Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Congress is going to throw the kitchen sink at big tech

bigtechnology.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 343 posts

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

#281

Post by kragen »

Copyrights, patents, and legally-enforceable trade secrets are government-granted monopolies on particular inventions and works of authorship. Granting such monopolies may be good public policy in many cases, though it is never without its deadweight costs. However, it always carries the risk that the grantee will overexploit their monopoly, to the detriment of the public. In this case, there are at least two possible public policy options:

1. Reduce or eliminate the monopolies.

2. Continue to grant such monopolies, while attempting to limit their overexploitation through other means, such as prohibiting the forms of abuse that were most egregious three or four years ago.

Unaccountably, Congress seems to have chosen option #2. I doubt it will be effective.

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

#282

Post by heavyset_go »

Robotbeat wrote: post #272
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…

Some weird thing about Facebook is it now is basically the default web page for a LOT of small businesses. If you nuked Facebook, you'd nuke the webpages of millions of small businesses. ...not that you'd miss much, as they're usually spartan, but it's worth mentioning. It's kind of annoying, because an actual webpage is much better IMO, but it is what it is.

The business listing side of Facebook should be broken off as a separate business.

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

#283

Post by [deleted] »

crazygringo wrote: post #159
nerdponx wrote: post #117

Somewhat OT, but I love how this "kitchen sink" idiom has become so warped over the last several years. As far as I know (native AmE), the original expression was "everything but the kitchen sink", which evokes the idea of taking everything in the kitchen and using it all in a recipe, only stopping short of dismantling the kitchen itself. Whether through mishearing or laziness, the "everything but the" part has been…

I think you're confusing it a bit... One expression still is "everything but the kitchen sink", which means all reasonable effort. But that means the kitchen sink is now the metaphorical "last thing", i.e. the full extent of our effort, the theoretical maximum. So to "throw the kitchen sink" at something is to put in all your effort, literally everything you've got. (And there's no need for junk in the sink...) It's…

[deleted]

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

#284

Post by parafactual »

Growling_owl wrote: post #46
WalterBright wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read that Microsoft never did any lobbying before the anti-trust suit. Once you're big enough to be a target, you have to spend money on lobbying, and contribute to campaigns.

> Once you're big enough to be a target, you have to spend money on lobbying, and contribute to campaigns. Absolutely not. You do the opposite of that. You go at layer zero. At the population level and enter the culture wars arena with the goal of winning. Some of these companies are structured in a way that the founders are poised to retain control of their companies till they retire (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Berks…

> If a guy like Bezos or Zuck were to tweet back at Sanders something to the tune "I've started a company in a garage and now it has the same credit rating of the US Government, what have you done with your life?"

Aside from whether or not this is good to do, do you remember the Amazon News incident? Amazon tried to "fight back" on Twitter and it just made them look bad.

(Maybe incident is too strong a term, but I don't know what else to call it. Tweets such as this: https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1374911222361956359)

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

#285

Post by heavyset_go »

hardtke wrote: post #193
bogwog wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why the DOD/FTC/whatever can't/won't impose specific restrictions on companies in order to correct anti-trust issues? That seems a lot less drastic and risky than a break-up. For example, if Apple is forcing developers to use their payments SDK to collect 30%, why can't a government agency just force them to stop? Maybe there was a long official investigation by antitrust regulators, and that kicked off a lo…

Being large is not illegal. Having a monopoly in a specific product is not illegal. The standard by which the antitrust officials judge companies is whether the company controls a sufficient part of the market such that the consumer is harmed. The problem with the current regulations with respect to Google/Facebook is that their products are "free" to the "consumer," and free can't be harmful (harm is higher prices).…

> For Apple, their market would be all cell phones (or in the Epic case the Apple lawyers define the market as all game platforms). Since they don't have a majority of these markets and consumers are free to switch within the market they can't be forced to change behavior.

iOS has 60% of the US market[1], and Android 40%. The App Store has 100% more revenue than the Play Store[2], and the two are responsible for over 99% of all app sales. In the US, Apple has the majority of market share in the mobile operating systems market and the mobile app distribution market.

Both Apple and Google have a duopoly in mobile operating systems, and they leverage that duopoly to maintain their duopoly in the mobile app distribution market. To continue the chain, they then leverage that duopoly to dominate the mobile app payment market, as well.

Further, the colloquial definition of monopoly doesn't with regard to antitrust laws:

> 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.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-and-us-...

[2] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/

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

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

#286

Post by sixdimensional »

Animats wrote: post #275

None of the proposed bills are that severe. Most of the behaviors in Bill 1 are already illegal under current law. The FTC has been out to lunch on enforcement for years. Bill 2 is broader, but not well defined. Bill 3 is about data portability, a feature nobody actually uses even when available, as it is in Europe. Bill 4 is about getting the FTC and DOJ enough money to do their jobs. These jobs are hard because Con…

Not to mention, nothing on cloud egress fees.

That is probably one easy way to encourage competition. Eliminate the egress fees.

If it costs nothing abnormal to use services across clouds or on premises, then you can likely pick and choose best of breed anywhere as long as there is a decent network.

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

#287

Post by bobthepanda »

andreilys wrote: post #244
not_exactly__ wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s a somewhat false dichotomy that splitting up US big tech makes China big tech win. The reason being that splitting up US big tech allow for more competitive US mid tech to arise that can outcompete China big tech in areas where it matters. I suppose you also want to prevent China Big Tech to throw its money around at Mid Tech the way US big tech did in the last 10-15 years.

Why wouldn't an international tech co just be able to acquire domestic companies and/or launch products at a significant loss to gain market share in the US? For example, break up Amazon and you now create an opening for Alibaba to expand into the US. Spending billions in order to get customers to shift to Alibaba instead of Amazon.

This is probably overblown if only because practice has borne out that the Asian platform model has ported very poorly to the US.

Americans don't seem to be interested in using massive platform apps that contain the kitchen sink; WeChat is available but not popular, same for LINE, and Messenger never successfully became that.

Right now the most successful overseas strategy for a software company has been Tencent's games strategy (as opposed to their WeChat one), and in that respect they're mostly just a holding company.

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

#288

Post by nooyurrsdey »

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…

So we should leave things as they are for our companies to compete with Chinese companies?

This just feels like fear mongering. "Don't tamper with what we have now! The other guys will win"

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

#289

Post by cookiengineer »

fb13 wrote: post #278
cookiengineer wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the startup culture and everyone wanting to be a tech billionaire kind of changed the amount of midlevel companies. Most of them get acquired by the big ones at one point - or aren't able to compete with them technologically. Everything gets absorbed into blobs of enterprises that do not give a single damn about the individual customer. The ironic thing here is that this goal, being absorbed by corporate…

> I want to build a legacy, not some zuck or besos weekend shopping item. Yeah, keep that view and you'll succeed. Beware of: children, relationships that expect things from you, anyone that isn't within your reality distortion field. I'm with you. I guess your in your twenties. Me, early thirties. It does get harder to say no to everything everyone around you is doing successfully, for moral reasons. Zuck/bezos and…

> Yeah, keep that view and you'll succeed. Beware of: children, relationships that expect things from you, anyone that isn't within your reality distortion field.

Why the sarcasm? Did I offend you?

If I don't stand up for my own values, am I not a fraud when I try to teach a kid what's good and what not? Would you rather live in a world where everyone gave up because the hurdles were too hard to overcome or live in a world where people stand up for their ideals and work for them?

I mean, we as "tech guys" have the luxury of being able to have work available wherever we go, and we can live off it very much above average when it comes to income. You can still live a good life with a family and working part-time...and you don't necessarily have to drive a Tesla to be happy.

I do realize that somewhere along the line we all make compromises, for whatever reasons. But when I'm in my death bed I wanna tell my children about what I fought for, and being able to tell them about my social ideals beyond capitalism or an "influencer life" and about what I imagined, what I thought the world could be.

(also, I am slightly older than you :P)

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

#290

Post by shusson »

crazygringo wrote: post #159
nerdponx wrote: post #117

Somewhat OT, but I love how this "kitchen sink" idiom has become so warped over the last several years. As far as I know (native AmE), the original expression was "everything but the kitchen sink", which evokes the idea of taking everything in the kitchen and using it all in a recipe, only stopping short of dismantling the kitchen itself. Whether through mishearing or laziness, the "everything but the" part has been…

I think you're confusing it a bit... One expression still is "everything but the kitchen sink", which means all reasonable effort. But that means the kitchen sink is now the metaphorical "last thing", i.e. the full extent of our effort, the theoretical maximum. So to "throw the kitchen sink" at something is to put in all your effort, literally everything you've got. (And there's no need for junk in the sink...) It's…

Your idea would make more sense if congress had tried everything but the kitchen sink already. But afaik congress has been doing very little to regulate "big tech". Now let's say it's a year later and the 5 draft bills are passed, but congress decides to create another bill to regulate tech, what will the new article say then? Kitchen sink was not enough, another kitchen required? No, I think the expression is just misused in this article.

By the way the original expression was popular during WWII when describing the effort to fight the enemy[1].

[1] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/96582/what-is-th...

Post reply on HN