A Leading Critic of Big Tech Joins the White House (nytimes.com) 36
President Biden on Friday named Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor, to the National Economic Council on Friday as a special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy, putting one of the most outspoken critics of Big Tech's power into the administration. From a report: The appointment of Mr. Wu, 48, who is widely supported by progressive Democrats and antimonopoly groups, suggests that the administration plans to take on the size and influence of companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, including working with Congress on legislation to strengthen antitrust laws. During his campaign, Mr. Biden said he would be open to breaking up tech companies. That confrontational approach toward the tech industry would be a continuation of the one taken by the Trump administration. Late last year, federal and state regulators sued Facebook and Google, accusing them of antitrust violations. The regulators continue to investigate claims that Amazon and Apple unfairly squash competition.
Mr. Biden has also expressed skepticism toward social media companies and the legal shield known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. He told The New York Times editorial board in January 2020 that Section 230 "should be revoked, immediately." The tech companies have fought vigorously against new antitrust laws and regulations, building out some of the most potent lobbying forces in Washington to push back. Mr. Wu has warned about the consequences of too much power in the hands of a few companies and said the nation's economy resembled the Gilded Age of the late 1800s. "Extreme economic concentration yields gross inequality and material suffering, feeding the appetite for nationalistic and extremist leadership," Mr. Wu wrote in his 2018 book, "The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age." "Most visible in our daily lives is the great power of the tech platforms, especially Google, Facebook and Amazon," he added. Wu is best known for advocacy against powerful telecom companies and for coining the term "net neutrality," the regulatory philosophy that consumers should get equal access to all content on the internet.
Mr. Biden has also expressed skepticism toward social media companies and the legal shield known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. He told The New York Times editorial board in January 2020 that Section 230 "should be revoked, immediately." The tech companies have fought vigorously against new antitrust laws and regulations, building out some of the most potent lobbying forces in Washington to push back. Mr. Wu has warned about the consequences of too much power in the hands of a few companies and said the nation's economy resembled the Gilded Age of the late 1800s. "Extreme economic concentration yields gross inequality and material suffering, feeding the appetite for nationalistic and extremist leadership," Mr. Wu wrote in his 2018 book, "The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age." "Most visible in our daily lives is the great power of the tech platforms, especially Google, Facebook and Amazon," he added. Wu is best known for advocacy against powerful telecom companies and for coining the term "net neutrality," the regulatory philosophy that consumers should get equal access to all content on the internet.
Constructive solutions anyone? (Score:3)
Anyone notice a bit of drivel? Me neither. And screaming "government bad" doesn't count as a solution except to some Neanderthal wannabes. Delusions of winning. 'Nuff said.
Regarding Tim Wu, I'd obviously like to see some comments from people who've read his books. I can see (from my browser history) that I was already interested in The Attention Merchants (his previous book), but my metasearch tool says no local copies (of any of his books) are available in this neck of the woods. A closely related book m
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I could repeat my favorite solution approach, which is basically restructuring the tax system to favor smaller companies (and smaller governments) and REAL competition with MORE freedom for all, but I've never detected much comprehension or interest around these parts.,/quote>
Ok I'll bite, what's your proposal?
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Do you promise to explain what's wrong with it? There must be something and I'm just too stupid to see it, even after months (years?) of playing with the idea.
The kernel is a progressive tax rate linked to market share. More market share = higher tax rate on profits. If a company dominates a particular market, then the natural path to higher retained earnings would be for the company to divide itself into competing daughter companies. (BtW, not instantly, but the timing is one of the key parameters to incen
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In principle it sounds possible. I think the devil is more in the details here. How do you determine market share in a fair and objective way that can't be gamed? Business are always going to look to circumvent regulation where possible, especially if the cost of regulation is cheaper than the cost of "doing it right". So not only do you need a reliable way to determine market share but the taxes need teeth and punishments for violating the regulations need teeth as well. These aren't criticisms, these are
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The devil is always in the details, and the devilish gamesters are always going to be looking for ways to attack in the details and in the creases between the details. However, if you have a clear higher principle, then you have a basis for updating the details (including the rules of the game) as soon as each new scam appears.
In short, I agree with you that the gamesters are going to game, but that's why I mentioned "competitors and wannabe competitors". They have strong incentives to help identify the mon
The financial system is a much bigger problem (Score:5, Interesting)
S230 isn't the root cause of anything here. It's not even a blocker. It's the ability to buy and sell without having woke corporations vetoing your ability to send money to people they find offensive.
Don't like Twitter? Build your own. Ok, doable.
Don't like AWS kicking you off? Build your own. Ok, expensive but doable and is being done by Gab (while Parler whines like a bitch).
Don't like Visa fiatblocking you? Build your own... Ok now we're in a whole new realm of scaling up, fighting regulation and the whole nine yards.
The further down the stack you go into payments and bandwidth, the more we need to force companies to do business with actors they find repugnant unless we want to have a society where a handful of entrenched companies already in heavily-regulated markets with enormous cost to enter as a competitor (especially as a little startup) can decide who buys and sells and gets to have an Internet presence.
You can't just lay new fiber without local and state government approval. You can't just start a new payment system without deeply understanding the regulatory environment unless you want federal and NY regulators to light your ass on fire and dump you in the ocean. This is where ideology should crash on the rocks of reality.
Crypto is a ticking timebomb for dissidents (Score:3)
All fun and games until no exchange will do business with you, then your crypto is functionally worthless in the economy as it currently works.
Re:The financial system is a much bigger problem (Score:4, Insightful)
ISPs and payment processors should be regulated as common carriers, like the basic utilities that they are. Ditto for domain registration, IP allocation, and any other low level services one is dependent upon for basic functionality.
Re:The financial system is a much bigger problem (Score:5, Interesting)
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It's sickening, frankly. Andrew Torba of Gab not only lost the ability to process payments for Gab, the processors also cut off his wife's unrelated business from being able to process payments. This needs to stop. If you can't process visa and mastercard payments you can't do business in the US. Yes, Gab is barely making it with people sending them checks, but that's not a reasonable way for most companies to do business.
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But how else were the upper-class journalists Sarah Jeong, Jason Koebler, and Vice Magazine able to punch down and destroy Shenzhen Tech Girl Naomi Wu? [medium.com] They removed her ability to take payments, which wrecked her career. Now she's been erased. With the common carrier idea, she'd still be out there.
Thanks for that link. That and the follow on article, are truly sickening.
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We treat utilities differently from other businesses because when we don't, it causes problems. See: Texas.
An ISP is a basic utility of the modern age. It should be treated as such.
If you don't want to be regulated as a utility, don't act like a utility. Certainly no one wants to be that dependent on you.
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What collective delusion are you participating in here? That the right has a better track record of spending money, not kowtowing to monopolistic capitalism, and supporting free speech? The opposition to the right is almost entirely founded the (well founded) recognition that the modern day right can masquerade all day as financial conservatism and limited government (hence increased freedom, supposedly) but they're pure smokescreens for the true driver of that bus: the industry of social conservatism.
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This isn't a new problem though. It's been hard to do stuff without a bank account for many decades already, and the bank will close your account if you don't like you. I remember it happening to a guy in the 80s who changed his middle name to "Lloyds Bank are Bastards", and for some reason Lloyds felt that was unreasonable.
The issue always boils down to these services costing money to provide, which means anything which forces banks to provide them is seen as socialism, and rejected in the US.
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Absolutey.. Not only ISPs have to regulated as common carriers, but hosting companies also.There is no reason to regulate content. That is called censorship and is most evil.
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Don't like Twitter? Build your own. Ok, doable.
american, i presume ?
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Yo (Score:4, Insightful)
Biden to Congress: How's it going now?
Congress: Donations from big tech are skyrocketting, right on schedule!
Sciences in undergrad (Score:2)
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Microsoft learned this lesson that hard way.
They were a monopoly, no need to dispute that. They also used that to intimidate smaller players, that is also well known. However they were taken to court because of Netscape vs Internet Explorer thing, which looking back, was bogus.
Nevertheless it took them over a decade to fight off the charges. And required lots of lobbying in Washington (i.e.: greasing the politicians): https://www.opensecrets.org/or... [opensecrets.org]
The rules are simple: you spend billions in lobby dollars
1984, glass houses and getting stoned (Score:1)
In your own way, you have highlighted... (Score:2)
a common behavior of revolutionaries. It's extremely common for revolutionaries (of ANY political type) to destroy the path THEY took to overthowing the old order, because they more than most others can see the danger that is posed to THEM by the existence of the path they used. History is FULL of examples -look to the communist takeover of Russia, the rise of an odd failed painter in 1930s Germany, even the revolutionaries in China and Iran... all used various mechanisms to stage a revolution and then mov
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How about big banks (Score:2)
How about going after big banks first ? To me they cause more issues than big tech. I can easily avoid tech companies but no avoiding the banking industry.
Oh wait, banks have better bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H lobbing.
A law professor (Score:2)
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Huge improvement over corrupt industry hacks.
Nothing will change (Score:1)