10 ms·

To what end? "illegally undermine competition?" She is inferring that Google/Amazon/Facebook are committing anti-trust crimes? What proof does she have? >Comp

To what end? "illegally undermine competition?" She is inferring that Google/Amazon/Facebook are committing anti-trust crimes? What proof does she have? >Companies would be barred from transferring or sharing users’ data with third parties. That can be done without breaking them up. I don't think she realizes that splitting up amazon and amazon basics will do little to nothing. There are other things that can be done. You could require freedom of speech apply to industry leaders for example. However I suspect the democrats would never propose that because it would be bad for them.

kevinmchugh 8y ago
> You could require freedom of speech apply to industry leaders for example. What does this mean? Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Jeff Bezos, et al already have their constitutionally protected speech, except for where their roles as executives at public companies restrict them. If they find those restrictions onerous they can leave their roles.
- dEnigma 8y ago
  I think they meant requiring industry-leading companies to apply freedom of speech on their platforms. That is, no censoring of comments, videos, reviews, etc. as long as they don't violate the law.
  - kevinmchugh 8y ago
    So the idea is to "require freedom of speech to apply" by prohibiting corporations from setting their own terms of service, spam policies, etc? That sounds like a very serious restraint of speech.
  - apcragg 8y ago
    The government cannot compel speech. I don't think that using the power of the government to require some types of speech against the wishes of private entities solves the problem you think it's solving...
    - dEnigma 8y ago
      To clarify: I was just explaining what the above commenter meant, not stating my own opinion on the matter.
- sleepysysadmin 8y ago
  If Twitter decides tomorrow to ban the right-wing from their platform. They absolutely legally can. If you watch the recent Joe Rogan video with Tim Pool and Jack Dorsey. They didn't realize they were slowly banning the right-wing and allowing left-wing terrorists to stay on Twitter. They absolutely didn't realize they were doing this and they are going to look at fixing this. The government however could come in and simply make it that you have freedom of speech on social media. So if Twitter bans someone for saying "a man cannot be a woman" that person can sue them. The democrats will NOT do this however, the current censorship on social media is benefiting the left-wing.
  - kevinmchugh 8y ago
    The company twitter has set its terms of service. That is speech. What you're suggesting is eliminating the corporation's ability to do speak in that manner. Do you believe the US government has the ability to simply prohibit speech by corporate entities? Is it in accordance with free speech principles for a federal government to prohibit certain types of speech?
    - sleepysysadmin 8y ago
      By forcing freedom of speech onto twitter for example. I don't see how that would be restricting their speech. Personally I see this as something that will come eventually. However, I don't think that's what Twitter should do. My idea is that twitter should act more like the united nations. You create a 'diplomatic immunity' type of account that people can request. It can be something like: Minimum 50,000 followers. Account history of 1 year. If approved you can no longer edit or delete your posts; but you also cant be kicked off twitter or other be harmed by rules of twitter. this by itself will solve the problem that twitter has.
    - smadge 8y ago
      I don't think terms of service, basically a contract, fall under free speech. If you and I make a verbal contract that you will assassinate someone we are still breaking the law because assassinations are illegal. Our free speech isn't being violated when we are arrested for doing something illegal.
Shivetya 8y ago
She has no proof, she does not need any. this is typical politician using FUD to scare the populace into letting them take actions which in the end only go to bolster their own campaign coffers and personal riches. With the upcoming Presidential campaign you can expect politicians tripping over each other using jealously and fear to get people to plea for action. Amazon is not a Standard Oil by any measure as they have ample competition when it comes to online sales. Facebook is still an opt in environment. If you don't want to join facebook you don't have to and no retailer is dumb enough (well that might not be true but I haven't found one) to require you to be a facebook member to purchase products or services. Google is, well google. I don't have to use their search engine if I don't want to.
- matchbok 8y ago
  That's not how antitrust works. At all.
  - throwawaymath 8y ago
    How does antitrust work?
    - cryptokernel 8y ago
      Just leaving this here: Join CoinCircle now: https://coincircle.com/l/50VVxbObg3 https://coincircle.com/l/50VVxbObg3
- stilist 8y ago
  Amazon has competition, but what competitor can afford to intentionally lose millions or billions a year in order to dominate a market segment?
  - sigstoat 8y ago
    if you rephrase that as "Amazon has competition, but what competitor can afford to intentionally give consumers millions or billions of value a year in order to dominate a market segment?" it seems sort of generous? they're taking all this money from venture capitalists funding startups running on AWS, and pumping it into their retail operation so that the working class can have cheaper goods. and everyone involved in the process consents to it, even!
will_brown 8y ago
>I don't think she realizes that splitting up amazon and amazon basics will do little to nothing. I think amazon : amazon basics is a great example of antitrust/unfair monopoly the same as google search : almost all consumer facing google products. Both amazon and google search are the dominate online market leaders in their respective categories. In amazons case they unfairly use their market position to begin offering amazon private label products on their platform. They know what users are looking for, spend the most on, and they can give their own products dominate positions in the UI. In the case of google they too unfairly use their position as a market leader against their own customers (advertisers), so say you are a hotel booking platform and spend $x with google, google knows the market (searches, clicks, etc...) so google launches their own hotel booking, gives their in-house service priority in search results over existing market incumbents and self bids on google search advertising for key industry terms to drive up costs of advertisers to keep in business. It’s kind of like standard oil buying up the railroads so they owned the supply chain and no other oil could be moved. It’s unfairly using your market position, not to compete, but to be anti competitive to the detriment of consumers. I’d like to see the tech giants prevented from unfairly using their market dominance to stifle competition. As we saw with the break up of standard oil...competition is good for consumers.
- basch 8y ago
  I agree. But if we are going to split up the store platform and the store brands, now youre going to have to split up Target, Walmart etc. Anyone besides Ikea who sells their own store brand and runs as a platform for others to sell their products. Any grocery store can do the same thing amazon is doing, use data about sales to push clones and store brands of popular products. What percent of products at Target are store brand now? Target is like an Ikea with 3rd party products sprinkled in it, which is what Amazon wants to become.
  - apcragg 8y ago
    The difference is that none of those examples dominate their market. The problem isn't "Amazon uses their platform to promote their own products" it's "Amazon uses their market dominance to promote their own products which might not otherwise be competitive"
velcrovan 8y ago
There is a case for splitting Amazon and AWS. The point of anti-trust laws is to break up monopolies because they represent a massive and dangerous concentration of market and political power in the hands of the few. You don't need evidence of any specific crime to do it. You can say you'd prefer it not be that way. But it's a provision of existing law, with precedents. To really argue for your preference you'd need to show how those applications didn't turn out well.
- basch 8y ago
  Facebook should be treated the same way and spit up vertically then, not horizontally. Datacenter and infrastructure and all their low level services should be split from client apps, NOT messenger split from whatsapp.
  - velcrovan 8y ago
    Not sure why this would carry over to Facebook. Amazon sells metered compute or hosting infrastructure used by half the internet, Facebook doesn't sell infrastructure to anyone. Going by their actual levers of market power, you absolutely would split WhatsApp and Instagram off.
    - basch 8y ago
      I still dont think you can justify any of those as monopolies yet. Snapchat, twitter, pinterest, reddit, youtube, hangouts/gmessenger, linkedin, skype/groupme, imessage, discord, kik, line, telegram, signal. Especially justifying Instagram, because facebook really made it what it is. WhatsApp MAYBE, but in reality what facebook is doing is owning both the US and INTL messengers, I dont think they overlap in a way that justifies splitting it up, because FB's US marketshare doesnt drastically increase from WA. Is it the justice departments job from to allow the most popular domestic product from merging with the most popular international product? Uber being able to swallow up or own shares in all these regional services should be questioned then. FB/WA still have viable competition from imessage, snapchat, and skype.
- JackFr 8y ago
TheRealDunkirk 8y ago
> To what end? "illegally undermine competition?" It doesn't have to be illegal to undermine competition. Luxottica owns a vertical of 80% of the brands, the factories, the retail stores, AND the largest insurance company concerning eyeglasses in America. It isn't illegal, but the rents they are extracting from our society by keeping prices artificially high sure as hell SHOULD be.
sadris 8y ago
They've admitted that they work together on censorship issues. They're colluding together to harm potential competitors: Gab is banned from the Google app store, and Google was running a competing social media network Google+. This is exactly what ATT was doing that got them broken up.

kevinmchugh 8y ago

> You could require freedom of speech apply to industry leaders for example. What does this mean? Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Jeff Bezos, et al already have their constitutionally protected speech, except for where their roles as executives at public companies restrict them. If they find those restrictions onerous they can leave their roles.

dEnigma 8y ago
I think they meant requiring industry-leading companies to apply freedom of speech on their platforms. That is, no censoring of comments, videos, reviews, etc. as long as they don't violate the law.
- kevinmchugh 8y ago
  So the idea is to "require freedom of speech to apply" by prohibiting corporations from setting their own terms of service, spam policies, etc? That sounds like a very serious restraint of speech.
- apcragg 8y ago
  The government cannot compel speech. I don't think that using the power of the government to require some types of speech against the wishes of private entities solves the problem you think it's solving...
  - dEnigma 8y ago
    To clarify: I was just explaining what the above commenter meant, not stating my own opinion on the matter.
sleepysysadmin 8y ago
If Twitter decides tomorrow to ban the right-wing from their platform. They absolutely legally can. If you watch the recent Joe Rogan video with Tim Pool and Jack Dorsey. They didn't realize they were slowly banning the right-wing and allowing left-wing terrorists to stay on Twitter. They absolutely didn't realize they were doing this and they are going to look at fixing this. The government however could come in and simply make it that you have freedom of speech on social media. So if Twitter bans someone for saying "a man cannot be a woman" that person can sue them. The democrats will NOT do this however, the current censorship on social media is benefiting the left-wing.
- kevinmchugh 8y ago
  The company twitter has set its terms of service. That is speech. What you're suggesting is eliminating the corporation's ability to do speak in that manner. Do you believe the US government has the ability to simply prohibit speech by corporate entities? Is it in accordance with free speech principles for a federal government to prohibit certain types of speech?
  - sleepysysadmin 8y ago
    By forcing freedom of speech onto twitter for example. I don't see how that would be restricting their speech. Personally I see this as something that will come eventually. However, I don't think that's what Twitter should do. My idea is that twitter should act more like the united nations. You create a 'diplomatic immunity' type of account that people can request. It can be something like: Minimum 50,000 followers. Account history of 1 year. If approved you can no longer edit or delete your posts; but you also cant be kicked off twitter or other be harmed by rules of twitter. this by itself will solve the problem that twitter has.
  - smadge 8y ago
    I don't think terms of service, basically a contract, fall under free speech. If you and I make a verbal contract that you will assassinate someone we are still breaking the law because assassinations are illegal. Our free speech isn't being violated when we are arrested for doing something illegal.

Shivetya 8y ago

She has no proof, she does not need any. this is typical politician using FUD to scare the populace into letting them take actions which in the end only go to bolster their own campaign coffers and personal riches. With the upcoming Presidential campaign you can expect politicians tripping over each other using jealously and fear to get people to plea for action. Amazon is not a Standard Oil by any measure as they have ample competition when it comes to online sales. Facebook is still an opt in environment. If you don't want to join facebook you don't have to and no retailer is dumb enough (well that might not be true but I haven't found one) to require you to be a facebook member to purchase products or services. Google is, well google. I don't have to use their search engine if I don't want to.

matchbok 8y ago
That's not how antitrust works. At all.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  How does antitrust work?
  - cryptokernel 8y ago
    Just leaving this here: Join CoinCircle now: https://coincircle.com/l/50VVxbObg3 https://coincircle.com/l/50VVxbObg3
stilist 8y ago
Amazon has competition, but what competitor can afford to intentionally lose millions or billions a year in order to dominate a market segment?
- sigstoat 8y ago
  if you rephrase that as "Amazon has competition, but what competitor can afford to intentionally give consumers millions or billions of value a year in order to dominate a market segment?" it seems sort of generous? they're taking all this money from venture capitalists funding startups running on AWS, and pumping it into their retail operation so that the working class can have cheaper goods. and everyone involved in the process consents to it, even!

will_brown 8y ago

>I don't think she realizes that splitting up amazon and amazon basics will do little to nothing. I think amazon : amazon basics is a great example of antitrust/unfair monopoly the same as google search : almost all consumer facing google products. Both amazon and google search are the dominate online market leaders in their respective categories. In amazons case they unfairly use their market position to begin offering amazon private label products on their platform. They know what users are looking for, spend the most on, and they can give their own products dominate positions in the UI. In the case of google they too unfairly use their position as a market leader against their own customers (advertisers), so say you are a hotel booking platform and spend $x with google, google knows the market (searches, clicks, etc...) so google launches their own hotel booking, gives their in-house service priority in search results over existing market incumbents and self bids on google search advertising for key industry terms to drive up costs of advertisers to keep in business. It’s kind of like standard oil buying up the railroads so they owned the supply chain and no other oil could be moved. It’s unfairly using your market position, not to compete, but to be anti competitive to the detriment of consumers. I’d like to see the tech giants prevented from unfairly using their market dominance to stifle competition. As we saw with the break up of standard oil...competition is good for consumers.

basch 8y ago
I agree. But if we are going to split up the store platform and the store brands, now youre going to have to split up Target, Walmart etc. Anyone besides Ikea who sells their own store brand and runs as a platform for others to sell their products. Any grocery store can do the same thing amazon is doing, use data about sales to push clones and store brands of popular products. What percent of products at Target are store brand now? Target is like an Ikea with 3rd party products sprinkled in it, which is what Amazon wants to become.
- apcragg 8y ago
  The difference is that none of those examples dominate their market. The problem isn't "Amazon uses their platform to promote their own products" it's "Amazon uses their market dominance to promote their own products which might not otherwise be competitive"

velcrovan 8y ago

There is a case for splitting Amazon and AWS. The point of anti-trust laws is to break up monopolies because they represent a massive and dangerous concentration of market and political power in the hands of the few. You don't need evidence of any specific crime to do it. You can say you'd prefer it not be that way. But it's a provision of existing law, with precedents. To really argue for your preference you'd need to show how those applications didn't turn out well.

basch 8y ago
Facebook should be treated the same way and spit up vertically then, not horizontally. Datacenter and infrastructure and all their low level services should be split from client apps, NOT messenger split from whatsapp.
- velcrovan 8y ago
  Not sure why this would carry over to Facebook. Amazon sells metered compute or hosting infrastructure used by half the internet, Facebook doesn't sell infrastructure to anyone. Going by their actual levers of market power, you absolutely would split WhatsApp and Instagram off.
  - basch 8y ago
    I still dont think you can justify any of those as monopolies yet. Snapchat, twitter, pinterest, reddit, youtube, hangouts/gmessenger, linkedin, skype/groupme, imessage, discord, kik, line, telegram, signal. Especially justifying Instagram, because facebook really made it what it is. WhatsApp MAYBE, but in reality what facebook is doing is owning both the US and INTL messengers, I dont think they overlap in a way that justifies splitting it up, because FB's US marketshare doesnt drastically increase from WA. Is it the justice departments job from to allow the most popular domestic product from merging with the most popular international product? Uber being able to swallow up or own shares in all these regional services should be questioned then. FB/WA still have viable competition from imessage, snapchat, and skype.
JackFr 8y ago

TheRealDunkirk 8y ago

> To what end? "illegally undermine competition?" It doesn't have to be illegal to undermine competition. Luxottica owns a vertical of 80% of the brands, the factories, the retail stores, AND the largest insurance company concerning eyeglasses in America. It isn't illegal, but the rents they are extracting from our society by keeping prices artificially high sure as hell SHOULD be.

sadris 8y ago

They've admitted that they work together on censorship issues. They're colluding together to harm potential competitors: Gab is banned from the Google app store, and Google was running a competing social media network Google+. This is exactly what ATT was doing that got them broken up.