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

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

#101

Post by tracker1 » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 9:44 PM UTC

CM30 wrote: post #86

tracker1 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ma…

Given that much of this apparently comes down to the likes of Visa and Mastercard, perhaps these types of companies need breaking up or regulating. Maybe also large enough payment processors like PayPal.

I'm not sure that they realistically can be broken up. I mean, a government based one could be created, but there's the matter of interoperation between countries. I think that keeping them out of ethics/censorship in terms of what they'll process payments for would be where to start. That should include transparency in terms of when government actors ask them to blacklist someone.

They're in a potentially tough position, however they have an unfair level of power. I'm not sure how they could reasonably be broken up.

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

#102

Post by B-Con » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 9:44 PM UTC

naravara wrote: post #98

B-Con wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rather than trust busting, why not start with relaxing the federal laws which forbid the development of third-party applications? Cute phrasing, but what this really means is "why not force anyone who develops a product to allow others to capitalize on it?" > It seems premature to pursue trust busting action while we still have federal laws that encourage and cement the dominance of a single provider. You mean "all…

>Cute phrasing, but what this really means is "why not force anyone who develops a product to allow others to capitalize on it?" . . . why not though? I don't see how permitting monopoly rents in perpetuity is an economically or socially desirable outcome.

Facebook is a product, not a monopoly.

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

#103

Post by kauffj » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 9:44 PM UTC

B-Con wrote: post #87

kauffj wrote: post #67

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' pos…

> Rather than trust busting, why not start with relaxing the federal laws which forbid the development of third-party applications? Cute phrasing, but what this really means is "why not force anyone who develops a product to allow others to capitalize on it?" > It seems premature to pursue trust busting action while we still have federal laws that encourage and cement the dominance of a single provider. You mean "all…

I think you're misunderstanding. I'm not proposing that Facebook be _forced_ to allow third-party access, which would carry the risks you've pointed out. I'm simply proposing the federal government not aid them in their market dominance.

Facebook could still prevent third-party applications from functioning, but it would have to do so by methods inside of the HTTP specification rather than legal ones. For example, it could simply ban users who authenticate via a third-party app.

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

#104

Post by gajeam » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 9:45 PM UTC

Lot of people talking about third-party application development in this thread. It's also worth considering the opposite side of that, data portability. GDPR already requires companies allow users to easily export all their data [1], and if the US did the same it could really help mitigate the network effect social media companies use to hold onto their dominance (i.e. Facebook's properties)

[1] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/

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

#105

Post by feanaro » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 9:45 PM UTC

kevin_b_er wrote: post #35

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…

There is plenty left in the libertarian philosophy even if you take away the concept of idly sitting by, watching perverse, runaway growth. For example, ideas like bounding government power and reducing it to a few minimum functions and letting the market handle most things by itself. This does not necessarily imply letting the market go completely unchecked and requiring it to serve every need.

I think that decentralization of power is one of those profoundly libertarian ideas that is not often explicitly recognized as one.After all, a corporation in which power is extremely centralized is hard to differentiate from a government. Furthermore, if there is no one keeping it in any kind of check, what is preventing it from becoming a totalitarian government?

Markets work best when there is at least some level of decentralization. In other words, when you don't let any entity acquire a significant portion of total power.

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

#106

Post by prostoalex » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 9:47 PM UTC

Impossible wrote: post #96

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…

The problem with this is a lot of acquisitions that become massive look like toys originally. At the time of acquisition, Instagram was a joke, people (including myself) thought FB overpaid. There are some great comments in this NYT article ( https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/facebook-buys-instag... ) and the original Hackernews post ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840 ). You can see this playing out…

Also, would Instagram have become the force that it is without FB's marketing, site reliability, i18n and anti-spam muscle? Just the flawless logins where a newly installed Instagram app recognizes that you're already logged in to Facebook boosted adoption likely.

If you look at the press reports from around that era, Instagram's domination was far less assured - Color got tons of funding, PicPlz raised $5 mil, the press favored Hipstamatic, and every day a few new apps with their own twist on photo sharing would launch.

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

#107

Post by aylmao » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

shereadsthenews wrote: post #91

puzzle wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds plausible at first, but is inaccurate on multiple levels. By early 2006, YouTube had substantial peering in place. It's easy to prove: they talked about their programs at NANOG ( https://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog37/presentations/bill.no... ). Without those, they would have folded already. They were acquired by Google only at the end of the year. Google doesn't own all of its fiber. Also, some ISPs have…

YouTube had some peering but not enough. It was a massive cash incinerator.

> It was a massive cash incinerator.

I mean, this is not unheard of in Silicon Valley.

Be it YouTube or some other company, truth is online user-generated video was bound to be huge given the growth in bandwidth capacity and improvement in smartphone cameras.

The fact that specifically YouTube is what it is right now might be because it operates under the Google umbrella. Had the acquisition not happened, I'm sure we'd have at least a couple online video unicorns feeding off the huge demand for video and supply of people wanting to share.

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

#108

Post by naravara » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

B-Con wrote: post #102

naravara wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Cute phrasing, but what this really means is "why not force anyone who develops a product to allow others to capitalize on it?" . . . why not though? I don't see how permitting monopoly rents in perpetuity is an economically or socially desirable outcome.

Facebook is a product, not a monopoly.

I said "monopoly rent." It's a term with a specific definition that you would do well to understand.

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

#109

Post by LifeLiverTransp » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 9:54 PM UTC

But the factors that grew this giant remains, meaning this will turn into a whack-the-mole where nothing changes but the name and owner of the company that reeincarnates the by nature centralized public service these companies provide.

I would suggest a partially privat solution. Meaning. The public owns such projects, once the investment was returned. Sort of a lease from the allmende, that always returns -as rewards for the maintenance of investment. And any company can temporary (1 year max) own this infrastructure, once it contributes signifantly to it.

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

#110

Post by ocdtrekkie » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 10:01 PM UTC

rifung wrote: post #53

I work for Google, opinions are my own. Have there been any studies or anything on how having or breaking up large companies affects a country's competitiveness on a global scale? I feel like an extremely large company may be more competitive but this may come at the expense of other companies in the same or other industries. FWIW I personally agree with using antitrust to break up companies that don't harm consumers…

I am not sure if fear of China is an adequate justification to allow rampant misconduct of a corporation here. Consider that we could just the same argue that having a minimum wage that's (still woefully inadequate, but higher than China) also significantly harms the competitiveness of our country's competitiveness in many industries on the global stage.

It would probably be better to deal with issues of other country's power via trade agreements and political pressure.