9 ms·

It’s time to free ourselves from ‘Big Tech’ monopoly

70 points by theBashShell 6y ago

PaulAJ 6y ago
Am I right in thinking this is a Democratic party website thinly disguised as a genuine news site?
- imaginarypedro 6y ago
  They're pretty unbiased according to Media Bias Fact Check. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/arizona-capitol-times/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/arizona-capitol-times/ However, it's worth noting that this article is under the Opinion section.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  No, the parent organization is not the Democratic Party. https://bridgetowermedia.com/ https://bridgetowermedia.com/
- mikestew 6y ago
  You would do well to state up front why you think that. If it's because two AZ representatives wrote an opinion piece, I would suggest researching the difference between news and the editorial section of a newspaper. I know that's probably a bit condescending, but I have to make a lot of assumptions about how one would reach the conclusion that you did.
  - TameAntelope 6y ago
    Not for nothing, but a push to regulate something doesn't typically from the right, so if his heuristic is as non-specific as, "Policy advocated for in article is liberal, therefore publisher is liberal." I could see how it'd match this article. Not defending the heuristic, but I can see the (hasty) logic.
- chrisoverzero 6y ago
  It would be surprising, considering the opinion's authors are both Republican members of the Arizona House of Representatives.
zepto 6y ago
Calling fees taxes is just bullshit. This is just dishonest politics. By this logic, there is a Grocery ‘tax’, and a haircutting ‘tax’. Spotify ‘Taxes’ you. Netflix ‘Taxes’ you. The New York Times ‘taxes’ you. It’s also a lie to say that Apple charges 30%. It’s 15% for almost all developers except for a tiny percentage of themselves extremely wealthy corporations. Perhaps these are the people who are behind these moves. They are the only ones who will gain. The the idea that paying, 10% less to small app developers will do anything to make Arizonans better off is utterly stupid. There may be good reasons for tech legislation - e.g. forcing Boot Camp style installation of alternate operating systems on hardware. But it’s fairly obvious that all this talk about the App Store is just the result of other middlemen lobbying for a part of the action.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Calling fees taxes is just bullshit. General “fees”, probably; there's a sense in which monopoly rents are tax-like, though.
  - zepto 6y ago
    I’m fine with calling them ‘monopoly rents’. Then we can have a meaningful conversation about what to do about them, if that’s indeed what they are. Tax-like, is not the same as Tax. Even saying ‘tax like’ would be better. It’s still a dishonest politicization to call them taxes. If we call App Store fees ‘taxes’, why don’t we also call healthcare premiums, or bank charges, ‘taxes’?
    - pydry 6y ago
      And monopoly rents, being not impossible but still difficult to avoid are a lot like _____ ? It seems more honest than dishonest to me.
      - emteycz 6y ago
        Will police come arrest me if I don't pay? No? Then it's not a tax. I was never ever stressed out because of a company's fees - I simply cancelled the service. I can't do that with taxes. Comparing these absolutely different experiences totally seems dishonest.
cbradford 6y ago
This is logical and nothing new. As a country we faced the same issue in the start of the 1900s when the railroads abused their monopoly access power and created the concept of the "common carrier" to level the playing field. Let's stop pretending tech monopolies are something new or unique. We have dealt with them before (AT&T) and should use the same tools. These companies are now utilities, should be subject to FTC and other rules on common carriers and have their returns subject to regulatory oversight. Just like 90% of the rest of the economy. Time to level the playing field, and be fair to all. Tech companies wanting special exemption from rules is not right.
- golemiprague 6y ago
  There is a difference between AWS which is indeed a utility to facebook which publish user's content. I understand why there need to be a special rules and regulation for publishing user's content, including the need for moderation and the implications. But I can't understand why we allow AWS or other infrastructure companies which are not involved directly with the content, to decide who they serve and who they don't.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- walshemj 6y ago
  Remind me again how well the judge driven breakup of AT&T worked. You would also have to remove the ability any state or city to carve out exceptions
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    Remind me again how well the judge driven breakup of AT&T worked. Judge-driven? My memory is that AT&T asked to be broken up so it could get into the personal computer business.
skymt 6y ago
This appears to be the bill in question, if anyone would like to read it. https://legiscan.com/AZ/amendment/HB2005/id/89532 https://legiscan.com/AZ/amendment/HB2005/id/89532 I'm not sure why it was introduced as an amendment for a bill about distributing federal education funds, but I'm sure there's some justification in the legislative process. Anyway, this is very clearly tailored towards the current Epic vs Apple/Google fight, right down to disallowing "retaliation" from platform providers.
hkarthik 6y ago
"Big Tech" has become an umbrella term which can mean any of the following: * Big Tech monopolies controlling news and information: Twitter, Facebook, Google * Big Tech monopolies on Advertising/Marketing: Facebook and Google * Big Tech monopolies on Multimedia content: Netflix and Spotify * Big Tech monopolies on Cloud Technology Infrastructure: Amazon, Google, Microsoft * Big Tech monopolies on Mobile: Apple and Google * Big Tech monopolies on eCommerce: Amazon We could be talking about "Breaking up Big Tech" for 50 years trying to break all of these up. It's kind of insane.
- gumby 6y ago
  > Big Tech monopolies controlling news and information: Twitter, Facebook, Google I think you mean NYT, Wapo, Fox, CBS, Zeit, Asahi "control" the news...except there sure are a lot of them.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    All members of the AP aren't they? Most of what you see in the news is just parroted from AP feeds.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- fullshark 6y ago
  > * Big Tech monopolies controlling news and information: Twitter, Facebook, Google If it's a traditional news article or op-ed, it's almost always a complaint about this iteration.
- yazaddaruvala 6y ago
  Disclaimer: Technically these are all oligopolies, but I'll stick to using the original term. Don't forget the soon to come: * Big Tech monopoly on space travel/mining: SpaceX, Blue Origin * Big Tech monopoly in the car/taxi industry: Tesla, Boring Company, Apple, Google * Big Tech monopoly over wearables/implants: Apple, Neuralink, Amazon, Google * Big Tech monopoly over VR: FB, Apple, Valve * Big Tech monopoly over restaurants: Uber, Apple, ??? * Big Tech monopoly over banking: Chase, Apple, Intuit, Amazon
wrnr 6y ago
Im not going to try to stop you, but if it was up to me setting priorities I'd focus on big consulting like EY, PWC, Capgemini, these companies employ each more then 100K engineers and I wouldn't know what they do with their billions.
matthewfelgate 6y ago
7 references in this article to Google. 0 references to Microsoft. Stupid.
- wedn3sday 6y ago
  I have a Microsoft operating system on one computer (my desktop) and a Google operating system on another computer (my phone). One of those lets me install any bit of software I want (even make my own! Try that on a machine running android), the other has a monopoly on all software installation and charges a fee for any sales. Im not even sure why you mention Microsoft? In what way are they a monopoly in any way? All of their products have alternatives, and they charge no extra fee when I install software on my Microsoft computer.
  - d1zzy 6y ago
    > In what way are they a monopoly in any way? They have more than 70% of the desktop OS market share: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide In Enterprise software (cloud or desktop) they have even larger share. > All of their products have alternatives, and they charge no extra fee when I install software on my Microsoft computer. And Google's products don't have alternatives? :) I would argue it's much more easy to type "bing.com" in your URL than it is to change the desktop operating system, even for a techie. So not only are there alternatives, they are easier to switch to.
  - indymike 6y ago
    You can install any application on both (Android will not let you have root access, though). You can write your own software for Android and install it on your phone, but it is difficult to write software on your phone for your phone. Microsoft does have a huge app store and they do charge a percentage (although for non-games, it's just 5% which seems like a bargain).
  - matthewfelgate 6y ago
    Microsoft runs on about 95% of desktops. Whats your definition of a monopoly?
marshmallow_12 6y ago
two points: phones can be jailbroken, you don't have to go through the app store. Also, bashing dc just lowers the tone of the article. By doing so, the article automatically has to work harder to persuade me. I have not been successfully convinced that their proposals are a good idea.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  "two points: phones can be jailbroken" that's like arguing that housing market is not a problem because you can live in a cave or a tent. Most people aren't going to do that, bank apps refuse to work on jailbroken phones, etc.
watertom 6y ago
Big tech? How about big information, 6 companies control almost all media in the U.S. The U.S. keeps consolidating, the "spin" is that it's all about lower costs to the consumer by allowing "scale", when it reality it's just about monopoly power and the ultra rich getting richer and more powerful. A two party government. It's all an illusion of choice.
- wwww4all 6y ago
  Two parties are both controlled by the same establishment elite cabal. They also control Big Business, Big Labor, Big Media, Big Tech, etc. It’s all in the open and there’s no question about it anymore.
  - ausbah 6y ago
    pretending the democratic party and republican party are identical or even "mostly similar" is a willfully naive reading of politics
    - choward 6y ago
      I disagree. The leaders in those parties are a lot more similar to each other than they are to their base. For the most part they have the share the same neoliberal beliefs. Even though democrats like to pretend they don't, their actions say otherwise.
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      Are you serious? How long have you been following politics for? If you didn't notice, there was almost no difference between George W. Bush and Obama on foreign or domestic policy. The establishment politicians that have been in power for decades simply play to the base during primaries, all the while rigging the primary process against reform candidates and then move right back to the elite consensus after the election.
      - ausbah 6y ago
        there's been a bipartisan consensus on foreign policy for most of the past 20 years; but saying the same thing for Healthcare, immigration, tax policy, or whatever is not true
bediger4000 6y ago
I have to ask why "Big Tech" is a monopoly worth freeing ourselves from now, if we didn't free ourselves from Microsoft circa 2000. Microsoft had way more monopoly power back then (maybe even does now), and barriers to entry into the OS market are much higher. It's relatively easy to switch to duckduckgo.com for example. Isn't this just grandstanding, based on letting Microsoft keep it's monopoly?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- kps 6y ago
  Microsoft didn't compete with news media for ad money. Nor do telcos/ISPs where consumers in many places actually have no choice.
  - bediger4000 6y ago
    So, yes, this is just grandstanding, and the law isn't being applied equally. Or is Microsoft also a target today?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
williesleg 6y ago
Big government is better, eh?
rictic 6y ago
> The legislation would allow web developers to accept payments for their apps without going through Apple or Google’s app stores Is the word "web" there instead of "app" just a mistake? Because web developers can accept payments for their apps without going through Apple or Google, even on mobile. It's one of the things I love most about the web.
goatcode 6y ago
Maybe not giving big anything tax breaks or funding would help solve some of the problems.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kodah 6y ago
I love this, but they don't really call it what it really is. This is the Midwest aiming to break apart coastal software ecosystems and distribute them more evenly across the nation. Big tech firms don't just use their might to unfairly fight smaller competitors, they also use their might to recruit talent to certain geological regions. This causes salaries, cost of goods, among other things to stagnate and hurt their own economies. The real word for it is pushing back against state to state income inequality by attacking the powers and structures that reinforce them, which in this case is technological conglomerates. If you've ever wondered why you get paid $80k to be a software engineer in Oklahoma while someone doing the exact same job with the exact same requirements in Silicon Valley makes $200k+, state to state income inequality is most of the reason, while cost of living attributes a very small sliver of that calculation.

70 points by theBashShell 6y ago

PaulAJ 6y ago

Am I right in thinking this is a Democratic party website thinly disguised as a genuine news site?

imaginarypedro 6y ago
They're pretty unbiased according to Media Bias Fact Check. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/arizona-capitol-times/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/arizona-capitol-times/ However, it's worth noting that this article is under the Opinion section.
dragonwriter 6y ago
No, the parent organization is not the Democratic Party. https://bridgetowermedia.com/ https://bridgetowermedia.com/
mikestew 6y ago
You would do well to state up front why you think that. If it's because two AZ representatives wrote an opinion piece, I would suggest researching the difference between news and the editorial section of a newspaper. I know that's probably a bit condescending, but I have to make a lot of assumptions about how one would reach the conclusion that you did.
- TameAntelope 6y ago
  Not for nothing, but a push to regulate something doesn't typically from the right, so if his heuristic is as non-specific as, "Policy advocated for in article is liberal, therefore publisher is liberal." I could see how it'd match this article. Not defending the heuristic, but I can see the (hasty) logic.
chrisoverzero 6y ago
It would be surprising, considering the opinion's authors are both Republican members of the Arizona House of Representatives.

zepto 6y ago

Calling fees taxes is just bullshit. This is just dishonest politics. By this logic, there is a Grocery ‘tax’, and a haircutting ‘tax’. Spotify ‘Taxes’ you. Netflix ‘Taxes’ you. The New York Times ‘taxes’ you. It’s also a lie to say that Apple charges 30%. It’s 15% for almost all developers except for a tiny percentage of themselves extremely wealthy corporations. Perhaps these are the people who are behind these moves. They are the only ones who will gain. The the idea that paying, 10% less to small app developers will do anything to make Arizonans better off is utterly stupid. There may be good reasons for tech legislation - e.g. forcing Boot Camp style installation of alternate operating systems on hardware. But it’s fairly obvious that all this talk about the App Store is just the result of other middlemen lobbying for a part of the action.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Calling fees taxes is just bullshit. General “fees”, probably; there's a sense in which monopoly rents are tax-like, though.
- zepto 6y ago
  I’m fine with calling them ‘monopoly rents’. Then we can have a meaningful conversation about what to do about them, if that’s indeed what they are. Tax-like, is not the same as Tax. Even saying ‘tax like’ would be better. It’s still a dishonest politicization to call them taxes. If we call App Store fees ‘taxes’, why don’t we also call healthcare premiums, or bank charges, ‘taxes’?
  - pydry 6y ago
    And monopoly rents, being not impossible but still difficult to avoid are a lot like _____ ? It seems more honest than dishonest to me.
    - emteycz 6y ago
      Will police come arrest me if I don't pay? No? Then it's not a tax. I was never ever stressed out because of a company's fees - I simply cancelled the service. I can't do that with taxes. Comparing these absolutely different experiences totally seems dishonest.

cbradford 6y ago

This is logical and nothing new. As a country we faced the same issue in the start of the 1900s when the railroads abused their monopoly access power and created the concept of the "common carrier" to level the playing field. Let's stop pretending tech monopolies are something new or unique. We have dealt with them before (AT&T) and should use the same tools. These companies are now utilities, should be subject to FTC and other rules on common carriers and have their returns subject to regulatory oversight. Just like 90% of the rest of the economy. Time to level the playing field, and be fair to all. Tech companies wanting special exemption from rules is not right.

golemiprague 6y ago
There is a difference between AWS which is indeed a utility to facebook which publish user's content. I understand why there need to be a special rules and regulation for publishing user's content, including the need for moderation and the implications. But I can't understand why we allow AWS or other infrastructure companies which are not involved directly with the content, to decide who they serve and who they don't.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
walshemj 6y ago
Remind me again how well the judge driven breakup of AT&T worked. You would also have to remove the ability any state or city to carve out exceptions
- reaperducer 6y ago
  Remind me again how well the judge driven breakup of AT&T worked. Judge-driven? My memory is that AT&T asked to be broken up so it could get into the personal computer business.

skymt 6y ago

This appears to be the bill in question, if anyone would like to read it. https://legiscan.com/AZ/amendment/HB2005/id/89532 https://legiscan.com/AZ/amendment/HB2005/id/89532 I'm not sure why it was introduced as an amendment for a bill about distributing federal education funds, but I'm sure there's some justification in the legislative process. Anyway, this is very clearly tailored towards the current Epic vs Apple/Google fight, right down to disallowing "retaliation" from platform providers.

hkarthik 6y ago

"Big Tech" has become an umbrella term which can mean any of the following: * Big Tech monopolies controlling news and information: Twitter, Facebook, Google * Big Tech monopolies on Advertising/Marketing: Facebook and Google * Big Tech monopolies on Multimedia content: Netflix and Spotify * Big Tech monopolies on Cloud Technology Infrastructure: Amazon, Google, Microsoft * Big Tech monopolies on Mobile: Apple and Google * Big Tech monopolies on eCommerce: Amazon We could be talking about "Breaking up Big Tech" for 50 years trying to break all of these up. It's kind of insane.

gumby 6y ago
> Big Tech monopolies controlling news and information: Twitter, Facebook, Google I think you mean NYT, Wapo, Fox, CBS, Zeit, Asahi "control" the news...except there sure are a lot of them.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  All members of the AP aren't they? Most of what you see in the news is just parroted from AP feeds.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fullshark 6y ago
> * Big Tech monopolies controlling news and information: Twitter, Facebook, Google If it's a traditional news article or op-ed, it's almost always a complaint about this iteration.
yazaddaruvala 6y ago
Disclaimer: Technically these are all oligopolies, but I'll stick to using the original term. Don't forget the soon to come: * Big Tech monopoly on space travel/mining: SpaceX, Blue Origin * Big Tech monopoly in the car/taxi industry: Tesla, Boring Company, Apple, Google * Big Tech monopoly over wearables/implants: Apple, Neuralink, Amazon, Google * Big Tech monopoly over VR: FB, Apple, Valve * Big Tech monopoly over restaurants: Uber, Apple, ??? * Big Tech monopoly over banking: Chase, Apple, Intuit, Amazon

wrnr 6y ago

Im not going to try to stop you, but if it was up to me setting priorities I'd focus on big consulting like EY, PWC, Capgemini, these companies employ each more then 100K engineers and I wouldn't know what they do with their billions.

matthewfelgate 6y ago

7 references in this article to Google. 0 references to Microsoft. Stupid.

wedn3sday 6y ago
I have a Microsoft operating system on one computer (my desktop) and a Google operating system on another computer (my phone). One of those lets me install any bit of software I want (even make my own! Try that on a machine running android), the other has a monopoly on all software installation and charges a fee for any sales. Im not even sure why you mention Microsoft? In what way are they a monopoly in any way? All of their products have alternatives, and they charge no extra fee when I install software on my Microsoft computer.
- d1zzy 6y ago
  > In what way are they a monopoly in any way? They have more than 70% of the desktop OS market share: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide In Enterprise software (cloud or desktop) they have even larger share. > All of their products have alternatives, and they charge no extra fee when I install software on my Microsoft computer. And Google's products don't have alternatives? :) I would argue it's much more easy to type "bing.com" in your URL than it is to change the desktop operating system, even for a techie. So not only are there alternatives, they are easier to switch to.
- indymike 6y ago
  You can install any application on both (Android will not let you have root access, though). You can write your own software for Android and install it on your phone, but it is difficult to write software on your phone for your phone. Microsoft does have a huge app store and they do charge a percentage (although for non-games, it's just 5% which seems like a bargain).
- matthewfelgate 6y ago
  Microsoft runs on about 95% of desktops. Whats your definition of a monopoly?

marshmallow_12 6y ago

two points: phones can be jailbroken, you don't have to go through the app store. Also, bashing dc just lowers the tone of the article. By doing so, the article automatically has to work harder to persuade me. I have not been successfully convinced that their proposals are a good idea.

ClumsyPilot 6y ago
"two points: phones can be jailbroken" that's like arguing that housing market is not a problem because you can live in a cave or a tent. Most people aren't going to do that, bank apps refuse to work on jailbroken phones, etc.

watertom 6y ago

Big tech? How about big information, 6 companies control almost all media in the U.S. The U.S. keeps consolidating, the "spin" is that it's all about lower costs to the consumer by allowing "scale", when it reality it's just about monopoly power and the ultra rich getting richer and more powerful. A two party government. It's all an illusion of choice.

wwww4all 6y ago
Two parties are both controlled by the same establishment elite cabal. They also control Big Business, Big Labor, Big Media, Big Tech, etc. It’s all in the open and there’s no question about it anymore.
- ausbah 6y ago
  pretending the democratic party and republican party are identical or even "mostly similar" is a willfully naive reading of politics
  - choward 6y ago
    I disagree. The leaders in those parties are a lot more similar to each other than they are to their base. For the most part they have the share the same neoliberal beliefs. Even though democrats like to pretend they don't, their actions say otherwise.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    Are you serious? How long have you been following politics for? If you didn't notice, there was almost no difference between George W. Bush and Obama on foreign or domestic policy. The establishment politicians that have been in power for decades simply play to the base during primaries, all the while rigging the primary process against reform candidates and then move right back to the elite consensus after the election.
    - ausbah 6y ago
      there's been a bipartisan consensus on foreign policy for most of the past 20 years; but saying the same thing for Healthcare, immigration, tax policy, or whatever is not true

bediger4000 6y ago

I have to ask why "Big Tech" is a monopoly worth freeing ourselves from now, if we didn't free ourselves from Microsoft circa 2000. Microsoft had way more monopoly power back then (maybe even does now), and barriers to entry into the OS market are much higher. It's relatively easy to switch to duckduckgo.com for example. Isn't this just grandstanding, based on letting Microsoft keep it's monopoly?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kps 6y ago
Microsoft didn't compete with news media for ad money. Nor do telcos/ISPs where consumers in many places actually have no choice.
- bediger4000 6y ago
  So, yes, this is just grandstanding, and the law isn't being applied equally. Or is Microsoft also a target today?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

williesleg 6y ago

Big government is better, eh?

rictic 6y ago

> The legislation would allow web developers to accept payments for their apps without going through Apple or Google’s app stores Is the word "web" there instead of "app" just a mistake? Because web developers can accept payments for their apps without going through Apple or Google, even on mobile. It's one of the things I love most about the web.

goatcode 6y ago

Maybe not giving big anything tax breaks or funding would help solve some of the problems.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

kodah 6y ago

I love this, but they don't really call it what it really is. This is the Midwest aiming to break apart coastal software ecosystems and distribute them more evenly across the nation. Big tech firms don't just use their might to unfairly fight smaller competitors, they also use their might to recruit talent to certain geological regions. This causes salaries, cost of goods, among other things to stagnate and hurt their own economies. The real word for it is pushing back against state to state income inequality by attacking the powers and structures that reinforce them, which in this case is technological conglomerates. If you've ever wondered why you get paid $80k to be a software engineer in Oklahoma while someone doing the exact same job with the exact same requirements in Silicon Valley makes $200k+, state to state income inequality is most of the reason, while cost of living attributes a very small sliver of that calculation.