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Comment by benwerd | Hacker News Reader

> This stands in stark contrast to the meeting I attended on Tuesday with Amazon's general counsel regarding their Rekognition service.

And I think that cuts to the core of this: this is an anti-Amazon move. Nonetheless, I do also think it's a pro-consumer, pro-civil liberties stance. It's also a recognition that the tide is turning with respect to consumers and privacy; here, Microsoft is getting ahead of this changing trend and establishing that they're on the right side of it. Amazon is going to find itself hurting on several levels next year, as legislation likely finds its way onto the books and the consumer tide changes further.

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I'm not convinced the US will be passing much of anything in the next two-years. Passing pro-privacy regulation? Seems very unlikely to me. Microsoft should engage with Canada and the EU where technology/privacy regulation is gaining traction.

I'm not so sure - I don't necessarily think it'll be federal straight away, but I think there's real possibility of state-by-state rules, which will eventually give way to federal.

This is the best way anyways. 50 experiments will lead to a better outcome.

50? That would be nice. For any given forward-thinking issue, I consider us lucky to have a handful of innovators at the state level. Now, when a crisis of some sort comes around, lawmakers from others states will start to pay attention. Ideally, at that point, they will evaluate and adapt other state experiments. In practice, it depends on the timing, committees, etc. Sorry to sound a bit cynical, but really my take-away message is this: if you care about an issue, get involved one way or the other in lobbying for your cause (I'm assuming here that HN people are well-informed, even if we have different policy prescriptions).

red tape ... legislation will be passed if regulation can be made.

Amazon or tech in general wont be stopped , but it will have to pay the toll. This is something dems and repubs agree on. Im guessing MS is not looking to be the leader so why not just get some good press at the same time.

The incoming California legislature is over 3/4ths Democratic so while the Federal gridlock may not make any progress, there could be some movement closer to home that at least gets the industry to prepare for the inevitable.

Yes, state action on this is likely to occur first, and it should definitely be done sooner rather than later. State law commonly templates federal law, as it has historically done with mileage standards, the ACA, etc. Get this done in CA, NY, and MA, where it's politically viable.

Could you elaborate on the privacy regulation that is gaining traction in Canada?

Hey sorry I didn't check for follow-up comments. Hopefully you still see this.

On Nov 27th, I watched the International Joint Hearing with Richard Allan, Facebook’s vice-president of policy solutions. It was a couple hours long and of much higher tech literacy than the one the US held with Zuckerberg. Questions came from seven countries. Questions were mostly honest and the answers were informative. There were still a number of people who chose to just ask angry questions for sound bites. (Canada's rep was unfortunately one of the ones who asked bad questions.)

Overall though, it was a really good discussion. Here's a link to the transcript and video ("watch the meeting" link).

http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence....

A joint-declaration was made after the hearing. It speaks to an international alliance for regulation. This is really where I see traction forming.

Here's the declaration, it's only a page long: https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z...

Hope this throws you a notification or something. Cheers.

Only 3 Republican senators need to support it, and there's a ton of them that don't care so much for Trump.

If enough industry people are on the side of it and/or there no populist fight over it, Trump would have no reason to veto it.

I don't think Trump really cares that much about these things, it'll only be a thing if it turns into a pop-culture war in which he may choose sides.

But if MS and a bunch of other heavyweights are in favour of it, he just might even go for it.

It's possible. But more likely in a few years.

> I don't think Trump really cares that much about these things, it'll only be a thing if it turns into a pop-culture war in which he may choose sides.

> But if MS and a bunch of other heavyweights are in favour of it, he just might even go for it.

I remember the first time I heard about Net Neutrality as an issue, in what, 2011 or something? I couldn't have imagined it becoming politicized at all. Plus, Wikipedia, Google, basically any tech company who isn't an ISP should clearly be on the same side. And yet, it became a political issue. People who couldn't explain the first thing about what Net Neutrality is, have opinions about it. Trump's administration is against it.

Maybe it'll be different for Facial Recognition, since people can better intuit about it, but honestly, that probably just makes it easier to fear-monger about, rightly or wrongly.

Net Neutrality will definitely become politicized because it's a war between layers of the value chain: carriers vs. Google.

Carriers are enormously powerful and influential so there will be a war.

If it's MS vs. Amazon ... well it's not one industry vs. the other.

But I agree it could turn into a pop culture war.

Amazon's Rekognition is a joke: it is weak FR, does not have basic features, and is overly expensive. The only thing they have going for them is Amazon's PR. They fooled you into thinking their Yugo of a product is anything at all. Disclaimer: I work at a real FR company, and Rekognition is no where, a non-contender in quality, features and price. A joke.

Which would make it even more potentially harmful in this context, if it is relied upon.

Microsoft knows how to talk the enterprise talk. BTW, Amazon competes against Alibaba for their main business, not Microsoft.

Just to clarify:

Amazon's "main business" is AWS, not their online store. For many years their store operated at a loss. Don't get me wrong, amazon.com is a HUGE business, but it's not Bezos' breadwinner.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/all-of-amazons-2017-operating-...

It only operated at a loss because they were plowing massive amounts of money into their delivery infrastructure. Revenue matters more than net income

Also because they are trying to estabilish monopoly. Amazon's long term plan is to kill every other big retailer.

To be fair, that's the hope of every company.

their main business is their online store, your linked article proves as much. If the online store was to disappear tomorrow the value of Amazon as a company would decrease much more than if it were AWS. It is proportionately more profitable but that doesn't make it the main business

That's nonsense.

AWS is a very large business, and much more profitable than selling physical goods online.

But Amazon's overall revenue was $56.6B (Q3 2018[1]) and "only" $6.68B of that was AWS. By comparison, revenue from Amazon's advertising business is $2.5B - and no one is claiming that is their main line of business.

Even the article you point to shows Amazon made a profit of $1.69B on North American ecommerce vs $1.35B profit from AWS.

So yeah - AWS is a high margin business, but no where near their "main business".

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/25/amazon-earnings-q3-2018.html

Why do we always wait until it's too late and the repurcussions almost unbearable to put in any common-sense preventions to abusive technology or practices?

Because law makers are still trying to wrap their heads around the Internet. That means tech has to self regulate and we just haven't set ourselves up for that. I don't think that lack of diversity helps with that.

It all comes down to your definition of "we". In short, this is either a collective preference problem (e.g. not enough people care or pay attention) or a collective action problem (if you believe that at least collective intent exists).

More specifically, a common theme in public policy analysis is agenda setting. Unfortunately, in many situations, the agenda is so crowded with priorities that only crises cut through. For more context, see "The Public Policy Primer: Managing the Policy Process" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8727263-the-public-polic...)

You can't meaningfully regulate for specific things before they exist for one. Trying to do so prematurely would result in nonsense that would only hold us all back. Not to mention matters of enforcibility.

Facial recognition's biggest abuses are from the fox watching the hen-house. "Common sense" would lead to such absurdities like banning using it on cops because "everybody knows criminals could use it to track them" while using it on every protester because "they might be terrorists" despite both known truths being complete bullshit.

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