tech companies of course disagree<\/a> with much of the report, using terms like “regulatory spitballing,” “outdated and inaccurate allegations,” and “false narrative.” Like most things in life, reality is a bit more complex. Economies of scale have been an argument for letting companies get big for decades. There are reasons that a large entity can create either faster or better or cheaper products\/services than small ones. In an analog world of manufacturing, products, and services, the relationships are easier to trace, the IP more clear-cut, and the risks more evident. Trust is easier to gain and maintain.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut we are not longer living in a strictly analog world. We’re firmly in the digital epoch, and the goods and services are largely virtual. One challenge is that digital scales in a way that analog never could or will. That means that our old models and regulatory structures likely are not equipped for either the pace or scale of change. Trust becomes a murky and ephemeral beast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So break them up or let them be? Not a clear answer, but many would argue that *something* needs to be done. Some of our first questions and metrics should be around the equity and sustainability of the ecosystem. Ethics is rarely on a development timeline, but it feels like it needs to be. That begs a whole other set of questions but better we ask them now then letting things just happen later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To quote the band Rush, “if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” RIP Neal Peart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
via Todd Richmond This week the House of Representatives released a 451 page report on “big tech” – Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google. The document discusses practices such as “killer acquisitions” (buying a company to eliminate a potential competitor) and talks about restricting companies to a single line of effort. Battle lines are already being…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,17],"tags":[70],"class_list":["post-5334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-future","category-government","tag-todd-richmond"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6572,"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5334\/revisions\/6572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}