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I think maybe we're speaking past eachother. When we say "break up" in the context of Google... what do we mean? Geographically? By "vertical" like Gmail & stu

I think maybe we're speaking past eachother. When we say "break up" in the context of Google... what do we mean? Geographically? By "vertical" like Gmail & stuff, YouTube and search, advertising & making money, waymo and other loss making operations..? I'm not sure what the solutions to all the issues are. But, apart from the issues around privacy (and I'm not sure the conventions we're aiming for are great on privacy anyway), we just can't "physically" own our data individually. That's not how data works. The data from lots of cars driving around can become a self driving car program. The data from you driving around cannot (never say never though). It's data's qualities at scale that are being discussed here. Amazon knows what and how and how much who buys, at scale. If an allegation/indictment is made, it will/may allege that at Amazon scale, this is monopolistic.

CodiePetersen 7y ago
I'm suggesting that the bad effects are usually from scale. So the only real effective way imo is to reduce the scale by breaking the companies both horizontally and vertically. Maybe each vertical has two or more companies created from it idk. But if there are more actors smaller populations can have a larger effect on policy because now the companies don't have many revenue streams to hold out until people forget. They would be subject to immediate public demands and people would have competitors they could flock to. Additionally many actors competing with data at smaller scales I think reduces the harmful effects of singular bad influence pointing society in the wrong direction. But I agree I don't think there is much we can do about data ownership. The most we can do is make laws saying you have to inform them when you collect their data and that's already being done. Users just need to be conscious about their activity and sites they go to. But there needs to be real competitive alternatives to switch to if that is going to be effective.

CodiePetersen 7y ago

I'm suggesting that the bad effects are usually from scale. So the only real effective way imo is to reduce the scale by breaking the companies both horizontally and vertically. Maybe each vertical has two or more companies created from it idk. But if there are more actors smaller populations can have a larger effect on policy because now the companies don't have many revenue streams to hold out until people forget. They would be subject to immediate public demands and people would have competitors they could flock to. Additionally many actors competing with data at smaller scales I think reduces the harmful effects of singular bad influence pointing society in the wrong direction. But I agree I don't think there is much we can do about data ownership. The most we can do is make laws saying you have to inform them when you collect their data and that's already being done. Users just need to be conscious about their activity and sites they go to. But there needs to be real competitive alternatives to switch to if that is going to be effective.