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Comment by gbil | Hacker News Reader

This assumes that he has more power than the tech companies on the everyday life and I wonder if that is really the case. As I'm not located in the states, I'm very much interested to hear from a US resident if that is really the case.

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>This assumes that he has more power than the tech companies

lol

Even the San Francisco city council is bullying American tech companies and tech executives.

The power of US tech companies is vastly overstated.

The biggest mistake tech companies have done over the past 2 decades is not spending enough money lobbying. Every other industry manages to stay under the radar by continuing to pay both sides. Tech industry never got involved in politics so they were easy targets for politicians on minor issues.

> The biggest mistake tech companies have done over the past 2 decades is not spending enough money lobbying.

What does "enough" look like?

https://www.datawrapper.de/_/Ldiwf/

I mean given that they are in tech, the biggest mistake was being located in a city or state. I can understand that they have to deal with the US government (any company anywhere in the world have to deal with it) but they don't have to deal with San Francisco/California. They choose that position and they don't deserve sympathy for being passive about it.

A tech company can’t shoot me with impunity under “qualified immunity”. Put me in jail, harass me because I don’t look like a belong in my own neighborhood, take my property under civil forfeiture without a trial…

They can permanently ban you from the economy though.

There is no company that would ruin me if I lost an account.

You're right about these most serious adverse outcomes, but don't forget what could happen if you (say) randomly get your Big Tech account locked/suspended/banned for some reason that was ultimately erroneously flagged by an AI, and then cheerfully executed at scale.

The examples you provided are more fundamental and I won't trivialize them, but making you lose your "keys to your own digital space" is a very real power they have over you.

Okay? I lose my Google account and lose my Google Photos, they are also backed up to iCloud and One Drive and vice versa. All the music I bought back in the day from iTunes is DRM free and has been since 2009.

I lose my Amazon account, so what?

> This assumes that he has more power than the tech companies on the everyday life

How?

From the perspective of a citizen’s everyday life who sees that their life is getting more expensive and consumes information from a curated essentially list - eg. Instagram, fb etc - from the operator of that platform. I don’t think that the average person in the states - like in my European country - watches tv or buys a newspaper. In this context is the PR and hence effect from the government more than that of the tech companies ?

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