Fighting Big Tech Makes for Some Uncomfortable Bedfellows

A monopoly is like Communism without the politics of Marx. Lenin designed a centralized economic system because he understood economies of scale. You can see him doing that math in his works that argue for a central command and control economy. Tech companies are trying to use the economy of scale to become more efficient and productive -- which is something Lenin advocated too. The problen as I see it is that now we're heading towards a centralized economy controlled by billionaire capitalist egomaniacs who think at least in part like Lenin thought. But this centralized efficiency winds up robbing people of choices. For example, you could only buy clothes from one store in Russia. All stores were just branches of that store. That was why Soviet women all wore the same brown tweed skirt. Without anti-trust laws, capitalism could wind up looking a lot like Soviet Communism, but without the cheap rent and free education. The KGB in its wildest dreams could not have gathered the kind of information on Soviet citizens that the tech companies are sitting on right now.

FOX/ Rupert Murdoch don't like Google and Facebook pure and simple because they are the competition!

Wow, lawmakers from both sides of the isle are coming together in a display of unity to take on the problem of big tech. This is a great example of bipar-- --Oh. Oh, nevermind. The NYT says it is awkard. Nevermind, it's not fantastic progress. It's just awkward. Nothing to see here.

This idea of breaking up these companies is a bit premature. They are on the big side, but there are many media companies and software companies that are bigger. Breaking these companies up will not make our data any safer. Since the use of their products are basically free, it won't make usage fees cheaper either. People are losing sight of the main thing we need to do - tax the rich. The companies that are too big are the banks. We need to focus our wrath on the bankers and the rich. They have been and still are the main problem. Let's wipe that smug grin off Jamie Simon's face.

Who should be in charge of Facebook, if not Mark Zuckerberg? That's a great question without an answer, but here are a few steps that should be taken to further the discussion: 1) Facebook should be forced by law to divest itself of many of its acquisitions. Here is a woefully incomplete list; some you may have heard of, some not: Instagram Face Lightbox Whatsapp Oculus PrivateCore Faciometrics tbh If you don't know some of these companies, you should find out about them. 2) Congress needs to pass and the President needs to sign a law making it illegal for any publicly traded company to issue shares with different voting rights. Mark Zuckerberg owns 25% of Facebook but has 60% of the voting rights. One citizen = one vote. One share = one vote. Back to the original question: Who should control Facebook? Answer: Whoever has the support of stockholders representing 50% plus one dollar of the market value. My guess is that today that's Mark Zuckerberg. One the day it isn't, he must be gone. Dan Kravitz

I never would have entertained such an idea until Amazon started delivering my packages to my neighbor instead of to me. FedEx or UPS don't do that. Never happened to me with them. But now Amazon is trying to Uberize their delivery services and drive FedEx and UPS out of business. Now the people bringing my stuff are just random people driving their own cars. I called their delivery customer service and was told that their drivers "don't always get the exact details right" when they deliver. It's my address, and the number is right on the door. And the one thing a delivery driver is supposed to know is how to get the package to the delivery address. I want FedEx or UPS or some other real professional service to bring stuff to my house. I honestly don't like having random people in random cars who don't wear uniforms knowing where I live and when I'm home. This Amazon attempt to take over delivery has pushed me into the Warren corner of BREAK THEM UP. That, plus the threat Uber poses to public transportation. Very bad for the climate for everyone to hail cheap rides in private vehicles instead of taking the bus. But this is where tech is leading us. It has to stop.

Does the editor ever question the premise of the article, or merely pointing out that people are not diametrically opposed on every issue and this is a curiosity piece?

For me the problem isn't left or right, it's the idiocy of the algorithms that our millennial bro-friends in Silicon Valley have unleashed upon the world. I lean left but I embrace large elements of the thoughtful right (The late William F. Buckley's National Review leaps to my mind). Intelligent debate is thoughtful. And the internet -- left or right, I'm sorry -- doesn't do thoughtful well. I have written in the past about the need for people to make informed choices. I fully understand that a staggering majority of my fellow citizens (whether they are glued to MSNBC or Fox News or "centrist" CNN) will choose to take a pass when given a choice to opt out. But choice (the right to opt out) is fundamental to the most foundational definition of freedom. So maybe Tim Wu and Steve Hilton are onto something. Let's disagree, but let's disagree in an environment where our thinking (and that's what it comes down to, sad to say) isn't being recorded and monitored while we voice our opinions.

Google has made information more accessible and thus has advanced human knowledge more than any other corporation. Amazon has saved millions of people billions of hours. So the new Luddites should focus on Facebook.

"On one side is the progressive left, whose members have been appalled by Facebook’s handling of pro-Trump Russian disinformation campaigns " And these people don't seem to have thought things thru. When large companies like Facebook are gone, do they think the demand to connect will just dry up? Or will Facebook be replaced by a bunch of Infowar clones spreading disinformation?

what is not strange is that Fox has misidentifed a minority. he is Tim not Nick Wu. typical first rate research and reporting from the fact free zone called Fox.

"Fighting Big Tech Makes for Some Uncomfortable Bedfellows" Sure does. Below are the top campaign contributors to Nancy Pelosi 2017-2018. Campaign Committee Fundraising, 2017 - 2018 Top Contributors, 2017 - 2018 Facebook Inc Salesforce.com Intel Corp Amazon.com Google Inc Data https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary/nancy-pelosi?cid=N00007360&cycle=2018&type=I

“Uninformed populists are showing up at populist conferences to call for breaking up Facebook and Google. Uninformed populists are going on populist TV shows to do the same. It’s awkward to prioritize Chinese businesses over American ones.” I fixed the subhead, maybe someone can help with the content?

Why does this headline have to say this. The headline can be this is how we work together across party lines. Once again the media works it’s own separating agenda.

It is common for liberals and conservatives to agree and to work for a common cause. All agree, for example, that democracy is superior to tyranny. Such agreement is "awkward" only for those with a binary worldview: you're either all good or all bad, all liberal or all conservative, all black or all white, all-American or all-Martian. This binary worldview used to be called called "false dichotomy" or "Platonic dualism". (Although, in fact, Plato knew this to be an error 23 centuries ago: see the discussion of the tallness and shortness of Simmias in "Phaedo".) Today it is often called "the Bush blunder" (21 September 2001: "You are either with us, or with the terrorists"). Anyone who recognizes the variety and complexity and splendor of the human condition knows that it's not "awkward", it's life.

The cry that "Conservatives are being censored" stems from the fact that conservatives are the ones spewing most of the hate speech. If the conservatives would preach love vs hate, then they wouldn't be censored.

Liberals must be as vigilant against the authoritarian left as they have been the authoritarian right.

Very crafty of Tim to send his alter-ego "Nick" to the appearance with Steve Hilton on Fox News.

It shouldn't be awkward.

"On one side is the progressive left, whose members have been appalled by Facebook’s handling of pro-Trump Russian disinformation campaigns and Silicon Valley’s consolidated power." Which disinformation campaigns are those, the buff pride Bernie, or the rally in Texas (not a swing state, once Hillary was the nominee it was going Trump) which attracted 10 Trump supporters, or was it the kittens meme? Perhaps the Jesus and Onanism one? The claims of some organized Russian disinformation campaign are a sorry, and invalid, excuse for Hillary Clinton working to elect Trump. Nor is the Internet Research Agency even part of the Russian state. Oh, and no, neither the Mueller report, nor the Mueller indictments of 2018, ever provided evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The report accepts such as proven, and the indictments made unsupported claims. Submitted July 15th 2:22 PM eastern

"On the other side is the Trumpist right, whose members see the power of social media companies to ban content as censorship and worry that the arteries of communication are controlled by young liberals." Sorry to break it to rightwingers and the NY Times, both Google and Facebook are censoring the left. Some subjects, not an encyclopedic list: poison gas use in Syria, solid cases against "Russia-gate", publications like the World Socialist Website, etc. Submitted July 15th 2:50 PM eastern

But don't conservatives and liberals have different reasons for wanting to break up big tech? As I understand it, conservatives think social media lean too far to the left, whereas liberals see too much uncensored false information (too much pro-Trump stuff propagated by malign actors).

The problem is a vast technological tidal wave being seen by people who still operate at the level of personal shmoozing. They couldn't have created the technology, can't understand it, don't want people they don't like using it, but would very much like it to serve their own purposes. They're likely to do things that make matters worse, mostly by regulating a monopoly into place rather than creating competition. Regulation tends to lead to consolidation in the long term. It leads to bottlenecks as appointed gatekeepers say what can pass, and what shall not.

Liberals and conservatives agree on general principles, like freedom of speech, but their interpretations of those principles move in opposite directions. The interpretations of the Supreme Court justices about freedom of speech diverged aggressively along ideological lines. Having witnessed that biased split on such a fundamental issue, I hold little hope for traditional antagonists in congress to settle on common ground regarding the regulation of Big Tech.

There is growing recognition that these tech companies are doing evil, that they are doing it intensely as a practice, and that they systematize their doing of it. The difficult question is how to stop it without creating as much evil as is eliminated. The one thing that seems certain is that concentration of market power that they enjoy operates to facilitate their ability to do their evil and magnifies the harmful effect from them doing it.

In this case strange bedfellows are united by a single common cause: the denial of civil liberties. The antitrust movement is just a tactic in the fight for the return of an American democracy.

Where were these conservatives in 2009? The too big to fail banks are still a threat to our economy! There are fewer today and they are bigger than when they blew up the global economy. Only one presidential candidate is talking about the need to break them up and restore the Glass Steagall act.

It’s not possible to be a thoughtful person AND a Fox “News” host. How such people square that circle defies logic.

When has the US ever really enforced its anti-trust laws?

The U.S. economy is 70% consumer-driven. Our commensurate addiction to the production of goods and services employs a lot of people. Given the oversupply of junk in our developed-world lives that does not suffice to enrich us as much as it clutters our lives, we are now an economy of make-work to a significant degree, and that is unstable as it is unsustainable. John Kenneth Galbraith discussed this at length 50 years ago. We are now coming to terms with a critical fact: our society cannot live on production and consumption to such a great degree when those elements are of marginal importance to our lives in a world that is increasingly fragile and put at great risk by our failure to address resource depletion, waste pollution, and overwhelming population growth. Maybe when the world seemed infinitely large, the over-production of ephemera to earn a living to keep dinner on the table wasn't much of a problem, but today the externalized expenses of resource depletion, waste pollution, and overwhelming population growth make it untenable and unethical. Put another way, trashing the planet for sheer survival is more comprehensible than trashing the planet only to make more unnecessary goods and services that are short-lived. In the former, we'd eventually die on a wasted planet having at least tried to survive, “die trying” as it were. In the latter, we'll all die on a wasted planet and be the waste itself. Ephemera will be the end of us all, and that is pitiful.

In calling for the breakup of tech companies, conservatives have a clear plan whereas liberals seem to be unknowing dupes. The conservative viewpoint is clear: Facebook is like if CNN had a monopoly on cable news. They want it broken up so that there's greater ideological diversity in social media, just like there is in cable news. In other words, their endgame is the creation of "Fox News Facebook." I've never understood the liberal case for breaking up Facebook when it comes to hate speech and other issues. Do liberals really think the creation of "Fox News Facebook" is going to lessen right-wing extremism on the internet? There are other reasons for breaking up tech titans (such as Google squelching search results for competing companies). But if liberals actually used their brains, they would realize this intervention will make extremist activity on social media worse.

What's wrong with two sides agreeing that there is a problem? They can't even get that far in Congress. Also, what's wrong with holding digital platforms to the same standards for libel that, say, the New York Times is? The digital industry is mature, some of it makes tons of money, and those platforms that don't are small enough to correct problems within the wide cone of protection covering the intersection of libel and the !st Amendment. Frivolous lawsuits are always a hazard, but things have gotten out of hand.

Yeh, its backward. But have no illusions. Authoritarians must capture media to survive. That is what Trump and the GOP will be after. Authoritarian Guide to End Democracy: 1 Capture Party: GOP, Nov 2017. 2 Capture Law: DOJ and Apintments, Feb 2019. 3 Capture Journalism: Next. Authoritarian Guide to Keep Power: 1 Tyranny to keep opposition and minions in line.

Perhaps the most telling line in the article is "The detail here is who exactly should be in charge of a company like Facebook...". These actions by the two polar opposites in politics are not about making society better for all. Rather, this is a naked grab for power and controlling the media/speech. It is something that I would expect in a country such as China, Iran or North Korea, not in the US.

Obviously it would be an incredibly complex process to break up these big tech companies. An easier first step is for everyone to spend less time and money on these sites (or stop using them all together). Don't buy anything on Amazon today!

It is an issue that has brought some together. Even Zuckerberg has called for regulation. We need to be diligent to act, but not overreact. I wrote a book titled "Retail Apocalypse: The Death of Malls, Retailers & Jobs" that details how disruptive of a force Big Tech has become in retail. Netflix started out competing with a retailer, BlockBuster, but now it competes with Hollywood and TV studios. Microsoft and Apple have stores. Google is aggressively pursuing e-commerce. The same encroachment is happening across industries.