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I've come around and landed more on the opinion that we're now enabling our jailors. Light tech regulation was exactly the correct approach in the 1990s (and a

by ethbr0 5y ago

I've come around and landed more on the opinion that we're now enabling our jailors. Light tech regulation was exactly the correct approach in the 1990s (and arguably the 2000s). It enabled mind-boggling rapid and stunning innovation. ... However, the massive corporate fortunes built by the winners of those times are now primarily enabling rent seeking. Google and Facebook's other work is interesting in the same way that Bell Labs was interesting -- great for a few, but funded by taxing everyone (albeit via tracking and ad market control in this instance). And they've learned from their predecessors' demises that part of their winnings need to be continually re-invested in buying startups that might threaten their dominance. IMHO, everyone will be better off if Facebook, Google, and Amazon are shattered into small enough independent pieces that (1) "get bought" is no longer the startup win condition & (2) they have peer level competitors in all markets in which they participate. Apple and Microsoft? Mandate open app stores and devices, if an owning user so chooses. Thinking back to the 90s... if anyone has guaranteed revenue streams out 10 and 20 years these days, the market as a whole isn't competitive enough. That should be enough time for the entire playing field to upend itself. At least, it used to be.

skak 5y ago
How do you (and most other people, especially Americans) not realize how unrealistic this is? It’s such a common refrain to say “break `em up!” but it seems as if nobody stops to question why it never happens despite it’s popularity... These corporations control the government because the same people demanding to “break `em up!” have also been demanding “small government!” for decades on end, which in practice simply means a government that works for the corporate private sector. The morale of this story is that your solution is no solution at all, and to the extent that it is a solution the means to implement it are nowhere to be found.
- danShumway 5y ago
  > These corporations control the government So proposing these bills is more feasible, because... why exactly? Are you under the impression that corporations aren't allowed to lobby about bills? What makes you think that legislating tech will be easier than breaking tech up? Complicated rules about vertical integration aren't going to be less susceptible to lobbying and corporate FUD.
pmoriarty 5y ago
The technology field has much deeper problems that increased competition alone won't fix. One of the most pernicious effects of tech advances in recent decades has been the rise of surveillance state and surveillance capitalism, and the loss of privacy that comes with that. This enabling of spying on everyone is not going to be addressed by more competition, and might even enable it further if innovation in that space increases. Another major issue is economic inequality fostered by the internet and tech booms which, again, the breakup up (or even end) of these companies would not address.
- handrous 5y ago
  > One of the most pernicious effects of tech advances in recent decades has been the rise of surveillance state and surveillance capitalism, and the loss of privacy that comes with that. Exactly this! Two out of five of FAANG derive effectively all their revenue from global-scale dragnet spying, and all five of them use that kind of data collection as a highly effective moat against competition. It should simply be outlawed. That should be step #1 for breaking the tech monopolies.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    I'd say 3/5 (+Amazon). And arguably 5/5 if you include product mining within their ecosystems (+Apple +Netflix).
    - handrous 5y ago
      Yeah, that'd be the "moat" I mentioned, but maybe I didn't sufficiently emphasize what a huge advantage that is for them. Losing the ability to vacuum up and hoard data just wouldn't be quite as big a shock directly to the bottom line, in very short order, for the rest of FAANG (+M) as it would be for F and G, in particular. It'd hurt the others plenty, however.
dreamcompiler 5y ago
We need to be careful about breakups to prevent re-agglomeration. Although AT&T was broken up, the Baby Bells eventually merged back together again while nobody was looking. The winner was Southwestern Bell, which later renamed itself to AT&T. The AT&T we know today is really just Southwestern Bell with a new name. Fortunately they have competitors but not very many.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  > while nobody was looking It was done while everyone was looking, and it was explicitly authorized because the market had changed. Wireless had proliferated, and the value add segment of the vertical had moved (from circuit-switched lines and long distance) to the Internet, where (pre-Time Warner merger in laughably late 2016) ATT didn't compete. There's also the two other surviving "small" clumps of Bells called Verizon (Bell Atlantic, NYNEX + GTE) & Lumen (US West + Qwest + CenturyLink). If we want to gripe about the current state of the US ISP market, post-ATT re-mergers shouldn't be top of mind. Exclusive franchise agreements, lack of common and accessible conduit / poles, lack of community-funded competitors, and bundling are above it. Even a hypothetical worst-current-case scenario where 3+ of the majors ATT, Verizon, CenturyLink, Comcast, & Spectrum were offered at every house, because they all had access to each other's last-mile at non-discriminatory rates would solve current issues.
  - rektide 5y ago
    Common carrier laws established in the 1996 Telecommunications Act were doing a good job insuring that ISPs were competitive, by requiring regulated, bulk wholesale access to local loop elements to competitive (non-incumbent) carriers. Most cities in the US had a wide variety of DSL options, which was possible because of this common carrier system. Things were kind of going ok with that! That all got royally hosed when pro-big-business Supreme Court activism sided with Verizon's stance that they Verizon should have monopoly rights to fiber, in Verizon vs FCC (2002). Now suddenly telecomms could go back to their nasty old ways, which they have.
- bogwog 5y ago
  I wonder why the DOD/FTC/whatever can't/won't impose specific restrictions on companies in order to correct anti-trust issues? That seems a lot less drastic and risky than a break-up. For example, if Apple is forcing developers to use their payments SDK to collect 30%, why can't a government agency just force them to stop? Maybe there was a long official investigation by antitrust regulators, and that kicked off a long bureaucratic process that ends in a mandate restricting Apple from doing a very specific thing, maybe with an appeal/review process, expiration date, etc. No need to get a bill passed that changes the law for everyone. A smaller company could still do that same thing, but it doesn't matter because due to their size, they're not immune to competitive forces. If anything, they'll have a harder time pulling it off because developers can get a better deal with Apple thanks to the new restriction. Idk how the law works and whether the relevant regulators are able to do something like this. So maybe this comment is stupid, but it makes sense in my layman head at least.
dalbasal 5y ago
FB is somewhat of an odd man out... I certainly think reversing acquisitions would be a positive, but... With Bell, standard oil and past monopolies... the goal was to decentralise while keeping oil and telecom viable. We wanted what they made, and didn't want disruptions. Do we want what FB makes? Is it scarce? I feel like we would have a sufficient supply of likes, shares, messages and posts regardless. There doesn't need to be a $trn company for those to be supplied. Generally, I think the issues at stake have evolved. Many of the problems with today's monopolies are power related, rather than efficiency related. I think FB is enormously inefficient, but this is kind of besides the point.
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  Facebook the website and Facebook the advertising giant are kinda different things though. By which I mean that Facebook does not make $trn by supplying likes shares messages and posts.
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    I find it very curious how facebook's advertisements (especially on instagram) seem to have a lot more products that are cheap commodity Chinese products, whitelabeled by a glitzy 'startup' brand, and add a 500%+ margin. Very often a quick search can find identical items (maybe without a brand label) on Aliexpress for a fraction of the price. Google search and on-site ads can be annoying and of questionable relevance, but I rarely see items that are so egregiously ripping off consumers. I dont see this much on twitter promoted tweets either. What is it about facebook's ad business that encourages such a high proportion of overpriced garbage? Is it the mediums focus on pictures and video that makes these sales work? Is the audience just dumber/less savvy and so these platforms are the only places with enough suckers to do this successfully? TikTok's sponsored videos seem to be falling into a similar trap to a lesser extent - the markup is less extreme for the few I've looked at out of curiosity. Do Google and Twitter have some process for quality control to keep the garbage out that Facebook does not? Or is the medium the primary reason for this perceived difference?
    - 5y ago
wintermutestwin 5y ago
Haven't we learned that the "break 'em up" fix for monopolies doesn't achieve the desired results? Why not simply get our government to do their jobs and REGULATE away practices that are not in the public's interest?
- seneca 5y ago
  Because regulation, even when well-meaning, acts as a barrier to entry and keeps competitors from even getting off the ground. Stifling small companies stagnates the industry and smothers innovation. You can play whack a mole with their bad behavior, but large companies can come up with new dark patterns way faster than you can regulate them with precise and well thought out regulation. You just end up with entrenched interests and an ossified industry. That's not even touching on regulatory capture.
  - shakezula 5y ago
    Regulatory capture is the true evil of our current setup. Ajit Pai was inevitable, and he won’t be the last or even the worst.
- shakezula 5y ago
  The break them up and fix them approach actually worked wonders for the end consumers in Bell, Standard Oil, etc…
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- majormajor 5y ago
  > Haven't we learned that the "break 'em up" fix for monopolies doesn't achieve the desired results? What do you think are failed examples of this? Even though you had eventual re-consolidation, the post-breakup phone industry seemed like a much more interesting and competitive place than the one before it. The fix for re-consolidation, of course, could be pretty simple... Very few people want to do the harder, more innovative, more interesting thing if they can make a comfortable living doing what they've always done. This applies to regulators as much as to companies. We haven't found any better tool to force companies to be in touch with their customers and do what the customers want than competition, but we also have an economic system that encourages consolidation (because competition is HARD!). So the role of government to break things back up to keep competitive incentives feels quite natural. The market isn't gonna do it itself.
andreilys 5y ago
IMHO, everyone will be better off if Facebook, Google, and Amazon are shattered into small enough independent pieces that (1) "get bought" is no longer the startup win condition & (2) they have peer level competitors in all markets in which they participate. I’m sure Chinese Tech co’s would absolutely love to have their Western competition knee-capped by their own governments. Will make it a lot easier for them to dominate the globe for decades to come.
- InvertedRhodium 5y ago
  Their services will just be banned and access made difficult enough to dissuade the average person. By that point I'm sure China will have perfected the technology enough that we can just copy them.
  - bawana 5y ago
    If we decimate domestic economic engines, then the internationals will figure out ways to push us into ever deeper economic dependency and subservience. We need the REAL hackers to paralyze monopolies.
- not_exactly__ 5y ago
  I think it’s a somewhat false dichotomy that splitting up US big tech makes China big tech win. The reason being that splitting up US big tech allow for more competitive US mid tech to arise that can outcompete China big tech in areas where it matters. I suppose you also want to prevent China Big Tech to throw its money around at Mid Tech the way US big tech did in the last 10-15 years.
  - andreilys 5y ago
    Why wouldn't an international tech co just be able to acquire domestic companies and/or launch products at a significant loss to gain market share in the US? For example, break up Amazon and you now create an opening for Alibaba to expand into the US. Spending billions in order to get customers to shift to Alibaba instead of Amazon.
m463 5y ago
There's a human side of all of this. The people who built these companies in the 90's and 2000's are not the people running the ship now. The new folks have very different personalities and motivations.
mr_toad 5y ago
> IMHO, everyone will be better off if Facebook, Google, and Amazon are shattered into small enough independent pieces that (1) "get bought" is no longer the startup win condition & (2) they have peer level competitors in all markets in which they participate. Apple and Microsoft? Mandate open app stores and devices, if an owning user so chooses. I doubt all this bluster in Congress is anything more than rhetoric and posturing. There might be some settlements and watered down regulations, but that’ll be it. This is DoJ vs MS all over again.
cookiengineer 5y ago
I think that the startup culture and everyone wanting to be a tech billionaire kind of changed the amount of midlevel companies. Most of them get acquired by the big ones at one point - or aren't able to compete with them technologically. Everything gets absorbed into blobs of enterprises that do not give a single damn about the individual customer. The ironic thing here is that this goal, being absorbed by corporates, is what startup exits are about. And honestly, I don't understand it. I want to build something that matters. Morally and ethically, not financially. I want to build a legacy, not some zuck or bezos weekend shopping item.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  For a lot of people, the reward is money. Not legacy. Not vision. Money. Uber was built for money. Facebook was built for money. The reason buy-outs are more common is because the tech giants have gotten large enough to offer so god damn much money that very few people have enough non-monetary drive to continue the risk. Incentives affect actions in a dose dependent manner.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Take thay money and donate it, or plant a forest. There is nothing wrong with making money and then spending it on all the right things
- fb13 5y ago
  > I want to build a legacy, not some zuck or besos weekend shopping item. Yeah, keep that view and you'll succeed. Beware of: children, relationships that expect things from you, anyone that isn't within your reality distortion field. I'm with you. I guess your in your twenties. Me, early thirties. It does get harder to say no to everything everyone around you is doing successfully, for moral reasons. Zuck/bezos and your kid stops getting bullied at public school... Also: money buys legacy. Bezos and zuck can scrub the web of their wrongdoings(not that there are any) with 0.00000001% of they're stash.
  - cookiengineer 5y ago
willis936 5y ago
>Google and Facebook's other work is interesting in the same way that Bell Labs was interesting -- great for a few, but funded by taxing everyone I feel like this sentiment doesn't go far enough. "Oh we would break up the monopoly if not for the innovation". Bell Labs innovated far more than FAANGs. It actually produced R&D that benefitted everyone. Big tech is far past the point of Bell Labs.

by ethbr0 5y ago

skak 5y ago

How do you (and most other people, especially Americans) not realize how unrealistic this is? It’s such a common refrain to say “break `em up!” but it seems as if nobody stops to question why it never happens despite it’s popularity... These corporations control the government because the same people demanding to “break `em up!” have also been demanding “small government!” for decades on end, which in practice simply means a government that works for the corporate private sector. The morale of this story is that your solution is no solution at all, and to the extent that it is a solution the means to implement it are nowhere to be found.

danShumway 5y ago
> These corporations control the government So proposing these bills is more feasible, because... why exactly? Are you under the impression that corporations aren't allowed to lobby about bills? What makes you think that legislating tech will be easier than breaking tech up? Complicated rules about vertical integration aren't going to be less susceptible to lobbying and corporate FUD.

pmoriarty 5y ago

The technology field has much deeper problems that increased competition alone won't fix. One of the most pernicious effects of tech advances in recent decades has been the rise of surveillance state and surveillance capitalism, and the loss of privacy that comes with that. This enabling of spying on everyone is not going to be addressed by more competition, and might even enable it further if innovation in that space increases. Another major issue is economic inequality fostered by the internet and tech booms which, again, the breakup up (or even end) of these companies would not address.

handrous 5y ago
> One of the most pernicious effects of tech advances in recent decades has been the rise of surveillance state and surveillance capitalism, and the loss of privacy that comes with that. Exactly this! Two out of five of FAANG derive effectively all their revenue from global-scale dragnet spying, and all five of them use that kind of data collection as a highly effective moat against competition. It should simply be outlawed. That should be step #1 for breaking the tech monopolies.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  I'd say 3/5 (+Amazon). And arguably 5/5 if you include product mining within their ecosystems (+Apple +Netflix).
  - handrous 5y ago
    Yeah, that'd be the "moat" I mentioned, but maybe I didn't sufficiently emphasize what a huge advantage that is for them. Losing the ability to vacuum up and hoard data just wouldn't be quite as big a shock directly to the bottom line, in very short order, for the rest of FAANG (+M) as it would be for F and G, in particular. It'd hurt the others plenty, however.

dreamcompiler 5y ago

We need to be careful about breakups to prevent re-agglomeration. Although AT&T was broken up, the Baby Bells eventually merged back together again while nobody was looking. The winner was Southwestern Bell, which later renamed itself to AT&T. The AT&T we know today is really just Southwestern Bell with a new name. Fortunately they have competitors but not very many.

ethbr0 5y ago
> while nobody was looking It was done while everyone was looking, and it was explicitly authorized because the market had changed. Wireless had proliferated, and the value add segment of the vertical had moved (from circuit-switched lines and long distance) to the Internet, where (pre-Time Warner merger in laughably late 2016) ATT didn't compete. There's also the two other surviving "small" clumps of Bells called Verizon (Bell Atlantic, NYNEX + GTE) & Lumen (US West + Qwest + CenturyLink). If we want to gripe about the current state of the US ISP market, post-ATT re-mergers shouldn't be top of mind. Exclusive franchise agreements, lack of common and accessible conduit / poles, lack of community-funded competitors, and bundling are above it. Even a hypothetical worst-current-case scenario where 3+ of the majors ATT, Verizon, CenturyLink, Comcast, & Spectrum were offered at every house, because they all had access to each other's last-mile at non-discriminatory rates would solve current issues.
- rektide 5y ago
  Common carrier laws established in the 1996 Telecommunications Act were doing a good job insuring that ISPs were competitive, by requiring regulated, bulk wholesale access to local loop elements to competitive (non-incumbent) carriers. Most cities in the US had a wide variety of DSL options, which was possible because of this common carrier system. Things were kind of going ok with that! That all got royally hosed when pro-big-business Supreme Court activism sided with Verizon's stance that they Verizon should have monopoly rights to fiber, in Verizon vs FCC (2002). Now suddenly telecomms could go back to their nasty old ways, which they have.
bogwog 5y ago
I wonder why the DOD/FTC/whatever can't/won't impose specific restrictions on companies in order to correct anti-trust issues? That seems a lot less drastic and risky than a break-up. For example, if Apple is forcing developers to use their payments SDK to collect 30%, why can't a government agency just force them to stop? Maybe there was a long official investigation by antitrust regulators, and that kicked off a long bureaucratic process that ends in a mandate restricting Apple from doing a very specific thing, maybe with an appeal/review process, expiration date, etc. No need to get a bill passed that changes the law for everyone. A smaller company could still do that same thing, but it doesn't matter because due to their size, they're not immune to competitive forces. If anything, they'll have a harder time pulling it off because developers can get a better deal with Apple thanks to the new restriction. Idk how the law works and whether the relevant regulators are able to do something like this. So maybe this comment is stupid, but it makes sense in my layman head at least.

dalbasal 5y ago

FB is somewhat of an odd man out... I certainly think reversing acquisitions would be a positive, but... With Bell, standard oil and past monopolies... the goal was to decentralise while keeping oil and telecom viable. We wanted what they made, and didn't want disruptions. Do we want what FB makes? Is it scarce? I feel like we would have a sufficient supply of likes, shares, messages and posts regardless. There doesn't need to be a $trn company for those to be supplied. Generally, I think the issues at stake have evolved. Many of the problems with today's monopolies are power related, rather than efficiency related. I think FB is enormously inefficient, but this is kind of besides the point.

bluefirebrand 5y ago
Facebook the website and Facebook the advertising giant are kinda different things though. By which I mean that Facebook does not make $trn by supplying likes shares messages and posts.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  I find it very curious how facebook's advertisements (especially on instagram) seem to have a lot more products that are cheap commodity Chinese products, whitelabeled by a glitzy 'startup' brand, and add a 500%+ margin. Very often a quick search can find identical items (maybe without a brand label) on Aliexpress for a fraction of the price. Google search and on-site ads can be annoying and of questionable relevance, but I rarely see items that are so egregiously ripping off consumers. I dont see this much on twitter promoted tweets either. What is it about facebook's ad business that encourages such a high proportion of overpriced garbage? Is it the mediums focus on pictures and video that makes these sales work? Is the audience just dumber/less savvy and so these platforms are the only places with enough suckers to do this successfully? TikTok's sponsored videos seem to be falling into a similar trap to a lesser extent - the markup is less extreme for the few I've looked at out of curiosity. Do Google and Twitter have some process for quality control to keep the garbage out that Facebook does not? Or is the medium the primary reason for this perceived difference?
  - 5y ago

wintermutestwin 5y ago

Haven't we learned that the "break 'em up" fix for monopolies doesn't achieve the desired results? Why not simply get our government to do their jobs and REGULATE away practices that are not in the public's interest?

seneca 5y ago
Because regulation, even when well-meaning, acts as a barrier to entry and keeps competitors from even getting off the ground. Stifling small companies stagnates the industry and smothers innovation. You can play whack a mole with their bad behavior, but large companies can come up with new dark patterns way faster than you can regulate them with precise and well thought out regulation. You just end up with entrenched interests and an ossified industry. That's not even touching on regulatory capture.
- shakezula 5y ago
  Regulatory capture is the true evil of our current setup. Ajit Pai was inevitable, and he won’t be the last or even the worst.
shakezula 5y ago
The break them up and fix them approach actually worked wonders for the end consumers in Bell, Standard Oil, etc…
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
majormajor 5y ago
> Haven't we learned that the "break 'em up" fix for monopolies doesn't achieve the desired results? What do you think are failed examples of this? Even though you had eventual re-consolidation, the post-breakup phone industry seemed like a much more interesting and competitive place than the one before it. The fix for re-consolidation, of course, could be pretty simple... Very few people want to do the harder, more innovative, more interesting thing if they can make a comfortable living doing what they've always done. This applies to regulators as much as to companies. We haven't found any better tool to force companies to be in touch with their customers and do what the customers want than competition, but we also have an economic system that encourages consolidation (because competition is HARD!). So the role of government to break things back up to keep competitive incentives feels quite natural. The market isn't gonna do it itself.

andreilys 5y ago

IMHO, everyone will be better off if Facebook, Google, and Amazon are shattered into small enough independent pieces that (1) "get bought" is no longer the startup win condition & (2) they have peer level competitors in all markets in which they participate. I’m sure Chinese Tech co’s would absolutely love to have their Western competition knee-capped by their own governments. Will make it a lot easier for them to dominate the globe for decades to come.

InvertedRhodium 5y ago
Their services will just be banned and access made difficult enough to dissuade the average person. By that point I'm sure China will have perfected the technology enough that we can just copy them.
- bawana 5y ago
  If we decimate domestic economic engines, then the internationals will figure out ways to push us into ever deeper economic dependency and subservience. We need the REAL hackers to paralyze monopolies.
not_exactly__ 5y ago
I think it’s a somewhat false dichotomy that splitting up US big tech makes China big tech win. The reason being that splitting up US big tech allow for more competitive US mid tech to arise that can outcompete China big tech in areas where it matters. I suppose you also want to prevent China Big Tech to throw its money around at Mid Tech the way US big tech did in the last 10-15 years.
- andreilys 5y ago
  Why wouldn't an international tech co just be able to acquire domestic companies and/or launch products at a significant loss to gain market share in the US? For example, break up Amazon and you now create an opening for Alibaba to expand into the US. Spending billions in order to get customers to shift to Alibaba instead of Amazon.

m463 5y ago

There's a human side of all of this. The people who built these companies in the 90's and 2000's are not the people running the ship now. The new folks have very different personalities and motivations.

mr_toad 5y ago

> IMHO, everyone will be better off if Facebook, Google, and Amazon are shattered into small enough independent pieces that (1) "get bought" is no longer the startup win condition & (2) they have peer level competitors in all markets in which they participate. Apple and Microsoft? Mandate open app stores and devices, if an owning user so chooses. I doubt all this bluster in Congress is anything more than rhetoric and posturing. There might be some settlements and watered down regulations, but that’ll be it. This is DoJ vs MS all over again.

cookiengineer 5y ago

I think that the startup culture and everyone wanting to be a tech billionaire kind of changed the amount of midlevel companies. Most of them get acquired by the big ones at one point - or aren't able to compete with them technologically. Everything gets absorbed into blobs of enterprises that do not give a single damn about the individual customer. The ironic thing here is that this goal, being absorbed by corporates, is what startup exits are about. And honestly, I don't understand it. I want to build something that matters. Morally and ethically, not financially. I want to build a legacy, not some zuck or bezos weekend shopping item.

BobbyJo 5y ago
For a lot of people, the reward is money. Not legacy. Not vision. Money. Uber was built for money. Facebook was built for money. The reason buy-outs are more common is because the tech giants have gotten large enough to offer so god damn much money that very few people have enough non-monetary drive to continue the risk. Incentives affect actions in a dose dependent manner.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Take thay money and donate it, or plant a forest. There is nothing wrong with making money and then spending it on all the right things
fb13 5y ago
> I want to build a legacy, not some zuck or besos weekend shopping item. Yeah, keep that view and you'll succeed. Beware of: children, relationships that expect things from you, anyone that isn't within your reality distortion field. I'm with you. I guess your in your twenties. Me, early thirties. It does get harder to say no to everything everyone around you is doing successfully, for moral reasons. Zuck/bezos and your kid stops getting bullied at public school... Also: money buys legacy. Bezos and zuck can scrub the web of their wrongdoings(not that there are any) with 0.00000001% of they're stash.
- cookiengineer 5y ago

willis936 5y ago

>Google and Facebook's other work is interesting in the same way that Bell Labs was interesting -- great for a few, but funded by taxing everyone I feel like this sentiment doesn't go far enough. "Oh we would break up the monopoly if not for the innovation". Bell Labs innovated far more than FAANGs. It actually produced R&D that benefitted everyone. Big tech is far past the point of Bell Labs.