
States to Move Forward with Antitrust Probe of Big Tech Firms - JumpCrisscross
https://www.wsj.com/articles/attorneys-general-to-move-forward-with-antitrust-probe-of-big-tech-11566247753?mod=rsswn
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thecleaner
I am not sure why people are so anti big tech investigations. There is data
available that says they are among the top 10 lobbyists at DC. And who would
want this industry to be plagued with monopolies ?

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logicchains
Because they're clearly not monopolies in the usual sense, just maybe
oligopolies (note the "mono" in monopoly: it means "one"). If I want search I
can use Bing and get results that are usually good enough, sometimes even
better than Google's. If I want a phone, I can choose between Apple and
Android, and maybe even niche brands like Jolla. If I want to message
somebody, I can use Slack, WhatsApp, Skype, WeChat, Line, Telegram, Signal...
If I want to post pictures or videos of myself, there's YouTube, TikTok,
Facebook/Instagram. If I want to buy ads, I can buy from Google, Bing,
Facebook and Twitter. They're only monopolies if we define the class of
businesses so narrowly that each business model is a new class, such that each
firm is a monopoly.

Contrast that with e.g. home internet, where in many parts of the US there's
literally just a single company providing internet connectivity, a single ISP,
and it's illegal to start a competing ISP.

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bubble_talk
>>Contrast that with e.g. home internet, where in many parts of the US there's
literally just a single company providing internet connectivity, a single ISP,
and it's illegal to start a competing ISP.

You know, you might have shed some light on the core issue here. Usually for
tangible goods, it is about choice, at an affordable cost. In the case of tech
however, it is not about choice, but it is actually about _access_ , at an
affordable cost.

In theory, you could also just set up your own wireless mesh network to reach
the internet. Its actually really simple: figure out the basic hardware, and
then the software which goes with it, and then get the cooperation of your
immediate neighborhood, and then the community at large, and don't centralize
anything so you don't become branded as an ISP. Of course, the problem is that
it is prohibitively expensive, at least in terms of time. So you might say
"Well, it makes no sense. I will rather pay the very high price that my ISP
charges". So you have just perpetuated the ISP's monopoly, because there is
now one less person who has a good reason to potentially contribute to the
wireless mesh network.

You can use Telegram instead of WhatsApp, but now you don't have access
(because most of your friends are not going to move to Telegram just because
you are such an amazing friend).

But here is the important thing: the fact that all these tech giants use every
single dark UX pattern imaginable (to increase access on their products), and
don't allow unfettered data export (to decrease access for competitors), means
they are well aware of this and try to make access prohibitively expensive
(again, in terms of time) if you chose one of their competitors.

I don't have a solution, but I think that is why the monopoly label makes
sense.

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rahidz
One potential solution is to mandate some form of open cross-platform system,
where the big tech companies are forced to give up our data and allow us to
freely share it with others. So Telegram and WhatsApp would still both exist,
but if I download Telegram, I should be able to communicate with WhatsApp
users as easily as Telegram users.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
I*ve been wanting something like this for a while, but I usually use Facebook
as an example.

Right now, facebook is like a phone company that only allows folks to
communicate with others using the same company. If you could see pages on
other platforms and chat with users on other platforms - at least to an extent
- that would open up some space for competition and overcome the most
difficult part of building any "replacement" or competition to facebook.

All that said, I think this is probably a problem that is more complex than I
make it out to be and it might or might not be a feasible solution. The first
hurdle would be deciding on the standards for this stuff.

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bubble_talk
Given that Microsoft now owns GitHub, I would add them into this list too.

Also, perhaps some of the focus should also shift towards preventing such
acquisitions (Google + YouTube, Facebook + WhatsApp), which the tech community
at large can immediately identify as a potential monopoly threat. A simplistic
way to do this would be to look at how much the company pays for the
acquisition, but I am sure others here can come up with better metrics.

Also, Facebook should not be clubbed with the other companies in this list.
What they are doing isn't some poorly defined "tech monopoly consolidation".
They are just a completely fraudulent company headed by someone who should
probably not be running _any_ company. Tim Cook's point may have been self-
serving, but he was absolutely right when he said that "if I were Facebook, I
would not be in this situation".

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cameronbrown
No, GitHub doesn't give Microsoft any market control. Git is an open protocol
inherently.

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save_ferris
I've worked for 7 software companies in my career. Every single one of them
used Github, and I don't believe my experience was unusual in this regard.

Your argument implies that all Github does is service the Git protocol, but we
all know it does so much more than that. From a cloud-based source control
standpoint, Microsoft absolutely gained market control. An open protocol !=
cloud-based SAAS company.

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cameronbrown
GitHub doesn't do anything but centralise a bunch of services other companies
(including Microsoft) have SaaS for. There's literally hundreds of git hosting
platforms, kaban boards, issue trackers, CI services, code search tools out
there.. All GitHub does is bring it together. It does not really have any kind
of lock-in.

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blub
It does have lock-in because almost everyone is on GitHub and if they move
they lose access to that community.

e.: people mentioning "Github profiles" when discussing preparing for
interviews.

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antoinevg
Pet peeves:

* WKWebView is the only browser engine allowed on iOS.

* Apps can only be distributed through the iOS app store.

* No formal appeals processes based on established judicial principles for either Apple or Google.

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michaelvoz
?? So don't buy an iPhone? It's their ecosystem. You are owed nothing.

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AnthonyMouse
> So don't buy an iPhone?

You don't get to choose which phone the customer for your app already bought.

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r00fus
It’s amazing how well connected industries like big oil and big Ag seem to
operate with impunity while the nascent bad boys are put under the
investigation spotlight.

Perhaps Big Tech hasn’t hired enough lobbyists.

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logicchains
Big Oil and Big Ag aren't an existential threat to the business model of the
traditional news media, and the traditional news media still have a lot of
power to influence opinions.

An experiment: try counting the number of positive news articles about
Google/Facebook you see and compare it to the number of negative ones.

~~~
cameronbrown
The down votes are concerning. Regardless of your opinion on FAANGXYZ there
are other industries which aren't being talked about enough (banks, oil
companies, etc..), and we all know why. Talk about tech, yes, but we don't
need a sustained smear campaign like we've been getting the past 3 years.

~~~
Monroe13
But keep in mind the 3 year smear campaign followed a multi-year media love
fest for Big Tech.

The Tech industry has spent billions on PR. That spending propped up a massive
media infrastructure — how many reporters cover the tech beat? How many of
those reporters exist because their publication host events and conferences,
run advertorials, print “Special Features”, etc. paid for in large part by the
tech industry? — and the industry naively thought they had the leverage to
control the narrative. They were wrong and now the massive infrastructure they
built to help them market their products has turned on them. The amount of
noise being generated is a function of the size of the “problem” but it’s also
a function of the size of the media-industrial complex built by the industry.

Ag and Oil are also under scrutiny but you shouldn’t be surprised they get
less attention. They haven’t spent nearly as much over the last decade
twirling shiny objects to distract from poor business practices.

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this2shallPass
Sure, why not have investigations around antitrust and other issues from Big
Tech firms. Include Verizon / AT&T / and telcos, and do it for companies in
all other industries, too.

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blub
Because resources are limited and big tech is currently more harmful than some
lame US-only ISPs.

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akersten
This probe doesn't make any sense. Lawmakers are either seriously misguided,
or have an agenda against specific tech companies.

One aspect of the investigation claims that tech companies are stifling
competition and that the big names are monopolistic. I'd argue that's as far
from reality as possible - it's never been _easier_ to start a tech company,
and the barrier to entry is extremely low. You know a market with a high
barrier to entry, and literal laws preventing new competition? Internet
service providers. Investigate the ISPs instead.

The second aspect of the probe surrounds concerns about personal data and its
aggregation. But why bother investigating how Google et al are handling this
data when there are clear offenders who have behaved with gross negligence and
suffered no consequences (Equifax)? If those companies are not investigated,
what possible reason could there be to investigate Google (who have not
suffered a large-scale data breach) other than politically-motivated
harassment? You know what would be more productive than investigating big tech
companies - passing actual legislation like the GDPR to set up a framework to
prevent the kind of privacy issue these legislators are supposedly concerned
with.

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rickycook
have you ever tried to start a competitor to facebook? plenty of platforms
have, and you haven’t ever heard of them because whilst better, facebook has a
monopoly by way of critical mass... it’s almost impossible to pull significant
populations away from their platform: not even google could, and google plus
was an excellent product; far better than facebook in almost every way

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akersten
I've heard of plenty of social media platforms (Diaspora, G+, LiveJournal)
that have failed to gain traction for various reasons. I'm not convinced that
it's because one of their competitors was just too big. The same argument
could have been made that MySpace would never be dethroned a decade ago.

And I've also witnessed many successful social media platforms evolve in the
post-Facebook era (Snapchat, Twitter, Tumblr, TikTok). There are also a
plethora of small communities like DeviantArt, image boards, and specialty
forums. My point is, of course cloning an existing platform won't pull
populations away from it - users are sticky. That's true with any product.
Folks need a reason to move, and once they have that reason, they're happy to
do so. The beauty of social media is you don't even have to _move_ , you can
just have accounts in both places.

So I don't think the fact that a Facebook clone failed means that Facebook has
a monopoly on social media. They might have a strong momentum with users that
prefer Facebook-flavored social media, but given the market of all the
different available platforms, it doesn't seem like there is a lot of demand
for Facebook #2. Having a differentiator is the killer, and that makes the
difference between G+ and TikTok.

