9 ms·

Google and Facebook execs allegedly approved dividing ad market among themselves

328 points by iam-TJ 5y ago

iam-TJ 5y ago
Title had to be trimmed to fit 80-character limit, from "Google's and Facebook's top execs allegedly approved dividing ad market among themselves". This reports on an amended complaint filed Friday 14th January 2022. "On Friday, Texas et al. filed a third amended complaint [0 PDF] that fills in more blanks and expands the allegations by 69 more pages. The fortified filing adds additional information about previous revelations and extends the scope of concern to cover in-app advertising in greater detail." ... "The third amended complaint explains, "Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer [REDACTED] was explicit that '[t]his is a big deal strategically' in an email thread that included Facebook CEO [REDACTED]. When the economic terms had taken their form, the team sent an email addressed directly to CEO: 'We're nearly ready to sign and need your approval to move forward.' Facebook CEO wanted to meet with COO [REDACTED] and his other executives before making a decision." [0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903.195.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.56...
- civilized 5y ago
  Good thing they redacted the Facebook CEO. He might not enjoy the negative public attention.
  - ydlr 5y ago
    It looks like the court has roughly the same standard as facebook when it comes to anonymized data.
  - reaperducer 5y ago
    Good thing they redacted the Facebook CEO. He might not enjoy the negative public attention. The local newspaper's version of the story was nice enough to name Sundar Pichai by name. It also included a poor response from Google which was along the lines of, "He signs agreements all the time, but doesn't know what's in them, and so he's not really responsible in any way for this." Which is exactly the opposite of what the newly revised documents show. It's also very telling when a company's PR department pivots from protecting the company to protecting an individual at that company.
    - hazelnut 5y ago
      "He signs agreements all the time, but doesn't know what's in them, and so he's not really responsible in any way for this." That’s exactly the point why he needs to sign to get his written approval. Defending him that we didn’t tell him everything would be pretty concerning.
    - malka 5y ago
      If you are the boss, you are responsible for everything the company does. You don't know? It's your job to know.
    - CosmicShadow 5y ago
      can I use this excuse to get out of all my legal obligations and not pay my mortgage or my ad bills to Google?
      - mtgx 5y ago
- arcanus 5y ago
  Anyone want to weight in on how this falls legally? Price fixing can be a felony, and result in jail time[1]. Not sure if this falls under that, or similar anti-trust laws. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1987/06/20/price-fixing-charged-on-soft-drinks/d6763187-ade7-4b53-959f-6736e999d1e5/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1987/06/20/p...
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    The proposed "win rate guarantee" Google gave Facebook appears to be the same economically as Google buying up a bunch of ad slots, and then giving them to Facebook for free. Assuming the same was done in reverse, this is both companies reducing the pool of ad slots available to others, and pushing up the price. It would be equivalent to one oil company giving lots of oil to a competitor to destroy, and that competitor doing the same in return.
    - alisonkisk 5y ago
    - ryoshu 5y ago
      So price fixing?
  - IAmEveryone 5y ago
    It’s all civil law right now. It’s doubtful that criminal law would be very useful. First, because the standard of proof would make criminal charges much harder to sustain. Second, because, judging from all those emails, it’s much more of a group effort between and inside these organizations.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      Group efforts can definitely be subject to criminal investigations. Look, for example, at Enron.
- edem 5y ago
  It would be great if finally at least someone from this group got some serious jail time. It would restore my faith in humanity. I'd vote for Suckerberg, but I'd settle for Brin too.
BarryMilo 5y ago
That's some mustache-twirling evil stuff. As a side note, this is a problem with ads as a business: since the morality of the very practice is dubious, the companies that sell them aren't expected to behave ethically.
- draw_down 5y ago
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago
  > since the morality of the very practice is dubious Really? What's "dubious" about selling attention for money and/or physical goods? The practice is older than money itself. The current social contract where advertising is clearly marked as out-of-stream information is a very good thing. Because the alternative is all advertising is "native", meaning lies and deception. The only unethical part of the landscape is the fact that Google (et al.) disrupted the traditional advertising markets and managed to avoid having to comply to existing legislation.
  - BarryMilo 5y ago
    Advertising is an attempt to steer your thoughts in a specific direction for personal gain. Surely you can understand how some people are not okay with that?
    - kibwen 5y ago
      In other words, advertising is socially-acceptable corporate-sponsored brainwashing.
    - otabdeveloper4 5y ago
      No. Selling a fiction book is also "an attempt to steer your thoughts for personal gain". Advertising is a more specific thing: an implicit social contract where demands on your attention are rewarded with non-monetary bonuses. As such it's a good thing, because a world with no social contract or rewards would be shittier.
largbae 5y ago
Here is the most recent discussion on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28976487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28976487 Isn't proof that these players are abusing their market power? Short trial?
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  Isn't what proof?
samwillis 5y ago
It’s increasingly looking like there is a reckoning coming for the online advertising business. As the owner of an e-commerce business dependent on online advertising I fear it will be small business that are most adversely affected by the coming changes.
- ses1984 5y ago
  It’s looking there should be a reckoning, I’m not optimistic though.
- mritchie712 5y ago
  Do you mostly run facebook ads?
- moneywoes 5y ago
  Have you found the CAC to be lowest on FB?
- pclmulqdq 5y ago
  There should be a reckoning. NASDAQ is not allowed to trade on its own exchange with more information than their customers the way Google does. Even _Coinbase_ isn't allowed to trade on its own exchange in an unfair way. Google is an exchange, a broker, a buyer, and a seller, and there are no financial regulations for the ad markets. Facebook is the same.
  - cute_boi 5y ago
    When politicians hold the share of Alphabet & Facebook, are there any high incentives for them to introduce financial regulations?
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  Businesses have always invested the same % of revenue in advertising. They ll keep doing it without google, and they will still need publishers to display the ads. Other companies will reemerge
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Sosh101 5y ago
Rather Molotov–Ribbentropesque.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...
- jacknews 5y ago
  LOL, you almost invoked Godwin's law, but not quite. I think this is slightly different, in that the Google-Facebook pact seems to have had a specific focused purpose.
civilized 5y ago
I have often heard that Google's dominance of the ad market is bad for ad space sellers, but this is the first time I've understood anything about the mechanisms. I looked up "header bidding" [1][2] and basically it seems to be a way for sellers to auction their space to all potential buyers at once, rather than letting Google be the middle-man and rig the game in its favor... for example, by reserving the last bid in an auction for Google Ad Exchange. No wonder Google is against it. [1] https://www.lotame.com/back-basics-header-bidding/ https://www.lotame.com/back-basics-header-bidding/ [2] https://adage.com/article/digital/how-header-bidding-wars-led-google-antitrust-case-and-claims-collusion-facebook/2307586 https://adage.com/article/digital/how-header-bidding-wars-le...
- tveita 5y ago
  Header bidding also means that websites blast your page visits to every provider that might want to bid on it, instead of "only" to the ad exchange and the winner. Just a massive surveillance spout to anyone at all. Just because Google is against something doesn't mean that it is good for us as consumers.
- pclmulqdq 5y ago
  There is a legitimate reason to oppose header bidding: it results in higher latency than using traditional ad services. Ads served at lower latency tend to get more clicks, and so they have more value. Unfortunately, that means that header bidding results in less money for the website.
  - civilized 5y ago
    ...or so Google says, paternalistically. Yet for some reason this technique is used by about two thirds of publishers. I guess they're just throwing their money away? Somehow they fail to realize that Google knows best?
    - pclmulqdq 5y ago
      There are good reasons to not use Google ads if you are a news site: you are competing with Google for being a news provider. Even if you would make more without header bidding, you might not want to use solutions like Google ads since that means supporting someone who is competing with you. I personally think header bidding is the next good evolution of the ad markets (and the ad market seems to agree), but there is a cost to it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dls2016 5y ago
A reminder that this isn’t the first time Google has been caught colluding with competitors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
zelphirkalt 5y ago
Wouldn't surpise me at all, if true. Both are running on ad money (and selling personal data) and have much to lose and much to win. Ad business being typically a dubious business of questionable real worth with huge smoke screens all over the place and a lot of make believe, it might make for a more opportunity, if secretly the market is strictly divided and stepping on eachother's toes is avoided.
- yodsanklai 5y ago
  These companies don't sell personal data. They use personal data to target ads.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    Does that distinction matter? The thing their customers would do with that personal information is target you with ads. So they were subcontracted the task as opposed to selling them the information to do it themselves.
candiddevmike 5y ago
When I bring the anti trust case against Google up with others (which this allegation stems from), no one seems to care about the actual content of the case. Their opinion is entirely dependent on their political "team": if you're a democrat, this is a republican witch hunt, if you're a republican, these companies are limiting free speech. They just repeat what their bubble tells them to. There's a lot of pieces involved here, and I wish the political divisions in this country didn't stop people from actually researching the case and forming their own opinion. The outcome of this case will have massive effects and could bring about a lot of changes (both good and bad).
- smt88 5y ago
  I don't know where you got the idea that Democrats think this is a witch hunt. Are you talking to Democrats who work in tech and/or the companies being hunted? House Democrats were unable to find Republicans to support a recent antitrust investigation's recommendations[1]. Prominent Democrats have been pushing reinvigorating antitrust legislation for years[2], in fact. The only partisan issue is whether the govt can or should compel social media platforms to carry speech that they don't want to carry, which is a violation of the First Amendment[3] and something Republicans support. 1. https://www.protocol.com/critics-say-what-house-democrats-got-wrong-big-tech https://www.protocol.com/critics-say-what-house-democrats-go... 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/breaking-from-tech-giants-democrats-consider-becoming-an-antimonopoly-party/2017/09/04/3edc7e92-8f56-11e7-84c0-02cc069f2c37_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/breaking-from-tech-... 3. https://www.lawfareblog.com/no-florida-cant-regulate-online-speech https://www.lawfareblog.com/no-florida-cant-regulate-online-...
barneygale 5y ago
Google/Facebook employees: do something good for civilisation and quit your jobs. There are plenty of employers out there where you can create something real and positive.
- hazelnut 5y ago
  Google/FB strategy to keep their employees quite is to throw money at them. It works for the majority.
- hirako2000 5y ago
  I think many of the top employees already are. they have no worries finding alternative employers. it would be even better if it turns out that average to mediocre is all there is left.
- sebow 5y ago
  This is a solution but not really a long-term one.Google/FB/Apple can already de facto buy less principled people or foreigners and also buy them citizenships to work for them.90%+ of the time such individuals who take these deals won't give a shit about principles[There are cases when they do, and often these outliers become leakers when booted out,but for the vast majority of cases this does not happen], given that it's obvious the motive(money) for such a move. This is not an argument or a talking point against immigration, or importing workforce, what I'm saying is that by doing this and (at least) not reforming companies(or better: shut them down), you effectively empower these corporations to be even less-principled and the pressure from employers becomes smaller.Now theoretically this can be curbed by the government, but there are a few problems here: you cannot do this and think you can remain competitive as a global power;such policies are very unpopular in US;FAANG companies can easily lobby and overthrown this(they already probably did and do this) policy; So the solution imo has to be a bottom->up one: pressuring the company internally, though this rarely works in practice.Google has become more transparent (even if a facade) in the latest years towards the average user.But at the same time it has engaged in shady projects for the military that are very concerning,so who knows what's going on.
sebow 5y ago
I would be surprised if this was not the case for the last 10+ years.Every new player gets to a point where if they're relevant they will be offered a paycheck.Refusal of that paycheck means war, and usually the older and bigger player wins, sooner or later.The reasons being simple: a new player often provides new interesting features, but scales very hard due to lack of resources.The old player just has to effectively copy these new features into it's existing product(which takes less time than scaling infrastructure). Again, this is not news.Besides actual leaks we've had tv shows/movies depicting this phenomenon for at least a decade, and usually mainstream pictures hit the screen when it's already obvious that something was partially true.
- jvsg_ 5y ago
  this was demonstrated in the case of tiktok. Essentially, every other player tried to emulate them, and then facebook lobbied USA and it's minions (like india) to mount pressure on tiktok for being "chinese spy app".
andrepd 5y ago
The advertising equivalent of Sykes-Picot, or the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact x)
sul_tasto 5y ago
feels like my privacy is on the auction block
guerrilla 5y ago
I don't care about the specifics here, but can someone school me: What possible mechanisms are there to prevent cartels? I hear a lot about how to deal with monopolies (which are trivial to identify) but very little about colluding oligopolies.
- beberlei 5y ago
  The strategy the European Union is going is to guarantee the first party that sings about a cartel immunity/impunity and all others can be fined up to 10% of global turnover.
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    Okay, that makes sense. Hopefully we have whistleblower protections and reward for individuals too, like a bug bounty program for the economy :)
- gen220 5y ago
  The first sentence of the Sherman Antitrust act (same one that grants the DoJ authority to break up monopolies) declares "every contract... or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce" illegal, which would generally include cartels. 12 years ago [1] this law was invoked against big tech companies, who entered no-poach agreements to reduce inter-big-tech-co hiring competition, with the side effect of wage suppression. Anti-competitive collusion is illegal, full-stop. Proving anti-competitive conspiracy without an explicit paper trail is hard. The emails in the article are pretty explicit. Should be interesting! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation#Department_of_Justice_antitrust_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dang 5y ago
There have already been large threads about this (I mean the latest revelation, not the earlier ones) but I don't have time to find them just now. Anyone?

328 points by iam-TJ 5y ago

Title had to be trimmed to fit 80-character limit, from "Google's and Facebook's top execs allegedly approved dividing ad market among themselves". This reports on an amended complaint filed Friday 14th January 2022. "On Friday, Texas et al. filed a third amended complaint [0 PDF] that fills in more blanks and expands the allegations by 69 more pages. The fortified filing adds additional information about previous revelations and extends the scope of concern to cover in-app advertising in greater detail." ... "The third amended complaint explains, "Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer [REDACTED] was explicit that '[t]his is a big deal strategically' in an email thread that included Facebook CEO [REDACTED]. When the economic terms had taken their form, the team sent an email addressed directly to CEO: 'We're nearly ready to sign and need your approval to move forward.' Facebook CEO wanted to meet with COO [REDACTED] and his other executives before making a decision." [0] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903.195.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.56...

civilized 5y ago
Good thing they redacted the Facebook CEO. He might not enjoy the negative public attention.
- ydlr 5y ago
  It looks like the court has roughly the same standard as facebook when it comes to anonymized data.
- reaperducer 5y ago
  Good thing they redacted the Facebook CEO. He might not enjoy the negative public attention. The local newspaper's version of the story was nice enough to name Sundar Pichai by name. It also included a poor response from Google which was along the lines of, "He signs agreements all the time, but doesn't know what's in them, and so he's not really responsible in any way for this." Which is exactly the opposite of what the newly revised documents show. It's also very telling when a company's PR department pivots from protecting the company to protecting an individual at that company.
  - hazelnut 5y ago
    "He signs agreements all the time, but doesn't know what's in them, and so he's not really responsible in any way for this." That’s exactly the point why he needs to sign to get his written approval. Defending him that we didn’t tell him everything would be pretty concerning.
  - malka 5y ago
    If you are the boss, you are responsible for everything the company does. You don't know? It's your job to know.
  - CosmicShadow 5y ago
    can I use this excuse to get out of all my legal obligations and not pay my mortgage or my ad bills to Google?
    - mtgx 5y ago
arcanus 5y ago
Anyone want to weight in on how this falls legally? Price fixing can be a felony, and result in jail time[1]. Not sure if this falls under that, or similar anti-trust laws. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1987/06/20/price-fixing-charged-on-soft-drinks/d6763187-ade7-4b53-959f-6736e999d1e5/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1987/06/20/p...
- londons_explore 5y ago
  The proposed "win rate guarantee" Google gave Facebook appears to be the same economically as Google buying up a bunch of ad slots, and then giving them to Facebook for free. Assuming the same was done in reverse, this is both companies reducing the pool of ad slots available to others, and pushing up the price. It would be equivalent to one oil company giving lots of oil to a competitor to destroy, and that competitor doing the same in return.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
  - ryoshu 5y ago
    So price fixing?
- IAmEveryone 5y ago
  It’s all civil law right now. It’s doubtful that criminal law would be very useful. First, because the standard of proof would make criminal charges much harder to sustain. Second, because, judging from all those emails, it’s much more of a group effort between and inside these organizations.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    Group efforts can definitely be subject to criminal investigations. Look, for example, at Enron.
edem 5y ago
It would be great if finally at least someone from this group got some serious jail time. It would restore my faith in humanity. I'd vote for Suckerberg, but I'd settle for Brin too.

BarryMilo 5y ago

That's some mustache-twirling evil stuff. As a side note, this is a problem with ads as a business: since the morality of the very practice is dubious, the companies that sell them aren't expected to behave ethically.

draw_down 5y ago
otabdeveloper4 5y ago
> since the morality of the very practice is dubious Really? What's "dubious" about selling attention for money and/or physical goods? The practice is older than money itself. The current social contract where advertising is clearly marked as out-of-stream information is a very good thing. Because the alternative is all advertising is "native", meaning lies and deception. The only unethical part of the landscape is the fact that Google (et al.) disrupted the traditional advertising markets and managed to avoid having to comply to existing legislation.
- BarryMilo 5y ago
  Advertising is an attempt to steer your thoughts in a specific direction for personal gain. Surely you can understand how some people are not okay with that?
  - kibwen 5y ago
    In other words, advertising is socially-acceptable corporate-sponsored brainwashing.
  - otabdeveloper4 5y ago
    No. Selling a fiction book is also "an attempt to steer your thoughts for personal gain". Advertising is a more specific thing: an implicit social contract where demands on your attention are rewarded with non-monetary bonuses. As such it's a good thing, because a world with no social contract or rewards would be shittier.

largbae 5y ago

Here is the most recent discussion on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28976487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28976487 Isn't proof that these players are abusing their market power? Short trial?

alisonkisk 5y ago
Isn't what proof?

samwillis 5y ago

It’s increasingly looking like there is a reckoning coming for the online advertising business. As the owner of an e-commerce business dependent on online advertising I fear it will be small business that are most adversely affected by the coming changes.

ses1984 5y ago
It’s looking there should be a reckoning, I’m not optimistic though.
mritchie712 5y ago
Do you mostly run facebook ads?
moneywoes 5y ago
Have you found the CAC to be lowest on FB?
pclmulqdq 5y ago
There should be a reckoning. NASDAQ is not allowed to trade on its own exchange with more information than their customers the way Google does. Even _Coinbase_ isn't allowed to trade on its own exchange in an unfair way. Google is an exchange, a broker, a buyer, and a seller, and there are no financial regulations for the ad markets. Facebook is the same.
- cute_boi 5y ago
  When politicians hold the share of Alphabet & Facebook, are there any high incentives for them to introduce financial regulations?
cblconfederate 5y ago
Businesses have always invested the same % of revenue in advertising. They ll keep doing it without google, and they will still need publishers to display the ads. Other companies will reemerge
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Sosh101 5y ago

Rather Molotov–Ribbentropesque.

dredmorbius 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...
jacknews 5y ago
LOL, you almost invoked Godwin's law, but not quite. I think this is slightly different, in that the Google-Facebook pact seems to have had a specific focused purpose.

civilized 5y ago

I have often heard that Google's dominance of the ad market is bad for ad space sellers, but this is the first time I've understood anything about the mechanisms. I looked up "header bidding" [1][2] and basically it seems to be a way for sellers to auction their space to all potential buyers at once, rather than letting Google be the middle-man and rig the game in its favor... for example, by reserving the last bid in an auction for Google Ad Exchange. No wonder Google is against it. [1] https://www.lotame.com/back-basics-header-bidding/ https://www.lotame.com/back-basics-header-bidding/ [2] https://adage.com/article/digital/how-header-bidding-wars-led-google-antitrust-case-and-claims-collusion-facebook/2307586 https://adage.com/article/digital/how-header-bidding-wars-le...

tveita 5y ago
Header bidding also means that websites blast your page visits to every provider that might want to bid on it, instead of "only" to the ad exchange and the winner. Just a massive surveillance spout to anyone at all. Just because Google is against something doesn't mean that it is good for us as consumers.
pclmulqdq 5y ago
There is a legitimate reason to oppose header bidding: it results in higher latency than using traditional ad services. Ads served at lower latency tend to get more clicks, and so they have more value. Unfortunately, that means that header bidding results in less money for the website.
- civilized 5y ago
  ...or so Google says, paternalistically. Yet for some reason this technique is used by about two thirds of publishers. I guess they're just throwing their money away? Somehow they fail to realize that Google knows best?
  - pclmulqdq 5y ago
    There are good reasons to not use Google ads if you are a news site: you are competing with Google for being a news provider. Even if you would make more without header bidding, you might not want to use solutions like Google ads since that means supporting someone who is competing with you. I personally think header bidding is the next good evolution of the ad markets (and the ad market seems to agree), but there is a cost to it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dls2016 5y ago

A reminder that this isn’t the first time Google has been caught colluding with competitors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

zelphirkalt 5y ago

Wouldn't surpise me at all, if true. Both are running on ad money (and selling personal data) and have much to lose and much to win. Ad business being typically a dubious business of questionable real worth with huge smoke screens all over the place and a lot of make believe, it might make for a more opportunity, if secretly the market is strictly divided and stepping on eachother's toes is avoided.

yodsanklai 5y ago
These companies don't sell personal data. They use personal data to target ads.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  Does that distinction matter? The thing their customers would do with that personal information is target you with ads. So they were subcontracted the task as opposed to selling them the information to do it themselves.

candiddevmike 5y ago

When I bring the anti trust case against Google up with others (which this allegation stems from), no one seems to care about the actual content of the case. Their opinion is entirely dependent on their political "team": if you're a democrat, this is a republican witch hunt, if you're a republican, these companies are limiting free speech. They just repeat what their bubble tells them to. There's a lot of pieces involved here, and I wish the political divisions in this country didn't stop people from actually researching the case and forming their own opinion. The outcome of this case will have massive effects and could bring about a lot of changes (both good and bad).

smt88 5y ago
I don't know where you got the idea that Democrats think this is a witch hunt. Are you talking to Democrats who work in tech and/or the companies being hunted? House Democrats were unable to find Republicans to support a recent antitrust investigation's recommendations[1]. Prominent Democrats have been pushing reinvigorating antitrust legislation for years[2], in fact. The only partisan issue is whether the govt can or should compel social media platforms to carry speech that they don't want to carry, which is a violation of the First Amendment[3] and something Republicans support. 1. https://www.protocol.com/critics-say-what-house-democrats-got-wrong-big-tech https://www.protocol.com/critics-say-what-house-democrats-go... 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/breaking-from-tech-giants-democrats-consider-becoming-an-antimonopoly-party/2017/09/04/3edc7e92-8f56-11e7-84c0-02cc069f2c37_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/breaking-from-tech-... 3. https://www.lawfareblog.com/no-florida-cant-regulate-online-speech https://www.lawfareblog.com/no-florida-cant-regulate-online-...

barneygale 5y ago

Google/Facebook employees: do something good for civilisation and quit your jobs. There are plenty of employers out there where you can create something real and positive.

hazelnut 5y ago
Google/FB strategy to keep their employees quite is to throw money at them. It works for the majority.
hirako2000 5y ago
I think many of the top employees already are. they have no worries finding alternative employers. it would be even better if it turns out that average to mediocre is all there is left.
sebow 5y ago
This is a solution but not really a long-term one.Google/FB/Apple can already de facto buy less principled people or foreigners and also buy them citizenships to work for them.90%+ of the time such individuals who take these deals won't give a shit about principles[There are cases when they do, and often these outliers become leakers when booted out,but for the vast majority of cases this does not happen], given that it's obvious the motive(money) for such a move. This is not an argument or a talking point against immigration, or importing workforce, what I'm saying is that by doing this and (at least) not reforming companies(or better: shut them down), you effectively empower these corporations to be even less-principled and the pressure from employers becomes smaller.Now theoretically this can be curbed by the government, but there are a few problems here: you cannot do this and think you can remain competitive as a global power;such policies are very unpopular in US;FAANG companies can easily lobby and overthrown this(they already probably did and do this) policy; So the solution imo has to be a bottom->up one: pressuring the company internally, though this rarely works in practice.Google has become more transparent (even if a facade) in the latest years towards the average user.But at the same time it has engaged in shady projects for the military that are very concerning,so who knows what's going on.

sebow 5y ago

I would be surprised if this was not the case for the last 10+ years.Every new player gets to a point where if they're relevant they will be offered a paycheck.Refusal of that paycheck means war, and usually the older and bigger player wins, sooner or later.The reasons being simple: a new player often provides new interesting features, but scales very hard due to lack of resources.The old player just has to effectively copy these new features into it's existing product(which takes less time than scaling infrastructure). Again, this is not news.Besides actual leaks we've had tv shows/movies depicting this phenomenon for at least a decade, and usually mainstream pictures hit the screen when it's already obvious that something was partially true.

jvsg_ 5y ago
this was demonstrated in the case of tiktok. Essentially, every other player tried to emulate them, and then facebook lobbied USA and it's minions (like india) to mount pressure on tiktok for being "chinese spy app".

andrepd 5y ago

The advertising equivalent of Sykes-Picot, or the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact x)

sul_tasto 5y ago

feels like my privacy is on the auction block

guerrilla 5y ago

I don't care about the specifics here, but can someone school me: What possible mechanisms are there to prevent cartels? I hear a lot about how to deal with monopolies (which are trivial to identify) but very little about colluding oligopolies.

beberlei 5y ago
The strategy the European Union is going is to guarantee the first party that sings about a cartel immunity/impunity and all others can be fined up to 10% of global turnover.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  Okay, that makes sense. Hopefully we have whistleblower protections and reward for individuals too, like a bug bounty program for the economy :)
gen220 5y ago
The first sentence of the Sherman Antitrust act (same one that grants the DoJ authority to break up monopolies) declares "every contract... or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce" illegal, which would generally include cartels. 12 years ago [1] this law was invoked against big tech companies, who entered no-poach agreements to reduce inter-big-tech-co hiring competition, with the side effect of wage suppression. Anti-competitive collusion is illegal, full-stop. Proving anti-competitive conspiracy without an explicit paper trail is hard. The emails in the article are pretty explicit. Should be interesting! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation#Department_of_Justice_antitrust_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dang 5y ago

There have already been large threads about this (I mean the latest revelation, not the earlier ones) but I don't have time to find them just now. Anyone?