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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

#391

Post by dan-robertson »

undefined1 wrote: post #277
shockeychap wrote: post #102

Given the volume and profitably of tech trading by members of Congress (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26821601 ) I have ZERO confidence that any useful legislation will come of it. It will just be a bunch of earnest and disingenuous theatre by the very people profiting from a bunch of companies who make Microsoft circa 1995 look like a kitten. For my part, I think the fundamental business model of profitin…

wow, you're not kidding. what are the chances they are going to bite their main investments and key donor class? "About 98% of political contributions from internet companies this cycle went to Democrats" https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/02/tech-billionaire-2020-electi... https://observer.com/2020/11/big-tech-2020-presidential-elec... https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/10/30/21540616/silicon-valle...

There’s two ways to look at donations from companies. When you donate to a political campaign in the us you need to write down your employer. So one way to look at it is by looking at where eg all the donations from people employed by Google went (big surprise: democrats, but also, the kind of democrats who have safe seats and policies to rein in big tech companies).

Another way to look at it is to look at the PACs run by tech companies. These are paid into by employees (often they may sign up to give some small amount of their pay automatically, and then forget about it), but they tend to make donations in the companies interests (mainly to an assortment of politicians with an aim to be balanced in some way) and do not lean massively towards democrats, or even towards politicians that align with the companies’ stated values (I’m talking about values that tend to be pro-immigration or pro-lgbt for example here). Two big tech companies that don’t have a PAC are Apple and IBM. Microsoft has one that disappears for a few months when employees start complaining about it (but it doesn’t ask for its donations back from politicians which it can do with likely success)

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

#392

Post by Spivak »

warkdarrior wrote: post #390
darawk wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but they own search ads and a large percentage of web ads (though the non-siloed web is becoming less and less relevant each year), and they do everything in their power to put people into their ad funnel. You can call any company as a monopoly if you define its market narrowly enough. The hard question is making a good argument for your choice of market. Google is absolutely a monopoly in search advertising.…

Starbucks has a monopoly on coffee at Starbucks locations.

Which sounds like a crazy comparison but you’ve got people on HN saying that stores should be forced to carry products they don’t want to.

It’s completely unfair that Starbucks is taking away consumer choice by not selling Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.

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

#394

Post by tqi »

indigochill wrote: post #91
izacus wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an american so can you explain if Facebook and Twitter actually have bigger sway than obviously partisan news media like Fox News? (At least in our part of the world that media seriously outstrips any kind of influence FB and Twitter yelling has.)

> can you explain if Facebook and Twitter actually have bigger sway than obviously partisan news media like Fox News? More people get their news from social media than from... let's call it "big media" (CNN, Fox, etc). Sometimes that's from people linking content from those sources, but the point being people are spending a -lot- more time trawling social media than they are specifically checking their news media fee…

That's like saying people don't get their news from Fox, they get it from their TV...

Most of the time spent in SM is consuming/sharing content from news media and their affiliated contributors.

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

#395

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

skystarman wrote: post #74
capableweb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just whatever marketplace, anti-monopoly legislation focuses on markets where the players own a significant share of the full market. In the case of Amazon, it seems like they have above 52% of the e-commerce market in the US in 2019 ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/955796/global-amazon-e-c... ) so probably it's even higher now. When one player now has over half the market, you need to carefully watch w…

The standard for antitrust enforcement for decades has been when the action of a company harms consumers. How does Amazon harm consumers? I mean precisely, how? Amazon is one of the most highly rated companies in the US by its customers. Its NPS score is 69 and 70 is considered "world class". I can get almost anything online shipped to my house the SAME DAY. If Amazon sends you the wrong item they'll let you keep the…

How does Amazon harm consumers? Try to boycott them and find out. I'm harmed when I have no choice.

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

#396

Post by pdonis »

The fundamental problem here is one that the law cannot solve: we as consumers have become addicted to free tech apps that use us as the product in order to make money. That addiction comes with a price, and no amount of legislation can shield us from ultimately paying that price if we refuse to give up our addiction.

The only thing the law could really do to "fix" the problem would be to outlaw the "free app that harvests people's time and attention to make money" business model altogether. And every lawmaker who voted to do that would be voted out of office by all the people who are angry that they can no longer have their free apps.

The root problem is not "Big Tech". The root problem is us.

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

#397

Post by dequor »

capableweb wrote: post #5

> 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…

Not to deter from the point but DDG also returns Google Earth as a first result of the search for Earth. The algorithms can be (and are) manipulated; it's called SEO. Fun example is an image search of "white couple".

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

#398

Post by Spooky23 »

echelon wrote: post #315
kortilla wrote: post #288

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. >…

> > How is Apple allowed to disallow any other web browsers on their mobile devices? We already went through this with Microsoft in the past but suddenly it's different? > The same reason you can’t put software you want on a Xbox/PlayStation/Switch. The iPhone is a general purpose computer, not a gaming toy. You do finances, email, chat, dating, games, spreadsheets, GPS navigation, photos, video - your entire life, a…

Is the PlayStation store also evil?

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

#399

Post by ClumsyPilot »

dredmorbius wrote: post #336
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Strict liability, duty of care and ignorantia juris non excusat.

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

#400

Post by bogidon »

kortilla wrote: post #288
capableweb wrote: post #5

> 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…

> 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. >…

> If they want to erode public trust by using it to advertise their products, that’s their choice

Companies are people too!

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