News: The Big Tech Thread

You don't hear much on the news about it, but there are quite a few employees at various big tech conglomerates that are dissatisfied with the structure, attitude, or working conditions of the places that write their paychecks.

Employees at Amazon, Facebook, and Google in the past two or three years have become more vocal about their displeasure where they work. As far as I know, few of these people have made their concerns known before legislative investigatory bodies at the state or national level. Anyone that's gone before Congress, for example, tends to be the corporate heads of these large companies, rather than current or former employees who do a lot of the grunt work. I don't know if these people who lodge complaints or voice concerns are reluctant to testify at such hearings or maybe they've never been contacted in the first place.

Personally, I don't like the fact that Google, for instance, can do what amounts to 'contact tracing' on me as it pertains to my surfing and viewing habits online. I take it in stride though as a possible 'necessary evil', and fortunately, I haven't had many bad experiences with my computer getting infected with a virus because I happened to drift into an unsavory website. After 20 years online though, I've learned to recognize spam and shady posters, and I try to avoid them as much as possible. Facebook is another story. I haven't posted anything there in almost 6 months. I'm more addicted to BigSoccer, anyway! As for Amazon, well, I do shop there on occasion, especially during the 'Days of Pandemic', but I don't have a Prime account, since my needs over the years have drastically changed from what I think I want to what I actually need.

 

I like Northwestern's chances this year.

Oh, I thought it was the Big Ten Thread.

Okay, I know less about Big Tech than I do about college sports...except both are evil, both suck and both tend to control people's lives.

Edit: reading the first two posts, there is not much with which I disagree.

 

I will also add that the companies have gotten so big that they are anti-competitive. Both in that it is almost impossible to compete with them, but also that they have so much money that they are buying out and shutting down companies that could become competitors for them. A lot of the crap they've done in the last decade or so would have gotten companies that are in "traditional" markets in tons of trouble and, likely, would have resulted in at least wrist slaps..

 

Here is the rope...

I have lived and worked in the Valley of Hearts Delight (prior name of Silicon Valley) since the 60s (started working in aerospace in the 80s and transitioned to tech in the late 90s). Please don't let a few company founders think the "valley" is more libertarian than liberal. You would be wrong.

Yes, there are many who come to the valley who work long hours and are chasing a big paycheck. However, the majority are smart and often independent thinkers who understand the challenges of Big Tech. While I have not worked at a Big Tech company (Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon), I know many that do and enjoy working for the company. Some do not and have moved on. However, it's really no different than any tech company.

While I'm personally open to some form of regulation (US monopoly laws don't work), what do you see as the biggest threat from the companies? Is it lack of competition? Allowing content which is hateful or promotes violence? Other?

I would say one of the biggest issues is that content delivery has gone from the professional "news" to other sources which allow open content such as Facebook. Do you think regulating Facebook is going to stop and any such site going to stop the content proliferation? Who is going to make the decision on right or wrong? US, China, Saudia Arabia? Will it stop "good" content?

 

There are a lot of issues.

In general, go watch "The Social Dillema" on (ironically) Netflix. The main issue is that the platforms have determined that they make the most money by keeping you online a lot, and they are using big data and patterns and AI to feed you (the consumer) the article/movie/thread most likely to keep you online. Our brains and society haven't figured out how to remedy this. And there is no regulation against collecting, aggregating, and selling all the personal information that makes this possible. Europe passed the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) but we've nothing like it, even though we have the bill of rights...

Other issues are ripe for monopoly-busting. I mean, Alphabet has what, Google, Youtube, YoutubeTV, Android, Chromebooks, Cloud, Maps - think of the market share and the information they have on people. Amazon is the biggest store in the world and the largest cloud provider with AWS. Microsoft was almost broken up with a much smaller part of the market. These companies are also buying up and shutting down competition and performing other anti-competetive practices.

Personally, I'm in favor of more regulations on what, how much, and how long these companies can store my data. I'm in favor of more regulations on what these companies can automate/curate to push into my feed. I'm in favor of breaking up and walling off these big tech companies into more specific companies and "undo" some of the mergers and acquisitions like Google/Youtube and Facebook/Instagram.

But then, I'm not rich and don't have any lawyers - and the only ones with any money right now appear to be the FANG group again.

 

TikTok absolutely is not a competitor with any of those. It filled the hole left by Vine when Twitter bought and then crushed it. You could argue that it's short form videos are tangentially a competitor to Twitter, but it's only tangentially so. TikTok and Twitter have very different use cases and, so far, TikTok hasn't gotten to the point where you can have "discussions" like you can on Twitter. It just isn't set-up for that use case.

 

Totally agree on data privacy. We are not moving fast enough on protecting our data. Part of the reason I never joined Facebook and other platforms is data privacy (and the fact that I am anti-social). ML needs big data sets and is really the next big push for Big Tech. They need big data sets to train their algorithms for ML. It really puts smaller start up's to a disadvantage.

There needs to be standard framework to manage and control data which allow the data owners to share their data as appropriate. For example, I share data with Google because I want to use some of their services. Is it the right thing? Probably not, but I will to take the risk with them because I'm more familiar with their data and security practices than other companies. Facebook? Hell no. Most social platforms. Hell no.

The challenge is market segmentation. You mention Google and Youtube. Google's main business started with search/advertisement and business applications (G-Suite, etc.). Youtube is a content platform. Should Google be limited to only certain market segments? I guess that you could argue that Youtube helps their search business by driving eyes to their site, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the fundamental search platform.

I want go down the whole innovation discussion as it has been well worn down, but their are valid concerns with impact to innovation by market segmentation.

 

I think this is fair and would address some of the concerns around technology leveraging/driving content inappropriately. Additionally, it would still give them the opportunity to go into other business markets, just not content management.

Now, we could have a whole separate thread on media companies and editorial responsible.

 

The Big Soccer powers that be think they might want to join Big Tech so they designed a test to see which group of Mods were qualified to run with it.


Referee Mods......World Rivalries Mods....PC&E Mods

 

That’s certainly a unique definition since that would mean sports, sleeping, eating, working, commuting, etc, etc would be competitors to FB and YT..

 

but the First Amendment!?!

 

Doesn’t apply to private companies.

 

I know.
I was aping what I expect to be the anticipated response.
Should have used quotes and an emoji. Sorry.

 

Or the deep state!!!!

 

Each time I hear FB etc proclaiming "we are just a platform" to defend their policies it makes my blood boil.

What kind of society would we have by now if the MSM had taken the same approach since their founding, and just published unfiltered anonymous shyte from their readers?

ok. mini-rant over ....

Can someone provide a words-of-one-syllable explanation of the legalities that allow the Techs to get away with this and are not held to the same standard as a newspaper ?

 

Money!

hmm 2 syllables damn.