18 ms·

Three Stanford professors on the sensible regulation of Big Tech

70 points by ubac 5y ago

DSingularity 5y ago
Too little too late. The famous profs are silent as they are already wealthy from the big-tech they helped create.
scotuswroteus 5y ago
Rich, cloistered elites discover the bare minimum of ethical considerations after being entirely walled off from the broader American political conversations for the better part of two decades. Says Reed Hastings OF A BOOK COMING OUT IN SEPTEMBER OF 2021: "In System Error, we finally have a book about the digital revolution that is serious rather than sensationalistic." This isn't serious.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
crazy_horse 5y ago
I do academic work in this area, which was inspired by watching Reddit and HN for a decade. I do think something must be done, but the notion that it should be the government taking action scares me. I believe, platonically that is the right way for government to act, to take necessary actions to counter predatory behavior. What scares me is that we chanced into this. Zuck made some brilliant movies but he was the same guy at 22 that thought that younger people were smarter. Notice he wasn't young enough to say that at 32. The people in government do not understand tech. They don't understand how it works, they don't understand where it is going, and they don't understand its ethos. Government right now is dominated by ideologues and demagogues. I'm very worried that any government action is going to end up being something that only FB, Google, etc can do anything about. Why does the government need to act? Why spend so much time complaining about it on HN? We've been doing that for a decade.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  The government is the only institution with a monopoly on force. How else can institutional changes be enacted without worrying about defection?
  - crazy_horse 5y ago
    How many people here work in those institutions? Do they not have power to make change or work somewhere else?
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
      Not really... If the market saw an opportunity to make money by defecting from a commonly accepted norm that isn't enforced by law there are people who would be willing to implement the defection for the right price.
    - Barrin92 5y ago
      There is absolutely zero incentive for any of those people in power to do anything about it. They work in one of the best paying industries on earth, they financially stand to benefit from the very things that ought to be regulated. How do you think anyone reigned in the tobacco industry? Everyone in the industry just went, "well I hate coffers full of money, let's stop working here" ? That's what governmental authority exists for. The idea that the foxes polices themselves while they have all the keys to the henhouse is comical.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        > The idea that the foxes polices themselves while they have all the keys to the henhouse is comical. Exactly. "The tragedy of the commons" is a well-known terms that means, "given the keys to the henhouse, the foxes are not able to police themselves well enough to keep themselves from starving" - and this doesn't even begin to consider the interests of hens.
  - OneEyedRobot 5y ago
fnord77 5y ago
the government really doesn't like a challenge to its power. as seen from past antitrust actions, I expect much of "big tech" to be thoroughly dismantled. alphabet will be chopped up along business lines. Each business will have to develop its own independent ad system. facebook will be forced to spin off their acqs and separate completely from them. amazon and AWS will be split, obviously. dunno about apple. at least split their entertainment businesses from their hardware businesses. This will be a great opportunity for startups who might otherwise never would have a chance.
- notabanker 5y ago
  I really would like to believe your prophecy but want to offer a few rebuttals... > the government really doesn't like a challenge to its power. But the government as a whole hasn't really made up its mind. There are a few junior congresspeople who are vocal about monopoly problems with Big Tech. But senior Democrat congresspeople from Big Tech states have not uttered a word against Big Tech. Even senior Republicans, and republicans have been at the receiving end of Big Tech censorship, are loath to antitrust as they have started conflating checks on Big Tech monopoly with checks on free enterprise. In short, government will has not coalesced around antitrust action against Big Tech. I don't know if Big Tech can be stopped by the government. A possibility I see is that the stock market bubble pops, Fed money printing loses its ability to inflate tech stocks, leading to a decline in Big Tech power.
  - OneEyedRobot 5y ago
    >But the government as a whole hasn't really made up its mind. It's probably better to view the 'government' as a coalition of self-interested groups. It's never really monolithic.
    - notabanker 5y ago
      Good point, that's really what it is .. a complex entity.
- cheeseomlit 5y ago
superbaconman 5y ago
I don't see how government can make even a dent in what are ultimately cultural issues without drastic changes to the core of our laws. The idea that you can't deny service to an individual for their political views is a big shift. The idea that businesses must align with government goals is a big shift. The idea that limitations must be imposed on an individuals exposure to social media for their own good is a big shift.
- OneEyedRobot 5y ago
  >The idea that you can't deny service to an individual for their political views is a big shift. I can't remember people being denied service for their political views until just recently. Another odd thing is that a company would give a rip about their employees political views. These are strange times.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Look back 50+ years. In the Soviet Union and Soviet-affiliated countries, people were denied services and jobs for being not visibly communist enough. In the United States, people were denied services and jobs for being not visibly anti-communist enough. The idea of not discriminating based on politics or other overt characteristics, as a widespread cultural phenomenon, was relatively new and short-lived.
    - MrZongle2 5y ago
      In the United States, people were denied services and jobs for being not visibly anti-communist enough. In the early 1970s? I'd like to see some citations of that.
    - themacguffinman 5y ago
      That is widely recognized as a dark time in the US because of the Cold War and that kind of "McCarthyist" discrimination was loudly and prominently rejected after a decade or so. It's anti-communist discrimination that was relatively new and short-lived. You can identify the beginnings and endings of that time as an era, doesn't seem like a perennial norm to me. Edit: the above is perhaps a bit of an incomplete thought. I'd generally argue that picking wartime era hysteria is a little misleading, that happens to basically every country. On the other hand, there's a reason why people always jump on the "myth" of the First Amendment when it's mentioned in discussions about private companies: Americans often confuse the constitutional principle with the general principle, and they do this because Americans are largely supportive of the general principle.
qntty 5y ago
I'd be embarrassed to write a letter to the editor of a local newspaper with an analysis this simplistic. Why did it take three guys with PhDs to tell us that Regulation Can Be Good Actually™?
gego 5y ago
In Europe digital humanisms seems to be the umbrella term... https://dighum.ec.tuwien.ac.at/perspectives-on-digital-humanism/ https://dighum.ec.tuwien.ac.at/perspectives-on-digital-human...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mLuby 5y ago
I'll add that regulation can be an entrenching mechanism, as the overhead of compliance has less relative cost to large existing businesses than to small, new ones. For example: if social media companies were required to ID their users in person within 30 days of sign-up ("think of the children" IDK), the infrastructure to comply with that regulation would make it extremely difficult for a new startups to pull off, while big incumbents with compliance departments already staffed up can make it work. Even worthwhile safety regulations have this effect. You can't just start a hazardous chemical transportation company in a weekend like you can a software company. I'd say that's working as intended, but it does still give larger players a competitive edge just for being larger/older. For my 2¢, limiting acquisitions and mergers is the way to go here. The laws already exist, they just need to be more strictly enforced. If a company's core business grows, the company can and should grow. But we don't want a ravenous corporate blob that absorbs everything tangential to its business, whether that's for growth or defensive reasons.
- vlovich123 5y ago
  Can’t you have the regulations only kick in once you have a certain number of users or revenue to limit the entrenching impact?
  - TrainedMonkey 5y ago
    How do you stop fragmentation of large companies into subsidiaries who are all just below the limit where regulations kick in?
    - vlovich123 5y ago
      Ownership stakes - for example if company X owns >10% of company Y, then the regulations for company X could kick in for company Y. There’s some conceptual precedent for reporting requirements of publicly held companies (if you own more than a certain percentage it has to be publicly reported). The subsidiary fragmentation itself is uninteresting from a regulatory perspective as long as the regulatory environment is carefully crafted to pierce through intentional corporate governance obfuscation.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Animats 5y ago
That article is awful. Three professors coming up with five-world clickbait memes, while evading real issues. A real question is, in areas where network effects are very strong, how do we avoid monopolies forming?
- seph-reed 5y ago
  This is a very interesting question. Almost like saying: how do we keep gravity from eventually creating a few giant blackholes? Granted, we can't change physical laws. But if we could, we would clearly need some sort of anti-gravity that kicks in just passed the point of a black hole. So I guess there needs to be some benefit of not being a monopoly.
arminiusreturns 5y ago
Until you fix Kstreet corruption of the legislative body any regulation pushes will almost invariably end up benefiting the big corps despite however noble the idea behhind the particlar legislion starts out.
WalterBright 5y ago
Three Stanford professors who have zero business experience have all the answers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Reich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Reich https://profiles.stanford.edu/jeremy-weinstein https://profiles.stanford.edu/jeremy-weinstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Sahami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Sahami Contrast this with what Senator McGovern wrote after he retired to run a small hotel business: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203406404578070543545022704 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203406404578070... "In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of such a business, especially during a recession of the kind that hit New England just as I was acquiring the inn's 43-year leasehold. I also wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator and a more understanding presidential contender. Today we are much closer to a general acknowledgment that government must encourage business to expand and grow. Bill Clinton, Paul Tsongas, Bob Kerrey and others have, I believe, changed the debate of our party. We intuitively know that to create job opportunities we need entrepreneurs who will risk their capital against an expected payoff. Too often, however, public policy does not consider whether we are choking off those opportunities."
Woodi 5y ago
Sorry guys, you are super smart and you talking good things but all what it is is foam making. Yes, new book, even if in 100% describing reality as reality is is not enough. Maybe im 10-20 year someone state: Hey, it was already written 20 years ago ! And all that Congress and rest of the bunnies "activities" is just foam and smoke. Why ? Becouse US as a whole makes money from current state. Corporations are just part of US controlling rest of the world. Not so evil so far and always will be someone on the top. Except maybe South America think USA is that bad capitalist from XVIII+ century... Still, USA have a lot of influence via tech and tech is used by plain peoples. So when something is bad in USA it have influence on rest of us. Eg. attempts to deny repairing phones... Pure idiocy but who cares in Congress or elsewhere ?? And, sadly, you - USA - will do not change much until forced by someone proposing (and having some power to enforce) some sanity in tech and other parts of life. It's not easy to be World capital country :)

70 points by ubac 5y ago

Too little too late. The famous profs are silent as they are already wealthy from the big-tech they helped create.

Rich, cloistered elites discover the bare minimum of ethical considerations after being entirely walled off from the broader American political conversations for the better part of two decades. Says Reed Hastings OF A BOOK COMING OUT IN SEPTEMBER OF 2021: "In System Error, we finally have a book about the digital revolution that is serious rather than sensationalistic." This isn't serious.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

crazy_horse 5y ago

I do academic work in this area, which was inspired by watching Reddit and HN for a decade. I do think something must be done, but the notion that it should be the government taking action scares me. I believe, platonically that is the right way for government to act, to take necessary actions to counter predatory behavior. What scares me is that we chanced into this. Zuck made some brilliant movies but he was the same guy at 22 that thought that younger people were smarter. Notice he wasn't young enough to say that at 32. The people in government do not understand tech. They don't understand how it works, they don't understand where it is going, and they don't understand its ethos. Government right now is dominated by ideologues and demagogues. I'm very worried that any government action is going to end up being something that only FB, Google, etc can do anything about. Why does the government need to act? Why spend so much time complaining about it on HN? We've been doing that for a decade.

colinmhayes 5y ago
The government is the only institution with a monopoly on force. How else can institutional changes be enacted without worrying about defection?
- crazy_horse 5y ago
  How many people here work in those institutions? Do they not have power to make change or work somewhere else?
  - colinmhayes 5y ago
    Not really... If the market saw an opportunity to make money by defecting from a commonly accepted norm that isn't enforced by law there are people who would be willing to implement the defection for the right price.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    There is absolutely zero incentive for any of those people in power to do anything about it. They work in one of the best paying industries on earth, they financially stand to benefit from the very things that ought to be regulated. How do you think anyone reigned in the tobacco industry? Everyone in the industry just went, "well I hate coffers full of money, let's stop working here" ? That's what governmental authority exists for. The idea that the foxes polices themselves while they have all the keys to the henhouse is comical.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      > The idea that the foxes polices themselves while they have all the keys to the henhouse is comical. Exactly. "The tragedy of the commons" is a well-known terms that means, "given the keys to the henhouse, the foxes are not able to police themselves well enough to keep themselves from starving" - and this doesn't even begin to consider the interests of hens.
- OneEyedRobot 5y ago

fnord77 5y ago

the government really doesn't like a challenge to its power. as seen from past antitrust actions, I expect much of "big tech" to be thoroughly dismantled. alphabet will be chopped up along business lines. Each business will have to develop its own independent ad system. facebook will be forced to spin off their acqs and separate completely from them. amazon and AWS will be split, obviously. dunno about apple. at least split their entertainment businesses from their hardware businesses. This will be a great opportunity for startups who might otherwise never would have a chance.

notabanker 5y ago
I really would like to believe your prophecy but want to offer a few rebuttals... > the government really doesn't like a challenge to its power. But the government as a whole hasn't really made up its mind. There are a few junior congresspeople who are vocal about monopoly problems with Big Tech. But senior Democrat congresspeople from Big Tech states have not uttered a word against Big Tech. Even senior Republicans, and republicans have been at the receiving end of Big Tech censorship, are loath to antitrust as they have started conflating checks on Big Tech monopoly with checks on free enterprise. In short, government will has not coalesced around antitrust action against Big Tech. I don't know if Big Tech can be stopped by the government. A possibility I see is that the stock market bubble pops, Fed money printing loses its ability to inflate tech stocks, leading to a decline in Big Tech power.
- OneEyedRobot 5y ago
  >But the government as a whole hasn't really made up its mind. It's probably better to view the 'government' as a coalition of self-interested groups. It's never really monolithic.
  - notabanker 5y ago
    Good point, that's really what it is .. a complex entity.
cheeseomlit 5y ago

superbaconman 5y ago

I don't see how government can make even a dent in what are ultimately cultural issues without drastic changes to the core of our laws. The idea that you can't deny service to an individual for their political views is a big shift. The idea that businesses must align with government goals is a big shift. The idea that limitations must be imposed on an individuals exposure to social media for their own good is a big shift.

OneEyedRobot 5y ago
>The idea that you can't deny service to an individual for their political views is a big shift. I can't remember people being denied service for their political views until just recently. Another odd thing is that a company would give a rip about their employees political views. These are strange times.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Look back 50+ years. In the Soviet Union and Soviet-affiliated countries, people were denied services and jobs for being not visibly communist enough. In the United States, people were denied services and jobs for being not visibly anti-communist enough. The idea of not discriminating based on politics or other overt characteristics, as a widespread cultural phenomenon, was relatively new and short-lived.
  - MrZongle2 5y ago
    In the United States, people were denied services and jobs for being not visibly anti-communist enough. In the early 1970s? I'd like to see some citations of that.
  - themacguffinman 5y ago
    That is widely recognized as a dark time in the US because of the Cold War and that kind of "McCarthyist" discrimination was loudly and prominently rejected after a decade or so. It's anti-communist discrimination that was relatively new and short-lived. You can identify the beginnings and endings of that time as an era, doesn't seem like a perennial norm to me. Edit: the above is perhaps a bit of an incomplete thought. I'd generally argue that picking wartime era hysteria is a little misleading, that happens to basically every country. On the other hand, there's a reason why people always jump on the "myth" of the First Amendment when it's mentioned in discussions about private companies: Americans often confuse the constitutional principle with the general principle, and they do this because Americans are largely supportive of the general principle.

qntty 5y ago

I'd be embarrassed to write a letter to the editor of a local newspaper with an analysis this simplistic. Why did it take three guys with PhDs to tell us that Regulation Can Be Good Actually™?

gego 5y ago

In Europe digital humanisms seems to be the umbrella term... https://dighum.ec.tuwien.ac.at/perspectives-on-digital-humanism/ https://dighum.ec.tuwien.ac.at/perspectives-on-digital-human...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mLuby 5y ago

I'll add that regulation can be an entrenching mechanism, as the overhead of compliance has less relative cost to large existing businesses than to small, new ones. For example: if social media companies were required to ID their users in person within 30 days of sign-up ("think of the children" IDK), the infrastructure to comply with that regulation would make it extremely difficult for a new startups to pull off, while big incumbents with compliance departments already staffed up can make it work. Even worthwhile safety regulations have this effect. You can't just start a hazardous chemical transportation company in a weekend like you can a software company. I'd say that's working as intended, but it does still give larger players a competitive edge just for being larger/older. For my 2¢, limiting acquisitions and mergers is the way to go here. The laws already exist, they just need to be more strictly enforced. If a company's core business grows, the company can and should grow. But we don't want a ravenous corporate blob that absorbs everything tangential to its business, whether that's for growth or defensive reasons.

vlovich123 5y ago
Can’t you have the regulations only kick in once you have a certain number of users or revenue to limit the entrenching impact?
- TrainedMonkey 5y ago
  How do you stop fragmentation of large companies into subsidiaries who are all just below the limit where regulations kick in?
  - vlovich123 5y ago
    Ownership stakes - for example if company X owns >10% of company Y, then the regulations for company X could kick in for company Y. There’s some conceptual precedent for reporting requirements of publicly held companies (if you own more than a certain percentage it has to be publicly reported). The subsidiary fragmentation itself is uninteresting from a regulatory perspective as long as the regulatory environment is carefully crafted to pierce through intentional corporate governance obfuscation.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Animats 5y ago

That article is awful. Three professors coming up with five-world clickbait memes, while evading real issues. A real question is, in areas where network effects are very strong, how do we avoid monopolies forming?

seph-reed 5y ago
This is a very interesting question. Almost like saying: how do we keep gravity from eventually creating a few giant blackholes? Granted, we can't change physical laws. But if we could, we would clearly need some sort of anti-gravity that kicks in just passed the point of a black hole. So I guess there needs to be some benefit of not being a monopoly.

arminiusreturns 5y ago

Until you fix Kstreet corruption of the legislative body any regulation pushes will almost invariably end up benefiting the big corps despite however noble the idea behhind the particlar legislion starts out.

WalterBright 5y ago

Three Stanford professors who have zero business experience have all the answers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Reich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Reich https://profiles.stanford.edu/jeremy-weinstein https://profiles.stanford.edu/jeremy-weinstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Sahami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Sahami Contrast this with what Senator McGovern wrote after he retired to run a small hotel business: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203406404578070543545022704 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203406404578070... "In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of such a business, especially during a recession of the kind that hit New England just as I was acquiring the inn's 43-year leasehold. I also wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator and a more understanding presidential contender. Today we are much closer to a general acknowledgment that government must encourage business to expand and grow. Bill Clinton, Paul Tsongas, Bob Kerrey and others have, I believe, changed the debate of our party. We intuitively know that to create job opportunities we need entrepreneurs who will risk their capital against an expected payoff. Too often, however, public policy does not consider whether we are choking off those opportunities."

Woodi 5y ago

Sorry guys, you are super smart and you talking good things but all what it is is foam making. Yes, new book, even if in 100% describing reality as reality is is not enough. Maybe im 10-20 year someone state: Hey, it was already written 20 years ago ! And all that Congress and rest of the bunnies "activities" is just foam and smoke. Why ? Becouse US as a whole makes money from current state. Corporations are just part of US controlling rest of the world. Not so evil so far and always will be someone on the top. Except maybe South America think USA is that bad capitalist from XVIII+ century... Still, USA have a lot of influence via tech and tech is used by plain peoples. So when something is bad in USA it have influence on rest of us. Eg. attempts to deny repairing phones... Pure idiocy but who cares in Congress or elsewhere ?? And, sadly, you - USA - will do not change much until forced by someone proposing (and having some power to enforce) some sanity in tech and other parts of life. It's not easy to be World capital country :)