Disney has single handedly affected copyright law due to the amount of IPs they own. They're a monopoly.
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Elizabeth Warren says she wants to break up Amazon, Google, and Facebook
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If that's the case, doesn't that mean Trump won the popular vote? Plenty of people didn't vote and if what you say is true, then those no votes would mean they voted for him.
I wasn't optimistic about Warren's chances coming into this , I think she was listening to too many consultants and letting Trump drag her down to the mud. However she has been extremely impressive since announcing her run
Good ideas, a history of of following through on her rhetoric and she's just been very consistent ever since she showed up.
Good ideas, a history of of following through on her rhetoric and she's just been very consistent ever since she showed up.
Well then you might as well vote for Trump. Honestly, I like her so I hope she does :P.
umm... the copyright law is busted... not that companies own a lot of IPs.... the fact that this is the first year in over 40 years that films are being released to the public domain is testament to that (largely because of.... Disney.. yeah, I know..)
I think people are too focused on the names that she named. If she's able to accomplish that, then they will definitely break up plenty of other companies too. She just singled out some of the biggest names right now.
She said she was starting a pledge against taking corporate big money(either by way of special PAC or high dollar fundraisers, smoozing with bundlers and such)in the primary, which is great.
But that she will drop that pledge for the general without precondition. It honestly erases the entire point of not taking big corporate money for the primary in the first place, there's no point.
If you can't come up with a strategy to hold yourself more accountable to the people than the donors, or that your values stop after a certain point, it completely trashes your stated goals and supposed beliefs.
It just sours me completely, and i was already very sour because Warren has a habit of doing this...just as one example, that whole native American DNA kerfuffle just is completely horrible after she played politics with Standing Rock after people were begging and pleading with her to come to their defense when they needed it.
I'm not sure how breaking up Apple makes a lot of sense. They're huge, but they're far from having a monopoly on anything. The iPhone is their most dominant product in the US and they're still only at ~45% mobile market share.
Not really. THe point is in a situation (like we have) where there really is only two feasable opponents, if you dislike one but don't vote or vote for some one who isn't going to win you pretty much indirectly helped him win anyways cause instead of doing the thing that would stop him from winning, you went with something that didn't matter to him. You were a vote that didn't like him that could have voted him out, so that potential is gone. It doesn't matter if you say you don't want him, if you don't vote for the viable alternative you in a way helped him win because he has one less vote that would have mattered against him. Hell, the republicans realize this, that's why we have so much voter suppression aimed at target markets they know don't tend to vote for them.
Now, we can't say that of everyone who didn't vote unless we know they all were against trump winning (we don't, some might, no will, have been against hillary winning).
They have the ability to materially affect market pricing across a huge swathe of industries - the prohibition on linking to other sites to force people to use their payment mechanisms with a 30% market tax affects (and blocking charging their platforms more) affects hundreds of industries even on non-Apple devices.
(Ability to materially affect market pricing is the EU test of monopoly market share).
I don't think a full break up is warranted, but forcing them to spin off some side divisions/businesses might be useful. The problem with many tech companies today is that their products benefit from huge network effects, where there's a lot of benefit in having one product have such large marketshare.
How about we break nothing up?
Breaking up the banks is the dumbest, most intellectually repugnant idea that was ever introduced on the campaign trail. Strengthening and enforcing D-F is all that's needed to regulate the banking industry.
Short of Verizon buying Comcast, the telecom industry doesn't need to be broken up.
Breaking up Google means that one business will be massively profitable, while the other can no longer have the luxury to innovate. Think non-ad Google will be spending billions on autonomous driving, charging nothing for Android, YouTube, Google Services, while continuing to innovate? But even then, you'd just have two smaller (one which will be significantly larger) businesses that still have scale.
Reactionary campaign rhetoric.
I don't disagree with any of that, and if that's the test, then they definitely qualify.
She definitely ain't winning now. They'll throw everything at her.
They are the government.
They are the government.
Google and Facebook I get, they are legit monopolies within their business areas.
Amazon doesn't really seem to be in the same kind of uber monopolistic position to my knowledge. There are huge players in the same fields that they are in. Like, they have solid competition from companies like Walmart in retail, Netflix in online video streaming, Microsoft in cloud
Amazon doesn't really seem to be in the same kind of uber monopolistic position to my knowledge. There are huge players in the same fields that they are in. Like, they have solid competition from companies like Walmart in retail, Netflix in online video streaming, Microsoft in cloud
I still don't get what makes Facebook something that needs to be broken up. Even if you split off instagram or whatever, how are you going to force people to leave Facebook?
Poor sweet Amazon and Facebook. We must protect themAmazon and Facebook are like...
They are not monopolies, Disney and ATT are. Alphabet is
I think it's going to be a challenge, but there is a valid rationale here. The reason Warren or others would look at Amazon, Facebook, and GOogle, oversay, Disney, is because their products are so completely different and Disney is just not at the same level as those companies for controlling every day activities in your every day life. Disney is irrelevant here. THey own media properties, theme parks, movies, consumer goods, their own content delivery network, and those are irrelevant to your daily life. You could cut Disney out of your life and you'd lose their entertainment properties, big deal. You can't live a modern life and realistically cut Amazon or Google out of your life, even if you never shop on Amazon or only use DuckDuckGo (or Firefox, or w/e), your daily fingerprints are all over Amazon and Google products in ways that you don't even know it's Amazon and Google.
A huge portion of your daily web activity is on Amazon. No, not Amazon.com, on AWS - Amazon Web Services. You pretty much can't use the modern, Western internet without AWS. It is everywhere. Amazon has challengers in this area from Microsoft, and then you've got Google in a distant third, and then a smattering of other smaller companies. But, Amazon really owns the lionshare of "new" companies with cloud infrastructure, because their products are so good.
For GOogle, they've made such a good product that they own an actual majority on search traffic. Google has not abused their role in Search for consumers, they still provide the best search engine, at no cost, and the product is excellent. Google Search provides legitimate results, even when Google fails to implement search effectively for their other products (I've talked about this before, but search "Feminism" in Google and you'll get accurate, historical, informative articles and web pages about Feminism; Now search "Feminism" in YouTube... Note how different the results are despite that this is the same company building these two search algorithms). While Google has been an agent for good in the search game, literally knowledge sharing on the internet would not be what it is without Google, their is tremendous risk for abuse. Beyond that, Gmail, Android, Photos, and more, Google has built this huge cohesive network of data collection that makes their products exponentially better than everybody else's.
For Facebook, Facebook owns the three largest social networks in the world: WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram. A case can be made that Facebook has made Instagram better for consumers: Instagram used to have major problems with scaling and the network has only gotten more popular since Facebook bought it. Facebook, undoubtedly, abuses their position. While Amazon and Google arguably do not abuse their positions, Facebook unabashedly does... They hire counter-intelligence firms to spread false, damaging information about people who criticize them; they work with bad actors around the globe; they profit on misinformation, and promote misinformation because it's more profitable.
Disney isn't in the same realm here. They're not even relevant to this conversation. If you're worried about an entertainment company damaging consumers with a monopoly, look to Netflix, not Disney. Netflix owns the entertainment market today. Apple isn't either. Apple makes stuff, not services. AT&T/DirectTV can pose a danger, but they're quickly becoming less and less relevant.
I'd recommend people listen to a recent interview with former Hollywood studio Exec Barry DIller on RecodeDecode with KAra Swisher. It's typical rambinling shotgun question style of Swisher, but Diller makes a lot of really strong points, chief among them that the classic studios are irrelevant.
https://www.recode.net/2019/2/18/18...-kara-swisher-recode-decode-podcast-interview
The trouble with the monopoly argument against Google and Amazon is that even if you hate these companies for whatever reason, their main products that give them the most influence -- AWS for Amazon and Google Search for Google -- are still agents of good. AWS made cloud infrastructure approachable for consumers, startups, and major companies... It offered a consumer service that was previously only available if you were an Amazon or Microsoft. Microsoft and Google followed suit with their offerings. I actually prefer Google's products here (I fucking love Firebase, which Google bought in 2014 and has continually made better and better). Today's interpretation of breaking up monopolies usually targets businesses that hurt consumers with their monopoly, and the argument cannot be made that AWS and Google are hurting consumers with their monopolies... They simply aren't. But, anti-trust law did not always take this Corporation -> Consumer relationship as the primary motivation for whether an anti-trust suit has to be brought... Standard Oil wasn't broken up because of it's Corporation -> Consumer relationship, it was broken up because of its abuse of other corporations. But, Anti-trust law started to change in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s (rejected Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork has basically defined our modern anti-trust understanding), and now what we know as anti-trust law puts the consumer -- you, me, the small business -- as the chief plaintiff in anti-trust, and in that cases, it's almost impossible to make the case against Amazon and Google to be broken up. Interpretation of anti-trust would have to go back to pre-1980s interpretation.
I legitimately think that Facebook is an agent of evil, though, so I wouldn't extend that umbrella of defense to them. And, to be sure, I'm not defending Google or Amazon, I'm saying that our present day interpretation of anti-trust would be a challenge to break these companies up, and we'd have to go back to a early 20th century vision of anti-trust to do it.
A huge portion of your daily web activity is on Amazon. No, not Amazon.com, on AWS - Amazon Web Services. You pretty much can't use the modern, Western internet without AWS. It is everywhere. Amazon has challengers in this area from Microsoft, and then you've got Google in a distant third, and then a smattering of other smaller companies. But, Amazon really owns the lionshare of "new" companies with cloud infrastructure, because their products are so good.
For GOogle, they've made such a good product that they own an actual majority on search traffic. Google has not abused their role in Search for consumers, they still provide the best search engine, at no cost, and the product is excellent. Google Search provides legitimate results, even when Google fails to implement search effectively for their other products (I've talked about this before, but search "Feminism" in Google and you'll get accurate, historical, informative articles and web pages about Feminism; Now search "Feminism" in YouTube... Note how different the results are despite that this is the same company building these two search algorithms). While Google has been an agent for good in the search game, literally knowledge sharing on the internet would not be what it is without Google, their is tremendous risk for abuse. Beyond that, Gmail, Android, Photos, and more, Google has built this huge cohesive network of data collection that makes their products exponentially better than everybody else's.
For Facebook, Facebook owns the three largest social networks in the world: WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram. A case can be made that Facebook has made Instagram better for consumers: Instagram used to have major problems with scaling and the network has only gotten more popular since Facebook bought it. Facebook, undoubtedly, abuses their position. While Amazon and Google arguably do not abuse their positions, Facebook unabashedly does... They hire counter-intelligence firms to spread false, damaging information about people who criticize them; they work with bad actors around the globe; they profit on misinformation, and promote misinformation because it's more profitable.
Disney isn't in the same realm here. They're not even relevant to this conversation. If you're worried about an entertainment company damaging consumers with a monopoly, look to Netflix, not Disney. Netflix owns the entertainment market today. Apple isn't either. Apple makes stuff, not services. AT&T/DirectTV can pose a danger, but they're quickly becoming less and less relevant.
I'd recommend people listen to a recent interview with former Hollywood studio Exec Barry DIller on RecodeDecode with KAra Swisher. It's typical rambinling shotgun question style of Swisher, but Diller makes a lot of really strong points, chief among them that the classic studios are irrelevant.
https://www.recode.net/2019/2/18/18...-kara-swisher-recode-decode-podcast-interview
The trouble with the monopoly argument against Google and Amazon is that even if you hate these companies for whatever reason, their main products that give them the most influence -- AWS for Amazon and Google Search for Google -- are still agents of good. AWS made cloud infrastructure approachable for consumers, startups, and major companies... It offered a consumer service that was previously only available if you were an Amazon or Microsoft. Microsoft and Google followed suit with their offerings. I actually prefer Google's products here (I fucking love Firebase, which Google bought in 2014 and has continually made better and better). Today's interpretation of breaking up monopolies usually targets businesses that hurt consumers with their monopoly, and the argument cannot be made that AWS and Google are hurting consumers with their monopolies... They simply aren't. But, anti-trust law did not always take this Corporation -> Consumer relationship as the primary motivation for whether an anti-trust suit has to be brought... Standard Oil wasn't broken up because of it's Corporation -> Consumer relationship, it was broken up because of its abuse of other corporations. But, Anti-trust law started to change in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s (rejected Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork has basically defined our modern anti-trust understanding), and now what we know as anti-trust law puts the consumer -- you, me, the small business -- as the chief plaintiff in anti-trust, and in that cases, it's almost impossible to make the case against Amazon and Google to be broken up. Interpretation of anti-trust would have to go back to pre-1980s interpretation.
I legitimately think that Facebook is an agent of evil, though, so I wouldn't extend that umbrella of defense to them. And, to be sure, I'm not defending Google or Amazon, I'm saying that our present day interpretation of anti-trust would be a challenge to break these companies up, and we'd have to go back to a early 20th century vision of anti-trust to do it.
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Twitter, Reddit, SnapChat, etc. there are plenty of other social media services. All I hear from peoooe here is how nobody useable facebook anymore.
If the reason is they're too big and powerful, that implies Elizabeth Warren wants to impose an arbitrary upper market cap limit on the size of companies, or at least of tech companies. What would her ceiling be? $200 billion? $400 billion? S&P 500 companies divest parts of their business all the time when it makes sense for them to do so. If the companies are that size, it's because it's economically efficient for them to be that size (except in cases where management is empire building just to increase their paycheck). I'd rather not there be an artificial ceiling on the limits of U.S. companies and have them be divided up beyond that point. That would destroy so much value and put our MNCs at a disadvantage internationally.
So what do you do with AWS and Google's search engine? How do you break that up? Like AWS can only sign up so many customers before they start refusing new business?
Netflix is also on relatively thin ice for a supposed monopoly, considering Disney+ is about to enter the market. I'd argue Disney has way more leverage than them considering the content they already own/create.
Is there any real basis for breaking up Apple? Do they even own 20% of the smartphone market?
I'm sure the U.S. government exlusivly controlling search, social media, web services, and having direct access to all the data would go over well lol.
God DAMN its good to see that conversation starting. I doubt it'll happen but I really like that its out there now.
I'm sure we'll have no shortage of dipshits going "That's big gubbamint trying to stick their nose in free market!" but regardless, let us whisper of a dream.
I'm sure we'll have no shortage of dipshits going "That's big gubbamint trying to stick their nose in free market!" but regardless, let us whisper of a dream.
Disney is primarily a content company. Google, Facebook, and Amazon are platform companies.
This isn't about going after big companies that own a lot of things. This is about going after companies that have an unusually large, and growing, amount of control over data collection, content distribution, e-commerce, and personal communication. Companies that have hooks into almost every single aspect of your life. Google and Facebook know everything about you from you simply interacting with their platforms, and Amazon is well on their path to putting their snoopy little microphones into most of the homes in America, with Google chasing after them. Facebook has been spreading propaganda and misinformation globally at a scale that was previously unthinkable, resulting in genocide campaigns and doing actual damage to society.
If you think Disney owning all of the superheroes is as big of a problem as that, lol.
What exactly did Google do? Facebook and Amazon needing to be broken up makes sense, but Google broke itself up when it launched Alphabet.
Apple is not a monopoly in anything. Not even a majority. Also, they are awesome.
It's hilarious, and sad, that a guy who ran on a platform of racism, and won, is fine, but doing something that would actually benefit people is seen as too out there.
I guess the one thing I don't get is that people still have a choice, and they're choosing to use Google, Amazon, and Facebook. There are alternatives. Life can actually exist without using them at all. You don't have to buy an Echo, for instance. Now you can argue that if you completely blocked out AWS, that would be a large portion of the internet but AWS is not consolidating your data and companies can choose on their own to not use them. These are not commodities with a monopoly where there is no choice. Now if there are anti competitive practices (and I'm sure there are), then yeah, go after that.
What this is basically saying is people are too dumb to choose not to protect their data (or whatever) and so we must protect them. Which may be true.
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