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

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

#341
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, how does this harm consumers?

What are some examples of behavior you would accept as being actual harm to consumers?

Under the Bork standard, to which skystarman is alluding, rising price is the only concern. "Consumer harm" doctrine.

This was invented from whole cloth by Robert Bork, Richard Posner, and Aaron Director, at the University of Chicago, as part of a decades-long project and organisation to redraft US antitrust policy. It was devastatingly effective.

It also has little if any basis in the legislative rationale of original antitrust legislation in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antitrust_Paradox

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

#342
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Amazon cares substantially about stopping these things. As is the case when you are fighting against other humans, who are crafty, financially-motivated, and are willing to break the law, and may be operating from different jurisdictions where attempting to get the DA to prosecute them or filing a lawsuit against them is ineffective, it's a very difficult battle to fight. As an example I'd be surprised if Amazon coul…

I don't buy it. This is why companies have (sometimes government-mandated) know-your-customer policies.

Allowing anyone to sign up and do business on your platform with minimal friction is great for growing your platform, but it's terrible for growing a trustworthy platform.

The things you bring up are the result of an allow-all policy with a denylist. Deny-all with an allowlist would fix the problem. But of course that costs a lot more to implement, and as long as people still buy stuff on Amazon despite the hassle of dealing with counterfeits, Amazon will continue to fail to fix the problem.

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

#343
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’re going to have a really hard time defining what’s “fair” for a black box algorithm to do. To which the two biggest counter-arguments are: 1. “So don’t allow black box algorithms” 2. “This is why the search engine company should be separate from the company which owns all the other products”

People use Google because the algorithm is a black box that is constantly updated to keep away black hat SEO crap. An open web page ranking algorithm is useless in an adversarial environment. There is no current signal that can’t be trivially gained that doesn’t effectively require mass user surveillance (to see “what’s really popular”). > 2. “This is why the search engine company should be separate from the company…

> An open web page ranking algorithm is useless in an adversarial environment.

Anybody with Search experience confirm or deny this claim?

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

#344
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>"The same reason you can’t put software you want on a Xbox/PlayStation/Switch." > Stop using this argument, its daft and convinces noone. Letting anyone put any software they wanted on an Xbox/Playstation/Switch would diminish the platform's value by eroding security and trust. For instance, compare online cheating ecosystems between those three platforms and the PC (where you can run any software you want). The PC…

That is totally irrelevant. This about not allowing competing browsers as a blanket policy. If this was trully about security, Apple can do as many security audits as they want. They can even charge for them. They can require affidavit, security officers, insurance policy, indemnity, etc. But they dont because this is not about security, it is about controling the market

Not allowing arbitrary code on a platform is hardly an irrelevant point. It's a fundamental architectural decision that makes deep statements about what a platform can do, and who has permission to do it. These decisions define both business models AND features such as user security and trustworthiness.

For instance, to be competitive in terms of performance, a browser almost certainly needs to JIT Javascript. If a platform prevents apps from generating code and enabling the 'X' bit in PTEs then this isn't going to work. Even if the platform provides JIT services (e.g., pass in an AST, out pops a few pages of callable code) there is still a ton of added risk.

Designing and maintaining the security of a platform is a ton of work and a big investment (assuming it's done well). Security teams are already quite busy, and adding whole app categories that are suddenly able to break previously established design decisions is not easy -- "just do a security audit on a handful of titles" is a phrase that we've all heard, many times, and it sends shivers down our spines. Having seen it tried, and been on some projects that did it, I think it's impossible to do well even at a small scale.

Been there, done that, seen projects canceled because PMs couldn't internalize the nature of the risk to the platform.

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

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The list goes on. I'm happy that it's being suggested, I'm just worried how it took so long to get here. Because this is a Gish Gallop of weak individual reasons batched together to make it seem like a stronger obvious argument when it’s not. > How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? They don’t. Amazon and Facebook both make a fortune from ads. You need to be more specific. >…

> > How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? > They don’t. Amazon and Facebook both make a fortune from ads. Yes, but they own search ads and a large percentage of web ads (though the non-siloed web is becoming less and less relevant each year), and they do everything in their power to put people into their ad funnel. They control 50% of the mobile OS, 70%+ of the browser monocu…

> Yes, but they own search ads and a large percentage of web ads (though the non-siloed web is becoming less and less relevant each year), and they do everything in their power to put people into their ad funnel.

You can call any company as a monopoly if you define its market narrowly enough. The hard question is making a good argument for your choice of market. Google is absolutely a monopoly in search advertising. But is search advertising the right market to consider? Google would argue the appropriate market is advertising as a whole, where they are clearly not a monopoly.

The ultimate question at hand is whether and to what extent consumers are being harmed by anti-competitive practices. I think in Google's case that's a hard case to make. It might be a bit easier for e.g. Facebook or Amazon, though.

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

#346

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…

Should Costco/Walmart be allowed to sell products along competing ones in their own marketplace? No! Of course! I’d like to see how well they would perform on Target/Best Buy shelves, they probably wouldn’t sell at all. Therefore the only origin for their success is an abuse of marketplace ownership, and it has distorted the market, and therefore has harmed consumers by simply reducing quality brand’s ability to scal…

I feel like this ship sailed many many decades (centuries?) ago. Pretty much any store aside from small mom-and-pops will have their own brand of commodity items that they sell alongside third-party brands. Complaints about those seem to be pretty rare.

I think the difference is that the playing field is more level. Most stores that I've seen won't make it harder to buy the name-brand version or easier to buy the store-brand version (aside from the store brand often being cheaper). They tend not to really market the store brand, so the name-brand version generally has advertising behind it and is often seen as superior, even when it really isn't. The two versions sit side-by-side on the shelves without preferential placement to either.

Meanwhile, I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon gives preferential treatment in search results to stuff that gives them a better margin, regardless of whether or not it's a better product or a better value.

I don't necessarily agree that they wouldn't sell outside their own store, though. I generally look at the store brand as the usually-cheaper "generic brand". For example, if I'm looking for cold medicine, I'll never buy NyQuil, because the equivalent store brand is more or less the exact same thing and is cheaper. But I don't really care which store brand. If the CVS-branded version somehow ended up in a Walgreens, I'd still buy it. (Obviously CVS would never sell the Walgreens version, but... yeah.)

(Speaking of mom-and-pops, I actually find it annoying when I need cold medicine, walk into my local corner store, and only find NyQuil rather than the generic CVS/Walgreens/whatever store brand. The corner store usually sells NyQuil at an even higher price than the chain pharmacy would, and there's no alternative.)

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

#347
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%?

There's an interesting intersection of monopoly and The Tech Recruiting Problem which Cory Doctorow highlighted in a Exponential View (HBS) podcast.

Acqui-Hiring is the new recruiting model.

Very roughly paraphrased, assessing tech talent has become so painfully difficult that the most effective model is essentially to assign a class assignment to a set of founders, along with a few million in seed capital, to build some Minimum Viable Proof of Talent. The seed funders act as matchmakers to the buying (typically: tech monopoly) firm, and take a finder's fee. The project is shut down (it's done its work of demonstrating competence), and the team is brought into the acquiring firm.

https://hbr.org/podcast/2021/01/big-tech-and-a-decade-of-ant...

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

#348
I'm pleased to see that Netflix has been kicked out of FAANG. Makes sense since they are facing robust competition and no-longer qualify for near monopoly status. I also support the reordering of the words as presented in the article since GAAF is way more appealing than leaving it as is with Netflix removed.

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

#349
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The list goes on. I'm happy that it's being suggested, I'm just worried how it took so long to get here. Because this is a Gish Gallop of weak individual reasons batched together to make it seem like a stronger obvious argument when it’s not. > How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? They don’t. Amazon and Facebook both make a fortune from ads. You need to be more specific. >…

> You’re going to have a really hard time defining what’s “fair” for a black box algorithm to do. To which the two biggest counter-arguments are: 1. “So don’t allow black box algorithms” 2. “This is why the search engine company should be separate from the company which owns all the other products”

So when are we banning human judgements? They are the ultimate black box.

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

#350

> 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…

Microsoft didn't ban anything. They commited the mortal sin of bundling notepad.exe and freezing out text editor innovation... or something like that.
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