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Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

nytimes.com

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Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#411

Post by ryanmarsh »

Honest question, not trying to make a statement...

Is this really a left/liberal/progressive/dem position and if so why?

I'm mainly on the right and so I don't have a lot of insight into why Sen. Warren would be taking this position. To be frank I kinda would have expected something like this from Trump, not from her. Tech companies like Amazon seem to be left leaning (just looking at Bezos and his investment in WaPo). Wouldn't Warren want strong left leaning tech companies? Why would she want to go up against them?

Again I'm not trying to trigger anyone or make any political assertions. I generally don't understand and would love the input of others for familiar with Sen. Warren's platform.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#413

Post by dfxm12 »

giggles_giggles wrote: post #373
psadauskas wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, I should have checked the facts before speculating on which company spent more on lobbying. However, the things they are lobbying for/against also matter. As a recent example, Net Neutrality involved massive amounts of lobbing and had very clear "pro-consumer" and "anti-consumer" sides. From https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/net_neutrality/ > Not only was Google the pro-net neutrality organization…

>As a recent example, Net Neutrality involved massive amounts of lobbing and had very clear "pro-consumer" and "anti-consumer" sides This isn't as uncontroversial of an opinion as it might appear to be in a place like HN. What you're admitting here basically is that you think Comcast should be broken up because they lobby for things you don't like, but FAANG is fine because they lobby for things you do.

Isn't the point of government to represent the people? Sure, the parent poster is but one person, but on the whole, Americans were in favor of Net Neutrality.

Perhaps outright defending FANG is going too far, but the parent definitely has a point that ISP's should be looked into when we're discussing "breaking up" companies.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#414

Post by lotu »

mabbo wrote: post #97

There's precedent to this in the USA. The US Government once passed regulations that caused one of the largest companies in America to break up into three smaller companies. Today those, three companies are entirely independent, employ over 400,000 people combined, and have a combined net work of over $400B. Those companies are Boeing Aircraft (153k employees, $244B market value), United Technologies (202k employees,…

The problem is this type of vertical splitting doesn't solve the problem of large tech companies. It's like treating a burst appendix with a kidney transplant.

The problem of Amazon is that it is effectively the only online shopping place, and thus can act as a Monopsony in hiring it's workers for warehouses, splitting AWS out of that doesn't fix that problem. Maybe you could require that distribution centers be owned by separate companies. This might work but locally each Center would still be a Monopsony and thus cause the same problem. Maybe if you capped the size of distribution center you could force lots of smaller ones to be built, but at this point I worry that you are going to end up making shipping slower and more expensive.

The problem of Google is they are very dominate in the Ads space splitting out the Ads portion into another company would not solve that. Facebook's problems is everyone has put their data in Facebook has friends in Facebook and feel compelled to keep using it. I don't see how splitting up the company into, Instagram, What's App, and Facebook solves the network effects of those apps.

Splitting up tech companies is not a punishment to make the CEO feel bad or change their ways. It is a technique to change how we need the market works to benefit the large population. As such we need to think about how to split them, the effects, and most importantly if the effect achieves the intended result.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#415

Post by enraged_camel »

will_brown wrote: post #326
psadauskas wrote: post #211

How about going after Comcast and Verizon first, the actual tech monopolies ? I already don’t use Facebook, I buy things online from places other than Amazon, and have email accounts that aren’t hosted by Google. However, all of that goes over Comcast’s network because that’s my only viable choice for Internet service. Also, while FAANG occasionally do things I don’t approve of, they don’t actively lobby congress for…

>But no, because Comcast has -bribed- donated to way more congresspeople than Google... Lobbying is tracked and google spent over 33% more than Comcast - in your own words - bribing members of Congress. The bulk of Google’s lobbying expenditure was for immigration, tax reform and antitrust. I’d say Google’s far better “at playing the game” after all no one is randomly sticking up for Comcast.

>>Lobbying is tracked and google spent over 33% more than Comcast - in your own words - bribing members of Congress.

That's just members of Congress. What about local governments? Keep in mind a lot of states don't have laws that require publicly disclosing lobbying efforts.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#416

Post by rayiner »

psadauskas wrote: post #392
giggles_giggles wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As a recent example, Net Neutrality involved massive amounts of lobbing and had very clear "pro-consumer" and "anti-consumer" sides This isn't as uncontroversial of an opinion as it might appear to be in a place like HN. What you're admitting here basically is that you think Comcast should be broken up because they lobby for things you don't like, but FAANG is fine because they lobby for things you do.

No, you're putting words in my mouth, or misunderstanding my point. > you think Comcast should be broken up I think efforts to break up tech monopolies should first be focused on telecommunication companies. > because they lobby for things you don't like, Not just me, but are objectively harmful to 99% of the people they would affect > but FAANG is fine because they lobby for things you do. I'm mostly focusing on Goo…

> With Comcast (and other ISPs), you have only one choice, and they spend tons of money and effort making sure you only have that one choice, and continue to have only that one choice. Comcast recently spent nearly $1M to prevent Fort Collins from creating a municipal ISP[1]. That is actively anti-competitive and monopolistic by definition.

I'm sure if the U.S. government was proposing to sell public bonds to build a search engine or ride-sharing service, you'd see a lot of lobbying from Silicon Valley. It's not "actively anti-competitive and monopolistic by definition" to oppose government backed and funded competition in your industry.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#417

Post by satyrnein »

piaste wrote: post #218
eanzenberg wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as those services are profitable and they can outcompete startups then there’s nothing illegal or wrong about that. There’s no right that startups need to survive or have bias to succeed.

There's no right that tech giants need to be allowed to exist in their current form, either. If a person doesn't break any pre-existing laws, then they must not suffer any legal consequences, sure. And nobody is suggesting that Page and Brin should spend a minute in court or pay a cent in fines. But a corporation isn't a person, it's a business instrument, and if the United States were to judge that the existence of…

Breaking up a company certainly harms people, by diminishing the value of the company's stock, which is private property. Not only people like Page and Brin, but more sympathetic characters like workers whose retirement funds contain Google stock.

This may be worth it for society, but it's a little too convenient to say no people will be harmed.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#418

Post by rayiner »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #397
will_brown wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But no, because Comcast has -bribed- donated to way more congresspeople than Google... Lobbying is tracked and google spent over 33% more than Comcast - in your own words - bribing members of Congress. The bulk of Google’s lobbying expenditure was for immigration, tax reform and antitrust. I’d say Google’s far better “at playing the game” after all no one is randomly sticking up for Comcast.

Lobbying is tracked and google spent over 33% more than Comcast - in your own words - bribing members of Congress. Probably because they saw what happened when Microsoft tried to ignore Washington, DC. altogether. Can you blame Google for realizing that they couldn't just turn their backs on the game?

Google has long used lobbying for business objectives. For example, because Google profits from being a middle man for content created by other people, Google has lobbied for weaker copyright protections. Joel Splosky calls this "commoditizing your complement": https://www.gwern.net/Complement, and it explains Google's political positions to a tee. The idea that they were "forced" into it is wishful rationalization.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#419

Post by cooooooffffeeee »

psadauskas wrote: post #211

How about going after Comcast and Verizon first, the actual tech monopolies ? I already don’t use Facebook, I buy things online from places other than Amazon, and have email accounts that aren’t hosted by Google. However, all of that goes over Comcast’s network because that’s my only viable choice for Internet service. Also, while FAANG occasionally do things I don’t approve of, they don’t actively lobby congress for…

She's called out Comcast before too — don't jump to the conclusion that someone can't chew gum and walk at the same time without at least a 10 second Google.

Re: Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon

#420

Post by Kaveren »

sarbaz wrote: post #96
untog wrote: post #14

Comparisons will be made to Microsoft and Internet Explorer but to me the really crucial part of this isn't market dominance in the "what app are you using" sense, it's data. Facebook, Google and Amazon really do have an unprecedented amount of data on us. And keep vacuuming up more and more of it. Facebook should never have been allowed to buy WhatsApp (and maybe not Instagram though I'm less concerned about that on…

This is also the first idea I've seen that tries to deal with the free speech problem on the internet. A lot of platforms today apply varying amounts of censorship (like youtube's copyright takedown mess), but there isn't really anything we can do because it's a privately owned platform and they can do whatever they want. But when they control such a large amount of mindshare, we end up putting the idea of free speec…

Just because something has a lot of mindshare doesn't mean you have any business silencing their choices. People who don't agree with the policies of private companies like Facebook can simply not use it. Try Gab if you want a private company that is anti-censorship.
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