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Comment by Slansitartop | Hacker News Reader

> if you're going to regulate, should these companies be at the top of your list

Yes. Two of them (Google and Facebook) basically control a huge fraction of the information people are exposed to on a daily basis, either directly on indirectly. They're so dominant and aloof, that they can make or break businesses without even realizing it or caring. Their control over information flow also has important civil society implications.

Amazon could conceivably control most American retail activity in the future, though it has a few retail titans that could conceivably stand up to it if they get their acts together [1]. At best, we seem to be headed towards a retail oligopoly.

Personally, I'm much less worried about Apple, its control is much less pervasive. Though I wish there were more alternatives to it other than Android.

[1] https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/01/01/amazon-is-...

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Yes, they do both control a lot of information that people see, BUT Facebook already changed their news feed algorithm and many tech companies are making changes. Not saying they're doing it perfectly or even well, but still.

On the other hand

Tobacco companies for years lied about the risks and promoted false science

Energy companies regularly fund climate change denial organizations (see Heartland Institute)

Monsanto sends detectives after farmers who get tangled with them (https://www.organicconsumers.org/old_articles/Monsanto/farme...)

Tyson, Purdue regularly keep chicken farmers in poverty and silenced about chicken farming conditions.

Volkswagen created emission cheating software to hide their emissions...

Again, tech companies aren't great and control a lot of information, but what about the food we eat and the air we breathe?

Every one of those other companies is incredibly heavily regulated.

>Tobacco companies for years lied about the risks and promoted false science

And were punished severely, rightly so. They paid out billions.

>Energy companies regularly fund climate change denial organizations (see Heartland Institute)

This is difficult to solve within the existing legal infrastructure and might require a constitutional amendment

>Monsanto sends detectives after farmers who get tangled with them (https://www.organicconsumers.org/old_articles/Monsanto/farme...)

I'm not sure that should be illegal - they sued the farmers and lawyers use investigators.

>Tyson, Purdue regularly keep chicken farmers in poverty and silenced about chicken farming conditions.

This should be more regulated and there are serious calls to do so.

>Volkswagen created emission cheating software to hide their emissions...

And are now paying billions for it.

While I do agree that all these areas need regulatory improvements, I feel like you're falling into the what-about-ism trap. I personally feel like increased regulatory scrutiny about tech companies (i.e. regulating information) would be a strong first step in allowing society to then regulate the other industries that you mentioned.

I think you make a good point about what-about-ism. Unfortunately, the attention of regulators, the U.S. government, and the media is a rival good and areas of focus are definitely mutually exclusive.

It's a sad fact of the national attention span, but still likely a fact.

  BUT Facebook already changed their news feed algorithm and many tech companies are making changes

I can't rid myself of the impression that such changes are only applied to avoid the hammer coming down.

For example : Facebook gave exactly zero fucks about harrassing - or hate posts in specific markets despite the fact that such posts were illegal in such markets. Only when Germany started to crack down severely you saw change.

Same with other tech companies. Uber and Airbnb don't only not give a shit they actively flout the law and you only see changes in their behavior when the hammer of the law threatened to come crashing down.

While I agree with your examples that doesn't mean that we should give tech companies a pass. Rotten (and potentially illegal) behavior is hurting us all for the benefits of very, very few.

I'm glad, that Europe is at least trying to put a stop at the most egregious behavior. The US seems more inclined to give a pass even when borderline crimninal behavior is involved. (Equifax?)

It's not society can only pursue one bad actor at a time. This is a tech forum so we're going to focus on the tech side.

Also, I would say the flow if information is a more pressing priority, because its vital to solving those other problems as well. Imagine a future Facebook that takes a payoff from Monsanto to opaquely bury all criticism of it.

> BUT Facebook already changed their news feed algorithm and many tech companies are making changes. Not saying they're doing it perfectly or even well, but still.

Facebook's algorithm tweaks don't solve the problem of its market position and dominance.

There ARE real limits to regulatory capacity though.

- Major merger approvals tie up DC for months at a time. - The SEC is perpetually unable to keep up with Wall Streets’ shenanigans - Major procurement programs like the F35 dominate the military’s buying capacity

Etc etc

I'm seeing you listing bad companies, but I'm not seeing a reason not to regulate the big tech ones.

Not to mention, it's not like the government can't do both at once. Most of those industries you mentioned have other departments that regulate them.

There's a problem in the UK where people get splashed with acid. A UK kid made a prank out of it (using water instead to scare them) .. and Google banned his entire YouTube channel.

Was what he did stupid? Oh absolutely. Maybe he needed to be taught a lesson .. but now his entire channel with hundreds of thousands of subscribers is gone, and so is the ad revenue .. and all the videos/content.

Because of the dependence on that platform, Google can kill anything they deem unworthy. You could say, "Well so could television companies, or Netflix/Amazon Video," but you typically enter in a contract with those companies, and there's some degree of oversight on the content. Here people are giving YouTube their content, and then monetizing it only if/after they get popular.

Seems like he got off lightly. Wouldn't be surprised if someone is looking if a prosecution is viable. Assault perhaps?

First he's not "a kid", looks more like 18 - 22. So old enough to know better.

Second there's something of an epidemic of acid attacks in London recently. So scare the shit out of random strangers for clicks n giggles.

He should try his "humour" in an airport or on a copper - I'm sure he'd get plenty of extra views.

> Was what he did stupid? Oh absolutely. Maybe he needed to be taught a lesson .. but now his entire channel with hundreds of thousands of subscribers is gone, and so is the ad revenue .. and all the videos/content.

Do you believe that the government would be more or less ok with allowing controversial content like that? I suspect that government regulation would make this problem worse, not better.

Depends on which govt. I am no expert, but being a news junky the past few years I would think that Germany may side with censoring, and I would hope that the US would push for free speech above all else. The UK is looking at pushing google, visa/mc, and ISPs to choke anything sexually arousing online and then forcing blocks nationwide. Getting rid of religious stuff has been interesting the past couple of years. I am looking forward to more routers like the disney router to make these choices easier for households, and less about the portals relaying info posted by others. At the same time people should have easy access to unfiltered net as well. Too many groups pushing to censor millions of minds here and there. Govt could make it better, and of course they could make it worse. Can tech really give those choices to the adults to make for themselves?

>> Was what he did stupid? Oh absolutely. Maybe he needed to be taught a lesson .. but now his entire channel with hundreds of thousands of subscribers is gone, and so is the ad revenue .. and all the videos/content.

> Do you believe that the government would be more or less ok with allowing controversial content like that? I suspect that government regulation would make this problem worse, not better.

In the US, the government would absolutely be OK with it. Protection of speech from government interference is one of the most fundamental and sacred cornerstones of US law.

out of all of the examples I can think of for unjustly banned youtube content, that is one of the least compelling example I've ever heard of. I'm not a lawyer but that "prank" is almost certainly a crime.

I have no sympathy for that person. If you want to cite a reason why Google/YouTube should be regulated, that was not it.

That kid should be grateful he was not put in a hospital, he got off lightly.

Acid attacks are extremely, extremely horrible and damaging.

> Amazon could conceivably control most American retail activity in the future, though it has a few retail titans that could conceivably stand up to it if they get their acts together [1]. At best, we seem to be headed towards a retail oligopoly.

Isn't that precrime?

no, it's reasonable foresight and concern for our collective future condition

> Two of them (Google and Facebook) basically control a huge fraction of the information people are exposed to on a daily basis, either directly on indirectly.

I think CNN, NBC ("beauty of our weapons") and Fox news control a bigger fraction, but nobody's clamoring for them to be regulated. I wonder why it's just the upstarts being targeted.

Could you elaborate on their aloofness? What exactly do you hope to achieve by regulating them?

They seem to take the privacy of their users far more seriously than other competitors as well as the government (US - net neutrality).

> Could you elaborate on their aloofness?

For Google:

If your site gets incorrectly fucked over by one of Google's ranking algorithm changes, try to find someone to talk to who cares enough to try to fix the issue.

Ditto if your Gmail account gets wrongly flagged and closed for some reason. There's no one for you to call and you're fucked, unless you happen know someone inside Google.

Neither of these have happened to me personally, but I've followed cases of each pretty closely.

For Facebook:

It's recent newsfeed changes have had a huge detrimental impact on legitimate news organizations, even more in some foreign markets than int the US. See how much Facebook cares.

> What exactly do you hope to achieve by regulating them?

The standard stuff, like elimination of unfair competition (e.g. Google using Search to push its other stuff). I'd also like to see some breakups/forced divestitures to increase overall competition.

In Facebook's case, specifically: I'd like to see Instagram and Whatsapp spun off; and the core Facebook social network decentralized into several independent instances, with mandates to conform to open interoperability standards. Those standards should include a mandatory privacy permissioning system, to control how personal data is used across instance boundaries.

What does net neutrality have to do with privacy?

https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/11/15258230/net-neutrality-p...

Having political or cultural influence, or holding market dominance aren't crimes in a capitalist economy. Those aren't valid reasons to "regulate" the success out of those companies.

> Having political or cultural influence, or holding market dominance aren't crimes in a capitalist economy. Those aren't valid reasons to "regulate" the success out of those companies.

Capitalism isn't the only idea by which we run our society, nor is the market society's only priority.

Also, we have experience with the pernicious effects of too much market dominance, which is why we developed antitrust law.

What is?

I don't know. But I feel like the assumption here is that these companies are harmful merely because of their size and influence, which I understand, but don't believe is necessarily true. Or at least not true enough to write laws about.

One of the arguments is that companies that are too large stifle innovation. The author claims that our current crop of companies came about because of Microsoft anti-trust legislation. Do you not think this is true?

>One of the arguments is that companies that are too large stifle innovation.

They might, but is "innovation" something that should be enforced by law? Do companies have a right to expect equal access to a market regardless of the successes or advantages of their competitors?

Isn't that the entire point of antitrust?

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