
Conservatives, liberals unite against Silicon Valley - yohui
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/12/conservatives-liberals-silicon-valley-242631
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freedomben
I have certainly noticed this as well, even among my group of
friends/associates. Both the Progressive and Conservative sides (which
together make up a heavy majority of political opinion in the US) seem to be
favoring regulation, and in some cases heavy regulation. They may have
different reasons, but at the end of the day I don't see how you avoid the
government clamp-down given the emerging political climate. I'm generally
against regulation myself, but even I am wondering if it isn't needed.

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rickybobbynoooo
Ive had a bit to drink but hear me out, I never comment on sites.

You have essentially three companies, Google, Facebook, Microsoft. At this
point they now dictate what roughly 2-4 billion people see everyday. If they
begin censoring content they disagree with (and that can come from a small
cadre of roughly 20-200 people per group, whether we are talking about google
search, bing, youtube, etc) then they need to be regulated. Honestly, I
believe that most people would agree that these entities need to be broken up
via trust acts. BELL couldnt even imagine this level of propagandistic control
over so many people. And they were broken up. I could blather on, but this is
an untenable situation.

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wahern

      propagandistic control
    

That's not actually a thing.

AT&T was a government-created monopoly that not only directly prevented (not
indirectly, via hand-wavy causal chains) the emergence of competitors to its
monopoly, but even directly suppressed the emergence of competitive collateral
markets that relied on telephony services.

Monopolies aren't bad in themselves. Both common sense and the law require
that monopolies be broken up only when abused. And you need to be concrete
about the market and the abuses. Every business enjoys some kind of monopoly
in some dimensions because our economy is finite, not to mention time and
geography. If you went around destroying monopolies you'd be breaking up
companies left and right all day long.

Of all things to care about, supposed monopolies in social media are the last
the thing people should care about. The rise of Breitbart is all the proof you
need that there's nothing to "fix". You don't breakup companies because you
want a particular outcome or merely dislike the status quo; it's foolhardy to
think you can engineer a particular outcome, and foolhardy to even want to
try.

The closest parallel to historic breakups would be Google, given it's
dominance of online advertising. But while they throw their weight around,
AFAIU there's hasn't been any substantial abuse (or even credible accusations
of substantial abuse). Probably because while dominant, they don't actually
hold a monopoly or participate in an oligopoly that has the capability to
close-off access to the market to newcomers.

People seem to care about supposed social media monopolies because of the bike
shed effect. Everybody uses Facebook and Twitter (except some of us), and so
everybody has an opinion and believes they're capable of making an informed
judgment call. That's the worse way to drive policy.

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freedomben
Well said. I think it's easy for people to think, "it should be this way, so
let's do something" without realizing that the Law of Unintended Consequences
is almost always a participant in outcomes. Human behavior is a wildly complex
thing to predict and incentivize. Often times the counter-intuitive approach
of "let it work out" is actually the optimal approach.

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jeff07r
It's amazing how the political elite are realizing they don't have complete
control of every step of the process. It's almost as if they are reacting out
of fear of these tech companies and their ability to influence law making in
the same way that other more traditional industries have been for decades.

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thrawnjuxt
Fear of AI could be a factor too, though the article doesn't talk about it.
Politicians must be seeing the AI hype and paranoia in the media and wondering
how they can ensure they stay on top of it and use to their ends.

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yohui
If such fears are a factor, perhaps politicians should consider that even if
they succeed domestically that won't stop geopolitical rivals such as China
from pursuing AI, backed by state funding and with no limits on data
collection.

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RickJWagner
Yeah, Silicon Valley overstepped. It'd due for some reigning-in.

