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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

#261

Post by dane-pgp »

sanderjd wrote: post #241
dane-pgp wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also walk between point A and point B, but that doesn't mean that rail monopolies aren't a problem.

There are other equivalent ways. Using iMessage is not like walking compared to Messenger, it's just parallel railroad tracks.

Dividing your attention between two different messaging apps is more than twice as inconvenient/costly as having just one. If the first company to lay tracks could force later companies to charge double for journeys along their parallel tracks, then that would be a clearly anti-competitive situation.

The situation is even worse with messaging apps than with railroads, though, since there is a coordination problem between customers/users of each service, rather than each customer/user being able to make their choice of service in isolation. It's very hard for a messaging service to compete if it requires users to ruin the experience of not just themselves but also at least one of their friends.

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

#262

Post by heavyset_go »

sanderjd wrote: post #243
colinmhayes wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can waste time on semantics or you accept that practically everyone means "company that abuses their overwhelming market power to create friction in the market" when they say monopoly.

It isn't semantics. You want to use the word monopoly to mean something different than what it means. Feel free to make the more nuanced point about "abusing market power", but if you're building your argument around the word monopoly, you need to be using that word to mean what it means.

Your layman definitions of monopoly do not matter when it comes to antitrust laws[3]:

> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power.

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

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

#263

Post by munificent »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #258
munificent wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to be clearer by what "product" means when it comes to monopolies in the Information Age. In the Industrial Age, you had a monopoly on paperclips if the only way to buy a paperclips was through your company. But paperclips themselves are commodity-like: there are billions of them out there and each is more or less interchangeable with the others. Information products are not like paperclips. Each piec…

I find this argument pretty interesting. It seems like if social networks decide to adapt open protocols, it would pretty much kill it. Which wouldn't be the worst outcome out there.

> It seems like if social networks decide to adapt open protocols, it would pretty much kill it.

...which is exactly why they never will. This is how you know they are behaving monopolistically.

An analogous problem exists with media companies. Why do we all now have subscriptions to Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, etc. instead of just one? They don't seem to have a monopoly since there are so many. But we don't seem to have much choice either, since we end up having most of them.

The problem is that each has a complete monopoly on certain shows. If you want to watch "Stranger Things", the only way to get it is Netflix.

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

#264

Post by munificent »

gshubert17 wrote: post #155
adfrhgeaq5hy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, duh. "Free market" does not mean "unregulated market". It requires that the market be free from monopolies and that all agents have complete information. Regulation and trust-busting are, in practice, required to bring about a free market. Co-opting the term "free market" was a fantastically successful bit of propaganda.

"Uncoerced market" or something, is closer to the meaning I seek.

"Free market" is a fine term. People just forget about the "market" part.

A "market" isn't some natural emergent property of the physical or social world. They aren't formed by, like, volcanoes. A market, historically, is a space defined deliberately by a governing body where traders are allowed to participate and where trade is allowed to occur under a given set of rules.

It's suposed to be a free market, not a free anything-goes-chaos-and-anarchy.

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

#265

Post by da_big_ghey »

AlbertCory wrote: post #205
zucked wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Tha…

What do you believe to be a "legitimate" use for this data then once it his holding by such a company with register and bond? Most times somebody need to authorize data for HIPPA people just sign and say it is fine, why wouldn't this happen here? People become used to some site saying "this site needs access to your data"? How is there any difference except one more layer of indirection? Or perhaps I am misunderstanding your statements.

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

#266

Post by bumby »

sanderjd wrote: post #249
bumby wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting because it defines monopoly and market power in terms of prices. How does the traditional monopoly definition fit when we're talking about "free" goods (to the general consumer) like FB or Google search? Is the thought that they exert too much power over ad pricing?

It doesn't fit. The point is that we need new regulatory language that does fit.

Is there a proposed new language/definition? The article's discussion still seems to be centered on price.

"her paper highlights how the consumer welfare view of antitrust fails to curb the predatory pricing".

I said it elsewhere, but I not against the idea of trust-busting, but the industry analogies typically brought up don't really fit. The closest I can find in general discussion is that the services are a public good, but we tolerate/promote monopolies in those sectors (like utilities).

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

#267

Post by dane-pgp »

tehjoker wrote: post #212

Google and Facebook have natural monopolies. The answer isn't to break them up (which will just restart the cycle) but to place them under public ownership. This would also enforce first amendment rights on both platforms and disallow the legal side-step the government has been using to pressure them into censoring people.

Some men just want to watch teh world learn.

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

#268

Post by rsj_hn »

The problem with these types of articles is that it doesn't contain a single actionable step on how one would go about breaking up these monopolies. It's a lot of "well, we did it with the electrical providers and telephone providers so we should do it with google."

Well, you can take a national utility and split it across geographic regions so local calls or electricity bills go into the pockets of the region you are in, and calls between two regions go into the pockets of both according to whatever long distance agreement is in place. That's at least workable. Or you break up an Oil Company that has 500 wells/concessions, into 5 groups of 100 wells/concessions. Or a railroad with a nationwide network, split up into 5 regional networks. That could work, too. That's what we did in the past to break up monopolies.

Now how would that work with google search? Prevent people in region A from loading a website in region B? Is that what we want? crickets

Sure there is low hanging fruit in terms of divesting -- e.g. no reason to keep a video monopoly like youtube with a search monopoly. I'm all for it. But now you just have two monopolies, and have not solved the problem of lack of competition in either video or search, which is ostensibly what you use to justfy these actions.

In fact the consumer pains with long distance in the wake of the ATT breakup is the reason why the law has changed on anti-trust. Now you must show consumer harm to pass constitutional muster and your proposal has to show consumer benefit. A proposal to break off youtube from google is going to have a hard time passing this test.

So yes, we, get it, we solved the problem of anti-trusts in the past, we don't like google, so We Must Do Something. Except those old anti-trust strategies just wont work against monopolies that have no geographic dimension. That no one is willing to touch that explains why we have a deluge of pleas, none of which contain a single workable proposal.

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

#269

Post by inetknght »

huitzitziltzin wrote: post #230
HWR_14 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question posed by the monopolies is not "are these the only options". But do these wield too much market power to be controlled by the market. That is, sure, Bing and DDG make up 5% of the global search, but is that enough. Yes, people use Twitter and TikTok, but does that replace the social graph of FB? Yes, I can buy directly online from many places, but if people are going to Amazon instead of Google to search…

> But do these wield too much market power to be controlled by the market. That is, sure, Bing and DDG make up 5% of the global search, but is that enough. This is exactly what antitrust law should not punish. Google has a large market share of search because it offers a good product . Antitrust law should preserve competition without punishing success. People are free to use alternatives, including Bing. If they don…

> Google has a large market share of search because it offers a good product

No. Google has a large market share of search because it got in early, presented some synergistic products, heavily biased search results towards its own products to reinforce that, heavily gamed advertising bidding in its favor, placed anti-competitive requirements on hardware manufacturers of Android devices, and locked-in consumers' data so that competitors couldn't access it until it was forced by governments to allow consumers to download a copy.

Google, and Alphabet, do not today offer good products. I can go on for hours describing many years-long problems with the product offerings; culminating in my complete non-use of Google as a search engine because its results are so poor, stopped using Google News because of its tracking and curation biases, stopped using Google Mail because of its inability to provide filters that automatically mark emails as spam, stopped using Google Drive because it actively prevents many features from working in Firefox, and ... well the list can go on but I have better things to do.

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

#270

Post by quotemstr »

tehjoker wrote: post #212

Google and Facebook have natural monopolies. The answer isn't to break them up (which will just restart the cycle) but to place them under public ownership. This would also enforce first amendment rights on both platforms and disallow the legal side-step the government has been using to pressure them into censoring people.

Public ownership isn't really necessary and comes with its own downsides. All that's needed is to apply the first amendment to these companies, which can be done either through legislation or through the courts applying Marsh-like reasoning about freedom of speech in privately owned public accomodations.
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