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Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

bigtechnology.substack.com

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Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#231

Post by repsilat »

tmp_anon_22 wrote: post #200
dalbasal wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB is somewhat of an odd man out... I certainly think reversing acquisitions would be a positive, but... With Bell, standard oil and past monopolies... the goal was to decentralise while keeping oil and telecom viable. We wanted what they made, and didn't want disruptions. Do we want what FB makes? Is it scarce? I feel like we would have a sufficient supply of likes, shares, messages and posts regardless. There doesn…

I think if Facebook got truly broken up worse apps would take its place, particularly in communities outside US jurisdiction. Say what you will about Facebook, but I believe some random FB employee can't just dive through my personal messages without consequences. Having met several, I believe their data scientists go to great lengths to strip PII and generally secure data sets in transit between teams and outside pa…

> I think if Facebook got truly broken up worse apps would take its place

Facebook has nothing approaching a monopoly on attention, social media, messaging, anything really. All of their products have serious, billion-dollar, hundreds-of-millions-of-users competitors. Even if they disappeared in a puff of smoke I don't think any competitive landscapes would change much.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#233

Post by bingidingi »

graeme wrote: post #222
bingidingi wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe Amazon is more like 50%+ now, and to compared to brick & mortar... Wal-Mart is considered huge and still only ~10% of the market. There are more than 3 grocery chains in your link, I think you may have overlooked the regional chains listed below.

Nope, 40.4%: https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-dominates-us-ecomme...

maybe I was looking at bad data? this says 51.2% of retail ecommerce

https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2021/amazon-walmart-nearl...

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#234

Post by [deleted] »

crazygringo wrote: post #204
nerdponx wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard that one before, but it would be pretty clever. I think most people just use it wrong.

What do you mean using it wrong? The article is using it in exactly the way I described. "Throw the kitchen sink at something" is a widely used, valid expression these days. People are using it to mean expending every effort, so people seem to be using it right . And the wonderful thing about language is that however most people are using it is by definition what it means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_des…

[deleted]

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#235

Post by nicolashahn »

tmp_anon_22 wrote: post #200
dalbasal wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB is somewhat of an odd man out... I certainly think reversing acquisitions would be a positive, but... With Bell, standard oil and past monopolies... the goal was to decentralise while keeping oil and telecom viable. We wanted what they made, and didn't want disruptions. Do we want what FB makes? Is it scarce? I feel like we would have a sufficient supply of likes, shares, messages and posts regardless. There doesn…

I think if Facebook got truly broken up worse apps would take its place, particularly in communities outside US jurisdiction. Say what you will about Facebook, but I believe some random FB employee can't just dive through my personal messages without consequences. Having met several, I believe their data scientists go to great lengths to strip PII and generally secure data sets in transit between teams and outside pa…

Facebook employee here. A significant chunk of onboarding is driving the message through that if you abuse your powers as an engineer to access personal user data, you will be insta-fired without warning. There are a number of checks in place to ensure that employees that don't need access to the data for their specific work cannot get it either.

Additionally, the privacy review process for new products/features is extremely stringent and time consuming. Product teams have been hamstrung significantly, with some engineers I know complaining that they're not even able to get half as much work done as they used to.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#236

Post by repsilat »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #228
bpye wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take is to compare how ads are displayed today, vs maybe 10 years ago. Ads today are almost indistinguishable from organic content, and are typically at the top of any results. I would think that ads could still exist if organic results were still prioritised, and probably that the ads are clearly marked.

> Ads today are almost indistinguishable from organic content If that's the problem then there should be specific rules addressing that. > and are typically at the top of any results. I don't think ads were ever not at the top of the results. > I would think that ads could still exist if organic results were still prioritised What does that mean concretely? How many organic results would have to be above the ads?

>> Ads today are almost indistinguishable from organic content

> If that's the problem then there should be specific rules addressing that.

Honest question, why? If ads make the experience worse for users then the page owner will suffer and be vulnerable to competition. If they make the experience better (possibly by raising money to fund unrelated improvements) it's pro-consumer.

Is the problem that it's deceitful? That it's fraud? That users are tricked into clicking a link? IMO the barrier to regulation should be pretty high, and I'm not sure this is something where the government needs to get involved.

(Now, if the ad content appears to be attributed to someone, I guess that person could consider it defamatory. And if it's untrue or illegal I could see the page owner being liable. But "not clearly an ad" is too thin.)

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#237

Post by ProjectArcturis »

andreilys wrote: post #205
ethbr0 wrote: post #54

I've come around and landed more on the opinion that we're now enabling our jailors. Light tech regulation was exactly the correct approach in the 1990s (and arguably the 2000s). It enabled mind-boggling rapid and stunning innovation. ... However, the massive corporate fortunes built by the winners of those times are now primarily enabling rent seeking. Google and Facebook's other work is interesting in the same way…

IMHO, everyone will be better off if Facebook, Google, and Amazon are shattered into small enough independent pieces that (1) "get bought" is no longer the startup win condition & (2) they have peer level competitors in all markets in which they participate. I’m sure Chinese Tech co’s would absolutely love to have their Western competition knee-capped by their own governments. Will make it a lot easier for them to do…

If we protect out markets from all monopolies, foreign included, we'd end up with tons of competitive companies all scrapping to be the best. Instead what we've got now are monoliths that will gradually ossify into cable-company levels of innovation and customer service. Breaking up domestic monopolies would be one of the best things we could do to compete internationally.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#238

Post by ethbr0 »

davedx wrote: post #217
ethbr0 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a valid point. Less so specifically to China, and more so generally to all countries with national champions (e.g. South Korea). In some sense, it's a zero sum game, where if your country don't scale or allow companies to scale, they find the next most favorable country. Or another country's companies succeed because of the additional support provided. But subsidies and government support have always been the bi…

How is it a zero sum game?

Edited my post to clarify the language a bit.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#239

Post by amadeuspagel »

repsilat wrote: post #236
amadeuspagel wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ads today are almost indistinguishable from organic content If that's the problem then there should be specific rules addressing that. > and are typically at the top of any results. I don't think ads were ever not at the top of the results. > I would think that ads could still exist if organic results were still prioritised What does that mean concretely? How many organic results would have to be above the ads?

>> Ads today are almost indistinguishable from organic content > If that's the problem then there should be specific rules addressing that. Honest question, why? If ads make the experience worse for users then the page owner will suffer and be vulnerable to competition. If they make the experience better (possibly by raising money to fund unrelated improvements) it's pro-consumer. Is the problem that it's deceitful?…

I don't have a view on that. My point is just that specific rules addressing a specific problem are better then vague rules justified by a specific problem.

Re: Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

#240

Post by ethbr0 »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #226
ethbr0 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a valid point. Less so specifically to China, and more so generally to all countries with national champions (e.g. South Korea). In some sense, it's a zero sum game, where if your country don't scale or allow companies to scale, they find the next most favorable country. Or another country's companies succeed because of the additional support provided. But subsidies and government support have always been the bi…

Sort of, protonmail or fastmail could get 20 million customers and gmail would be juuust fine.

But would the NSA and FBI? (Limiting for purposes of discussion to legal, specific subpoenas)

General point being that the US government will tend to avoid doing things that are bad for the US government.

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