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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

#131

Post by kauffj »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #111
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…

I think your focus on the CFAA is somewhat missing the point. The assertion being made is that Facebook and Google (and perhaps one or two others, like Amazon and Twitter, maybe) have become so big and so powerful that they are able to act like the trusts of yore, leveraging their data to stop competitors from having any realistic chance of disruption and even affecting other peripherally-related industries. If we su…

I'm not claiming it's sufficient. Perhaps it's not.

But it seems mistaken to use anti-trust regulations to break up or regulate companies when there are still laws on the books that help facilitate market dominance. Repeal those first and see what happens before doing anything else.

Any legal rule that makes legitimate HTTP requests illegal (i.e. requests whose purpose is not solely to commit harm ala a DDoS) ought to be repealed.

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

#132

Post by joejerryronnie »

yonran wrote: post #68

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 tha…

This example highlights the whole problem with the line of thinking in this article. Absolutely nobody thinks Craigslist needs to be broken up through anti-trust regulation. But several capable startups have failed to adaquately challenge Craigslist. Where do you draw the line between hampering competition and just meeting the consumer needs better than anyone else? The primary arguments against the tech giants hampering competition are literally speculation (with the possible exception of Amazon). You could have made the same arguments against Yahoo’s dominance in their heyday. When the paradigm of advertising supported services changes, Google and Facebook will become immediately vulnerable.

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

#133

Post by tivert »

3xblah wrote: post #119
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…

Facebook allows users to easily export their data as a compressed archive. Why not have the third party app access exported archives and not Facebook servers? This way users could at least be made aware of the features they are missing. Ones that might be better for users but not necessarily better for Facebook. For example, organising and searching through past data could be made much more efficient, reducing the ti…

> Facebook allows users to easily export their data as a compressed archive.

> Why not have the third party app access exported archives and not Facebook servers?

For the most part, those archives only contain data that the user has personally uploaded. They contain little to no data about their friends or their friends activity. A third party app that only works with a user's archive will not be able to function as an adequate Facebook alternative.

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

#134

Post by tivert »

EGreg wrote: post #85
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…

Or, why not build open source alternatives that are as good as Facebook? Back in the day AOL was the Facebook. The first browsers were ehh, but the idea of owning your own domain really appealed to people and the Web killed AOL which is no longer around as the world’s centralized social network. That’s what we are doing at https://qbix.com . Watch the video there. We are inspired by Wordpress which powers 30% of all…

> PS: I see a few steady downvotes every time I suggest that we need an open source alternative to Facebook and link to meaningful efforts in that direction. I would definitely prefer to hear what is wrong with what I said, rather than silently downvoting.

I don't think you were downvoted because you suggested an open source alternative to Facebook, but rather because the bulk of your comment was a plug for your own project.

You'd probably get a better reception if you made your point, and ended your comment with a very short plug along the lines of "PS: I'm working on one at https://qbix.com."

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

#135

Post by jpollock »

dbt00 wrote: post #57
jpollock wrote: post #26

"when AT&T was broken up in 1984, a torrent of new products came on the market, everything from the first answering machines to early ISPs." Since the RBOCs were local monopolies, it wasn't the breakup which resulted in the opening of the network. They didn't have competition until 1996, when the local loop was unbundled, allowing CLECs to appear. The tradeoff was that if they could demonstrate local competition, the…

I think the post you're responding to is thinking of the unleashing of non-Bell-owned equipment on AT&T lines. This was prohibited by AT&T until the FCC forced them to drop this provision. Commonly known as the Carterphone decision, this happened in 1968. Fax machines, modems, answering machines and other devices were mostly only possible after this change.

Correct, that is what they are referring to. However, they are directly linking it to the 1984 breakup, which was not what allowed it. Thanks for the name of the decision [1], I had a hard time finding a reference. :)

So, yes, it's an argument for regulation, but not for breaking up a monopoly. :)

There are many good reasons to break up monopolies, but their thesis is that the 1984 breakup led to the development of ISPs because people were all of a sudden allowed to plug random things into the network.

[1] Carterfone Decision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone#Landmark_regulatory...

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

#136

Post by jpollock »

extra88 wrote: post #94
jpollock wrote: post #26

"when AT&T was broken up in 1984, a torrent of new products came on the market, everything from the first answering machines to early ISPs." Since the RBOCs were local monopolies, it wasn't the breakup which resulted in the opening of the network. They didn't have competition until 1996, when the local loop was unbundled, allowing CLECs to appear. The tradeoff was that if they could demonstrate local competition, the…

They had competition for long distance service from MCI and the like after the 1984 breakup.

Yes, but that's not the paragraph in the article. If they had talked about cost reduction and competition in long-distance, then sure.

However, that wouldn't support their thesis. Their thesis is that looking at consumer cost reductions is the _wrong_ way to look at monopolies.

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

#137

Post by tivert »

nradov wrote: post #41
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 imagine how in practice we could construct a regulatory regime which would prevent large tech companies from acquiring small start-ups which represent only a potential competitive threat with little current market share. How would one even define a "market" in legally defensible way? Would Instagram have been counted as being in a market of just consumer instant messaging mobile apps? All instant messaging se…

> I can't imagine how in practice we could construct a regulatory regime which would prevent large tech companies from acquiring small start-ups which represent only a potential competitive threat with little current market share.

How about: once you hit a certain market share, you're no longer allowed to acquire businesses that compete with you in some feature category? There could be some processes where a court adjudicates what the feature categories are in each case and whether or not they're the same.

There's already some concept about how to do this, since it's not uncommon for a company to be forced to divest a division or two during a merger.

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

#138

Post by salawat »

danra wrote: post #125
taurath wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it were legal (which it should be IMO), I can't see anything other than a cat and mouse game happening where the primaries change their authentication patterns on a daily, hourly or minute to minute basis. Consider all the things that facebook does to mess with scrapers right now - every single letter in a div, multiples that are hidden, etc. Its a complete mess. "Forced open APIs" is an interesting idea in t…

> every single letter in a div That's... I... Well. :0

That alone is enough to assure me my conviction to never support them beyond a token account was justified.

...though I may formally delete my account now. That's just... I'm going to be sick. That's Hostile Architecture if I've ever seen it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture

I'm growing increasingly weary of this type of offensive programming. I've never felt or understood the need to actively make something as hard to consume and process as possible. Again though, it really speaks to Facebook's view of their users: 'Look, but don't touch!'

Then again, I tend to build by the maxim 'it is vain to do with more what can be done with less'.

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

#139

Post by erentz »

shereadsthenews wrote: post #45
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…

Acquisition by Google is the only reason YouTube exists. If they had to pay for their networking they could not have survived (Google owns its own fiber and doesn't pay anyone for transit). If you are taking a consumer benefit angle I don't see how you conclude that Google should have been prevented from buying YouTube.

> Acquisition by Google is the only reason YouTube exists. If they had to pay for their networking they could not have survived (Google owns its own fiber and doesn't pay anyone for transit).

By this logic Netflix shouldn’t exist because it doesn’t use Google’s network assets. I’m pretty sure YouTube’s advertising revenue should cover its cost of building out CDN and transport infrastructure.

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

#140

Post by clucas »

mattmaroon wrote: post #28
dwater wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think it's logical to say that just because consumers don't directly pay they aren't harmed. What if increased competition would make it such that there would be a way better search engine than today's Google? It's certainly harder to prove harm than monopolistic price fixing though.

In response to your argument, the U.S. courts would provably respond like the judge in My Cousin Vinny: "That is a lucid, intelligent, well thought-out objection. Overruled."

Silly as it is, that's just not how antitrust law works in the U.S.

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