Big Tech Sold Out on Its Promise of an Open Internet (gizmodo.com) 46
An anonymous reader shares a report: 2021 was a bad PR year for Big Tech. Lawmakers, advocates, and scholars filled pages of books and held hours of hearing exalting what they viewed as an industry being strangled by a handful of players using anti-competitive practices to solidify their position as kings. Ironically, those exact same tactics were vehemently opposed by the Big Tech companies themselves less than a decade ago. Like an aging punk throwing out their raggedy jean jacket for a blazer, Big Tech sold out. That's according to a new report by the Tech Oversight Project shared exclusively with Gizmodo. The report -- titled Whiplash: Inside Big Tech's Open Internet Flip-Flop -- lays out a laundry list of times where Big Tech companies have seemingly expressed support for many of the same policy goals they're currently fighting to quash. It also comes as Congress muses over several key pieces of antitrust legislation taking aim at Big Tech's alleged monopolistic business practices.
The report spotlights Google, Amazon, and Facebook's fierce defense of net neutrality in 2014 where the companies repeatedly cited an "open internet" as a critical component to innovation and economic growth. Tech's biggest players, as a New York Times article from the time states, "put their reputations and financial clout behind the challenge." These high-minded priorities for an open internet were shouted from the rooftops by Big Tech's most prominent voices at the time. "The internet has created this remarkable set of free markets, open competition, and competitive growth, and we need to keep it free and open," Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in a 2007 address to the Progress and Freedom Foundation Aspen Summit.
The report spotlights Google, Amazon, and Facebook's fierce defense of net neutrality in 2014 where the companies repeatedly cited an "open internet" as a critical component to innovation and economic growth. Tech's biggest players, as a New York Times article from the time states, "put their reputations and financial clout behind the challenge." These high-minded priorities for an open internet were shouted from the rooftops by Big Tech's most prominent voices at the time. "The internet has created this remarkable set of free markets, open competition, and competitive growth, and we need to keep it free and open," Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in a 2007 address to the Progress and Freedom Foundation Aspen Summit.
Water's wet. Sky's blue. (Score:3)
And sometimes it stinks when I come out of the bathroom.
This is a "so obvious it doesn't need to be said" story. Granted, it beats reading another crypto bro diatribe. Not by much, but a little.
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Not dead, just in hiding (Score:2)
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The wild west areas are the least free of all and ARE the ones run by the massive-market oligopolies. You really don't seem to comprehend that this is PRECISELY what the wild west was (and libertarianism is) about.
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that's a fancy way of saying "honey pot" but yeah, i see your point.
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Where's that spammer rant about other websites? (Score:2)
Now dude, now's your chance, it won't be offtopic!
I hate to dish out this overused cliche (Score:5, Insightful)
but... "Don't be evil". Ya know, that stuff that was quietly dropped from Google's code of conduct.
No need ofr books or reports. Three words. That's all you need to know about Google and selling out. Of course, If you're less generous, you could say they officially dropped the lie.
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It was obvious "Don't be Evil" was a lie when they bought Doubleclick, already known as the scummiest of the web advertising companies.
Re:I hate to dish out this overused cliche (Score:4, Insightful)
Corporations, by their nature, must be sociopathic-- it's all about them. Any fandom about an "open internet" means open for them, and their customers so long as their customers bring them revenue.
It's not about ideology, philosophy, actual openness. It's about fealty to Wall Street, the quarterly earnings report, and pumping the stock price.
Were you looking for moral or ethical concerns, Eric Schmidt is not the right direction to look and the same can be said for the other revenue protectors. This is all about being fooled by corporate messaging, the facade of altruism, and not having to pay for circuits to their customers.
But we knew that. And as we became The Product, we fed them our privacy, our identity, and had it bolstered with addictive must-have tools and devices-- social media is the crack of the 2020s.
They never truly wanted it open (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They never truly wanted it open (Score:5, Interesting)
"We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content, even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it. Not because that's the law in the United States - because as many people have pointed out, privately-owned forums are under no obligation to uphold it - but because we believe in that ideal independently, and that's what we want to promote on our platform. We are clarifying that now because in the past it wasn't clear, and (to be honest) in the past we were not completely independent and there were other pressures acting on Reddit. Now it's just Reddit, and we serve the community, we serve the ideals of free speech, and we hope to ultimately be a universal platform for human discourse."
--Tishan Wong, Statement by Reddit's then-CEO in 2012
Today Reddit is one of the internet's leading pro-regime, pro-censorship companies. How times change. From "don't tread on me" rebels to bootlickers. Reddit today: "Free speech is a fascist activity that needs to be curtailed and those whose speech does not further the cause of social justice should be silenced."
"I think all censorship should be deplored. My position is that bits are not a bug."
-- Aaron Swartz (1986 - 2013)
Slightly different take on it (Score:2)
I've been saying this since the net neutrality debate began. Net ne
I miss the old days (Score:2)
When you could read articles without having a tabloid shoved in your face and there wasn't ads every two inches, when social media was about connecting people, not about extracting every cent from them, and when the world was much much simpler.
Granted there are some cool things now that make the web more shiny, but I sure miss the web of 15 years ago.
Re:I miss the old days (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there is a wealth of good that has been accomplished, but the dark hearts have started to overwhelm the good.
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Shit started going down hill when AOL unleased their hoards the net.
It should be damned hard to configure a system to online. We need that as a pre-filter for idiots and legislators.
Yah, orgs don't have single beliefs (Score:2)
Unsurprising. Even people often hold conflicting views. The right hand of a big organization often doesn't know what the left hand is doing. One group is asked for an official viewpoint and they have a certain pull to say what seems good and virtuous. Another group is focused on improving some product and doesn't even really think about the bigger picture.
But, I'd like to point out that a major player in all of this is the pressure on these orgs by governments and social groups to either better protect
No specifics (Score:2)
That's according to a new report by the Tech Oversight Project shared exclusively with Gizmodo
This "article" fails to share even one specific claim from this double-secret report. It just says the big companies were all talking about the need for "openness" a decade ago, and now are opposing specific legislation that targets their business practices.
There is no policy proposal X such that the article claims a company supported X previously and now opposes it.
If this is an apoligy piece (Score:1)
If this is an apoligy piece that suggests we should support the latest version of SOPA/PIPA, i.e. the EARNIT act, this is garbage, bullshit, and any recommendations given should be taken with a galaxy-sized grain of salt.
Maybe you should RTFA and find out nt (Score:2)
Also, it's "apology".
CEO's come in & morals go out (Score:2, Troll)
Re:CEO's come in & morals go out (Score:4, Insightful)
three futures (Score:3)
You can grow up, get old, or sell out. The sell outs universally claim to have grown up, but no.
Shock, horror! (Score:1)
"Big tech"... meaning the ISPs, right? (Score:1)
They are the only real problem, and it's our fault for not demanding the dumb pipe.
Time to bring back BBSes? (Score:2)
Yes, you were beholden to the SysOp, but if you found one that was cool about things, then it was a pretty open place to be, and no ads or spyware or crap like that.
Maybe it's time to return to that?
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Maybe it's time to return to that?
https://www.telnetbbsguide.com... [telnetbbsguide.com]
Go right ahead! They're very, very much a niche, but they exist, and most are connected via telnet or SSH, so they're accessible by almost literally anything.
Protecting their self interests (Score:2)
The report spotlights Google, Amazon, and Facebook's fierce defense of net neutrality in 2014 where the companies repeatedly cited an "open internet" as a critical component to innovation and economic growth.
Net Neutrality is in the companies' best interests and protects them more than us as it forces ISPs and network providers to provide equal access. These companies provide "free services" (both words debatable) and people aren't going to pay extra to access them and those companies don't want to pay extra so their customers (products) can access them either.
The internet has created this remarkable set of free markets, open competition, and competitive growth, and we need to keep it free and open," Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said ...
Again, because it helps them and they only want the parts of that that help them -- especially in the short term and impacts their revenues, profits, b
It amazes me (Score:2)
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Noscript has also the side effect of rendering web browsing doable on older computers. I wonder why we need 8 gigs of RAM to display a bunch of letters and images on a screen?
The internet was never open... (Score:2)
.... in 1997 the videogame industry started stealing games via rebranding PC RPG's mmo's. Then steam launched in 2003. The PC game industry has been stealing the networking code out of games and selling gamers broken apps for 23+ years since roughly 97.
Microsoft wants to lock down our machines with TPM chips that communicate back to microsoft. The internet is one giant personal computer because most of our species is morons, two or more computers in a network become and behave as a single computer. So
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.... in 1997 the videogame industry started stealing games via rebranding PC RPG's mmo's. Then steam launched in 2003. The PC game industry has been stealing the networking code out of games and selling gamers broken apps for 23+ years since roughly 97.
So, RPGs still exist. Bloodborne, DragonAge, Disco Elysium, The Witcher 3, and Skyrim all came out in the past decade, and aren't MMOs. Yes, everyone wants subscription revenue (and IAPs/Lootboxes/Battlepasses) and those infections are getting progressively worse, but let's not pretend that the genre stopped in 2005.
In terms of multiplayer, I agree, Steam/Origin/Uplay/Battle.net/Epic replacing dedicated servers is a huge loss. Titanfall's years-long DDoS would be impossible if it were possible for fans to s
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So, RPGs still exist
You don't get more and more games got backended, aka Transformers fall and war of cybertron had their netwoking multiplayer code in a remote server exe even though it is an unreal engine game. That was a political statement by Mr bobby kotick to the quake and unreal generation of PC gamers. Since there was no need for transformers to not have dedicated servers like most fps games had from 1990 to 2005 before the mmo apocalypse began in 1997.
You don't seem to get Ultima series "disappeared" when it was bac
An open internet (Score:1)
Net neutrality never meant throwing the old rules of Capitalism out the window. All new businesses, whether online or brick and mortar, face competition from existing players who are dominate in their respective markets. It's why most startups fail.
An open internet simply meant everyone has equal rights of access the basic connective infrastructure of the internet. It never guaranteed that your business would attract customers, build an audience, or grant you a platform on someone else's server(s). Just
Content (Score:2)
It is not uncommon for content moderators at sites like Facebook to have PTSD caused by everything they are required to see.
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This is a difficult problem to tackle, but are censorship and walled gardens a sensible option?
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