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Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

mattstoller.substack.com

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Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#31

Post by jessaustin »

veerabadhra wrote: post #13
bigcorp-slave wrote: post #10

[flagged]

The anti trust break up of AT&T led to disruptive innovation, like mass produced cell phones. I personally can't wait for the AI revolution that will occur when Google is broken up. The Big Tech incumbents need to die out, because innovation stagnates in these monopolies.

That "break up", especially when considered together with the Act of '96, was a long con. Outside investors poured billions into "competitive" telcos, yet today the replacement for Ma Bell is two Daughters Bell plus a few scattered also-rans. In the meantime they got rid of common carriage, lots of PUC rules, limits on broadcast monopolies, etc. The monopoly profits they stole on the wireline side funded their anti-competitive merger spree on the wireless side. We don't have to wait for the inevitable merger between ATT and VZN to call this a giant failure.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#32

Post by wvenable »

88840-8855 wrote: post #17

One of the things that I would love to see would be the ban of all those acquisitions that those large firms do. Yet alone the 9bn USD MGM takeover by Amazon was not understandable. Amazon is already too huge. Why are those aqcuisitions allowed?

MGM is dying so they really needed to be acquired or otherwise invested in.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#33

Post by jasode »

ignoramous wrote: post #6

> The ACCESS Act mandates that big tech firms have to make their systems open to competitors and business rivals, in the same way that AT&T customers can talk to T-Mobile customers, or users of different email systems can communicate with one another. Okay, this is plausible, but it can turn into all kinds of mess as federated systems aren't simpler to design, build, or operate. For example, how would Signal inter-co…

>as federated systems aren't simpler to design or build. For example, how would Signal inter-communicate with e2ee intact with say, Facebook Messenger?

You may have used Signal as a random example but as side trivia... The non-profit Signal Foundation's Moxie Marlinspike did not want others to federate with Signal servers: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...

He said others could re-use the Signal source code and create their own ecosystems but to not federate with Signal's servers. He cited costs was one issue.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#34

Post by mrDmrTmrJ »

dantheman wrote: post #23
stephc_int13 wrote: post #12

This is clearly needed, even if late, considering that antitrust laws are not a new thing. There is hope, we tend to forget after only a few generations, but if politicians are moving now this is because the collective opinions about big tech progressively shifted during the last decade. I might be naïve, but I think that HN played a role. And of course this is not over yet.

This is clearly not needed. The citizens of the US are being harmed in education both primary and secondary, medicine, and in housing. These are heavily regulated industries that recieve large amounts of tax dollars - why are they not being addressed?

Strongly agree. We're seeing legislation target the sector of the economy with some of the highest productivity ever seen in human history.

Congress needs to look at the sectors with the lowest productivity growth! Home construction, infrastructure, health care, and eduction.

Here's a great place for congressional investigators to start: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/03/03/why-american-c...

Though, in reality, many those industries are high cost because of congress

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#35

Post by cobookman »

ignoramous wrote: post #6

> The ACCESS Act mandates that big tech firms have to make their systems open to competitors and business rivals, in the same way that AT&T customers can talk to T-Mobile customers, or users of different email systems can communicate with one another. Okay, this is plausible, but it can turn into all kinds of mess as federated systems aren't simpler to design, build, or operate. For example, how would Signal inter-co…

> how would Signal inter-communicate with e2ee intact with say, Facebook Messenger?

Couldn't you use Public Key Cryptography? Kind of like what we've done for encryption between the Web Browser and Service Provider using PKI+TLS (HTTPS).

Such-as...say each chat network having a certificate authority which crypto-signs each end-user's Public Key. With PKI used to encrypt messages between users. A 4096 PKI key can transmit 4KiB of data, which should be enough for most chat networks. For attachments or very large messages, can just copy how TLS uses PKI to transmit an AES key for decrypting a larger payload.

The user's Private Key(s) can remain on phone/browser. To keep traffic e2e encrypted.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#36

Post by reidjs »

WalterBright wrote: post #25

Notably absent of is any recognition that we live today in a very global marketplace. FAANG companies are all American. If they are broken into pieces by the US government, what if that just provides opportunity for non-US companies to now fill those ecological niches? The end result will be the US anti-trust action accomplished nothing but enabling foreign replacements.

Don't you think monopolies are bad, though? Maybe they're convenient, but it's better to spread wealth around, right?

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#37

Post by oliwarner »

dantheman wrote: post #23
stephc_int13 wrote: post #12

This is clearly needed, even if late, considering that antitrust laws are not a new thing. There is hope, we tend to forget after only a few generations, but if politicians are moving now this is because the collective opinions about big tech progressively shifted during the last decade. I might be naïve, but I think that HN played a role. And of course this is not over yet.

This is clearly not needed. The citizens of the US are being harmed in education both primary and secondary, medicine, and in housing. These are heavily regulated industries that recieve large amounts of tax dollars - why are they not being addressed?

Big Tech is in every pocket. They monitor and influence the 3-12 hours a day of screen time the average adult subjects themselves to. They can themselves, and can be paid to influence the way we think, shop and live, in ways we keep refusing to acknowledge or confront.

Yes, other things are also broken! Let's fix those too.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#38

Post by WalterBright »

reidjs wrote: post #36
WalterBright wrote: post #25

Notably absent of is any recognition that we live today in a very global marketplace. FAANG companies are all American. If they are broken into pieces by the US government, what if that just provides opportunity for non-US companies to now fill those ecological niches? The end result will be the US anti-trust action accomplished nothing but enabling foreign replacements.

Don't you think monopolies are bad, though? Maybe they're convenient, but it's better to spread wealth around, right?

What if the result of breaking up US monopolies is their replacement by non-US monopolies?

How is that better?

I'd think very, very hard about crippling US companies in a global marketplace. So far, I don't even see any discussion about it.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#39

Post by dundarious »

WalterBright wrote: post #25

Notably absent of is any recognition that we live today in a very global marketplace. FAANG companies are all American. If they are broken into pieces by the US government, what if that just provides opportunity for non-US companies to now fill those ecological niches? The end result will be the US anti-trust action accomplished nothing but enabling foreign replacements.

I'm highly skeptical of that prediction. The EU are hardly slouches with respect to anti-monopoly actions. Chinese and Russian companies are subject to intense fear-mongering (not that every criticism is invalid) and are unlikely to take the place of FAANG. And I don't foresee other Asian, African, Middle-Eastern, or companies from UK or the Americas achieving huge monopolies before actions could be taken against them.

Re: Why Did Congress Just Vote to Break Up Big Tech?

#40

Post by cryptica »

WalterBright wrote: post #25

Notably absent of is any recognition that we live today in a very global marketplace. FAANG companies are all American. If they are broken into pieces by the US government, what if that just provides opportunity for non-US companies to now fill those ecological niches? The end result will be the US anti-trust action accomplished nothing but enabling foreign replacements.

Because this tired old argument has been made far too many times.

These companies have become bloated and become a liability to the US and the dollar... Soaking up all the newly printed money and wasting it on bureaucracy whilst depriving everyone else from capital. Monopolizing user attention for the benefit of other aging, rotten, decrepit, bureaucratic corporations. They were producing big nominal gains through hoarding of newly printed money but rotting the economy from the inside. Good riddance.

If the reserve banks want to restore faith in the US dollar, they have to prove it works.

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