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Tech Giants Like Amazon and Facebook Should Be Regulated, Disrupted, or Broken Up: Mozilla Foundation (venturebeat.com)
The Mozilla Foundation has called for the regulation of tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook. From a report: Though tech giants in the U.S. and companies like Alibaba and Tencent in China have "helped billions realize the benefits of the internet," the report calls for regulation of these players to mitagate monopolistic business practices that undermine "privacy, openness, and competition on the web." They box out competitors, restricting innovation in the process, Mozilla wrote today in its inaugural Internet Health Report, "As their capacity to make sense of massive amounts of data grows through advances in artificial intelligence and quantum computing, their powers are likely to advance into adjacent businesses through vertical integrations into hardware, software, infrastructure, automobiles, media, insurance, and more -- unless we find a way to disrupt them or break them up." Governments should enforce anti-competitive behavior laws and rethink outdated antitrust models when implementing regulation of tech giants, the report states.
The Mozilla Foundation has called for the regulation of tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook.
If they want to have this happen they have to show how CONSUMERS are being harmed in some tangible (mostly financial) way. The mere fact that those companies have simply out competed their rivals is not sufficient and it's clear those companies have provided a lot of value whatever their flaws might be. None of those companies are monopolies or if they are they are extremely narrow ones. Amazon may be the big gorilla in ecommerce but they aren't a monopoly. Facebook may dominate social media but proving that harms consumers is going to be a tough argument.
Plus is it really realistic to call for regulation when the party that breaks out in hives whenever they hear the word controls both congress and the presidency? Never going to happen. This is the same party that seems to think net neutrality is some communist plot to reduce profits of big business. This is the same party that hasn't issued a single enforcement action out of the CFPB in over a year. Regulate? Not bloody likely.
Whoever is saying "so they are almost monopolies, what is the big deal?". Well, it is a big deal. The government in the US is starting to pay more and more attention. They don't want to hurt business in general, but they also do not want these near-monopolies to rule the US and much less the planet.
Mozilla is making this statement to educate the people. As much as I hated history as a youngster, the cliche of history repeating itself is very real. Go see how the public eventually is guaranteed to get screwed when there is a monopoly. Basic econ 101 states that monopolies will eventually charge more for crappier services because there is no competition. Smaller businesses are snuffed out, so those guys hate monopolies. Employees are taken advantage of, think Walmart employing so many in the US and the poor wages. Consumers get less choice, worse service, and higher prices, think one ISP in your town.
Amazon - There are still local shops and individual web stores a like. There are even other major everything store - AliExpress for one (dubious as that might be). Don't like AWS Microsoft and a whole tone of other guys like Rackspace offer compute and storage.
facebook - Many tentacles sure but few 'essential services' You can still login pretty much everywhere without a facebook account, you communicate without facebook using e-mail, WWW forums, and for you nerds IRC and news.
On the other hand just try and do anything on the net without Google something or other. If nothing else half the pages you visit probably use googleapis. You have essentially one other smart phone vendor to choose from if you don't want a Google account. Even if you do use another e-mail provider, chances are good your recipient is on GMAIL or Google for Domains. Search is there any serious competition that isn't re-branding Google? Bing? sort of if you don't care about getting terrible results comparatively.
Of the big three Google is nearly impossible to avoid, Amazon and facebook can be avoided with some effort if you desire to do so.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Zuckerberg could not explain why Facebook thought "Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day" and "Diamond and Silk" were such gross violations of "community standards" that they had to be banned. He also could not think of a single time that someone in their community guidelines enforcement had nuked a prominent left wing group on Facebook.
If a business as easily replaced as a local bakery cannot choose to impose its own standards on how it does business, a business as uniquely situated to exploit the market and block competition as Facebook sure as shit should not be able to do that. By law. (And before anyone cries "well what about a gay couple in Appalachia that can't find a baker." To that I would point out, if a gay couple can't find a baker willing to work with them where they live, they might want to first consider the OPSEC issues with having their "wedding" in that region if it's really that opposed to their orientation)