throwaway_trust

I work in ad-tech and let me tell you all these wall gardens are so arrogant that they create their own metrics for measurement and bully industry (especially marketers to follow them).

I strongly believe only way to bring these mega companies to senses and rein in on their arrogance by trust busting and creating level playing field for competition.

We need DOJ and anti-trust into big 3 oligopoly (GOOG, FB, AMZN) to crack down on them. They are too big for small players to compete.

This is not right. I'm a founder of Series C startup/venture and I'd be inclined to take money from SB only if numbers are looking shaky. Going public creates a strong brand value, and liquidity for all the employees (not just VCs and founders). Not to mention, makes recruiting easy due to perception of "this company made it". While there is lot of scrutiny, I think it's worth it if your numbers are somewhat good (no need to be great as public markets have shown to be forgiving tech companies if you have bright growth prospects or you can paint a great futuristic story).

I do not criticize their decision to select customers with whom they want to do business.

Definition of hate alone is extremely broad. And depends from culture to culture, country to country. Do we want many Interents with each having it's own rules? Or one Internet connecting people like it was envisioned to be?

I'm asking more meta/philosophical question here. What kind of precedence do they set with these actions?

Not everyone is shill or a bot. I neither support nor critique their decision. They are entitled to make this decision. I just believe this is dangerous precedence to set and can open whole lot of can of worms.

As much as I detest that site, this is now dangerous precedence. Payment processors choosing not to do business at their whim.

Imagine scenario - there is a totalitarian government in some banana republic that forces these companies (who are already global) not to support dissidents of it's regime in order to operate in their countries, what moral high ground will they take? The totalitarian regime will say you are doing this in US then why not in our country too?

Internet was supposed to be great equalizer. But supposedly monopolies are abusing their power. This is too close to net neutrality argument. Payment processors is oligopoly business like ISPs. It's a high barrier to enter due to governmental regulations. Now why can't be case made for net neutrality for payment processors?

And "build your payment processing company" -- give me a break. Any media organization can't just build payment processing services. I know there is BTC/ETH, saving grace for decentralization of Internet and working as true intended goal.

What was the reasoning behind social credit system? To keep track of bad actors or create surveillance nation?

On a side note, this is what happens when "technocrats" become the ruling class in overwhelming majority. Ability to apply technical solution to societal problems. Most of the China's ruling class are technocrats. We need anthropologists, social scientists, philosophers as law makers. Yes technocrats should be there in the mix too but they alone won't fix societal problems.

Fundraising might have fell through at last moment. Some major customer/partnership might've pulled the deal at the last moment. This all happens at startup level cashflow is tight. And all the investors thought there is no way this business with make sense based on the data they might have had on their hands. So they pulled the plug

> I think they are going to fail, and quietly increase the human involvement once they realize that their AI isn't good enough. Then they will slowly scale back the humans as their AI improves, until the next controversy when they realize that they still need humans.

Exactly. AI is not good at subjective decisions of qualitative data. For example, nobody knows any political candidate's net worth apart from IRS, until they make those records public. And say political candidates make statements that they are way less or way more than their net worth they cannot detect it is true or false.

That's why I was surprised. Pichai is smart enough that AI can't combat fake news. Hence he was just saying to save face.

To be honest so much corporate speak. Only Sergei's voice seems to be authentic. Everyone else trying to be extremely careful with their language of comments even though it's not a public event.

And "misinformation" and "fake news" will be combatted by AI? Seriously? That is like saying, "I have no clue but I will use some buzzwords". Pichai/GOOG knows AI better than everyone. I think they still don't have plan for combatting misinformation.

All of them are too big and we need someone like Teddy Roosevelt going on trust busting crusade. This is the second position of POTUS that I agree with (first being merit based immigration, as I'm myself an immigrant). In a weird sense, I think POTUS may achieve it as he is all about anti-establishment.

Now why do I think they deserve Sherman Antitrust investigations (and IANAL).

All of them have control over people's different dimensions of data that nobody has.

- Amazon: With acquisition of Whole Foods they control retail like nobody. Yes, Walmart is trying to make a dent. So does best buy. But they have pretty much monopoly over e-books business when it comes to publishing. Apple already had eBooks settlement.

- Google: They make or break Internet with control over gateway (Chrome), Search (gatekeeper, and promoting their own content) and monetization (Google Doubleclick/Adx is majority of share in ad-tech market for on-walled garden s, good luck competing against it). Given their control and 1B users across multiple platforms they constantly engage in anti-competitive behavior. Read about rise of header bidding and how AdX used to anti-competitive in ad-tech. Google's ad-tech division needs to thoroughly investigated over anti-competitive behavior.

Secondly, Android is free but Google has iron grip over Android using play store. I think gated App Stores are inherently anti-competitive and not in best interests of users and developers. OS should allow multiple app stores and DoJ should go after this. Fortnite already tried to highlight this issue.

Facebook - I think Facebook might be spared as for social they are not the only platform. But given their data scandals

Apple - As I said app stores are inherently anti-competitive. Same thing applies here like Android.

Anyway, these companies can make or break business with their anti-competitive practices. As discussed in another comment, Sherman Antitrust Act doesn't apply in monopoly positions but against businesses that may stifle overall competitive behavior. I strongly believe these companies are even more scarier in telcos as they are wolves in sheep's clothing and always try to play nice.