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299a08f3 NR |
1 | 0Professor Who Coined Term 'Net Neutrality' Thinks It's Time To Break Up Facebook (theverge.com) null/SLASHDOT/0102640274 70\r |
2 | i Thursday September 06, 2018 @11:30PM (BeauHD)\r | |
3 | i from the easier-said-than-done dept.\r | |
4 | i\r | |
e818d449 NR |
5 | i [1]pgmrdlm shares a report from The Verge:\r |
6 | i \r | |
7 | i > Best known for coining the phrase "net neutrality" and his\r | |
8 | i book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information\r | |
9 | i Empires, Wu has a new book coming out in November called\r | |
10 | i [2]The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age . In\r | |
11 | i it, he argues compellingly for a return to aggressive\r | |
12 | i antitrust enforcement in the style of Teddy Roosevelt, saying\r | |
13 | i that Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other huge tech companies\r | |
14 | i [3]are a threat to democracy as they get bigger and bigger .\r | |
15 | i "We live in America, which has a strong and proud tradition of\r | |
16 | i breaking up companies that are too big for inefficient\r | |
17 | i reasons," Wu told me on this week's Vergecast. "We need to\r | |
18 | i reverse this idea that it's not an American tradition. We've\r | |
19 | i broken up dozens of companies."\r | |
20 | i \r | |
21 | i >\r | |
22 | i \r | |
23 | i > "I think if you took a hard look at the acquisition of\r | |
24 | i WhatsApp and Instagram, the argument that the effects of those\r | |
25 | i acquisitions have been anticompetitive would be easy to prove\r | |
26 | i for a number of reasons," says Wu. And breaking up the company\r | |
27 | i wouldn't be hard, he says. "What would be the harm? You'll\r | |
28 | i have three competitors. It's not 'Oh my god, if you get rid of\r | |
29 | i WhatsApp and Instagram, well then the whole world's going to\r | |
30 | i fall apart.' It would be like 'Okay, now you have some\r | |
31 | i companies actually trying to offer you an alternative to\r | |
32 | i Facebook.'" Breaking up Facebook (and other huge tech\r | |
33 | i companies like Google and Amazon) could be simple under the\r | |
34 | i current law, suggests Wu. But it could also lead to a major\r | |
35 | i rethinking of how antitrust law should work in a world where\r | |
36 | i the giant platform companies give their products away for\r | |
37 | i free, and the ability for the government to restrict corporate\r | |
38 | i power seems to be diminishing by the day. And it demands that\r | |
39 | i we all think seriously about the conditions that create\r | |
40 | i innovation. "I think everyone's steering way away from the\r | |
41 | i monopolies, and I think it's hurting innovation in the tech\r | |
42 | i sector," says Wu.\r | |
43 | i \r | |
44 | i \r | |
45 | i \r | |
46 | i [1] https://slashdot.org/~pgmrdlm\r | |
47 | i \r | |
48 | i [2] https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Bigness-Antitrust-New-Gilded/-\r | |
49 | i dp/0999745468\r | |
50 | i \r | |
51 | i [3] https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/4/17816572/tim-wu-facebook-\r | |
52 | i regulation-interview-curse-of-bigness-antitrust\r | |
299a08f3 | 53 | i\r |