Sort of goes against their obsession with the free market and government interference as well.
Facebook, Amazon etc....
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Sort of goes against their obsession with the free market and government interference as well.
They have too much power to control and influence discourse, democracy and society at large.
It's not a right/left thing. Neolibs and 'free-market' right-wing boomers both worship corporations, to namecheck two groups on the left/right spectrum.
I'm pessimistic on the idea anyway. Breaking up Big Tech would do as much good as breaking up the Big 3 newspapers 60 years ago. Turn 3 into 6, and in a year all 6 will still be bought and paid for by the corporate establishment.
Think it's also naive to believe that breaking them up will dissaude them in any way from banding together unofficially to act as an oligopoly. We've already had plenty of examples of coordination between the tech companies - various 'banwaves' all being aligned etc.
It's been the right mantra for at least six years.
Have you been following the anti-trust proceedings?
That’s probably the easiest question you could ever ask, they’ve already done it for you with their branding.
Right! But hey, Google doesn't support Trump so its evil just like Bill Gates
Do you mean like splitting off Amazon Web Services from their traditional Amazon.com? That wouldn't really solve what people tend to complain about.
What do you mean about "right" mantra. You mean right-wing? or you just think its the correct thing to do. Why?
And nope, I haven't. Feel free to link an article of any key points you think are relevant though.
I agree with the bolded. But for me, there are tons of corporations that are much more worrisome for the future of humanity than "big tech". I'm more worried about oil and gas like the Koch brothers, big pharma that allowed things like the opioid epidemic to wreak havoc, traditional companies like Dow Chemical, Monsanto, banks like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, etc. Google is one of the major corporations I am least worried about having influence at the moment.
You used the phrase first? What did you mean by it?
You can't summarize five or six years worth of argument in an article. Basically it's a similar position as the oil companies at the turn of the last century except far worse as tech companies represent a challenge to the sovereignty of the nation state and all of its citizens.
I said right-wing mantra as in the mantra of right-wingere like Trump.
And I see far less existential threat to the "sovereignty of the nation state" from tech than the companies I already mentioned but that's just me.
What's worse today than a 110 years ago is that shares in tech companies (FANG stocks) comprise large amounts of value in pension funds, which means breaking them up would probably result in funds losing money and enraging members of the public who rely on them for retirement. The larger the companies get, the more powerful they get, the more complicated and painful it gets to break them up, which is why it has to be done sooner rather than later.
Fair enough - although it isn't a right wing mantra. It's one of those rare movements that has massive bipartisan support.
I agree. The interconnected nature of the economic system means there's a limited window within which to accomplish meaningful antitrust legislation. The thing is, if you force divestment the value doesn't disappear it merely changes hands. Short term loss for long term stability. It makes sense on too many levels for it not to happen (Sanders, Biden, Warren, Trump, and so on all touted a breakup and so have hundreds of congressmen and senators). It's doable.
Does it? Can you link evidence that show breaking up "big tech" to have "massive bipartisan support"?
It would also get some support from right wingers who are upset about Trump's social media bans, perceived anti-conservative bias via algos, Bezos owning Wapo etc., so in the end it would probably end up in a strange bedfellows coalition between Sanders, Warren, the Squad, and Trumpers.
The right wingers will have a moment of clarity and realise who they are working with and filibuster their own bill.
And this. 50 AGs investigating parallel to the DOJ's investigation which runs alongside broader antitrust movements. Popular with teaparty republicans and supposedly socialist democrats as well as a giant section of the moderates. That's as bipartisan as it gets.
https://news.yahoo.com/biden-taps-t..._yJjhDjGouHmjC-2aOR4GegdJ6YZBk4ccUEprmpjlZ8Jl
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Have the WaPo published anything negative about Amazon after Bezos bought it?
Interesting poll but I'm not buying it fully. I think certain types of young progressives and Trumpers are far more likely to respond to such a poll about Big Tech so I'd bet these results skew in that direction. Anyway, even if it's relatively accurate, I still believe Google and Amazon are not even close to as bad as all the companies I mentioned earlier, although Bezos should be paying his fecking taxes.
Using that logic you can basically disregard any poll. What kind of evidence would you take?
They've been covering the news just as they always have. The only reason Trump didn't like them is because they routinely published stories that revealed information he didn't want the public to know. So did the NY Times, Axios, and many other outlets that aren't owned by Bezos.
You have to break down any poll based on several factors including the methodology for how they are gaining their sample (which isn't always very clear) and how the questions are phrased (which greatly impacts results). Then consider that people answers in the abstract will different from both their behavior and what they might support in actionable items. People might tell a questioner they "somewhat support" a condition "such as undoing recent mergers as Facebook acquiring Instagram" but they spend over an hour on Facebook every day and buy things from Amazon multiple times per week.
Someone might support a specific example like undoing a FB-Insta merger but wouldn't support some arbitrary cleaver applied to every company that counts as "big tech". For instance, people mention Facebook and Amazon a lot but does "breaking up big tech" include Apple, the biggest tech company in the world? If FB and Amazon need to be broken up, why not Apple and Microsoft? Yes, I realize that some people think Microsoft should be but that road has already been driven on for years. These aren't really monopolies in the traditional sense. A person might just agree with the example, for instance, they want Amazon to stop showing Amazon products in searches, which is a fix that could be regulated, much easier, without any break-up. Hearings will likely result in some mild compromise regulation, such as "Amazon cannot prioritize Amazon brand products" .
They all got to where they are for a reason. Google, for example, consistently produces better results. They dominated their competition and became synonymous with internet search by delivering consistently superior results to other search engines that existed at the time and all the competitors. A massive right-wing movement to switch to Duck Duck Go was all over their media for half a decade yet it hasn't made a dent. Google, for me, is really most like 3M, one a company I have never seen anyone want the government to "break up". People vote with their dollars. If a majority really didn't want Facebook or Amazon to be what they are, they would stop spending money on them. Can't tell you how many times I've heard people complain about Amazon but then they buy stuff off Amazon all the time.
These issues are just too complex to reduce to a few multiple-choice poll answers. It's never as simple as "hey this 1200 person poll says the majority believe in breaking up tech so everyone wants us to come in and break up tech". A whole other layer is that bi-partisan polls might go out the window when reality comes in. From what I've read, I doubt a majority of Trump voters would trust a Democratic administration to break up companies, they want Trump to do it. So while the poll might be accurate at measuring something in the abstract, I don't think it would apply to actualities the same way. I personally, would never trust a Trump-McConnell effort to break up Google or Amazon.
Social networks by their very nature naturally will lead towards a "monopoly" even more than other businesses simply because part of their appeal is "everyone is on it". Most people don't want 10 social networks to connect to all their friends and family when they could have 1. I certainly don't, even if in the abstract, I might think Facebook has too much power. There will be niche social networks, like the Caf here, and ones with a different focus (image-based, or short message-based) but ultimately I think a main social network will naturally occur whatever regulators do. Do people really want a "conservative social network" and a "liberal social network". Trumpsters/Qanon tried to initiate a migration off Facebook to Parler and it failed outside their narrow niche.
Anyway, I don't see much happening. A lot of companies have been far worse for longer (the opioid industry, Monsanto, Koch Industries, etc) and they were not broken up and Microsoft's trial already set precedents I don't see breaking anytime soon.
@oneniltothearsenal
You not wanting monopolies to be broken up is not the same thing as the majority of other people wanting them to be broken up. And you keep insisting the movement is right wing. Again, it isn't.. You need to do some research on the issue.
You not wanting monopolies to be broken up is not the same thing as the majority of other people wanting them to be broken up. And you keep insisting the movement is right wing. Again, it isn't.. You need to do some research on the issue.
Yep, and it has been for a long time (going back to the 90s even). At the start it was about regulating data, now it's moved to specific companies whose control of that data is unprecedented. The monopoly angle is an added layer that hits political institutions from a parallel angle.
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I never said that no progressives support it just that it has been a massive thing from the Trumpsters in the past few years. And I explained the issue is much more complex and nuanced than can be measured by a poll like the one you linked. And I'm just stating the reality that most of this is just going to result in some regulations and concessions and maybe a fine or two.
That doesn't really establish it as a priority. AOC supports a lot of things.
Progressives are for it. So are right wingers. That's more bipartisan than anything else in Congress, spare perhaps the defense budget.
A more accurate statement would be some progressives are for it and the Trumpsters are for it. It probably also has as much bipartisan opposition as it does support, at least in the radical "break up" format. And that doesn't even begin to address all the nuances behind it like I broke down above. It's too complex and nuanced than simply bleating about "break up 'big tech'", especially the inherent inertia. Trump supporters don't even trust Biden to administer the vaccine, they aren't going to go all-in on some mythical Biden Admin-AOC plan to break up big tech.
I'm sure there will be some more regulations as there should be though. Doubt it will be anything more than what happened to Microsoft in the 1990s. Basically, good luck if you expect something radical to come out of AOC and Trumpsters alleged unification not his issue!
Jesus
It's a damn cult.
It's a damn cult.
In the case of a possible monopoly I don't think the 'people voting with their dollars' argument holds.
I think it's natural for any of the companies to dominate a certain niche. Take Google for example: Excellent search engine. And e-mail service, no problem. But when the also control the operating OS of my phone (android), the video content I watch (YouTube), my navigation system, etc it becomes a bit much. When regulators didn't break them up they did it themselves and created 'Alphabet'. So it shouldn't that hard.
The same for FB with instagram, whatsapp, News services, etc. The main reason I started using whatsapp over a decade ago was because I was quitting FB.
There being other evil companies isn't a very good argument either. I agree about the ones you mentioned being evil, but I think you're under-estimating the economic and social impact these tech companies are being allowed to leverage.
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The thing is people can just use other services. There are other search engines you could use, other email clients, and other video content. Sure there are only a handful of options out there but that's the nature of how ubiquitous certain technologies have become. You can't really have a single inventor invent some brand new cellular OS and have that compete because those projects are the product of a lot of very smart engineers and require a lot to operate at that scale. However, there are plenty of other options to the Google services you mention and no one needs any of Facebook's products. Even if you broke off Instagram and WhatsApp, I don't see how that would solve anything people are complaining about with social networks (for ex: mental health and FOMO, sucking time away from more productive activities, online bullying). Those are issues that come with the level of technology we have and they have to be managed irrespective of whether FB owns one social network or three.
You can more than function without choosing a Google or an Apple or an Amazon or a Facebook product if you so choose. You don't need to buy anything off Amazon. Anyone that thinks Amazon is "evil" should not purchase anything from them. Nobody needs Amazon. What they offer though is convenience. Buying from other vendors 1) takes more clicks and 2) means sometimes waiting longer to get what you want. Amazon is what it is because they found a way to leverage the psychological need for instant gratification. I don't think "break up Amazon" is going to solve the problems associated with poor impulse control and the psychological bias to instant gratification.
It's not really the same as an electric utility where you don't have other choices. Globally there could be more competition of course but then you get the xenophobic stuff of Trump raging against WeChat and Tik Tok. Chinese companies now face a massive uphill battle but things like Tik Tok and WeChat could help bring healthy competition. There are ways to encourage more healthy competition than trying to break up a company like Google.
I don't think the tech companies meet any classic definition of a monopoly. Heck, Intel and AMD are closer to an actual monopoly than any of the giants and you don't see anyone arguing to break them up. You don't even hear Apple mentioned when people say "break up big tech" which I find quite amusing. I just think it's a naive and misguided approach to improving society in an era of ever-increasing technological advance. We need new ways to look at things. The law is woefully behind and still trying to apply things like chattel laws to tech and the internet instead of modernizing (I guess that's what happens when you have a generation of boomers that refuse to relinquish the slightest control of power). Intelligent regulation piloted by people that actually know what's going on (IE not 70-80-year-olds like Feinstein and McConnell and not ideologues like Trumpsters and yes AOC) could accomplish far more.
So, I don't really see "big tech" as "evil" at all. In general, I don't think the existence of Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc is an overall ill for society. I think it's a net positive overall and the companies themselves (with the possible exception of Amazon) are far, far better to work for than what I've seen in most other industries, big or small. In fact, personally, the worst employers I've seen are the ever glorified "small business owners". Can't tell you how many utter cnuts I've encountered in my life that were small business owners. Just one example is how Google essentially subsidized Solar City which led to a big upgrade in energy efficiency and solar power here in California and other states that was very forward moving.
There are certainly aspects that could be improved with regulation, mostly related to Amazon and there should absolutely be more oversight related to mergers but that's true across the board for every industry. I don't think tech needs more merger control or oversight than other industries which is certainly how "OMG break up big tech" narratives tend to come off. I think mergers and acquisitions should be carefully examined across all industries. And across the board there needs to better ways to control tax evasion. Regulation is a good thing, paying your taxes is a good thing. But calls to just break things up could possibly do more harm than good in the long term because they won't fix most of the issues people complain about and they will likely create new inefficiencies.
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People can and do use alternative products where possible. At some point though it becomes impractical or inconvenient. Other (maybe better) operating systems beside android and iOS have been made, but fail because independent developers won't create apps for them. Regarding social networks, a large percentage of the users signed up for them before they were bought by bigger companies. I could move off Whatsapp like I moved away from Facebook, but say I sign up to telegram or signal whose to say they won't be bought by, and integrated into, for example, Google? Keep in mind we're not even "customers" to Facebook and Google, we're a product, snared so our data can be harvested and monetized.
These services are actually a bit like electricity, I mean we can survive without them, humanity did OK without them for ages, but now that they are there living without them is inconvenient.
I'm not against Zuckerberg or Brin owning all these companies as long as each is a separate entity, I'm against these behemoths merging with each other, sharing unlimited resources and user data, and being in a position to strong arm competition, users, developers and as we're seeing now regulatory bodies and even governments. They are clearly monopolies that smother out any competition.
Regarding AMD and Intel, whataboutism aside, yeah break them up too if they are deemed monopolies. There's no limit on how many times the law can and should be applied. Abusive small business owners? Deal with that according to the law too. These being bad doesn't mean Koch brothers, fossil fuel companies or big pharma get a pass, or vice versa. They are all bad.
There will obviously need to be a full and proper antitrust investigation. If it did somehow happen, Amazon would be the primary target among the FANGs, since there are already compelling arguments as to why it’s a monopoly in the present. If it were to take place it would probably involve breaking up AWS into three separate entities and the retail business into two or three different entities which would again make it closer in size to Walmart.
The argument against AWS would be that Amazon cannot control the critical infrastructure whereby it sets the terms by which its competitors must comply.
That argument takes on much greater significance when the host company also happens to be the nation’s largest e-commerce retailer. This wouldn’t be a particularly difficult argument to make, which is why Bezos has launched a propaganda campaign to influence public opinion. He knows what the stakes are in a Dem controlled Senate with the likes of Sanders and Warren having greater power over policy.
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Comparing a social network to electricity is not a very strong argument. For the electricity grid, there were no alternatives, and significantly, electricity deals with base-level human food and shelter. Very different from what is essentially a voluntary luxury item (social networks).
The whole "we are not customers, we are the product" is old news. That data ship sailed a long time ago (the passing of the Patriot Act almost 20 years ago for just one example). If you think that breaking up a few big tech companies you subjectively deem "evil" is going to magically stop your data from being harvested and monetized when hundreds of millions freely and happily hand over all that data then I think you might be in for a harsh wake-up call.
I remember when I first joined Facebook, maybe around 2006-07 and I and some friends used a pseudonym and never input accurate personal information (false DOB, etc). We told dozens of other friends, "hey you realize FB is going to collect your personal information and probably sell it right?" The answer from the vast majority of people on this was "I don't care. Let FB know my age, RL friends, college, etc. I like the service it provides." When you have hundreds of millions willing to make that trade-off, it's hard to call it evil rather than just acknowledge the reality that it's a fair exchange many are willing to make. If you aren't willing to make that tradeoff, there are clear workarounds (I still have never used my real name or DOB on a social network).
Splitting off Instagram from Facebook isn't going to stop data from being harvested and monetized and shared. Heck, any website with GA collects data from your web browsing behavior. It's already pervasive. Look up LiveRamp for example. The best way to protect data is regulation and making sure data collection is anonymized and aggregated (which is the current law) because you aren't going to stop it and hundreds of millions are quite happy to trade away personal data to get the services that come with it.
Re: Intel and AMD, it's a legitimate point to ask when people are calling for "break up big tech":
Where does this new wave of break-up calls start and stop? What "big tech" companies qualify for you wanting to break them up? What are the criteria here? Why are you(not you personally but in general) so interested in breaking up Google/Amazon but not Apple? I don't see a consistent logic to these arguments, just emotions. Unless you are going to run with all large corporations are evil and need to be broken up which isn't a very actionable stance.
The issue about corporate influence on government is a separate issue and also, won't be changed or affected by just "breaking up" Amazon and Facebook. That problem lies in Citizen United and older Supreme Court rulings (like corporate personhood from 1886). That's the issue that needs to be attacked and focused on, otherwise breaking up Amazon won't change a single thing about corporate influence on governments and regulatory bodies.
Anyway, I don't really see a compelling case for Google or Apple being inherently evil, unlike other companies that actually do evil things. I guess this is where my pragmatist comes out because I don't see the underlying issues being addressed here and the "break up big tech movement" seems to be wasting a lot of time and energy on things that aren't ultimately going to change a whole lot, and certainly not fix any problems like the influence of money in politics. The best argument is probably the "don't allow companies to be too big to fail" but the counter could just be to let them fail rather than arbitrarily regulating their size at some subjective stage. No one can make an argument that Facebook is critical to the infrastructure the way they did with the banks, airlines, even Detroit.
The argument to split off AWS from their retail business might have legs - that is one of the few areas I see having some potential, but I can't see splitting the retail business into two or three entities being a winning argument. I think you might be overestimating the influence of Bernie and Warren on the Senate at this stage. If Bernie actually formed an alliance with the Trumpettes, then you could be onto something, but I don't see that legitimately happening. It would be historically interesting if it did though, a strange variation on Fukuyama's predictions about a realignment of the party allegiances around technological debate (albeit in a different form than what he predicted).
To be clear about my previous post, i don't actually think it will happen. But the threat of Sanders and Warren attempting it (probably in concert with some Republican support) will be enough to scare Bezos into making some concessions the next time they call him up to testify.
But they keep crushing unionization efforts...