Not sure why this is a "no" versus "and," but whatever. The problem with "strong consumer protection" is it's vague. It means anything to anybody, which is useless from a policy perspective. It's language designed to gum up the legislative process, which is why Facebook's lobbyists use it. (Note: not insinuating shilling. Their lobbyists coöpted the term.)
Replace "strong consumer protection" with specific asks. Mine is breaking up Facebook. You may have others.
The tech monopoly giants of today are mostly Adtech companies, and as far as I'm concerned their very business model is anathema to free society. Trustbusting is good and needed, but customers should have been protected even before these firms turned into monopolists.
This is one of the reasons that I like the Brave/BAT model so much. It shows that you can have an "ad-based" economy without having to have Surveillance Capitalism. People could take part of the rewards they receive from the ad network and use to pay for their social media service. That was one of my ideas behind communick. [0]
And anyway, even if we wanted to get rid of "ads" altogether: WhatsApp was a profitable, sustainable business just by charging $1/year from part of its userbase. Facebook bought them because they knew it could become a threat to their business model.
It's questionable, but I think the idea is that ad tech makes ads more valuable? Ie a user gets something relevant to them.
Maybe the future will be this personalization happens offline on the user's device.
Your example on WhatsApp buttresses my point I guess. With payment, businesses have to rely on part of their userbase. And we all know that segment largely comes from particular geographies. This knowledge largely affects a company's strategy.
Ads are not totally different -- CPC/CPM varies across markets. But maybe can be compensated by volume.
This is what they want us to believe. I am pretty sure that in some years we will look at this claims from ad tech in the way that we see today the mid-century claims from Big Tobacco about the benefits of smoking.
> Maybe the future will be this personalization happens offline on the user's device.
It's already part of the present. This is exactly how Brave does the ad-matching. To make it perfect the only thing that I think is missing is for the user to have a way to train their own matching model, or at least to provide some kind of feedback about the types of ads that are relevant to them.
> And we all know that segment largely comes from particular geographies.
I believe that most companies already operate on the assumption that they will provide the service globally and lower-income markets are subsidized by richer regions. That is certainly true for any product that depends on network effects.
And for the products that do not depend on network effects, then the segmentation is likely to be a good thing. A more diverse set of companies, trying to solve the specific problems of different markets - instead of pushing for one-size-fits-all plans from big Corporations - is good thing in my book.
Time for consumers to get their rights back!
Please stop demonizing "profit-seeking". The problem is the lack of ethics of Facebook and Big Tech in general. Putting it on "private, profit-seeking" companies is a tired, sophomoric take.
If not then the comparison is not really valid.
> The problem is the lack of ethics of Facebook and Big Tech in general.
And big oil. And big pharma. And big anything.
Large corporations are built to maximize profit. And it is this focus on profit that is the problem.
So 'profit seeking'...
Profit-seeking should not imply unethical, no need to twist language when there is already the vocabulary to convey the proper meaning.
Nobody said that profit-seeking implies unethical. It was said that profit-seeking companies should not deserve our unconditional trust.
Well the last time I checked I didn't turn a blind eye to my work helping to start a promote a genocide in Burma so I really don't see your point.
I don't think that profit-seeking ever results in behaviour that is ethical. If I make a decision based on my desire for more money then it is almost always going to be a choice not based on ethical or moral values.
The difference is the scale. If I cut a few corners as a independent contractor then at worst my client gets slightly less value from their money.
If I cut corners as the owner of a chain restaurant then my profit-seeking has an impact on the employees I have and my customers.
If I am a major corporation that has billions of users then my profit-seeking has incredible impact.
If so, you'd have to argue why you want to change a neutrally-charged concept into something that carries negative connotations.
I don't understand this. At the end of the day they are separate things, probably you are saying a profit-seeking company is more likely to be unethical?
The fact that two things are usually correlated doesn't make them the same, right?
Somehow, this was translated into: profit-seeking companies are unethical. Which is not what I said.
> There is certainly an incentive for companies to make their ethics secondary to profit.
Replace "companies" for "dentists", "engineers", "plumbers" and "cooks", and this statement is still valid. The temptation to cheat and cut corners to favor short-term gains will always exist.
Yes, larger corporations give the ability for individuals to distance themselves from the consequences of their actions, and therefore it is more likely to see unethical behavior from large, faceless corporations. Still, this is not about "profit-seeking" or "profit-maximizing".
Your issue (and mine) is with Corporatism, not Capitalism. It is an important distinction to make.
Trusting profit-seeking private companies to do "the right thing" is naive at best.