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Microsoft President: Democracy Is At Stake. Regulate Big Tech
- fron 7y agoSays the president of the largest spyware ("telemetry") distributor in the world
- Hoasi 7y ago"Please regulate the competition!"
- mc32 7y agoTrue, but that’s because given their revenue model, this would impact them less than the corps which have embedded their tentacles deep into personal data of their users. Adtech is, by now, addicted to people freely giving up thief data and rights to their data. Never the less, whatever happens when the elephants wrangle, it’s good for end users.
- ToFab123 7y agolargest. Hardly. Google and Facebook wins clean on this one.
- GoToRO 7y agoIf you don't play by the same rules, you loose. What he says is that the rules need to change.
- whiteflame7000 7y agoWhats interesting is that the DoD only uses windows machines even at the NSA. I think I might know where that telemetry might be going.
- colejohnson66 7y agoWhile I think the whole “telemetry” thing is overblown, there are enterprise editions of Windows that come with little to no telemetry. And I’m certain there’s custom builds of Windows for the government that have all traces of telemetry (to Microsoft) scrubbed.
- mikojan 7y agoExpropriate Microsoft.
- Aloha 7y agoWhy?
- bureaucrat 7y agoRegulate yourselves, FFS. I don’t want my paid operating system to send my private information constantly to your company.
- aaronchall 7y agoQuit using software you can't control. --- > And what? Use ‘Linux desktop’? No thank you. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. My wife uses it. I've used it for the past decade. XFCE is fully featured, smooth, and very light-weight. Others have been great too. Want software? Just install it with the package manager. Games? I used to run them in a windows VM when I really wanted to.
- wslh 7y agoThat is naive. Organizations and people depend on specific software and there is not replacement for any kind of app that is spying on you.
- aaronchall 7y agoI've been doing it progressively over the past 10 years. I don't carry a smart phone (I'm looking at Linux ones now though). My wife and I use Linux on our laptops. I'm learning more every year about how to control it. It's not naive, it's just difficult. But it's worth doing. ---- What worth do I get? I get expertise. I get knowledge. I'm a programmer. I don't have a OS sending my information to Microsoft. I don't have to worry nearly as much about malicious software. I don't have to run an Antivirus (AV) and AV scans constantly to feel confident in my computer's security. I get access to powerful open-source software. I get to keep learning about even more powerful software - repeatable environments and builds, that give me even more confidence in my ability to create value for myself and others. I get a lot of value for it.
- bureaucrat 7y agoAnd what ‘worth’, may I ask, did you get?
- hd4 7y agoWhy can't big tech self-regulate? Why must it always be a solution that depends on big government instead? Why should anyone trust the government given the last few thousand years of history?
- JaimeThompson 7y agoShould we allow chemical companies, oil companies, and power plants to regulate themselves? What about drug companies?
- PorterDuff 7y agoThe counter example is the way the Soviets dealt with chemicals, oil, power. Personally, I think that the government vs. industry split becomes rather academic when you are speaking of monopolies, especially monopolies that spy on you. I expect that there's a slow motion merger into a GoogleFacebookMicrosoftApple.gov body with the companies acting as cabinet branches.
- lesservehicle 7y agoThe nature of the stock market demands that they never self regulate. Companies are incentivized to meet the demands of shareholders, which means more revenue streams, regardless of the effects on consumers.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y agoWhen, in the history of anything, have companies self regulated properly? It always ends up at the October 1929 stock market or worse.
- MichaelMoser123 7y agoI think because democracy also implies a separation of powers, so that you have the players watching each other in order to prevent any player from becoming too strong.
- PorterDuff 7y ago
- MichaelMoser123 7y agoOnce upon a time public opinion was manipulated by TV and the big newspapers; now it is manipulated by new media companies. My stupid question is: where is the big difference?
- foepys 7y agoBecause newspapers and TV at least had somebody in the country. Facebook et al make it available to foreigners and despite what you may think, Western democracies are still a lot better than dictatorships or authoritarian leaders.
- MichaelMoser123 7y agoI didnt say that dictators are better than democracy. Why did you turn personal?
- barry-cotter 7y agoThe people who used to be able to manipulate public opinion are really, really pissed off that others are doing it and they’re even more pissed off that manipulating public opinion has become more difficult and people who aren’t respectable members of the elite are being listened to by the public. Before the internet Sanders, Trump, AOC, Yang, they would never have gotten anywhere. The ruling class is pissed off that people aren’t doing what they’re told and they want to stuff the communications revolution genie back in its bottle.
- ghaff 7y agoThere were plenty of outsider demagogues in politics long before the Internet.
- MichaelMoser123 7y agoI dont know about Trump, but this makes some sense. Thanks.
- PorterDuff 7y agoTo tell you the truth, I think that Trump would have done well in any political era, particularly those where unflagging public speaking was necessary to get the gig. Good political instincts, ability to speak extemporaneously (a rare ability in the modern era). I expect that he could have picked up a House seat fairly easily on the way to a Presidential campaign as sort of a Williams Jennings Bryanesque character. I do agree though that the internet has changed the character of politics (painfully obvious). Anything that breaks the back of newspapers and broadcasters as gatekeepers isn't such a bad thing, the trick is to avoid having youtube/facebook/etc. become activist successors to the NYT and CBS.
- aj7 7y agoWarning. Regulation almost always favors incumbents.
- i_am_proteus 7y agoMicrosoft President: Congress, please dig me the deepest, widest moat possible.
- Barrin92 7y agoThis argument is always repeated within the first ten minutes of these discussions, but I don't really understand why anyone assumes that competition is somehow the panacea to every problem on the planet. I don't want ten unregulated facebooks who all leak my data, I want one facebook that plays by reasonable rules. The dynamics of social networks which don't deliver value if they're fragmented has made the competition focus obsolete. When Zuckerberg makes this point he is obviously speaking in his self-interest but he is absolutely right and the dominance of his platform proves it. The world isn't better off if half of the information is on bing and half of the information is on google, the world is better off if those large companies which do deliver benefits to end consumers by virtue of their centralisation are bound by law to implement reasonable standards.
- whiteflame7000 7y agoCompetition is the fundamental of Capitalism. Capitalism becomes cronyism without fair competition. Edit: Downvoters please elucidate?
- colejohnson66 7y agoMeta comment: The rules ask us to please not ask about downvotes; It distracts from the discussion. As for why you’re being downvoted, it usually means people don’t agree with you (not that you’re wrong). However, we’re not supposed to downvote simply because we disagree here, but it happens. And seeing you’re a “green” account, it could also just be people who downvote all new users (yes, those exist).
- 7y ago
- aussieguy1234 7y agoIf they pass a law requiring platforms to be responsible for content their users post, it'll be easy for big incumbents like Facebook to fall in line. It will be much harder, however, for new platforms with less resources to comply. They may have to shut down instead.
- blackflame7000 7y agoYea but that would kill Facebook by a 1000 lashes overtime.
- colejohnson66 7y agoSo killing any startup’s chance of hosting user created content is ok as long as it kills Facebook?
- blackflame7000 7y agoYou are most certainly putting words in my mouth. The words on the internet should be protected under the 1st amendment no matter how disgusting and no one should have to shoulder that burden except the members of society themselves in how they go about their conduct. In my opinion, it is not people's responsibility to be unoffensive, but rather it is our own responsibility to not let offensive thoughts permeate our being.
- colejohnson66 7y agoMy apologies. I went back and reread your comment and I clearly misread it
- rayiner 7y agoWhat is the economic rationale for regulating “big tech?” What market failure would be addressed by such regulations?
- Pinckney 7y agoIt sounds like he wants to require tech companies to ban speech that the US is constitutionally forbidden from banning itself.
- AJ007 7y agoThis is a two way street. They may dictate not only what is banned, but also what can not be banned. Clearly, depending on which political party or points of view held by those with the most influence at a given time will dictate what types of speech rules are enforced. One should look at the various democracies in power across Europe and the various regions of the United States and consider just how much control they wish those governing bodies to have on what is allowed to be said, not said, and how it should be said. Additionally, consider what sorts of governance may potentially be in power in the future as well.
- shams93 7y agoYeah its not really about protecting democracy it always boils down to protecting monopolies from competition.
- entropea 7y agoMoney does not care about democracy :)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- hos234 7y agoZuckerberg & Co are going to play the 'we will loose to China card'. Which is going to slow down any kind of regulations... What's weird is, why there is no great rumbling against China's big tech within China. By now Chinese big tech should have wrecked the same unintended consequences and damage as American big tech. Whats going on there? I am guessing once things blow up there then we see global consensus on regulating Big Tech.
- Jabbles 7y agoChina isn't a democracy?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- alexis_fr 7y agoWhat I’m worried about is, Europe doesn’t even have this debate. It’s all currently in the hands of where those technologies were invented, America. It leaves you, US people, to arbitrate between freedom of speech and hate censorship, monopolies and fair competition. Whereever we go in terms of defining democracy and what it means at the time of technology, we’re dependent on you. Europe certainly, probably Asia too. Example of the current status of France: - We don’t have protected freedom of speech, there are penalties for insults, defamation and hate speech (against the protected groups only) (statistics about ethnicities are forbidden, which means no statistics about crime and ethnicity) (applied only for influential people, it seems), people have an expectation of what is said has been verified so they are not used to checking the info so they are... gullible (sorry, no better word). So I would say there is no tradition of free speech here, with the usual required education that goes with it (about the fact that people can freely tell lies). - The new law is about to enter in action: Platforms must remove « hate speech » content, and keep it (I don’t know how much time) so the police can build a case if they want to attack. Recently, stories about the books published by our minister of equality using a false name (books about advice for sexual life) have been removed, using the « hate speech » procedures. So pretty much everything is hate speech. We have no protection for political dissidence here. Everyone’s a progressive, everything else is « hate speech » and problems grow because they are not addressed.
- mattmcknight 7y agoThe threats to democracy arguments are so overblown. We're about to have a huge election. There is no literal threat to democracy. Hmmm...it must be some kind of metaphor. So what do people mean when they say this? The NPR piece says Smith suggests "the Internet giants will cannibalize the very fabric of this country". This metaphor seems hyperbolic as well. To use "cannibalize" means that something will eat itself. So, they Internet giants are the fabric of the country and they will eat the fabric. Something is missing there. The next paragraph then negatively describes Smith's regret of his previous calls for deregulation. This seems firmly unrelated to democracy, as all forms of government have regulation, and regularly adjust regulation to get better effects. However, it does seem related to the power of government over organizations such as Microsoft. Is the "threat to democracy" really meant to indicate the loss of the power of the government over individuals relative to increases of power of other organizations? "For one, he argues, it's time to reform the U.S. law that says Internet platforms are not liable for just about any of the content running through their pipes" This would dismantle the Internet. Did he forget to read https://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Six-Words-That-Created-Internet/dp/1501714414 https://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Six-Words-That-Created-Interne... ? It would force your ISP to become a censor. It's the complete opposite of the idea of moving power towards an elected government and away from corporations. Anyway, I was worried for a bit reading the headline, but it looks like our elected government is safe for the time being and this is just more hyperbolic bullshit.
- mch82 7y ago> There is no literal threat to democracy. What would you consider a threat to democracy?
- keyme 7y agoCensorship
- sebastianconcpt 7y agoOvert and covert censorship. Training ML models with ideological biases. Covert subversion of the concept of justice. Weaponization of cultural symbols. Promotion of histeria and false allegations to increase cultural subversion.
- treebeard901 7y agoThe claim that big tech itself is a threat to democracy needs to be debated. While they do manipulate their customers and sell their personal information for profit, the companies themselves have also been manipulated by the various groups in the world that are the actual threat to democracy. The political polarization might not be caused by technology but instead only amplifies it. One example where the tech companies are "guilty" is by having everyone live in their own confirmation bias bubble which is enabled by the algorithms they created. What we seem to forget is that we all lived in confirmation bias bubbles before the internet. We all believed our own local version of what the United States was until the various points in history where the dissonance was interrupted. Now globalization and social media have shown people how different their respective views happen to be, feeding the polarization even more, and we find it easy to put the blame on technology.
- rmrfrmrf 7y agoThe only part of your argument that's relevant is the part about selling personal information for profit. The rest is immaterial to the problem with unregulated industry, and in fact incorrect when it comes to the end-result of things like "political polarization". Governments and private companies are more than happy to see the mass organization and demonstrations of the 20th century turn into yelling at auntie on Facebook. Social media is the /dev/null of critical thought; a pressure valve for grievances that can be quickly assuaged by faves. The polarization of views online just makes us more silent IRL, much to the delight of our employers.
- dillonmckay 7y ago“Social media is the /dev/null of critical thought” Beautiful.
- warbird 7y agoThe article itself barely touches upon the titular "stake." NPR inserts "election interference" and Smith is quoted in reference to personal data acquisition as a potentially dangerous wealth transfer/concentration. Since election interference is widely reported and understood to have been an intel operation aimed at polarizing U.S. public opinion with legitimate and illegitimate information, I dont see how treebeard is irrelevant. Sidenote: It's still unclear, to me anyway, just how effective the influence was. In these crazy times, I should clarify that I'm not denying it occured.
- GreaterFool 7y ago> that governments need to put some "guardrails" around engineers and the tech titans they serve The evil engineers! Not the managers, CEOs and so on, but engineers. The true root of evil. Finally someone recognizes who's really at fault </sarcasm>
- throwawaywindev 7y agoA lot of MSFT management are engineers (including the CEO) so that’s probably not what he meant. Disclosure: I work at MSFT.
- mikestew 7y agoIt probably is what he meant, because this is not a casual email but written for publication. If he used the word “engineer”, I will assume he meant “engineer”, and it is not necessary that you speak for management to correct perceived misunderstandings. (NPR could have misstated Smith’s intent, but imma need a citation.)
- skrebbel 7y agoStop pushing the blame upstairs. If you knowingly build software that hurts people, you share the blame. The job market for programmers has never been better. "My boss told me to do it" is not an excuse. I, for one, hope more engineers involved in fraud (eg VW), privacy breaches (eg Facebook) etc get tried and punished. It might help make programmers realize that yes, your work actually affects real humans and yes, you're partly responsible for getting it right. If your boss makes you write evil crap, quit and get a better job. No need to be all courageous and write an angry blog post, most of us are wimps and that's fine. But that doesn't mean you can't vote with your feet. We need engineers to stop being willing to work anywhere as long as the pay is good and the tech is cool.
- pacala 7y agoThe entire adtech industry, which happens to dominates both tech and the economy, is a giant privacy violation machine. Looks like everyone is happy to cash in a fat check, fatter as you move up the totem pole. Après nous le déluge.
- _bxg1 7y agoI don't disagree, but this is an easy thing to say when you're a competitor of companies that would be hit much harder by that regulation.
- rmrfrmrf 7y agoNothing more than a cynical play by Microsoft to get a seat at the table for the inevitable avalanche of regulation coming.
- jhanschoo 7y agoTech incumbents have an incentive to argue for regulation since they typically his small companies harder.
- blackflame7000 7y agoYou know they are hoping they get looked at last since they already had to endure the anti-trust lawsuits before.
- tempsolution 7y agoBig tech is a threat to democracy? What a backwards, self-serving hunk of junk. Big tech might be the only way to sustain democracy. Technology gives governments the power to instill a lasting total dictatorship, something completely unprecedented in the history of mankind. Of course they are afraid that big tech takes away from their pie by becoming too powerful and preventing them from setting us up for an eternal dictatorship. Wake up people. China is the canary in the coal mine. If big tech doesn't step up and provide some sort of a shadow government, pressuring our real government, we are actually really screwed. Going forward, the government NEEDs to be undermined by the private sector, this is the only way to provide a power balance.
- ausbah 7y agoCorporations aren't accountable to everyday people, democratic governments are. Both big tech and big government should be kept in check, but governments accountable to their populace I think are the only realistic way to keep technology companies in chexk.
- enra 7y agoConvenient thing to say when your company has already gone through antitrust where as your competing tech companies have not.
- brandonmenc 7y ago> For one, he argues, it's time to reform the U.S. law that says Internet platforms are not liable for just about any of the content running through their pipes — hate speech, death threats and ads for counterfeit goods or illegal guns. Only if it comes with full regulation of said platforms as publishers, which they would then be - and imo already are today. Enough with this having it both ways.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- telltruth 7y agoFor those you don’t know: Brad Smith was the chief legal officer who got Microsoft out of Antitrust with a slap on the hand. For this marvelous achievement, he has since been given promotions all the way to the position of the President.
- archie2 7y agoMake no mistake, this is just MS calling for regulatory capture so they have few people to compete with their products. They are in it for their profits, not the good of mankind.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoAny time I see a statement put out by any of the tech incumbents, I ask myself, "How does this statement benefit the company?" And usually, there is a clear path to an answer. It's for profits, it's never for the public good. These are companies after all. If they're asking to regulated, it means buying a seat at the table, creating the illusion of regulation, with none of the downsides imposed by actual regulation.
- archie2 7y agoFrom the 80s until the 90s Microsoft never lobbied the government, and they dominated. They got hauled in front of congress and were chastised for not lobbying, then a year later were hit with their infamous antitrust suit. The government bullied Microsoft into paying them off - just like the damned Mafia, except it's legal. Now we see Microsoft begging the government to basically do this AGAIN. It's sick, corrupt and a perversion of capitalism and democracy.
- remir 7y agoPerhaps not really relevant to the discussion, but what is the role of Microsoft's president within the company?
- paggle 7y agoRuns the commercial side of the company (sales/marketing/operations). No direct control over product development.
- goofaced 7y agoThere is actually a pure free market solution to this problem. Microsoft should sell their stake in Facebook and publicly announce they are distancing themselves from FB. The dominos will just start falling automatically, one by one. For sure, it will start some serious soul searching among the companies whose primary business is data exploitation. But of course, this will not happen, because Microsoft desperately needs Facebook to be strong so that its AI team can actually challenge Google's dominance in AI (Tensorflow). https://internetofbusiness.com/microsoft-and-facebook-team-up-on-open-source-ai/ https://internetofbusiness.com/microsoft-and-facebook-team-u... So we keep hearing these weird platitudes by folks who probably are never going to be affected in any big way by this so called "cannibalization of the fabric of this country".
- paggle 7y agoI see a lot of criticism that this is self-serving by Microsoft, that they’re advocating for regulation that will hurt their competitors like Google and Amazon much harder than themselves. I say... *that’s great.” Privacy advocates can get one of the world’s most powerful companies as an ally, just by a common self interest. I don’t mind that this is self serving from Microsoft, I hope they are successful. Other allies could be the media companies hurt by Facebook, advertisers bidding up each other on Google, etc. there should be a selfish coalition of privacy defenders just to protect their own businesses.
- elevenbits 7y ago> that governments need to put some "guardrails" around engineers and the tech titans they serve No. We don't need "guardrails" at all. We have an existing legal system that works quite well to discourage companies from profiting from ventures we don't like: we simply make those ventures illegal. Companies have been able to make a profitable business out of harvesting personal data, abusing consent, etc., because these things aren't illegal. GDPR et al is the start of laws in this area, but a financial penalty is simply a business cost. If I can make $500B with a 25% chance of a $5B fine, the rational action is of course to proceed. If there was a law about certain types of consent being legally required for certain types of data, THEN an engineer, manager, or exec can decide to either a) report the violation to authorities or b) become complicit themselves. When breaking these laws comes with real penalties (jail time, not fines), then the business can choose between a) do something illegal and government puts everyone in jail and takes all assets or b) don't do something illegal, which is exactly what we want. Bottom line: No special regulation is required here. Simply make a law extending the personal data productions afforded by existing regulations and let the system do its job.
- surjrjfovjr 7y agoWould I be wrong to translate as follows? >Today, the tech giants — whose tools have been used to interfere in fair and free elections — are posing a much bigger threat to the political stability of many countries, including the U.S. "Democracy does not work because people are easily manipulated by propaganda, so we need enlightened overlords to create better propaganda that will manipulate people to support my interests... uh, I mean, to support what's good for them." >Smith has proposals that are not popular in Silicon Valley. For one, he argues, it's time to reform the U.S. law that says Internet platforms are not liable for just about any of the content running through their pipes — hate speech, death threats and ads for counterfeit goods or illegal guns. "I love censorship. Let's have more of it!"
- austincheney 7y agoThe problem isn’t a lack of regulation. Increased regulation could be a partial solution. The problem is a weak economic model. In the online economy software (products) have little or no value. The value is placed almost entirely upon media and data transactions. Those two are symbiotic but they are neither the same nor codependent. This economic model is what needs to be fixed. Entrepreneurs out there if you want to do good for the world, make absurd money, and be disruptive then that economic model is what you should disrupt. Go, disrupt the shit out of it.
- mnm1 7y agoHard to take something like this seriously coming from Microsoft's president. Either he wants regulation to keep competition out or to hinder competitors or he'd regulate Microsoft himself if he really believed in regulation. He doesn't. This is just a ploy. Should these companies be regulated? Of course. But let's not believe they want it for the good of everyone else. They have selfish interests only. Period. Believing this drivel is foolish.
- jkp56 7y agoBrad Smith clearly wants to corner software engineers and leave them no choice, but to unionize. I understand that this is not Brad's idea and he just delivered the message from the MS board meeting. However the big tech does need regulation and this regulation is called GDPR. We need laws that make it a criminal offense to use user data without an explicit written consent in a standard form set by law per each use of this data.
- sorin-panca 7y agoIn the wake of left wing alternative media gaining momentum, and left wing representatives and candidates enjoying huge public support, Microsoft now wants regulation on platforms.