Professor Who Coined Term 'Net Neutrality' Thinks It's Time To Break Up Facebook (theverge.com) 61
pgmrdlm shares a report from The Verge: Best known for coining the phrase "net neutrality" and his book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, Wu has a new book coming out in November called The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age. In it, he argues compellingly for a return to aggressive antitrust enforcement in the style of Teddy Roosevelt, saying that Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other huge tech companies are a threat to democracy as they get bigger and bigger. "We live in America, which has a strong and proud tradition of breaking up companies that are too big for inefficient reasons," Wu told me on this week's Vergecast. "We need to reverse this idea that it's not an American tradition. We've broken up dozens of companies."
"I think if you took a hard look at the acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram, the argument that the effects of those acquisitions have been anticompetitive would be easy to prove for a number of reasons," says Wu. And breaking up the company wouldn't be hard, he says. "What would be the harm? You'll have three competitors. It's not 'Oh my god, if you get rid of WhatsApp and Instagram, well then the whole world's going to fall apart.' It would be like 'Okay, now you have some companies actually trying to offer you an alternative to Facebook.'" Breaking up Facebook (and other huge tech companies like Google and Amazon) could be simple under the current law, suggests Wu. But it could also lead to a major rethinking of how antitrust law should work in a world where the giant platform companies give their products away for free, and the ability for the government to restrict corporate power seems to be diminishing by the day. And it demands that we all think seriously about the conditions that create innovation. "I think everyone's steering way away from the monopolies, and I think it's hurting innovation in the tech sector," says Wu.
"I think if you took a hard look at the acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram, the argument that the effects of those acquisitions have been anticompetitive would be easy to prove for a number of reasons," says Wu. And breaking up the company wouldn't be hard, he says. "What would be the harm? You'll have three competitors. It's not 'Oh my god, if you get rid of WhatsApp and Instagram, well then the whole world's going to fall apart.' It would be like 'Okay, now you have some companies actually trying to offer you an alternative to Facebook.'" Breaking up Facebook (and other huge tech companies like Google and Amazon) could be simple under the current law, suggests Wu. But it could also lead to a major rethinking of how antitrust law should work in a world where the giant platform companies give their products away for free, and the ability for the government to restrict corporate power seems to be diminishing by the day. And it demands that we all think seriously about the conditions that create innovation. "I think everyone's steering way away from the monopolies, and I think it's hurting innovation in the tech sector," says Wu.
Safe Harbor (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
If they want to curate content according to their political bias, then treat them like the politically-biased media outlets they are, legally liable for the content they host, instead of platforms under "safe harbor" protections. If they want to continue to be treated like platforms, then they can keep their hands off their political opponents' speech.
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They're already not 'common carriers' so they really didn't lose anything by curating.
The solution is to reestablish 'common carrier' protections for those web forums that deserve it.
Re:Safe Harbor (Score:4, Interesting)
Holy Fuck (Score:1)
Why do I bother coming here anymore?
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We don't even have that anymore.
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PHRASING.
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At this point in time,
Jeff Bezos owns Amazon and news papers and whatever else
Satya Nadella is in control of one of the biggest new networks (which slashdotters will never see because it's through Edge and Bing)
The Alphabet boys are in control of what almost everyone in the world sees
Zuck and Dorsey could easily control a MASSIVE amount of what everyone sees.
What's also important is that most of these people seem to have some inkling of wanti
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It's correct that people want one point of access to a thing, but nobody really wants a monopoly.
Assuming that one inevitably leads to the other is part of the problem.
For example, with the video streaming sites, what we really need is for them to collaborate on the platform (how you login and watch shit) but compete on the content, meaning that if you watch American Gods on the shared platform, Amazon gets paid a share of your subscription, yet if you watch Luke Cage on the same platform, Netflix gets paid
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Then there was FDR who had the national radio and used it as a weapon against others in Washington to give him near-dictator powers. And then he completely without foresight fucked up the political system in America by imposing term limits which meant that politicians who have real plans that take more than 8 years to accomplish... won't.
When we got TV and had 1-3 channels,
Professor? Professor? (Score:2)
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Dr. Who! :D
How (Score:2)
exactly do you break up a company who offers a service for free?
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Facebook, Google, and Apple need to be broken up. (Score:1)
Microsoft has fallen below the zone they were once in.
And how would that solve anything for consumers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Facebook has grown because it offered the best social platform for users. The point of social platforms is to connect with everyone else. Fragmentation means people needing to belong to and check multiple platforms. Trying to force competition won't solve any user issues. However, once Facebook stops providing a compelling service, people will move on their own. The same as they gave up MySpace and the same as they rejected Google+. The market chose Facebook and will purge it when time comes.
The same with Google. There were plenty of entrenched search services when Google came to be. Users chose it because it was better. The old search services died because they didn't evolve. If Google stops being the best fit option, people will go somewhere else. They already have choices like Bing and Duck Duck Go. As the service is free, people are choosing based on functionality, not on price. Those that don't like the privacy price of Google are opting for other services. You can't just declare another search service is required and then force the public to use it so that you can claim to have multiple services with comparable market share.
If people were given a choice of all you can eat steak or beets at equal cost, odds are that the majority would choose steak. When you remove cost and scarcity, the premium option will dominate. Digital services don't have scarcity like physical products do. It's a different economy.
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Facebook has grown because it offered the best social platform for users.
As stated in the summary: Facebook has grown by purchasing their competitors. The summary mentions WhatsApp and Instagram specifically.
Your comment about the problem with fragmentation is an example of why Facebook needs to be broken up by an outside entity: they have a natural monopoly, since real competition from startups would lead to fragmentation.
I've said this before, but if the government came along and broke up the company by splitting off Facebook's front-end from its back-end, then we could
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As stated in the summary: Facebook has grown by purchasing their competitors. The summary mentions WhatsApp and Instagram specifically.
While this is true, so far they have not bought their competitors to shut them down, or to raise prices to the detriment of consumers. They are building a monopoly, but so far, it is not harmful from an economic perspective, and unfortunately I don't think anti-trust law is concerned with privacy, so the case for breaking up Facebook is not strong.
Apple would be a much juicier target, especially as they recently became the world's first trillion dollar company (with Amazon close behind). Splitting out the
ok (Score:1)
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We need open platforms (Score:1)
These proprietary social networks are bad for free speech.
I have no problem with facebook, google, twitter, except that they concentrate the internet in the hands of a few large companies.
We need open platforms like HTML, TCP/IP, Email, Newsgroups, etc.
All old retrograde stuff according to the children. But there isn't one of these social networks that couldn't be made P2P or something that anyone could set up their own personal server for that interlinked with each other.
A 20 dollar raspberry pi could host
Not a monopoly or required... (Score:2)
I don't like Facebook either but its not a monopoly, nor is it required in anyway to use the internet. Anyone could come up with the next social network thing anytime now or you can just NOT use Facebook. It isn't like an OS or a browser that is necessary for use or access to anything. Facebook or Twitter are tools of convenience and can easily be done without. If you don't like what is being said filter it out or don't use either.
We had the chance... (Score:2)
and blew it...with Microsoft. They should have been broken up just like Standard Oil. But they were not and that just created a precedent for companies like Facebook and Amazon and Google. We reap what we sow.
Why I posted this (Score:2)
What the f____ (Score:2)
"Look over here! See? We're thinking about maybe eventually doing something someday! (Pay no attention to the massive personal data collection feast that every-single-damn-corporation and government in the entire bloody world is gorging on behind the curtain)"
WHY do people give so many shits for instabook and facegram? It's not something anybody actually needs to begin with. For fucks sake. Big tech is not "The internet"... in fact, the case has been made that these companies are big evil time eaters that p
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