Facebook should have dominated the payments space. It failed. Every few years they announce new payments products and strategy. Nothing fundamentally changes.
He talks about it in interviews. While he was at Facebook, he started an investment fund outside of work. Now I do not want to get sued for mischaracterizing what he did. You will have to listen to those interviews yourself.
I am aware of the investment fund he started both while he was at Facebook and after it. Neither of them were done in secret and in fact Facebook was an investor in it. Furthermore the companies that the funds invested in had no business dealings with Facebook. You can see the list of companies it invested in as it's public info.
Lawmakers did not just wake up one morning and decide to push antitrust forward. I would love to see which companies or people are pushing for, or against, it.
It would not surprise me to find out that telco lobbyists had a lot to do with this. It's not shocking that this whole movement to break up FAANG started after the Net Neutrality loss.
Telcos have largely been able to avoid breakups and scrutiny for years because they invest very heavily in lobbying.
I think antitrust has been asleep for decades but the shear scope of the damage of these monopolies is forcing congresspeople to finally ignore their special interests. Bear in mind, plenty of people ready to move forward on antitrust now are people literally receiving campaign money from Google. It's just not working anymore: Congresspeople aren't completely stupid (well, except Jim Jordan) and they can see their jobs are under threat due to Big Tech interference in the media and politics.
I'm not claiming they are being bullied by lobbyists. I'm claiming that the antitrust arguments have a long history of political motivation, as opposed to broadly beneficial economic motivation.
This is one of my favorite classics of Hacker News: searching for the nefarious companies behind the anti-trust action.
It's interesting because it's clearly an attempt to take populist suspicion of corporations and redirect it towards opposing a policy that would reduce consolidated control in markets.
It would be a wholly incomplete picture to think that such actions are happening organically. Whether antitrust is justified or not, ignoring the behind the scenes maneuvering will do a disservice to the discussion.
https://antilop.cc/sr/ was a great source of information for those not following closely.
One of the corrupt agents involved, Carl Force, gets out of prison in a couple of weeks. The other corrupt agent, Shaun Bridges, gets out in a year. I find the corruption angle to be most intriguing. Maybe more were not caught.
My simple answer: we became afraid. 9/11 showed us we were not invincible. Technology to enable mass surveillance had quick answers for our collective fears. Stoking our fears is a profitable industry. Here we are today.
Don’t know why you’re getting so many downvotes. This is pretty general but there’s a lot of truth to it.
9/11 ushered in an era where the US government took pretty extraordinary steps to protect national security by undermining the rights of citizens (see operation “Stellar Wind”.) It was so aggressive that FBI director Comey did not want to reauthorize it due to constitutional concerns.
Fear indeed is a powerful and profitable emotion to traffic in, it drives so much of our current media and political landscape.
A prominent political pundit that shall remain nameless said relatively recently that what is true doesn’t matter as much as what feels true. And that mentality dominates our political discourse.
I can totally understand the need to protect your citizens, but I rather think that this kind of behaviour damages the reputation of the US deeply. In the long run, you might have gotten your hands on someone's data that would like to harm the US (but are these guys so stupid to put their malicious plans on a handheld device they use at border crossing?)
Actually after the Snowden revelations: aren't the three letter agencies able to access our data without us knowing it anyways? If we are on their radar, they can get whatever info they want from us anyway. That's my understanding. So why harrass the normal person crossing the border?
Since the border has become such a focal point of our political conscious, the culture of some of these agencies is really being brought to light. Just look at the private Facebook groups of current and former CBP agents comparing migrants to animals and whatnot.
When the culture of an agency gets toxic, you start to see enablement of this kind of behavior.
It's another thing where people have such a different world view about this that I can't understand why they don't have concerns. I can only guess people comfortable with this don't live in a place where the border patrol doesn't bug them, or they don't cross the border much. Your whole life is basically accessible on your phone, giving a copy of it to the us govt isn't going to make america a better country. I haven't ever understood what happens if you don't unlock your devices and just give them to them. Will they return them? I'm certain they'll harass you next time you come to the border.
Like a lot of things that come down to "this doesn't affect them", this is yet another issue where I'm surprised that there are people who support this. The border patrol is under the control of the president, who can make changes. They could change this policy. Obama didn't change it, and Trump doesn't seem likely to care, because 'it won't apply to him'. But why not? The 100 mile border plus other exemptions is incre
It makes me so happy to see people standing up for what they believe in. I don't agree with the author's views on Google but I do agree with his personal stance of willing to be inconvenienced because of his views on Google.
I observe that most people are willing to hold an opinion until they are inconvenienced. Society would be better if citizens backed their values with their actions. Convenience is not a value.
