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Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

newyorker.com

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Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#31

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

greendream17 wrote: post #22

The director of the Manhattan Project Robert Oppenheimer went on a public speaking tour to apologising for his part in creating the atomic bom. It was Von Neumann who cynically remarked that: One cannot apologise for something without also first claiming it as one's own accomplishment. Wether is the atomic bom or Facebook, I am sure they would have existed without their conscientious defectors. There is something muc…

*bomb

You may have written about bill of materials enough that BOM is in your autocorrect.

Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#32

Post by firasd »

antielectronite wrote: post #20
firasd wrote: post #8

His whole deal is about the 2016 election. While it exposed legitimate issues, I suspect a lot of anti-Zuck/'techlash' sentiment will die down if a Dem is elected next year. In fact I suspect even now the Techlash is overstated. Elizabeth Warren spent the month of October going after Zuckerberg and meanwhile lost her front-runner status in the polls. Anti-Big-Tech talking points may be red meat for journalists, but a…

I think one reason journalists are having a moral panic about tech is that a lot of them seem to have a very unhealthy twitter addiction, which clouds their view on the impact social media has on society. A lot of media people seem to spend ~8 hours tweeting almost everyday, which is obviously unhealthy but not indicative of how most people use "big tech".

Yeah. Interesting article about that: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/opinion/covington-twitter...

Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#34

Post by nightsd01 »

larnmar wrote: post #13
firasd wrote: post #8

His whole deal is about the 2016 election. While it exposed legitimate issues, I suspect a lot of anti-Zuck/'techlash' sentiment will die down if a Dem is elected next year. In fact I suspect even now the Techlash is overstated. Elizabeth Warren spent the month of October going after Zuckerberg and meanwhile lost her front-runner status in the polls. Anti-Big-Tech talking points may be red meat for journalists, but a…

Cynically we could say that the current news cycle is about putting pressure on big tech companies to try to rig the next election in favour of a Democrat. Even more cynically we could say that an awful lot of people at an awful lot of tech companies want to do exactly that, and “responding to pressure” just gives them a perfect excuse.

Why do you think the right has spent years whining about Google and Facebook’s supposed “left wing bias” with literally no evidence...? If anything the liberals are doing it to counter BS from the right.

Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#35

Post by nightsd01 »

harry8 wrote: post #29
kortilla wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems to me like most people support Warren's anti-big-tech stance in principle or they don't much care Maybe for liberals, but a lot of people on the right don’t care much for government intervention in industries without a compelling reason.

I am on the right. Those on the right aren't changing their views on Warren because she discusses big tech. Really they aren't suddenly decicding they don't like her anymore. Besides this the reasons for regulation are pretty damn compelling. Clear cut case of market failure. You cannot take your business elsewhere to deal with the failings of big tech. It is an industry with a long run decreasing average total cost…

Monopolies are typically considered “bad” because they hurt consumers by jacking up prices when they acquire a dominant market position. How is this happening with Facebook? How is Facebook hurting consumers in a way that could be alleviated by breaking it up into 5 smaller companies?

If you take a look at something like disinformation campaigns, that’s something that big tech companies can handle MUCH better than smaller ones.

And if we did break up FB, network effects will just lead us back to the same situation in a few more years anyways.

Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#36

Post by nightsd01 »

harry8 wrote: post #23
harikb wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then there's the obscenely large amounts spent by big tech on lobbying in washington and PR in the media and in places like right here. Any data here? I would have thought compared to other industries, tech hasn’t spend nearly enough! Few people occasionally tweet our Google or Facebook having donated $2700 to one republican superpact or another. This has to be peanuts compared to any real money involved.

first hit for the first search string that came to mind "facebook lobbying spend" https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/23/facebook-and-amazon-lead-tec...

$4M isn’t that much, even just in one quarter. Look at the oil/gas or health insurance industry if you want to see what a real lobbying bill looks like.

Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#37

Post by CriticalCathed »

antielectronite wrote: post #20
firasd wrote: post #8

His whole deal is about the 2016 election. While it exposed legitimate issues, I suspect a lot of anti-Zuck/'techlash' sentiment will die down if a Dem is elected next year. In fact I suspect even now the Techlash is overstated. Elizabeth Warren spent the month of October going after Zuckerberg and meanwhile lost her front-runner status in the polls. Anti-Big-Tech talking points may be red meat for journalists, but a…

I think one reason journalists are having a moral panic about tech is that a lot of them seem to have a very unhealthy twitter addiction, which clouds their view on the impact social media has on society. A lot of media people seem to spend ~8 hours tweeting almost everyday, which is obviously unhealthy but not indicative of how most people use "big tech".

Replace twitter with facebook/instagram and there you go. People spend hours and hours a day on there.

Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#38

Post by Animats »

harry8 wrote: post #29
kortilla wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems to me like most people support Warren's anti-big-tech stance in principle or they don't much care Maybe for liberals, but a lot of people on the right don’t care much for government intervention in industries without a compelling reason.

I am on the right. Those on the right aren't changing their views on Warren because she discusses big tech. Really they aren't suddenly decicding they don't like her anymore. Besides this the reasons for regulation are pretty damn compelling. Clear cut case of market failure. You cannot take your business elsewhere to deal with the failings of big tech. It is an industry with a long run decreasing average total cost…

Besides this the reasons for regulation are pretty damn compelling. Clear cut case of market failure. You cannot take your business elsewhere to deal with the failings of big tech. It is an industry with a long run decreasing average total cost curve and has network externalities. (Hence why there aren't 27 similar magnitude businesses competing in the Facebook space, for example).

That's not market failure, it's normal market functioning today. It used to be that the limits of scaling kept companies in most industries from becoming monopolies. The industries with really strong network effects, railroads, communications, and banking, were highly regulated.

Now, more industries have strong network effects. The negative effects of scale, big companies unable to get out of their own way, seem to have been conquered. Planetary-scale companies such as Walmart and McDonalds work quite well, and they're not even "tech" companies. And US antitrust enforcement has been out to lunch for 30 years now.

The European Union has a study, which I've cited before, that price competition seems to require, in practice, at least four major players. There's an implicit collusion effect that makes it more profitable to not compete on price where the number of players is small.

Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#39

Post by jessaustin »

firasd wrote: post #8

His whole deal is about the 2016 election. While it exposed legitimate issues, I suspect a lot of anti-Zuck/'techlash' sentiment will die down if a Dem is elected next year. In fact I suspect even now the Techlash is overstated. Elizabeth Warren spent the month of October going after Zuckerberg and meanwhile lost her front-runner status in the polls. Anti-Big-Tech talking points may be red meat for journalists, but a…

I've been disgusted by Facebook for at least a decade, so McNamee's very late disillusionment seems a bit silly. He sent Zuck a stern email ten days before the election! I also enjoyed this gem:

In protest of the Iraq War and other policies during the George W. Bush Administration, he refused to cut his hair. When President Obama was inaugurated, he celebrated with a trip to the barber.

Kudos for being right about Iraq before it was cool, but we're still in Iraq, aren't we? Just to be safe, let's don't get a hair appointment immediately on Michelle's inauguration...

Re: Big Tech's Big Defector: Roger McNamee

#40

Post by Ericson2314 »

nightsd01 wrote: post #35
harry8 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am on the right. Those on the right aren't changing their views on Warren because she discusses big tech. Really they aren't suddenly decicding they don't like her anymore. Besides this the reasons for regulation are pretty damn compelling. Clear cut case of market failure. You cannot take your business elsewhere to deal with the failings of big tech. It is an industry with a long run decreasing average total cost…

Monopolies are typically considered “bad” because they hurt consumers by jacking up prices when they acquire a dominant market position. How is this happening with Facebook? How is Facebook hurting consumers in a way that could be alleviated by breaking it up into 5 smaller companies? If you take a look at something like disinformation campaigns, that’s something that big tech companies can handle MUCH better than sm…

This consumers test is a relatively recent phenominon.

"trusts have made products cheaper, have reduced prices; but if the price of oil, for instance, were reduced to one cent a barrel, it would not right the wrong done to people of this country by the trusts which have destroyed legitimate competition and driven honest men from legitimate business enterprise"

— 51st congress

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