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Yeah so the government has implemented payola schemes to subvert those items. Again, I'm glad that this isn't quite so mysterious and difficult to comprehend fo

Yeah so the government has implemented payola schemes to subvert those items. Again, I'm glad that this isn't quite so mysterious and difficult to comprehend for policymakers in the EU.

dghlsakjg 3y ago
I’m not sure what you’re talking about with payola schemes. This is a comment on an article about how an international company violated EU law. The US government (the only organization bound by constitutional law) was never involved in any way.
- hnfong 3y ago
  The idea that only the government has the power to abuse political power and ruin your life is quite out dated. These days large, monopolistic corporations have similar powers, and you don't get any recourse. Imagine getting banned from Google and Facebook/Meta services because they used some some wacky reputation scoring -- you could still live a normal life of a 1780s homesteader, but you're probably not going to live a functioning modern life. It's a bit disingenuous to argue that the constitution only limits government powers -- which might be true, but that's exactly the problem: the US government has been allowing private companies to become so powerful and ubiquitous that they are exerting undue influence on people's lives even more-so than proper government institutions. The only thing that apparently seems to prevent this from devolving into a dystopian scenario is personal moral backbone of some founders of these tech companies. It's not hard for me to imagine a much more corrupt world where politicians in Washington routinely emails CEOs of $BigTech and make some backroom deals that only benefits the parties involved. (pretty sure it happens, but it could happen much more often) Given how cozy CEOs of "private companies" and politicians are together, it's really disingenuous to claim that we shouldn't be alarmed when unregulated monopolistic companies are free to do whatever they want because "they aren't the government". I was going to say that people in 1700s didn't envision "private" companies from being as powerful as governments, but then I remembered the East India Companies of the era. What's the difference of "companies" and "governments" when the functions they perform become indistinguishable?

Yeah so the government has implemented payola schemes to subvert those items. Again, I'm glad that this isn't quite so mysterious and difficult to comprehend for policymakers in the EU.

dghlsakjg 3y ago

I’m not sure what you’re talking about with payola schemes. This is a comment on an article about how an international company violated EU law. The US government (the only organization bound by constitutional law) was never involved in any way.

hnfong 3y ago
The idea that only the government has the power to abuse political power and ruin your life is quite out dated. These days large, monopolistic corporations have similar powers, and you don't get any recourse. Imagine getting banned from Google and Facebook/Meta services because they used some some wacky reputation scoring -- you could still live a normal life of a 1780s homesteader, but you're probably not going to live a functioning modern life. It's a bit disingenuous to argue that the constitution only limits government powers -- which might be true, but that's exactly the problem: the US government has been allowing private companies to become so powerful and ubiquitous that they are exerting undue influence on people's lives even more-so than proper government institutions. The only thing that apparently seems to prevent this from devolving into a dystopian scenario is personal moral backbone of some founders of these tech companies. It's not hard for me to imagine a much more corrupt world where politicians in Washington routinely emails CEOs of $BigTech and make some backroom deals that only benefits the parties involved. (pretty sure it happens, but it could happen much more often) Given how cozy CEOs of "private companies" and politicians are together, it's really disingenuous to claim that we shouldn't be alarmed when unregulated monopolistic companies are free to do whatever they want because "they aren't the government". I was going to say that people in 1700s didn't envision "private" companies from being as powerful as governments, but then I remembered the East India Companies of the era. What's the difference of "companies" and "governments" when the functions they perform become indistinguishable?