Right because giving the government more power can’t possibly have negative consequences. Did you watch the congressional testimony a few days ago? Would you trust this government to pass laws with regards to tech?
It's not "more power over tech," it's the job of government. Distribution of power, promoting competition, tweaking the rules as little as is deemed necessary.
Is it really so outrageous to consider there might be a consolidation of power in a way we haven't dealt with before, seeing Amazon crush partners overnight, or Facebook impacting elections?
The very same HN that longs for the early internet, with web rings and personality, doesn't have a problem with Google scrapping content from pages you would have otherwise visited, further limiting smaller website's revenue opportunity?
For those of you not seeing clear anticompetitive behaviors that warrant discovery -- where is your line?
Facebook impacted elections for conservatives - the same people that are complaining about an anti conservative bias.
What would you propose the government do? Force people not to use FB who willingly go to their site? Have the government say what is and is not allowed on their platform.
I don't care who's barking about what and if they're consistent about it. Either there is or is not an underlying risk we should aim to minimize.
As far as what I might want to see, since you asked: for one, I would like to see more rigor around the acquisition process to eliminate or even undo some of the consolidation. I won't pretend to understand the details of how or what needs to change, but I am more than open to taking a hard look at things like WhatsApp and Instagram being acquired by Facebook and what kinds of power centralization that enables. I hope smarter people than me will do that research and make intelligible cases so we can all hold evidence-backed positions.
Look at the valuation, never mind the societal impact, of these companies -- data is worth far more than your average consumer realizes, at least once it hits an inflection point, and our laws don't currently reflect that. Maybe they should, maybe they shouldn't. I welcome the discovery, and don't feel like we need to be anywhere near a solution yet.
Yeah, you’re right...Anybody should be allowed to do anything that they want like on the highway where you’re allowed to just ram your car into other drivers without any consequences.
It is honestly frightening that HN wants to give Apple more power over tech after what we've seen from their treatment of HEY, the butterfly keyboard, and the Magic Mouse 2 port.
Yes because Apple with 10% market share in computers has so much power over the computer market. I’m sure the same congress where one of the Senators asked Zuckerberg about why Twitter put Don Jr in time out could design the perfect keyboard and mouse.
Basecamp also restricts who can integrate with their platform.
Again, neither you nor the government get to force a company into making products you like. Apple does not exist for you or your whims. There are plenty of other mice on the market, and the Magic Mouse 2 isn’t harming you in any way.
Yes, very productive things have come out of the dog and pony show: tons of conversation and debate amongst voters as people familiarize themselves with the nuance of these topics.
Do I trust the politicians? Maybe not the ones you're describing but read through Elizabeth Warren's proposal around platform utilities:
Maybe you agree, maybe you don't - the point is that it's clearly a well-articulated position. Not all US politicians are idiots, but the loudest ones certainly make it seem that way.
Right because a representative who asked Zuckerberg about a Twitter policy is really smart.
The very first paragraph she used MS as an example of when the government intervened in tech. How did that work out? Microsoft is still one of the five largest companies in tech and still has the same dominance in PC operating systems and productivity apps.
I said "voters are discussing" and you said "representatives are idiots". I'm not sure you're hearing my POV. Stupid questions and ineffective historical decisions or not, are you suggesting we just throw in the towel based on a snapshot of our government? Can we not vote in better representation once the population tears into these issues and better understand the outcomes we want?
Yes because out of all the issues that voters care about. I’m sure “breaking up big tech” so you can put an emulator on an iPhone ranks above (hopefully my list equally hits conservative and liberal talking points):
- gun control
- health care
- unemployment
- “The War on Christmas”
- “those evil immigrants who are taking away your jobs”
- banning straws so we stop killing fish
- free college education
The fact is that the only reason $BigTech is $BigTech is because people voluntarily use their products - especially Apple that has a minority market share and charges a premium. Everyone knows how much money they give Apple/Amazon for their products - unlike Facebook and Google.
But everyone does NOT know how much data they hand over and how that's used to stifle competition, innovation, and has attributable impact to many of the other items you list - and that's what's being vetted right now. No one has issue with high revenue, that's the reward for winning. We're discussing HOW you win, and if that needs modification.
Most people I know are more than capable to read, learn, and form educated opinions on everything on your list as well as this topic.
We might be at a stalemate here since you won't be convincing me the discovery process into these issues isn't worth it, and I'm not sure I can convince you to not judge an entire nation by its lowest common denominator, be it extreme left or extreme right, which is what I'm drawing from your previous comment.
Where do you think the following issues rank in the list?
Facebook/Google collecting data. Especially in the case of FB where people willingly give it data.
Amazon - effects on small retailers (disclaimer I work at AWS)
Apple -
A) taking a 30% cut when most of the money comes from play to win games.
B) Or that you can’t sign up for subscription services in the app
C) you can’t sideload. People have been fine with buying through iTunes/App Store since 2003.
We know that many people on the right are single issue voters - religion, gun rights , abortion. There are probably many single issue voters on the left. The only one that I can think of is “not Trump”.
More lowest common denominator talk despite these issues being economic which was ranked as the #2 issue in the source you presented.
The three options you present are a completely different level of granularity, I'm not clear why you're ranking them. No one is a single issue voter down to Apple's 30% cut, that's just a piece being discussed to better understand the larger issue (or lack thereof, if that's your point of view).
And people concerned about “the economy” care about geeks not being able to sideload or having to go to a website to subscribe to Netflix. Out of the 5 major tech companies, the only one that has a negative image in the mind of most people is Facebook - and they still use it.
The issues that you bring up don’t affect most people. Most people willingly spend their money at Apple and Amazon. People spend more to buy Apple devices despite all of the drawbacks that geeks care about.
Besides that, Apple isn’t raising the ire of conservatives about being “unfair” to them or having a negative effect on the election by liberals.
You keep drawing me back in because you state the issue, but don't seem to see it as an issue - you're not seeing the forest but the trees are obvious.
It's not about the workarounds, those are symptoms and some of the reasons this is a thing in the first place.
The face that sentiment around Facebook is generally negative but most still use it is testiment to the monopolistic powers these discussions are all about. Could people migrate to Twitter or some other social network? Sure, maybe. Are they? No. Why? Everyone thought Facebook was a blip in a string of Friendster, MySpace, etc -- but boy they've had staying power despite the low switching cost we thought we had on the early internet. How is that not worth exploring to the fullest?
We don't actually know if these issues affect most people. What would Amazon be like without their Amazon products crushing their third party partners? What would Facebook be like without WhatsApp and Instagram? What would Apple be like if you could plug your weather app of choice in vs their acquisition and likely destruction of all current iOS weather apps? Will Apple nail the DarkSky integration and make a top notch user experience? Almost certainly -- that's not in question.
All of that has a ripple effect through the economy and right now there's purely discovery happening and I still haven't heard one good reason why this discovery process isn't worthwhile, outside of its lack of effectiveness, from the very people who seem to be against any kind of change.
Facebook is the least essential of all the companies. Most people know FB is creepy, if they willingly choose to use it, should they government prevent them?
The weather app has no special significance on iOS. You can delete it. Choose another weather app. Put it in the Notification Center. Add a Siri shortcut for it.
Would the founders of the weather app that Apple bought be better off if Apple had just added the functionality instead of acquiring them?
Would Instagram had grown as fast without FB ad network and social graph? Would the founders be better off if the government had stopped Instagram from buying them?
