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Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

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Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#31

Post by whiteflame7000 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #24
aj7 wrote: post #14

Warning. Regulation almost always favors incumbents.

This argument is always repeated within the first ten minutes of these discussions, but I don't really understand why anyone assumes that competition is somehow the panacea to every problem on the planet. I don't want ten unregulated facebooks who all leak my data, I want one facebook that plays by reasonable rules. The dynamics of social networks which don't deliver value if they're fragmented has made the competiti…

Competition is the fundamental of Capitalism. Capitalism becomes cronyism without fair competition.

Edit: Downvoters please elucidate?

Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#32

Post by markus_zhang »

Barrin92 wrote: post #24
aj7 wrote: post #14

Warning. Regulation almost always favors incumbents.

This argument is always repeated within the first ten minutes of these discussions, but I don't really understand why anyone assumes that competition is somehow the panacea to every problem on the planet. I don't want ten unregulated facebooks who all leak my data, I want one facebook that plays by reasonable rules. The dynamics of social networks which don't deliver value if they're fragmented has made the competiti…

Well the thing is, if you want one facebook that plays by reasonable rules, creating a few competitors might actually help to achieve the goal.

Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#33

Post by Ensorceled »

mugwort13 wrote: post #19
bureaucrat wrote: post #8

Regulate yourselves, FFS. I don’t want my paid operating system to send my private information constantly to your company.

If this is your posture, I am assuming you don't use Android, ChromeOS, iOS, MacOS, Fire OS, or even some no paid OSes like Ubuntu.

Sounds like they still use Windows and are speaking directly to the President of Microsoft which just asked the government to regulate his industry.

Why are you accusing them of some kind of hypocrisy here?

I also don't want ANY of my products, paid or unpaid, to spy on me. Assume if someone calls out a particular vendor for a particular instance of privacy violations, they are not explicitly or implicitly giving a free pass to everybody else.

Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#34

Post by alexis_fr »

What I’m worried about is, Europe doesn’t even have this debate. It’s all currently in the hands of where those technologies were invented, America. It leaves you, US people, to arbitrate between freedom of speech and hate censorship, monopolies and fair competition. Whereever we go in terms of defining democracy and what it means at the time of technology, we’re dependent on you. Europe certainly, probably Asia too.

Example of the current status of France: - We don’t have protected freedom of speech, there are penalties for insults, defamation and hate speech (against the protected groups only) (statistics about ethnicities are forbidden, which means no statistics about crime and ethnicity) (applied only for influential people, it seems), people have an expectation of what is said has been verified so they are not used to checking the info so they are... gullible (sorry, no better word). So I would say there is no tradition of free speech here, with the usual required education that goes with it (about the fact that people can freely tell lies).

- The new law is about to enter in action: Platforms must remove « hate speech » content, and keep it (I don’t know how much time) so the police can build a case if they want to attack.

Recently, stories about the books published by our minister of equality using a false name (books about advice for sexual life) have been removed, using the « hate speech » procedures. So pretty much everything is hate speech. We have no protection for political dissidence here. Everyone’s a progressive, everything else is « hate speech » and problems grow because they are not addressed.

Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#35

Post by sfkdjf9j3j »

bureaucrat wrote: post #15
aaronchall wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quit using software you can't control. --- > And what? Use ‘Linux desktop’? No thank you. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. My wife uses it. I've used it for the past decade. XFCE is fully featured, smooth, and very light-weight. Others have been great too. Want software? Just install it with the package manager. Games? I used to run them in a windows VM when I really wanted to.

And what? Use ‘Linux desktop’? No thank you.

Have you tried using linux on a personal computer? You might be surprised!

Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#36

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

hd4 wrote: post #9

Why can't big tech self-regulate? Why must it always be a solution that depends on big government instead? Why should anyone trust the government given the last few thousand years of history?

I think because democracy also implies a separation of powers, so that you have the players watching each other in order to prevent any player from becoming too strong.

Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#38

Post by rayiner »

Barrin92 wrote: post #24
aj7 wrote: post #14

Warning. Regulation almost always favors incumbents.

This argument is always repeated within the first ten minutes of these discussions, but I don't really understand why anyone assumes that competition is somehow the panacea to every problem on the planet. I don't want ten unregulated facebooks who all leak my data, I want one facebook that plays by reasonable rules. The dynamics of social networks which don't deliver value if they're fragmented has made the competiti…

> This argument is always repeated within the first ten minutes of these discussions, but I don't really understand why anyone assumes that competition is somehow the panacea to every problem on the planet.

Competitive markets are the closest thing we have to a panacea for every problem. There’s lots of things the US and Europe don’t agree on. But one thing they do agree on is deregulation to enable competition. That’s why even Macron in France is trying to privatize SNCF. That’s why Denmark abolished its version of the FCC. That’s why nearly every Western European country has deregulated markets for wholesale electricity, allocates public airwaves through auctions, etc. Thats why Vietnam, which is still technically a Marxist-Leninist country, has 95% of people supporting market capitalism: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/13/vietnam....

That is not to say that market failures don’t exist. But we should think extremely hard before we try non-market solutions, identifying exactly why the market isn’t working and addressing those specific issues in the least invasive way.

Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#39

Post by NOGDP »

wslh wrote: post #11
aaronchall wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quit using software you can't control. --- > And what? Use ‘Linux desktop’? No thank you. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. My wife uses it. I've used it for the past decade. XFCE is fully featured, smooth, and very light-weight. Others have been great too. Want software? Just install it with the package manager. Games? I used to run them in a windows VM when I really wanted to.

That is naive. Organizations and people depend on specific software and there is not replacement for any kind of app that is spying on you.

Organisations mandating use of a specific OS is one thing, but most people would be able to get by fine using Linux personally.

Re: Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech

#40

Post by AJ007 »

Pinckney wrote: post #29

It sounds like he wants to require tech companies to ban speech that the US is constitutionally forbidden from banning itself.

This is a two way street. They may dictate not only what is banned, but also what can not be banned. Clearly, depending on which political party or points of view held by those with the most influence at a given time will dictate what types of speech rules are enforced.

One should look at the various democracies in power across Europe and the various regions of the United States and consider just how much control they wish those governing bodies to have on what is allowed to be said, not said, and how it should be said. Additionally, consider what sorts of governance may potentially be in power in the future as well.

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