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U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tone of this is a little hard to read, so forgive me if I've misread anything. I mostly agree with the other changes, except for increasing pay as a means of eliminating the motivation to play games. If there's one thing we've seen play out over and over, it's that excesses and greed just beget more greed. Look at the number of executives, financial managers, and politicians who already had vast wealth yet STILL…

The people you want running the country aren’t likely people who are willing to get paid minimum wage too. You want the best? Usually have to pay more. People in congress are barely paid anything as far as the private market goes. (<$200k/yr and that’s while having to live in two places and frequently travel between them) Considering how many have law degrees and other professional degrees, being a congress person ce…

I don't want legislators who think they're "running the country". That's the first problem. Rulemaking should never be construed with "running".

Secondly, I've never had any illusion about trying to attract "the best" in Congress. It's an elected position, both the House and Senate, and so it will merely attract those with aspirations of power and wealth who are good at campaigning. Oftentimes we also get people who forge a decades-long career by leveraging the access to power and influence they have in such a position. This last part is toxic, and won't be fixed by increasing pay.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#332
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The list goes on. I'm happy that it's being suggested, I'm just worried how it took so long to get here. Because this is a Gish Gallop of weak individual reasons batched together to make it seem like a stronger obvious argument when it’s not. > How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? They don’t. Amazon and Facebook both make a fortune from ads. You need to be more specific. >…

> You’re going to have a really hard time defining what’s “fair” for a black box algorithm to do. To which the two biggest counter-arguments are: 1. “So don’t allow black box algorithms” 2. “This is why the search engine company should be separate from the company which owns all the other products”

People use Google because the algorithm is a black box that is constantly updated to keep away black hat SEO crap. An open web page ranking algorithm is useless in an adversarial environment. There is no current signal that can’t be trivially gained that doesn’t effectively require mass user surveillance (to see “what’s really popular”).

> 2. “This is why the search engine company should be separate from the company which owns all the other products”

This doesn’t solve the problem. They can still alter top listings to push things for “preferred partners and truths”.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#333

> potentially barring companies like Amazon.com from operating the markets in which they also compete Absolutely bananas that this haven't been fixed yet! How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? Obviously for-profit companies will abuse their positions if it'll earn them more money, and fines ends up being the cost of doing business instead of deterrents. How is Apple allowed t…

Walmart sells walmart brand generic stuff don't they?

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#334

> potentially barring companies like Amazon.com from operating the markets in which they also compete Absolutely bananas that this haven't been fixed yet! How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? Obviously for-profit companies will abuse their positions if it'll earn them more money, and fines ends up being the cost of doing business instead of deterrents. How is Apple allowed t…

Shouldn't this also affect cable companies and what not?

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#335
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are intentionally protecting their ecosystem from the thread of an incumbent strangling their growth and marginalizing their strategy. From a market dominant position it would be Antitrust material. Not in this case: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272698/global-market-sha...

Now find the same chart for the US only

Why? I'm European, what's so special about US market?

(rhetorical question, I know)

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#336
post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the principal is that everything which is not banned is legal. This probably has a funky Latin translation, but I don’t know as I’m not a lawyer.

John has gone to the pub, a random person gave him $5,000 and said he can keep half if he transfers the rest to Bob. Later it turned out it was drug money. The question in court will not be "is money laundering illegal" or "is taking money from random people illegal". The question in court will be "does this amount to money laundering, or is john just an idiot and it was not his responsibility to know". Similarly, he…

Mens rea.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon cares substantially about stopping these things. As is the case when you are fighting against other humans, who are crafty, financially-motivated, and are willing to break the law, and may be operating from different jurisdictions where attempting to get the DA to prosecute them or filing a lawsuit against them is ineffective, it's a very difficult battle to fight. As an example I'd be surprised if Amazon coul…

They could start by preventing listings from being renamed. I have encountered several items with good reviews, but when you read the reviews, they're all talking about a completely different item.

Yeah, I've personally run into that myself. It's not that the listings are being renamed, it's typically that the seller is listing their product as a "variation" of the other product has has good reviews.

What you're describing is another kind of abuse called Listing Abuse, specifically Variation Abuse. If you encounter Listing Abuse, use the link on the page "Report Incorrect Product Information" [1] and say that the product is experiencing Listing/Variation Abuse, and give a couple examples of reviews that are clearly for unrelated products. It will be investigated, taken down/unlinked from those reviews, and the seller will be punished as appropriate.

("Variations" are products that have different SKUs but are all linked together and share reviews, such as the same product that comes in different colors or patterns or sizes. For example, the Speedo Swim Cap has 20+ color and pattern variations: https://www.amazon.com/Speedo-Silicone-Solid-Swim-Black/dp/B... . Each is actually a distinct product SKU, but since they're all functionally the same, just with different colors or patterns, they have one page and share reviews.)

The fundamental problem that makes Listing Abuse hard to stop is that, if you allow people to sell on your store, that means you allow them to enter their own product information -- which you don't have any way to verify. There's no World Authority for Product Information that you can check against. And not all sellers use Fulfillment-by-Amazon where Amazon holds the inventory; plenty of sellers ship the product themselves, meaning that Amazon never has an opportunity to see or inspect the product. Even if Amazon had a policy requiring new sellers to ship a product to Amazon to inspect, that wouldn't stop malicious sellers from shipping something different to customers.

Sellers have a lot of power to describe the products they're selling that they legitimately need. Unfortunately this means they have the power to list their products as variations of other highly-rated products to falsely make them look like they have a lot of good reviews. This is another one of those problems that is difficult to solve, because you need to give sellers access to describe their products to support legitimate usage patterns, like adding a new variation. (Like Speedo deciding to offer yet another color or pattern beyond their existing 20+).

All that being said, I agree that this should really be one of the easier types of fraud to stop, and don't understand why it's taking so long for the company to shut it down effectively. I think they need to build some machine learning systems that compares product information to review content when new variations are created, to flag likely variation abuse for human review. I also don't understand why variations are not required to all be shown on a single page (which would stop the abuse); there are probably legitimate use-cases that require it.

[1] Here's a link highlighting where it is on the page for the Speedo Swim Cap: https://www.amazon.com/Speedo-Silicone-Solid-Swim-Black/dp/B.... - or just find it by text searching for "Report incorrect".

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#338
I hope whatever comes out of this doesn't end up creating a regulatory moat around big incumbents that start-ups can't muster the resources to cross.

Only government regulation is powerful enough to counteract capitalism's natural tendency toward aggregation.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s not competitive advantage, it’s strategy It's 100% competitive advantage. The main driver of Apple's lack of support for Flash was to damage the web's ability to distribute DRMed video and force it into apps on iOS, where Apple could rent seek a 30% commission from subscription fees.

Nonsense. There is extensive writing on the subject including internal memos from Steve Jobs on Flash — and you are 100% incorrect.

Can you elaborate and link to sources plz?

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#340
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One example: Amazon doesn’t seem to care about fraudulent sellers and fake paid-for reviews on its platform.

Amazon cares substantially about stopping these things. As is the case when you are fighting against other humans, who are crafty, financially-motivated, and are willing to break the law, and may be operating from different jurisdictions where attempting to get the DA to prosecute them or filing a lawsuit against them is ineffective, it's a very difficult battle to fight. As an example I'd be surprised if Amazon coul…

> Amazon cares substantially about stopping these things.

And yet Amazon doesn't even let their customers choose the correct reason for returns when they receive counterfeit items. Instead of being able to choose "This item is a counterfeit" or "I believe this item is a counterfeit", the customer must choose between reasons for their return that aren't entirely accurate, like "Inaccurate website description" or "Item defective or doesn't work".

You'd think that a company that claims it is throwing vast amounts of resources at stopping counterfeiting on their platform would at least try to collect data on the counterfeits their customers receive.

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