Back in the spring of 2018, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in front of Congress and they questioned him about the ethics that Facebook, the questions they asked did no phase Zuckerberg. The only thing that made him look bad, was his demeanor during the hearing, the memes that made him look bad, and his notes that he had which would throw other companies under the bus if the opportunity presented itself.
Also, when Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai was in front of Congress and the questions they asked him about Google’s algorithm of “why is it, when I Google idiot, pictures of the president come up?” Having a career politician if important, but at least have people
When the San Bernadino case happened, the shooter had an iPhone. People in government wanted Apple to decode the shooters iPhone but it’s not that simple. If Apple were to decode the shooters iPhone then that makes cracks in iOS for hackers to get into anyone’s iPhone. There are no exceptions for 0s’ and 1s’.
There’s a fine line in properly attacking these companies for the good of the consumer, and not just attacking them because we felt they didn’t do enough in a course of action.
Apple isn’t much at fault for monopolies or violating consumers in any way, but they have abused patent laws in the past and their own lightning port instead of a standard USB-C which other companies have, does abuse consumers.
Microsoft learned their lesson in the 90s when they bundled Internet Explorer with windows and essentially having a monopoly in more than one market. Most believe this led to Microsoft giving Apple money so they could stay afloat and stay competitive.
What’s to be done about the regulation?
What’s to be done about the big tech companies? Even if you don’t find what I have written a concern, we can agree that we value technology more and more each day that it’s near impossible not to use the big 5 tech companies (Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple). As demonstrated by Kashmir Hill, as she tried not to use the big 5 and it was impossible for her to do. I thought not using AWS supported sites was a bit extreme but that’s really sticking to the tech cleanse. One thing that the video pointed out that was interesting was that Mina Khan said that these companies need to stop stifling innovation. Facebook buys its competitors or they copy their competitor’s technology or implement it as their own, Amazon stifles retail growth, Google owning both Google search and YouTube does cause some conflict of interest to me.
People smarter than me don’t know how to properly regulate these Silicon Valley giants. Government can start by enforcing more antitrust regulations against these companies. It’s in these companies rights to buy companies but before every purchase, a committee should form to come to the conclusion to see if it’s in the best interest of companies that company A buys company B.
It’s hard to say for sure what can be done. There’s no right way to do this but since there’s nothing being done now, a simple step like regulation can be done. It’s more than a simple grey area of a solution of sanctioning their business models; data for Google and Facebook, retail for Amazon, and Hardware for Apple.
I feel two, three or four parts isn’t enough to properly write about this topic so I’ll have to come back in the future when something is to be done about this.
Daniel's ideas 