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The ISPs and mobile carriers are too powerful. At least Google/Facebook have to innovate, or buy companies like Instagram or Whatsapp that innovate. ISPs get

The ISPs and mobile carriers are too powerful. At least Google/Facebook have to innovate, or buy companies like Instagram or Whatsapp that innovate. ISPs get their billions in revenue from monopoly. All they have to do is buy off politicans and put people like Ajit Pai in power. Now that they've started to acquire tech companies like Yahoo, no one can stop them from giving preferential treatment to their content and streaming services eventually threatening the ability for tech startups to compete through innovation.

Bartweiss 8y ago
I'm still baffled by the focus on FANG as too powerful and inescapable, especially from generally left/liberal writers. They're not always friendly or easy to avoid, certainly, but they're far more escapable and far less legislatively malicious than Comcast, AT&T, and their ilk. Obviously lots of people are mad at those companies too, but it's frustrating to see "hit Google with antitrust suits!" getting high-profile NYT billing while "hit Comcast with antitrust suits!" doesn't.
- lainga 8y ago
  >writers I think there's your problem. The FANG companies have such a higher profile than ISPs, and universal exposure among readers (vs. anyone who might live outside the US, or where Comcast doesn't have a monopoly), so articles on them will attract more attention. See $argument-about-the-decline-of-journalism and so on.
- tivert 8y ago
  > I'm still baffled by the focus on FANG as too powerful and inescapable, especially from generally left/liberal writers. They're not always friendly or easy to avoid, certainly, but they're far more escapable and far less legislatively malicious than Comcast, AT&T, and their ilk. Facebook and Google have are far more powerful and inescapable for writers than for the general public, as those companies are the primary way the public discovers and consumes news media online. A regular person can easily delete their Facebook profile and switch to Duckduckgo, but the same would be suicide for a newspaper: they have to go where the eyeballs are.
  - sangnoir 8y ago
    > Facebook and Google have are far more powerful and inescapable for writers than for the general public This is insightful. Sometimes I forget that journalists occasionally have points-of-view that are not quite aligned with the public - I think they forget that too. I suspect that's also why middle-aged, balding men (frequently English professors) who are somehow irresistible to (much) younger women are over-represented in novels as heroes.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Google and Facebook are allowed to maintain data about me and my life, sell that data to others, and I have no recourse. My broadband and mobile providers see a much slimmer cross section of my life, and are far less capable as data aggregation and warehousing systems comparatively speaking. Google and Facebook (and Amazon, to a lesser extent) are for-profit surveillance systems at their core. How could you not demand oversight and regulation of such systems in a democracy?
  - r00fus 8y ago
    Why aren't you complaining about Equifax instead then? Now there's a company who absolutely deserves scorn.
    - blub 8y ago
      That's just a red herring you're dangling in front of our noses to distract us. There's no law of the universe saying one has to address bad actors in a specific order or sequentially. Furthermore, Equifax is a problem that the US needs to solve by themselves. Google & Facebook are a global problem.
      - r00fus 8y ago
        Equifax (and Facebook) actually had an exfiltrated event. And they didn't get punished. Don't lump Google in there.
  - Bartweiss 8y ago
    "are allowed to maintain data about me and my life, sell that data to others, and I have no recourse" All of that applies unchanged to Verizon, Comcast, et al, even if they aren't currently doing so. "My broadband and mobile providers see a much slimmer cross section of my life" I'm not sure this is true in general? I agree that Google and Facebook have a fair bit of data about me. They have vastly more data about average users who use Facebook sign-in, don't block tracking, leave location services on, etc. But broadband and mobile providers see every site most users visit (even if your DNS isn't your ISP), along with metadata about those interactions. And mobile providers track location effectively non-stop, even if location services are off, plus extensive metadata on calls and texts. And that's before we get into the monopoly issues; Verizon now owns the scraps of data-hog Yahoo so it's operating in both domains. I'm not sure why I would assume Oath is any less scary as an aggregator and warehouse than Google. (Less secure, undoubtedly, but that's not a mark in its favor. "Verizon sucks at technology" does not make me feel better.) "How could you not demand oversight and regulation of such systems in a democracy?" Again, my argument isn't "Facebook and Google are beyond reproach", it's "why are we more worried about FANG than their analogues who also have monopoly control over users and in-depth access to people's locations and call records?" The other issue with regulation, of course, is that a key concern for all of these companies is that they hand data to the government, often without so much as a warrant. (And yet again, mobile providers are noticeably worse about this than any other player - except Yahoo, which is now tied to a mobile provider.) That doesn't make regulation a bad idea, but it certainly cripples my faith in it as a full solution.
- forgottenpass 8y ago
  I'm still baffled by the focus on FANG as too powerful and inescapable I can stand up an encrypted session to prevent ISPs from having incidental access to my data. I get the exact same service (a dumb bit pipe). Moving from one ISP to another is a lightweight operation that doesn't limit what I can do beyond throughput and latency. I've already switched between 3 different isps today without even noticing, and it will be 5 by the time I go to bed. The Facebook/Apple/Googles of the world are all designed around vendor lock-in, designing tools such that they always get incidental access to my data, then exploiting that access to the hilt. Oh, and ISPs get beat up plenty too.
RestlessMind 8y ago
But ISPs don't pick war with those who buy ink by the barrels. So you won't see a flood of articles across the political spectrum about how bad ISPs are.
erlend_sh 8y ago
ISPs are USA’s problem. FANG is a global problem.
- jchonphoenix 8y ago
  If by global, you exclude China with 1/6 of the world population, then sure. While you're at it, you should exclude Japan, SE Asia, and Russia also.

Bartweiss 8y ago

I'm still baffled by the focus on FANG as too powerful and inescapable, especially from generally left/liberal writers. They're not always friendly or easy to avoid, certainly, but they're far more escapable and far less legislatively malicious than Comcast, AT&T, and their ilk. Obviously lots of people are mad at those companies too, but it's frustrating to see "hit Google with antitrust suits!" getting high-profile NYT billing while "hit Comcast with antitrust suits!" doesn't.

lainga 8y ago
>writers I think there's your problem. The FANG companies have such a higher profile than ISPs, and universal exposure among readers (vs. anyone who might live outside the US, or where Comcast doesn't have a monopoly), so articles on them will attract more attention. See $argument-about-the-decline-of-journalism and so on.
tivert 8y ago
> I'm still baffled by the focus on FANG as too powerful and inescapable, especially from generally left/liberal writers. They're not always friendly or easy to avoid, certainly, but they're far more escapable and far less legislatively malicious than Comcast, AT&T, and their ilk. Facebook and Google have are far more powerful and inescapable for writers than for the general public, as those companies are the primary way the public discovers and consumes news media online. A regular person can easily delete their Facebook profile and switch to Duckduckgo, but the same would be suicide for a newspaper: they have to go where the eyeballs are.
- sangnoir 8y ago
  > Facebook and Google have are far more powerful and inescapable for writers than for the general public This is insightful. Sometimes I forget that journalists occasionally have points-of-view that are not quite aligned with the public - I think they forget that too. I suspect that's also why middle-aged, balding men (frequently English professors) who are somehow irresistible to (much) younger women are over-represented in novels as heroes.
toomuchtodo 8y ago
Google and Facebook are allowed to maintain data about me and my life, sell that data to others, and I have no recourse. My broadband and mobile providers see a much slimmer cross section of my life, and are far less capable as data aggregation and warehousing systems comparatively speaking. Google and Facebook (and Amazon, to a lesser extent) are for-profit surveillance systems at their core. How could you not demand oversight and regulation of such systems in a democracy?
- r00fus 8y ago
  Why aren't you complaining about Equifax instead then? Now there's a company who absolutely deserves scorn.
  - blub 8y ago
    That's just a red herring you're dangling in front of our noses to distract us. There's no law of the universe saying one has to address bad actors in a specific order or sequentially. Furthermore, Equifax is a problem that the US needs to solve by themselves. Google & Facebook are a global problem.
    - r00fus 8y ago
      Equifax (and Facebook) actually had an exfiltrated event. And they didn't get punished. Don't lump Google in there.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  "are allowed to maintain data about me and my life, sell that data to others, and I have no recourse" All of that applies unchanged to Verizon, Comcast, et al, even if they aren't currently doing so. "My broadband and mobile providers see a much slimmer cross section of my life" I'm not sure this is true in general? I agree that Google and Facebook have a fair bit of data about me. They have vastly more data about average users who use Facebook sign-in, don't block tracking, leave location services on, etc. But broadband and mobile providers see every site most users visit (even if your DNS isn't your ISP), along with metadata about those interactions. And mobile providers track location effectively non-stop, even if location services are off, plus extensive metadata on calls and texts. And that's before we get into the monopoly issues; Verizon now owns the scraps of data-hog Yahoo so it's operating in both domains. I'm not sure why I would assume Oath is any less scary as an aggregator and warehouse than Google. (Less secure, undoubtedly, but that's not a mark in its favor. "Verizon sucks at technology" does not make me feel better.) "How could you not demand oversight and regulation of such systems in a democracy?" Again, my argument isn't "Facebook and Google are beyond reproach", it's "why are we more worried about FANG than their analogues who also have monopoly control over users and in-depth access to people's locations and call records?" The other issue with regulation, of course, is that a key concern for all of these companies is that they hand data to the government, often without so much as a warrant. (And yet again, mobile providers are noticeably worse about this than any other player - except Yahoo, which is now tied to a mobile provider.) That doesn't make regulation a bad idea, but it certainly cripples my faith in it as a full solution.
forgottenpass 8y ago
I'm still baffled by the focus on FANG as too powerful and inescapable I can stand up an encrypted session to prevent ISPs from having incidental access to my data. I get the exact same service (a dumb bit pipe). Moving from one ISP to another is a lightweight operation that doesn't limit what I can do beyond throughput and latency. I've already switched between 3 different isps today without even noticing, and it will be 5 by the time I go to bed. The Facebook/Apple/Googles of the world are all designed around vendor lock-in, designing tools such that they always get incidental access to my data, then exploiting that access to the hilt. Oh, and ISPs get beat up plenty too.

RestlessMind 8y ago

But ISPs don't pick war with those who buy ink by the barrels. So you won't see a flood of articles across the political spectrum about how bad ISPs are.

erlend_sh 8y ago

ISPs are USA’s problem. FANG is a global problem.

jchonphoenix 8y ago
If by global, you exclude China with 1/6 of the world population, then sure. While you're at it, you should exclude Japan, SE Asia, and Russia also.