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The argument for breaking up these companies is not based on punishing them for wrongs. Instead, it’s based on the idea that they have so much manifest power th
by c256 9y ago
The argument for breaking up these companies is not based on punishing them for wrongs. Instead, it’s based on the idea that they have so much manifest power that their natural order of business inherently has the effect of “abuse of monopoly (monopsony) power”, regardless of any ‘unfair intent’.
Take Google as an example: they provide a large number of incredibly valuable services to the public (in my opinion). The cost for those services is a vast centralized surveillance system that cannot be reasonably avoided by basically anyone taking part in the first world economy. If Google we’re less hegemonic, then there would be at least a chance for alternatives that don’t either knock you out of contemporary society or simply change the nameplate on the panopticon to exist.
An exception that proves the rule here is DuckDuckGo: it’s a scrappy, functional search engine that lets people opt out of part of Google’s oversight —- except that it doesn’t; the remainder of Google is still in so many aspects that it can effectively bypass the loss of personal data that goes to search. If YouTube, Gmail, and AdSense were also separate blocks, though...
- amelius 9y agoFortunately, there is one thing on the horizon that can stop all of this, which is to have AI that can recognize and remove ads: that would destroy all incentives for these companies to track us.
- jacksmith21006 9y agoLike it or not ads are necessary. So if there is AI that removes ads then there will not be content to consume.
- nerfhammer 9y agoYou seem to be talking about credit agencies though. It's orders of magnitude easier to browse the internet in incognito mode than it is to live without a credit card or to not have a credit report. There's only two credit card networks and three credit reporting agencies. Google and Facebook don't know exactly where you live but credit agencies do, and they also know your bank accounts, social security number, etc. Credit agencies openly sell their data, but Google and Facebook don't and never have. Google and Facebook don't actually have vast logs of everything you've ever done, they trash old logs after some period of time, and frankly most of is not useful to bother to do anything with to try to join it in the first place. But your credit card data and credit history lasts your whole life. We could put some regulations on personally identifiable information... except actually that exists already, and the credit agencies have been the ones that have been hopelessly reckless with that and somehow always get away with it.
- lancesells 9y agoIf you use either Google and Facebook on your phone they do know where you live. Most likely they know where you work, how you get there, your voice (Google), your income, your demographic information, what websites you visit, what you buy, who your friends and family are and what you look like. Google and Facebook buy the data from those credit agencies and they resell that data to the highest bidder numerous times a day. Google and Facebook have far more data on anyone in the US than any credit agency ever will.
- nerfhammer 9y agoNo, seriously, they don't sell personal data to the highest bidder. There is no such data sales product that they offer. It doesn't exist. They don't compile lists of web sites you visit and sell it to anyone. They don't keep vast logs of everything you've ever done because it's expensive to store and simply isn't worth anything, especially if it isn't recent. They do want to keep your age and gender and what city you live in, that sort of thing. They don't care what you look like. > Google and Facebook buy the data from those credit agencies No they freaking don't. Facebook barely makes one dollar per month per user. Google makes something like $2 per month per user. Credit reports cost on the order of $20 each. Do the math.