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Comment by stale2002 | Hacker News Reader

stale2002

> Trying to conflate

I think that from a higher level principle, they can be conflated.

The way that they can be conflated is that many of these tech companies, just don't have many friends left.

Even if the exact reason as for why they don't have many friends left may be different, the end result is still the same.

The left and the right may be going after them from different angles, but that is still pretty bad, because nobody is there to defend them.

People who may have stuck their neck out to defend them in the past, just aren't going to do so anymore.

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Is it really your opinion that the richest and most powerful industry in the world has no ability to defend itself? And that we need to fight back and encourage monopoly and stifle competition?

And sorry, they are still not conflatable - you’re still trying to create a false equivalence. They are not the same thing, the desire here to misrepresent facts to fit into a narrative is intellectually dishonest.

> has no ability to defend itself?

Well, in the legislative bodies, they have much less ability to defend itself, than in the past, due to both parties having significant, albeit different, problems with these companies.

> trying to create a false equivalence.

They are equivalent in the specific aspect of them having less allies in congress, and that this makes them more vulnerable than in the past.

IE, less people in our legislative bodies will be willing to stick their neck out to defend them.

> to fit into a narrative

It is absolutely accurate to say that these companies have less allies in congress, than in the past, and that being hit, from both sides, on these 2 issues, hurts these companies.

I can promise you that the major tech companies have no shortage of people in Washington preaching the benefits their companies provide. I wouldn’t say they have less allies than I would say that people don’t use the same rose-tinted glasses when it comes to these companies and their effects on the markets they participate in. It’d be perverse to have a congress that allows what it sees as monopolistic behavior just because their friends are the ones profiting from it.

> I would say that people don’t use the same rose-tinted glasses

You can use different words to describe having less allies, or allies that are less likely to support them, if you want.

But my point still stands. They either have less allies, or those allies are less likely to look at these tech companies through "rose-tinted glasses"

Glad you agree that their former "allies" are no longer looking at these companies so favorable, using " rose-tinted glasses".

The only people who expected democrats to defend monopolies because they were ‘friends’ has either a very cynical or naive view of the influence of business on the Democratic Party, and very little historical perspective.

Arguments that would essentially allow monopolistic behavior has pretty much always been firmly inside republican laissez-faire circles, and those allies are still very much there. Railing against tech elites may play great for tv, but let’s be honest - Peter Thiel, strong advocate of monopoly, still spoke at the Republican national convention. There’s a good reason they overruled fact-checkers when conservatives violated their prescribed rules, they know where their bread is buttered.

https://www.engadget.com/facebook-overruled-fact-checkers-to...

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