Comment by harry8 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by harry8 | Hacker News Reader

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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?

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 competing in the Facebook space, for example).

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.

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!

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