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Whenever I read about how powerful these companies are, it sends chills down my spine.

by ViktorRay 5mo ago

morkalork 5mo ago
A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
bigyabai 5mo ago
AdSense is the one that people underestimate. It's a piranha pool of liquid cash, billions-scale impressions and near global outreach. Any sane nation would have banned it decades ago, unless it was propping up a global influence campaign for their government.
- parineum 5mo ago
  > Any sane nation would have banned it decades ago Why?
  - inquirerGeneral 5mo ago
    [dead]
  - bigyabai 5mo ago
    AdSense uses a sealed-bid auction system with arbitrary number of lots that Google controls. It's a FOMO market driven by artificial scarcity, and since Google contractually forbids AdSense-enabled websites from using competing services, it forces ad buyers to go through their closed, controlled system.
    - SilverElfin 5mo ago
      They forbid those websites from using competitors? Isn’t that blatantly illegal? I guess it’s not actually illegal until they lose a court case for antitrust.
    - streptomycin 5mo ago
      But in practice, nobody (well, nobody making lots of ad revenue from their website) uses AdSense exclusively. Most don't even use it at all - AdX is better as a header bidding fallback than AdSense. But those who do use AdSense as a fallback are using it in competition with many other ad networks.
  - echelon 5mo ago
    Google owns 92% of all "URL bars". They turned this into "search". Every brand or product has to competitively bid for its own identity in a monopoly competitive bidding market. It's downright evil. Look at Google's AI rivals having to spend hundreds of millions just so customers can find them. Google Anthropic or OpenAI and see what you get. The next admin needs to break Google up horizontally (not vertically) into competing browsers, clouds, and search products. They all need to fight. Healthy capitalism is fiercely competitive. Not whatever this invasive species that preys on everything else is. They also need to make it illegal to place ads for registered trademarks. The EU should get in on that too.
    - Aerroon 5mo ago
      >The next admin needs to break Google up horizontally (not vertically) into competing browsers, clouds, and search products. They all need to fight. Healthy capitalism is fiercely competitive. Not whatever this invasive species that preys on everything else is. That sounds great if you're rich and can afford to pay for all the million subscriptions that will pop up to replace what Google offers. Google offers an insane amount of value to people for free: YouTube, Android, Google Search, Trends, Scholar, Maps, Chrome, Translate, Gmail. These would all be paid subscription products without adsense (or some equivalent). And as paid products they would get the typical subscription enshittification over time. Also, on the topic of AI: didn't the transformers research paper come from Google? In an alternate world that would've been a trade secret locked away inside Google.
      - echelon 5mo ago
        > Google offers an insane amount of value to people for free: YouTube, Android, Google Search, Trends, Scholar, Maps, Chrome, Translate, Gmail. These would all be paid subscription products without adsense (or some equivalent). And as paid products they would get the typical subscription enshittification over time. That's false. There are hundreds of free offerings in this and many other spaces offered by lots of other companies. There does not have to be one monopoly controlling all of it for the freemium model and advertising to work.
  - majormajor 5mo ago
    "Possibility for abuse" seems like the right reason here. Does the benefiting of reducing a specific possibility of abuse outweigh the cost of an intervention? And here in particular, is there much cost to the intervention other than just shifting the money distribution from a zero-sum advertising arms race from one player to several? I frequently see calls to not intervene if there's not bulletproof evidence of existing abuse, but why wait? Would you want Google to own a bunch of nuclear missiles just because they might not have misused them yet?
- pixelpoet 5mo ago
  I am deeply saddened that it was developed by the hero of modern rendering, Eric Veach.
- j16sdiz 5mo ago
  I am more concern with how they make scam much less detectable. You can hyper-target your ad or scam to vulnerable individual. Unlike traditional media, like newspaper, you can post an ad with no visibility outside your target group -- which is hard to discover. The report button is just some generic "second look" and automation within the same organization, there are no oversight.
SilverElfin 5mo ago
Yep. They can make every mistake imaginable and not work as hard but still win. It’s the power of concentrated capital and monopolistic behavior and what people call “moats” but really is just an unfair advantage. Why should Google or Apple be allowed to copy everyone’s AI tech and just win because of distribution through Chrome or iPhones? We need new antitrust laws and heavy taxes just on the megacorps worth $500B or more. And aggressive enforcement.
- IncreasePosts 5mo ago
  What AI tech did Google just copy?
  - ivewonyoung 5mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_Is_All_You_Need https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_Is_All_You_Need /s
- georgemcbay 5mo ago
  Not that I'm opposed to new laws, but just having enforcement of the laws we already have would go a long way to fixing the problems. The problem is how to get to the point where there is enforcement. It definitely isn't going to happen with Republicans in power, and it also isn't a sure thing with Democrats in power either. Lina Khan was a good start for a bit there, but she certainly didn't have universal Dem support. Establishment Democrats are going to have to grow a spine and tell the Reid Hoffmanesque donor class to get fucked.
  - SilverElfin 5mo ago
    The current set of laws lead to the current situation in my opinion. Enforcement within the current laws means a court case that will take years and span multiple administrations, which gives it a lot of time to be killed. It doesn’t provide enough authority to immediately bring enforcement actions.
  - keeda 5mo ago
i_love_retros 5mo ago
Collectively we have the power to do something about it if enough people care to. It's called democratic socialism. https://www.dsausa.org/ https://www.dsausa.org/
- TulliusCicero 5mo ago
  DSA would be a great org if they could fix their foreign policy takes. Doing the whole "it's both sides, really" thing after Russia invaded Ukraine just makes them look like useful idiots.
tt24 5mo ago
Saying this about a compute rental service is hilarious They have the power to do what exactly? Sell you some EC2 instances at reasonable prices? lol There’s organizations that have the power to openly kidnap and execute people and we’re being melodramatic about a few buildings with computers in them
- siliconc0w 5mo ago
  They'll buy your politicians who will give them zero checks on raising energy prices or poisoning your children's minds
  - sublinear 5mo ago
    Apathy is not evidence of anything, not even ignorance.
  - tt24 5mo ago
    Have they been doing this? Evidence?
    - killjoywashere 5mo ago
      How's a 170 million pieces of evidence for poisoning children's minds https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/09/google-youtube-will-pay-record-170-million-alleged-violations-childrens-privacy-law https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/09/...
      - tt24 5mo ago
        How is this related to poisoning anyone’s mind Looks like they collected some metrics. I’m fine with this
    - chneu 5mo ago
      The trump family is literally in office and accepting bribes from every tech company in existence. Lol how willfully ignorant can people be?
raincole 5mo ago
Wait until you learn what governments are.
- applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
  Governments are companies that have accountability to the public, wherein the public has direct influence over their decisionmaking, unlike regular corporations where people have no influence whatsoever (without lobbying the government to regulate them, anyways). To the extent that governments work against the people, it is largely because people in some countries are collectively very stupid and willingly support such governments.
  - victorbjorklund 5mo ago
    oh, yes, Trump famous for being held accountable.
    - applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
      He is politically accountable. The majority of the voting populace voted him back in and also voted for a majority of legislators whose central policy was worshipping the ground on which he stands. America is getting exactly what its people voted for, if you have a problem with that you have a problem with democracy itself.
      - victorbjorklund 5mo ago
        In what way? What will happen to him? As far as I know, he is not standing for a re-election anyway, so exactly zero consequences for him.
        applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
        To be clear, political accountability doesn't mean "you, one person out of over 300 million, get your desired outcome". It means the over 300 million people collectively decide what he is accountable for and what happens to him. He can be removed from office by Congress after the midterms if the population shows up to vote for that happening. They won't, of course, because the American people as a whole do not want him removed from office, but the mechanism is there. He will also probably stand for re-election, and if he does he probably will win despite it being in violation of the constitution, because by all accounts the American people collectively prefer the concept of Supreme Leader Trump to the scrap of toilet paper that is their constitution. That is the nature of democracy. It gives the people what they want, even if what they want is very stupid and harmful to themselves.

Whenever I read about how powerful these companies are, it sends chills down my spine.

morkalork 5mo ago

A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

bigyabai 5mo ago

AdSense is the one that people underestimate. It's a piranha pool of liquid cash, billions-scale impressions and near global outreach. Any sane nation would have banned it decades ago, unless it was propping up a global influence campaign for their government.

parineum 5mo ago
> Any sane nation would have banned it decades ago Why?
- inquirerGeneral 5mo ago
  [dead]
- bigyabai 5mo ago
  AdSense uses a sealed-bid auction system with arbitrary number of lots that Google controls. It's a FOMO market driven by artificial scarcity, and since Google contractually forbids AdSense-enabled websites from using competing services, it forces ad buyers to go through their closed, controlled system.
  - SilverElfin 5mo ago
    They forbid those websites from using competitors? Isn’t that blatantly illegal? I guess it’s not actually illegal until they lose a court case for antitrust.
  - streptomycin 5mo ago
    But in practice, nobody (well, nobody making lots of ad revenue from their website) uses AdSense exclusively. Most don't even use it at all - AdX is better as a header bidding fallback than AdSense. But those who do use AdSense as a fallback are using it in competition with many other ad networks.
- echelon 5mo ago
  Google owns 92% of all "URL bars". They turned this into "search". Every brand or product has to competitively bid for its own identity in a monopoly competitive bidding market. It's downright evil. Look at Google's AI rivals having to spend hundreds of millions just so customers can find them. Google Anthropic or OpenAI and see what you get. The next admin needs to break Google up horizontally (not vertically) into competing browsers, clouds, and search products. They all need to fight. Healthy capitalism is fiercely competitive. Not whatever this invasive species that preys on everything else is. They also need to make it illegal to place ads for registered trademarks. The EU should get in on that too.
  - Aerroon 5mo ago
    >The next admin needs to break Google up horizontally (not vertically) into competing browsers, clouds, and search products. They all need to fight. Healthy capitalism is fiercely competitive. Not whatever this invasive species that preys on everything else is. That sounds great if you're rich and can afford to pay for all the million subscriptions that will pop up to replace what Google offers. Google offers an insane amount of value to people for free: YouTube, Android, Google Search, Trends, Scholar, Maps, Chrome, Translate, Gmail. These would all be paid subscription products without adsense (or some equivalent). And as paid products they would get the typical subscription enshittification over time. Also, on the topic of AI: didn't the transformers research paper come from Google? In an alternate world that would've been a trade secret locked away inside Google.
    - echelon 5mo ago
      > Google offers an insane amount of value to people for free: YouTube, Android, Google Search, Trends, Scholar, Maps, Chrome, Translate, Gmail. These would all be paid subscription products without adsense (or some equivalent). And as paid products they would get the typical subscription enshittification over time. That's false. There are hundreds of free offerings in this and many other spaces offered by lots of other companies. There does not have to be one monopoly controlling all of it for the freemium model and advertising to work.
- majormajor 5mo ago
  "Possibility for abuse" seems like the right reason here. Does the benefiting of reducing a specific possibility of abuse outweigh the cost of an intervention? And here in particular, is there much cost to the intervention other than just shifting the money distribution from a zero-sum advertising arms race from one player to several? I frequently see calls to not intervene if there's not bulletproof evidence of existing abuse, but why wait? Would you want Google to own a bunch of nuclear missiles just because they might not have misused them yet?
pixelpoet 5mo ago
I am deeply saddened that it was developed by the hero of modern rendering, Eric Veach.
j16sdiz 5mo ago
I am more concern with how they make scam much less detectable. You can hyper-target your ad or scam to vulnerable individual. Unlike traditional media, like newspaper, you can post an ad with no visibility outside your target group -- which is hard to discover. The report button is just some generic "second look" and automation within the same organization, there are no oversight.

SilverElfin 5mo ago

Yep. They can make every mistake imaginable and not work as hard but still win. It’s the power of concentrated capital and monopolistic behavior and what people call “moats” but really is just an unfair advantage. Why should Google or Apple be allowed to copy everyone’s AI tech and just win because of distribution through Chrome or iPhones? We need new antitrust laws and heavy taxes just on the megacorps worth $500B or more. And aggressive enforcement.

IncreasePosts 5mo ago
What AI tech did Google just copy?
- ivewonyoung 5mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_Is_All_You_Need https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_Is_All_You_Need /s
georgemcbay 5mo ago
Not that I'm opposed to new laws, but just having enforcement of the laws we already have would go a long way to fixing the problems. The problem is how to get to the point where there is enforcement. It definitely isn't going to happen with Republicans in power, and it also isn't a sure thing with Democrats in power either. Lina Khan was a good start for a bit there, but she certainly didn't have universal Dem support. Establishment Democrats are going to have to grow a spine and tell the Reid Hoffmanesque donor class to get fucked.
- SilverElfin 5mo ago
  The current set of laws lead to the current situation in my opinion. Enforcement within the current laws means a court case that will take years and span multiple administrations, which gives it a lot of time to be killed. It doesn’t provide enough authority to immediately bring enforcement actions.
- keeda 5mo ago

i_love_retros 5mo ago

Collectively we have the power to do something about it if enough people care to. It's called democratic socialism. https://www.dsausa.org/ https://www.dsausa.org/

TulliusCicero 5mo ago
DSA would be a great org if they could fix their foreign policy takes. Doing the whole "it's both sides, really" thing after Russia invaded Ukraine just makes them look like useful idiots.

tt24 5mo ago

Saying this about a compute rental service is hilarious They have the power to do what exactly? Sell you some EC2 instances at reasonable prices? lol There’s organizations that have the power to openly kidnap and execute people and we’re being melodramatic about a few buildings with computers in them

siliconc0w 5mo ago
They'll buy your politicians who will give them zero checks on raising energy prices or poisoning your children's minds
- sublinear 5mo ago
  Apathy is not evidence of anything, not even ignorance.
- tt24 5mo ago
  Have they been doing this? Evidence?
  - killjoywashere 5mo ago
    How's a 170 million pieces of evidence for poisoning children's minds https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/09/google-youtube-will-pay-record-170-million-alleged-violations-childrens-privacy-law https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/09/...
    - tt24 5mo ago
      How is this related to poisoning anyone’s mind Looks like they collected some metrics. I’m fine with this
  - chneu 5mo ago
    The trump family is literally in office and accepting bribes from every tech company in existence. Lol how willfully ignorant can people be?

raincole 5mo ago

Wait until you learn what governments are.

applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
Governments are companies that have accountability to the public, wherein the public has direct influence over their decisionmaking, unlike regular corporations where people have no influence whatsoever (without lobbying the government to regulate them, anyways). To the extent that governments work against the people, it is largely because people in some countries are collectively very stupid and willingly support such governments.
- victorbjorklund 5mo ago
  oh, yes, Trump famous for being held accountable.
  - applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
    He is politically accountable. The majority of the voting populace voted him back in and also voted for a majority of legislators whose central policy was worshipping the ground on which he stands. America is getting exactly what its people voted for, if you have a problem with that you have a problem with democracy itself.
    - victorbjorklund 5mo ago
      In what way? What will happen to him? As far as I know, he is not standing for a re-election anyway, so exactly zero consequences for him.
      - applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
        To be clear, political accountability doesn't mean "you, one person out of over 300 million, get your desired outcome". It means the over 300 million people collectively decide what he is accountable for and what happens to him. He can be removed from office by Congress after the midterms if the population shows up to vote for that happening. They won't, of course, because the American people as a whole do not want him removed from office, but the mechanism is there. He will also probably stand for re-election, and if he does he probably will win despite it being in violation of the constitution, because by all accounts the American people collectively prefer the concept of Supreme Leader Trump to the scrap of toilet paper that is their constitution. That is the nature of democracy. It gives the people what they want, even if what they want is very stupid and harmful to themselves.