[HN Gopher] Senators aim to block tech giants from prioritizing ...
___________________________________________________________________
Senators aim to block tech giants from prioritizing own products
over rivals'
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 96 points
Date : 2021-10-15 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| chiefofgxbxl wrote:
| "...the bill reflects a growing realization that competition
| laws, like the Sherman Act of 1890, which prohibits
| anticompetitive agreements and attempts to monopolize markets,
| need to be updated for the digital era. _(Amazon founder Jeff
| Bezos owns The Washington Post.)_ "
|
| ... exactly.
| jedberg wrote:
| The intentions are good but I suspect like most laws, it will
| have both loopholes and unintended consequences. The bigger
| question is, how do we prevent that? Congress has a dedicated
| group of economists to advise on laws that affect the economy,
| maybe they need a group of engineers to advise on technology
| laws?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I bet the consequences are very much intended by whatever
| lobbying firm wrote the bill. Determine who wrote it and who
| they represented at the time and we can determine what the
| likely consequences are.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Makes me wonder if there's anything like a TDD concept for
| writing laws.
| agustif wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Lobbying is a necessary evil. Not every legislator can be even
| a generalist in half the things they vote on. The problem comes
| when they donate money to specific legislators. Regulate that
| first.
| dantheman wrote:
| Perhaps that's a sign that they're involved in too many
| things.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| Eliminate lobbying for one. Loopholes aren't accidental, and
| it's pretty clear that policy that affects the money tends to
| be influenced by it.
|
| A group of advising software people isn't gonna do anything
| when FAANG is spending millions on lobbying the policy that
| ultimately governs them.
| adventured wrote:
| Lobbying will never be eliminated. There is no scenario where
| that is ever going to be allowed to happen. Both sides of the
| political aisle love it and use it to their advantage, it's
| useful and lucrative for the political class. Their only
| interest is in controlling it, never eliminating it. So
| what's the next best option after that?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _eliminate lobbying_
|
| If Congress is about to pass a bill regulating tech
| companies, should it be illegal for said companies' employees
| to reach out to their representatives? What if one of them
| offers to drive others to D.C. to meet the bill's sponsors in
| person? What if one of them, say a manager, picks up the gas
| tab? Would a service that notifies you when bills in your
| interest areas come up for debate be considered lobbying?
| Should a Congressperson's staff, drafting a bill to regulate
| agriculture, be banned from reaching out to farmers for
| input?
|
| Lobbying encompasses a lot of activities. Some of it is
| fundamental to citizen-representative communication. A lot of
| it is sleazy. One of the principal problems the lobby-reform
| movement faces is in imprecisely delineating between the two.
|
| (Lower-hanging fruit, in my opinion: elected officials
| "retiring" into padded Board seats and advisory roles. And
| campaign finance.)
| jyounker wrote:
| It was called "The Office of Technology Assessment." It was one
| of the shining starts of the US government, and governments
| around the world used it as a model.
|
| Destroying the OTA was one of the center pieces of the
| Republican's "Contract with America," was they perceived its
| advice to be an obstacle to their legislative goals.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessmen...
| slownews45 wrote:
| I got bummed out when a lot of googles (much cleaner) options
| were de-prioritized. Could we at least let USERS select a
| preference to allow google to prioritize its own products etc?
|
| I want google only finance website, I want amazon only seller
| etc.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| Is anyone old enough to remember setting up a landline phone
| line?
|
| This was 20 years ago - the phone company said I needed to pick a
| long distance provider but they were legally prohibited from
| telling me anything about them other than their names. They read
| me a list starting with a randomly designated letter of the
| alphabet.
|
| I'm sure the government will handle this problem just fine...
| jyounker wrote:
| And before they broke up ma bell you weren't allowed to plug
| your own electronics into the phone jacks. [That's why we had
| acoustic coupled modems existed.]
|
| You also had to wait a month to get a phone line hooked up too.
|
| Long distance cost dollars per minute.
|
| Breaking up ma bell was the best thing that happened to
| telecommunications in the USA.
| jedberg wrote:
| I do remember that! And then after they read their mandated
| list I picked a random company and then ended up using a VOIP
| provider. They had a local access number you would call, put in
| your secret code, and then you could call anywhere they had an
| exit point, for like 1 cent a minute, which was crazy cheap at
| the time. But you had to deal with a 3 second delay because the
| internet wasn't fast. :)
| travisporter wrote:
| This doesn't sound bad... wouldn't the best company eventually
| win out from word-of-mouth? Unless you had to choose under
| duress or the receiver would shock you or something
| gruez wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu all over again?
| dantheman wrote:
| In the US, the main problems are housing, healthcare, and
| education. All with heavy government involvement, so Senators
| decide to get involved in Tech to stop what is legal in every
| other industry?
| [deleted]
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| The big problem with this argument is that tech is everywhere
| now.
|
| Housing? Look at the pressure that companies like Zillow are
| applying to housing market by buying up houses and holding on
| to them without providing any real value to the market.
| Healthcare? Google and Amazon are both making inroads to
| capturing and owning various aspects of healthcare data
| transfer and management, which is one the most cumbersome and
| expensive aspects of healthcare today. Education? Several big
| tech companies are involved there as well.
|
| You can't separate big tech from any of the industries you just
| listed because their hands are in all of them, which is one of
| the big reasons we're having this conversation now.
| jedberg wrote:
| In defense of Zillow, they are in fact providing a service --
| liquidity. If you need to get out of your house _now_ ,
| Zillow makes that possible.
|
| Edit: To be clear, I don't think this is good for society as
| a whole, but they _do_ provide value to someone -- they aren
| 't just sitting in the middle rent seeking.
| mistermann wrote:
| Zillow does many things, some of them useful and beneficial
| to individuals and society, others not so much. Back in the
| good old days society tended to realize that we have the
| power to collectively determine which activities are
| allowed and which are not, but it seems like somewhere
| along the way we forgot that we have this power.
| bnjms wrote:
| I'd consider providing liquidity a negative. Doesn't that
| prevent people from selling for lower values and help prop
| up housing prices?
| jedberg wrote:
| It's a negative for the local housing market, but it's a
| positive for the seller as well as a positive for the
| housing market the seller is moving to, because now they
| have cash to buy in the new market.
|
| Like I said, I think it's a net negative for society, but
| there are people who get value from it.
| chucksta wrote:
| On the other hand, they are impossible to compete with
| pushing normal people with local money out of the market.
| Very few individuals can, or will put in an all cash offer,
| as-is, no inspection
| jedberg wrote:
| I agree, I don't think it's beneficial to society as a
| whole, but they _do_ provide a service that some people
| find useful.
| redisman wrote:
| Wow that's so great. If you're filthy rich
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| And companies like Black Cube that run psyops campaigns on
| social media are providing a service too, someone
| absolutely benefits from it. That doesn't automatically
| mean it's beneficial to society.
| jedberg wrote:
| I never said what Zillow does is good or beneficial, just
| that they do add value.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| Sure, they add value for those that own property at the
| expense of everyone else.
|
| When you go to defend a company that essentially acts to
| exclude large swaths of the community from home ownership
| by accumulating real estate assets and driving prices up
| $400+/sq ft in many communities without actually doing
| any work to these houses, it's important to distinguish
| who exactly benefits here, because it's not most people
| that benefit from this.
|
| Defending a company that adds value exclusively to the
| wealthier, property-owning class to everyone else's
| detriment by arguing that they "add value" is a bit of an
| oversimplification, isn't it?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Regulating tech companies has bipartisan support, so it's an
| easy way for politicians to get things passed that will be
| popular with their constituents.
|
| Unlike other industries, tech companies haven't banded together
| to create some SuperPAC named something like "American
| Association of Tech Innovators" to lobby/bribe politicians
| against regulating.
|
| For healthcare, you have the vile "American Hospital
| Association" and "Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of
| America " goblins trying to block any legislation that will
| lower healthcare costs at their expense.
|
| For housing, the high costs are heavily affected by restrictive
| local zoning limiting the new supply of housing. The "lobbying"
| in this case is local NIMBY groups that every state/city has to
| fight.
|
| For education, the high cost of college is due to the fact that
| the federal government originates/backs the vast majority of
| student loans. They basically allow colleges to charge whatever
| they want, pay them up front, and then it's on the federal gov
| to collect from students afterwards.
|
| When they're effectively handing colleges blank checks, no shit
| they're going to charge the max they can get away with. It's so
| straightforward and infuriating that this point is rarely ever
| discussed in the debates around college costs. If these "non-
| profit" colleges (vast majority are) want access to that vast
| student loan money, they should have to play ball and only
| charge what the feds will allow. If they want to charge more,
| it should be their problem to find a way to get paid.
| anotherman554 wrote:
| Healthcare and education may be problems in America, but we are
| better off than we were before the government programs provided
| emergencies rooms and a literate population.
| a_t48 wrote:
| Are you sure you don't have the causation backwards? "X is bad
| because the govt stepped in" vs "the govt stepped in because X
| is bad/hard"
| echelon wrote:
| A good first step.
|
| The best move would be to prevent giants from having so many
| hands in so many jars. The lines are hard to draw, but a good
| heuristic would be if they're stepping across industry
| boundaries.
|
| Commoditizing your complement is great if you're engaged in war
| tactics against a few rivals, but when it's broadly applied to
| everything it's essentially a scorched earth campaign that has
| massive negative externalities for the entire capitalist
| ecosystem.
|
| As an example and a prediction of the outcome of this behavior:
| in a decade there will be few movie studios left because Amazon,
| Apple, and Google ate them up so that they can keep eyeballs on
| their platforms.
|
| Things we deal with today: browser monoculture, unilateral
| decision making, and erosion of ad blocking. Devices you can't
| repair that are the only way you can access certain sets of
| services. Etc.
|
| If these were separate companies, the experience would be top
| notch for each piece, and user rights would be respected.
| gbear0 wrote:
| I don't see much of an issue with any company having lots of
| entry points into different industries. I see more of the
| problem being tight control over vertically integrated aspects
| of the supply chain.
|
| I'd prefer to see rules limiting companies from creating
| products in 2 consecutive/complementary components of a supply
| chain unless one of the products is completely open for
| 'swapping' out with something else. This allows companies to
| still benefit from vertical integration if they don't
| commercialize one side of things. But as you said, it's hard to
| draw the lines, cause you could define a supply chain in a ton
| of different ways.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| The simplest approach I've read so far was Warren's proposal to
| split those that manage markets from those that compete in said
| market.
|
| Specifically, Amazon can run a giant online marketplace, but it
| shouldn't be able to put it's own products in that marketplace.
| Being able to both control the market and provide goods and
| services within the market is a recipe for disaster for
| everyone that isn't in control.
| dantheman wrote:
| How about applying that to stores in the state of MA, CVS
| can't sell house brands, and the grocery stores can't do it
| either. Let's see how it works there first, before doing it
| at the national level?
| Randosaurus wrote:
| This is akin to disallowing sugar completely because too
| much sugar causes people to become unhealthy.
|
| The issue here isn't the action, it's the scale at which
| this action is able to occur.
| mistermann wrote:
| I think it would be interesting if a startup media organization
| adopted the convention of reporting the news in a more
| epistemically strict form, something like:
|
| > "Senators _claim to_ aim to block tech giants from prioritizing
| own products over rivals'. "
|
| Indeed it is possible, and _maybe_ even "likely" that these
| politician's actual intentions match their stated
| intentions...but then it is also possible that they do not, and
| it is definitely possible that their minds or intentions could
| change along the way. I wonder if simple changes like this might
| maybe have some useful effect on affairs, what it is we're doing
| now sure seems to be yielding far from perfect results.
| Program_Install wrote:
| The "government can fix it" mentality. A rule set and power grab
| for the sake of helping the little guy, that don't really care
| about to begin with. It's postering like this that clearly mark
| two rivals as the opposite side of the same coin.
| SpikeDad wrote:
| Hey how about this? Legislation to block Senators from
| prioritizing their own political gains over the benefits of their
| constituents?
| Booktrope wrote:
| I hope the article isn't accurate, because if it's only "tech
| giants" to be prohibited from store brands, that would mean,
| Congress has decided, it's only brick-and-mortar giants who can
| use sales data to grind product sellers and compete using store
| brands. I mean, it's not as if drug chains (Walgreens, CVS, etc.)
| and grocery chains (Kroger, Albertsons, etc.) and big box chains
| (Costco, Walmart, etc.) and pretty much every sort of large
| retail operation doesn't do just the same thing.
|
| And speaking of using data to grind suppliers, ever since the
| early days of the NCR Teradata project put them miles ahead of
| any competitor and made them the largest retailer in the world
| for decades (sales still a bit ahead of Amazon last time I
| looked), they've been grinding prices, forcing offshoring of
| production to reduce labor costs, forcing suppliers to economize
| (that is, cut corners) on manufacturing to keep prices low. But,
| hey, it's tech giants selling store brands, that's the big
| problem!
| picardo wrote:
| The counter to that argument is that the brick-and-mortar
| chains don't claim to be platforms or marketplaces for other
| products. The business model of a Walmart is pretty simple. Buy
| wholesale, sell retail.
| nradov wrote:
| It's a little more complex than that. Retail chains often
| charge consumer packaged goods companies for shelf space.
| Essentially the retailers are selling access to their
| "platform".
|
| https://traxretail.com/blog/quick-guide-shelf-space-costs/
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The business model of a Walmart is pretty simple. Buy
| wholesale, sell retail.
|
| Is it?
|
| https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2016/retail-charging-
| supp...
|
| I would not be surprised to see the big retailers passing off
| a lot of inventory risk to the smaller brands it can push
| around. Walmart also definitely uses sales data from its
| stores to sell their own brands (Mainstays and others)
| alongside other brands.
| aaomidi wrote:
| To be fair the level of competition in physical stores is way
| beyond what we have online.
| xoa wrote:
| > _To be fair the level of competition in physical stores is
| way beyond what we have online._
|
| That is an absolutely ludicrously absurd statement. Physical
| stores are _physical_ , by definition they have vastly more
| scarcity. There is only so much physical land in high density
| areas, and physical stores that are even tens of minutes
| away, let alone hours, are in an enormously different
| competitive situation to ones nearby. Whereas online I have
| vast numbers of stores that are all perfectly equal
| "distance" away. They are freed from many if not all of the
| tradeoffs in storage space vs convenient (and very expensive)
| locations. Online stores are cheaper both to start and
| operate. Someone can reach a global audience from literally
| their garage.
|
| In comparison, a huge percentage of the country has maybe
| single digit stores within 30 minutes of driving. There is no
| competition at all... except from online.
| aaomidi wrote:
| > In comparison, a huge percentage of the country has maybe
| single digit stores within 30 minutes of driving.
|
| That's also a part of the country that doesn't have a ton
| of people.
|
| Again, I wish this applied to physical stores. But the fact
| that it doesn't, doesn't mean we should say this is a bad
| bill.
| threeseed wrote:
| This is completely wrong.
|
| Supermarkets, departments, hardware, chemists etc. in every
| country is dominated by 1-3 chains who have the capital and
| time to extinguish any competition. And it's been this way
| for a century or more.
|
| In the online world every sector has anywhere from hundreds
| to tens of thousands of competitors not just locally but from
| around the world.
|
| To setup an online store you just need Shopify, supplier and
| a few thousand for ads. For a physical store you need tens of
| thousands for fit out and leasing.
| echelon wrote:
| Name more than two phone operating systems.
|
| There are hundreds of big box retailers, ranging from drug
| stores, big box retailers, specialty stores, and more.
|
| Before Amazon, most of them were incredibly healthy. And lots
| of them still are.
|
| Name more than four mobile app marketplaces.
|
| Name more than two search engines.
|
| ...
|
| Tech is winner take all, then they pivot that power to take
| over more industries.
|
| Google now sells fitness trackers. Apple is a movie studio.
|
| Amazon is already starting to buy out physical retailers. The
| other tech giants won't be far behind.
|
| This is why we need legislation. To keep capitalism
| evolutionarily healthy rather than turning the world into grey
| google goo.
| aaomidi wrote:
| And tech is also operating where physical constraints don't
| apply. They can grow as large as they want.
| threeseed wrote:
| How about you tell us which country you live in and how many
| supermarket, chemist, hardware etc chains exist there.
|
| In Australia for example, we have basically 2 supermarkets, 4
| banks, 3 chemists, 2 hardware stores, 2 department stores
| etc.
|
| This idea that winner take all is unique to tech is laughably
| ridiculous. Especially for those of us who have had to
| compete and /or work with one of those major chains.
| fakedang wrote:
| I don't know, in most countries that I've visited or lived
| in, there was way more competition than duopolies and
| monopolies.
|
| I'm currently in the UAE where there are more than 30+
| retail chains competing alongside online retail shops
| (including Amazon). Thats ignoring independently run tiny
| grocery stores which number more than 5000. All of them
| compete to provide the best service, and incidentally its
| the groceries that are winning.
|
| There are more than 10+ national banks and more than 30+
| banks providing retail services. And even though there's
| only one major oil producer (ADNOC), there are multiple gas
| station chains. All this in a tiny country of 9 million
| people - I purposely did not take into account a country
| such as Germany or India.
|
| There is one industry which is a duopoly, telecom, which is
| a state run duopoly, and the quality shows. Customer
| service is the worst - so bad that even a royal prince from
| a ruling family cursed the telecoms, so bad that the heads
| of the bigger firm were berated by the rulers in a meeting.
|
| If you're gloating about how monopolies are the norm around
| the world, well quite frankly, it isn't. On the other hand,
| it might be far more symptomatic of the direction the
| countries you're referring to are heading in. Incidentally
| I have observed the pattern you mentioned in the UK too.
| echelon wrote:
| The United States.
|
| I think I could enumerate 100 major (publicly listed)
| stores if I tried without even using Google.
| ManBlanket wrote:
| The way this article is written makes it seem the focus of the
| bill is preventing the promotion of Amazon Basics. Personally
| it strikes me as a bit of a straw-man. The article seems
| acutely focused on this small aspect of the larger policy. Like
| the author is hoping the reader will throw the baby out with
| the bath water, in an evasive way. (Jeff Bezos owns the
| Washington Post)
|
| Personally I am finding it increasingly difficult to read the
| Post without noticing bias. I would encourage comparing this
| article to Klobuchar's own description of the bill before
| coming to your own conclusion.
| https://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2021/2/sen...
|
| It would seem the portion of the bill in question regards,
| "exclusionary conduct". Like if Amazon refused to list
| retailers that compete with its own Amazon Basics brand, akin
| to a grocery store refusing to sell Rice Crispies because it
| competes with their own Crisp Ricies. Not necessarily
| precluding them from offering the products.
|
| Even then that's only a small bullet point in a much larger
| bill. Most of the intent seems to be focused on increasing the
| capacity and resources for pursuing cases pertaining to anti-
| competitive mergers and acquisitions by these companies. The
| potential for exclusionary conduct becomes particularly
| concerning given the current trend of a few corporations
| gobbling up everything in their path that even remotely
| competes with their products.
|
| Thing is it doesn't matter if a product is a good idea which
| solves a niche problem if it's involved with these massive
| companies. If that product doesn't make a billion dollars then
| it finds itself in the Google Graveyard. Personally I don't
| want to see new and innovative things have a bad deal forced
| upon them, only to merge into a morass of vanilla ice cream
| because they didn't make ALL the money.
| cjsplat wrote:
| The Klobuchar PR comment you link dated Feb 4, 2021
| references S.225, introduced in February.
|
| This article seems to be about a new bill that Klobuchar and
| Grassley will introduce "next week".
|
| In yesterday's WaPo article, Klobuchar seems to imply that
| the new bill will motivated similarly to HR3816, which is
| very different than S.225.
|
| Until the new bill is published it is difficult to have a
| solid analysis. It is possible that the lobbyists quoted by
| WaPO actually have seen draft versions given how Washington
| actually works.
|
| So ... expect this item to appear on HN again next week when
| outsiders can have a more informed opinion.
| chmsky00 wrote:
| Politics does not exist to resolve social problems. It exists
| to resolve headlines.
|
| So, yeah, it is a straw man. It's framed as a general problem
| of society, but it's a feel good solution that again waves
| off any conversation about raising taxes in response to their
| behavior.
|
| Senators are tackling this very serious problem, to be
| immediately gamed given billionaires financial resources.
|
| It's not a tax on money, it's a tax on agency. Fiat and macro
| economics is a euphemism for "what are people doing and how
| do we make them do this instead?"
|
| It's not about perfect mind control, but inflating their
| value to deflate our agency (or buying power, whatever trips
| your trigger).
|
| We get debate protecting one concept or principle or another,
| but think a bit more literally and it starts to take on a
| whole new perspective.
| wincy wrote:
| So a place like Aldi will have to stock things other than its
| store brands? How do you pick which brands need be included?
| Judging from a place like Sprouts or Whole Foods there's
| about 50 varieties of rice crispies.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| For the love of all that is good, I hope this requires my iPhone
| to allow me to choose different defaults.
|
| I can't wait until I can use Alexa on my iphone instead of Siri,
| who now just seems to do google searches with the most basic of
| requests.
|
| Me: '<any question>'
|
| Siri: 'unlock your phone and read this ad-ridden search result'
|
| This would so improve the voice ecosystem because there would be
| actual competition.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://archive.ph/zmTKz
| joemi wrote:
| Is this talking about H.R. 3816? I hate it when these articles
| mention bills but don't link to them.
|
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3816...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Is this talking about H.R. 3816?_
|
| No. The article mentions this is legislation to be introduced
| next week by Senators Klobuchar and Grassley. H.R. 3816 has
| already been introduced by Cicilline, a Rhode Island
| Congressman.
| joemi wrote:
| Thanks. American legislation confuses me, and I'm American.
| Too many organizations that report on it don't link to the
| bills they talk about, and when I google them I get things
| like this, with the exact same name. Definitely doesn't help
| with my casual attempts to understand it.
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