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Comment by whitepaint | Hacker News Reader

Aren't governments (especially Germany and Australia for what they are doing at the moment) way more scarier than big tech? I am not scared of Google or Facebook at all. I am, however, scared of governments. Especially seeing how the pandemic was handled and how little resistance the handling got from the citizens.

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Those governments (and the ones in the US) are at least beholden to voters.

Large companies have no accountability, and if they disrupt the democratic process, they have no consequences either.

Mark Zuckerberg is the authoritarian ruler of an extremely powerful entity that, in some countries, is more powerful than any local government.

> more powerful than any local government

I’ll believe that when I see FB agents smashing down doors to imprison (/kill) activists.

They can, indirectly. The side effects of their actions and deep knowledge on individuals can be used for violence or ill will.

Have they? Does Facebook have political dissidents locked up in prison without representation? Has Google made homosexuality illegal and robbed individuals of legal protections? Does Apple routinely break into the wrong home and shoot people eating ice cream?

"They could" isn't a good argument.

Why do that when they can push the activist down a depressive spiral into suicide?

You mean like what they did to Aaron Swartz?

They're "beholden to the voters" only in an aggregated sense. Most democracies are representative, so if there's an elite consensus around an issue, it's easy to end up in a situation where a few unpopular policies get enacted or a few popular policies don't. This is ultimately too niche of a topic for many people to be single-issue voters about.

This, and at least in the US, your choice is really between two candidates who are— in practice— virtually identical on most issues. Want to vote for a pro-privacy, anti-war, anti-monopoly, fiscally responsible, forward-thinking candidate? Great. Your candidate will get 0.0001% of the votes. The Republican and Democrat machines don’t give anyone else a chance.

> "Want to vote for a pro-privacy, anti-war, anti-monopoly, fiscally responsible, forward-thinking candidate?"

yes! that's totally me in a nutshell. i'm hoping more and more people realize the hegemony that the two-party system represents and votes against it en masse. we need more people standing up against the consolidation of power and wealth in all its forms. that's the only way we return to a healthy and dynamic society.

I'd like to add a few more if I may? Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Elon Musk, Tim Cook.

The real danger is when they act in unison. ...as we are seeing developing in China.

If anything we need to create moats between big tech and gov't. ...and one of those tactics is breaking up tech monopolies/oligopolies.

I agree. Facebook can try to show me targeted ads, but that's pretty benign compared to what my government can do to me with absolutely zero recourse.

So uh, why do you put Australia in your two-especially-scary-governments-in-the-world list? That seems extremely odd to me.

Sydney here. I've seen oblique mentions like this a couple of times on here recently and asked about it, as I've no idea what would inspire such a comment, but no-one answered until now. Well, for one thing, we don't have nuclear weapons pointed at anyone...

The narrative is that the Australian government is enforcing authoritarian lockdowns and mandates on its population.

Melbourne here, its not that bad.

The narrative is mostly being spun but the anti-lockdown parties in the USA trying to push their own agenda.

Lives for most people under authoritarian regimes is "not that bad". That is from personal experience living in Russia, my life was pretty great, as far as I can tell from coworkers/visits to China it's similar there.

And they (the governments, and many if not most citizens) will tell you that police coming to somebody's home after an online post about organizing a protest against government policies, and such, are for greater good and anyone who says otherwise is a foreign agent "spinning a narrative". Even Russia didn't prevent people from leaving, impose internal borders, or arrest people for going to a park, as far as I know :)

What an absurd comment. Really, you are implying Australia has an "authoritarian regime"?

> Authoritarianism is a form of government characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of a strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting.

Uh... 100% no, no, no, no and no. I'm not saying at all that I like our present government - our last few have been increasingly pathetic, from what I've heard, but...let's keep it slightly real, thanks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism

It's a spectrum, not a boolean flag. There were many examples, my favorite was when someone wanted to organize a protest against lockdowns on Facebook, and cops came into their home. That is an action of an extremely authoritarian government. In the article I guess it falls under suppressing civil liberties and antiregime activities. Vaguely, the more of such actions a government can perform/ performs (or cannot/refrains from performing) the more (less) authoritarian it is... The fact that the majority agrees they are justified has no bearing on that whatsoever. Democracy and liberty only tend to correlate, they are not the same thing, especially recently.

I oppose putting people in camps.

Maybe because of anti encryption laws and surveillance bill.

I think not. I mean, I am not scared directly of Google and Facebook, I am scared of the tools they put at the disposal of people manipulating discourse. I don't think FB nor G even _want_ to be in this discussion, but they just don't have any other choice, they would rather just rake in their big wads of cash. No, the danger comes from the way the tools are used. I have seen several people dear to me fall into some really bad beliefs that are not rational. I think that the whole "tracking" discussion's most dangerous in this aspect, it can, statistically, persuade people of things that don't make sense and don't pass the reason test. Basically, really effective propaganda. Just this time, anyone with time can access this propaganda machine. Want to destabilize a country from within? No problem, you don't even have to be be there.

At least governments (in a democracy) are subject to public scrutiny and accountable to the electorate. As far as I can tell, the big tech firms aren't answerable to anyone.

You can stop using Google, Facebook, or Apple and not be a customer. You do not get this choice with your government, regardless of the electoral process.

Is that actually true? Don't those companies (maybe not Apple) maintain "shadow profiles" to track non-users?

https://reclaimthenet.org/google-is-building-shadow-profiles...

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/facebook-shadow-profiles/

A tracking pixel on a website doesn't make me that pixels customer, anymore than being photographed by a photographer on the street makes me their customer.

By that standard, most Google and Facebook users aren't customers anyway. Nobody pays to use Google Search or Facebook.

You're either a customer using their services directly, or you're the customer of one of their customers. You only have direct influence over the former, and can decide to avoid companies that fall in the latter.

People are also free to stop taking opiates, alcohol, crack, or to stop gambling. Yet these things wreck unbelievable havoc on our society because a vast swath of the human population is not psychologically, even biochemically, capable of stopping themselves from doing these things.

Human agency has its limits because humans don’t have precise rational control over their own behavior. Otherwise we’d all eat sleep and exercise flawlessly for our entire lives… and we wouldn’t keep refreshing the front page of HN every 30 minutes.

What is Germany doing? And what did you not like about how the pandemic was handled by the government?

> Aren't governments (especially Germany and Australia for what they are doing at the moment) way more scarier than big tech?

Could you elaborate please? I’m a German citizen and do not understand what you mean by that.

You just need to see one picture: https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1469357170990923779

That picture does not answer my question. What exactly has that to do with the German and Australian governments you mentioned?

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