
Trust-Busting as the Unsexy Answer to Google and Facebook - prostoalex
https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/trust-busting-as-the-unsexy-answer-to-google-and-facebook/
======
kauffj
Rather than trust busting, why not start with relaxing the federal laws which
forbid the development of third-party applications?

The limits on third-party apps are legal, not technical. It is not technically
challenging to build an application that collects Facebook credentials and
then presents alternative views and features. It could, for example, finally
be possible to see a time-ordered view of your friends' posts (Facebook
doesn't allow this since it reduces engagement).

The development of such applications would serve as a threat and check on the
market dominance of Facebook. A popular third-party application could consider
adding its own features that Facebook does not have. It would also reduce
Facebook's revenue.

What stops this? In the US, it is primarily the CFAA
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act)).
Once Facebook formally tells a company to stop accessing their servers, they
are in violation of federal law if they continue to do so.

It seems premature to pursue trust busting action while we still have federal
laws that encourage and cement the dominance of a single provider.

~~~
B-Con
> Rather than trust busting, why not start with relaxing the federal laws
> which forbid the development of third-party applications?

Cute phrasing, but what this really means is "why not force anyone who
develops a product to allow others to capitalize on it?"

> It seems premature to pursue trust busting action while we still have
> federal laws that encourage and cement the dominance of a single provider.

You mean "allow a product to exist as a unified product". "Provider" is 100%
misleading language.

~~~
kauffj
I think you're misunderstanding. I'm not proposing that Facebook be _forced_
to allow third-party access, which would carry the risks you've pointed out.
I'm simply proposing the federal government not aid them in their market
dominance.

Facebook could still prevent third-party applications from functioning, but it
would have to do so by methods inside of the HTTP specification rather than
legal ones. For example, it could simply ban users who authenticate via a
third-party app.

~~~
B-Con
What's the difference? If it's desirable to reserve the right to disallow
third-party frontends, why push the burden onto them (and everyone else)
enforcing it through technical measures?

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Because with technical measures, the cost is allocated to the party who
benefits from vendor lock-in, rather than to the public.

------
40acres
As talked about in this article, I think the main catalyst to increased anti-
trust scrunity will be a mind shift away from the "consumer welfare" view of
anti-trust.

For the most part, big tech companies provide amazing service. I can't think
of another industry that has a product as good as the tech companies of today
have. Yes there may be some fakes on Amazon, and DDG in some use cases may be
better than Google, but for the majority of consumers these companies provide
excellent service.

We really need more scrunity when it comes to acquisitions, the fact that
Google was able to acquire YouTube and Facebook was able to acquire Instagram
shows a real lack of foresight on regulators. Perhaps this is because when
you're busting up Standard Oil you have more tangible view of what the
monopoly looks like: the oil company owns the fields, the railroads, the
refineries, the whole damn stack. When it comes to tech everything is a data
play, Google (a search engine) and YouTube (a video site) look like distinct
industry, but at the end of the day the main resource being competed for is
attention and data.

~~~
dwater
I was just watching an interview between Scott Galloway and Richard Kramer
discussing if the big 4 will be broken up. An insight I hadn't heard before
was that anti-trust in the US is based on consumer harm, and since consumers
get services from these companies for free, by this measure there can't be
consumer harm. However, if you consider the advertisers (who are actually
funding everything) are the consumers, they are being significantly harmed by
the lack of competition. An advertiser has essentially no choice, if they wish
to reach consumers online they have to deal with the big 4 on their terms.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD7LyAJWkZ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD7LyAJWkZ0)

~~~
mattmaroon
I don't think it's logical to say that just because consumers don't directly
pay they aren't harmed. What if increased competition would make it such that
there would be a way better search engine than today's Google? It's certainly
harder to prove harm than monopolistic price fixing though.

~~~
clucas
In response to your argument, the U.S. courts would provably respond like the
judge in My Cousin Vinny: "That is a lucid, intelligent, well thought-out
objection. Overruled."

Silly as it is, that's just not how antitrust law works in the U.S.

------
jpollock
"when AT&T was broken up in 1984, a torrent of new products came on the
market, everything from the first answering machines to early ISPs."

Since the RBOCs were local monopolies, it wasn't the breakup which resulted in
the opening of the network.

They didn't have competition until 1996, when the local loop was unbundled,
allowing CLECs to appear. The tradeoff was that if they could demonstrate
local competition, they were allowed to enter the long distance market.

It was FCC regulation which allowed interconnection of non-approved devices
[1]. "In the 1960s and 1970s, the FCC gradually relaxed regulation of
telephone terminal equipment (e.g., telephone handsets, private branch
exchanges), known as customer premises equipment (CPE)."

[1]
[https://www.nap.edu/read/10235/chapter/11#298](https://www.nap.edu/read/10235/chapter/11#298)

[2]
[http://bpastudio.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/471/hout/telecomHistor...](http://bpastudio.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/471/hout/telecomHistory/)

[3] [https://www.mackinac.org/6033](https://www.mackinac.org/6033)

~~~
dbt00
I think the post you're responding to is thinking of the unleashing of non-
Bell-owned equipment on AT&T lines. This was prohibited by AT&T until the FCC
forced them to drop this provision. Commonly known as the Carterphone
decision, this happened in 1968. Fax machines, modems, answering machines and
other devices were mostly only possible after this change.

~~~
jpollock
Correct, that is what they are referring to. However, they are directly
linking it to the 1984 breakup, which was not what allowed it. Thanks for the
name of the decision [1], I had a hard time finding a reference. :)

So, yes, it's an argument for regulation, but not for breaking up a monopoly.
:)

There are many good reasons to break up monopolies, but their thesis is that
the 1984 breakup led to the development of ISPs because people were all of a
sudden allowed to plug random things into the network.

[1] Carterfone Decision:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone#Landmark_regulatory...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carterfone#Landmark_regulatory_decision)

~~~
graybored
case by case, maybe one is not directly linked to the other.

however in the mindset of ATT and telco management, all these things are
linked. It's like when Microsoft supported Apple or soft pedalled some of it's
legal case against linux in the late 90s and early 2000s - it wasn't directly
linked to the government suing them for bundling a web browser circa late 90s,
but in the management of Microsoft, they had to gauge their decisions against
whether the government might object to their behavior, essentially whether
their "brand" with the government regulators would be damaged if they, say,
systematically obliterated linux the way they did Dr Dos in the late 80s/early
90s.

------
ilaksh
Good article. I hope that trust-busting becomes popular again.

The article did not mention technological intervention in this situation. I
believe we will eventually move past the technopolies and decentralized
technologies will play a large part.

In my opinion the power and scope of some companies overlaps with or even
effectively supercedes government in some ways. To me these are demonstrations
of the obsolescence of current government structures.

The all-encompassing networks provided by these monopolies are extremely
useful and I believe the main reason we tolerate them. They provide a
platform.

Decentralized technologies are becoming increasingly capable and popular. The
only realistic alternatives to the giant monopoly companies are platforms
built on decentralized technologies. I also suspect that for government to be
able to keep up or be effective it also needs to be decentralized and possibly
integrated in some way into the decentralized systems or metasystems.

------
yonran
The moat that each tech company owns is its network. Rather than trust-busting
these companies up into their different businesses, I think it would promote
more competition to impose network interoperability requirements once the
network is entrenched for too long.

A useful example is craigslist: a company with virtually no innovation for
decades that still dominates the classified listings space. Other companies
that try to offer a better experience face the hurdle of creating their own
network or attempting to scrape craigslist’s items (and then being kicked off
by their lawyers). What regulation would allow meaningful competition? A
policy that requires craigslist to provide an API to competing firms for
reading and writing at a reasonable price, and a requirement that changes to
the network not favor craigslist vs. other firms.

~~~
kauffj
You don't need new regulation; you just need to get rid of existing
regulation.

It is currently illegal to build third-party applications once the first party
tells you to stop.

Craigslist actually was involved in the court case that cemented this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist_Inc._v._3Taps_Inc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist_Inc._v._3Taps_Inc).

~~~
ucaetano
> It is currently illegal to build third-party applications once the first
> party tells you to stop.

No, it is illegal to access the data of a third-party with your own app if
that third-party doesn't allow you to do so.

------
sabalaba
Surprised that HN has this sort of myopia in tech history. Are things really
different this time? Standard Oil, U.S. Steel, Bell, IBM, Microsoft, AOL Time
Warner. Cries for antitrust action are often a bellwether for organic
disruption. A lot of the discussion here is about how to "organically" break
the trust via regulatory changes such as repealing CFAA, more scrutiny around
acquisitions, etc.

It's not possible to understand the first order effects (let alone second and
above) of regulation. Doing so without using the mighty/crude hammer of
antitrust would presume that one knew how to organically disrupt these
companies. "Oh! If only other people were to prevent Google from making all of
these acquisitions we would have more competition in search!" "If only small
companies could build 'third-party apps' legally!" Once you substitute out the
ever-wise HN commenter with a member of our legislature does the absurdity of
these statements become clear. Can we at least have the humility to say that
we don't know how to disrupt these companies? There is already a massive
profit incentive in the form of the net profits to be competed for. The answer
to the question "How do you beat Google?" is for the market to answer.

Before trying to come up with a regulatory solution, it's worth stepping back
and realizing that if you knew exactly how to beat Google, you'd hopefully try
and do it.

------
rifung
I work for Google, opinions are my own.

Have there been any studies or anything on how having or breaking up large
companies affects a country's competitiveness on a global scale? I feel like
an extremely large company may be more competitive but this may come at the
expense of other companies in the same or other industries.

FWIW I personally agree with using antitrust to break up companies that don't
harm consumers despite currently benefiting from the system.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I am not sure if fear of China is an adequate justification to allow rampant
misconduct of a corporation here. Consider that we could just the same argue
that having a minimum wage that's (still woefully inadequate, but higher than
China) also significantly harms the competitiveness of our country's
competitiveness in many industries on the global stage.

It would probably be better to deal with issues of other country's power via
trade agreements and political pressure.

------
pradn
One complement/substitute for this approach is mandating open standards. If
Facebook had to be part of the Fediverse or something like that. The standards
could be managed by a third-party, something like the Federal Reserve for
APIs. This way they can move to accommodate fast-moving changes and
competition from companies in other countries.

------
x220
Would trust-busting do any good? The main reason no practical alternatives to
Facebook exist is the network effect. The main reason that competitors to
Google don't do well is that people will just use the search engine that
returns the most relevant results (unless your internet connection is
censored). The only practical solution is regulating ethical behavior of these
incomprehensibly powerful corporations.

~~~
stcredzero
_The main reason no practical alternatives to Facebook exist is the network
effect._

Doesn't it creep you out that one company has a monopoly on the social graph?
When we busted up Ma Bell, we basically put into place standards for
interoperation. What if we had a law mandating social graph companies open
themselves up for interoperation once they reach some critical threshold of
size? Basically, the idea is that once you're massive enough in social media,
you don't get to hold onto your lead purely through the network effect.
Staying at the top, just because you're at the top doesn't really promote the
general welfare of society or motivate people to make better products.

 _The main reason that competitors to Google don 't do well is that people
will just use the search engine that returns the most relevant results (unless
your internet connection is censored)._

At home, I use Duck Duck Go. It gives good enough results but comes with a
better reputation with regards to privacy.

~~~
twblalock
> What if we had a law mandating social graph companies open themselves up for
> interoperation once they reach some critical threshold of size?

If we open up Facebook's data to other companies, what makes you think those
companies are willing and capable of securing the data and respecting user
privacy?

Facebook having all of that data is bad enough. Requiring Facebook to share it
with other companies would not make that data more secure -- but it could
definitely make it less secure.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
For one, where sharing of data is concerned, none of this is about forcing
Facebook to give your data to some random third party that asks for it. It is
about you as a user being able to demand from Facebook that they make your
data (or some selection of it) accessible to some third party of your choice.

But also, and maybe more importantly, interoperation does not really
necessarily require any sharing of data. Think the telephone network: All
telephone network operators world wide do interoperate, which is why it
doesn't matter where you are a customer, you still can call any other
telephone on the planet. But that doesn't mean that those telcos somehow share
data of their customers, apart from the particular calls that happen between
customers of two different telcos.

Also, one way in which Facebook could be forced to share data would be for
migration to a different service: If you think Facebook is abusing your data,
you could move to a different provider, and Facebook would have to allow them
to pull your data over and then delete it on their side--and all that without
you losing contact with people who stay on Facebook thanks to enforced
interoperability.

~~~
stcredzero
_But also, and maybe more importantly, interoperation does not really
necessarily require any sharing of data._

DRM actually has a potential for societal good. We should make companies like
Facebook subject to DRM around _our data_. DRM is subject to the same
asymmetry as privacy. Privacy for individuals is a societal good, in contrast
to governments and big public companies, which should be as transparent as
possible. Likewise, DRM used by big companies and organizations against
individuals is bad for individuals and societies. However, DRM used on behalf
of individuals to protect them from big companies would be a societal good.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Well, except it doesn't, because it necessarily either doesn't work or it is
centrally controlled.

What does help is simply encryption and decentralized services, no need for
DRM.

~~~
stcredzero
_Well, except it doesn 't, because it necessarily either doesn't work or it is
centrally controlled._

Putting in another hoop for abusive corporations to jump through does have a
function. There would be additional opportunities for whistleblowers to spot
it happening, opening up the company to legal and regulatory action. Also, it
wouldn't necessarily have to be centrally controlled. 3rd party companies
could be hired to do the administration.

 _What does help is simply encryption and decentralized services, no need for
DRM._

DRM could well be implemented as encryption and decentralized services.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> Putting in another hoop for abusive corporations to jump through does have a
> function. There would be additional opportunities for whistleblowers to spot
> it happening, opening up the company to legal and regulatory action. Also,
> it wouldn't necessarily have to be centrally controlled. 3rd party companies
> could be hired to do the administration.

In which case DRM doesn't do anything, but regulation and whistleblowers do?

> DRM could well be implemented as encryption and decentralized services.

How would that work? You don't have control over your own machine, but
everyone else does?!

DRM is the idea that your property has a function that controls what you can
do with your property based on instructions from a third party ... who would
that "decentralized third party"(?) be? And what would even be the point of
that? I am not sure I even understand what kind of construction you have in
mind that would qualify as DRM and also be useful for the end user in any way.

------
mark_l_watson
That was a good read. Having made a good living from programming since the
early 1970s, I would like to give something back, but other than creating
content and software with sharing licenses, I am not sure how to proceed.

I used to feel good about donating to EFF, ACLU, and FSF but I have reduced my
donations because I don’t feel like they are doing much good. I have read Tim
Wu in the past and although he helps us understand the power dynamics of
monopolies and controlling platforms, I don’t really get any actionable
suggestions from him. Same could be said for this article: a good read, but
left me wondering what, if anything, I can do to help.

------
personjerry
At the heart of the article, the assertion that the power of these
corporations is threatening our government implies that this is a problem --
which in turn implies that government is somehow superior to corporations. Why
is this necessarily true?

~~~
elefanten
It doesn't have to imply that government is outright superior to corporations.
It would be sufficient to imply that neither should have overwhelming power
over the other.

------
cat199
1) Doesn't seem so unsexy to me - though I havent gotten any in a while
(actual trust busting that is)

2) If raising the issue, why start with these 2?

    
    
       Many bigger and much more entrenched fish in our sea

------
LifeLiverTransp
But the factors that grew this giant remains, meaning this will turn into a
whack-the-mole where nothing changes but the name and owner of the company
that reeincarnates the by nature centralized public service these companies
provide.

I would suggest a partially privat solution. Meaning. The public owns such
projects, once the investment was returned. Sort of a lease from the allmende,
that always returns -as rewards for the maintenance of investment. And any
company can temporary (1 year max) own this infrastructure, once it
contributes signifantly to it.

------
ufmace
> Tarbell’s 19-part exposé on Rockefeller’s Standard Oil would mark a turning
> point in setting public sentiment against the trusts.

Seems modern tech monopolies have it much better, with far more control over
the information the public sees and can share with each other. Particularly
when they start buying up newspapers. Whatever the practicalities of going
against them in this way, that's going to cause complications.

------
fouc
Trust-Busting implies that we have to go out of our way to identify and bust
monopolies every 10-20 years. That's the wrong fix here. Instead we should
focus on finding alternative solutions that reduce the tendency to form these
huge corporations or conglomerations. And encourage more
companies/competition.

------
kryogen1c
As a self-defined libertarian, I think one of the most critical functions a
government is responsible for is anti-trust and Monopoly busting. This is one
of the critical issues of our time, but is only a symptom of the corruption of
Congress, which is a deep topic in it's own right.

Free markets are like any hierarchy, and if theres no regulation mechanism the
powerful will dominate the less powerful. I think history and established
economic and game theory is fairly universal on this point.

I'd be interested to hear an argument that these international
megacorporations without meaningful competition don't need to be broken up.

~~~
kevin_b_er
This doesn't sound like a liberatarian, at least not in the US. The one with
the strongest competitive greed who wins the most money/power is viewed as the
end-goal and the most successful under the ideology. Thus, a monopoly is
really the end-goal of US libertarianism for they had the highest wealth and
are assumed to have the highest drive to have the most wealth. Libertarianism
opposes that the will of the people should constrain avarice or rich and
powerful. Greed is always good under libertarianism. The philosophy is
particular popular for the rich because it is a tool to prevent the will of
the people from constraining their power through wealth.

So, Libertarianism blames regulation itself as the cause of monopolies because
they look mainly at regulatory capture, which is done through greed-based
corruption of government. Libertarian philosophy would view reducing the
regulation, and thus any constraint on Facebook's avarice, as the solution to
Facebook's monopoly.

So, you shouldn't, as a libertarian, propose trust-busting regulation for
Facebook, as this is the opposite of libertarian.

~~~
feanaro
There is plenty left in the libertarian philosophy even if you take away the
concept of idly sitting by, watching perverse, runaway growth. For example,
ideas like bounding government power and reducing it to a few minimum
functions and letting the market handle most things by itself. This does not
necessarily imply letting the market go _completely_ unchecked and requiring
it to serve _every_ need.

I think that _decentralization of power_ is one of those profoundly
libertarian ideas that is not often explicitly recognized as one.After all, a
corporation in which power is extremely centralized is hard to differentiate
from a government. Furthermore, if there is no one keeping it in any kind of
check, what is preventing it from becoming a totalitarian government?

Markets work best when there is at least some level of decentralization. In
other words, when you don't let any entity acquire a significant portion of
total power.

------
tropo
Will we ever again break up a monopoly?

The attempt instantly becomes a political battle. The moment a politician
takes sides, the other party opposes, and the initial politician's party backs
him up. Politicians collect lots of money. There is then a highly politicized
court case which the company drags out until there is a change of political
power. Once political power changes, the government purposely sabotages their
own case until the company wins.

------
gajeam
Lot of people talking about third-party application development in this
thread. It's also worth considering the opposite side of that, data
portability. GDPR already requires companies allow users to easily export all
their data [1], and if the US did the same it could really help mitigate the
network effect social media companies use to hold onto their dominance (i.e.
Facebook's properties)

[1] [https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/](https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/)

~~~
dane-pgp
Competitors to Facebook really need to be aware of the power of this law. In
particular, it says:

"The data subject shall have the right to ... transmit those data to another
controller without hindrance from the controller to which the personal data
have been provided, where ... the processing is carried out by automated
means... [, and] shall have the right to have the personal data transmitted
directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible."

If the data transfer is automated and direct, then a Facebook user should be
able to request that their posts on Facebook be continually synched over to
their Mastodon account (for example).

As Facebook is already a member of the Data Transfer Project [1], it would
look very bad for them if they only allowed data to be automatically synched
one way, especially if most Fediverse implementations supported two way synch.

Of course, once your data is fully synched, you'd never need to actually
browse Facebook itself again, and your friends on both Facebook and Mastodon
would be able to read your Mastodon posts. (I suppose Facebook would similarly
cite "data protection reasons" for why they can't synch your friend's Facebook
posts out to you on another site, though).

Anyway, I'm sure an EU anti-trust investigator would enjoy the opportunity to
examine claims against a big US social media company like Facebook, especially
if it were a small EU social media provider bringing the complaint.

[1] [https://datatransferproject.dev/](https://datatransferproject.dev/)

------
stcredzero
_Capitalism, according to all these men, is about frictionless, seamless
engorgement._

The writer is losing the thread a bit here. "Eating" in this context, means to
disrupt with a more efficient way of doing things. "Eating people" is
replacing manual jobs performed by people with automation and networks. If a
job can be "eaten" then that means keeping it is just top-down mandated make-
work.

 _More generally, he argues that we are, in fact, in an all-out return of the
Gilded Age — and perhaps only the clothing has changed._

We are, in fact, in yet another variation of a "Gilded Age." [1] Only the
clothing and particular cultural artifacts have changed. For years on this
site, I've been making an analogy between SV of today and "Mad Men." I think
people have misunderstood. In both cases, there's a tribe of people, recently
imbued with greater socioeconomic status, mostly from all of the same schools,
with the same subculture, dressing the same, consuming the same non-mainstream
products, becoming increasingly out of touch with mainstream people and
mainstream culture. In both cases, the interests of the subgroup have diverged
and come to odds with the interests of society at large. In both cases, many
members of the subgroup have come to look down upon the society and mainstream
culture they originally came from.

When it comes down to it, groupthink is the underlying motivating factor in
all of history's great tragedies and great evils. As an intellectual in 2019,
it behooves you to constantly look over your shoulder for its approach. Look
across the media landscape for its encroachment. Look the hardest at yourself
and those nearest to you.

([1] - yes, I know the one referenced predates the Mad Men milieu. There are
many gilded ages.)

------
x220
>Capitalism, according to all these men, is about frictionless, seamless
engorgement.

I could not care less about the opinions of thirty-something techies about
political ideologies. At a time when capitalism seems more attacked in the
West than at any other time in modern history, I think it is deceitful to talk
about capitalism from the point of view of the group of the most unethical
business leaders in America. We wouldn't tolerate someone defining socialism
from the point of view of dictators.

~~~
minikites
>We wouldn't tolerate someone defining socialism from the point of view of
dictators.

Venezuela, Stalin, Mao, etc all get brought up constantly in discussions about
socialism/communism.

~~~
x220
>all get brought up constantly

and are quickly met with "that's not real socialism".

------
simplecomplex
So, Google and Facebook suck up lots of personal information and some people
don't like that. Splitting them apart wouldn't change their business models.

Arbitrary destruction of their business doesn't do anything to protect
consumer privacy.

There's also nothing anti-competitive about either business. Using a different
website is as simple as typing a URL into your web browser.

