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Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

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Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#131

Post by laurent92 »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #9

Trust busting can seem like it’s anti free market, but when a company has a monopoly on a network it stops functioning as a company and basically becomes a government. The problem with Facebook/Amazon/Google is that they have a monopoly on a specific information network, for Facebook the social graph, internet discoverability for Google, and online shopping for Amazon. It’s similar to if a single company owned the ro…

Of course. Trust-busting has always been part of liberalism.

The idea of liberalism has always been to avoid monopolies, which government is just one form of. The government’s role should be reduced to the minimum, police-army-justice-currency, and even the last one is up for a debate. So the government’s role is to stay small, and make companies stay small enough.

Unfortunately this flew away in 2001 wehn Microsoft had been condemned, but not sentenced, because after 9/11, USA needed their companies to reign upon the rest of the world. Maybe time has come to admit that US reigning on the rest of the world hurt the domestic market with too-large-monopolies, and maybe it is time to come back to a competition market.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#132

Post by throwaway894345 »

sanderjd wrote: post #46
camjohnson26 wrote: post #9

Trust busting can seem like it’s anti free market, but when a company has a monopoly on a network it stops functioning as a company and basically becomes a government. The problem with Facebook/Amazon/Google is that they have a monopoly on a specific information network, for Facebook the social graph, internet discoverability for Google, and online shopping for Amazon. It’s similar to if a single company owned the ro…

I know this is the inevitable and cliche pushback, but it never seems to be grappled with so it remains worth pointing out: none of the three things you mentioned are anywhere close to monopolies. There are lots of social networks (Twitter and TikTok are extremely successful, among others), lots of ways to search the internet, and lots of ways to shop online. The analogy with the railroads simply is not apt, their mo…

The obvious problem with considering social network platforms as interchangeable competitors is that they... aren't interchangeable at all. A user can't pack up and go to a different platform because their actual social network (i.e., relationships between humans) is only accessible on one platform.

For example, my colleagues are on Twitter but not Mastodon. I can't leave Twitter without leaving my social network. Why does Twitter own access to my colleagues? Why should we allow that to be a competitive advantage? It's certainly at-odds with the principle of innovation--you're not on a platform because it's more innovative than another platform, you're on it because they have a monopoly on your social network.

Contrary to your claim, there's very little competition in these markets because corporate ownership of user social networks is an enormous moat. Not only can users not easily move to another platform, but advertisers can't easily spend their money on some new platform because the new platform is much smaller in all likelihood.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#133

Post by wilburTheDog »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #121
camjohnson26 wrote: post #9

Trust busting can seem like it’s anti free market, but when a company has a monopoly on a network it stops functioning as a company and basically becomes a government. The problem with Facebook/Amazon/Google is that they have a monopoly on a specific information network, for Facebook the social graph, internet discoverability for Google, and online shopping for Amazon. It’s similar to if a single company owned the ro…

> The problem with Facebook/Amazon/Google is that they have a monopoly on a specific information network, for Facebook the social graph, internet discoverability for Google, and online shopping for Amazon. None of these things are a natural monopoly. Facebook only stays relevant by buying its competitors. You don't even need to break them up, just disable acquisitions. Then Instagram would be separate, WhatsApp would…

>Just stop letting them buy their competitors.

And how would you stop them from simply replacing their competitors? From the article "Budding companies that resist being acquired are pruned through flagrant copying." Would you pass a law that said Facebook can't expand their business to do anything a competitor is doing? I can't see how that would fly.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#134

Post by sanderjd »

hardtke wrote: post #65
sanderjd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is the inevitable and cliche pushback, but it never seems to be grappled with so it remains worth pointing out: none of the three things you mentioned are anywhere close to monopolies. There are lots of social networks (Twitter and TikTok are extremely successful, among others), lots of ways to search the internet, and lots of ways to shop online. The analogy with the railroads simply is not apt, their mo…

The monopoly is not on the consumer side, it is on the advertising side. Google and Facebook are the only companies that have access to data on basically every sale on the internet (almost every site that uses their ad tools reports back their sales). This data gives them a defensible duopoly on digital advertising.

This argument makes way more sense, but it is also not well handled by existing anti-trust law and a much better response would be new regulation.

Edit: It also doesn't speak to any of the issues with Amazon. (Also interestingly, Amazon's own advertising business is increasingly making this a tri-opoly.)

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#135

Post by sanderjd »

hardtke wrote: post #92
spaced-out wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google and Facebook are the only companies that have access to data on basically every sale on the internet Amazon? eBay? WeChat?

Sites report their data back to Google analytics and Facebook by implementing their pixels. People don't do this for Amazon, ebay, wechat.

Amazon actually does have a quickly growing ads business FWIW.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#136

Post by ZeroGravitas »

sanderjd wrote: post #46
camjohnson26 wrote: post #9

Trust busting can seem like it’s anti free market, but when a company has a monopoly on a network it stops functioning as a company and basically becomes a government. The problem with Facebook/Amazon/Google is that they have a monopoly on a specific information network, for Facebook the social graph, internet discoverability for Google, and online shopping for Amazon. It’s similar to if a single company owned the ro…

I know this is the inevitable and cliche pushback, but it never seems to be grappled with so it remains worth pointing out: none of the three things you mentioned are anywhere close to monopolies. There are lots of social networks (Twitter and TikTok are extremely successful, among others), lots of ways to search the internet, and lots of ways to shop online. The analogy with the railroads simply is not apt, their mo…

The railroads weren't total monopolies, they were just local monopolies. If you didn't like them you could just move somewhere else, to another place with a local monopoly. Which is not the same as competition.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#137

Post by sanderjd »

SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #91
sanderjd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is the inevitable and cliche pushback, but it never seems to be grappled with so it remains worth pointing out: none of the three things you mentioned are anywhere close to monopolies. There are lots of social networks (Twitter and TikTok are extremely successful, among others), lots of ways to search the internet, and lots of ways to shop online. The analogy with the railroads simply is not apt, their mo…

> The analogy with the railroads simply is not apt, their monopoly was so powerful because there was often no other way to get from point A to point B, so they had complete leverage. I still believe the analogy holds, just substitute geographical points A and B with person A and person B (or business A to potential client B), and the similarities are obviously clear. There is often no other way to get from person A t…

There is absolutely other ways to get between those people in all those cases. That's exactly why it doesn't hold.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#138

Post by sanderjd »

mrkurt wrote: post #87
sanderjd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is the inevitable and cliche pushback, but it never seems to be grappled with so it remains worth pointing out: none of the three things you mentioned are anywhere close to monopolies. There are lots of social networks (Twitter and TikTok are extremely successful, among others), lots of ways to search the internet, and lots of ways to shop online. The analogy with the railroads simply is not apt, their mo…

Antitrust is much broader than "monopolies". It's all about concentrated power. Saying "monopoly" is just shorthand for market power, it's not a binary definition.

> Antitrust is much broader than "monopolies".

I'm with you here.

> Saying "monopoly" is just shorthand for market power, it's not a binary definition.

No, the word "monopoly" has an actual definition.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#139

Post by sanderjd »

stevetodd wrote: post #86
sanderjd wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is the inevitable and cliche pushback, but it never seems to be grappled with so it remains worth pointing out: none of the three things you mentioned are anywhere close to monopolies. There are lots of social networks (Twitter and TikTok are extremely successful, among others), lots of ways to search the internet, and lots of ways to shop online. The analogy with the railroads simply is not apt, their mo…

Remember that you are the product and not the customer for these companies. Google’s customers are the advertisers who pay and (I’d argue) those who want to show up in search results. You have to either pay for ads or play their algorithm game to be relevant because of their monopoly position on search. It’s basically the same story for Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc.

But this argument still seems to rely on "monopoly position on search", when there are in fact a number of search engines.

Re: Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook

#140

Post by throwdecro »

tqi wrote: post #84
spywaregorilla wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps those aren't the problems this aims to solve

What are the problems then?

> What are the problems then?

As stated in the review, and presumably in the book: that "the very bigness of present-day companies — especially those in the tech sector — does not just harm consumers, but that it also threatens innovation and undermines the power of government."

The problem that trust-busting is meant to solve is the bigness, and its impact on the government, innovation, and consumer markets.

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