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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

#201

Post by dahfizz »

Supermancho wrote: post #180
dahfizz wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At no point has "monopoly" meant anything other than "A single seller". The confusion comes from people trying to steal that term to refer to "big companies".

> The confusion comes from people trying to steal that term to refer to "big companies". This is an oligopoly. Because companies are arbitrary constructs, it's a defacto monopoly by multiple sellers. The terminology is useful, but not in the sense that it is then end-all of qualification.

To claim big companies == oligopoly == monopoly is objectively wrong, and the opposite of useful terminology.

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

#202

Post by VRay »

AlbertCory wrote: post #104
jraph wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should work on making user privacy more private, not more portable. If it does not exist it does not need to be ported. A piece of data which has been put somewhere is there forever . It cannot be moved, only copied. And we should disincentivize data collection by making it worthless or costly, so only the strict minimum to make something work is collected. edit: and having a central place where companies can requ…

> "We should work on making user privacy more private, not more portable." I don't understand this; can you explain? I focused on getting data out of the FAANG Data companies. There would equally be regulations on getting it in . If you want to outlaw face recognition, you would make it illegal to add any data about facial characteristics. Or political affiliations, or porn history, etc. etc.

What's your plan for "anonymized" data that's all hilariously easy to de-anonymize? Example: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/20/opinion/locat...

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

#203

Post by kfarr »

HWR_14 wrote: post #195
oconnor663 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what the formal definitions of any of these things are, but I assume (hope?) that it's important not to equate being successful with being a monopoly by definition. If Ford came out with an amazing new car tomorrow, and suddenly 95% of new cars purchased were Fords, we probably shouldn't initiate trust-busting action against Ford on that basis alone. We want car companies to try to capture market share b…

> suddenly 95% of new cars purchased were Fords, we probably shouldn't initiate trust-busting action against Ford on that basis alone. Antitrust law isn't about stopping people from accumulating a dominant position. It's about stopping people from using that dominant position to maintain itself or to spread to other areas. Ford produces the "Amazing Car" that everyone wants, costs $1, etc. great! When Ford uses an RF…

Yes Google was able to catapult YouTube playback pages in all Google search results after acquisition, just one example

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

#204

Post by joe_the_user »

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…

But I also think there are major issues with the current configuration of the tech industry! They just aren't because of monopolies. It is not helpful to misdiagnose a real problem. It is not helpful to have only a hammer and call every problem a nail.

Yeah, the situation involves a contradictory litany of complaints. Google/Facebook/etc are terrible because they suppress free speech and terrible because they allow it. They're terrible because monopolize online advertising and terrible because they facilitate it.

The purpose of breaking up a monopoly is to allow competition to facilitate the provisioning of whatever good a monopoly provides. Lots of people imagine breaking up or regulating Facebook will prevent the variety of abuses that we see. But if you look at the "competitive Internet", you can observe a sea of garbage in the form of endless popups, malware and eCommerce fraud. Things seem little more thought-out than "I want this to stop", which is hardly a recipe for constructive change.

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

#205

Post by AlbertCory »

zucked wrote: post #200
AlbertCory wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "We should work on making user privacy more private, not more portable." I don't understand this; can you explain? I focused on getting data out of the FAANG Data companies. There would equally be regulations on getting it in . If you want to outlaw face recognition, you would make it illegal to add any data about facial characteristics. Or political affiliations, or porn history, etc. etc.

At the risk of sounding like a dimwit, because this is the edge of my mental abilities here - is the concept, then, that data _itself_ becomes a regulated asset? Such that no company, should they not desired to participate on your REIT-like scheme, would be able to collect "data" without it being akin to holding a regulated asset?

I appreciate the humility. So rare!

I think that's it exactly. I suspect HIPAA is a model for this, although not a perfect one. It's like holding health data on large numbers of people -- you need to be registered & bonded, and you have to control access to it. Why is data on your friends & political beliefs any less sensitive than your health?

I hope no one thinks I have a whole manual of how this would operate. That would be the result of a large group saying "This sounds interesting. Let's try to flesh it out."

On the other hand, as I said: breaking up Ma Bell took 14 years. Just saying "break up Big Tech" doesn't answer all the questions, either.

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

#207

Post by jessaustin »

hk1337 wrote: post #112
adfrhgeaq5hy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the system. Let us assume we have 99.9% moral people who never lie and never break the law even if they can gef away with it. Problem is the 0.1% have a competitive advantage. They will accumulate more wealth and power than the others. The others can either compromise on their morality or lose ground against their competition, maybe failing entirely. The amoral people will gain outsized power and will…

> The problem is the system. The problem is the people. Everything else after that I agree with. For a completely free market to work 100% of the people would have to be moral, upstanding people. A completely free, unregulated, market is an anarchocapitalist's utopia. Like how a working socialist government is a utopia. Neither of those is realistic though, so we have a regulated free market.

Regulators are also people.

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

#208

Post by 1121redblackgo »

ilaksh wrote: post #37

People should educate themselves about decentralization technologies. That's really the direction for resolving these issues. And the first thing you will realize when you start to study them is that in a way the name 'decentralization' is misleading because they are actually the best ways we know of to keep holistic systems. But we get that without the actual physical or organizational centralization and at the same…

Could you elaborate or simplify what you are saying? I'm curious to know more but I don't think I understand

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

#209

Post by AlbertCory »

VRay wrote: post #202
AlbertCory wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "We should work on making user privacy more private, not more portable." I don't understand this; can you explain? I focused on getting data out of the FAANG Data companies. There would equally be regulations on getting it in . If you want to outlaw face recognition, you would make it illegal to add any data about facial characteristics. Or political affiliations, or porn history, etc. etc.

What's your plan for "anonymized" data that's all hilariously easy to de-anonymize? Example: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/20/opinion/locat...

Have you mistaken me for someone with a 2,300 page legislative proposal all ready to go?

Anyhow, in the spirit of HN working this out together (should we form a bipartisan Working Group for this?):

Any data which, taken together, improperly identifies an individual may not be stored at all. I can't think of any reason why anyone outside of law enforcement needs this location information.

How's that?

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

#210

Post by niuzeta »

spaced-out wrote: post #82
ragnarok451 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised by this too, but AWS only has 32% of cloud market share https://www.parkmycloud.com/blog/aws-vs-azure-vs-google-clou... .

Back in 2018 it was nearly half, people don't realize how much market share they've lost in the last few years

Wow, what happened? Loss of 10+ percentage of market share is pretty huge. Or did the market simply expand that quickly?
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