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CNet:
"Today's big tech companies have [too much power over] our economy, our society, and our democracy," wrote Warren in a blog post. "They've bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation."
Warren said that big tech companies use mergers to swallow competition and sell products on their own e-commerce platforms, which hurt smaller businesses' opportunities to succeed. Weak antitrust enforcement also resulted in "a dramatic reduction" in competition and innovation in the tech industry, according to Warren's blog post.
With conservative voices decrying Big Tech censorship, internet activists decrying privacy violations, and now Senator Warren calling for outright dismemberment, Big Tech might be in for a rocky stretch of road.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Saturday March 09 2019, @01:18AM (18 children)
The government has power, because it's the government.
How it uses the power depends on whether the people bitch online or keep their elected officials scared.
That's how the system should work.
Private companies becoming TBTF, or wielding unreasonable power allowing them to control people's lives and threaten their freedoms, is not how the system should work.
Not that I agree that they should be broken up; but throrough regulations is how you defend your freedoms and democracy.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by wisnoskij on Saturday March 09 2019, @01:29AM (5 children)
Fixed that for you.
(Score: 5, Informative) by bob_super on Saturday March 09 2019, @01:41AM
No.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 09 2019, @04:06AM (2 children)
And that's working so well so far in gun-saturated USA *where this story is taking place,* isn't it? God damn, are you an idiot. I guess when the only tool you have is a gun, every problem looks like a suspiciously Obama-shaped paper target.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09 2019, @03:50PM (1 child)
Where are the militias? Oh, right, labeled as terrorist organizations and targeted by the ATF.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 09 2019, @09:24PM
Given what the last few (dozen...) self-styled "militias" got up to, that's not a surprise.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday March 09 2019, @06:37PM
Fixed that for you.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jmorris on Saturday March 09 2019, @02:27AM (6 children)
I'm ready to see em broken up. They are all just too dangerous to allow to live in their current form.
Facebook was founded the same day the govenment shut down their "Lifelog" program, then Zuck brings in the DARPA admin who was responsible?
Google's founding is equally troubling. Microsoft isn't even an American corporation in any meaningful sense of the word anymore. Amazon is so far in bed with the government it can be hard to see where one ends and the other starts. And Apple is clearly a menace to the world.
As to the morality of the government breaking up corporations, we settled that with the old time "trust busting" of yore. Publicly traded corporations are artificial government created entities. If the government lacks the authority to regulate its own creations, who does? Corporations were originally intended to allow raising large amounts of money to support capital intensive heavy industry. But there aren't any projects currently or proposed that require one entity to have control over a trillion dollars. I'd support a hard upper limit of $100B maximum sustained market cap. Stay over the limit for 365 consecutive days and you must file a plan to divide into two or more new entities. No one business should be worth $100B. Would put a swift end to the rampant M&A activity that is one of the key drivers of loss of competitors in the market. Inflation would push toward ever smaller entities over time.
Perhaps make an exception for a focused entity that is doing one thing so well it is worth that much, it can exist so long as it never adds new side ventures, drops easily divided off parts, etc. Apple's iProducts division might need to be an exception for example. But lose the inhouse chip design shop to an independent entity. Lose the watch to an open API any smartwatch can talk to, etc. Would this exception be abusable?
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Saturday March 09 2019, @02:48AM
I agree, I'm just suffering from some cognitive dissonance I need to take out back and shoot.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Saturday March 09 2019, @03:21AM (3 children)
So it sounds like you agree with Warren's position on this issue.
And I think you would agree that some kind of market cap limitation on corporations is much more likely to come from the left/dems.
So this is an honest question: Would you vote for her as president?
(Score: 2, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday March 09 2019, @04:12AM
I also agree with Senator Warren of Mass., sometimes referred to as Pocahontas (the bad version). Don't worry, we're moving very strongly to break up Big Tech. Look at Amazon, they're closing almost 100 "Physical Locations." Something they never did when Cheatin' Obama was in office. But, I will never vote for Liz. She's getting slammed because she took a bogus DNA test and it showed that she may be 1/1024, far less than the average American. Now Cherokee Nation denies her, "DNA test is useless," complete and total Fraud. Even they don’t want her. Now that her claims of being of Indian heritage have turned out to be a scam and a lie, Elizabeth Warren should apologize for perpetrating this fraud against the American Public. Harvard called her "a person of color" (amazing con), and would not have taken her otherwise. Phoney!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09 2019, @10:33AM (1 child)
I'm big on minority representation so could only give her 1/1024th of my vote.
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Saturday March 09 2019, @05:42PM
Well, it's a range, and picking the least favorable (10 generations) over the most favorable (6 generations) seems unfair.
Maybe split the difference to 8 generations back and giver her 1/256th of your vote?
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 4, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 09 2019, @04:03AM
All the planets must be in alignment or something. You've said something reasonable, rational, well-thought-out, well-reinforced with verifiable factual backup, and not even the least bit evil. More of this, please.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 09 2019, @09:01PM (1 child)
thorough regulations to defend freedom? what a fucking slave.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 09 2019, @09:47PM
You haven't thought this through very thoroughly, have you?
Suppose there were no regulations--we call them "laws" where I come from--against things like theft, assault, or murder. Would you *truly* think yourself more free than if you didn't have to spend all your time worrying that someone stronger, sneakier, smarter, and/or better armed than you could at any time and for any reason and with no repercussions take everything from you up to and including your very life?
If you want to be a minarchist, that's fine. I've actually been described as "left-libertarian in exile," which seems fair to me, and so could sympathize with that. But remember Einstein's supposed maxim, "as simple as possible, and no simpler." The fewest rules up front does not necessarily translate to the most freedom, and in fact, is guaranteed not to given the capacity for people to take actions which curtail the freedom of others.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 09 2019, @09:33PM (2 children)
What's unreasonable about the power that Amazon, Google, and Facebook have? Let us keep in mind that customers/end users of these platforms have even more power over these businesses than voters do over the governments. Because stop using a business's platform is much easier than stop using a government.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday March 11 2019, @01:45PM (1 child)
As a software engineer, even I can't figure out how the fuck to stop using these platforms, so I'm not sure how any normal user is supposed to manage it. I can't even order parts from Sparkfun since blocking Google; I can't post comments on most websites or login to most forums either all thanks to reCaptcha. Most news websites break due to jQuery that they just link to Google for. There's very, very few major website that you can access without your information being transmitted to Facebook through their tracking icons. You can't even pay for smaller subscription video services, because most of them just post embedded private YouTube videos, which is still Google. I can read Soylent and I can SSH and that's about it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 11 2019, @02:16PM
I can. Notice that we're complaining about companies with very public services rather than companies like Akamai Technologies with nearly invisible behind the scenes services.
Ok. So what?
Where would Google be without its search engine data? Just another tracker company without a means to acquire the data it needs to track. How would Facebook be able to place those tracking icons, if it doesn't have a business? The whole thing is way overblown.