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Businesses The Internet United States Technology

Tim Berners-Lee Says Tech Giants May Have To Be Split Up (reuters.com) 145

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Facebook and Google have grown so dominant they may need to be broken up, unless challengers or changes in taste reduce their clout, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has said in a new interview. From a report: The digital revolution has spawned a handful of U.S.-based technology companies since the 1990s that now have a combined financial and cultural power greater than most sovereign states. Tim Berners-Lee, a London-born computer scientist who invented the Web in 1989, said he was disappointed with the current state of the internet, following scandals over the abuse of personal data and the use of social media to spread hate. "What naturally happens is you end up with one company dominating the field so through history there is no alternative to really coming in and breaking things up," Berners-Lee, 63, said in an interview. "There is a danger of concentration." But he urged caution too, saying the speed of innovation in both technology and tastes could ultimately cut some of the biggest technology companies down to size. "Before breaking them up, we should see whether they are not just disrupted by a small player beating them out of the market, but by the market shifting, by the interest going somewhere else," Berners-Lee said.
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Tim Berners-Lee Says Tech Giants May Have To Be Split Up More

Tim Berners-Lee Says Tech Giants May Have To Be Split Up

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  • Worked for Ma Bell. Sounds like a good idea. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Seven Spirals ( 4924941 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @09:16AM (#57573851)
    Sherman anti-trust act [wikipedia.org] gives all the needed legal cover. Do it. They are fully formed evil megacorps and trusts if there ever were any. Break them up and let them compete with the fragments of themselves. Competition is the soul of capitalism, not monopolies.
    • Doesn't go far enough; split up (draw and quarter) that fuck they call Zuck.

      • I don't agree with Facebook in "product" and "principals" but this sounds alot like old Russia to me. No thanks.

    • Sherman anti-trust act [wikipedia.org] gives all the needed legal cover. Do it. They are fully formed evil megacorps and trusts if there ever were any. Break them up and let them compete with the fragments of themselves. Competition is the soul of capitalism, not monopolies.

      Isn't Ma Bell almost completely recombined now?

      • Isn't Ma Bell almost completely recombined now?

        Yes, pretty much everything is now VZ or ATT, with some Sprint. But the breakup did improve things substantially for consumers, and it could simply be done again. We could do it now by hitting VZ and ATT, or we could wait until they try to combine too. I suggest doing it now, they're both already evil.

        I also suggest that we need to nationalize the infrastructure. It's already being snooped by the NSA (Qwest's former CEO having been the only guy who said no to them, and just look at how that turned out) so W

        • I wonder what economists would think of a proposal that forced corporations controlling more than 50 percent of their market to be broken apart. If the economics suggests they'll (eventually) recombine anyway, then the market gets the benefit of competition and innovation at least for a while. Companies that don't wind up controlling more than 50% don't have to break up, but also lack the ability to control the market. I think nationalizing the cell tower networks makes a lot of sense. So much wasted sp

    • Sherman anti-trust act [wikipedia.org] gives all the needed legal cover.

      Not really, they're not really monopolies in any given field. Twitter and snapchat come to mind as competing social media platforms. As for Google- last I heard they were slightly losing share in the search field and there are sizable alternatives: Bing and DuckDuckGo come to immediate mind.

      If a company does anticompetitive practices (like Microsoft bundling or forcing IE, or Google forcing all their stuff on Android) then sure, fine them, like the EU did in both cases. Splitting them up? Nah, not just

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        YouTube is effectively a monopoly, and got that way by being run at a loss for years, subsidized by Googles monopoly on search. That's exactly the sort of thing anti-trust laws are there to stop.

        The takedown of Gab.ai by the social media oligopoly is very worrying from an anti-trust point of view. "Interlocking directorates" may be a thing of the past, but they seemingly aren't needed for coordinated action by the oligarchy to destroy a competitor. A month ago, I was on the side of "yeah,they dominate th

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Powercntrl ( 458442 )

          YouTube is effectively a monopoly, and got that way by being run at a loss for years, subsidized by Googles monopoly on search.

          Taking a loss to undercut the competition is anti-competitive behavior - not a monopoly. A monopoly means that you're the single provider of a specific good or service. People share video files P2P just fine without YouTube, just don't be surprised that it's mostly pirated Hollywood movies. YouTube also has plenty of competition in the adult market, since they don't even allow that sort of content.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by lgw ( 121541 )

            YouTube is a monopoly in it's market, just as Windows was a monopoly at Apple's nadir, when the lawsuits over bundling IE happened. At the time Google was propping up YouTube, Google was had a monopoly on search. You don't legally have to be the only possible provider, just sufficiently dominate the market.

            Selling products at a loss isn't necessarily a problem in the US, but using a monopoly in one area to create a monopoly in another very much is.

            • YouTube is a monopoly in it's market, just as Windows was a monopoly at Apple's nadir, when the lawsuits over bundling IE happened.

              Microsoft was abusing their position of dominance in the desktop OS market to force shady licensing deals on OEMs, and it was their standard operating procedure to stifle competition of third party application developers whenever Microsoft had a first-party alternative.

              YouTube isn't doing anything similar. Not being able to secure the funding to launch and promote a competing video sharing platform isn't YouTube's fault, no more than it's Walmart's fault if you can't afford to launch your own "big box" ret

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by lgw ( 121541 )

                YouTube isn't doing anything similar.

                Not yet. IE wasn't either, though, the problem was it was bundled with Windows. Using one monopoly to create another is illegal. MS was abusing its OS monopoly to give away IE for free. Google was abusing it's search monopoly to give away YouTube content for free (YouTube pays for itself these days, but not then).

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by dryeo ( 100693 )

                  IE was pushing weird non standard standards on the web. There were all these sites that didn't work on alternative browsers at a time when the WWW was becoming necessary to do things. As well, IE was just one of multiple things that MS was doing to kill any competition.
                  Youtube doesn't seem to be trying to kill Vimeo or other competitors, works on most all platforms and doesn't seem important. It it only worked on the Chrome browser and Google was using patents or such to deny competition, you might have a p

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by lgw ( 121541 )

                    IE was pushing weird non standard standards on the web

                    So just like Chrome then. But that has nothing to do with monopolistic practices.

                    Youtube doesn't seem to be trying to kill Vimeo or other competitors, works on most all platforms and doesn't seem important. It it only worked on the Chrome browser and Google was using patents or such to deny competition, you might have a point.

                    I frequently find YouTube doesn't work for me on Firefox, especially on Ubuntu where about 1 in 3 won't play.

                    But my point was that Google cheated to create YouTube, resulting in the current landscape of YouTube dominance. They may also be abusing their monopoly of YouTube to do further evil, sure, but I doubt to a degree that it's illegal.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by dryeo ( 100693 )

                      Well there's chromium and webkit in QT which allow fairly easy development of browsers that are mostly equal in features to Chrome.
                      I'm surprised you have problems playing Youtube on Firefox on Linux. Most all videos play here on Firefox (actually SeaMonkey, but same engine) on OS/2 using VESA video drivers. There are dropped frames, especially at higher resolutions and I do prefer using Firefox on Linux to watch Youtube. This is a 10 year old Q8800 computer and a crappy LTE net connection.

                      With all these com

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          I thought it was the payment people along with the hosting people refusing to have anything to do with Gab. The payment people part is worth looking at for having a quasi-monopoly but if no one wants to host them, I don't see how you can force hosting. Shame that on the internet, people can't self-host.
          Then there is the whole freedom to not associate with groups that you don't want to associate with.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dryeo ( 100693 )

            Pressed submit to soon, meant to continue the last line,
            Then there is the whole freedom to not associate with groups that you don't want to associate with. This is tempered by making it illegal to not associate with people who can't help being the way they are, if you are a business or such. Just read about someone getting smacked down for firing people just because of their race.

      • "I don't like them because they're successful" is not a valid reason to split up a company.

        It's a perfect example of why the right-wingers don't trust the left-wingers with socialism. Making companies pay their workers a fair wage so they're not sucking off the government teat is a good idea. Breaking up successful companies because you're unhappy with the present distribution of wealth - that's taking socialism too damn far.

        • Well the trouble is that we *do* have a fucked up distribution of wealth. I'm sure the wealthy don't think so, but when enough average folks do, the society has a problem. If democracy can't deliver the goods, then people will be tempted to turn to right-wing strong-men demagogues like Hitler & Mussolini or left-wing socialists & communists like Pol Pot, Stalin, Chavez, or Mao. So, I'm a bit afraid that if people stand back and hand-wring over the poor rich people and their pet corporations for too

    • The M$ Shills are out in force (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Wow! The M$ shills have jumped right on this.

      The question is not whether a business is dominant in one industry segment (a monopoly), but does it use its power in one segment to manipulate other segments. For example, M$ used its dominance in operating systems to manipulate browsers. M$ has been convicted of monopolistic behavior in multiple venues without ever being broken up.

      The Ma Bell monopoly breakup was actually intentional, with the idea of spinning off money losing (rural) customers. Once the br

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
      "Worked for Ma Bell"

      Did it though? [imgur.com]
      Also note, that image is outdated as Qwest [wikipedia.org] no longer exists, being bought by the CenturyLink [wikipedia.org].

    • Re:Worked for Ma Bell. Sounds like a good idea. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @10:30AM (#57574301)

      One problem with breaking up Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc, is that often these companies have ONE service which dominates their revenue. It's not like the old Standard Oil or AT&T in which you can break them up into smaller regional interests which are roughly equivalent. In Google's case, there's no point in breaking up search and advertising, because search is what drives eyeballs, while advertising is what funds damn near everything else they do.

      And how the heck would you split up Facebook or Twitter? Nothing they do is really all that significant outside of their ONE primary product. How would breaking up Facebook even work? Facebook1 and Facebook2? Randomly split up accounts? Duplicate them and make people choose? You can't really make a case for splitting apart their advertising and social media platform, as one drives the revenue for the other. And everything else they do is a sideshow by comparison. Even moreso with Twitter.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Etcetera ( 14711 )

        One problem with breaking up Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc, is that often these companies have ONE service which dominates their revenue. It's not like the old Standard Oil or AT&T in which you can break them up into smaller regional interests which are roughly equivalent. In Google's case, there's no point in breaking up search and advertising, because search is what drives eyeballs, while advertising is what funds damn near everything else they do.

        And how the heck would you split up Facebook or Twitter? Nothing they do is really all that significant outside of their ONE primary product. How would breaking up Facebook even work? Facebook1 and Facebook2? Randomly split up accounts? Duplicate them and make people choose? You can't really make a case for splitting apart their advertising and social media platform, as one drives the revenue for the other. And everything else they do is a sideshow by comparison. Even moreso with Twitter.

        I'm not sure you understand: That's the point. Breaking up the social networks from the advertising, and the data tracking/brokering from either, (and possible the cloud offerings from everything as well) is the important middle goal. By breaking up the technology players, they can choose among ad networks, ads can be more tightly regulated, and consumer tracking can be placed into its own regulated area (think credit bureaus). Broken up into individual platforms, Google can't use its near-monopoly in ad re

      • How would breaking up Facebook even work? Facebook1 and Facebook2?

        Sure, we could even name them different things, so FB1, FB2 and FB3 could be called FaceBook, WhatsApp, and Instagram respectively. They could have different sign ins, etc.

        You can't really make a case for splitting apart their advertising and social media platform, as one drives the revenue for the other.

        Huh? Of course you can. FB Ads could sell services to FB. You could force Double-Click away from Google. Heck, once you separate ads f

      • At least for Facebook, one approach suggested is to force Facebook to split off their subsidiaries to create rivals and reduce the broad range of data they can collect. So that would mean re-establishing Instagram, WhatsApp, and other large brands as separate entities. It's not perfect, but it would break up the sheer scale they've achieved through those acquisitions.

        Google, Amazon and Twitter are harder since those businesses are built around a more centralized section. You could force Amazon for examp

        • At least for Facebook, one approach suggested is to force Facebook to split off their subsidiaries to create rivals and reduce the broad range of data they can collect. So that would mean re-establishing Instagram, WhatsApp, and other large brands as separate entities. It's not perfect, but it would break up the sheer scale they've achieved through those acquisitions.

          I think the problem with FB is that the relative power and value between the parent company and those acquisitions you mentioned is so asymmetrical that it wouldn't have much effect. There's a reason FB acquired those companies and not the other way around. Google has the same issue. There are lots of companies you could split away, but most of them would probably die out without the revenue from search.

          Breaking apart Amazon or Microsoft would be easier, because they both have more effectively diversifie

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Puls4r ( 724907 )
      Ahh yes. Break them up immediately. It will be far easier for the giant conglomerates of Europe and Asia to purchase them or drive them out of business.

      We are global now. If you think Google, Amazon, or Microsoft is the only game in town, head to China or India and you'll quickly realize you're wrong.

  • Yes, that has worked so well in the past (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jodido ( 1052890 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @09:21AM (#57573899)
    Split up Standard Oil in 1910--how well did that work out? Split up Ma Bell--happy with the result? Split it up and the parts will recombine in some other form but functionally equivalent.

    • Yes breakups did work (Score:5, Informative)

      by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @09:34AM (#57573967)

      Split up Standard Oil in 1910--how well did that work out?

      Pretty well. At it's peak Standard Oil controlled somewhere around 90% of all oil production and sales in the US and they were renowned for predatory business practices. You really think having one private company with that much control over our energy supply is a good idea?

      Split up Ma Bell--happy with the result?

      Short answer yes. The reason you have a lot of the choices you do is precisely because AT&T was broken up. You might not be old enough to remember what it was like prior to the breakup but I am. Prior to the breakup there was basically no competition in the long distance call market. Unix was in no small part a result of the breakup. AT&T wanted to get into the computer business and the breakup was the price they had to pay to do it. The breakup introduced a lot of competition and innovation that likely would never have happened without it. Could the AT&T breakup have been done better? You could make a case for that. But it almost certainly was a good thing overall.

      Split it up and the parts will recombine in some other form but functionally equivalent.

      Umm, no. The current AT&T has no where near the market power the company had prior to the breakup. I'm not sure you fully appreciate how powerful a monopoly AT&T was prior to the breakup.

      • Split up Ma Bell--happy with the result?

        Short answer yes. The reason you have a lot of the choices you do is precisely because AT&T was broken up. You might not be old enough to remember what it was like prior to the breakup but I am. Prior to the breakup there was basically no competition in the long distance call market. Unix was in no small part a result of the breakup. AT&T wanted to get into the computer business and the breakup was the price they had to pay to do it. The breakup introduced a lot of competition and innovation that likely would never have happened without it. Could the AT&T breakup have been done better? You could make a case for that. But it almost certainly was a good thing overall.

        Split it up and the parts will recombine in some other form but functionally equivalent.

        Umm, no. The current AT&T has no where near the market power the company had prior to the breakup. I'm not sure you fully appreciate how powerful a monopoly AT&T was prior to the breakup.

        I'm old enough to remember. Yeah, they were super powerful.

        I don't think the key was the breakup though.

        It was the requiring them to let other companies use their lines. That's what changed things. They owned the wires to your house, so they could say "oh, you wanna use them? Then you have to lease a phone from us. You have to get your service from us. Etc. "

        • I don't think the key was the breakup though.

          It wasn't JUST the breakup but there are a lot of things that would never have come to pass without it, including the internet as we know it today. There is almost no way the internet or the world wide web becomes what it is today if AT&T is still a monopoly.

          It was the requiring them to let other companies use their lines. That's what changed things. They owned the wires to your house, so they could say "oh, you wanna use them? Then you have to lease a phone from us. You have to get your service from us. Etc. "

          The local phone company STILL owns the line going to your house. That never changed. It's true even today. AT&T's monopoly on phones in the house was broken with the Carterfone [wikipedia.org] legal decision back in 1968. That decision eventually let to a [wikipedia.org]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

          But that's the key thing: you break them up, then you fix the regulatory infrastructure that led to the problem. Only doing one or the other isn't sufficient.

          I do agree that we need another breakup + regulatory change. The whole thing with allowing other companies to use their lines has fallen into disuse. I live in a major metropolitan area, and the last company that was offering internet over Verizon's lines died about 10 years ago. That solution isn't working right now. And there is no equivalent ru

        • I'm old enough to remember. Yeah, they were super powerful.

          Yeah...they had their own police force! [youtube.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        Pretty well. At it's peak Standard Oil controlled somewhere around 90% of all oil production and sales in the US

        Exxon is the legacy of Standard Oil. (SO -> Esso -> Exxon) It still dominates US-owned oil production and sales. We have real competition only because of foreign competitors, each of which dominates oil in its country.

        The reason you have a lot of the choices you do is precisely because AT&T was broken up.

        AT&T is my only choice for ISP, or landline phone service for that matter. Well done.

        Things got better for a while when each of those were broken up. Competition flourished for a few years. Then everyone got bought up again.

      • Yes... but... do Amazon, Facebook, and Google have that kind of power? (Did Walmart back 20-30 years ago?)

      • The point you're missing is that the telcos and oil companies control critical infrastructure. Google, Facebook, and Twitter do not. Heck, I even hear there's this company out in California that's building smartphones without Google's operating system - imagine that!

      • Nonsense! Standard Oil was broken up ONLY on paper --- not in actuality! And that paper breakup greatly profited John D. Rockefeller! I would posit that AT&T is back stronger than ever, having been reconstituted thanks to Clinton's signing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996! (The attorney general at the time of the so-called breakup of Standard Oil was Charles Joseph Bonaparte, the grandnephew of Napoleon --- you know, that French conqueror dude --- who also gave us the Bureau of Investigation,
    • If Standard had actually been split up --- it would have worked quite nicely. Not sure how reality-based the split of AT&T was, but since they've reconstituted it is almost irrelevant.

  • Bullshit (Score:3, Informative)

    by mi ( 197448 ) <slashdot-2017q4@virtual-estates.net> on Thursday November 01, 2018 @09:25AM (#57573923) Homepage Journal

    What naturally happens is you end up with one company dominating the field so through history there is no alternative to really coming in and breaking things up

    Bullshit, Sir Lee... Historically, to warrant the actual breaking-up, the following conditions had to hold:

    • The targeted company uses its monopoly position in one market (such as desktop operating systems or search-engines) to target competitors in another (such as web-browsers, or cellular phones).
    • The market must have a substantial barrier to entry [wikipedia.org].

    For example, if Twitter — the dominant player in its field — is really behind the troubles Gab.com is experiencing [slashdot.org] (if — I make no such allegations), the first item holds. But, given the ease, with which one can start an Internet web-site, the second condition does not hold — and there is no reason to even investigate Twitter in this case...

    Simply doing something somebody does not like is not a good justification to use the force of government — however much the bunch of little authoritarians would like it to be.

    Don't fall into the trap of believing, that experience in something — such as hyper-text — makes a man an expert in everything.

    • For example, if Twitter â" the dominant player in its field â" is really behind the troubles Gab.com is experiencing (if â" I make no such allegations) But, given the ease, with which one can start an Internet web-site...

      I totally agree with this, Facebook and Twitter are not in any way monopolies, there is no way as you say for them to control competitors.

      But the other angle of this is, what does breaking up Facebook or Twitter even look like, and how would it help anyone?

      Lets say you break

      • Instagram can compete with Facebook rather than synergize with it. Same thing goes for WhatsApp. Competition includes tracking, advertising, and eyeball hours.

        • Instagram barley synergizes with Facebook as is. Even as a separate entity why would it drop the ability to broadcast changes to other social media platforms, like Twitter or Facebook?

          Competition includes tracking, advertising, and eyeball hours.

          So maybe you reduce Facebook revenue a tiny bit. Big whoop, it seems way more likely that you cripple Instagrams ability to survive in as pure a form as it is right now where pressure to do crazy things like Snapchat has done is removed.

          WhatsApp also is another ap

    • "Anyone can make a website" is horseshit. To get anywhere near a tenth of Facebook's user base, you need piles of hardware and a team of administrators. Electricity costs mean a pile of money.

      You simply can't compete when everyone is using it. People use FB because people they know use it. There was nothing like it at the time. Now you have to have something compelling to make people switch. There's big money for anyone who succeeds. Has anyone even come close to succeeding?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mi ( 197448 )

        To get anywhere near a tenth of Facebook's user base [....]

        The same way Facebook dethroned MySpace [slashdot.org] and a bunch of others, they can themselves be taken over the minute they lose it [slashdot.org]...

        You simply can't compete when everyone is using it.

        A looser's argument...

      • What you describe is the same situation for anyone starting a competitor to any major corporation. Unless you're sitting on a big fat pile of start up capital, tough luck. This is commonly referred to as "late capitalism".

        • Unless you're sitting on a big fat pile of start up capital, tough luck.

          Facebook was able to rise — and to take over established players — without any such [wikipedia.org]:

          Facebook was initially incorporated as a Florida LLC. For the first few months after its launch in February 2004, the costs for the website operations for thefacebook.com were paid for by Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin, who had taken equity stakes in the company. The website also ran a few advertisements to meet its operating costs

          In th

          • a $500,000 angel investment in the social network Facebook for 10.2% of the company and joined Facebook's board.

            They say your first million in business is the hardest, and that got Facebook halfway there. It may seem impressive that half a million would be enough to launch a successful competitor against an established business, but the reality is few investors are willing to risk that kind of capital and most people don't have that kind of money to fund the venture themselves. The median American household has only $11,700 in savings [cnbc.com]. Facebook got lucky twice - first that they were able to secure venture capital,

  • Don't worry - Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter have competition: Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and Xiaomi

  • They are to big and for some there only ISP choice

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      I live in the suburbs of a large city, and we still have only 2 viable ISP choices, which both suck. We call them Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum .

  • Small player beating them... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Facebook: Don't like our TOS? MAKE YOUR OWN!
    Gab: Okay!
    Facebook/Google/Apple/Paypal: Hey everyone! They're hosting Nazis! Get them off the Internet!

    Sorry, they're already too fucking big.

  • People go to Google or Facebook or Amazon not because they are better in technology or service, but because they have the bulk of the data or products available.
    So you could Split up Google and have different Apps one for search a company for maps, a company for google suites. However their success is based on their integration. And Google Maps alone probably wouldn't be able to fund itself without google search dollars.
    Also people will Google with Google. There isn't anything stopping me from searching wi

    • So you could Split up Google and have different Apps one for search a company for maps, a company for google suites. However their success is based on their integration.

      So, what I'm hearing is that there are better options for an office suite and a map company, but because Google uses it's monopoly over several areas to integrate them, they lose in the marketplace. That's pretty much the ideal case for an anti-trust intervention.

  • Facebook and Twitter are self-destructing anyway (Score:3)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @09:47AM (#57574053)

    As Napoleon once said: "Never interfere with the enemy while he is in the process of making a mistake."

    If you just wait a few years Facebook/Twitter problems will be gone one way or another, no need for the government to step in and take action.

    Facebook has become universally disliked and distrusted, to the point where I think they have just about zero power over anyone now. They are ripe for competition to take over what they do.

    Twitter is simply self-immolating at a rapid clip, never doing a thing the users ask for (like the simple ability to edit tweets), instead doing things like removing features people actually like (the like button) and mass banning supposed bots, but every time carving out more and more real users.

    I have been looking around for alternatives, some of which have been discussed here before - there's a great list up on Reason [reason.com] of some alternative social media platforms. I plan to pick one of these (maybe Minds) and stick to that as primary, every now and then checking Twitter/Facebook but slowly fading from those platforms.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shotgun ( 30919 )

      I just last night shut down my Facebook account and opened one on diaspora.org

  • The problem is private infrastructure (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dallas May ( 4891515 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @09:52AM (#57574083)

    We don't need to break them up, we only need to mandate interoperability between the platforms.

    Compare the internet platforms to telephones. Both are run by super mega-oligopolies. Both are almost completely privately owned yet vital infrastructure. Yet, there is much better competition in phone companies than the big internet companies, consumers have much more power in the market to change. Why? Because your phone can call any other phone. Interoperability is the key. If companies can lock you inter their platform, consumers are slaves to the platform. If they can't, then consumers have all the power.

    • We might have passed the point that this will work.

      • Bull. It'll take some time, but there is no technical reason why Facebook Messenger can't talk to iMesseges. It's just text for gawd sake. The only reason is that the companies don't want their users to talk to other company's users.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

      Yet, there is much better competition in phone companies than the big internet companies

      How many options do you have in your area? Most areas it is 1 to 3. That's not much.

      Because your phone can call any other phone

      Can your computer not call any other computer? I'm not sure I see a difference here.

      The problem isn't interoperability. And phone companies *are* internet companies now. The concept that they are different is a regulatory absurdity.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I think he is meaning something like diaspora allowing people to communicate with people on competing social networks.

        I don't know how this works with Google, as they really aren't locking anyone into their search, they are just the default choice because they suck less than most competitors.

        • Google search is tough to nail down. It's hard to say exactly how they are a monopoly.

          But it's more than just social media. User lock in is a serious problem in tech. For example, chat. There is no technical reason why iMessages doesn't work with WhatsApp. These are fake barriers designed to lock users into ecosystems.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

            I think he is meaning something like diaspora allowing people to communicate with people on competing social networks.

            Oh, sorry Dallas May, the AC cleared this up. I thought you meant internet infrastructure.

            These are fake barriers designed to lock users into ecosystems.

            Agreed. This problem started when developers began making *platforms* instead of *protocols*.

            When you download a video editor, it has options like "Upload to facebook" or "Upload to youtube." Those should not exist. It should instead offer "Upload via FTP" and then I type the URL of the site I want to send it to. As soon services stopped supporting standard protocols, and when as we started tying things to proprie

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      the barrier to entry in creating your own facebook, twitter, etc is the cost of hosting; and the ease of expanding infrastructure is even easier in 2018 than in 2008.

    • Re:The problem is private infrastructure (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bigpat ( 158134 ) on Thursday November 01, 2018 @12:14PM (#57574976)

      We don't need to break them up, we only need to mandate interoperability between the platforms.

      Let's start with video calling so I can video call with my kids from my android phone or desktop or Skype or Facetime or whatever Amazon calls their service. It is completely absurd that there is no standard interoperability in common use to be able to video call between platforms. This is a real failure.

      Then let's reinvent social platforms to be blockchain based, open source and encrypted so you can share your contacts with other contacts and selectively and securely communicate and filter without reliance on a third party provided like Facebook.

      And then let's embrace decentralized AI and decentralized search indexes to reduce reliance on centralized providers like Google. I want my personal AI assistants to exist on local hardware without spying on me and relaying that information to big corporations and the government. And gigabytes of search indexes can be seeded, shared and synced by your personal preference without reliance on a centralized repository.

      And then let's work on making all the lessons of Amazon work with an efficient decentralized supply chain, delivery system and decentralized e-commerce ecosystem.

      We knew the day was coming when our collective laziness would be exploited by eager corporations and their well earned successes would make the winners so big that they become systemic risks. The day is here.

      • And then let's embrace decentralized AI and decentralized search indexes to reduce reliance on centralized providers like Google. I want my personal AI assistants to exist on local hardware without spying on me and relaying that information to big corporations and the government. And gigabytes of search indexes can be seeded, shared and synced by your personal preference without reliance on a centralized repository.

        Finally, something to do with all the horsepower of a modern desktop.

        It's also a nonstarter. With the exception of the Apple captives, no one is spending the big bucks on desktop hardware anymore. Hell, even gamers are getting by with slightly older, slightly lower spec machines. Worse, it takes a damn lot of bandwidth to run a web spider, and sharing all those indexes with the system means vast upstream bandwidth is required, and that's simply not available. I have a 400 megabit connection. Downstream

  • The godawful nature of trying to do everything via HTML is all your damn fault, sir.

  • "Imagine the possibilities!"

    Is this:

    A. The slogan of some fast-growing tech giant?

    B. The slogan of some billion-product established multinational?

    C. One politician to another in the cloakrooms of many countries, drooling over the possible kickbacks, illegal and legal , to slow or halt this breakup process?

  • Those "small players that beat them out of the market" that Tim speaks of? They don't. They disrupt the big boys' gravy train and then get bought, and then their novel new concept becomes part of the big boys' gravy train. So, ultimately, breakup needs to occur.
  • We've been breaking up "monopolies" since the 1800's. No difference, if it can be proven these companies are monopolies or anti-trust type situations
  • Just pass some common sense internet privacy laws. Install ad-blockers and track-blockers by default on new systems. Shrink their ad revenue, watch the over-inflated stock pop like a bubble.
  • Seriously, if Google and FB were smart, they would split on their own. Rather than go horizontal, do multiple vertical. In particular, they should create 2-3 for America, maybe 2-3 for Europe, and at least 1 for Asia. Then ideally America and Europe will block Baidu until they split.
    Need the same for FB.
  • These entities are large enough that they just buy out and absorb upstarts.
  • only idiots would continue to use facebook, users know full well that facebook is exploiting their users for all they can get out of them,

  • Mr. Tim (creator of the WWW), how much money have you given your representatives in government? Is that amount equal or greater than what the monopolies have given?

    Mr. Tim (inventor of the WWW), do you believe that you and all the Slashdotters and all the concerned citizens are going to contribute more to candidates' reelection funds than the monopoly powers?

    Mr. Tim (god of the WWW), do you understand that government action is purchased by the highest bidder? Until you find a way to buy that action, your wo

  • Luckily, after the EU fines their executives and jails them, they will break up the firms.

    Due to treaties, Canada and Mexico and many other countries will agree with these moves.

  • What I particularly like about social media platforms is when I'm one of only a handful of users.... oh wait, no actually I like having my entire circle of friends, colleagues and old school chums on the same network, otherwise what's the point!

  • Well Tim, you are also responsible by creating the internet as a server / client network.
    This has caused concentration of data and control.
    Dick head, it has to be changed to peer - peer topology.

  • I think putting a cap on Market capitalization is better

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