Comment by d0gbread | Hacker News Reader

Comment by d0gbread | Hacker News Reader

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It's not "more power over tech," it's the job of government. Distribution of power, promoting competition, tweaking the rules as little as is deemed necessary.

Is it really so outrageous to consider there might be a consolidation of power in a way we haven't dealt with before, seeing Amazon crush partners overnight, or Facebook impacting elections?

The very same HN that longs for the early internet, with web rings and personality, doesn't have a problem with Google scrapping content from pages you would have otherwise visited, further limiting smaller website's revenue opportunity?

For those of you not seeing clear anticompetitive behaviors that warrant discovery -- where is your line?

Facebook impacted elections for conservatives - the same people that are complaining about an anti conservative bias.

What would you propose the government do? Force people not to use FB who willingly go to their site? Have the government say what is and is not allowed on their platform.

I don't care who's barking about what and if they're consistent about it. Either there is or is not an underlying risk we should aim to minimize.

As far as what I might want to see, since you asked: for one, I would like to see more rigor around the acquisition process to eliminate or even undo some of the consolidation. I won't pretend to understand the details of how or what needs to change, but I am more than open to taking a hard look at things like WhatsApp and Instagram being acquired by Facebook and what kinds of power centralization that enables. I hope smarter people than me will do that research and make intelligible cases so we can all hold evidence-backed positions.

Look at the valuation, never mind the societal impact, of these companies -- data is worth far more than your average consumer realizes, at least once it hits an inflection point, and our laws don't currently reflect that. Maybe they should, maybe they shouldn't. I welcome the discovery, and don't feel like we need to be anywhere near a solution yet.

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