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I know HN likes to beat the drum around braking up big tech, but this is absurd. This is a move right up there with protectionist policies from the US and china

• dustinmoris 6y ago
  That is not true. A protectionist policy, as the name suggest, is protecting people. A person is not just a consumer, a person is also a worker, a student, someone who pays taxes, someone who raises a family and children, someone who has a mental health and so on... While it may be true that initially a break up would reduce the offering of giant tech companies and give consumers less choice of some product, in the long term they might benefit as a whole person a lot more than the little cost that has been added just to the consumer role itself. The replacement companies might pay more tax, the might be better regulation to stop fake news or other damaging content circulating, law makers might have more influence in sanctioning companies who do not behave in an ethical way, children might get sucked less into addictive habits where their behaviour and data is being further exploited into sucking them into more damaging habits, etc. So yes, possibly a consumer might miss out on some addictive and damaging products which initially might seem a loss, but the human as a whole is probably going to benefit magnitudes more than what they lost.
  • dx87 6y ago
    Your post makes sense, but it's the complete opposite of what commenters from the EU normally say when it's the USA implementing protectionist policies. Any time we do it, there's a bunch of finger wagging and talk about how the USA is becoming a totalitarian state like China by trying to control how or what businesses operate in our country.