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47 Attorneys general now support Facebook antitrust investigation

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Re: 47 Attorneys general now support Facebook antitrust investigation

#3

Post by simplebuilder »

It’s an issue with bipartisan support, so you can bet no matter how hastily conceived some of the specific proposals are, that you’ll see them all clamoring to get credit for “taking down the man.” It will be interesting to see if out of the anti-monopoly legislation some genuinely interesting start-ups can find a new, interesting niche.

Re: 47 Attorneys general now support Facebook antitrust investigation

#6

Post by turc1656 »

officialchicken wrote: post #5
turc1656 wrote: post #2

I see mention to a Google one as well. What about others like Amazon?

[flagged]

This isn't whataboutism even though it contains the words "what about". Whataboutism is an attempt to excuse one thing because some other bad actor or event wasn't dealt with properly. It's when you try to discredit an argument by implicitly charging them with some sort of hypocritical stance. I'm simply saying Amazon should be next on the list that they investigate. I'm not trying to say that these are bullshit inquires because Amazon hasn't been investigated, which is what a whataboutism on this would be. I'm saying the opposite - that Facebook and Google should be investigated but so should Amazon.

Re: 47 Attorneys general now support Facebook antitrust investigation

#7

Post by throwaway87378 »

x220 wrote: post #4
turc1656 wrote: post #2

I see mention to a Google one as well. What about others like Amazon?

What is amazon a near-monopoly in?

Amazon is a trust, not yet a monopoly. There is an inherent conflict of interest, and lack of recourse (forced arbitration), between Amazon marketplace sellers and Amazon the e-commerce store. Likewise between AWS customers and Amazon the e-commerce store and advertising network. By any reasonable consumer standards, AWS should be split off into a separate company. The pervasive surveillance and continual scandals surrounding Ring's handling of user data, when taken in context of Amazon's collection of user data from the e-commerce store, advertising network, Alexa, other Amazon business units, and purchased third party data, mean that Amazon should never have been allowed to acquire Ring in the first place. If the Department of Justice Antitrust Division had not been completely captured by corporate interests, they would be in the process of litigating to undo this acquisition right now.

Re: 47 Attorneys general now support Facebook antitrust investigation

#8

Post by smegma2 »

throwaway87378 wrote: post #7
x220 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is amazon a near-monopoly in?

Amazon is a trust, not yet a monopoly. There is an inherent conflict of interest, and lack of recourse (forced arbitration), between Amazon marketplace sellers and Amazon the e-commerce store. Likewise between AWS customers and Amazon the e-commerce store and advertising network. By any reasonable consumer standards, AWS should be split off into a separate company. The pervasive surveillance and continual scandals su…

Have we seen companies get split off in similar circumstances in the past?

Re: 47 Attorneys general now support Facebook antitrust investigation

#9

Post by sp332 »

x220 wrote: post #4
turc1656 wrote: post #2

I see mention to a Google one as well. What about others like Amazon?

What is amazon a near-monopoly in?

They're buying competing booksellers, which is by definition anti-competitive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...

Re: 47 Attorneys general now support Facebook antitrust investigation

#10

Post by tombert »

smegma2 wrote: post #8
throwaway87378 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is a trust, not yet a monopoly. There is an inherent conflict of interest, and lack of recourse (forced arbitration), between Amazon marketplace sellers and Amazon the e-commerce store. Likewise between AWS customers and Amazon the e-commerce store and advertising network. By any reasonable consumer standards, AWS should be split off into a separate company. The pervasive surveillance and continual scandals su…

Have we seen companies get split off in similar circumstances in the past?

Not exactly the same, but in the 90's we almost split up Microsoft to two separate divisions: a company that builds the operating system, and a company that builds user-space applications.

This was because, during the browser wars of the 90s, Microsoft was purposefully gimping competing browsers at the OS level like Netscape Navigator so as to encourage people to use Internet Explorer.

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