Slashdot Mirror
How To Tame the Tech Titans (economist.com)
dryriver shares an opinion piece from The Economist: Not long ago, being the boss of a big Western tech firm was a dream job. As the billions rolled in, so did the plaudits: Google, Facebook, Amazon and others were making the world a better place. Today these companies are accused of being BAADD -- big, anti-competitive, addictive and destructive to democracy. Regulators fine them, politicians grill them and one-time backers warn of their power to cause harm. Much of this techlash is misguided. The presumption that big businesses must necessarily be wicked is plain wrong. Apple is to be admired as the world's most valuable listed company for the simple reason that it makes things people want to buy, even while facing fierce competition. Many online services would be worse if their providers were smaller. Evidence for the link between smartphones and unhappiness is weak. Fake news is not only an online phenomenon.
But big tech platforms, particularly Facebook, Google and Amazon, do indeed raise a worry about fair competition. That is partly because they often benefit from legal exemptions. Unlike publishers, Facebook and Google are rarely held responsible for what users do on them; and for years most American buyers on Amazon did not pay sales tax. Nor do the titans simply compete in a market. Increasingly, they are the market itself, providing the infrastructure (or "platforms") for much of the digital economy. Many of their services appear to be free, but users "pay" for them by giving away their data. Powerful though they already are, their huge stockmarket valuations suggest that investors are counting on them to double or even triple in size in the next decade. There is thus a justified fear that the tech titans will use their power to protect and extend their dominance, to the detriment of consumers (see article). The tricky task for policymakers is to restrain them without unduly stifling innovation.
But big tech platforms, particularly Facebook, Google and Amazon, do indeed raise a worry about fair competition. That is partly because they often benefit from legal exemptions. Unlike publishers, Facebook and Google are rarely held responsible for what users do on them; and for years most American buyers on Amazon did not pay sales tax. Nor do the titans simply compete in a market. Increasingly, they are the market itself, providing the infrastructure (or "platforms") for much of the digital economy. Many of their services appear to be free, but users "pay" for them by giving away their data. Powerful though they already are, their huge stockmarket valuations suggest that investors are counting on them to double or even triple in size in the next decade. There is thus a justified fear that the tech titans will use their power to protect and extend their dominance, to the detriment of consumers (see article). The tricky task for policymakers is to restrain them without unduly stifling innovation.
There's no reason for a company like Google to even exist (or more recently, a company like Alphabet - the whole concept of umbrella corporations are a prime example of the BAADD acronym used.) If a company is with over 9 figures in a modern-day valuation they should simply be nationalized (and I'm far from a liberal, full-blown Trump supporter with zero regrets thus far, so please keep that in mind because I know that idea goes against the party divide pretty significantly.) This isn't to say the government should exist to fund other nations or wage wars (that we start,) but if a corporation makes it to that level it can only mean that they are gutting consumers, at which point the government can't really do much worse and it's a damned-good deterrent.
These giant tech companies do nothing more than show government (and citizenry) how broken the laws actually are. The market will never restrain itself, that's what regulation is for. That regulation needs to be properly balanced and reviewed a bit more often than once a century, or you wind up with newer technologies arising to show how outdated those regulations are.
That is the problem. Not businesses that take every advantage of the law to keep costs down, prices up, marketshare horded, and profits maximized. That's what they are SUPPOSED to do. Its the entire point of a corporation in fact. Expecting it to do anything else is foolishness.
Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft can easily hop to China or Europe. Throwing stifling regulation at them will do absolutely nothing other than cause fewer jobs here in the US. Instead, government needs to stand behind business so people have jobs and the economy stays well off.
As of now, this is working well -- the stock market is at record highs, the US is at full employment, where anyone who wants a job can get one, and companies are turning record profits. Hitting them with regulations will mean a recession, if not a depression, as they take their toys and go home.
Apple is to be admired ... for the simple reason that it makes things people want to buy
So do meth cooks. And like those scofflaws Apple bends a lot of rules and fosters a lot of bad shit in this world. They don't get absolution just because they're cool.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Meth dealers.
I took the tour while they were about to shoot a scene. It is a bizarre place.
BeauHD told me he'd thought about doing a shoot there but they don't pay amateurs enough. I told him the pay is still better than what creimer makes spamming these boards. And moreso than one could make writing kernel code in Assembly for "long term support' of 2.2. There are still i386SX out there.
APK
Just give it time. For some unfathomable reason Indian CEOs are the new hip thing. Eventually they'll all appoint one and be run into the ground.
Also, when exactly was that time where they were "making the world a better place", Mr. blatantly obvious PR shill?
Because the answer is: Never.
Profit doesn't improve the world. It does quite the oppposite, in its ultimate pointlessness. Look at all the stuff Gates has to do, to give his life meaning, because $100 billion still meant no mark of improvement of any relevance in the world.
Yet those companies literally harm each and everyone of us every day, to run behind the profit tin god.
*That* is why they are bad. Harm! That is literally the definition of bad!
So put your fuzzy-focused pseudo-American capitalism fetish delusion back in Trump Tower or wherever it came from.
How can one be so ridiculoisly delusional?
If this eas a movie, people would say, people. like you don't exist in the real world.
And hey, you probably don't. ...
Because if anything ever smelled too strongly of the shill perfume
The presumption that big businesses must necessarily be wicked is plain wrong.
This presumption is accurate. Corporations are required by law to make money. Share holders can exact retribution if they don't. People lose their job if they fail to steer their company in a growing profitable manner, regardless of whatever else.
Once these companies 'go public', they are beholden to the share holders to give a return on their investment. The ever increasing demand for more profits, more growth, well, it's what turns good ideas into evil entities we despise.
If company's goals were things like do X better for society, discover Y, provide Z service to the best of your ability, things might be better, but that's not how it is. Every company has the same goal: Make more money for their share holders. Period. Every other consideration is secondary.
Every corporation I've ever seen has done one of two things: Get bigger, or disappear.
... back in he days:
TREASON.
20 years prison. Maximum sentence.
For both the politician ("representative") and the "lobbyist".
And the second I have the power to make it so, that will happen. Retroactively for the last 150 years.
Innovation that relies on thievery is not innovation, in fact it is contrary by definition. Big business is indeed not necessarily wicked, but big tech *is*. Most of these companies would collapse if they were required to be ethical, and that is also perfectly telling. The biggest absurdity is the notion that innovation is only possible outside of the realm of ethics and decency. That's not a justification, it is an excuse, and it is reprehensible.
Wow, this is a load of horseshit. He's discounting science and calling it "fake news", why? Simple, it doesn't fit the narrative that he's trying to sell you.
Evidence for the link between smartphones and unhappiness is weak. Fake news is not only an online phenomenon.
I can tell you for a fact that adults addicted to their smartphones just kinda check out of being parents and only do the most superficial component of parenting. They aren't neglecting their children but they also aren't involved in their lives in any meaningful way. There's a new generation of children being raised by zombie parents because of these damn machines and it's going to lead to an increasingly and strangely fucked up future for society. These devices could be great tools but there is far more profit in making money off of neurohacking people which results in screen zombies.
It's ultimately up to the individual to decide how they live their lives but there is nobody warning them about the danger smartphones present.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Make the fines a percentage of gross worldwide revenue.
Problem solved.
I really like the idea of nationalizing companies that are too big to fail, but I can't think of any way of having a turnover that doesn't involve:
(a) existing employees and shareholders looting the company of all assets before the government takeover, or
(b) systemic fraud involving massive webs of shell companies trading tiny percentages of large companies and/or periodically re-branding every company big enough to be on the government's radar.
Imagine if the US government tried to take over ownership of one of the tech giants... anyone want to bet that they wouldn't start up a 2nd company that does the exact same thing, and then start advertising to get the customers end employees to switch to the new company, so that the government would be left holding a huge bag of shit?
Bullshit. If there are a larger quantity of providers, they compete harder and customers have more choice. Japan had 7 viable car companies that kicked the ass of our 3 in the 80's.
The only place I see it being a problem is cross-country coverage. But the co's can make roaming deals with other carriers.
Oligopolies consistently have the worse customer service in surveys among different products that have fell under oligopolies/monopolies.
Table-ized A.I.
Tech titans never last
HP was a tech titan
IBM was a tech titan
Want was a tech titan
So was DEC
In mobile phone, Nokia was a tech titan
So was Blackberry
In RAM chips, Toshiba / NEC / Fujitsu used to control the DRAM chip
In PC, Gateway was a tech titan, so was Osborne
How long their 'titanship' lasted?
FB, Google, Amazon, Microsoft might be 'titans' now --- how long before they become 'titan-no-more'?
That is a lot of handwaving with no supporting evidence. The pass given to Apple is the most laughable part. This piece is not up to The Economist's usual standards.
This is not about tech companies. There is a general problem with the way our system is set up whenever a company (representing the desire to make money) is large and powerful enough to make demands from a government (representing the diverse needs of the people).
Whenever one desire can subdue all other desires, you have something we call addiction in psychology. And the general agreement is that it's a bad thing, unhealthy for the whole organism.
View societies as organisms (living systems theory, in case you are into such fields) and many faults of our system become painfully obvious.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Their users are the ones really in charge and the ones who should force any company to behave properly. Clients shouldn't be hysterical fans, members of cults or suckers blindly believing that (big) companies really care about them. Users shouldn't be understanding with even the slightest problem and actively contribute towards creating a monopoly-free internet/world; they might, for example, try to use as many alternatives as possible or make worldwide legislations restrict their activity.
Big internet companies behave as they do because their users allow them to do so. There are many different options, changing almost any aspect of your online/computer activity is quite easy and your voice can easily be heard by a relevant number of others. Motivatedly critise, don't buy into their loyalty crap and never forget that they get paid to give you exactly what you want. Same ideas apply to any other entity trying to trick you into misunderstanding the reality master-slave (logically, never seriously applicable between human beings, but between people and what is meant to serve them) like governments, legislators, banks, groups-of-economists-or-other-lobbies-wanting-to-rule-whatever or similar.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
For the most part, these aren't tech companies. They are web companies. Don't get it confused.
They are an important part of the industrial ecosystem, but they are a superficial layer and the real meat is below.
The greatest thing about capitalism is that it fully embraces the unfairness of life, and in fact, uses it to produce something worthy.
There are haves and have-nots. This goes far beyond mere money. Life is completely unfair, top to bottom. But in a capitalist society, it doesn't have to stay that way. A have-not can become rich by mass-providing something that the rich have to all his fellow have-nots.
Just two generations ago, the ability to quickly research something and gain an insight that might give you a competitive edge was limited to people with access to research libraries and experts. Today we have the Internet. Yes, the Internet is full of sludge, but that's only on its bottom. What runs on top is extraordinarily valuable information. And all that value now rests in the palm of everyone's hand.
Government funded the research phase of the Internet, and it was a spectacularly good investment. But it's only in hindsight that we can say that, only after capitalism mass-produced it. Can you imagine what an Internet run by the government would look like?! I shudder to even think.
Embrace the unfairness of life and exploit it. Be creative and courageous. Don't rely on the government -- of all institutions! -- to make life "fair". Life in North Korea and Cuba is what government's idea of "fair" looks like.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Why do we share our pictures of food and cats on facebook instead our own blogs with our own rights management?
Why do we follow on twitter, instead of subscribing to the same authors' rss feeds?
Because we want simple, and "free". We're stupid, and cheap. Alternatives are too complicated, and cost money.
Big tech can develop once, deploy for a billion users. At minimal cost, far lower than the value of the information they collect.
Alternatives may be existing, but they are hiding pretty well from the average person.
After reading the article, summary and the non-hidden comments, I noticed that Microsoft was only mentioned once. It was mentioned in the article, only in passing reference to reforms surrounding litigation.
This is ridiculous. Microsoft, Intellectual Ventures, and their trolls have been a tax to innovation for decades.
1
2
3
In addition, they use their global footprint to avoid taxes on multiple continents.
a
b
c
d
e
How can the summary and so many comments utterly fail to mention this?
Slashdot, you should know better than to allow this garbage on the front page. It's short and yet still packed with unfounded claims and base assumptions that are far from normal, yet the author makes no attempt to explain or justify these absurd assumptions. In a world where we have to make phone lanes and have teenage suicides at new highs despite rising quality of life, I fail to trust this author's disingenuous claim that there is a weak link between smartphone addictions and happiness.
Slashdot, you should be ashamed for calling this news. It's comment bait, that's it; and why you are losing more of your audience every month.
The people who work at these companies have picked a fight with a very large group of people. In the end, their companies are going to pay out many billions of dollars.
"Much of this techlash is misguided."
Lets list some top shelf, recent bad things happening at the big tech giants:
- Google is suppressing relevant links in your search results that don't agree with their world view and/or whatever country you are searching from. If a conservative organization that controlled 90% of all search was doing this, it would be wall to wall media coverage, but the truth is Google is warping reality, rather than using straight relevancy to your search terms, now they are also deciding what is relevant.
Google must be regulated as a common carrier to protect the free exchange of ideas (a ubiquitous search engine is the very definition of a common carrier), and only a very narrow list should be censorable, and that list must be defined by the government with federal oversight and transparency and accountability to the people, not some unaccountable corporation. For example, sites inciting actual unjustified violence (in their content, not in some random user generated comment), sites promoting violent jihad, sites promoting harming children, etc.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articl...
https://www.usnews.com/opinion...
https://www.reddit.com/r/googl...
- Google and Facebook combined control 60% of all advertising revenue on the web, and routinely block content from receiving revenue if they don't agree with it (conservative video blogs on Youtube for example.) No other entity has more than 5% market share of online advertising. http://fortune.com/2017/07/28/...
- Google recently fired an employee who was asked for input on their internal hiring policies. When he highlighted a number of reasonable, demonstrable facts that contradict Google's diversity initiatives, one of his upper level managers leaked his memo to the press and he was subsequently fired (they are now facing a massive class action lawsuit, and more and more stories of the fascist intolerant alt left behavior at Google are coming out.) (no citation needed, well documented on slashdot.)
- Facebook first facilitated Russian (and likely Chinese and others) meddling by allowing false advertising stories to run during the election, then they tried to implement news censors, the vast majority of which were targeted against conservative sites, to the point that there was massive backlash and they got hauled in front of congress to explain WTF they were doing. They utilized blatantly biased censors as well as sites like politifact (which has very little facts beyond the actual name, and is a demonstrated shill for the alt left and not some non-partisan group) and the ADL (also an alt left hit squad group with zero credibility to anyone who has been paying attention).
https://gizmodo.com/former-fac...
https://www.washingtontimes.co...
Some concrete examples of conservative banning: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/20...
- Twitter has been caught red handed gleefully describing how they shadow ban people for expressing political views with which they disagree, rather than advocating anything objectively wrong. The political bans have been 90% right leaning people. Those on the left who have been banned have been advocating actual violence, and often associated with the terrorist group Antifa.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
It's very unlikely the strategy of splitting the monopoly will work online. How would you split Google search, force half the planet to use a different search engine? People are the true source of Google fortune - so we should have a voice and a seat at the table. And the data they amassed should be put to use for the benefit of everyone (and increasing competition), not just for their profit.
"Much of this techlash is misguided. The presumption that big businesses must necessarily be wicked is plain wrong."
Utter nonsense. When a company grows beyond a certain scale it serves as a shield for wrongful even criminal acts by diffusing responsibility in the pursuit of the bottom line. Amoral actions are not only encouraged, they are rewarded. There is a reason a disproportionate number of C-level executive exhibit psychopathic behavior. Tech, not tech, it is a problem of scale more than a problem of line of business. That tech can be applied to manipulate people in ways other industries cannot is an ancillary yet equally important issue but size is the crux. The problem rests in a lack of accountability and the flaws of human nature in monopolies or quasi-monopolies. Should Alphabet be broken up or at a minimum put on a short leash? Without question. But you can say the same thing about Amazon, Wal-mart, for-profit health care insurance companies and pretty much any energy conglomerate and most pharmaceutical companies.
Who cares if people are harmed or their rights usurped so long as there is a shareholder dividend to be had and no C-level executives are going to be held accountable? Right?
Reduce companies to sizes where regulation is effective and painful when violations occur. Start putting CEOs of offending companies in prison - and I do mean hard long time in real prisons and not a Federal country club - and you'll start to see a return to more ethical business practices and accountability that goes beyond the balance sheet.
Until then, corporatism will remain the new fascism.
I think the overaching problem with all of this is that these massive organizations are for-profit corporations. A search engine with 90%+ marketshare, a social network with 2 billion people’s connections and growing, a communications platform connecting half the world, would be ok if they were decentralized, federated networks running on public coulds with data protected by their owners and secured with crypo.
We can benefit from technology without giving ourselves and our data over to corporations.
Companies of that size should NOT be nationalized. Doing so would not remove the centralized anti-competitive power that is so tempting to misuse. It should be broken up into many smaller companies.
In an ecosystem the more biodiversity there is, the more resistant an ecosystem is to disruptive change. This also holds true to economic fields. If you only have three banks managing all of a countrie's finances, failure of one or two will cause dire problems for the entire economy, top to bottom. If there were two hundred banks, two could fail, and it woulden't cause more than a minor ripple.
Decentralization and diversification will make any industry more competitive, more resistant disruption, fiscally efficient, and nimble. This is good for the consumer, the economy, investors, and society as a whole. It also reduces the ability of individuals to tamper with laws to their own ends via graft and bribery.
The fix to make this happen everywhere would be a simple one, too. Just outlaw a corporation from owning another corporation, and prevent any consolidation or acquisition activity that gives a corporation grater than 25% of a market. Aside from an occasional Microsoft that grabs 90% market share without buying anyone out, this will stop quite a bit of predatory activity by corporations.
We should give corporations as much leeway as possible to compete and profit, but encouragement to do so in a way that isn't creating efficiency through predatory behavior or eroding the stability of the market.
Keep government out of the business of trying to run companies, and in the business of providing infrastructure, defense, social programs, etc. that private industry does not. Until they get that perfected, they don't need more on their plates....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
"...The presumption that big businesses must necessarily be wicked is plain wrong" - This opinion is misguided. The massive tech giants are well known for utterly destroying any semblance of a work/life balance. Idolizing a virtual slave-like mentality to the well-being of the company is not a laudable trait... in fact, that sort of workaholic mentality is in actually mental illness in disguise. Encouraging this sort of behavior is destructive and exploitative... so, yes, this sort of behavior is indeed wicked and wrong.
You were already told that this includes all taxes, it's in the short 2 page link you obviously continue to fail to understand both times it has been shown to you. Or are just lying for some reason?
Most comparisons like this include all taxes. You just believe what you want to believe, or are told to believe.
Innovation. The old tech titans were taken down by new tech titans.
First there is a problem.
Then those in tech address the problem. Often it explodes into many fields, businesses, business models even, and it is good.
Next those in some narrow minded corridors decide that the actual problem is others are making money by addressing the problem.
Next some perceived evil is imagined. And the solution is presented, by Opinions. They never suggest breaking up Mobil. Or General Motors. Or Boeing. Or the Economist.
We in tech are still not surprised. Next time crush The Economist first. Then we might talk.
But we will probably laugh. newbs.
Stopped reading as soon as I saw the part about Apple being a great company that just makes great products.
"The mind is a terrible thing to, um, uh, oh bollocks." -- Me
Us stupid little peasants feel so sorry for you. It must hurt so bad. Please, how can we make your lives better?
Seriously, though, for people who like to remind the world what superhero, rockstar, alpha dogs you are, you can be quite the whiny little bitches.
it's all about power, they have become too big and thus gained too much power.
they could use if for good or evil, most of the time a bit of both, but we remember the evil things longer.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I really like the idea of nationalizing companies that are too big to fail,...
Break them up. Employees wouldn't lose their jobs, and shareholders end up with shares in each of the new companies. We did it before with AT&T, but we've let them grow/merge to ridiculous levels again.
Just another day in Paradise
You wouldn't have to split search, but there's no reason Google search, and Chrome, and GMail and Google Maps, etc., all need to be in one company. Those could easily be broken up. Note that I'm not picking on Google...ideally, MS would have been broken up in the antitrust case previously, and others should as well.
Just another day in Paradise
The coordinated persecution by all the major ISPs (notably including GoogleFiber) of the operation of servers by ordinary residential (and mobile) internet access subscribers is what I see as the key element of the problem of lack of better alternatives.
https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/7522219498.pdf