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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

Anyone notice that the Justice Department under an administration who supposedly doesn’t believe in regulation all of the sudden is interested in regulating companies run by the “liberal elite”? Does it not worry anyone that an administration that’s not exactly friendly to the states where these companies are located are now all of the sudden cracking down on only certain big businesses?

Every time I post about the government is rarely the answer I get push back. Be careful what you ask for...

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Maybe so, but in this case the consumer will benefit. These large companies have been abusing their monopoly or near monopoly status to push their own politics aggressively. It's no surprise that the other side of the political spectrum would react negatively.

That's why issues like free speech for all are so important. Someday, your enemies might be in charge and if you've been eroding human rights because you're powerful enough to do so, someone more powerful may show up and use the landscape you helped create against you.

The winning move for tech was to not become politicized and just focus on being a neutral platform. Hopefully this threat of regulation will scare some of the overt politics out of our industry and everyone will benefit.

You really think the government run by an administration hostile to tech companies is going to do anything that benefits the consumer? Do you trust any politician to have both the integrity and the knowledge to pass laws that benefit anyone except themselves and their donors?

While tech companies aren’t “becoming politicized” you better believe that the people who don’t share your interest are.

I don't trust the government regardless of who is in charge of it. I also no longer trust our big tech companies as they've demonstrated values I don't share: censorship and unnecessary editorializing mainly. Both of which drive companies to operate in a more centralized manner.

In this case, I see the threat of government intervention to be beneficial as tech will have to adapt to circumvent it or a whole new breed of companies will arise that have immunity baked in. Ideally this would be a focus on decentralization so that the government can't intervene in operations at a technical level.

tldr; our current big tech landscape are overly centralized and behaving badly. The government is not trustworthy but a fight between the two will help healthier tech companies emerge.

The difference is that a government with more power has the right to take my liberty and my property....

You notice that there is no attempt to regulate Walmart which is much bigger than Amazon?

> The difference is that a government with more power has the right to take my liberty and my property....

I agree but that's not what this particular discussion is about.

Censorship of what exactly? You're free to self host your own services. At what point does censorship become a catch-all for muh free speech. These people want to push agendas and then when people don't want to hear it they are like.. muh free speech has been violated. But as soon as you go into a live chat and give a differing opinion then they block you. No one is going after retail stores for kicking people out or banning them when people cause a scene. Why can't tech companies kick people off their platforms that they host and own? If the government wants to start an all inclusive social network that doesn't block people then let them. But when they try to tell companies that they need to be broken up for some misconception that they are censoring conservative posts (although they never post proof but love to spread the fear) then you are just welcoming tech to be controlled by a political ideology which is far more dangerous. I especially don't trust this administration to "do the right thing" and expect most people supporting this are not trying to "do the right thing" either.

> Maybe so, but in this case the consumer will benefit. These large companies have been abusing their monopoly or near monopoly status to push their own politics aggressively. It's no surprise that the other side of the political spectrum would react negatively.

At least we can agree this is all political.

If you want to be cynical, maybe it is just people sticking their hands out. Why aren't these companies "donating" like the National Association of Realtors, Boeing or Comcast?

Here's a list of companies and organizations[1] that actually push their politics aggressively. Maybe a couple of those take advantage of their market position less than the big tech companies.

I do think strengthened anti-trust legislation and actions would benefit the economy, but I don't think these companies are the worst offenders. It is a harmful perverse incentive to punish companies because they are not playing politics enough.

[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s

What politics?

I’m 100% behind the idea of deplatforming trolls, even if they claim it’s a political message. “Don’t Troll” has been a good rule since Usenet days, and I don’t see why it should be otherwise.

Who gets to decide who's a "troll" and who's not? That's political.

Whoever owns the platform. If enough people don’t like the policies of the platform. They are free to create their own. I have no problem with Facebook and Twitter deciding how their platforms should be used.

I do however think that infrastructure companies like ISPs should be neutral. I don’t even consider hosting companies as infrastructure companies. As long as I have an internet connection, I can host whatever I want to.

Why is it not a matter of justice instead?

Preserving the peace, protecting the rights (of others), protecting property?

The King of France would have claimed all the French revolutionaries were trolls.

They were though...

But the French revolutionaries couldn't just go and create another France, in the way that some of the Nazis on Twitter moved to Gab and or some of the trolls on Reddit moved to Voat.

Turns out that a platform full of Nazis or trolls isn't as popular as one that isn't. But that should surprise no one.

> These large companies have been abusing their monopoly or near monopoly status to push their own politics aggressively.

I don't think there is evidence to support this statement, but even if there were, pushing a political agenda is not an anti-trust issue.

"Overt politics" = "free speech". There is no reason why private companies have to be politically neutral.

When they operate as a platform they should be politically neutral and allow free speech for their users. Companies being overtly political isn't illegal but it is consumer hostile and just a bad idea.

There is no one forcing you to be a consumer of Facebook, Twitter, or Amazon. They aren’t infrastructure companies. If your ideas have enough merit, you should be able to get your ideas out there. For instance, Farrakhan [1] (who was deplatformed) has been getting his message out for decades before there was an internet.

[1] I have no idea about any of his beliefs or why he got deplatformed. I just know he’s been around forever.

> There is no one forcing you to be a consumer of Facebook, Twitter, or Amazon. They aren’t infrastructure companies.

I think that's debatable (which is precisely what the antitrust investigation is looking into).

Regardless, I'm not forced to stand up for them either. I don't agree with how they are operating and I'm glad they're being looked into.

You really don’t think there is any other means to get your word out than to depend on Facebook and Twitter? HN users are always telling musicians that they should make their money from touring and selling CDs. Why couldn’t people get speaking engagements, sell books, create podcasts (no you don’t have to be in the Apple Podcast directory, you can subscribe to a podcast directly from the RSS feed), newsletters, etc.

Yes, I do feel the bar has to be a lot higher - as in burning babies at an alter besides cute kittens -for an infrastructure company like an ISP or a domain register to ban you.

Time to make sure that all those conservative businesses in Indiana can't kick me out of their stores for expressing my free speech and political opinions in their store, otherwise they should be regulated. /sarcasm

What if the creators of a platform decided that it's their prerogative not to host certain political ideas on their platform because they disagree with it? Should they be forced to support speech they disagree with?

If they claim common carrier status, then yes they have to allow all legal speech.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier

Since when did Facebook claim “common carrier status”?

Not this argument again.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/no-section-230-does-no...

There is no such thing as a canonically neutral platform. Your idea of neutral is someone else's idea of horribly biased and vice versa.

> These large companies have been abusing their monopoly or near monopoly status to push their own politics aggressively.

When Apple refused to comply with the FBI's order to unlock someone's iPhone, were they engaging in unacceptable politicking? Are you arguing that the correct and "neutral" thing to do would have been to hand over everyone's data on request? Are you also opposed to the tech companies that support net neutrality and backdoor-free encryption? Do you actually get angry at ALL politicking, or only when their politics differs from yours?

It's certainly bizarre to watch Republicans argue that we can fix this by giving government bureaucrats more control over private businesses and Democrats argue that we should break them up and then rely on the market to fix it for us.

Of course, it's hard to establish a connection between what this president says and actual policy action on the ground, but this is also a president who has been open about his willingness to order the DOJ around, so who knows.

That's the whole reason why there's been a strong norm around DOJ's Independence. Without that you never really know what their motivations are.

I don't think the President has been at all shy about this take either, especially with Amazon (see: https://www.thestreet.com/world/trump-vs-bezos-a-history-of-...). Recently the President tweeted a video about the Defense Department's 10 billion dollar contract that was during a segment called "swamp watch".

It's really hard to discern which, if any, of the President's actions translate into real policy decisions.

This certainly looks like it's because they didn't bend the knee.

Strange bedfellows, as they say.

Elizabeth Warren has been calling for the same thing. Seems relatively bipartisan.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/03/08/politics/elizabeth-warren-a...

While I do believe that Warren really believes in regulation and isn’t doing it out of spite, that doesn’t make it a good idea.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

It’s step 1 in a negotiation process to drive a laissez-faire attitude to anti-progressive communities and content. This step is called ‘obtain leverage’. You can see companies like Amazon preemptively putting filmmakers like DeSouza in your recommended play list.

Not the whole - he’s playing 3D chess while his opponents are playing checkers - argument.

Most of these companies have specifically used the power of their products to advance the political ideals of their executives and owners. It was wrong when General Electric did it, it’s wrong when Google does it. Seems like Google, Facebook and the like just thought they were too powerful to suffer any consequences.

As opposed to every other major company that uses profits from their business to fund lobbyists?

I think that, if you believe the FAANGs are dominant enough to be considered infrastructure, you can make a case that their putative political bias is worse that other company's lobbying. At least lobbying results in the introduction of bills that can be debated in a legislature with public input (via calling your representatives, as well as protests and counter-lobbying from other interest groups). The FAANGs' decisions on how to regulate their platforms are subject to no vote or other public input before enactment.

There is nothing “infrastructure” about any of the FaANGs.

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