Posted on 11/01/2017 9:05:54 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
In the absence of rigorous antitrust enforcement, the consumer internet has become too concentrated in a few dominant companies, creating easy targets for bad actors.
There is a reason Congress did not have to investigate foreign meddling after the 2008 or 2012 elections. Back then the internet was still a diverse, decentralized network...This older form of online community building has largely been supplanted by tools provided by the dominant players...
Google used to be the engine that drove the open web... Over time, Google’s philosophy shifted [to] making the internet less open and pluralistic than even a few years ago...Facebook’s walled garden is even more stringent, requiring all third-party content accessed from its app to run through its frame. As web activity is drawn within the confines of these two tech giants, so is the revenue that follows...
The economics have also changed for internet startups hoping to reinvent the web. Early-stage capital has dried up, dropping more than 40% since 2015, as investors have become pessimistic that any new Googles and Facebooks will ever be capable of disrupting the deeply entrenched incumbents....
The internet has turned into a pair of walled gardens, offering economies of scale for attackers....Russia Today, Moscow’s official English-language television network, is a “premium partner” on YouTube, entitling it to higher shares of revenue from advertisements sold by Google. A quick estimate—multiplying standard rates of revenue-sharing by RT’s view counts—suggests Google could be sending the Russians seven-figure annual payouts. Facebook has already identified at least $100,000 spent by Russians on its platform to influence voters. Paid ads have the ability to amplify the virality of the fake content. This suggests a feedback loop optimized for mischief...
Policy makers can solve this problem by compelling large information firms to embrace interoperability.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Google, Facebook and Twitter are monopolies in every sense.
Bust them.
The law exists. Enforce it.
Normally I’d say let the market work. I can build a car in my garaga, even an airplane or computer. But there is no way to build another Google. They monopolize all ad content not only in searches but through youtube.
Yup, time for anti-trust. Or they become the new Gestapo.
I think the case for Google being something that needs to be broken up is much better than for Facebook and Twitter.
Twitter is simply a social media site. The most popular one, true, but it has very limited usage. Facebook is similar, although they have branched out a little more than Twitter.
Google is the thing that is really vast and far reaching, with its ownership of YouTube, the wide array of different services and products it offers. It’s insidious. It gets into your email, your documents, your stored data, your media, everything.
Plus, Google’s original function, as a search engine, has probably become its most nefarious, acting as a gateway to the internet — a filter that can cut out the things it doesn’t want you to see and shove the things it does want you to see in your face.
>>Google, Facebook and Twitter are monopolies in every sense.
Bust them.
The law exists. Enforce it.<<
I agree — if they did it to Ma Bell, they can do it to them.
We are all tired of their tyrannical and arbitrary censoring of conservative thought.
The other day I tweeted (under my FD2003 guise —
I *never* tweet as my RL name) something to an apparent woman “you only wish you were as lovely and elegant as Ivanka” — that was IT!
I was suspended.
These things are now utilities. Let the inventors continue to profit from their inventions but force the market to open.
I dont understand why a privately held company has to cater to the “free speech” at a level that the government does.
The constitution does not apply to your ability to express your opinions on my web site.
If people don’t like how they deal with censorship, the market is free to provide an alternative.
Spot on. In my view this is absolutely no different to what the feds did to AT&T in the early 1980s. Back then Ma Bell was performing a function very similar to what Google, Facebook, and YouTube are doing. I see no reason not to decentralize these powers in the same manner as was done to AT&T, and for the same reason.
As a result of the bust up of AT&T a lot of great innovation occurred that may have not occurred without the forced competition.
>>The constitution does not apply to your ability to express your opinions on my web site.
<<
One could make the same argument for electricity and telephone — they started in the private sector and should therefore now be subject to rules and restrictions based on a corporation’s whims.
Note I said the inventors should still be allowed to profit.
Twitter and FB have become de-facto utilities. If you are silenced there you are silenced in the public square.
I thought the Russian ads were AGAINST Trump!!
I understand what you are saying. I simply disagree with your premise.
As a free market conservative, I think that companies should rise and fall on their merits. For example, we frequent a conservative web site because we want to see what we consider fair coverage of issues. We do not use the DU for the same coverage.
The market determines how that works. I do not want the government regulating the speech on any web site. If our message(s) are strong enough we will adapt to the technology and make it our own.
I am not arguing for the sake of argument. I think we just have two different views of how this stuff works best.
We can disagree, agreeably.
What you really want to break up is Comcast. Their vertical integration has a more direct impact on the american public than google ever will.
Using your standards, they own TV, Cable, Bill Boards, and a whole conglomerate of media.
>>We can disagree, agreeably.<<
Agreed.
:)
>>What you really want to break up is Comcast. <<
But they have significant competition in all the spaces where they operate. If Comcast decides it doesn’t want you in any space in their vertical — or you don’t want them — you can immediately go to a competitor.
If FB suspends you, what alternative is available?
In every sense? How about in the sense they are exclusive in their market? Google has competitors, has no exclusive control, so is not a monopoly.
You can get suspended for arbitrary reasons on FR, too. Does that make FR a utility?
>>You can get suspended for arbitrary reasons on FR, too. Does that make FR a utility?<<
You have it reversed. It isn’t the silencing, it is the lack of alternatives.
Silencing me from FR does not silence me on other boards. FR is the largest conservative board but it is a tiny slice of the public square.
Being silenced on FB essentially silences you in the entirety of the public square since you can’t say “no problem, I will go to my alternative.”
Same for Twitter.
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