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Elizabeth Warren Calls To Break Up Facebook, Google, and Amazon
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is proposing to break up technology companies, including Amazon.com, Google and Facebook, calling them anti-competitive behemoths that are crowding out competition. From a report: "Twenty-five years ago, Facebook, Google, and Amazon didn't exist. Now they are among the most valuable and well-known companies in the world," Warren wrote in a post on the blogging platform Medium. "It's a great story -- but also one that highlights why the government must break up monopolies and promote competitive markets." Warren's call also comes as Democrats have begun to plan for increased oversight of tech companies after winning control of the House in the 2018 midterm elections. On Wednesday, House and Senate Democrats introduced legislation to establish strong net neutrality protections that would look to prevent major service providers from using their power to manipulate how users experience the internet. Update: In a statement, Warren's team said that the proposal would also apply to Apple. "They would have to structurally separate -- choosing between, for example, running the App Store or offering their own apps," a spokesperson said.
Warren has to say something to separate herself from the throngs of Democratic Presidential hopefuls, and elevate her campaign into the limelight, but she doesn't really have a clue what her proposal would do.
Internet neutrality is poorly understood by Washington, and there would be throngs of salivating international competitors for the void created if the US government handicaps their domestic tech industry.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Separate the networks and prohibit them from selling to users, or having exclusive contracts. Then we have competing networks (though sometimes it might be cable vs dsl), and competing providers on top of the networks.
Breaking up Google would be a catastrophic disaster for privacy. Google has been good when it comes to protecting the data it has, and has every commercial incentive to continue to do so. Break it up and that data is now available to multiple companies, each of which has no incentive to keep it secret.
Breaking up Amazon? I don't see why. People buy from Amazon because it's a trusted entity and probably the only online store that's achieved that. The issues with Amazon, such as shitty employment conditions, would get worse, not better, if it was broken up into other companies that have to go into a race to the bottom as far as costs go.
What are you achieving by breaking either up that wouldn't be better solved with proper regulation? Nothing. You're removing a trusted retailer and replacing it with four untrustworthy ones, and you're duplicating the number of companies that collect your data. Who benefits? Russian hackers maybe?
Facebook needs to die. The other two can live, but I would like the government step in and say "You can't do that" occasionally. Even if it pisses Rand Paul off. Actually, especially if it pisses Rand Paul off, that's just a bonus.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Apple pays their dues. Al Gore had been paid tens of millions of dollars to be on their board of directors, Nancy Pelosi somehow come to own several million dollars worth of Apple stock, etc., etc.
So ignorant and short sighted. They have half the online sales in the US and the only reason they're at 5% of sales in general is that they have basically no physical locations.
Amazon isn't a monopoly, thankfully there is no legal requirement to be a monopoly in order to run afoul of antitrust regulations.
Why wait until they've completely taken over the economy when they're already breaking the law?
"Actually, especially if it pisses Rand Paul off, that's just a bonus."
That's the congressman you have a problem with? The one that actually tries to follow the constitution?
Your feelings are no basis for a system of government. The sooner you learn that the better off you will be.
Facebook agrees to allow you to:
You agree to allow Facebook to:
If someone really wants to agree to all that, it's not your or my place to stop them. My beef is only that it isn't made clear to people exactly what they're giving up when they sign up for a "free" Facebook account. The biggest culprit being lawyers burying the important details in a 50 page EULA of dense, obscure, and difficult to understand language. If the business model dies when you shine a light onto its inner secret workings, then it never deserved to operate in the first place. OTOH if people willingly choose to use the business after its inner workings are completely exposed, then it's not the government's place to stop the people from using it.