube would have been a telco What about Amazon or Microsoft?

They don't own. They's recently (in the past 5 years) started taking part in building, but they don't own anything compared to Google and the major telcos.
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