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This article was enlightening in summarizing all the Antitrust activity recently. What I was looking for, but didn't find in the article, is why the FTC has wok

This article was enlightening in summarizing all the Antitrust activity recently. What I was looking for, but didn't find in the article, is why the FTC has woken up against Big Tech, after 25 years of silence following the Microsoft case.

Nevermark 3y ago
Whether its friends, family, or every online community I experience, there seems to be a politically impactful grassroots flip in favor of anti-big tech action for many reasons: 1. Normal daily life increasingly happens through gates controlled by a handful of firms. 2. We all noticed when several of these firms crossed from "free" and "wonderful" to enshitiffied services. E.g. Google, Amazon, etc. 3. A general disgust with big tech's handling of social media in terms of user manipulation, and privacy abuses. And disgust with a perception of unhelpful behavior and lack of transparency or responsibility by social media's famous leaders. 4. General feeling that big tech is shafting little people, whether it's social media, physical world gig work, heavily taxing or not paying creators on their sites or in apps, etc. 5. People dealing with big tech mismanagement of their accounts, with great frustration and even fear. (I almost lost my home when more than one financial firm suddenly decided that having a non-driver's ID after a move somehow made me more risky? Or a good target to demonstrate they are weeding out risky people?I will never know the reasons, and their unexplained decisions are unappealable. A month of hell. Banned for life, without recourse, apparently.) 6. The amount of frivolous and disturbing news that is generated by the tech billionaire class, emphasizing vast inequalities in resources and quality of public behavior between regular people and the super rich. I don't imagine its just me that has experienced a surge of complaints like these in their techie and non-techie circles. I think the relative unity behind these negative perspectives comes from them being based in everyone's practical lives, as apposed to having indirect, abstract, tribal or ideological bases.
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  I'll add another thing someone pointed out. The difference between General Motors circa 1955 and Google circa 2020. General Motors indirect economic effects were huge and larger than the company itself. Lots and lots of businesses and people were employed indirectly. Google, nothing, bupkis, they're totally extractive on the rest of the economy. Most of the towns and cities in the US google doesn't employ anyone directly or indirectly. And the places they do they distort the economy in bad ways.
  - Nevermark 3y ago
    Very good point! Along those lines, it is interesting that as much as “evil” Microsoft dominated computing and leveraged their power in the 90’s, they still provided a very open (in terms of building on) platform for an enormous number of third parties. Now Apple manages an enormous platform re iOS apps, but it is not open technologically or economically.
    - almatabata 3y ago
      Apple and Microsoft have a very different market share. Windows has something around 85-90% desktop/laptop market share. So you can make a very good argument that they have a functional monopoly over the desktop OS market. Contrast this with Apple, they have around 10% desktop/laptop market share and around 50% of the smartphone market share. Here you could only argue that they have a duopoly with google on the smartphone OS market. Microsoft had to open up the platform or they would have gotten destroyed by antitrust laws there and then. They had to let other developers deploy on their OS and support them because if they failed the government would have gotten involved and forced them. So smartly they decided let us no destroy the nice thing we have and play as nice as we have to to keep our profits and our market share. And they mostly succeeded in that regard.
      - Nevermark 3y ago
        The duopoly difference is real. But either side of a duopoly in a critical global market has tremendous power. Very hard, often impossible, to be competitive in mobile software if you don’t support iOS. Microsoft didn’t optimize Windows for third party developers because of legal action. Supporting third party developer innovation was the foundational Microsoft strategy, long before and after they got into operating systems. The legal issue was using their platform’s defaults and product bundling to kill the opportunities and economics for potentially competitive platforms (Netscape, the web as an OS platform replacement).
  - spiderfarmer 3y ago
    I disagree. Google offers a cheap and effective way of advertising, making it possible for smb’s in rural areas to have a global reach. That’s not nothing.
icegreentea2 3y ago
Biden chose Khan to lead the FTC (signalling an anti-trust stance from the administration) in 2021. This was as the inflation surge started to form. While we can grant the administration some degree of foresight, I don't think it's reasonable to say at the anti-trust activity originated from the current (post 2021/2022) big tech backlash. Although certainly the backlash if helpful to their current efforts. My hunch is that it's a realization that the degree of concentration of power and money is really is destabilizing. For the democrats, doubly so, since it's been plain to see since 2016 just how much polarization and anger is fueling Republican strategy and success.
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
Rather than ask why it woke up, I prefer evaluating why after years of having real anti-trust teeth, it fell asleep & became so inactive. And for that, the answer is Borkism, which was Reagan's solicitor general rewriting the rules to only measure & go after very narrow anti-trust situations, where only certain types of consumer harm were worthy of note. As usual, Cory Doctorow has a decent introductory article to this. He's been blogging about these kinds of matters for ages & has covered Khan a number of times. https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/09/rest-in-piss-robert-bork/#harmful-dominance https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/09/rest-in-piss-robert-bork/...
personomas 3y ago
Because suing your own good companies (like Google and Amazon) is unbelievably expensive for tax-payers and anyways counter-productive. That's why.
- redserk 3y ago
  Well, monopolistic control is also counter-productive for an economy.
  - personomas 3y ago
    That's not a serious problem nowadays. Problems of monopolistic control is like a drop in a lake of water compared to the problems that our lawmakers cause by ridiculously high taxes and bureaucracy. If we're trying to fight monopolies today, we're fighting completely the wrong problems. Competition doesn't succeed because of taxes. Tearing down Amazon or Google due to reasons of monopoly (and therefore little competition) is like tearing down a newly built building because there was a bad paint job on one of the walls! It doesn't make sense. If there are no other buildings standing, it's because lawmakers don't create an environment where others can succeed (because of taxes and bureaucracy). We look at Amazon (for example), and say hey, they're really successful, and they're sort of alone, they must have cheated by using monopolistic control measurements, and then we search to find out how. But all alone we miss the real problems: it's the taxes and bureaucracy that don't let others succeed.
    - thewix 3y ago
      Got anything to back that up? Businesses managed to thrive before when taxes were considerably higher. How do you account for the Gilded Age? How were those monopolies different than today and how did taxes and bureaucracy exacerbate issues then? Because there are many parallels between them and now.
      - personomas 3y ago
        See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37725434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37725434 You have a complete misunderstanding of "thriving". Thriving is Google/Amazon in the past 20 years. IDK what thriving businesses you're talking about. You can't go back to the Gilded Age, dude, that's crazy. We have to keep things relevant.
almatabata 3y ago
I do not get it either honestly. All the acquisitions in the past i simply for the life of me do not understand why they ever allowed such a level of consolidation in big tech. Why did they allow google to acquire waze for example. Google has not shut them down but technically if they start competing with gmaps google do that at any moment. Why did they allow facebook to acquire instagram and whatsapp? How can smaller companies compete against these behemoths if you just allow them to buy up all the competitors or potential competitors? Either they have a very good lobbying team (probably do) or the administration wants this concentration of power somehow. Geopolitically it could help you keep the technological supremacy the US has enjoyed until now. You allow your companies to grow to giant mega corporations. And every time a startup becomes successful internationally you buy it, take the best pieces and manage it into a small steady decline.

Nevermark 3y ago

Whether its friends, family, or every online community I experience, there seems to be a politically impactful grassroots flip in favor of anti-big tech action for many reasons: 1. Normal daily life increasingly happens through gates controlled by a handful of firms. 2. We all noticed when several of these firms crossed from "free" and "wonderful" to enshitiffied services. E.g. Google, Amazon, etc. 3. A general disgust with big tech's handling of social media in terms of user manipulation, and privacy abuses. And disgust with a perception of unhelpful behavior and lack of transparency or responsibility by social media's famous leaders. 4. General feeling that big tech is shafting little people, whether it's social media, physical world gig work, heavily taxing or not paying creators on their sites or in apps, etc. 5. People dealing with big tech mismanagement of their accounts, with great frustration and even fear. (I almost lost my home when more than one financial firm suddenly decided that having a non-driver's ID after a move somehow made me more risky? Or a good target to demonstrate they are weeding out risky people?I will never know the reasons, and their unexplained decisions are unappealable. A month of hell. Banned for life, without recourse, apparently.) 6. The amount of frivolous and disturbing news that is generated by the tech billionaire class, emphasizing vast inequalities in resources and quality of public behavior between regular people and the super rich. I don't imagine its just me that has experienced a surge of complaints like these in their techie and non-techie circles. I think the relative unity behind these negative perspectives comes from them being based in everyone's practical lives, as apposed to having indirect, abstract, tribal or ideological bases.

Gibbon1 3y ago
I'll add another thing someone pointed out. The difference between General Motors circa 1955 and Google circa 2020. General Motors indirect economic effects were huge and larger than the company itself. Lots and lots of businesses and people were employed indirectly. Google, nothing, bupkis, they're totally extractive on the rest of the economy. Most of the towns and cities in the US google doesn't employ anyone directly or indirectly. And the places they do they distort the economy in bad ways.
- Nevermark 3y ago
  Very good point! Along those lines, it is interesting that as much as “evil” Microsoft dominated computing and leveraged their power in the 90’s, they still provided a very open (in terms of building on) platform for an enormous number of third parties. Now Apple manages an enormous platform re iOS apps, but it is not open technologically or economically.
  - almatabata 3y ago
    Apple and Microsoft have a very different market share. Windows has something around 85-90% desktop/laptop market share. So you can make a very good argument that they have a functional monopoly over the desktop OS market. Contrast this with Apple, they have around 10% desktop/laptop market share and around 50% of the smartphone market share. Here you could only argue that they have a duopoly with google on the smartphone OS market. Microsoft had to open up the platform or they would have gotten destroyed by antitrust laws there and then. They had to let other developers deploy on their OS and support them because if they failed the government would have gotten involved and forced them. So smartly they decided let us no destroy the nice thing we have and play as nice as we have to to keep our profits and our market share. And they mostly succeeded in that regard.
    - Nevermark 3y ago
      The duopoly difference is real. But either side of a duopoly in a critical global market has tremendous power. Very hard, often impossible, to be competitive in mobile software if you don’t support iOS. Microsoft didn’t optimize Windows for third party developers because of legal action. Supporting third party developer innovation was the foundational Microsoft strategy, long before and after they got into operating systems. The legal issue was using their platform’s defaults and product bundling to kill the opportunities and economics for potentially competitive platforms (Netscape, the web as an OS platform replacement).
- spiderfarmer 3y ago
  I disagree. Google offers a cheap and effective way of advertising, making it possible for smb’s in rural areas to have a global reach. That’s not nothing.

icegreentea2 3y ago

Biden chose Khan to lead the FTC (signalling an anti-trust stance from the administration) in 2021. This was as the inflation surge started to form. While we can grant the administration some degree of foresight, I don't think it's reasonable to say at the anti-trust activity originated from the current (post 2021/2022) big tech backlash. Although certainly the backlash if helpful to their current efforts. My hunch is that it's a realization that the degree of concentration of power and money is really is destabilizing. For the democrats, doubly so, since it's been plain to see since 2016 just how much polarization and anger is fueling Republican strategy and success.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

Rather than ask why it woke up, I prefer evaluating why after years of having real anti-trust teeth, it fell asleep & became so inactive. And for that, the answer is Borkism, which was Reagan's solicitor general rewriting the rules to only measure & go after very narrow anti-trust situations, where only certain types of consumer harm were worthy of note. As usual, Cory Doctorow has a decent introductory article to this. He's been blogging about these kinds of matters for ages & has covered Khan a number of times. https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/09/rest-in-piss-robert-bork/#harmful-dominance https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/09/rest-in-piss-robert-bork/...

personomas 3y ago

Because suing your own good companies (like Google and Amazon) is unbelievably expensive for tax-payers and anyways counter-productive. That's why.

redserk 3y ago
Well, monopolistic control is also counter-productive for an economy.
- personomas 3y ago
  That's not a serious problem nowadays. Problems of monopolistic control is like a drop in a lake of water compared to the problems that our lawmakers cause by ridiculously high taxes and bureaucracy. If we're trying to fight monopolies today, we're fighting completely the wrong problems. Competition doesn't succeed because of taxes. Tearing down Amazon or Google due to reasons of monopoly (and therefore little competition) is like tearing down a newly built building because there was a bad paint job on one of the walls! It doesn't make sense. If there are no other buildings standing, it's because lawmakers don't create an environment where others can succeed (because of taxes and bureaucracy). We look at Amazon (for example), and say hey, they're really successful, and they're sort of alone, they must have cheated by using monopolistic control measurements, and then we search to find out how. But all alone we miss the real problems: it's the taxes and bureaucracy that don't let others succeed.
  - thewix 3y ago
    Got anything to back that up? Businesses managed to thrive before when taxes were considerably higher. How do you account for the Gilded Age? How were those monopolies different than today and how did taxes and bureaucracy exacerbate issues then? Because there are many parallels between them and now.
    - personomas 3y ago
      See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37725434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37725434 You have a complete misunderstanding of "thriving". Thriving is Google/Amazon in the past 20 years. IDK what thriving businesses you're talking about. You can't go back to the Gilded Age, dude, that's crazy. We have to keep things relevant.

almatabata 3y ago

I do not get it either honestly. All the acquisitions in the past i simply for the life of me do not understand why they ever allowed such a level of consolidation in big tech. Why did they allow google to acquire waze for example. Google has not shut them down but technically if they start competing with gmaps google do that at any moment. Why did they allow facebook to acquire instagram and whatsapp? How can smaller companies compete against these behemoths if you just allow them to buy up all the competitors or potential competitors? Either they have a very good lobbying team (probably do) or the administration wants this concentration of power somehow. Geopolitically it could help you keep the technological supremacy the US has enjoyed until now. You allow your companies to grow to giant mega corporations. And every time a startup becomes successful internationally you buy it, take the best pieces and manage it into a small steady decline.