Amazon can merely issue a press release and cause an entire sector to lose market cap: "Amazon thinking of moving into healthcare" results in huge swings of stock prices from drug stores, to drug companies or hospitals, which create favorable buying opportunity.

In addition, Facebook and Google are moving more and more people to extremism, "down the brain stem". More anti vaxxers and election influence. Previously, we had controls over what played on Saturday morning cartoons and now there is no conversation or control about what a child sees on YouTube.

CSPAN Hearing:
https://youtu.be/WQMuxNiYoz4

Tristan Harris
https://www.tristanharris.com/

Scott Galloway
https://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/scott-galloway
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/5853354857001/



[Edited on September 8, 2019 at 10:16 AM. Reason : A]

9/8/2019 10:15:00 AM

Interesting (in a non-judgmental way) to see you posting this

9/8/2019 10:53:43 AM

Why? Because I'm in tech, or becuase I'm uninformed

9/8/2019 12:33:49 PM

Why don’t we put a market cap limit on all publicly traded companies. Pass the threshold and you must split up.

Just bc a tech company is acting in a way you find distasteful shouldn’t be a reason to cut them up.

9/8/2019 5:58:49 PM

Ma Bell was way smaller with much less power with than any of the above mentioned companies and it was broken up.

9/8/2019 8:14:00 PM

35 years ago tho

9/8/2019 8:43:38 PM

^^ Much less power? In what way? Ma Bell had a government monopoly. Amazon does not. It was a crime to compete against Ma Bell, anyone can try to start a new Amazon.

You are wrong about there being any actual control over Saturday Morning Cartoons. There were threats, and shame was and will always be very effective at influencing children's programming. But, no one ever lost a broadcast license from a cartoon show being too edgy.

Just because you're big shouldn't change the rules. You should be treated the same as anyone else.

9/9/2019 9:50:59 AM

^ Amazon can ruin the market cap of any company just by issuing a press release:

> Amazon thinking of getting into Health Care.

This causes anything tangentially related to health care to tank in price: CVS, Hospitals, Insurance companies. Even if it's not specific they can then acquire at a lower price any of these segments. Also, with AWS, Amazon can go after lucrative companies running on the platform by offering competing products at below market price until the business is killed.

9/9/2019 1:05:44 PM

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/09/09/texas-attorney-general-leads-google-antitrust-probe.html

9/9/2019 10:35:57 PM

Amazon 100% should be broken up.

But amazon got to their market position by being great at what they do. Even today ordering from Newegg isn't as pleasant an experience.

Facebook shouldn't be allowed to own both Instagram and Whatsapp.

I'm not certain enough about Google to say if/how they should be split up.

9/10/2019 12:35:18 PM

^ Search, ads, android, cloud, and home.

9/11/2019 9:20:09 AM

Quote :

"Facebook shouldn't be allowed to own both Instagram and Whatsapp."

Why?

9/11/2019 9:38:35 AM

^ I'll take a crack.

Instagram being a "native ad" platform and having insights into your real world social circle can select ads that are much more persuasive. They select ads that contain the same clothing or style as your friend group as well as have look similar in appearance to your family. An ad platform with access to Facebook's data is particularly insidious when there is no clear distinction between ad and legitimate non-paid post.

On Facebook you're not as readily friends with people that you haven't had some connection with in "real life" (including games and other online communities in "real life"). Even though Target probably knows you're having a baby and can pop up ads about maternity, you at least know that's Target and their intents. With Instagram it could just be someone in a community you follow and your guard isn't as up.

9/11/2019 11:33:47 AM

^^ It's anti-competitive. Facebook bought Instagram and their pace of development for instagram is far below Facebook. It seems to me they're keeping it stifled to try to keep Facebook on top.

It would be like if Apple bought Google, and kept Android/ChromeOS just minimally functional... it's bad for the customers.

9/11/2019 11:40:45 AM

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/13/760478177/microsoft-president-democracy-is-at-stake-regulate-big-tech

9/14/2019 10:49:48 AM

The argument of anti-competitive behavior requires something that keeps new competitors out of the market. I haven't seen a persuasive argument that this is happening. I would think the existence of software and design patents are a bigger danger to competition than how Facebook and Google run their platforms outside of litigation.

If a bunch of new regulations land, new competition will be hard to find because compliance requires resources. So there won't be new platforms that don't have a lot of VC. There will be no startups run by two people in their garage.

9/16/2019 4:49:19 PM

Good as place as any I guess for this
https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/26/23279562/arlo-apple-wyze-eufy-google-ring-security-camera-foortage-warrant

7/26/2022 11:44:42 PM

"foortage"

I dislike this so much. I don't trust any security camera with cloud access. I want a camera that backs up to its own storage, and the only network it needs is for me to connect to it directly.

7/27/2022 9:55:04 PM