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U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#91

Post by indigochill »

izacus wrote: post #52
roenxi wrote: post #15

I support anything that makes life harder for the FAANG style companies - I'm just never going to believe that the US house will do what this article signals they do. Facebook and Twitter are profound influences on politics. I look on the politically aligned mainstream news, practices like gerrymandering, the general state of political discourse, do some quick joining of dots and ... well. Political involvement isn't…

I'm not an american so can you explain if Facebook and Twitter actually have bigger sway than obviously partisan news media like Fox News? (At least in our part of the world that media seriously outstrips any kind of influence FB and Twitter yelling has.)

> can you explain if Facebook and Twitter actually have bigger sway than obviously partisan news media like Fox News?

More people get their news from social media than from... let's call it "big media" (CNN, Fox, etc). Sometimes that's from people linking content from those sources, but the point being people are spending a -lot- more time trawling social media than they are specifically checking their news media feeds.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#92

Post by baq »

skystarman wrote: post #74
capableweb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just whatever marketplace, anti-monopoly legislation focuses on markets where the players own a significant share of the full market. In the case of Amazon, it seems like they have above 52% of the e-commerce market in the US in 2019 ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/955796/global-amazon-e-c... ) so probably it's even higher now. When one player now has over half the market, you need to carefully watch w…

The standard for antitrust enforcement for decades has been when the action of a company harms consumers. How does Amazon harm consumers? I mean precisely, how? Amazon is one of the most highly rated companies in the US by its customers. Its NPS score is 69 and 70 is considered "world class". I can get almost anything online shipped to my house the SAME DAY. If Amazon sends you the wrong item they'll let you keep the…

One example: Amazon doesn’t seem to care about fraudulent sellers and fake paid-for reviews on its platform.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#93

Post by mlac »

izacus wrote: post #52
roenxi wrote: post #15

I support anything that makes life harder for the FAANG style companies - I'm just never going to believe that the US house will do what this article signals they do. Facebook and Twitter are profound influences on politics. I look on the politically aligned mainstream news, practices like gerrymandering, the general state of political discourse, do some quick joining of dots and ... well. Political involvement isn't…

I'm not an american so can you explain if Facebook and Twitter actually have bigger sway than obviously partisan news media like Fox News? (At least in our part of the world that media seriously outstrips any kind of influence FB and Twitter yelling has.)

I’m providing the numbers below for context, but cable news has a lot less daily active users than Twitter or Facebook. In my view, though, the daily news watchers are much more entrenched in their views, less likely to change, and believe strongly that the rest of the country watches the news like they do. I’ve had family members on both sides of the isle be extremely passionate and get physically worked up that the world was ending because they relied on cable news as their source of truth. The Fox follower was miserable when Obama was in office and the MSNBC follower was miserable more often than not when Trump was in office.

“Over the first full week of 2021 (Jan. 4 through Jan. 10), CNN ranked first among cable networks (roughly 2.8 million viewers per day; 4.2 million in primetime) followed by MSNBC (2.3 million per day ;3.8 million in primetime) and Fox News in third (1.7 million per day; 3.2 million in primetime).”[1]

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2021/01/16/fox-news-v...

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#94

Post by verdverm »

Black101 wrote: post #56
capableweb wrote: post #5

> potentially barring companies like Amazon.com from operating the markets in which they also compete Absolutely bananas that this haven't been fixed yet! How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? Obviously for-profit companies will abuse their positions if it'll earn them more money, and fines ends up being the cost of doing business instead of deterrents. How is Apple allowed t…

Another problem with Google is their popups... I.E.: If you are not using Chrome, and visit Google.com, they will let you know. That is how they got so many people to switch to it.

fwiw, I just started using MS products again and they do the same thing. I'm not switching because I tried them and Google still has superior products

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#95

Post by indigochill »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #57
dbetteridge wrote: post #6

"A year after initiating the investigation, we received testimony from the Chief Executive Officers of the investigated companies: Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai. For nearly six hours, we pressed for answers about their business practices, including about evidence concerning the extent to which they have exploited, entrenched, and expanded their power over digital markets in anticompetitive…

> By controlling the infrastructure of the digital age, they have surveilled other businesses to identify potential rivals, and have ultimately bought out, copied, or cut off their competitive threats. Is this accurate? I would think control of the infrastructure is with companies like Comcast/ATT/Verizon/Verisign/ and others who you can’t bypass by typing in different characters into the URL bar. Would it be more ac…

Comcast and friends are essentially utility companies. If the internet is "a bunch of tubes", they keep the tubes clear. They don't get involved at the content layer. Comcast may be a crappy provider in many ways, but they've never made the news for politically-motivated network traffic filtering.

FAANG on the other hand all get their hands dirty in deciding what content people get to see and what not, which would largely be a non-issue if there was mainstream competition, but there isn't, so rather than change their behavior and support/make/demand alternatives, consumers (including politicians) want Big Brother to step in, somehow forgetting that rarely solves anything and will simply consolidate more power with those who already have it.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#96

Post by tarboreus »

marderfarker2 wrote: post #81
capableweb wrote: post #5

> potentially barring companies like Amazon.com from operating the markets in which they also compete Absolutely bananas that this haven't been fixed yet! How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? Obviously for-profit companies will abuse their positions if it'll earn them more money, and fines ends up being the cost of doing business instead of deterrents. How is Apple allowed t…

Maybe they rank higher because their product is superior? I mean is there really anything better than Google Earth?

Right, and Froogle was the best shopping service in 2004. That's why we all still shop on Froogle to this day.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#97

Post by quickthrowman »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #75
ohashi wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sector does Microsoft dominate these days? They actually are pretty good at competing. Major units at Microsoft: OS. This one is old, gone through anti trust stuff already. There's Mac / Linux. Cloud. Azure is competing against AWS, GCP, everyone else. Gaming. Xbox has Sony and Nintendo. The strongest monopoly argument is still operating system/office, but even that Google is eroding away at office. The server m…

> But their major monopoly has already been tested and their power is waning according to market share ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste ...). I don’t see their power waning. Their control of Office and Windows lets them bundle things like Teams and OneDrive, which puts pressure on smaller companies like Slack (sold to Salesforce) and Dropbox, who have a harder time selling when MS is thr…

Let’s all shed a tear for the billionaire founders of slack and dropbox, if it wasn’t for Microsoft they’d have 10 billion each instead of 1-2 billion. Poor Drew, poor Stewart, the world has been cruel and unforgiving to them.

Have you considered that perhaps file storage and chat rooms aren’t innovative ideas that deserve massive multi-billion dollar rewards?

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#98

Post by eecc »

capableweb wrote: post #18
eecc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is Apple allowed to disallow any other web browsers on their mobile devices? We already went through this with Microsoft in the past but suddenly it's different? Nope, total Apple and Oranges. Forbidding other HTML rendering engines on iOS, prevented other massive players (Google) from forcing their browser platform onto Apple’s user base and Electron-ized Apple’s ecosystem making iOS a marginal runtime. Or wor…

How does preventing competition in a specific application category lead to Apple preventing Google from "forcing" iOS users to use Chrome? Not sure I follow your argument here or how allowing browsers would somehow make it possible for Google to automatically install Chrome for iOS users. Imagine if Google suddenly made their Chrome browser behave differently on Google websites compared to others, like 0.5 the perfor…

They are intentionally protecting their ecosystem from the thread of an incumbent strangling their growth and marginalizing their strategy.

From a market dominant position it would be Antitrust material. Not in this case: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272698/global-market-sha...

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#100

Post by bko »

capableweb wrote: post #20
lotsofpulp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can Amazon be allowed to sell competing products in their own marketplace, when they own the actual marketplace? They should have been forced to divide their busin Depends on how you define “marketplace”. Costco/Walmart/Best Buy/Target/Home Depot/Lowe’s/grocery stores all sell their own brands next to competing brands in their stores. Is their one store the marketplace? It takes considerably more effort to go t…

It's not just whatever marketplace, anti-monopoly legislation focuses on markets where the players own a significant share of the full market. In the case of Amazon, it seems like they have above 52% of the e-commerce market in the US in 2019 ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/955796/global-amazon-e-c... ) so probably it's even higher now. When one player now has over half the market, you need to carefully watch w…

> It's not just whatever marketplace, anti-monopoly legislation focuses on markets where the players own a significant share of the full market.

It depends on what you call the marketplace. Look at the broader "retail" sector

> The eCommerce giant [Amazon] accounted for 3.2 percent of total consumer spending in Q2 (spanning all categories, including retail) and 9 percent of total retail spending... When it comes to consumer spending, Walmart accounts for 3.4 percent overall and 10.2 percent for retail. That’s up from 9.6 percent in Q1 2020.

Walmart has a considerable share.

> so even if Home Depot wanted to exploit their position, they probably couldn't

Do you really think Amazon has more pricing power than Walmart? I'm much more likely to switch online retailers than my brick and mortar store. It's a lot easier to compare prices and switch.

https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2020/amazon-and-walmarts-...

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