6 ms·

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

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/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/net_neutrality/ > Not only was Google the pro-net neutrality organization that spent the most on lobbying in 2014 — $16.8 million in 2014 — it was the 10th biggest spender on federal lobbying that year. Impressive as that sounds, however, it still ranked behind both Comcast and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. And it seems like every dollar that Comcast spends lobbying is directed towards efforts that will have a negative impact on my life, and the lives of everyone not on Comcast's board of directors. At least with Google, sometimes our incentives align, so that's another point in favor of attempting to break up the Comcast monopoly before the Google one.

giggles_giggles 8y ago
>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.
- psadauskas 8y ago
  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 Google here, and yes, they at least occasionally lobby for things I like because sometimes their interests and the interests of the public in general happen to align. 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. [1]: https://muninetworks.org/content/totals-are-comcast-spends-900k-fort-collins-election https://muninetworks.org/content/totals-are-comcast-spends-9...
  - rayiner 8y ago
    > 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.
    - brmgb 8y ago
      Search engine and ride-sharing don't seem to be natural monopolies however. Communication infrastructure in most part of the USA clearly is. Still I agree breaking up Comcast is not the solution. You will just end up with smaller more localized monopolies. That's pretty much what happened with Bell after all. The solution would be either nationalizing the infrastructure and leasing it to operators or forcing existing operators to rent their infrastructure to their competitors for a set price. The later is actually working quite well in France. Short of that you will never get competition. It's simply not profitable.
      - rayiner 8y ago
        It's working terribly in France. France has some of the slowest broadband in the OECD: https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-t.... Just 18% of French households have connections faster than 15 mbps, versus 48% of American households.
        brmgb 8y ago
        That's mostly because France never used copper cable as a TV distribution system and is going straight to fiber. Deployment is admittedly slower than it should be especially in the countryside where it will never be profitable due to low density. Meanwhile, people are stuck with ADSL and VDSL which give connections closer to 10mbps than 15. Cost wise however, you can't even compare the USA and France. In France, a full speed FTTH subscription with no data cap cost 25 euros and you can pay 20 more to get a cell phone plan with unlimited call and unlimited data. If you are ready to switch provider yearly, you can bring that down to 25 euros all included.
- cowl 8y ago
  OFC that is the measure. If they have lobbied for things that actually make our life better or make it worse. Lobbing is inevitable and Desirable too.
  - sovnade 8y ago
    Not sure about desirable. I'm not a huge fan of the company/person with the most money to donate basically dictating the direction of our country (as it is now).
- dfxm12 8y ago
  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.
  - gnopgnip 8y ago
    There are multiple ways to represent the people and their best interests. It is not always the role of the government to do what is most popular. Raising taxes instead of increased deficit spending is an example of something that is often unpopular, but in many cases the objectively better option.
    - pessimizer 8y ago
      > Raising taxes instead of increased deficit spending is an example of something that is often unpopular, but in many cases the objectively better option. I don't think that you could get any reasonably representative range of economists in a room to even agree that this is ever a better option, so I think your claim to objectivity is unwarranted.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        Well, if the pre-existing taxes were zero, you could probably get a most economists to agree that raising taxes was better than increasing deficit spending. Beyond that...yeah.
- diminoten 8y ago
  It's uncontroversial to say Net Neutrality is pro-consumer on HN because we're the people who know the technical aspects of the concept; it's uncontroversial anywhere people know what it's about. But the point is well made. We can't be breaking up companies that don't do what we want, if they're playing by the rules. The real answer is to change the rules. Warren is running on some populist anger, and that's a dangerous thing to praise.
  - kmkemp 8y ago
    That's fine also, but I don't think they're mutually exclusive. If lax laws have allowed monopolies to take hold, then the job of the government is to protect consumers by creating a free market - and that may mean breaking companies up. In the case that the monopoly is natural or sufficiently hard to prevent, the government should either take over the industry and run it as a non-profit or intervene in such a way that creates a free market.
    - diminoten 8y ago
      In absolutely no way should the government do any of those things. The government should instead pass laws that reflect how the people want corporations to behave, and until they do so, not punish or harm corporations for playing by the rules. The government running an entire industry, even the threat of such a thing, is a great way to completely destroy innovation in that industry. Why would I invest in research if it's a real possibility the government can come in and take everything from me for nothing? What you're suggesting doesn't create a free market, it creates a dead market.
  - pessimizer 8y ago
    This is only true if you think that "the rules" can't include breaking up companies when they reach a certain level of market control. I hope you agree that Warren is running to change or enforce some rules; the reason you run for political office is to become a rulemaker or executor.
- wwweston 8y ago
  > 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. Far from being a shocking "admission," it's the least surprising thing in the world that people support policy they like and oppose policy they don't. And ignore policy they're indifferent to. (People may also at times support policy they don't like and oppose policy they do for various practical political reasons, but that's a different discussion.) This might be more of an issue in areas where things people do/don't like are arbitrary matters of taste. I'm certainly not saddling up to lead a state-backed charge against the company that produces Peeps despite the fact that I think they're a terrible excuse for candy. But net neutrality is not an arbitrary matter of taste. Nor, really, are immigration, tax reform and antitrust issues.
- dj_brown_sugar 8y ago
  > 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. The original point of anti-trust law was to make things better for the consumer. If Comcast is using their power to lobby for anti-consumer practices then they should be broken up. Naturally consumers are going to disagree with anti-consumer practices.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
I believe net neutrality is a regulatory capture move, and gives Google and Netflix a stranglehold over the industry: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19316513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19316513 Marketing to the contrary, I believe there are good, strong justifications for against net neutrality, as a consumer and someone excited about the future of technology. Additionally, and far more importantly: Comcast is a regional monopoly. They have a lot of power in some geographic areas of the United States. Google is a global monopoly that has power in nearly every home on the planet. You shouldn't be willing to strengthen a global monopoly to try to fight a regional one.
- Rebelgecko 8y ago
  How so? If I don't like my internet provider, my only other option is dialup. If I don't like Google, there's multiple alternatives for all of their services that I use
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    While you can place your data in services which are not Google, if you want to consume data, you are often going to have to deal with Google. For instance, almost anyone who shares any sort of video whatsoever puts it on YouTube. It doesn't matter if I'm not a YouTube user, I have to go to YouTube if I want to watch someone else's videos. And Google is far more than just where you go to search or store your email. Somewhere around 90% of the web uses Google Analytics, Google Ads, or Google Fonts, so they can track you regardless of where you go online. And that's before you get into the fact that plenty of websites are on Google's cloud services, which you may not even know. (I left Google Docs for another service, for instance, but it's still hosted on Google's servers.) Even if you're not logged into a Google account, Google is tracking you and profiling your behavior across the web. (Google also collects credit card data, so they can track you in brick and mortar stores now too.) Using Google's browser to access the web is also becoming increasingly inescapable, now that the company with the second largest market share in web browsers is switching to Chrome's codebase. Firefox is nearly the last remaining holdout against Chromium. In fact, the very protocol we use to talk to the web is constantly being revised primarily on Google's lead and direction. HTTP/3, QUIC, DNS-over-HTTPS, etc. is all about moving the web's standard to something more palatable to Google's business models, and making them harder to block or filter out. It's incredibly naive to believe you can escape Google. I've spent years de-Googling, and there's plenty of data Google still has on me. ISP monopolies are a big problem, but they won't follow you when you move. A high bar for escape, to be sure, but escaping Google likely requires an even higher bar: Entering the witness protection program and getting a new identity.

giggles_giggles 8y ago

>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.

psadauskas 8y ago
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 Google here, and yes, they at least occasionally lobby for things I like because sometimes their interests and the interests of the public in general happen to align. 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. [1]: https://muninetworks.org/content/totals-are-comcast-spends-900k-fort-collins-election https://muninetworks.org/content/totals-are-comcast-spends-9...
- rayiner 8y ago
  > 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.
  - brmgb 8y ago
    Search engine and ride-sharing don't seem to be natural monopolies however. Communication infrastructure in most part of the USA clearly is. Still I agree breaking up Comcast is not the solution. You will just end up with smaller more localized monopolies. That's pretty much what happened with Bell after all. The solution would be either nationalizing the infrastructure and leasing it to operators or forcing existing operators to rent their infrastructure to their competitors for a set price. The later is actually working quite well in France. Short of that you will never get competition. It's simply not profitable.
    - rayiner 8y ago
      It's working terribly in France. France has some of the slowest broadband in the OECD: https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-t.... Just 18% of French households have connections faster than 15 mbps, versus 48% of American households.
      - brmgb 8y ago
        That's mostly because France never used copper cable as a TV distribution system and is going straight to fiber. Deployment is admittedly slower than it should be especially in the countryside where it will never be profitable due to low density. Meanwhile, people are stuck with ADSL and VDSL which give connections closer to 10mbps than 15. Cost wise however, you can't even compare the USA and France. In France, a full speed FTTH subscription with no data cap cost 25 euros and you can pay 20 more to get a cell phone plan with unlimited call and unlimited data. If you are ready to switch provider yearly, you can bring that down to 25 euros all included.
cowl 8y ago
OFC that is the measure. If they have lobbied for things that actually make our life better or make it worse. Lobbing is inevitable and Desirable too.
- sovnade 8y ago
  Not sure about desirable. I'm not a huge fan of the company/person with the most money to donate basically dictating the direction of our country (as it is now).
dfxm12 8y ago
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.
- gnopgnip 8y ago
  There are multiple ways to represent the people and their best interests. It is not always the role of the government to do what is most popular. Raising taxes instead of increased deficit spending is an example of something that is often unpopular, but in many cases the objectively better option.
  - pessimizer 8y ago
    > Raising taxes instead of increased deficit spending is an example of something that is often unpopular, but in many cases the objectively better option. I don't think that you could get any reasonably representative range of economists in a room to even agree that this is ever a better option, so I think your claim to objectivity is unwarranted.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      Well, if the pre-existing taxes were zero, you could probably get a most economists to agree that raising taxes was better than increasing deficit spending. Beyond that...yeah.
diminoten 8y ago
It's uncontroversial to say Net Neutrality is pro-consumer on HN because we're the people who know the technical aspects of the concept; it's uncontroversial anywhere people know what it's about. But the point is well made. We can't be breaking up companies that don't do what we want, if they're playing by the rules. The real answer is to change the rules. Warren is running on some populist anger, and that's a dangerous thing to praise.
- kmkemp 8y ago
  That's fine also, but I don't think they're mutually exclusive. If lax laws have allowed monopolies to take hold, then the job of the government is to protect consumers by creating a free market - and that may mean breaking companies up. In the case that the monopoly is natural or sufficiently hard to prevent, the government should either take over the industry and run it as a non-profit or intervene in such a way that creates a free market.
  - diminoten 8y ago
    In absolutely no way should the government do any of those things. The government should instead pass laws that reflect how the people want corporations to behave, and until they do so, not punish or harm corporations for playing by the rules. The government running an entire industry, even the threat of such a thing, is a great way to completely destroy innovation in that industry. Why would I invest in research if it's a real possibility the government can come in and take everything from me for nothing? What you're suggesting doesn't create a free market, it creates a dead market.
- pessimizer 8y ago
  This is only true if you think that "the rules" can't include breaking up companies when they reach a certain level of market control. I hope you agree that Warren is running to change or enforce some rules; the reason you run for political office is to become a rulemaker or executor.
wwweston 8y ago
> 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. Far from being a shocking "admission," it's the least surprising thing in the world that people support policy they like and oppose policy they don't. And ignore policy they're indifferent to. (People may also at times support policy they don't like and oppose policy they do for various practical political reasons, but that's a different discussion.) This might be more of an issue in areas where things people do/don't like are arbitrary matters of taste. I'm certainly not saddling up to lead a state-backed charge against the company that produces Peeps despite the fact that I think they're a terrible excuse for candy. But net neutrality is not an arbitrary matter of taste. Nor, really, are immigration, tax reform and antitrust issues.
dj_brown_sugar 8y ago
> 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. The original point of anti-trust law was to make things better for the consumer. If Comcast is using their power to lobby for anti-consumer practices then they should be broken up. Naturally consumers are going to disagree with anti-consumer practices.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

I believe net neutrality is a regulatory capture move, and gives Google and Netflix a stranglehold over the industry: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19316513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19316513 Marketing to the contrary, I believe there are good, strong justifications for against net neutrality, as a consumer and someone excited about the future of technology. Additionally, and far more importantly: Comcast is a regional monopoly. They have a lot of power in some geographic areas of the United States. Google is a global monopoly that has power in nearly every home on the planet. You shouldn't be willing to strengthen a global monopoly to try to fight a regional one.

Rebelgecko 8y ago
How so? If I don't like my internet provider, my only other option is dialup. If I don't like Google, there's multiple alternatives for all of their services that I use
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  While you can place your data in services which are not Google, if you want to consume data, you are often going to have to deal with Google. For instance, almost anyone who shares any sort of video whatsoever puts it on YouTube. It doesn't matter if I'm not a YouTube user, I have to go to YouTube if I want to watch someone else's videos. And Google is far more than just where you go to search or store your email. Somewhere around 90% of the web uses Google Analytics, Google Ads, or Google Fonts, so they can track you regardless of where you go online. And that's before you get into the fact that plenty of websites are on Google's cloud services, which you may not even know. (I left Google Docs for another service, for instance, but it's still hosted on Google's servers.) Even if you're not logged into a Google account, Google is tracking you and profiling your behavior across the web. (Google also collects credit card data, so they can track you in brick and mortar stores now too.) Using Google's browser to access the web is also becoming increasingly inescapable, now that the company with the second largest market share in web browsers is switching to Chrome's codebase. Firefox is nearly the last remaining holdout against Chromium. In fact, the very protocol we use to talk to the web is constantly being revised primarily on Google's lead and direction. HTTP/3, QUIC, DNS-over-HTTPS, etc. is all about moving the web's standard to something more palatable to Google's business models, and making them harder to block or filter out. It's incredibly naive to believe you can escape Google. I've spent years de-Googling, and there's plenty of data Google still has on me. ISP monopolies are a big problem, but they won't follow you when you move. A high bar for escape, to be sure, but escaping Google likely requires an even higher bar: Entering the witness protection program and getting a new identity.