Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

lareviewofbooks.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 184 posts

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

#161

Post by naravara »

reissbaker wrote: post #117
naravara wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Pretty much any definition of "monopoly rent" I've found does actually require the existence of a monopoly. Also, there's no reason to talk down to people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent#Monopoly_rent

>I've found does actually require the existence of a monopoly.

Monopoly is defined loosely and based on the idea of market power, not being a sole provider. The Wikipedia article you cite even mentions Microsoft and Intel as examples, and they had less market power over their fields than Facebook does.

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

#162

Post by mark_l_watson »

That was a good read. Having made a good living from programming since the early 1970s, I would like to give something back, but other than creating content and software with sharing licenses, I am not sure how to proceed.

I used to feel good about donating to EFF, ACLU, and FSF but I have reduced my donations because I don’t feel like they are doing much good. I have read Tim Wu in the past and although he helps us understand the power dynamics of monopolies and controlling platforms, I don’t really get any actionable suggestions from him. Same could be said for this article: a good read, but left me wondering what, if anything, I can do to help.

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

#163

Post by naravara »

B-Con wrote: post #146
naravara wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Monopoly rent implies (near) monopolies, which Facebook is not. What's more, this is a conversation around individual users. Facebook's economic rent is paid by their customers, which are advertisers and not the subject of this conversation.

>Monopoly rent implies (near) monopolies, which Facebook is not.

Except it is, because it's able to leverage its market power to dictate terms to the market. If you prefer the term "oligopoly" rent you can do that, but there isn't much point. Their network effect and capacity for lock-in allows them to collect economic rents, which is the point here.

>Facebook's economic rent is paid by their customers, which are advertisers

No. Loss of privacy, surrendering your data and information, and platform constraints are all forms of rent paid to Facebook by consumers.

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

#164

Post by naravara »

bilbo0s wrote: post #120
naravara wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No you couldn't have, you could use your telephone to call any other telephone on the planet. Even if AT&T did not own the wires. What? The telephone exchange (run by Bell) had to actually make the connection for you. If you were not paying them for phone service your calls weren't getting connected. And they owned the entire vertical stack for phone service, from producing the handsets to leasing/selling the phones…

> What? The telephone exchange (run by Bell) had to actually make the connection for you.... Exactly, and Facebook will not make an open connection for you to another social network. Any connection is strictly limited to protect Facebook's sovereignty over you. It would be like At&T making a connection to Sumatra for you, but only if you confine your discussion to the size of pants you wear. No other information woul…

>Exactly, and Facebook will not make an open connection for you to another social network.

Yes. This is why I said you need to make it a condition of breaking the trust. To open the platform and create general standards for interoperability is part of the point. You're arbitrarily constraining the definition of a breakup to only refer to dividing up administrations, even though almost every instance of actual trust busting involves making all kinds of requirements about the conditions of subdividing operations to help make sure the same problems of consolidation and collusion don't repeat.

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

#165

Post by simplecomplex »

thosakwe wrote: post #159
simplecomplex wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's absolutely nothing stopping competition. Switching from Facebook or Google to a competing service is as simple as typing a URL into the web browser. They maintain their business position by providing an excellent product, not by preventing other people from creating competing products.

Well, that’s not 100% true. Competitors (specifically talking about FB in this case) are often copied outright if they reject an acquisition offer. I see that as stopping competition.

Isn’t that just business competing? If I open a burger stand, and the sandwich shop next door starts selling burgers, they’re competing for the same customers. The government stopping the sandwich shop from selling burgers would be anti-competitive.

I’m assuming you’re referring to Facebook implementing stories? Preventing them from implementing them would be anti-competitive.

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

#166

Post by Larrikin »

twblalock wrote: post #36
lumberjack wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then state should do what they did to make healthcare.gov work on the second time through. The roll out sucked but it's perfectly fine now

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

#167

Post by 3xblah »

tivert wrote: post #133
3xblah wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I was thinking that users would share relevant portions of these archives with their friends, etc. directly, without a middleman.

They have already shared the content of the archive via Facebook.

Nor was I thinking of a "Facebook alternative" (neither was the parent comment). What I was thinking is that one could demonstrate certain features in an app that one does not find one Facebook.

Users would then become familiar with features that are possible but that they are not getting on Facebook.

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

#168

Post by barry-cotter »

kybernetikos wrote: post #122
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 agree with this - in the recent discussion on Slate Star Codex about Thiel's views, the point was made that outsize success and profits are generally a sign of lack of competition. To me, after a reasonable period for them to capitalise on their innovation/higher quality execution, any company making huge profits in an area with few competitors should be subject to a range of measures designed to reduce barriers to…

Indeed, we wouldn’t want to incentivise people to produce wealth and improve people’s lives. That way inequality lies.

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

#169

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#170

Post by nradov »

tivert wrote: post #137
nradov wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ad…

That doesn't actually solve anything, it just shifts the problem definition. How do you expect legislators, bureaucrats, and judges to define something as amorphous and constantly changing as a "feature category"? I can't see how that would ever comply with the Constitutional vagueness doctrine.
Post reply on HN