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The Simmering Debate Over Big Tech Explodes on the Democratic Debate Stage (vox.com) 115

Posted by msmash from the it's-happening dept.
Democrats running for president had their most vigorous debate yet about the power of tech companies, finally bringing the long-simmering conversation about Big Tech into the mainstream of Democratic politics. From a report: The dozen Democratic candidates quarreled for almost 15 minutes at the fourth presidential debate about topics including digital privacy rights, the monopoly power of companies like Amazon, political fundraising in Silicon Valley, and whether politicians like Donald Trump should be banned from Twitter. It was the first time tech was discussed meaningfully on the Democratic debate stage -- and a sign that the media sees the growing techlash as enough of a concern that candidates should be pressed on it on national television. The combat mostly centered on Elizabeth Warren, the new presidential frontrunner who has made her proposal to break up tech companies like Facebook a cornerstone of her presidential run.

Many of her competitors said they were not willing to go as far as her, although several decided to take their own whacks at Silicon Valley from other angles. Beto O'Rourke offered the most direct criticism to Warren's plan, even comparing her approach to Trump's rhetoric about the press. "We will be unafraid to break up big businesses if we have to do that -- but I don't think it is the role of a president or a candidate for the presidency to specifically call out which companies will be broken up," O'Rourke said. "That's something that Donald Trump has done in part because he sees enemies in the press and wants to diminish their power. It's not something that we should do." Andrew Yang, the political neophyte running on tech-infused themes such as universal basic income, said Warren was correct in diagnosing the problem but that "using a 20th century antitrust framework will not work." Cory Booker would only say that his administration would "put people in place that enforce antitrust laws" but declined to sign on to the proposal to break up the tech giants. He did use some of the harshest language on the stage, saying that tech companies were responsible for a "massive crisis on our democracy."
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The Simmering Debate Over Big Tech Explodes on the Democratic Debate Stage More

The Simmering Debate Over Big Tech Explodes on the Democratic Debate Stage

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  • The media has power (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @10:47AM (#59314634)

    Even more so if they can pretend to speak "for the people". And that's easiest done by appearing like it is the people who talk through you. Which is basically what happens with social media. It is people talking there. That's the basic idea behind social media, that "everyone" has the chance to publish whatever he wishes to tell the world. Which grants them even more credibility than a "free" press has. Not only may they tell the truth, even if someone doesn't want to someone else can. Ain't that the pinnacle of credibility?

    Well... as we had to see... no.

    There are two problems with this. First, the same problem you have with a free press: Just because you may say the truth doesn't mean that you must. Many people didn't even get that distinction with the conventional media, why would they with social media? Just because someone says something on a social media platform, it needn't be true. Even if you don't attribute it to malice when people talk bullshit (unlike with conventional media where it's much harder to attribute it to idiocy), the average stupidity certainly offers enough of an explanation. If you need proof, check out any video promoting the idea that that earth is flat. I absolutely believe them that they really believe this and ARE actually that dumb. No malicious intent needed.

    But that's only the part that's similar to the old media. What's way more concerning is the de facto monopoly position YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have in their specific corners of the market. If you want to be heard, you have to go through them. And they get more and more picky about what messages they allow to be broadcast. Which in turn means that they eventually decide what kind of message may be broadcast.

    And whether you agree with what's "allowed" and what isn't, the very proposal of a corporation pretty much dictating public opinion is a terrible idea.

    Especially considering that they have a huge credibility bonus compared to any conventional media outlet, simply by the virtue of them having the air of being the "voice of you and me", with everyone (with a huge asterisk next to it) being able to "tell it how it is".

    I'm not exactly sure if breaking them up will suffice. I guess teaching the people how to deal with the media, how to verify information and how to tell facts from bullshit would solve the problem. But what politician would be interested in an electorate that can tell when they're told lies?

    • Re: The media has power (Score:4, Insightful)

      by NagrothAgain ( 4130865 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @10:55AM (#59314658)

      the very proposal of a corporation pretty much dictating public opinion is a terrible idea.

      Ya, that's what we used to have before the Internet. The Newspapers and major TV networks controlled almost all public discourse. What you describe isn't new, it's just a shift in terms of who owns the control, and the Old Guard isn't happy about it.

      • Re: The media has power (Score:4, Informative)

        by pyrrho ( 167252 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @11:02AM (#59314698) Journal

        well no, b/c there were thousands of papers and you were only allowed to own so many terrestrial stations... so it wasn't as monopolistic... the control was mostly whatever current social standards were, not like... the opinion Murdoch or the Clear Channel Board.

        • well no, b/c there were thousands of papers and you were only allowed to own so many terrestrial stations... so it wasn't as monopolistic

          But in any given city outside NYC and Chicago you had your choice of one paper. When radio came in there was a brief burst of diversity before the news side of the medium consolidated ariund a small number of nationally owned networks. When TV got its start, monopoly news was already in place waiting for it.

          • B/c we had access to the big city papers from New York and Chicago, etc... anyone near those cities had their options, one small town newspaper, or maybe two, and a nearby local paper or three.

          • Re: The media has power (Score:4, Interesting)

            by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @02:39PM (#59315720)

            But the Democratic candidates are not concerned about Big Tech censoring speech too much. They are concerned about Big Tech NOT censoring speech. They want more control over unrestricted speech directly from the citizens.

            • Is it unrestricted speech? In the beginning Facebook would show you everything that your friends posted. That is not true anymore. Now they choose what to show you. As much as any other media company! You see what other people posted, sure. But not everything, just their selection of it.

              I'm not saying I'm pro or against anything, just that what we have is not free and unrestricted speech in any way or form.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Shotgun ( 30919 )

          No. Now it is Jeff Zucker at CNN that makes those decisions.

      • Re: The media has power (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @11:05AM (#59314714)

        The difference is maybe that even during the worst of times we didn't have a media house that ran 95% of all publications and dictated what would be printed and what wouldn't. At least at no time that I'd remember.

        • I don't think any of the current media outlets are at 95%; but I think you're forgetting about William Randolph Hearst. During the 1920s, he published 25% of all newspapers in the US - and dominated magazines, too. He was, essentially, the entire mainstream media - with dozens of others trying to compete against his large share of the entire market.

          • You wouldn't say that YouTube has about 95% of the user-content video streaming market? Twitter has about 95% of the short user-message publication market? Facebook at 95% of ... well, the rest of user created content publishing in its grasp?

            Let's ignore China for a moment, because if it takes a dictatorship to break this de facto monopoly, all is already lost.

      • Re: The media has power (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @11:40AM (#59314934)

        In the days of newspapers, public opinion in each city was generally controlled by one powerful family. This situation not only existed before the Internet, but for a century before TV and radio. Today's news available to the lowliest plebeian is more diverse than at any time in our history.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Companies that are a monopoly or even an oligopoly should be heavily monitored and regulated. Otherwise they abuse their market share to gouge consumers and kill potential competitors using targeted price dumping. This is based on lots of history (Standard Oil, original AT&T, IBM, Microsoft, Luxottica, De Beers, etc.). And don't even get me started about the telecom oligopolies.

      I'm not sure they should immediately be broken up, but if they repeatedly try to wiggle out of penalties and responsibility the

      • According to your standards, it's time for the chopping block.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • The idea that you can come out ahead by taking losses to kill off your competition and then charge whatever you want is hogwash.

          Too many people think that businesses exist in a vacuum and that if one folds it is completely destroyed. If a company goes out of business their production facilities still exist, as does the work force that was previously employed there. Since this company is bankrupt they have to liquidate which means selling off their assets and someone who wants to start a company in that market can acquire a lot of infrastructure at a very low rate now in addition to having a lot of labor available to start working fo

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          When Rockefeller got into the kerosene business, he sold it for 70 cents/gallon...By the time the government broke up Standard Oil, he was selling kerosene at 7 cents/gallon.

          Maybe that would have happened without a monopoly. Technology and know-how increase over time. Things were changing fast during that time, including using railroads instead of horses. Horses ain't cheap.

          It's mathematically logical for a monopoly to charge a good premium over costs if there's no serious competition. Sure, there is incent

    • > And whether you agree with what's "allowed" and what isn't, the very proposal of a corporation pretty much dictating public opinion is a terrible idea.

      Here's the problem, as I see it.

      Pre-social media, we had professional media companies - ranging from the large to the small. They, more or less, operated under generally agreed-upon rules. (one cardinal rule was that you do NOT run a paid story as if it was written as a news story, another is "don't print blatant lies or even gross misrepresentations". M

      • There used to be a large barrier for entry for journalism, namely printing, distribution, broadcasting, etc. Those are all gone now. Everyone has a high-definition camera in their pocket already connected to everyone else. Everyone is a journalist now and the Old Guard is freaking out over losing that control over the population. No longer can they control the discourse and mood of the people. This is a very good thing,

        • > No longer can they control the discourse and mood of the people.

          Let me fix that for you: No longer can they EXCLUSIVELY control the discourse and mood of the people due to the barriers to entry.

          The discourse and mood of the people are now able to be controlled by anyone with enough resources and will, and it is happening from behind the curtains, with results that are bad for the people. So eliminating the barrier didn't eliminate the control, it eliminated the regulation ecosystem of that control.

          • But now it's more obvious than ever and only a small subset still fall for it. A vocal subset sure, but tiny nonetheless. We see this every day, even on this site. More and more people are waking up to the propaganda every day.

            • 100% this.

              Let big tech keep abusing the peoples trust until they lose it. BOOM, all kinds of problems fixed. Social media is not only unnecessary, it's also unaccountable, easily corruptible, and most importantly, extremely bad for personal privacy (liberty)

              Instead of wasting resources on trying to break up American companies, I say we spend some resources on educating the population. I suggest we start with a couple of public service announcements that simply read the Webster definitions of propaganda, and

        • It's a good thing, but a double edged sword. Because now everyone can say anything and we do not have a population that is capable of telling fact from fiction. That combination is what makes it bad.

          Also, direct democracy would be a great thing if people weren't fickle and easily influenced to act against their best interests. And as long as people are led mostly by fear, greed and envy we won't see any change about this any time soon.

          • Most people are able to tell fact from fiction though, that's how you got Trump. Just because you disagree what my best interests are does not mean I'm not acting in my best interests.

            It seems that's what has the totalitarians most worried. They're having more and more trouble convincing people what their best interests are when they're free to think for themselves.

            • Most people are able to tell fact from fiction though, that's how you got Trump.

              We got Trump because of the electoral college. Roughly 3 million more voters realized he was full of shit, but our election system is broken by design.

              It's like winning your court case because the other party didn't show up.

              • The Electoral College worked exactly as it was designed and for good reason. Without it a candidate could just promise the world to a few population centers at the expense of the rest of the country and win.

                • "Could have". Past tense. You really think that reaching your electorate is still a problem in this time and age? If you can't reach every single person (aside of maybe the Amish, who don't vote anyway), you probably missed the past 100 years or so.

              • The US got Trump because the people are pissed off with the political circus called presidential election.

                And a better example would be winning your court case because of some legal bullshit that makes the one proof that you're guilty inadmissible.

            • Then please clue me in what is in your interest that you got from voting for Trump.

      • This "cardinal rule" is actually a law where I live. If you broadcast bullshit, you have to broadcast the retraction at the same place in the same way as the original bullshit.

        And trust me, having a retraction on the front page in bold letters is something even tabloids shy away from.

        This kept our media in line and away from sensationalism (mostly). Because even a baseless "President sick! Is it cancer?" is good enough to warrant a retraction and having your next day headline read "We're sorry we were stupi

      • Re:The media has power (Score:5, Informative)

        by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @12:30PM (#59315158) Journal

        Pre-social media, we had professional media companies - ranging from the large to the small. They, more or less, operated under generally agreed-upon rules. (one cardinal rule was that you do NOT run a paid story as if it was written as a news story, another is "don't print blatant lies or even gross misrepresentations". More on that later). They were seen as generally ethical because they actually were ethical in almost every case.

        Really? I guess Pulitzer Prize winning lies about the Holomodor in the Soviet Union [wikipedia.org] by Walter Duranty are fine?

        How about the way the NY Times downplayed and effectively hid the Holocaust [historynewsnetwork.org] during WWII?

        Walter Cronkite lying about the failure of the US military during the Tet offensive [nationalinterest.org], after which the North Vietnamese were so destroyed they could no longer wage war in the South - at all.

        Dan Rather literally stating "fake but accurate" [wikipedia.org]about his outright lies?

        You sure you want to stick with your claim that - until Fox News - the media didn't "print blatant lies or even gross misrepresentations"?

        • My claim - if you read my words - is that "They were seen as generally ethical because they actually were ethical in almost every case.". Does that mean perfection? No. But lack of perfection to a standard isn't an argument that standards shouldn't exist.

          • Yellow Journalism [wikipedia.org] literally started in the pre-Fox/pre-Internet days. Back when newspapers and journalists would literally lie (and invent out of whole cloth) to push an agenda.

            • Yes, from time to time, there have been examples of professional/mainstream media either making big mistakes, gross errors in judgment, or even deliberately pushing agendas. The scale and scope of those instances is infinitesimally small when you compare it to the entire body of journalistic work, and an ecosystem of marketplace regulation served to chase out the worst offenders.

              This is not the same as social media based "news", which has convinced many, many people of things like QAnon, windmills causing c

              • The number of people who believe that windmills causes cancer is considerably less than the number who believed we lost the Tet Offensive, or that President Clinton created a surplus (both of which are false - but were pushed by the media for political reasons).

                • It's arguable whether Clinton himself created the surplus, but was there a surplus in years of the Clinton Presidency? Yes.

                  https://www.factcheck.org/2008... [factcheck.org]

                  • Re:The media has power (Score:4, Interesting)

                    by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @05:27PM (#59316362) Journal

                    False. That's only if you want to talk about "on budget" expenditures. Please see the Federal Debt to the Penny [treasurydirect.gov]. The last year we didn't add to the debt (meaning we didn't borrow money - we had an actual surplus) was in 1957. Clinton (and Congress) achieved a "surplus" by ignoring a lot of the spending. It's like saying you have $1000 extra per month to spend as long as you ignore your $2000 per month mortgage.

                    There hasn't been a surplus since 1957 - we've borrowed money every single year since then. FactCheck actually gets it wrong, when they try to claim "the debt went down" - it didn't. Government's debt increased every year - per the Treasury Department. Makes you wonder about the accuracy of FactCheck when they miss basic facts like this - maybe they have an agenda, too?

      • We are living in a world where debate can't even occur because people refuse to agree on actual FACTS, because they are trusting sources that repeatedly tell them that the facts are fiction.

        I think the problem is we can't agree on which facts are relevant or important. On the same day, an unarmed black man is shot by a police officer and a pretty white girl is murdered by an illegal immigrant. One of these gets 24/7 coverage on Fox but crickets on CNN, and for the other story vice versa. Nobody's got their

        • Yes, I agree, that is the precise problem which has caused the split. The determination as to which of those stories gets raised in importance is based on your existing world view, and it is a matter of opinion as to which one is more important. I think a true journalist or media organization would have standards in place, and would strive to portray each story factually, and equitably, not through a political lens. Media should not strive to conform their stories to specific world views. And that is what h

          • It is a problem that specifically began with conservatives,

            I completely disagree. It began with the liberals in charge of the media acting according to their own biases without realizing they're acting according to their own biases in the same way fish don't notice the water.

            I think a true journalist or media organization would have standards in place, and would strive to portray each story factually, and equitably, not through a political lens.

            In both examples I gave, choosing to highlight any of these s

            • > It began with the liberals in charge of the media acting according to their own biases without realizing they're acting according to their own biases in the same way fish don't notice the water.

              The lack of support for a biased position is not itself indicative of bias. Your argument implies that there is no such thing as bias because there is effectively no such thing as the truth, and that nothing is settled and that it is valid to challenge anything and everything, even if doing so gums up the works.

              • The lack of support for a biased position is not itself indicative of bias.

                No, the support for a biased position (that a black man getting shot by cops is newsworthy) is indicative of bias.

                Your argument implies that there is no such thing as bias because there is effectively no such thing as the truth

                No, my argument is that there is only bias. There are an infinite number of facts. The question is "which facts are relevant?"

                Look around your room. There's an infinite number of facts there. There's your coffe

        • I think the problem is we can't agree on which facts are relevant or important. On the same day, an unarmed black man is shot by a police officer and a pretty white girl is murdered by an illegal immigrant.

          If the media doled out their screen time in proportion to the number of people killed by a specific threat, it would be nearly all stories about people dying in the hospital of heart disease.

          The news runs stories they think their viewers will be most interested in, because like it or not, they're in the business of pleasing their sponsors. "Welp, we've reported on heart disease for the 1000th time this week, and sorry Ford Motors, but Nielsen Ratings reports not a single viewer has seen your new truck comm

          • I completely agree with you. I'm just saying which sensationalized crap is important enough to spur political action is a political decision. The idea that we should be going for some kind of "neutral, objective journalism" is not possible because there are an infinite number of facts, but a very small number of facts that matter, for varying values of "matter."

            I prefer an adversarial system with all our biases up front. It's a good idea to read Mother Jones so you know what the left cares about, and read B

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • What's way more concerning is the de facto monopoly position YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have in their specific corners of the market. If you want to be heard, you have to go through them.

      Just because you're envious of their foot traffic, it does not entitle you to set up your lemonade stand in Walmart's parking lot. Private companies have no obligation to give you access to their audience.

      Perhaps what we need is competing, government-run social media entities. Consider it the "public lands" of the internet. Then you can have your free peach (as they're fond of saying on Reddit), because we the people paid for it. Personally though, I'm taking a page out of the conservatives' book on thi

      • What's way more concerning is the de facto monopoly position YouTube, Twitter and Facebook have in their specific corners of the market. If you want to be heard, you have to go through them.

        Just because you're envious of their foot traffic, it does not entitle you to set up your lemonade stand in Walmart's parking lot. Private companies have no obligation to give you access to their audience.

        "Private property" is not always a shield. Many things are private property yet must abide by and allow civil rights to be exercised with relative freedom. Any place that courts decide is in practical terms a "public square" must not infringe on individuals' rights inherent in being on a public square. It's the reason wh

      • When your private company threatens the very democracy the country it resides in was built on, it's time to blow your shit up.

  • Information Technology is just a tool, and like all tools it can be used for good or it can be used for evil. In and of itself it doesn't dictate morality.

  • According to Law They have to be broken up (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pyrrho ( 167252 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @11:11AM (#59314742) Journal

    If we don't like it, we have to change the law. They've got a free ride since the 90s b/c the industry was too new to understand... that's 20+ years ago.

    It's also not difficult and is NOT PUNATIVE. When Standard Oil was broken up in total it grew, the investors profited, Exxon, Mobile (since allowed to merge) continued to be among the biggest companies in the country. It just couldn't be monopolisticly coordinated and surprise surprise there were people besides Rockefeller to run the "new" entities.

    When AT&T broke up, same thing, the companies did fine, were still monsters, and you have the creation of standards which creates regulatory control, and all the phones continued to call each other.

    A company like face book is already multiple server centers located regionally... each of these becomes an independent company and they create standards organizations (or use a current one) to describe the protocols that allow it to appear like one service, and allow NEW companies to take part in that service.

    However, it becomes a lot harder to be monopolistic and also play secret games with data because you have competitors, experts in the same systems, watching over you. You can't all just join together in a trust, because that becomes regulated.

    And as I said, this is current american law. It's literally a crime to intentionally not enforce it.

  • Anti-trust (Score:5, Interesting)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @11:12AM (#59314750)
    What Warren said about google is not that we should somehow require there to be 3+ dominant search engines, but that search should be a separate business from cloud services and advertising and so on. Similar to not letting a single company own the oil fields and all the railways that service them. They would still be each others' clients but other companies could also buy those services in ways they currently cannot, and this would also help lay bare how information about us is shared between these functions. I think it's worthy of consideration.

    • 3+ dominant MS Office competitors.... Not so much a fan of that idea...

    • And how much shit does Disney own?

      This whole punish a company for being too successful thing is just too arbitrary. I hate Facebook as much as the next guy, but they haven't done anything wrong. Unlike oil fields or railways, internet real estate is unlimited. Anybody is free to build a new cloud service, or messaging platform, or place to host cat pictures. The only thing Facebook is depriving a competitor of, is an audience - and that's entirely the fault of the mob of sheeple, not Facebook.

  • Invasion of the anti-science left (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @11:30AM (#59314864)

    The Democrats were at one time the party of the TVA, the Manhattan Project and Apollo. If the anti-tech fringe is successful at taking over, the party loses the support of the workers and is destined for obscurity.

    • No, all they have to do is convince the workers that they are about to be replaced by robots, and that only Democrats can save their jobs.

      See how that works?

    • Re:Invasion of the anti-science left (Score:4, Insightful)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @12:17PM (#59315096)
      I think they've already abandoned the workers, or at least the workers are feeling abandoned, which is part of the reason some of them went to Trump.

      The open boarder policy that several candidates are pushing (some even calling for the removal of existing walls [apnews.com]) is not a policy that benefits workers. It's really funny because you even see the left-leaning readership of Slashdot espouse the idea that H1B workers depress wages. Guess whose wages the low or unskilled migrants who come to the U.S. suppresses. Yeah, it's largely the group of people that the Democrats used to consider an important part of their base.

      The other problem seems to be that even when they do fall on the side of science (e.g., climate change) there's a part of the party that only seeks to use it as a vehicle for injecting other policy or pushing massive social change. The Green New Deal is a prominent recent example of this where it was loaded with all manner of things that had absolutely nothing to do with environmentalism at all, let alone addressing how to prevent or manage climate change. Perhaps the strangest thing is that this was something that they freely admitted [washingtonpost.com]:

      Chakrabarti had an unexpected disclosure. “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” he said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.” Ricketts greeted this startling notion with an attentive poker face. “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti continued. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

      “Yeah,” said Ricketts. Then he said: “No.” Then he said: “I think it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s dual. It is both rising to the challenge that is existential around climate and it is building an economy that contains more prosperity. More sustainability in that prosperity — and more broadly shared prosperity, equitability and justice throughout.”

      The Democrats feel like they're turning into what the Republican party would be if they hadn't spun off the Tea Party into its own little group. Instead, they've let the extreme end of the party co-opt the whole and steer the overall direction and I don't think that small contingent cares all that much about large parts of the existing base. And it's ultimately not good for the country if one party becomes dominant and unchecked, because it limits the necessity for compromise.

    • were government programs, right? You do understand that the Democrats are the ones pushing a response to climate change, with left wing Dems the only ones pushing a practical response (the "Green New Deal", a trillion dollar green jobs program), right?

      As a rule being pro-science means being pro-government. That's because "basic science" is hard, expensive and not profitable for decades. You'll note that it wasn't a private company that got us into space, and we didn't see private companies until governm

  • They are coming for you tech people (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @11:37AM (#59314916)

    Lots of Democrats supporters on Slashdot, I hope this is the start of a wakeup call.

    Tech is next in line to be eaten savagely by the left. The fact is that anything that gives power to an individual will be torn down and destroyed, or distorted to serve the state.

    There are some Democratic candidates that are much more reasonable on this but we all know they are not going to be the candidate, now don't we...

    Pay the most attention to what Warren is saying, as she has been chosen as the next nominee (just as Hillary was) and the wheels are already in motion to remove Biden and Sanders to clear the final path for her selection.

    • Tech is next in line to be eaten savagely by the left. The fact is that anything that gives power to an individual will be torn down and destroyed, or distorted to serve the state.

      If by "eaten savagely" you mean "properly regulated" then I would argue it's long past time. You may not think so but having virtual monopolies in power is a very bad thing. You only need to take a look at our telecom infrastructure, it's pricing compared to other nations and decades of broken promises to realize this. They were paid to build out to rural America multiple times and yet, still no dice for a lot of places.

      You might like living in a Neo-libertarian world where consumers are treated like shi

    • Re:They are coming for you tech people (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @12:26PM (#59315134)

      Lots of Democrats supporters on Slashdot, I hope this is the start of a wakeup call.

      What? You think that because these candidates are turning their sights on my industry, in a way that might hurt me personally, I'd no longer support them?

      Here's a hint. I vote for the left not because it will help me (as a high-earning tech person it will indeed harm me); I vote for the left in cases where I think it will help the disadvantaged people in society who need the help. And I vote for the right in cases where I think they'll do a better job at it. And I vote for whichever I think will advance the national interest best. My own personal well-being is way down at the bottom of my priority list.

      • What? You think that because these candidates are turning their sights on my industry, in a way that might hurt me personally, I'd no longer support them?

        ... as a high-earning tech person it will indeed harm me ...

        Why are you so sure it would hurt you? I'm not sure it would even hurt Zuckerberg [slashdot.org].

        If you are the owner of a small company it may be difficult to hire for a while(more competition), but migration could solve that pretty easily

    • they're coming for shitty tech companies that most of us generally hate because they're shitty companies. oh shucks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cylix ( 55374 )

      Well there is some positive potential here. The Reeeeee machine might just scare google to the center. That would be some benefit for everyone.

    • Only Harris' opinion was horrifying: Shut down twitter because... it's being used to broadcast the President's free speech? I find everything he's saying abhorrent as well, but that doesn't mean I want to deny him a voice. That's how we know what he's up to!

      Then again, her opinion was also predictable, because that's the kind of person she's always been. She attacks anything she doesn't understand.

      To me the debate really rammed only one thing home: There are too many candidates. Anyone with less than 5% oug

      • Only Harris' opinion was horrifying: Shut down twitter because...

        Here's a better idea: How about the president doesn't use a privately owned social media company as a platform? Twitter doesn't need to be shut down, the president needs to be shut out - by force of law.

        You mean to tell me we trust our government with nuclear weapons, but they can't figure out how to give the president an app he puts on his smartphone that allows him to post inane thoughts to a blog on whitehouse.gov, 280 characters at a time? Hell, I could probably write an app to do that in an afternoo

        • >the president needs to be shut out

          Yea because when you can't win elections nor win the argument just shut down the discussion. It's not censorship if its through a corporation at the behest of a twitter mob of fascist corporate censors ( I wonder if they speak Chinese).

          >that allows him to post inane thoughts to a blog on whitehouse.gov, 280 characters at a time?

          The idea of free speech is for unpopular speech. It doesn't matter how fucking inane his thoughts are. Why stop at twitter? Why not phone or

    • Lots of Democrats supporters on Slashdot, I hope this is the start of a wakeup call.

      Yes, because we're all believers that our own shit doesn't stink.

      The Republican party is homophobic [gop.com] (see: Defending Marriage Against an Activist Judiciary), climate change denialist, and they don't seem to have a problem with Americans dying because some of us can't afford for-profit healthcare.

      The Democratic party has aspects of their platform I disagree with, but nothing this bad. I'll get over Facebook/Amazon/Google being unfairly broken up, if it even actually happens (in all likelihood, it would face

    • and I want tech like everything else: Legal, Taxed and Regulated. I've seen big business left to it's own devices and I don't like it.

      And I'm paying attention to what Warren is saying just fine. It's why I support Bernie. I want universal healthcare and she's backpedaled repeatedly. I want to get us out of the 8 wars we're in for real (not just randomly pull back a few thousand troops in Syria while handing the region to the Soviet Union because we were either too dumb or too corrupt to wait for UN pea

  • it is OK for Microsoft to continue it's monopoly.... Meanwhile you can switch from a Dodge truck to a Ford with no issues....

    • What most people ignore is that it was the "monopoly" of Windows that fueled the computer - and later, Internet - revolution. Pre-Windows, you had several competing platforms, and most were not compatible. Your office used a Xerox 860 [old-computers.com] word processor; mine used a Wang 2200 [history-computer.com] and we couldn't share documents, electronically. Disparate hardware AND operating system platforms kept things fractured and slow.

      A common platform fixed that. The IBM PC architecture (and the quick clones afterwards) and a common OS (

  • What he's really saying... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Shotgun ( 30919 ) on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @11:47AM (#59314964)

    "massive crisis on our democracy."

    Translation: We no longer control the media. People like Jeff Zucker at CNN can't tell every social media warrior what they can't say. Social media warriors can't feed debate questions to their preferred candidate. "Anchors" can't bury a story they don't like. The only "crisis" is that entrenched politicians are losing their power.

    • Some of these politicians have only held office for 30 to 60 years and will do anything to keep that power and their income from it regardless of how well they have done. You know they are on wrong side of the public when they have to start cracking down on information. It works in China so why not in the USA they must think.

    • The only "crisis" is that entrenched politicians are losing their power.

      Which would be great if it meant we were electing regular, everyday people. But even on social media, oligarchs rule. Look at Trump's fan base.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Shotgun ( 30919 )

        We elected an regular, everyday person. Trump was declared "unpresidential" and we were told that we should have elected a "professional politician" instead. All the manufactured crisis around Trump has been specifically because he has been exposing the professional politicians for exactly what they are, and worse, he has been unapologetic about it.

    • You do understand that Mark Zuckerberg isn't some working class hero, right? That he's a member of the establishment and that his interests align with theirs, and not yours?

      This is just a small shuffle of who does what in the vast "Manufactured Consent" system (google the phrase if you don't know it). There's no revolution going on. If you want a Revolution go look up the Justice Democrats and their pledge to accept zero corporate cash. Now _that's_ a revolution.

  • Whoops (Score:2)

    by Cylix ( 55374 )

    I think they misspelled echo chamber.

  • ...all that will do is turn a defacto monopoly into an oligarchy. What it needed is open APIs to foster interoperability so people can effectively use the system of their choice instead of having to use whatever their friends are using. That doesn't really address google or amazon's market power, but it will address the social media behemoths...

  • We all know it, but most of us pretend it doesn't need to happen, mostly due to greed.

    Shatter the corporations.

  • And take his 65 million followers with him.

    Actually, it would probably be best to leave his account on twitter for awhile. You can post on gab.ai, and have the posts show up on twitter. But if Trump gets banned, gab.ai is still there.

    If twitter bans Trump, twitter would not hurt Trump, but twitter would shoot themselves in the foot badly. It would start a self-perpetuating cycle. Other conservatives would follow Trump and start using gab, then others would follow, until twitter loses about half it's audienc

  • It's a money grab, but it's time. The idea is tech outfits that started out small and grew because of normal market behavior should be subject to taxation just as any other industry or service does now. There is no 'incubation' period anymore. It's out there, and it's mature now. Amazon is a legitimate and now serious threat to Walmart. So much so, that they are accelerating the use of eliminating humans at the checkouts to the annoyance of older customers who prefer a human to deal with. YouTube and

  • threats to "our democracy" (Score:3)

    by eaglesrule ( 4607947 ) <eaglesrule@@@pm...me> on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @02:44PM (#59315744)

    It's as if we live in world where the DNC wasn't the Clinton's political machine that cheated Sanders out of the nomination, then concocted a completely fake story for the mockingbird press [politico.com] to hammer the public with for over two years. A big lie to be repeated often in order to save face and also undermine the legitimacy of a duly elect POTUS.

    Meanwhile the tech giants are working overtime to have their thumb on the scale against anyone who doesn't regurgitate leftist koolaid. Google tasks itself with "preventing the next Trump situation" [bitchute.com] and using 'product intervention' to promote their own idea of 'fairness' against an unsuspecting public.

    Now Warren is talking about killing the goose that lays democrat golden eggs. I'm sure she has a bridge to sell as well.

  • This is a rough ontology of financial models for journalism, but mostly the point is to consider what's been tried and isn't working too well in these days of the Internet.

    1. Espionage. I'm including it as a historical form, since most of us don't get access to spy reports, but it used to be that only the king could actually afford to send out spies to find out what was happening in his own kingdom and nearby. Most viable "business model" of them all? According to Wikipedia, it's currently over $50 billion/

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