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The regulatory architecture of "big tech" is an unmitigated disaster. You can't have two entities effectively control every touching point with the digital dom

The regulatory architecture of "big tech" is an unmitigated disaster. You can't have two entities effectively control every touching point with the digital domain for a major fraction of the planet. There is absolutely no reason to trust that they will not abuse this position in opaque and impossible to trace ways. These are trillion-dollar powered for-profit entities, with armies of lawyers and lobbyists that can intimidate medium sized countries. They will exploit every weakness of incompetent, confused and captured regulatory/political systems. Because that's what they are legally obliged to do for their shareholders. And these shareholders care zilch if this duopolistic - fingers in all honeypots - design undermines our entire digital future. They just want some tech "winners" in their portfolios. The longer nothing serious is done the harder it becomes to do anything.

justinclift 3y ago
> they are legally obliged to do for their shareholders Isn't that an "old wives tale" that doesn't have any basis in reality?
- nologic01 3y ago
  Alas it does. Think, e.g. about the backlash against asset managers for pursuing sustainability agendas. Closer to the topic, think also about the "furore" and supposed panic at Google that they are not capitalizing (literally) on their AI leadership.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    > pursuing sustainability agendas My impression is that the "sustainability agendas" these asset managers were pursuing turned out to be er... mostly bullshit. Along the lines of companies "green washing" stuff that was not in fact green. Also stuff marketed as "socially progressive" as a sales tactic.
    - nologic01 3y ago
      It just goes to show that if you want real change you need to get really serious about it. As in: change the regulatory and legal framework. Self-regulation doesn't work. You just get an army of consultants, rating agencies and other intermediaries providing "assurance" for-profit, never biting the hand that feeds them. PS. For the record and while tangential to the digital monopoly discussion, it is still a good thing that we got the ESG and greenwashing debacle. Just a few years ago nobody but the perennial "tree huggers" was even talking about sustainability. Now it is a much more broad based discussion although obviously it has not landed anywhere yet. I wish people would also take regulation of the digital sphere more seriously as it is the backbone on which we will solve all these other problems.
- reaperducer 3y ago
  Isn't that an "old wives tale" that doesn't have any basis in reality? You are correct. Nobody has ever been able to point to a law requiring companies to maximize profits for shareholders at all costs. In fact, there are thousands and thousands of companies that exist with a primary purpose of doing things other than making money for their shareholders. Any "legal" obligation to "maximize shareholder value" started out as a way to excuse the greed of other people, but falls flat upon even cursory examination.
  - itsoktocry 3y ago
    Exactly. Having a fiduciary duty to act in shareholder's interests (a very common sense rule) is a long way from "maximizing shareholder profits at all costs", even if those sometimes align.
  - nologic01 3y ago
    "An activist shareholder is a shareholder who uses an equity stake in a corporation to put pressure on its management" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activist_shareholder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activist_shareholder I am not excusing greed. I am just saying that if shareholders are focused on financial gain the corporate management is obliged to deliver. Not all shareholders are greedy. But overwhelmingly they are.
    - itsoktocry 3y ago
      >An activist shareholder is a shareholder who uses an equity stake in a corporation to put pressure on its management Would you be surprised to learn that there are shareholder groups that use their equity claims to pursue environmental, DEI or other goals that benefit society? >Not all shareholders are greedy. But overwhelmingly they are. Not even close. The vast majority of shareholders own stock through ETFs and pay no attention to the finances (or politics) of the companies they own. The fiduciary rule is to prevent executives from running the company in their interest, as opposed to the interests of the silent shareholders who actually own the company.
      - 3y ago
- terminous 3y ago
  For US companies registered in Delaware (which is most of them), the doctrine of shareholders primacy holds. Shareholders can and have sued corporate boards/execs for not acting in their best interest. It goes back to the 1910s when Henry Ford very loudly and explicitly announced he was cutting shareholder dividends to pay workers the famous $5/day wage (double what any other factory workers were paid), and minority shareholders sued and won. Of course it is debated and different in different jurisdictions, as it is common law and not a specific statute. But ambiguity in law means execs lean towards the safe decision. Shareholders can go a long way with a legal threat that never sees trial. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
  - itsoktocry 3y ago
    >Shareholders can and have sued corporate boards/execs for not acting in their best interest. Translating "best interest" to "maximize profits" is the stretch though. The shareholders define what is their best interest. Shareholders aren't faceless demons. They are you and me.
    - starbugs 3y ago
      Come on. You know who the "shareholders" are that the parent commenter talks about. They are board members and people with a huge amount of shares, not "normal" people who hold 5 shares in their retirement portfolio. The main interest of a shareholder is return on investment. And that's fine. The problem is that if you don't have enough competing entities in a market, these shareholders of the few companies that still exist hold disproportionate power that can and will be misused to make any attempt at new, reasonable competition infeasible. It's really not that hard to understand.
      - mistrial9 3y ago
        no this is insufficiently informed.. company bylaws can vary quite a lot about voting rights. Your typical SiliValley cut-n-paste corp less so..
      - 3y ago
rewmie 3y ago
> These are trillion-dollar powered for-profit entities, with armies of lawyers and lobbyists that can intimidate medium sized countries. They will exploit every weakness of incompetent, confused and captured regulatory/political systems. I don't think the need to exploit opportunities is exclusive to major corporations. We see this behavior and power grabs even in petty quarrels in small amateur organizations such as small businesses and homeowner associations. The tools change but the human traits that drive this behavior is always there. There is no toggle that turns on this behavior when assets surpass a certain level. > Because that's what they are legally obliged to do for their shareholders. I don't think they are "legally obliged" to anyone, or even "obliged" at all. Their leadership is driven to exploit the tools at their reach to meet their goals, and that's precisely what they do.
- nologic01 3y ago
  > I don't think the need to exploit opportunities is exclusive to major corporations we are not talking about small, medium or large corporations. we are talking about two entities that effectively control the entire fabric of digital society and the economy. and from which there is increasingly no opt-out. there was never so much concentration. never. > Their leadership is driven to exploit the tools at their reach to meet their goals Corporate management gets approved their remuneration from shareholders. If they don't deliver they get the boot.
  - rewmie 3y ago
    > we are not talking about small, medium or large corporations. Doesn't matter. The point is that there is no threshold in a company's revenue where they start to exploit all tools and opportunities at their reach. Large corporations aren't any more inherently evil than your local gas pump or convenience store. > Corporate management gets approved their remuneration from shareholders. If they don't deliver they get the boot. That's not what happens in real life. There is far more to the CEO-Board-shareholders relationship than simplistic "they can give him the boot" take.
vouaobrasil 3y ago
I blame the tech companies but I also blame the people who created all this stuff -- programmers, tech startups, and computer science. Those people created a system that is too easy to use as an ultra-efficient wealth concentrator, and now tech companies are the result.
- nologic01 3y ago
  we are all cogs in the machine. maybe decades ago the stance of individuals could have made a difference but nowadays its clear that it no longer does. there is a collectively created monster that can only be tamed by something of equivalent and greater collective power: radical government regulation. The EU is doing its part. The US isnt. imho nothing was learned from the previous Microsoft monopoly era. Information technology is not just any business sector. It is the canvas on which everything else plays out. It needs to be regulated in a way that people can go with online life, politics, business etc. without this Damocles sword permanently hanging above us.
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    I think personal action can still make a difference. What if we were to develop a coalition of people that believed in that, sort of like a union for a healthy society? The coalition would have a common set of standards and ethics, which would include the development of more community-based standards for technology. With such a coalition, we could create our own technology not in the hands of technology companies, and we could be more responsible in the development and use of technology. Then the entire coalition could stop using Google for example...and crush the life out of them. If such a coalition had ten million people in it, it might work if many of them are technologically capable. Ten million seems like a lot but it's only 1 person getting 2 new people to join, who in turn each get 2 new people to join, etc... 24 times.
    - nologic01 3y ago
      I would definitely not be against such a coalition :-). I think we already effectively have (more loosely defined than your idea) a global community that is based on various open source efforts. Open source is vitally important (and not much appreciated in the usual ossified power centers) phenomenon as it proves that in many critical nodes of information technology: desktop and mobile OS, desktop apps, browsers, social media, and all sorts of libraries etc you can perfectly well have alternatives that are more in line with societal objectives. But we have now enough of a track record to know the open source mode cannot scale to provide the backbone that everyone deserves. What is missing is the regulatory framework that will induce (and if needed, force) commercial initiatives to be interoperable, ring fenced, small enough to fear and respect clients and users, the opposite of the too-big-to-fail conglomerates, in short: we need companies that are good digital citizens.

justinclift 3y ago

> they are legally obliged to do for their shareholders Isn't that an "old wives tale" that doesn't have any basis in reality?

nologic01 3y ago
Alas it does. Think, e.g. about the backlash against asset managers for pursuing sustainability agendas. Closer to the topic, think also about the "furore" and supposed panic at Google that they are not capitalizing (literally) on their AI leadership.
- justinclift 3y ago
  > pursuing sustainability agendas My impression is that the "sustainability agendas" these asset managers were pursuing turned out to be er... mostly bullshit. Along the lines of companies "green washing" stuff that was not in fact green. Also stuff marketed as "socially progressive" as a sales tactic.
  - nologic01 3y ago
    It just goes to show that if you want real change you need to get really serious about it. As in: change the regulatory and legal framework. Self-regulation doesn't work. You just get an army of consultants, rating agencies and other intermediaries providing "assurance" for-profit, never biting the hand that feeds them. PS. For the record and while tangential to the digital monopoly discussion, it is still a good thing that we got the ESG and greenwashing debacle. Just a few years ago nobody but the perennial "tree huggers" was even talking about sustainability. Now it is a much more broad based discussion although obviously it has not landed anywhere yet. I wish people would also take regulation of the digital sphere more seriously as it is the backbone on which we will solve all these other problems.
reaperducer 3y ago
Isn't that an "old wives tale" that doesn't have any basis in reality? You are correct. Nobody has ever been able to point to a law requiring companies to maximize profits for shareholders at all costs. In fact, there are thousands and thousands of companies that exist with a primary purpose of doing things other than making money for their shareholders. Any "legal" obligation to "maximize shareholder value" started out as a way to excuse the greed of other people, but falls flat upon even cursory examination.
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  Exactly. Having a fiduciary duty to act in shareholder's interests (a very common sense rule) is a long way from "maximizing shareholder profits at all costs", even if those sometimes align.
- nologic01 3y ago
  "An activist shareholder is a shareholder who uses an equity stake in a corporation to put pressure on its management" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activist_shareholder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activist_shareholder I am not excusing greed. I am just saying that if shareholders are focused on financial gain the corporate management is obliged to deliver. Not all shareholders are greedy. But overwhelmingly they are.
  - itsoktocry 3y ago
    >An activist shareholder is a shareholder who uses an equity stake in a corporation to put pressure on its management Would you be surprised to learn that there are shareholder groups that use their equity claims to pursue environmental, DEI or other goals that benefit society? >Not all shareholders are greedy. But overwhelmingly they are. Not even close. The vast majority of shareholders own stock through ETFs and pay no attention to the finances (or politics) of the companies they own. The fiduciary rule is to prevent executives from running the company in their interest, as opposed to the interests of the silent shareholders who actually own the company.
    - 3y ago
terminous 3y ago
For US companies registered in Delaware (which is most of them), the doctrine of shareholders primacy holds. Shareholders can and have sued corporate boards/execs for not acting in their best interest. It goes back to the 1910s when Henry Ford very loudly and explicitly announced he was cutting shareholder dividends to pay workers the famous $5/day wage (double what any other factory workers were paid), and minority shareholders sued and won. Of course it is debated and different in different jurisdictions, as it is common law and not a specific statute. But ambiguity in law means execs lean towards the safe decision. Shareholders can go a long way with a legal threat that never sees trial. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  >Shareholders can and have sued corporate boards/execs for not acting in their best interest. Translating "best interest" to "maximize profits" is the stretch though. The shareholders define what is their best interest. Shareholders aren't faceless demons. They are you and me.
  - starbugs 3y ago
    Come on. You know who the "shareholders" are that the parent commenter talks about. They are board members and people with a huge amount of shares, not "normal" people who hold 5 shares in their retirement portfolio. The main interest of a shareholder is return on investment. And that's fine. The problem is that if you don't have enough competing entities in a market, these shareholders of the few companies that still exist hold disproportionate power that can and will be misused to make any attempt at new, reasonable competition infeasible. It's really not that hard to understand.
    - mistrial9 3y ago
      no this is insufficiently informed.. company bylaws can vary quite a lot about voting rights. Your typical SiliValley cut-n-paste corp less so..
    - 3y ago

rewmie 3y ago

> These are trillion-dollar powered for-profit entities, with armies of lawyers and lobbyists that can intimidate medium sized countries. They will exploit every weakness of incompetent, confused and captured regulatory/political systems. I don't think the need to exploit opportunities is exclusive to major corporations. We see this behavior and power grabs even in petty quarrels in small amateur organizations such as small businesses and homeowner associations. The tools change but the human traits that drive this behavior is always there. There is no toggle that turns on this behavior when assets surpass a certain level. > Because that's what they are legally obliged to do for their shareholders. I don't think they are "legally obliged" to anyone, or even "obliged" at all. Their leadership is driven to exploit the tools at their reach to meet their goals, and that's precisely what they do.

nologic01 3y ago
> I don't think the need to exploit opportunities is exclusive to major corporations we are not talking about small, medium or large corporations. we are talking about two entities that effectively control the entire fabric of digital society and the economy. and from which there is increasingly no opt-out. there was never so much concentration. never. > Their leadership is driven to exploit the tools at their reach to meet their goals Corporate management gets approved their remuneration from shareholders. If they don't deliver they get the boot.
- rewmie 3y ago
  > we are not talking about small, medium or large corporations. Doesn't matter. The point is that there is no threshold in a company's revenue where they start to exploit all tools and opportunities at their reach. Large corporations aren't any more inherently evil than your local gas pump or convenience store. > Corporate management gets approved their remuneration from shareholders. If they don't deliver they get the boot. That's not what happens in real life. There is far more to the CEO-Board-shareholders relationship than simplistic "they can give him the boot" take.

vouaobrasil 3y ago

I blame the tech companies but I also blame the people who created all this stuff -- programmers, tech startups, and computer science. Those people created a system that is too easy to use as an ultra-efficient wealth concentrator, and now tech companies are the result.

nologic01 3y ago
we are all cogs in the machine. maybe decades ago the stance of individuals could have made a difference but nowadays its clear that it no longer does. there is a collectively created monster that can only be tamed by something of equivalent and greater collective power: radical government regulation. The EU is doing its part. The US isnt. imho nothing was learned from the previous Microsoft monopoly era. Information technology is not just any business sector. It is the canvas on which everything else plays out. It needs to be regulated in a way that people can go with online life, politics, business etc. without this Damocles sword permanently hanging above us.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  I think personal action can still make a difference. What if we were to develop a coalition of people that believed in that, sort of like a union for a healthy society? The coalition would have a common set of standards and ethics, which would include the development of more community-based standards for technology. With such a coalition, we could create our own technology not in the hands of technology companies, and we could be more responsible in the development and use of technology. Then the entire coalition could stop using Google for example...and crush the life out of them. If such a coalition had ten million people in it, it might work if many of them are technologically capable. Ten million seems like a lot but it's only 1 person getting 2 new people to join, who in turn each get 2 new people to join, etc... 24 times.
  - nologic01 3y ago
    I would definitely not be against such a coalition :-). I think we already effectively have (more loosely defined than your idea) a global community that is based on various open source efforts. Open source is vitally important (and not much appreciated in the usual ossified power centers) phenomenon as it proves that in many critical nodes of information technology: desktop and mobile OS, desktop apps, browsers, social media, and all sorts of libraries etc you can perfectly well have alternatives that are more in line with societal objectives. But we have now enough of a track record to know the open source mode cannot scale to provide the backbone that everyone deserves. What is missing is the regulatory framework that will induce (and if needed, force) commercial initiatives to be interoperable, ring fenced, small enough to fear and respect clients and users, the opposite of the too-big-to-fail conglomerates, in short: we need companies that are good digital citizens.