3 ms·

We must break tech monopolies before they break us

63 points by unripe_syntax 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ricardo81 2y ago
Agree on the sentiment, though there's quite a lot of hostnames being called on that page, including Google Tag Manager, etc etc. Giving these large tech companies all the data they could ever need is part of the problem for sure. There are plenty alternatives that can be used which at least is a meaningful course of action to promote diversity away from big tech.
cm277 2y ago
The cry to "break up the monopolies" bugs me. Maybe because I am old enough to remember the failed Microsoft case or to have lived the re-unification of AT&T into, well, AT&T. If you really do believe that the tech giants need to be reigned in, breaking them up is NOT the way to do it. It's a red herring, a quixotical quest that will eat up time, money and opportunity costs for newer, better companies. Break-ups will be litigated endlessly, we'll end up talking about who benefits from what and at the end either nothing will happen or some business unit(s) will be spun out as sacrificial lambs so that the main behemoths can keep printing cash. The correct answer IMHO is "tax and regulate". Recognize that big tech are now infrastructure companies, massive railways on which international commerce happens and that they need to be taxed as such and regulated. As in regulated for minimum service levels, for liability on what happens on their rails (see Crowdstrike), for access to their platforms to others, for competing against their own customers. Regulate them, tax them, squeeze their margins down to something reasonable, turn them into, well, AT&T. No, that won't kill them and it would be much less dramatic than a breakup (and would feel less satisfactory, for sure). But it could actually happen relatively quickly and would push them to their natural place, i.e. platforms and utilities on top of which younger, hungrier companies can build.
- Aerroon 2y ago
  In my opinion, the most important "infrastructure" tech companies are credit card companies and banks. It's kind of wild that all digital money-handling is done by a third party that isn't regulated like a utility.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    This will eventually be resolved, forward looking, as payment volume ramps on the Federal Reserve’s FedNow instant payment system [1] [2] [3]. Banks in the US are already regulated as a utility, for the most part. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36801491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36801491 (“HN: FedNow is live) [2] https://www.paymentsdive.com/news/fednow-rtp-bank-participation-instant-payments/721484/ https://www.paymentsdive.com/news/fednow-rtp-bank-participat... (“FedNow zooms past RTP participation in inaugural year”) [3] https://news.cision.com/fxc-intelligence/r/fednow--the-numbers-one-year-on,c4000658 https://news.cision.com/fxc-intelligence/r/fednow--the-numbe... (“FedNow: the numbers one-year on”)
- AtlasBarfed 2y ago
  AT&T was a breakup within a utility. Huge problem to have entrenched advantage and regulatory capture of phone lines. AT&T doesn't make money off of POTS or long distance land lines anymore. It's cable and mobile, so the the new company is nothing like the old one. I agree it is depressing the degree to which our government is incapable of breaking up monopolies and restricting/penalizing anticompetitive behavior. It's just another aspect of near total political control by corporations in America. But the laws are on the books, they are just going unenforced by DOJ, and the shadow money system that buys judicial favor in virtually all corporate cases.
- BadHumans 2y ago
  Talking about the Baby Bells reforming is a bit misleading because not all of the Baby Bells reformed into AT&T and breaking them into other companies allowed other TelCos to grow so by the time these mergers happened there were other competitors in this space which is the entire point of breaking up these companies.
hungie 2y ago
Hard agree with this sentiment. Large companies can wield levels of power that distort the economy, legal systems, innovation, immigration, fair competition, standards, etc. Amazon entering a market absolutely warps that market.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  > Amazon entering a market absolutely warps that market. Yep. I remember them announcing something about groceries or whatever a long time ago and it causing a fall in the share price of various other companies. I think this pattern has happened several times with giant tech monopolists.
kordlessagain 2y ago
AI could revolutionize app development, shifting power to individual developers and consultants. With AI coding assistants, they might build custom apps for businesses in days instead of months. These AI-powered apps could even maintain and upgrade themselves, matching or surpassing traditional software support. This shift could level the playing field. Small businesses could access tailored software solutions without huge teams or long wait times. It's democratizing app development, potentially breaking the dominance of tech giants and creating a more balanced, competitive digital landscape.
- hungie 2y ago
  You wildly overestimate the capabilities of AI, while underestimating their cost.
  - kordlessagain 2y ago
    I've built solutions with it, so I'm not "wildly" overestimating the capabilities or cost. If LLMs keep increasing in capability, then what I'm talking about becomes a possibility, not a certainty.
- high_na_euv 2y ago
  If we assume that this is true, then big tech gets those benefits too, so each of their developers is more productive too
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
calvinmorrison 2y ago
General market monopolies exist and always have existed due to government giving warrant to particular groups. Econ 101
cies 2y ago
I get the feeling that we are told to look at AI for danger (there prolly is, but as of yet it not that evident to me; at this point I'd say AI is simply better and more blackboxy algorithms). But the danger with big tech to me is much more similar to how big-MSM is dangerous. There's a lot of proof now that big-tech + MSM have been behaving against the interests of "the people" in the C19 response and the 2020 elections. Zukerberg was telling his C-fam to not take the vax while his platform was pushing the vax (not allowing critique of the vax) in all kinds of nasty ways. Similar things have come out regarding the 2020 elections. Where "Russian meddling" turned out to be "DNC meddling".
- rmholt 2y ago
  I didn't hear about the Zuckerberg part, do you have a link to the article? I can't find it
  - cies 2y ago
    Here including the whole "debunking" of it... Judge for yourself if this type of info would be removed from FB if it was posted by users: https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/02/06/zuckerberg-vaccines-video/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/02/06/zuckerberg-vaccines-v...
akash4393 2y ago
I feel like the biggest, most effective step we should take is to stop these companies from being able to buy political power. “Breaking” them while those in charge of breaking are owned by the same companies that is being broken up is not a real solution. It is purely optics. If political power was not for sale to the highest bidder, we could actually tackle monopolies by fairly regulating them. Until that happens, anything we try to do to handle said monopolies is a little pointless because they have direct control over the regulators. Maybe I’m not smart enough to understand how this is not the most obvious first step towards any meaningful change. So maybe someone can point out what I’m missing here.

63 points by unripe_syntax 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Agree on the sentiment, though there's quite a lot of hostnames being called on that page, including Google Tag Manager, etc etc. Giving these large tech companies all the data they could ever need is part of the problem for sure. There are plenty alternatives that can be used which at least is a meaningful course of action to promote diversity away from big tech.

cm277 2y ago

The cry to "break up the monopolies" bugs me. Maybe because I am old enough to remember the failed Microsoft case or to have lived the re-unification of AT&T into, well, AT&T. If you really do believe that the tech giants need to be reigned in, breaking them up is NOT the way to do it. It's a red herring, a quixotical quest that will eat up time, money and opportunity costs for newer, better companies. Break-ups will be litigated endlessly, we'll end up talking about who benefits from what and at the end either nothing will happen or some business unit(s) will be spun out as sacrificial lambs so that the main behemoths can keep printing cash. The correct answer IMHO is "tax and regulate". Recognize that big tech are now infrastructure companies, massive railways on which international commerce happens and that they need to be taxed as such and regulated. As in regulated for minimum service levels, for liability on what happens on their rails (see Crowdstrike), for access to their platforms to others, for competing against their own customers. Regulate them, tax them, squeeze their margins down to something reasonable, turn them into, well, AT&T. No, that won't kill them and it would be much less dramatic than a breakup (and would feel less satisfactory, for sure). But it could actually happen relatively quickly and would push them to their natural place, i.e. platforms and utilities on top of which younger, hungrier companies can build.

Aerroon 2y ago
In my opinion, the most important "infrastructure" tech companies are credit card companies and banks. It's kind of wild that all digital money-handling is done by a third party that isn't regulated like a utility.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  This will eventually be resolved, forward looking, as payment volume ramps on the Federal Reserve’s FedNow instant payment system [1] [2] [3]. Banks in the US are already regulated as a utility, for the most part. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36801491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36801491 (“HN: FedNow is live) [2] https://www.paymentsdive.com/news/fednow-rtp-bank-participation-instant-payments/721484/ https://www.paymentsdive.com/news/fednow-rtp-bank-participat... (“FedNow zooms past RTP participation in inaugural year”) [3] https://news.cision.com/fxc-intelligence/r/fednow--the-numbers-one-year-on,c4000658 https://news.cision.com/fxc-intelligence/r/fednow--the-numbe... (“FedNow: the numbers one-year on”)
AtlasBarfed 2y ago
AT&T was a breakup within a utility. Huge problem to have entrenched advantage and regulatory capture of phone lines. AT&T doesn't make money off of POTS or long distance land lines anymore. It's cable and mobile, so the the new company is nothing like the old one. I agree it is depressing the degree to which our government is incapable of breaking up monopolies and restricting/penalizing anticompetitive behavior. It's just another aspect of near total political control by corporations in America. But the laws are on the books, they are just going unenforced by DOJ, and the shadow money system that buys judicial favor in virtually all corporate cases.
BadHumans 2y ago
Talking about the Baby Bells reforming is a bit misleading because not all of the Baby Bells reformed into AT&T and breaking them into other companies allowed other TelCos to grow so by the time these mergers happened there were other competitors in this space which is the entire point of breaking up these companies.

hungie 2y ago

Hard agree with this sentiment. Large companies can wield levels of power that distort the economy, legal systems, innovation, immigration, fair competition, standards, etc. Amazon entering a market absolutely warps that market.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
> Amazon entering a market absolutely warps that market. Yep. I remember them announcing something about groceries or whatever a long time ago and it causing a fall in the share price of various other companies. I think this pattern has happened several times with giant tech monopolists.

kordlessagain 2y ago

AI could revolutionize app development, shifting power to individual developers and consultants. With AI coding assistants, they might build custom apps for businesses in days instead of months. These AI-powered apps could even maintain and upgrade themselves, matching or surpassing traditional software support. This shift could level the playing field. Small businesses could access tailored software solutions without huge teams or long wait times. It's democratizing app development, potentially breaking the dominance of tech giants and creating a more balanced, competitive digital landscape.

hungie 2y ago
You wildly overestimate the capabilities of AI, while underestimating their cost.
- kordlessagain 2y ago
  I've built solutions with it, so I'm not "wildly" overestimating the capabilities or cost. If LLMs keep increasing in capability, then what I'm talking about becomes a possibility, not a certainty.
high_na_euv 2y ago
If we assume that this is true, then big tech gets those benefits too, so each of their developers is more productive too

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

calvinmorrison 2y ago

General market monopolies exist and always have existed due to government giving warrant to particular groups. Econ 101

cies 2y ago

I get the feeling that we are told to look at AI for danger (there prolly is, but as of yet it not that evident to me; at this point I'd say AI is simply better and more blackboxy algorithms). But the danger with big tech to me is much more similar to how big-MSM is dangerous. There's a lot of proof now that big-tech + MSM have been behaving against the interests of "the people" in the C19 response and the 2020 elections. Zukerberg was telling his C-fam to not take the vax while his platform was pushing the vax (not allowing critique of the vax) in all kinds of nasty ways. Similar things have come out regarding the 2020 elections. Where "Russian meddling" turned out to be "DNC meddling".

rmholt 2y ago
I didn't hear about the Zuckerberg part, do you have a link to the article? I can't find it
- cies 2y ago
  Here including the whole "debunking" of it... Judge for yourself if this type of info would be removed from FB if it was posted by users: https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/02/06/zuckerberg-vaccines-video/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/02/06/zuckerberg-vaccines-v...

akash4393 2y ago

I feel like the biggest, most effective step we should take is to stop these companies from being able to buy political power. “Breaking” them while those in charge of breaking are owned by the same companies that is being broken up is not a real solution. It is purely optics. If political power was not for sale to the highest bidder, we could actually tackle monopolies by fairly regulating them. Until that happens, anything we try to do to handle said monopolies is a little pointless because they have direct control over the regulators. Maybe I’m not smart enough to understand how this is not the most obvious first step towards any meaningful change. So maybe someone can point out what I’m missing here.