Re:Cory Doctorow's new book on beating big tech at its own game
by taeric on Thursday August 03, 2023 @10:28AM
(#36986437)
It is this odd debate on what companies "might do" that is so annoying to me. Don't paint what they are currently doing, today, as if they are already doing the future thing.
More, don't pretend like them doing something they are almost certainly legally bound to do because of the other big actors is their fault. Lobby to change rules, but realize that if you kill the newcomer to the market, you are likely setting up the old guard to take back over. And they are almost certainly going to do what they always do.
If every party wins then the only drawback is that the market evaporates and you end up with monoculture. Not a big deal unless the single player turns "bad" and starts abusing their position. Even if customers flee it would take a decade to regrow the free market.
And there's a huge buffer allowance for just being "a little bad". Like, "oops, sorry about that author/candidate that we crushed on accident, we've made a tweak to the algorithm and it won't happen again" but the damage is done.
I think a lot of people know that today it's a win-win but are just afraid what these companies _might_ do.