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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

#181

Post by Silhouette »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #33
pojntfx wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not using Firefox, you're using Safari with another skin. Browser engines other than Apple-approved Safari/WebKit are illegal on Apple platforms, effectively rendering it the biggest blocker for the web right now (no PWAs, no push notifications, no offline support, no support for free audio codecs, extensions ... and the list goes on!)

I wouldn't bury your flag on this argument. Many users don't care about that stuff, and Apple is winning the privacy war through decisions like these.

Many users don't care about that stuff

Users don't object to a lot of things when either they aren't aware of them or they believe they can't do anything about them. That doesn't mean they aren't still being harmed.

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

#182

Post by justapassenger »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #107
shockeychap wrote: post #102

Given the volume and profitably of tech trading by members of Congress (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26821601 ) I have ZERO confidence that any useful legislation will come of it. It will just be a bunch of earnest and disingenuous theatre by the very people profiting from a bunch of companies who make Microsoft circa 1995 look like a kitten. For my part, I think the fundamental business model of profitin…

They could just as easily profit from shorting tech etc. True whales make money on the up and down.

Shorting is much more legally risky. SEC basically doesn’t view shorts as investors, and that has interesting outcome.

The don’t care if you illegally cause stock to go up, and you profit from it, as other investors also profit.

But causing stock to go down opens you to much higher liability, for hurting investors. And if you profit of it via short, you’re in much more legal risk.

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

#183

Post by kube-system »

dontblink wrote: post #167
kube-system wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are using their power to force competitors out of the market. That's what antitrust is about anyway -- it's not really about how happy customers are. "We're the best!" is easy to say when you've decimated any potential rivals.

It is in the US though?

Laws that prohibit anticompetitive practices do just as the name implies -- they prohibit companies from acting in a way that inhibits competition with their competitors in the market.

The impact on consumers is often used as a justification and evidence of that, but it's not usually a requirement. It is assumed that the act of being anticompetitive itself is harmful to consumers as it limits their options.

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

#184

Post by kenny87 »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #131
shockeychap wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point, but there’s less predictability (both in timing and valuations) on the way down. It’s also harder to disguise the insider nature of shorts based on upcoming legislation. On top of that, these companies spend millions on lobbying and have SO MUCH INFLUENCE among DC insiders that reform doesn’t have a chance. It’s more corrupt than anything Hollywood ever made about Big Oil.

I’ll agree with your second point. How can we begin fixing it?

Very nice to see to genuine interest on HN in solving our Democracy's problems, instead the general cynicism, apathy and self-interest we all too often see. But to be fair, I think it's first important to realize that we are discussing historical forces. The kind of movements that we all read about in school, are happening now. And I think when we look at history we'll see that social forces strong enough to reform empires have always started in the marginalized communities. Our role here is to become active participants, on a day-to-day basis, in these communities and aid them, both technically and morally, in building -- and here is the key concept -- decentralized quasi-autonomous [1] communities. No amount of reform, sorry being a cynic, will "fix" Washington and its relationship with "corporate capitalism". The Supreme Court settled this question, campaign money is "free speech". [2] But we can build new social structures in the gaps. It happened about 2,000 years in empire built in Rome. Why not today?

[1] http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/decentralization/admi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

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

#185

Post by ryan93 »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #36
jiofih wrote: post #16

The top 10 tech companies have collectively acquired and shut down hundreds of small, successful startups. I believe this is very detrimental to the web and the economy. Founders need to have that as an option for an exit though. What are the alternatives? Limiting ownership to 49%?

>Founders need to have that as an option for an exit though. What are the alternatives? Limiting ownership to 49%? No they don't. To rephrase, you're suggesting that companies are entitled to getting bought out. That's ridiculous. Owning a company is a privilege, people who abuse that privilege, billionaires, should be stripped of that power. Corporate America is cancerous, consuming and destroying everything indiscr…

It's not a privilege. The company is their property. Political opinions you dont like on facebook is just something you are going to have to get over.

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

#186

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

granshaw wrote: post #79
jiofih wrote: post #16

The top 10 tech companies have collectively acquired and shut down hundreds of small, successful startups. I believe this is very detrimental to the web and the economy. Founders need to have that as an option for an exit though. What are the alternatives? Limiting ownership to 49%?

The whole notion of starting a company, possibly ignoring profits, with a buyout as the endgame is frankly ridiculous, and emblematic of the excesses and war chests that these big corps yield. What happened to building a profitable company, or at least one close enough to ipo, and “making it” that way?

There are people leading those companies, but they're so few and far between that you can probably list them off the top of your head in the tech space. When a successful company like GitHub can't pass up double-digit billions, then, really, what hope is there? Companies like Microsoft have $130B of cash on hand, and (almost) everyone has a price. They can go buy several more of those companies, and that's why we hear a new $20B buyout rumor every week. If you could, you would too. IMO, that's why we need to start capping company size/valuation. There's no social good in Microsoft owning all the things they do. It only benefits the executives at MS and large shareholders, and I think they're benefitting enough already.

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

#187

Post by tablespoon »

rincebrain wrote: post #148
spacemanmatt wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's dirty tricks with DOS, Windows, and other would-be commodity software are legend. They should have gotten parted out into OS, Desktop suite, and probably several other fragments a long time ago. That stuff was a nightmare for me as a consumer.

Should they have, though? I agree they should have been penalized (ideally more harshly than they were) for their legendary anticompetitive behavior, I'm just no longer as sure that partitioning the company out into distinct divisions would have been a net gain for the consumer as I used to be, especially against the specific behaviors they were accused of. How, for example, would breaking up Microsoft into distinct…

> How, for example, would breaking up Microsoft into distinct divisions prevent, say, the OS division from enforcing the same anticompetitive requirements on companies licensing the OS?

That kind of breakup wouldn't have solved that anti-competitive problem, but it would have solved others (e.g. the Office Team being able to use undocumented OS APIs to get an edge on competitors).

Though, personally I kinda think a breakup of a tech monopoly should be more extreme, for instance by breaking it up by division and splitting some of those divisions further into competitors (e.g. split the OS division in two, each with their own Windows fork to sell, and all the Windows trademarks go to some independent interoperability consortium).

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

#188

Post by zepto »

capableweb wrote: post #47
ericmay wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it more competition? You’ll visit at most what 2 of those stores looking for a product? I can use plugins in a web browser to effectively visit 100 stores to shop for the best price on an item. Amazon is just another vendor. -edit- To add to this. If you want to compare to Amazon then you have to look at the market share and revenue of those stores too. Not simply their existence. It doesn't matter if an ACE h…

> I can use plugins in a web browser to effectively visit 100 stores to shop for the best price on an item. Amazon is just another vendor. Sure you could, but is that how most users use the web? According to Statista (2019 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/955796/global-amazon-e-c... ) [same link I put before], over 50% of the market is just Amazon, even though it's soooo easy to chose another one. Since they now…

> Sure you could, but is that how most users use the web?

It’s not clear what the point is here.

> According to Statista (2019 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/955796/global-amazon-e-c...) [same link I put before], over 50% of the market is just Amazon, even though it's soooo easy to chose another one.

Could it be that people choose Amazon because despite its faults it provides the best service?

I dislike Amazon and try to avoid them wherever possible, but in practice I probably use them 50% of the time, because in those instances there isn’t a better alternative.

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

#189

Post by robbiemitchell »

traib wrote: post #150
zffr wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebKit on iOS has special sandbox privileges not available to other user frameworks. I think it allows it to spawn other processes, and do special stuff to increase its performance and decrease energy consumption. It seems like an engineering challenge to expose these features to arbitrary 3rd party frameworks in a way that doesn’t allow these features to be abused. Not sure of Apple’s full motives, but I think this…

> WebKit on iOS has special sandbox privileges not available to other user frameworks. Okay so WebKit cannot be used as is, but then why forbid other alternatives [1]? Seems like a Catch-22. > It seems like an engineering challenge to expose these features to arbitrary 3rd party frameworks in a way that doesn’t allow these features to be abused. How does literally every single other platform manage this? AFAIK none o…

What prohibited browsers are you referring to?

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

#190

Post by lallysingh »

salawat wrote: post #143
throwaways885 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a teenager I felt pushed out of conversations because I was an Android user, and got written off as a green bubble.

That's the most ridiculous division known to man. You don't use the right back end, therefore you aren't cool. It's absolutely absurd. I mean, about on par for teenagers, but gah... I can picture the conversation about "Your "friends" are complete morons, and you shouldn't feel ashamed or ostracized at what is probably one of the most silliest social signaling practices on the planet." It hurts being an engineer some…

> That's the most ridiculous division known to man.

Ha! They're teenagers. They will invent new divisions as needed.

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