Facebook is helping to set up a new pro-tech advocacy group | Hacker News Reader

Facebook is helping to set up a new pro-tech advocacy group

washingtonpost.com

64 pointsannadane53 comments

> The American Edge Project is dedicated to the bipartisan proposition that American innovators are an essential part of U.S. economic health, national security and individual freedoms

This will be interesting. On one hand, I definitely agree with that quote in the article. On the other hand, you often see highly tech-invested commenters on this website argue that it no longer makes sense to work for a startup because the FAANGs have amassed so much wealth and power that they can always be a better deal, even when the startup succeeds. So at the very least in seems the tech giants are stifling innovation in some way. It's also important to note that all of the tech giants amassed their power through acquisitions, not just organic growth (e.g. Facebook and Instagram/WhatsApp, Google and Android/YouTube).

What about Amazon? Wholefoods is the main notable purchase and they were were essentially a peripheral expansion/afterthought. NetFlix I can't even think of a single merger.

Amazon: Audible, IMDB, Goodreads, Comixology, the Book Depository, Woot, Ring, Eero.

They've been gobbling up other online media stores for decades. It's to the point you just assume a new store is an Amazon subsidiary or will be soon.

Don't forget Twitch as well. That was a massive acquisition. And Alexa, Box Office Mojo, Zappos, LoveFilm (an early Netflix competitor), and Curse. If I recall correctly, they also own a stake in Wikia/Fandom too. And that doesn't even go into the dozens of book stores and book data companies they've acquired over the last 20+ years.

Amazon has gobbled up tons of smaller companies in order to make themselves stronger and more diverse. I'm not sure why Nasrudith singled them out as someone who hasn't really.

In that case because I couldn't think of any that were a major component. Which I suppose is a side effect of their scale my mental modeling.

Facebook getting other social networks is cognitively equivalent to roughly an additional third each without checking the numbers - both are big known names. Google and getting YouTube is an influential chunk of their empire even if low margin from the expense - say an additional third of their "main product" along search and Android.

That is probably why I couldn't remember others.

M&A often involve conservative brand strategies, at least in part to promote a veneer of competition and diversity, while the insidious effects of consolidation are left unsaid and off the public radar after the M&A event. Imagine if all those purchases renamed to include Amazon in their name.

Zappos was a huge infusion of business DNA into Amazon, and from what I understand had a big influence on Amazon's customer service practices (Zappos was/is known for being maniacally customer focused.)

Another acquisition from around the same time was 'diapers.com'. That site is now defunct, and was never huge, but I believe they pioneered the concept of 'subscribing' to consumables like baby formula and, of course, diapers. After that acquisition, Amazon started doing the same with baby products, then their own brands, and now you can subscribe to just about any recurring purchase on the site.

In these cases, I think the acquisitions provided much more than the economic value of the business. They infused Amazon with new strategies and ideas to make them, as you said, stronger _and more diverse._

Also PillPack, their entry into the healthcare industry.

I’m mixed on this thought that they are stifling innovation. On one hand, yes, they have a habit of commoditizing their complements by acquisition or fast following. On the other hand, they most often have built the platforms that have made such complements possible in the first place.

It seems more like an innovation trade off relative to other innovators, but a net gain relative to other areas of society that are either innovation neutral (most of non-tech non-science society) or innovation destructive (politicians except when they are listening to advice from the EFF).

Yeah acquisition itself can have a positive role in innovation from specialization of capabilities. The VC model often is based upon "growth then monetize" and the monetization and creation skillsets don't always overlap.

Imagine a hypothetical world where anyone buying start ups was forbidden. Someone capable of building something new but not monetizing it would be less incentivized than if they could be bought out. Others would be encouraged to roll their own for redundancy of labor as there are downsides to building dependencies upon things you don't have full control over.

The current system is not a perfect system by any means but it does have merits.

You're only thinking about the top 1 or 2% of software engineers. There's nowhere near enough FANG jobs to employ most SEs. What the heck is everyone else supposed to do? sit around unemployed forever? There's plenty of SEs for startups. Although working at a FAANG is great compensation for someone in their 20s, it's a whole nother story if you have a family. At that point, the cost of living/housing is so excessive that you're not better working at a FAANG in the bay area. If you're renting, a house in palo alto will cost at least 90K per year, after taxes. That's a pretax cost of 150K. Which means, you need at least 500K minimum just to be doing ok (factoring in the much higher taxes at those salaries, and all the other cost of living).

If anything FAANGs are stifling innovation due to their walled gardens.

I feel like the group has a point. We should regulate Facebook to some degree, and I'm glad to know about their involvement here, but some people think the company should be destroyed and I don't see what they're hoping to accomplish. The realistic present alternative to a world dominated by Facebook proper and Instagram is a world dominated by WeChat and Weibo.

It's just, I'd feel more sympathetic if Facebook hadn't spent the last several years being unethical

Regulate how exactly? While better than the indistinguishable from bots "destroy/break up Facebook" ad nausuem repetition I have seen plenty of calls for regulation with zero thought as to what regulations they would add. The few examples I have seen proposed are either blatantly unconstitutional, ineffectual, and/or obviously doomed to backfire. Politician's syllogism (we need to do something and this is something) gets us nowhere.

One possible regulation that should resonate with the HN crowd would be a real form of due process or arbitration for users who have been censored. If platforms like Facebook are going to be the universal arbiters of acceptable public speech, then we ought to have formal recourse when they silence us. As it stands, we are completely at the mercy of the algorithm or outsourced contractors.

No. Protocol based Internet was the right idea - walled gardens are nation states recreated on the Internet.

Humanity in general started out much more open too, but we all moved to nation-states fairly quickly, because they are more stable and resilient in the long run.

Decentralized stuff is great, but it has a hard time competing with the efficiency of centralization.

Well, as has often been said, we now have cloud feudalism. The lord in the castle decides what's okay today in his domain, and his incompetent and inconsistent henchmen might throw you out for no reason, not even allowing you to take your belongings. You try to object, but no one is there to listen, only when many in the community (or people who has friends in the castle) raise enough noise, could you get a hearing. (Compare this to losing your access to your Google or Facebook account).

If the providers of the world can move to something like a democracy, with checks and balances and appeals processes (and not just banishment, deleting everything you have) that would be welcome.

Why not both? The beauty of the internet is a lack of spatial constraints or need for mutual exclusivity. The benefit of walled gardens is seamlessness. The benefit of open protocols is to be able to take control, extend, and experiment.

"if the world is going to be dominated by big tech, it'd better be by an AMERICAN company, not some CHINESE!!"

> Facebook is helping to set up a new pro-tech advocacy group to battle Washington

My guess is that Facebook is going to look for its own specific interest not so much "pro-tech". That makes sense and it is the normal PR naming to make it more palatable.

I can see that Facebook lobbing sometimes is going to align with "tech" needs and other it would play opposite to it.

I cannot read the article, so, anyone knows if organizations like EFF would be included in this advocacy group, it includes just Facebook or which companies it includes?

Yup, that's pretty much what I'm getting. It'll be an exercise in doublespeak; on the one hand they will push for internet access for all, but on the other to do away with net neutrality so that they can offer free internet access to Facebook and co but paid for non-facebook, like they tried (and failed) in iirc India. They want to push the Libra cryptocurrency so they can literally print digital e-monies and get a chunk of that dank payment processing revenue. They want to not be held accountable for swaying public interest, because they already are - consciously or not. They are pushing to get more and more power, less and less government oversight. Pesky consumer protection laws, pfft, not for us.

> if organizations like EFF would be included in this advocacy group

Obviously not. The EFF is antithetical to Facebook's goals; it advocates for freedom from not only governmental but also corporate surveillance.

Yes, the group is not "pro-tech," it's "pro-trust" AKA anti-antitrust. They're anti-regulation that they don't write themselves.

This looks like the start of a new misinformation campaign. Unregulation is anti-tech, not pro-tech: tech of today is in a strangle hold of corporate anti-competition tricks. Calling Facebook's lobbying efforts pro-tech is a cruel joke, but most people aren't well informed enough to tell.

freedom in America usually means freedom of the elite to do whatever they want, and freedom of the workers from being protected

It's about damn time. One of the clearest things on display during Zuckerberg's Senate grilling is that tech as an industry has proportionally smaller influence when compared to other industries (automotive, airline, finance) despite having a larger share of the economic pie. Tech is also a newer player than other companies in those industries, so it's natural that the balance of power has not yet swayed in favor of tech terms of Washington politics. Infiltrating politics through lobbying, advocacy or people in seat doesn't outright necessarily jive with our ideal notions of a democracy but it's the way that the game is played.

I'm not really sure what the purpose is of openly celebrating regulatory capture and the decline of our public institutions as they are being undermined in their independence by yet another interest group

That's an interesting observation. I'm in the camp that FB has significant influence in the administration via Peter Thiel, who I'm guessing has lots of friends in high places.

There's also the part where FB controls billions of eyeballs.

I don't worry for them in the slightest.

Luckily the top Google search result for "American Edge Project" is this handy website about knives: https://www.americanedgesharpening.com/

You will have to forgive me if I don't trust Facebook to do anything but that which is good for Facebook.

>> political advocacy group

Nice way to position your lobbyist.

To be fair, lobbyists and advocates are both just mouthpieces for special interests. "political advocacy group" just takes some of the stink off of the connotations of "lobbyist".

I've always wondered why big tech and its seemingly unlimited cash hasn't been able to out-lobby NIMBY groups in the bay area, and spur more housing construction.

Hopefully this is one of the things they'd be able to accomplish with an advocacy/lobbying group.

https://archive.md/CytY7

Disgusting. Everything about this is simply disgusting.

Particularly the fact that Zuckerberg and other companies are using China as a bogeyman to extract favorable tax and other policy concessions while exploiting Chinese immigrant labor.

It's not the labour that is their end game, unless you're talking about their users.

Trotsky: "You may not be interested in the dialectic, but the dialectic is interested in you."

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky

Merely recoiling from the horror of activities that some may rationalize is no source of safety.

Surprised it's taken this long. Tech has for too long pretended Washington and politics don't matter.

Not true. Google is one of the largest spenders of lobbying money in Washington.

This isn't a new concept for Facebook or tech, only a new wave of effort.

I'm sure Facebook will prioritize the interests of the common man in their advocacy.

Every company in that article needs to be broken up, and also investigated for their roles in enabling and encouraging extremism. The ad-driven frenzy for clicks at all costs needs to be reigned in.

Encouraging extremism isn't illegal.

Investigated for things that aren't even remotely a crime isn't a very good idea and is also a form of extremism ironically.

The central asseration of driving it while a convenient scapegoat also assumes facts not in evidence and outright contradicted. Alex Jones has been driving extremism in concrete and proven ways by hawking his own crap for funding.

There are congressional investigations as well which are meant to inform legislation, not indict criminals.

Sometimes I feel like "The People" need the equivalent of the NRA. An advocacy group that will advocate for their tech civil rights.

The real power of the NRA is not the money donated to it, but the huge group of single issue voters they can whirl up at a moments notice.

That's the EFF. It exists. Donate to it.

I find the EFF to be way too lefty and not necessarily doing a great job.

What is "lefty" about them? They support rights regardless of political leaning.

That's sort of the problem: The People (at least, a subset of them) are the ones who created and support the NRA. The People (at least, a subset of them) are also the ones who run and support Brady.

"The People" includes a large amount of people who disagree with you - regardless of what your belief system is. Arguing that your enemies are some privately sponsored or corporate backed shill is a tactic going back to ancient Rome.

Yeah "the People" in the Populist sense is a rhetorical trap. Implicitly it is "People who agree with me" which is myopia if ignorant or astoturfing if not. Even the Ironmanned best "the majority unrestricted from coercing others". That is why rights especially for the unpopular are important along with anonymous voting. With those precautions it would be truly Steelmanned but also not aa susceptible to the trap.

Without safeguarding rights populism is a ladder to powers which may become "people who agree with Great Leader".

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