Why the world would be a better place without Facebook, Google and Amazon.

cancel2 2022

Canceled
Certainly they should be broken up, they are the new Standard Oils of the 21st century.

Few people today have heard of Standard Oil, the giant petrochemical company that a century ago made its founder John Rockefeller wealthier than Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon owner Jeff Bezos and Google billionaires Sergey Brin and Larry Page are today – combined.

The secret of its success was control. It dominated production, ran all the refineries and pipelines, and owned all the ships, tankers and petrol stations.

It squeezed out competition with ruthless price-cutting until only it was left. Then it hiked its prices.

It took the will of the then US President, the one person more powerful than Rockefeller, to challenge and dismantle Standard Oil’s monopoly in order to promote fair competition.

Indeed, Theodore Roosevelt’s actions bravely set a precedent that led to the break-up of other monopolies, such as those in the railway and airline industries, and the stranglehold AT&T had over the telephone business.

It is a lesson today’s great monopolists – Bezos, Zuckerberg, Brin and Page – should heed.

For their businesses exert ever more control over our everyday lives. They believe their power is unlimited. And, what’s more, the authorities, in the main, are letting them get away with it.

These tech giants give the impression that democratically elected governments can be ignored, that they can use the most private information about millions of us for profit, without our knowledge and all the while treating the obligation of paying tax as optional.

Theirs is a world where they influence public opinion, taste and choice by the shadowy manipulation of their sites’ algorithms which record our every move online and then use it to make vast sums of money.

These firms assume we have become so dependent on them that they are irreplaceable, an essential part of life like the air we breathe. This is not so. It’s time to fight back.

We can replace these California-based giants if we choose. And, crucially, I believe the world would be a better place for it. The good news is that, at last, world governments have woken up to the dangers.

A series of anti-trust lawsuits has been laid against Facebook and Google in the US courts in a bid to stop their monopolistic behaviour.

The Australian government has taken up the cudgels, too, demanding tech giants pay publishers for sharing content on their sites. Here, the House of Lords Communication Committee has recommended the UK does the same.

It took the will of the then US President, the one person more powerful than Rockefeller, to challenge and dismantle Standard Oil's monopoly in order to promote fair competition.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/...ter-place-without-Facebook-Google-Amazon.html
 
When I entered high school, FB didn't exist, and Google and Amazon had only been created in the previous two years. I had learned to use many of the older search engines, and only heard of Google for the first time that year. I don't recall when I first heard of Amazon, but, it was a long time before I ever used it.
 
When I entered high school, FB didn't exist, and Google and Amazon had only been created in the previous two years. I had learned to use many of the older search engines, and only heard of Google for the first time that year. I don't recall when I first heard of Amazon, but, it was a long time before I ever used it.

Amazon should definitely be separated from AWS.
 
Where exactly are the conflicts of interest. Please be specific. What wrong decisions have been made?

amazon web services provides web application hosting and back end tech. they break contracts with clients platforming opinions adversarial to their other import business's business model.
 
amazon web services provides web application hosting and back end tech. they break contracts with clients platforming opinions adversarial to their other import business's business model.

Translation, you are so angry that they refused to continue to host your favorite website . Poor baby!
 
The big world, maybe. In my little world, no. I like a one stop shop, a mega robust search engine, and I don't care about Facebook at all.
Breaking them up might inconvenience me, but Amazon does treat its employees like shit, I read. Why are you letting Apple off the hook, by the way.
 
The big world, maybe. In my little world, no. I like a one stop shop, a mega robust search engine, and I don't care about Facebook at all.
Breaking them up might inconvenience me, but Amazon does treat its employees like shit, I read. Why are you letting Apple off the hook, by the way.

apple too then. they should be shutdown for human trafficking and slavery.
 
Certainly they should be broken up, they are the new Standard Oils of the 21st century.



https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/...ter-place-without-Facebook-Google-Amazon.html


'Unfettered Capitalism'. Funny. On one hand you have Conservatives screaming that Government should stay out of Business. On the other, unfettered Capitalism leads to Monopolies.
I think everyone agrees that 'Monopolies' are 'bad' and that 'Competition' keeps prices fair.

So ... are we all ready to accept/admit that Government needs to 'regulate' the Market for the Benefit of the Consumers?
 
amazon web services provides web application hosting and back end tech. they break contracts with clients platforming opinions adversarial to their other import business's business model.

Yup.

Like all Good Liberals, they seek to strangle opinions left & right which challenged their homodoxy.
 
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