Tech CEOs Invoke the American Dream to Obscure the Nightmare They Created | Hacker News Reader

Tech CEOs Invoke the American Dream to Obscure the Nightmare They Created

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65 pointselsewhen30 comments

There was a great comment on Slashdot[0] of all places about today’s hearing which I thought put it into great perspective:

> [I]t's a bit of grandstanding and an attempt to take back control of open discourse on the Internet. While they're going after these tech companies they've done fuck all about the massive telecom mergers, the fact that 90% of local TV stations were bought up by Sinclair Media, the massive consolidation in the grocery store business or that fact that every single apartment complex in 50 miles of where I live is owned by one company.

I couldn’t agree more. Of all the industries to go after at this time, these tech companies will not have anywhere near the same negative impact on people’s lives as media and housing consolidation. The power grab is happening right under everyone’s noses, and these hearings are nothing but a distraction.

[0] https://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=16866313&cid=6034...

> that every single apartment complex in 50 miles of where I live is owned by one company.

That sounds relatively dramatic but if we chop the US housing market into areas of 50 miles we still end up with a ton of different real estate companies

Facebook and Google together hold a majority of the digital ad market. If Facebook users were citizens it'd be the biggest nation on the planet

Sinclair is just about as bad but I doubt anyone disagrees with that sentiment, and the conclusion is obviously that sinclair needs more attention, and not that big tech needs less

To me it feels different because telecoms, airlines, banks, real estate, and all the other industries have undergone consolidation whereas the technology companies under fire practically invented the markets they are dominating.

Tech has also consolidated significantly.

- Facebook has acquired 86 companies, most of them small startups. They famously own Instagram, Whatsapp and Oculus, as well as Giphy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...

- Alphabet has made 236 acquisitions. They own Youtube and Doubleclick which are massive. Android, Maps, Docs and many other Google products came from acquisitions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...

Sure, but acknowledging the reality for many people that they are limited by a number of interests to stay geographically local, the local news and housing monopolies at 50-mile radius level are more restrictive than digital monopolies. Not that I like either.

Areas of 50 miles are entire cities.

Assuming their assertion about housing is true, they're absolutely right that the issue should get way more attention. I just disagree that should come at the cost of reducing attention to tech monopolies.

But since consolidation and market power abuse are the same problems whether in tech or real-estate or media, there's no reason scrutiny to it in tech should detract from scrutiny in other areas. In fact, it should increase scrutiny - once we notice the problem in one area, we'll notice it everywhere.

> > 90% of local TV stations were bought up by Sinclair Media

I'm not sure that this is accurate. Some quick parsing of the table [0] finds 37 states and 193 stations. I don't have the total number of stations for all states, but I highly suspect Sinclair actually doesn't own an amount so close to 90%. That number just made me want to see if I could verify it and it looks like it might not be correct.

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

But Facebook and Google are media. Not traditional media, but the power they wield in shaping public debate is similar.

FB and Google should crush Fox News. Of course it won't happen but they should.

This definitely. The US has reached a fairly catastrophic level of social dysfunction today, a bizarre and perhaps unprecedented sort of social polarization that bodes very ill for the future. It has appeared in social media, it might be accelerated by social media but it isn't explained by social media. The division of the US into "red counties" and "blue counties" especially should have people worried. Even more, the existence of a multitude of Christian institutions parallel to secular institutions (from Christian "health experts" to Christian law schools and colleges to Christian media to Christian rock) bodes further ill for unified nation.

I mean, genocide in Myanmar happened through Facebook but Facebook didn't create it out of nothing. Genocide in Rwanda happened through radio, TV and word-of-mouth but wasn't explained by these either.

Is it really unprecedented when we've had a civil war? Regardless, I agree it's catastrophic

Complete whataboutism. Other industries may have consolidated, but considering their market caps are orders of magnitude less than the tech giants, it's not unreasonable to question the extreme power these giants have.

I don’t think market cap (especially with tech) directly correlates to social/societal influence

The stock market is an okay marker to measure relative value/public confidence in their short term and long term fidelity as a company. But that’s not directly related to influence.

I'm absolutely not pro-GAFAM or anything, i don't use 99% their products, i've even left gmail recently (android and Youtube are the only GAFAM products i still use).

I don't think market cap is a valid mesuring point. Assets, real-world assets i mean, should be. QE since 2008 is inflating the stock market like crazy - with expected consequences regarding property prices - and market valuation are crazy. If they were not, at least some LBOs attempts would be made. I have found this[0] for revenue, this is an OK metric, not the best for sure, but it show the company participation in the economy (and thus is still better than market cap).

[0]https://howmuch.net/articles/worlds-largest-companies-by-rev...

The impact on average people’s lives of housing consolidation will be orders of magnitude bigger than anything tech companies can do at this point, and it started a while ago:

“Wall Street’s Hot New Financial Product: Your Rent Check” (2014)

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/blackstone-rent...

More recently:

“A $60 Billion Housing Grab by Wall Street” (March 2020)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/magazine/wall-street-land...

“If Landlords Get Wiped Out, Wall Street Wins, Not Renters“ (May 2020)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-12/if-landlo...

This is going to huge, bad for almost everyone, and it’s not getting talked about. It’s the government’s job to stay on top of these sorts of things, and they are instead focusing on tech. This is about governmental watchdogs focusing on the wrong things. It’s not “whataboutism”, it’s directly related.

It seems to me that the government failed from top to bottom in this pandemic. Leaders, the CDC, the world healthcare organization, the schools and their teachers, and on and on.

What succeeded? Private companies like grocery stores, Amazon, delivery companies, internet providers letting us watch the Netflix box all day and work from home.

I think the government and critics should take a hard look at themselves before pointing to the horrors of actually functioning enterprises.

The opening statements by the chair during the hearing made me guffaw. The basis of his accusations was that big tech conducted surveillance and that they had too much power.

How ironic that it's the federal government accusing them, the same government which persistently conducts (illegal) surveillance and wields far too much power

What should schools/teachers have done differently? (Just curious)

Redirected funding to parents to hire their own teachers, or enabled teachers to teach a group of say, 20 students, in a privately provided location to safely continue teaching. The massive population that makes up a school simply doesn’t work in a pandemic, but teachers unions and the institution of public school is too rigid to change whatsoever. They would rather hurt children than adapt, it’s absolutely pathetic and immoral if not evil.

Schools are so underfunded that teachers are commonly expected to buy their own classroom supplies with their own money, I don't know what money you expect to be diverted to parents to hire their own teachers outside of the richest of school districts

NYC schools spend more than $20k per student and get lower standardized test results and GPAs than Idaho which spends $5k per student. Lack of money is not the problem. The spending model is.

I don't think people appreciate how much is spent on public schooling in the US. According to data collected by the Federal Government, it's an average of nearly $15,500 PER student PER year. That's an enormous amount of money and the results don't show. I don't think throwing more and more money at it is the solution to government bureaucracy and waste.

That's fair. I think the solution is probably closer to emulating Idaho rather than privatizing schools, though

We pay more per pupil in our urban districts than any other western nation. If the money isn’t going to teachers, it’s going to the horrible and inefficient bureaucracy surrounding them. I suggest taking the $15 to $22k we pay per student (depending on the city) and giving it to parents to choose how to spend it instead. I guess I’m the crazy one?

So you're not talking about a response to the pandemic here. You want this reform independent of that.

I think we should at least first acknowledge that media outlets are by default competitors to and biased against tech platforms. They're not some neutral third parties passively reporting news / opinion as things unfold with old fashioned journalistic integrity.

Vice is generally okay, so I'd give them the benefit of the doubt, but think twice before you subscribe to any opinion that the NYTimes / Vox et. al. have about tech.

I feel we need public bug trackers that extend beyond software issues.

Where tech companies are creating economic issues, social issues, psychological issues, political issues, legal issues etc there needs to be public bug tracking on each.

Neat idea. Issues might need to be a little more freeform than most bug templates.

"Acceptance Criteria" would be a difficult field to fill out.

This article is rather vacuous. At least he should link to the testimony. However, check out this one by the same author:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ep4mx4/yale-antitrust-sch...

Article has a lot of complaints about the modern global supply chain, but not much about the tech giants caused it or how eliminating giants would avoid the problem.

Cocoa farm slavery is a huge problem even without a huge chocolate company causing it.

Let’s take your specific example, even though Nestle isn’t a “tech” company. Does Nestle do everything in its power to ensure it isn’t receiving products from slaves or from wholesalers dealing in slave-produced goods? Does it have as a part of its charter the ethical treatment of all people in its supply chain? Is Nestle doing its best not to do arbitrage on the difference in living standards and regulation that exist on either end of its supply chain? Are Nestles’ investors interested first and foremost in advancing and uplifting the people that ultimately create and consume Nestles products? Does Nestle lobby governments and international bodies to ensure human rights are being upheld?

Of course not!

The problem is that people fundamentally care more about chocolate Easter eggs than they do about each other. Slavery wouldn’t be a problem if demand for the product wasn’t there.

Tech companies exist at the forefront of profiteering by exploiting and reducing inefficiencies in the global market. Jeff Bezos said just as much in his congressional hearing. The problem is that these “inefficiencies” are the lived experiences of the people who actually interact with the tech. Peoples well-being and autonomy and culture are not always diametrically opposed you the interest of these companies, but at best they tend to be orthogonal.

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