The growing list of U.S. government inquiries into Big Tech | Hacker News Reader

The growing list of U.S. government inquiries into Big Tech

axios.com

47 pointsbookofjoe21 comments

Are companies like Comcast or Verizon on this list? I honestly trust Google, Facebook, Apple and the like much more—I shutter to think of a world where big tech is neutralized while companies like Comcast control content production, distribution, etc.

I'd trust them more, but not "much" more. Perhaps Apple is the lesser offender.

Likely they paid off relevant parties to be excluded. That's why I don't believe objectiveness of that effort. They ignore elephants in the room. Even more probably, the whole thing is driven by those monopolists, for their own benefit.

I think I view it as these companies simply all being very untrustworthy but in very different ways. I don't trust Google or Facebook with private data. I don't trust Comcast or Verizon to have transparent billing that doesn't run up against the edge of fraud. That sort of thing.

Comcast has overlap with both since they thought it was acceptable to inject JavaScript into unencrypted HTTP responses.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15890551

Story Time!

So a few weeks ago I was in a bar with a manager/team lead at Comcast and he was telling me one of the fun "don't tell anyone" projects he was working on after I drank him under the table. Basically Comcast had teamed up with a bunch of cell phone companies so that they can cross reference your cell phone data with your television data.

So for example, say you have the NFL game on. They can tell, using GPS how many people are in the room (by the cell phone GPS of you and all your buddies) and then use all the adware/spyware on your phones (this guy is into fly fishing, this guy buys diapers and watches MMA etc) to sell advertising to the group as opposed to the individual. Apparently it's about 70-80% accurate which is enough to charge advertisers based on impressions.

Evil as it gets.

As a non-US resident, I offer you a different viewpoint: Comcast or Verizon don't have any market presence in the country where I live (AFAIK at least), but the other big tech firms that you mentioned have a lot of influence.

For 4 of the largest companies in the world that have a global presence, that list doesn't seem that long?

The timing is way too convenient. The current American government hates tech companies due to their generally left leaning ideologies: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/06/26/trump-says-big-tech-comp...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-tech-factbox-id...

This is part of the trend of hipster antitrust zealots who view antitrust law as a solution to much bigger problems of governance.

The dominant relationship between US tech firms and government is that they cooperate fully on surveillance of the American people.

See my tweet on the subject:

https://twitter.com/startupjfox/status/1176306514577043458

The HN hivemind leans very pro-regulation these days.

There's no hivemind here.

IMO, every site with upvotes and downvotes develops a hivemind. I've seen it happen on my own projects.

I see a hivemind as unthinking conformity. The way you avoid an unthinking hivemind is by harnessing the power of group dynamics to push against unthinking conformity such that refusal to be an unthinking conformist is the group norm.

I don't think unthinking conformity is the norm on HN. Thus, I don't think it has a hivemind.

Certainly, there are group norms of some sort here. There are always group norms.

But some group norms are healthier than others. In my opinion, those that push back against unthinking conformity are better than those that push towards it.

Oh, I see why Jeff Bezos' washingtonpost ran their hit job [1] on Apple now. It seems Amazon basics is getting scrutiny while Apple has almost escaped unscathed. We all know the 30% haircut is ridiculous, but that's hardly the most anti-competitive thing Apple is known to do.

[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/05/how-app...

Ah yes, Bezos shedding light on something that has been widely known since early 2012.

A decade earlier, Apple ripped off Watson to make Sherlock. Even your icons aren't safe.

https://news.softpedia.com/news/Dev-Apple-Stole-My-Idea-and-...

It's part of their company culture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

What? How do you even get from this HN post to the WaPost article? It's not like anything on this list is news, the Washington Post didn't cause this to happen to Apple or anyone else. These issues have been covered by plenty of media outlets. The only novel thing about this whole post is simply that it's aggregating them all into a single place.

>the Washington Post didn't cause this to happen to Apple

What? How do you even arrive at that conclusion giving what I wrote? According to TFA,

"Apple is also part of the House Judiciary Committee's probe, which is looking into whether the cut that its App Store takes from software developers' revenue is anti-competitive."

That's it. That's all they're going at Apple for.

When this wapo hit piece was published last month (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20890717), I pointed out in comments that Amazon basics steals business from third party sellers on the amazon store, just as Apple steals business from third party developers on the app store.

Now I see why. Of course Bezos is going to publish articles pointing out that Apple is getting away with the same anti-competitive behavior Amazon is under investigation for: Stealing business from the third parties under them.

Maybe we simply misunderstood each other? Still I just don't need the WaPo thing. Bezos is notoriously hands off, and even if he isn't hands off behind the scenes, these issues with Apple are nothing that other media outlets haven't reported on, so it's hard to attribute WaPo's nearly identical reporting to bias. It comes off as a bit conspiracy theorist to attribute such hidden machinations absent any actual evidence.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com