6 ms·

You're right on the technicals, but the GP is right in spirit. It seems like society needs a term for the concept of a company accumulating far too much power,

You're right on the technicals, but the GP is right in spirit. It seems like society needs a term for the concept of a company accumulating far too much power, and that we need laws similar to anti-trust laws, that apply to these companies. This is an incredibly difficult problem to address specifically because FB is not a classic monopoly. I'm not even sure what it would mean to "break them up". Amazon, MS, Apple, and Google are all far easier to split up. Each company has logical seams to split at (i.e., aws/retail, gcp/search/android, itunes/devices, etc). You could split FB and insta, but that doesn't really curb FB's power and influence at all.

SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
Isn't the term just "too powerful"? It seems to me that the reason we don't have laws against companies being too powerful is that most people don't think it's a big deal for companies to be too powerful, as long as they're not monopolies.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  If people thought an entity was “too powerful”, then they would want a law against the entity, otherwise the word “too” does not mean anything. The reason there is no law against being “too powerful” is because it is a nebulous description that is not enforceable in a fair manner.
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    I kinda fundamentally reject the premise here. When I say that a sandwich is "too expensive", I don't mean that there ought to be a law against selling sandwiches for that price.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      The context is dealing with the problem of the existence of a too powerful company. Dealing with a too expensive sandwich requires no laws.
      - Stupulous 5y ago
        If refusing to work with a company is impossible, it's a monopoly, right? Otherwise, you are free to respond to the too-powerful company the same way you respond to the too-expensive sandwich. If a company is using its power to do something harmful, write laws against the harmful thing, irrespective of how much power the company has. Illegalizing shadow profiles of non-users would be a good step forward, illegalizing them only for FB-sized companies would be less good. If a handful of companies are operating as a monopoly, that's already well-defined as an oligopoly. I think the only other situation where a company can be too powerful is if they get too much power over the regulators. I expect it's rare to get there without becoming a monopoly or oligopoly, but it's probably not impossible.
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
        >If a company is using its power to do something harmful, write laws against the harmful thing, irrespective of how much power the company has. I agree, hence my explanation of why there are no laws against "too powerful" companies. It is not an actionable condition.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    Antitrust law is law against being too powerful.
  - bumby 5y ago
    This isn't a new problem though. Anti-trust laws have been enforced previously without a strict definition. "Although the courts "have not yet identified a precise level at which monopoly power will be inferred"[1] [1]Section of Antitrust Law, Am. Bar Ass'n, Market Power Handbook 1920 (2005).
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  Well yes but that term is too honest for its own good as a matter of opinion. "Too powerful" is an absolutely arbitrary standard with no desire for internal consistency. Which is exactly the opposite of what you want in laws.
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    I agree with what you're saying, but that's exactly the problem. I don't think the author of the source article has a clear, internally consistent standard, and I don't think any consistent standard exists that would tell you Google and Facebook need to be broken up but CVS and Costco don't.
francoi8 5y ago
The larger a company becomes, the more it should be regulated.
- bumby 5y ago
  Larger in terms of what? Market share? Revenue? Profit margin? Staffing?
  - romwell 5y ago
    Yes.
    - bumby 5y ago
      All of the above or any one of the above? How would one measure how each of those contributes to market power? I can't tell if you have a reasonably thought out perspective based on your response or if it's just "corporations that are 'big' suck"
sanderjd 5y ago
I agree with this. My point is merely that the current problems are a round peg that it is unwise to try to fit into the square hole of existing anti-trust regulation.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
I was going to reply to the parent that we used to have a word for this, and that word is "monopoly", but apparently we now no longer have that shared definition, probably an intentional confusion bought at great expense by monopolists.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  At no point has "monopoly" meant anything other than "A single seller". The confusion comes from people trying to steal that term to refer to "big companies".
  - Supermancho 5y ago
    > The confusion comes from people trying to steal that term to refer to "big companies". This is an oligopoly. Because companies are arbitrary constructs, it's a defacto monopoly by multiple sellers. The terminology is useful, but not in the sense that it is then end-all of qualification.
    - dahfizz 5y ago
      To claim big companies == oligopoly == monopoly is objectively wrong, and the opposite of useful terminology.
      - Supermancho 5y ago
        "big companies" were in quotes because there was context. This implies "too big to fail" or "big enough to trigger antitrust talks", et al. Collusion often results in this, which is not a dejour monopoly, but a defacto monopoly. Collusion isn't even strictly necessary. Endstage capitalism naturally selects the winners who stay on top. It's a simple concept taught in beginning economics. "big companies" == oligopoly == monopoly is exactly what people mean when talking about worrisome "big companies", without the commensurate analogies. A monopoly is about perspective which is about scale not some subjective definition (like sanderjd endlessly trolls about). Legal systems all over the world combat real/threatened monopolies (eg the CCP recently acted unilaterally) in various forms. Whether you think it's a useful reasoning to group companies and use a specific term is irrelevant. I sincerely hope you can understand that. Good luck with whatever.
nitrogen 5y ago
In Facebook's case they own some of their biggest potential competitors for attention and deliberately preserve their niches. So splitting them up might make a difference. But if not, requiring an open network akin to the telephone system with standardized protocols might make a difference. AT&T was split on geographical lines, so maybe FB could be as well, and the regionals would all have to interoperate with open protocols that would allow for regional competitors.
- dont__panic 5y ago
  Open protocols and interop seem like a very good goal to aim for. I'm curious how geographical lines would work for Facebook -- would you end up with one Facebook per country? And would we still end up in a situation where you need to have a Facebook account to participate in things like Marketplace or community groups? Personally I would want to be able to host my own tiny Facebook instance that I control. Ideally I could even invite friends and family to share my ad-free self-hosted instance with a chronological newsfeed setup.
  - vntx 5y ago
    Can’t you already do this? Host your own social networks, I mean. Of course, the hard part is getting others to join it. Isn’t that why protocols like Matrix and decentralized social media platforms like Mastodon were made? So you could communicate with anyone you wanted to on any other platform as long as they implemented the open protocols.
- sanderjd 5y ago
  For what it's worth, I think splitting up Facebook makes very little sense, but that requiring open protocols would be an excellent direction. A big reason I have a problem with the "monopoly" framing is that it limits the options for how to fix it to pretty much just this "break it up" idea, which isn't the right tool for the job.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Splitting Oculus, Instagram, and WhatsApp kind of makes sense.
laurent92 5y ago
Inheritance. That’s the term you are looking for. In many countries, we still tax it 65%, to ensure a one-time success doesn’t become a “monopoly” of some families over generations. Likewise for companies. we can’t tax them per generation, but the monopoly laws are here to dismantle them if they keep hold on a market without ongoing “coup de maître” on innovation.
arrosenberg 5y ago
> It seems like society needs a term for the concept of a company accumulating far too much power, and that we need laws similar to anti-trust laws, that apply to these companies. Our forebears have us covered! Antitrust became the popular term, but back in the Gilded Age, it was often referred to as anti-consolidation. I think that is an excellent term for it.

SpicyLemonZest 5y ago

Isn't the term just "too powerful"? It seems to me that the reason we don't have laws against companies being too powerful is that most people don't think it's a big deal for companies to be too powerful, as long as they're not monopolies.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
If people thought an entity was “too powerful”, then they would want a law against the entity, otherwise the word “too” does not mean anything. The reason there is no law against being “too powerful” is because it is a nebulous description that is not enforceable in a fair manner.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  I kinda fundamentally reject the premise here. When I say that a sandwich is "too expensive", I don't mean that there ought to be a law against selling sandwiches for that price.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    The context is dealing with the problem of the existence of a too powerful company. Dealing with a too expensive sandwich requires no laws.
    - Stupulous 5y ago
      If refusing to work with a company is impossible, it's a monopoly, right? Otherwise, you are free to respond to the too-powerful company the same way you respond to the too-expensive sandwich. If a company is using its power to do something harmful, write laws against the harmful thing, irrespective of how much power the company has. Illegalizing shadow profiles of non-users would be a good step forward, illegalizing them only for FB-sized companies would be less good. If a handful of companies are operating as a monopoly, that's already well-defined as an oligopoly. I think the only other situation where a company can be too powerful is if they get too much power over the regulators. I expect it's rare to get there without becoming a monopoly or oligopoly, but it's probably not impossible.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        >If a company is using its power to do something harmful, write laws against the harmful thing, irrespective of how much power the company has. I agree, hence my explanation of why there are no laws against "too powerful" companies. It is not an actionable condition.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  Antitrust law is law against being too powerful.
- bumby 5y ago
  This isn't a new problem though. Anti-trust laws have been enforced previously without a strict definition. "Although the courts "have not yet identified a precise level at which monopoly power will be inferred"[1] [1]Section of Antitrust Law, Am. Bar Ass'n, Market Power Handbook 1920 (2005).
Nasrudith 5y ago
Well yes but that term is too honest for its own good as a matter of opinion. "Too powerful" is an absolutely arbitrary standard with no desire for internal consistency. Which is exactly the opposite of what you want in laws.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  I agree with what you're saying, but that's exactly the problem. I don't think the author of the source article has a clear, internally consistent standard, and I don't think any consistent standard exists that would tell you Google and Facebook need to be broken up but CVS and Costco don't.

francoi8 5y ago

The larger a company becomes, the more it should be regulated.

bumby 5y ago
Larger in terms of what? Market share? Revenue? Profit margin? Staffing?
- romwell 5y ago
  Yes.
  - bumby 5y ago
    All of the above or any one of the above? How would one measure how each of those contributes to market power? I can't tell if you have a reasonably thought out perspective based on your response or if it's just "corporations that are 'big' suck"

sanderjd 5y ago

I agree with this. My point is merely that the current problems are a round peg that it is unwise to try to fit into the square hole of existing anti-trust regulation.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

I was going to reply to the parent that we used to have a word for this, and that word is "monopoly", but apparently we now no longer have that shared definition, probably an intentional confusion bought at great expense by monopolists.

dahfizz 5y ago
At no point has "monopoly" meant anything other than "A single seller". The confusion comes from people trying to steal that term to refer to "big companies".
- Supermancho 5y ago
  > The confusion comes from people trying to steal that term to refer to "big companies". This is an oligopoly. Because companies are arbitrary constructs, it's a defacto monopoly by multiple sellers. The terminology is useful, but not in the sense that it is then end-all of qualification.
  - dahfizz 5y ago
    To claim big companies == oligopoly == monopoly is objectively wrong, and the opposite of useful terminology.
    - Supermancho 5y ago
      "big companies" were in quotes because there was context. This implies "too big to fail" or "big enough to trigger antitrust talks", et al. Collusion often results in this, which is not a dejour monopoly, but a defacto monopoly. Collusion isn't even strictly necessary. Endstage capitalism naturally selects the winners who stay on top. It's a simple concept taught in beginning economics. "big companies" == oligopoly == monopoly is exactly what people mean when talking about worrisome "big companies", without the commensurate analogies. A monopoly is about perspective which is about scale not some subjective definition (like sanderjd endlessly trolls about). Legal systems all over the world combat real/threatened monopolies (eg the CCP recently acted unilaterally) in various forms. Whether you think it's a useful reasoning to group companies and use a specific term is irrelevant. I sincerely hope you can understand that. Good luck with whatever.

nitrogen 5y ago

In Facebook's case they own some of their biggest potential competitors for attention and deliberately preserve their niches. So splitting them up might make a difference. But if not, requiring an open network akin to the telephone system with standardized protocols might make a difference. AT&T was split on geographical lines, so maybe FB could be as well, and the regionals would all have to interoperate with open protocols that would allow for regional competitors.

dont__panic 5y ago
Open protocols and interop seem like a very good goal to aim for. I'm curious how geographical lines would work for Facebook -- would you end up with one Facebook per country? And would we still end up in a situation where you need to have a Facebook account to participate in things like Marketplace or community groups? Personally I would want to be able to host my own tiny Facebook instance that I control. Ideally I could even invite friends and family to share my ad-free self-hosted instance with a chronological newsfeed setup.
- vntx 5y ago
  Can’t you already do this? Host your own social networks, I mean. Of course, the hard part is getting others to join it. Isn’t that why protocols like Matrix and decentralized social media platforms like Mastodon were made? So you could communicate with anyone you wanted to on any other platform as long as they implemented the open protocols.
sanderjd 5y ago
For what it's worth, I think splitting up Facebook makes very little sense, but that requiring open protocols would be an excellent direction. A big reason I have a problem with the "monopoly" framing is that it limits the options for how to fix it to pretty much just this "break it up" idea, which isn't the right tool for the job.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Splitting Oculus, Instagram, and WhatsApp kind of makes sense.

laurent92 5y ago

Inheritance. That’s the term you are looking for. In many countries, we still tax it 65%, to ensure a one-time success doesn’t become a “monopoly” of some families over generations. Likewise for companies. we can’t tax them per generation, but the monopoly laws are here to dismantle them if they keep hold on a market without ongoing “coup de maître” on innovation.

arrosenberg 5y ago

> It seems like society needs a term for the concept of a company accumulating far too much power, and that we need laws similar to anti-trust laws, that apply to these companies. Our forebears have us covered! Antitrust became the popular term, but back in the Gilded Age, it was often referred to as anti-consolidation. I think that is an excellent term for it.