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> Sixteen marketing associations, some of which are backed by Facebook Inc (FB.O) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google, faulted Apple for not adhering to an ad-i

> Sixteen marketing associations, some of which are backed by Facebook Inc (FB.O) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google, faulted Apple for not adhering to an ad-industry system for seeking user consent under European privacy rules. Apps will now need to ask for permission twice, increasing the risk users will refuse, the associations argued. I was taken aback when I read that sixteen(!) agencies had banded together, including collusion from Google and Facebook. This starkly reminded me of Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (book I chapter X): > People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible, indeed, to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary. > > A regulation which obliges all those of the same trade in a particular town to enter their names and places of abode in a public register, facilitates such assemblies. It connects individuals who might never otherwise be known to one another, and gives every man of the trade a direction where to find every other man of it. > > A regulation which enables those of the same trade to tax themselves, in order to provide for their poor, their sick, their widows and orphans, by giving them a common interest to manage, renders such assemblies necessary. In other words, legal rules meant to restrain corporations' behavior instead often facilitate their collusion, which almost always results in a "conspiracy against the public." Apple is a bit unique in this regard, as their current brand positioning entirely removes their incentive for collusion. But only as long as the benefits to employing a pro-privacy-and-security brand posture are greater than the benefits it might enjoy from hoovering up as much data as it's rivals in Mountain View and Menlo Park.

dlubarov 6y ago
> collusion from Google and Facebook Is there a good reason to believe that Google or Facebook are involved? Seems like it may be a tenuous connection given the article's vagueness: "some" of 16 unnamed "associations" are "backed" by Google/Facebook, according to a source we know nothing about.
- baryphonic 6y ago
  Yes, the good reasons to believe this are (1) the article states it (news reports tend to be awful, but in my opinion we should at least give prima facie credence to their claims unless a knowledgeable party disputes them) and (2) it entirely aligns with Facebook's/Google's interests to engage in this kind of support/collusion.
  - dlubarov 6y ago
    I'm not suggesting that Reuters is lying; I would trust them if they claimed to have evidence of Google's/Facebook's involvement. I'm just complaining about their weasel words like "backed", which could be interpreted in a variety of ways.
mwfunk 6y ago
The crazy thing is some people will use this passage to justify not having regulations at all, because "regulating them will only make them conspire together against everyone!", when in fact the main reason Smith connects the two is that without regulation, the competitors (who are described as local artisans, not giant international corporations) might otherwise not know of one another's existence and would never talk to each other about shared concerns. Which was true when it was written, not so much now. Now that they can trivially find each other and conspire against consumers all they like, it's no longer an argument against regulation. Nowadays it's more useful as an argument against industry consortiums, standards bodies, professional organizations, and certifications, but I don't think of any of those things as being net negatives. If we ever find ourselves in a situation where humanity collectively is frightened to tell some industry that it can't do something for fear that that industry would retaliate by conspiring to do something even worse to us behind our backs, that's not an argument against regulation, that's an argument against the whole industry.
- baryphonic 6y ago
  I wouldn't cast it quite so simply. Smith and the classical liberal tradition he represented would likely be skeptical of regulations by default, but would evaluate them based on costs and benefits. You make an excellent point about Smith's treatment of firms as local artisans rather than large corporations. Incidentally, he uses the word corporation a paragraph below what I pasted, but it most likely refers to guilds or firms with monopolies, and not our modern idea of corporate bodies. That said, I tend to think of Coase as the sort of successor to Adam Smith's thinking. I find it not coincidental that Coase formulated the modern theory of the firm that economics still subscribes to, as well as extrapolating transaction costs into the realms of legal disputes and the administrative state. Coase himself was also skeptical of government regulation, not as a matter of ideology or principle (in fact, he said that in principle, many regulations could be effective, though he did also argue reductio ad absurdum that the state should regulate speech as vigorously as products [0]), but as a matter of empirical investigation [1]. [0] https://web.ntpu.edu.tw/~guan/courses/Coase74.pdf https://web.ntpu.edu.tw/~guan/courses/Coase74.pdf [1] https://reason.com/1997/01/01/looking-for-results/ https://reason.com/1997/01/01/looking-for-results/
humaniania 6y ago
Do you seriously think that all business decisions are based on economic greed? Some people do have values and morality and integrity.
- kilburn 6y ago
  I do think they are on any company that is not majority-owned by someone that cares. Morality and integrity are acceptable in large companies so long as they can bring some benefit. Otherwise they somehow always seem to find a way to justify doing even the most immorally-seeming stuff (like exploiting workers in third-world-country mines, selling weapons to dictators and so on). What's more important: why wouldn't it be like this? Why would a top-level exec leave money on the table for moral reasons? How would they sell that to their stakeholders?
- baryphonic 6y ago
  No, the space of business decisions is not reducible to greediness, and "greed" itself is a bit underspecified.
rsynnott 6y ago
> Apps will now need to ask for permission twice, increasing the risk users will refuse, the associations argued. Oh noes!

dlubarov 6y ago

> collusion from Google and Facebook Is there a good reason to believe that Google or Facebook are involved? Seems like it may be a tenuous connection given the article's vagueness: "some" of 16 unnamed "associations" are "backed" by Google/Facebook, according to a source we know nothing about.

baryphonic 6y ago
Yes, the good reasons to believe this are (1) the article states it (news reports tend to be awful, but in my opinion we should at least give prima facie credence to their claims unless a knowledgeable party disputes them) and (2) it entirely aligns with Facebook's/Google's interests to engage in this kind of support/collusion.
- dlubarov 6y ago
  I'm not suggesting that Reuters is lying; I would trust them if they claimed to have evidence of Google's/Facebook's involvement. I'm just complaining about their weasel words like "backed", which could be interpreted in a variety of ways.

mwfunk 6y ago

The crazy thing is some people will use this passage to justify not having regulations at all, because "regulating them will only make them conspire together against everyone!", when in fact the main reason Smith connects the two is that without regulation, the competitors (who are described as local artisans, not giant international corporations) might otherwise not know of one another's existence and would never talk to each other about shared concerns. Which was true when it was written, not so much now. Now that they can trivially find each other and conspire against consumers all they like, it's no longer an argument against regulation. Nowadays it's more useful as an argument against industry consortiums, standards bodies, professional organizations, and certifications, but I don't think of any of those things as being net negatives. If we ever find ourselves in a situation where humanity collectively is frightened to tell some industry that it can't do something for fear that that industry would retaliate by conspiring to do something even worse to us behind our backs, that's not an argument against regulation, that's an argument against the whole industry.

baryphonic 6y ago
I wouldn't cast it quite so simply. Smith and the classical liberal tradition he represented would likely be skeptical of regulations by default, but would evaluate them based on costs and benefits. You make an excellent point about Smith's treatment of firms as local artisans rather than large corporations. Incidentally, he uses the word corporation a paragraph below what I pasted, but it most likely refers to guilds or firms with monopolies, and not our modern idea of corporate bodies. That said, I tend to think of Coase as the sort of successor to Adam Smith's thinking. I find it not coincidental that Coase formulated the modern theory of the firm that economics still subscribes to, as well as extrapolating transaction costs into the realms of legal disputes and the administrative state. Coase himself was also skeptical of government regulation, not as a matter of ideology or principle (in fact, he said that in principle, many regulations could be effective, though he did also argue reductio ad absurdum that the state should regulate speech as vigorously as products [0]), but as a matter of empirical investigation [1]. [0] https://web.ntpu.edu.tw/~guan/courses/Coase74.pdf https://web.ntpu.edu.tw/~guan/courses/Coase74.pdf [1] https://reason.com/1997/01/01/looking-for-results/ https://reason.com/1997/01/01/looking-for-results/

humaniania 6y ago

Do you seriously think that all business decisions are based on economic greed? Some people do have values and morality and integrity.

kilburn 6y ago
I do think they are on any company that is not majority-owned by someone that cares. Morality and integrity are acceptable in large companies so long as they can bring some benefit. Otherwise they somehow always seem to find a way to justify doing even the most immorally-seeming stuff (like exploiting workers in third-world-country mines, selling weapons to dictators and so on). What's more important: why wouldn't it be like this? Why would a top-level exec leave money on the table for moral reasons? How would they sell that to their stakeholders?
baryphonic 6y ago
No, the space of business decisions is not reducible to greediness, and "greed" itself is a bit underspecified.

rsynnott 6y ago

> Apps will now need to ask for permission twice, increasing the risk users will refuse, the associations argued. Oh noes!