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Comment by firasd | Hacker News Reader

His whole deal is about the 2016 election. While it exposed legitimate issues, I suspect a lot of anti-Zuck/'techlash' sentiment will die down if a Dem is elected next year.

In fact I suspect even now the Techlash is overstated. Elizabeth Warren spent the month of October going after Zuckerberg and meanwhile lost her front-runner status in the polls. Anti-Big-Tech talking points may be red meat for journalists, but average Americans don't care all that much. (Based on this survey, Tech is still the most trusted industry sector: https://www.edelman.com/trust-barometer)

PS. An article about this: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/opinion/tech-backlash.htm...

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I think one reason journalists are having a moral panic about tech is that a lot of them seem to have a very unhealthy twitter addiction, which clouds their view on the impact social media has on society.

A lot of media people seem to spend ~8 hours tweeting almost everyday, which is obviously unhealthy but not indicative of how most people use "big tech".

Yeah. Interesting article about that: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/opinion/covington-twitter...

Replace twitter with facebook/instagram and there you go. People spend hours and hours a day on there.

Tech -- especially social media -- is often directly competitive with old media, and has for years at this point posed an existential threat. From Jobs wanting a 30% cut of the Times' revenue on iOS, to Amazon's cutthroat relationship with the publishing industry, Thiel's lawsuit against Gawker, Google search/news controlling distribution, Facebook's algorithm changes literally ending numerous media companies, etc., it's been pretty nonstop for over a decade now.

Always worth a mention when speculating as to why journalists tend to be so anti-tech nowadays.

Journalists don't have a choice, social media is the largest medium for consumption of News(or Title?).

For years News has been the least downloaded segment in the Appstore/Playstore[1], there was a chance to revive RSS when the social media got into trouble for fake news, but even that opportunity is lost as Google/Apple has repositioned themselves in the News segment.

[1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/270291/popular-categorie...

> I suspect a lot of anti-Zuck/'techlash' sentiment will die down if a Dem is elected next year.

If a Dem wins, the media/etc will praise tech/social media like they did after Obama won. Remember in 2008 when the media hailed Obama as the first "social media president". It's amazing how a single election shifted the narrative on an entire industry wholesale. It's like someone flipped a switch and the narrative went from positive to negative overnight.

How many remember Obama's Q&A at google?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nnj7r1wCD4

What would have been the narrative had Hillary won? Would tech be credited with helping her win rather than attacked relentlessly by the media? The real question that isn't why the news industry was so upset? Isn't the news supposed to be objective and fair?

It could be, as you say, the difference between "a Democrat" and "a Republican." It could also be the difference between President Obama and President Trump specifically.

It might even be the difference between 2008 and a decade later. Sometimes opinions shift over time, as new information comes to light.

>> Based on this survey, Tech is still the most trusted industry sector: https://www.edelman.com/trust-barometer

Devils advocate: Is there a chance this amounts to willful ignorance? Seems to me like once you are 'hooked on something': Amazon 1-click ordering, A social network, your phone - it's not easy to admit that you have 'a problem', let alone condemn a whole industry.

Beyond that: If 'they' actually know everything about us - I desperately want to trust them with that information.

edit: formatting.

It’s worth noting that Edelman is the world’s largest PR firm and their annual Trust Barometer is a major business development tool for them.

I'm far more concerned by the mental health impact of social media than whether a politician lied in an ad - I mean in every election cycle you see attack ads on TV all the time that are meant to scare you and generally filled with half-truths. Those are far worse than a sponsored post.

I think you’d want it to be your own party that gets to start regulating political speech. Advocating for censorship while the opposition is in charge is a phenomenal amount of trust, to say the least.

It will be - by the time the censorship is actually being implemented, the red team will be out and the blue team will have the reigns.

Generally the foundation of political support builds as sensible opposition while the other team is in power. Then that opposition team gets elected, and its politicians go to work "compromising" with the gatekeeping lobbyists - neutering any hard hitting reforms and transmuting that grassroots desire for reform into regulatory capture.

If you read his book, the 2016 election is not "his whole deal". Zucked touches upon it, but also the harm of the filter bubble, the amplification of outrage, and many other topics.

Tech giants are running amok, destroying society and ownership alike. I am so glad we are finally standing up to their modern-day attempts at sharecropping; I want to be a digital landowner and not a digital peasant. Cloud everything and subscription models are downright medieval in their business models.

And that's to say nothing of social media, which is causing society to cannibalize itself

I've been disgusted by Facebook for at least a decade, so McNamee's very late disillusionment seems a bit silly. He sent Zuck a stern email ten days before the election! I also enjoyed this gem:

In protest of the Iraq War and other policies during the George W. Bush Administration, he refused to cut his hair. When President Obama was inaugurated, he celebrated with a trip to the barber.

Kudos for being right about Iraq before it was cool, but we're still in Iraq, aren't we? Just to be safe, let's don't get a hair appointment immediately on Michelle's inauguration...

Bush just invaded other countries, Obama not just invaded other countries, he also was bold enough to accept Nobel Peace award for it.

I think Obama is much more bad ass than Bush.

> Obama not just invaded other countries, he also was bold enough to accept Nobel Peace award for it.

I think your timeline is a bit scrambled. Obama got the Nobel Peace (or rather, Not-GW-Bush-Jr) prize in the first year of his presidency, before any foreign interventions that could be realistically ascribed to his policy.

So is the anti-big-tech policy really genuinely unpopular with voters as you're implying or does it trigger the backlash from Big Tech? Like for example facebrick adjusting their algos to promote say, anti-Warren content. How would we know?

It seems to me like most people support Warren's anti-big-tech stance in principle or they don't much care. Not many outside of the bubble seem to be genuinely opposed to it and it's a quite esoteric argument as to why it would make things worse (maybe a true, valid and legitimate argument, - but not the sort of thing that takes on support organically without a bit of push - can we see that push?).

Then there's the obscenely large amounts spent by big tech on lobbying in washington and PR in the media and in places like right here.

Do any of us really believe big tech isn't paying for PR here at hacker news? Whether the PR is working is a different question. Whether there is a lot of pro-big tech opinion, much of which I share, here organically is a different question - and yes there is. The only thing that would prevent paid PR here is if hacker news has no impact and paid PR could not influence and this was known, as far as I can see.

Separate to the venture capitalist owners interests being served by mods, which of course happens and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it, either.

> It seems to me like most people support Warren's anti-big-tech stance in principle or they don't much care. Not many outside of the bubble seem to be genuinely opposed to it and it's a quite esoteric argument as to why it would make things worse (maybe a true, valid and legitimate argument, - but not the sort of thing that takes on support organically without a bit of push - can we see that push?).

I think the reason Warren could lose ground talking about Big Tech is pretty straightforward - it's a way less generally compelling, personally-broadly-relevant message than her other key issues, and so a distraction. Less a pure negative, but an opportunity-cost net negative.

I have very strong doubts about that as an explanation.

She’s too much of an ideologue —a bit like Bernie. It’s their way or the highway. So even if Joe is weaker as a candidate he’d be nominated over Warren and Sanders by the party, the people (primary voters) might go with an ideologue.

That said, Tulsi is right, most of the party are a bunch of neocons (aside from Sanders and maybe Warren).

What of her policies seem ideologically driven, to you? To me, her policies seem extremely pragmatic.

Medicaid for all for one. Wanting to break up companies rather than regulate first.

Yes, there is a problem with google and Facebook controlling what people see (algorithmic rather than organic) as well as soft and hard censorship, but I’m not sure the hammer of breakup is necessarily the first tool to go for in addressing the issue.

Joe is more pragmatic, but he’s also just skating. Tulsi is more of what Washington needs. No more foreign interventions. Let them fight it out. We’re always in the middle and always get flak and everyone else just sits there and does nothing. Only get in if it’s meaningful to us.

> Then there's the obscenely large amounts spent by big tech on lobbying in washington and PR in the media and in places like right here.

Any data here? I would have thought compared to other industries, tech hasn’t spend nearly enough! Few people occasionally tweet our Google or Facebook having donated $2700 to one republican superpact or another. This has to be peanuts compared to any real money involved.

first hit for the first search string that came to mind "facebook lobbying spend"

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/23/facebook-and-amazon-lead-tec...

$4M isn’t that much, even just in one quarter. Look at the oil/gas or health insurance industry if you want to see what a real lobbying bill looks like.

Google has had the largest (or nearly so) lobbying spend for the past few cycles and in 2019 Facebook and Amazon are the top spending corporations. Spending a few million more than the defense contractors.

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/top-spenders

There is no database of PR spending, but it’s telling that a study conducted by Edelman, the worlds largest PR firm, found Tech to be the most trustworthy sector. A cynic might say they are pandering to an important client base.

> There is no database of PR spending, but it’s telling that a study conducted by Edelman, the worlds largest PR firm, found Tech to be the most trustworthy sector. A cynic might say they are pandering to an important client base.

Survey showing that people trust tech is evidence that tech is corrupting our politics. Jeez, talk about confirmation bias. A PR firm could also use a negative trust score to sell a firm on how they need more PR.

> It seems to me like most people support Warren's anti-big-tech stance in principle or they don't much care

Maybe for liberals, but a lot of people on the right don’t care much for government intervention in industries without a compelling reason.

I am on the right. Those on the right aren't changing their views on Warren because she discusses big tech. Really they aren't suddenly decicding they don't like her anymore.

Besides this the reasons for regulation are pretty damn compelling. Clear cut case of market failure. You cannot take your business elsewhere to deal with the failings of big tech. It is an industry with a long run decreasing average total cost curve and has network externalities. (Hence why there aren't 27 similar magnitude businesses competiung in the facebook space, for example).

Indeed even if you have no facebook account and have taken your business elsewhere they have a shadow profile of you from your firends and from web trackers and so on. Google have your mail and analyze it even if you run your own server and have no google account. The list goes on from there. The case for regulation is overwhelming, what many of those of us of a libertarian bent want is /sensible/ regulation rather than the idiotic variety that is so prevalent. There aren't many on the right who think you should be able to poison the water or, switch off the taps and increase prices by a factor of 100. There aren't many on the right who think national defence payment should be "opt in"

Anyway these are also esoteric arguments just as their counterarguments are and unlikely to get a groundswell of support either way without a splashy push. The election of Donald Trump was that push for a large number of people on all sides of politics. The counter to that push? Where is that?

Monopolies are typically considered “bad” because they hurt consumers by jacking up prices when they acquire a dominant market position. How is this happening with Facebook? How is Facebook hurting consumers in a way that could be alleviated by breaking it up into 5 smaller companies?

If you take a look at something like disinformation campaigns, that’s something that big tech companies can handle MUCH better than smaller ones.

And if we did break up FB, network effects will just lead us back to the same situation in a few more years anyways.

This consumers test is a relatively recent phenominon.

"trusts have made products cheaper, have reduced prices; but if the price of oil, for instance, were reduced to one cent a barrel, it would not right the wrong done to people of this country by the trusts which have destroyed legitimate competition and driven honest men from legitimate business enterprise"

— 51st congress

Example:

Every single ad on facebook (and every single other social media business) should be in a searchable database along with the targeting purchased and all the statistics on the number of times seen and all demographic information available to aid the targeting.

It's a regulation. Is it a good one? The idea behind it is so that lies cannot be /broadcast/ in secret. That the Nazi party could broadcast inflamitory lies targeted at the mentally infirm by paying social media companies, ie facebook, to do it, in secret, while remaining anonymous is a problem.

Facebook's own policies as the dominant player are offering zero part of any solution other than to increase their share of the advertising spend. Really. Total focus of all their policy is just that. At the expense of, well who exactly?

Television is regulated. Newspapers are regulated. Radio is regulated. Secret facebook broadcasts are not. This is better because it makes facebook more money and worse in every other way we can imagine and some we haven't yet.

Good to see everybody declaring their interests in this thread though!

That's not market failure, it's normal market functioning today. It used to be that the limits of scaling kept companies in most industries from becoming monopolies. The industries with really strong network effects, railroads, communications, and banking, were highly regulated.

Now, more industries have strong network effects. The negative effects of scale, big companies unable to get out of their own way, seem to have been conquered. Planetary-scale companies such as Walmart and McDonalds work quite well, and they're not even "tech" companies. And US antitrust enforcement has been out to lunch for 30 years now.

The European Union has a study, which I've cited before, that price competition seems to require, in practice, at least four major players. There's an implicit collusion effect that makes it more profitable to not compete on price where the number of players is small.

Wal-Mart and McDonald's have plausible competitors. A better example would be cable.

This is a difference in understanding of definitions.

This /is/ market failure by the normal definition of market failure in the academic discipline of economics. It's not poetry. National Defence is an example of market failure. Any monopoly, eg, drinking water distribution, is an example of market failure. There is no economy anywhere on earth at any time through history up until now that has not had market failure as a feature of that economy. Not the only feature. I would say not even the major feature of the well functioning ones at least but everyone has it and tries to deal with. Is the cure worse than the disease? Is there a better cure, maybe even no cure. Most actual policy discussion in any newspaper is a discussion of just that.

Market failure is a very normal thing. What /I/ don't want is intervention where there is no market failure. What I don't want is regulation for the sake of regulation (or the sake of regulatory capture by the incumbant(s), or the sake of empire building by some public servant(s) or some witch hunt to win politcal favor at the ballot or whatever else on those lines). Regulation is the only sane response to market failure and has been since literally forever. See national defence.

Cynically we could say that the current news cycle is about putting pressure on big tech companies to try to rig the next election in favour of a Democrat.

Even more cynically we could say that an awful lot of people at an awful lot of tech companies want to do exactly that, and “responding to pressure” just gives them a perfect excuse.

Yes. I think a lot of liberal activism regarding Facebook is an attempt at 'working the refs'. The other side does it too -- before FB shut down the 'trending topics' section, there were many allegations of anti-conservative bias.

Why do you think the right has spent years whining about Google and Facebook’s supposed “left wing bias” with literally no evidence...? If anything the liberals are doing it to counter BS from the right.

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