Monopolies as a form of lawlessness - Matt Stoller at Harvard Law Forum.
Monopolies as a form of lawlessness - Matt Stoller at Harvard Law Forum.
A different perspective on tech companies.
https://eand.co/why-breaking-up-big-...t-5aeec2efe225
It turns out the Left is more conservative than Republicans. They hate tech; I’m hearing on NPR daily that Facebook should be nationalized. Democratic politicians are hailing Zuckerberg before Congress for a flogging. It’s leftist teachers who tell my kids it’s best to take notes by hand.
But no, I’m not a red state republican. True progrssives are smart enough to know that tech has done nothing but make our lives better. Tech has led to a world where except for localized conflicts essentially about religious disputes that are ages old there is no more war, women’s rights are ascenteant, we have same sex marriage legalized and mainstreamed, Ebola killed a few thousand people instead of 500 million as the Spanish Flu epidemic did in the twentieth century, except for political gamesmanship there is no reason anybody starves, and violence from crime and wars has plummeted. Religion is irrelevant because tech has made the three horseman of all scriptural narratives—war, epidemics and famine— obsolete. (This has all happened of course because of the partnership between science and capitalism we call tech.)
The latest thing is that tech is responsible for giving us Donald Trump. But guess what. Donald Trump is turning out to be a great president for far Leftist ideals. Tariffs, tech bashing, nativism, these are all traditional paleo left causes that were championed by none other than Bernie Sanders.
People who are afraid of Facebook becoming Big Brother need to do more reading. Facebook just wants to make profits. It doesn’t want to take away our liberty. I’ll take that motivation any day over the impulses of government overreach. Indeed, it’s the success of the business community that is our surest fire weall against totalitarianism. It’s tech that beat the Soviet Union and has improved the lives of billions of Chinese (as well as Americans) and made them our military allies and trading partners. I’m not afraid of Facebook. But the response to fake news is more speech, not less. To quote Rousseau, “To burn is not to anwer.”
One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it is the most precious thing we have.
--Albert Einstein
The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.
--Richard Dawkins
Be kind to all, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
--Philo
Preach on Seattle. Agree.Originally Posted by SeattleUte
Facebook/Instagram nuke a few accounts.
Instagram and its parent company Facebook announced Thursday that they were banning conspiracist Alex Jones and other far-right users under the platforms' policies against dangerous individuals and organizations. The Silicon Valley giant removed several accounts aligned with the far-right mediasphere: former Breitbart figurehead Milo Yiannopoulos; white nationalist personality Laura Loomer; former congressional candidate and anti-Semite Paul Nehlen; and Paul Joseph Watson, one of Jones’ proteges at the conspiracy site Infowars. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s account was also nixed.
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/...r-right-people
Maybe this should be in the Political chit-chat forum, but the social media giants have a big role to play if we are to avoid getting manipulated from abroad, and if we can bring our national discourse back toward a reasonable tone.
I don't know how much faith I have in Facebook's pivot toward privacy, but with GDPR and other nations leading the way on this issue, the big US social media titans need to start taking privacy and guardrails of social decency seriously, and stop allowing their platforms to be used in the decline of our national cohesion.
The White House is reportedly moving to regulate “anti-conservative” social media
This seems to run counter to the belief of corporations as people who have a first amendment right in a post Citizens United world.
Last edited by U-Ute; 08-12-2019 at 09:26 AM.
Tech has learned from finance (initially pioneered by aerospace?) how to use the revolving door between the public and private sectors to secure lucrative contracts.
Inside Amazon And Silicon Valley's JEDI Mind Trick On The Pentagon
No kidding. Internet service is monopolistic to the extreme already. Most Americans have only one or two choices in most cases, or if they are lucky three.
Perhaps if they really want to be given the freedom to eliminate Internet Equality, then they should be forced to accept fixed profit margins (say, 9% over true costs) with 100% open financials, and have their rates set and controlled by LOCAL elected boards and be subject to watchdog groups just like any utility.
Maybe somebody can attach an amendment banishing the FCC people from ever working in the Telecom industry in any capacity ever again, after this debacle.
This is a screw job of the highest order. Somebody needs to also tell Ted Cruz that his porn consumption will become more expensive, and that his hated Huffington Post will always be fast because it is part of the Verizon family.
I’ve found people are very confused about what net neutrality really is. My nephew had a long Facebook post about how he believed free market forces would regulate and prevent ISPs from actually throttling traffic. His think was that if your ISP did that you’d just join one that doesn’t and there would inevitably be one or more that do.
The problem is when you request a website it is likely coming to you across multiple competing ISPs. So even if you are a centurylink customer, you are frequently using Comcast’s network.
For example when I traceroute my servers for my business I’ll see hops across Comcast, centurylink and Cox. My home ISP is centurylink. If Comcast wants to throttle my server traffic without net neutrality they could even though I have no relationship to them.
So you can see how market forces really can’t regulate this and reward the good actors.
Conservative or liberal there is no reason to not support net neutrality as it really is what is best for consumers and actually all businesses.
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Beyond that, most people are lucky to have 2 ISP choices. And often that’s not even a choice my old house my choice was Comcast or Centurylink...but only one provided high speeds, the other was very limited.
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This guy (AG of Missouri) won’t be the last politician to push this issue:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...gating-google/
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
A libertarian view on net neutrality.
Why Net Neutrality Was Mistaken from the Beginning
http://reason.com/blog/2017/11/26/wh...m_medium=email
What interests me about this issue is that I have Republican friends on both sides of the issue, and Democrat friends on both sides of the issue. That suggests to me that perhaps ultimately the best solution is going to be some kind of compromise.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
This is a tangent to the NN discussion, but I don't think people realize just how fragile the wild-west, unregulated Internet world really is. I'm spending more & more of my time with ITSec issues, which is becoming not just expensive, but rendering the technology itself as less effective / valuable.
Here's an example everyone can relate to: How many of us answer our phones like we used to? How many times have you answered the phone, it looked like a local number, maybe somebody you know, and it turned out to be just another sales pitch from India, or the Philippines, or wherever? I don't answer my phone, 95% of the time, unless it's somebody in my Contacts.
All the noise and hassle make phones are less valuable than they used to be.
On NN, if there was a way to immediately punish abusers of throttling - did-incentivize the behavior - then we wouldn't need NN rules. But just as crooked stock brokers sense it's open season to prey on seniors under the Trump regime, those who are ready to jettison NN are either naïvely dogmatic against any regulation, or they stand to benefit from a more chaotic Internet world of predators and victims.
Huh. Imagine that.
Perhaps the nation and all local governments can send Comcast a bill for all of the tax breaks and incentives they were given to install the backbone, and also get them to pay for the real estate for rights-of-way they were essentially gifted without going through the normal condemnation process. Those alone have to approach a trillion dollars.
A free market analysis:
Should Platforms Like Google and Facebook Be Regulated?
http://pointsandfigures.com/2017/12/...-be-regulated/
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"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
This doesn’t have to do with net neutrality but in my mind emphasizes its importance:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-...air-1512516707
It doesn’t really matter who the bad actor(s) in this are it demonstrates that tech companies can shut each other off at expense of the consumer.
We’ve talked about for profit issues of no net neutrality but what about the vengeance side? What if Comcast decides Netflix is a competitor and just refuses to serve them up to their clients?
If you previously thought that wouldn’t happen, this dispute between two tech giants show it IS happening.
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The funny thing about the internet is this: it routes around censorship.
Someone will find a way to crack the Kindle and get the app back on just like someone will build a bridge between Comcast and Netflix if that happened.
Yeah, but only 1% of Kindle owners will be able to follow the instructions to get the hack to work. Tech savvy people have no idea how wide the gulf is between them and the rest of the world.
This is slightly off-point but still relevant here. Also disturbing.
Review: Social Media, Weaponized
Excerpt:
“Our information environment is sick,” warns David Patrikarakos. “We live in a world where facts are less important than narratives, where people emote rather than debate, and where algorithms shape our view of the world.” Even in war.
Mr. Patrikarakos’s “War in 140 Characters” details a new kind of conflict that puts traditional military dominance at risk by weaponizing social media in ways that Silicon Valley’s digital optimists never imagined. The author, a London-based journalist, realized a few years ago that the wars he was covering in the Middle East and Ukraine were fought through social media as much as through physical warfare.
The book offers vivid profiles of individuals on both sides of the online battlefield. One of them is a young Russian journalist who was out of work after Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea in 2014 and occupied Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine following the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s pro-Russian president. Vitaly Bespalov was offered a high-paying job at a digital publisher. He was suspicious but joined the staff of the website worldukraine.com.ua anyway. He discovered that his job was to outrage Russian speakers in Ukraine and keep them on Mr. Putin’s side.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
End of Net Neutrality: What It Means for Consumers
FCC’s rollback of telecom rules could raise prices, but nothing is certain
Supporters of net neutrality warn that the end of the Obama-era rules will spell doom for internet freedom. Rather than treat all web traffic equally, telecom companies will be free to carve up the web into slow and fast “lanes,” costing consumers more time and money, they say.
Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has played down the fears and said there are still rules in place to punish companies which harm consumers.
The truth may be somewhere in the middle. Much is still unknown about how this will play out now that the FCC has repealed net neutrality.
While the debate rolls on, here are some ways the FCC’s vote could impact you:
Will consumers have to pay more for internet service or content?
Don’t expect any immediate changes to your wireless bill or web subscriptions. But over the coming months and years, there are two ways the internet could become more expensive.
In the near term, internet-service providers, or ISPs, could charge content providers like Netflix and Spotify for the privilege of streaming their videos and music over internet “fast lanes,” free of interruption. Those services could in turn pass on the added cost to consumers by raising their subscriptions a few bucks a month.
So-called “paid prioritization” deals could be challenged by antitrust regulators if they are done to limit competition, rather than to pay for the cost of managing high-speed connections.
Further out, the removal of net neutrality in theory could inhibit competition for services. With fewer companies competing to offer broadband and fewer websites delivering content, prices for all of these things could go up.
Can service providers like Comcast and Verizon slow down video streaming?
The largest ISPs say they have no plans to throttle website speeds. But they have before.
In 2008, the FCC ruled that Comcast had slowed access to BitTorrent because the peer-to-peer downloading site had “become a competitive threat to cable operators.” Comcast sued and had the order overturned, but the event created the impetus for the drafting of net-neutrality rules to prevent throttling.
Will ISPs be able to censor content they don’t like?
The biggest telco companies also own TV studios, websites and other businesses that compete for the attention of web users. Without net-neutrality protections, they could try to tip the playing field to their advantage by blocking access to sites with which they compete.
This happened last year in Morocco, where telecommunications companies worked together to block access to web-calling services like Skype because it competed with their phone businesses.
In the U.S., such a brazen move could provoke intervention by the Justice Department or the Federal Trade Commission, which both police unfair and anticompetitive business practices.
What measures can people take to try to avoid having their internet slowed or censored?
Read the fine print on user agreements. The FCC will require service providers to notify users if they block, slow down or give preferential treatment to any services.
Are there any ways consumers might benefit from the rollback of net-neutrality rules?
Some services have already become cheaper to consumers through so-called “zero rating” deals offered by wireless carriers. These deals include free access to high-bandwidth apps and sites like Netflix and HBO that don’t count toward a user’s mobile-data plan.
Though critics say these deals violate the principles of net neutrality because they let carriers give preferential treatment to some services, the FCC said earlier this year that it wouldn’t target companies making such offers, especially because low-income people could benefit.
Write to Douglas MacMillan at douglas.macmillan@wsj.com
https://www.wsj.com/articles/end-of-...ers-1513275987
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"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
The bottom line is that there is little or no competition in the ISP space.
We don’t know for sure what will happen, but we do no for sure that companies do not behave when there is no competition. Especially companies that already have a history of bad behavior (looking at you Comcast).
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If we were to look into a crystal ball on this, some factors to consider:
Comcast is one of the largest ISPs in the nation with more than half of the US as subscribers.
Netflix represents nearly 40% of the nation’s bandwidth. I couldn’t find great info other than one article that said steaming services represent 70% of all bandwidth today.
People cutting the cord is happening exponentially and that isn’t good at all for Comcast’s other core business.
Do we really expect them to sit by as their other business erodes? Do we really expect them to be good players and not force these streaming services to pay more just because?
If you do I have some beachfront property on Arizona to sell you.
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IT'S A DEAL!!
https://www.nauticalbeachfrontresort...Policies_1.png
“Children and dogs are as necessary to the welfare of the country as Wall Street and the railroads.” -- Harry S. Truman
"You never soar so high as when you stoop down to help a child or an animal." -- Jewish Proverb
"Three-time Pro Bowler Eric Weddle the most versatile, and maybe most intelligent, safety in the game." -- SI, 9/7/15, p. 107.
I only believe that number if pornography is included.
NYU business prof, writing in Esquire:
SILICON VALLEY’S TAX-AVOIDING, JOB-KILLING, SOUL-SUCKING MACHINE
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics...ilicon-valley/Four companies dominate our daily lives unlike any other in human history: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. We love our nifty phones and just-a-click-away services, but these behemoths enjoy unfettered economic domination and hoard riches on a scale not seen since the monopolies of the gilded age. The only logical conclusion? We must bust up big tech.
I think it’s inevitable that something will be done about this. I hope it will be bipartisan.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
Just as Energy and Defense align with the Trump/GOP tribe, Tech aligns with Democrats, on culture, politics, womens rights, diversity. (It's ironic that tribalism frequently boils down to a binary view of the world, because the underlying structure of tech is binary, technologically, zeroes and ones.)
I think Trump would move to not just breakup the Tech Oligarchs, but seize control of I.T. companies and invite external powers to help maintain control.
Seems like a standard antitrust suit would do the trick. It would take commitment because the defendants have money and clout and staying power. Congressional action would be harder because the tech giants own both parties — Democrats probably a little more than the Republicans, but not enough of a difference to allow either party to be the champion of reform.
Deposit $.02.
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Last edited by LA Ute; 02-10-2018 at 04:16 PM.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
My guess is the Dems would threaten to break up the banks if the Repubs go after tech companies.
Maybe we need a massive bloodletting in this regard.
Interesting piece here in The Economist.
The techlash against Amazon, Facebook and Google—and what they can do
https://www.economist.com/news/brief...n-facebook-and
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
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