Facebook and Google have a long history of illegal activities. If they colluded like a "cartel", they should be treated like a cartel. The problem is both sides of the aisle have are irreparably entangled with big tech and cannot be trusted to prosecute not just fine them a paltry some that is insufficient to correct their behavior. People have gone to jail for weed longer than anyone in power at big tech has paid for their gross violations of trust and privacy of the entire world.
Edit:
Someone believes cartels are just for drugs here is a link about some of our remedies:
Political entanglements aren't the half of it. Facebook and Google (Alphabet) make up about 6% of the S&P500 by market cap, and that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how much of the global economy depends on the online advertising market. Nobody wants to risk popping that bubble.
The politicians and policy makers have failed in their job to come up with a well developed policy addressing various impact of new technology , partly because they do not understand it and do not have the expertise to solve it. They however have been successful in covering their ineptitude by diverting the general public’s attention and putting the tech companies in the defendants chair in the public court and this shifting the blame from the government to the tech companies. And then they of course get profited from lobbyist efforts and the huge spend behind them. It all works to the politicians benefits and they can shrink from their responsibility of coming up with same legislation and finish the endless debate , which frankly is getting tiring.
We already know big technology companies behave like cartels in other ways. For example there was the famous case of agreements not to poach from each other. In the end all they got for that was a slap on the wrist. All the workers were never properly compensated for it.
> If they colluded like a "cartel", they should be treated like a cartel
Are you suggesting we use their distribution networks to move crack in to the cities, then use the money made to fund illegal interventions in South America?
> both sides of the aisle have are irreparably entangled with big tech and cannot be trusted to prosecute not just fine them a paltry some that is insufficient to correct their behavior
When did so many on Hacker News become so pathetically fatalistic? I expect this from spoiled teenagers, not hackers of all people.
Ownership aside isn’t big tech something of an expert workers council?
If there’s literal logistics value to these systems we’ll build them anyway.
Political labels like cartel help politicians sell us on big ownership.
Let’s do novel things literally and ditch figurative political tradition. No more political tradition, no more big corp.
Obviously it can’t happen over night. We could invoke old politics or let big tech takeover the world and let workers takeover big tech as they forget about politics
> has paid for their gross violations of trust and privacy of the entire world.
Sorry, but who are you to speak for the entire world? You may not like facebook and google personally, but it is far streach to think you know to represent one country let alone the whole world.
For one thing, your are not speaking for myself: both google and facebook are some of the best tech I enjoy using every day, and they have and are improving mylife daily. They did not violate my trust in any way.
And for your allegations, can you provide any proof for it? Even out of respect for the community, so here supporting material not just words, in the air is what appreciated the most.
What I don't understand, is how a tendentious hateful post is not downvotes here on HN?
Google/Facebook doing shady things to undermine user privacy is a generally accepted fact in this community, so I think that the title understates the severity of the allegations in the article!
It contends that there was collusion between Google and Facebook to protect their abuses of dominance in the marketplace:
"Google quickly realized that this innovation substantially threatened its exchange’s ability to demand a very large – 19 to 22 percent – cut on all advertising transactions,"
...
"However, Google secretly made its own exchange win, even when another exchange submitted a higher bid,"
...
"And as one Google employee explained internally, Google deliberately designed Jedi to avoid competition, and Jedi consequently harmed publishers. In Google’s words, the Jedi program 'generates suboptimal yields for publishers and serious risks of negative media coverage if exposed externally.'"
...
"For example, Google and Facebook have integrated their software development kits (SDKs) so that Google can pass Facebook data for user ID cookie matching," the amended complaint says. "They also coordinated with each other to harm publishers through the adoption of Unified Pricing rules…"
I wonder what Google's take on this is. The system is so incomprehensibly complicated they can hide behind that. The FB relationship to me seems like it would be harder to explain away.
Maybe Google could say they are including quality & spam in their winning bid selection instead of only highest price.
Also conversion optimized bidding messes things up/more complicated the highest CPM might not be the best or most profitable ad for them to clear (another problem when they own all sides of the transaction).
FB for instance say they take ad quality, engagement, & predicted user behaviors into account when choosing winning ads not just price - which is also transparent..
Another thing is publishers can usually set floors and optimize for specific bid sources, like newssite.com could let their IOs win bids until it's filled even at a lower CPM.
Or also clear rates, like maybe an SSP bids $100 but it doesn't go through/get paid?
>
"And as one Google employee explained internally, Google deliberately designed Jedi to avoid competition, and Jedi consequently harmed publishers. In Google’s words, the Jedi program 'generates suboptimal yields for publishers and serious risks of negative media coverage if exposed externally.'
Lol I guess that employee missed the training where they tell you not to put this stuff in writing.
People who think the tech giants maintain their dominance via patents are 60 years behind the times. It's network effect plus some outright illegality like this.
If this is true, unless they get fined in the order of $200B it won't matter and whoever made the decisions will get promoted within both companies. Snapchat lost ~25% of their market value and other companies that did not collude probably also lost a lot.
Can we just step back and recognise that the elephant in the room here is advertising?
No matter your views on Google, Apple or Facebook, the issue here is nefarious practices predicated on the implied right for these companies to make money from you by polluting your internet experience with injected, paid for, content.
I'll play devil's advocate for a second and say that "not all advertising is bad", but the fact that this even reached court should tell you what the companies involved care about.
We really need to regulate online advertising. My personal opinion is that we should eradicate it and let the cards fall where they will, but that's unpopular and unrealistic for many valid reasons.
I agree with your sentiment but some of the quotes in the article from internal Google memos look pretty damning. One of interest says their "Jedi" advertising program, which was meant to subvert legitimate ad competition from other exchanges, 'generates suboptimal yields for publishers and serious risks of negative media coverage if exposed externally.'
I also would like to see some changes but this seems like a case of Google actively trying to be evil. They architected their systems to choose their exchange, even if another exchange had a higher bid, and then lied to ad publishers about the practice, along with fully acknowledging it in writing! How much more self-aware could you be? How could people, in good conscience, work for a place like that?
Absolutely. Advertising is the root of all the evils we face today in this technological society. I too believe it should be eradicated. If not by force of law, then by literally driving their return on investment to zero by blocking all their ads to all their users by default on every browser, every application, every operating system, every router, every ISP.
I went on the hunt just before posting this to find out more about how many people click on ads and how beneficial they are (for any party, not just the advertiser) and I can honestly say I think it's all lies: the whole industry are lying to one another and, by extension, to the customers.
Now, this is pure anecdotal but every result I found on DDG was from a company that either advertises, consults about SEO/ads, is Google, or otherwise part of the ad scumbaggery somewhere in the chain.
The thing that got me was they all said ads are brilliant (I know, odd, isn't it?). They all had click through figures ranging from a few percent to 35%. Are you kidding me? A third of people click on ads?
I couldn't find anything that said ads are shit or dangerous or even anything vaguely negative.
Now, I don't see ads. Ever. I have UBlock Origin and privacy badger and other settings to prevent them from showing on my screen but the odd time I setup a PC and have to open a gaping browser, it's such an assault on the senses.
I've asked on here before but is there somewhere out there in the internet that I can see unbiased research on ads. Something! Anything at all?
> polluting your internet experience with injected, paid for, content
You're really understating the problem here. It's not injected content, or paid for content that's really a problem. It's that state of the art social engineering has been used to create platforms in which the ability to manipulate people and their attention, beliefs and behaviors is sold at scale.
While the business model undoubtedly has a part to play I think the bigger issue is the lack of consequences for devising such schemes. The article's right to point out the similarities to insider trading. The only obvious difference is you don't leave the building in handcuffs.
Why don't these companies just offer a paid version of their products? Giving people an opportunity to back out. E.g: Pay X per month to use Google and you get no ads or tracked. YouTube does something similar, but I guess they still track you.
I personally would still mostly use the free ad-supported version.
Advertising is essentially just lazy attempted fraud, one person trying to convince another to give them money in exchange for something they may or may not need or want. I understand it in a more absolutist free speech country like the US. I don't at all understand why a society would ban, say, hate speech while still allowing uninformed, non-specific advertising. Seems hypocritical.
> I'll play devil's advocate for a second and say that "not all advertising is bad"
I've tried advocating for Satan in that way as well ... but could honestly find no compelling points with which to argue the case. It always boiled down to enabling one party to get money from another party irrespective of the one's party need for or ability to afford said product.
The easiest to way end advertising is to spend more and stop running a frail economy.
When aggregate demand is weak, people spend lots of money to try to redirect that demand towards them, when demand is strong people are too busy fulfilling orders to waste money on demand.
Crank up the fiscal policy and reduce working hours, and banning ads will be a lot more politically feasible than it is today.
I can imagine great benefits to eradicating advertising but I fear most of the internet can't exist without the ad revenue which might lead to an overall worse state of affairs for most people.
this advertising-as-root-problem perspective seems to have some traction here, but you’re not going up far enough in the causal chain of abstraction if you stop at advertising. that’s a tried-and-true recipe for unintended consequences and ineffective solutions. ultimately, it’s money that’s at the root of the problem, but that’s too uncomfortable of a truth for most people to accept, so we try to pull up short with attempts like this. and money in turn is overloaded to encapsulate power, influence, esteem, and wealth.
if we really want to inject fairness and competition into the ad business, we must accept that the quest for money, and all that it represents, is the driving force behind these kinds of behaviors, and that the only effective means of curtailing them is to ultimately rein in the drive for money (not simplistically to limit advertising).
both money and ads are useful tools in context, which also means in moderation. money is an overly simplistic metric poorly correlated to what we all want, which is human worth: to be loved, respected, esteemed, and included. having been gamed for so long, it now represents, and correlates with, our vices more than worth. we need to get beyond money as this simplistic on-size-fits-all metric for human worth.
Not all advertising is bad or rather, Advertising is not bad, period. The way google and facebook do it is bad, and of dubious effectiveness. Most of the small specialized niche communities need to stop relying on adsense etc. They should add self-serve advertising instead, and provide adequate exposure to those who pay for it. Advertising is communication; what is terrible is when it becomes spam, and google's moneymaker relies on spamming a lot because its premise is that spamming sells. There are better ways than that.
So, when do we see some real fines for this type of behavior? I’m a shareholder of both companies (through index funds) but I want to see a Treaty of Versailles level punishment for both companies that pushes them to the brink of bankruptcy and incentivizes their management and board to actively police monopolistic behavior. I’m talking high 11 or 12 figures.
Of course Google takes privacy very seriously! It's a potential threat to a huge part of their business, and if you don't take those threats seriously how can you neutralize them?
I always wonder why Google doesn’t do an Apple and turn off all advertising on Google phones. Selling hardware and subscriptions has proved to be more yielding than advertising. With Fuchsia on horizon, Google can literally own the entire ecosystem from desktop to mobile.
> We've been clear about our support for consistent privacy rules around the globe.
Truly PR statements can be generated with Markov chains, for a long time now. Every single statement and press release from a major company is at least half self-aggrandization: these robots really expect that the sentiment will be imprinted in our brains, instead of making us vomit a little each time. I'm surprised they don't walk around with twisted and bruised arms from patting their own backs so hard.
This leaves me curious, though, as to how Google subverted ‘header bidding’. Afaiu from the linked description, it happens on the client side—so how is the Goog able to manipulate it?
> "We've been clear about our support for consistent privacy rules around the globe. For example, we have been calling on Congress to pass federal privacy legislation for years."
Ah, the ol’ “Congress oughta do sumthin’” move! Facebook just used this one in their response to Haugen. It’s a classic, like fine wine.
Not just Apple privacy, but dominating the entire online ad industry. Jedi, but the dark side clearly. Also amazing how self aware they were about how bad this would look if it got out.
The collusion may the main point of the article, but the other actions really paint a horrific picture.
This is a company which had (sometime in the past) a "Don't be evil" in their statutes.
By contrast, the collection of misdeeds are mustache-twirling villainy.
Like, I would make a joke about stealing from children and so on, but if you look at the section about them trying to delay child protection legislation, well, my humor seems to have dissipated.
[+] [-] literallyaduck|4 years ago|reply
Edit:
Someone believes cartels are just for drugs here is a link about some of our remedies:
https://www.globallegalinsights.com/practice-areas/cartels-l...
The DOJ can raid them, and states attorney's can file separate suits. Perhaps there is one state government that hasn't succumbed to the corruption.
[+] [-] gary_0|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] la6471|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawaysea|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SV_BubbleTime|4 years ago|reply
Are you talking about the DOJ and many state governments run by people that received donations and support from Google and Facebook?
Let me know when a politician bites the hand that fed them.
[+] [-] swarnie|4 years ago|reply
Are you suggesting we use their distribution networks to move crack in to the cities, then use the money made to fund illegal interventions in South America?
Seems a bit extreme, i'd say just break them up.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|4 years ago|reply
When did so many on Hacker News become so pathetically fatalistic? I expect this from spoiled teenagers, not hackers of all people.
[+] [-] m0zg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ootsootsoots|4 years ago|reply
Ownership aside isn’t big tech something of an expert workers council?
If there’s literal logistics value to these systems we’ll build them anyway.
Political labels like cartel help politicians sell us on big ownership.
Let’s do novel things literally and ditch figurative political tradition. No more political tradition, no more big corp.
Obviously it can’t happen over night. We could invoke old politics or let big tech takeover the world and let workers takeover big tech as they forget about politics
[+] [-] sgregnt|4 years ago|reply
Sorry, but who are you to speak for the entire world? You may not like facebook and google personally, but it is far streach to think you know to represent one country let alone the whole world.
For one thing, your are not speaking for myself: both google and facebook are some of the best tech I enjoy using every day, and they have and are improving mylife daily. They did not violate my trust in any way.
And for your allegations, can you provide any proof for it? Even out of respect for the community, so here supporting material not just words, in the air is what appreciated the most.
What I don't understand, is how a tendentious hateful post is not downvotes here on HN?
[+] [-] cowpig|4 years ago|reply
It contends that there was collusion between Google and Facebook to protect their abuses of dominance in the marketplace:
"Google quickly realized that this innovation substantially threatened its exchange’s ability to demand a very large – 19 to 22 percent – cut on all advertising transactions,"
...
"However, Google secretly made its own exchange win, even when another exchange submitted a higher bid,"
...
"And as one Google employee explained internally, Google deliberately designed Jedi to avoid competition, and Jedi consequently harmed publishers. In Google’s words, the Jedi program 'generates suboptimal yields for publishers and serious risks of negative media coverage if exposed externally.'"
...
"For example, Google and Facebook have integrated their software development kits (SDKs) so that Google can pass Facebook data for user ID cookie matching," the amended complaint says. "They also coordinated with each other to harm publishers through the adoption of Unified Pricing rules…"
[+] [-] dillondoyle|4 years ago|reply
Maybe Google could say they are including quality & spam in their winning bid selection instead of only highest price.
Also conversion optimized bidding messes things up/more complicated the highest CPM might not be the best or most profitable ad for them to clear (another problem when they own all sides of the transaction).
FB for instance say they take ad quality, engagement, & predicted user behaviors into account when choosing winning ads not just price - which is also transparent..
Another thing is publishers can usually set floors and optimize for specific bid sources, like newssite.com could let their IOs win bids until it's filled even at a lower CPM.
Or also clear rates, like maybe an SSP bids $100 but it doesn't go through/get paid?
[+] [-] TedDoesntTalk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shawkinaw|4 years ago|reply
s/Apple/Google/
[+] [-] SilasX|4 years ago|reply
Lol I guess that employee missed the training where they tell you not to put this stuff in writing.
[+] [-] specialist|4 years ago|reply
People would rightly scream if NYSE was owned and operated by a cabal, playing both sides of every transaction.
One pillar of open markets is clear division of responsibilities. To prevent this kind of market manipulation.
No conflicts of interest. No competing with your own customers. No hiding important economic (market) activity.
[+] [-] AlbertCory|4 years ago|reply
People who think the tech giants maintain their dominance via patents are 60 years behind the times. It's network effect plus some outright illegality like this.
[+] [-] zipiridu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Intermernet|4 years ago|reply
No matter your views on Google, Apple or Facebook, the issue here is nefarious practices predicated on the implied right for these companies to make money from you by polluting your internet experience with injected, paid for, content.
I'll play devil's advocate for a second and say that "not all advertising is bad", but the fact that this even reached court should tell you what the companies involved care about.
We really need to regulate online advertising. My personal opinion is that we should eradicate it and let the cards fall where they will, but that's unpopular and unrealistic for many valid reasons.
[+] [-] longhairedhippy|4 years ago|reply
I also would like to see some changes but this seems like a case of Google actively trying to be evil. They architected their systems to choose their exchange, even if another exchange had a higher bid, and then lied to ad publishers about the practice, along with fully acknowledging it in writing! How much more self-aware could you be? How could people, in good conscience, work for a place like that?
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _Understated_|4 years ago|reply
Now, this is pure anecdotal but every result I found on DDG was from a company that either advertises, consults about SEO/ads, is Google, or otherwise part of the ad scumbaggery somewhere in the chain.
The thing that got me was they all said ads are brilliant (I know, odd, isn't it?). They all had click through figures ranging from a few percent to 35%. Are you kidding me? A third of people click on ads?
I couldn't find anything that said ads are shit or dangerous or even anything vaguely negative.
Now, I don't see ads. Ever. I have UBlock Origin and privacy badger and other settings to prevent them from showing on my screen but the odd time I setup a PC and have to open a gaping browser, it's such an assault on the senses.
I've asked on here before but is there somewhere out there in the internet that I can see unbiased research on ads. Something! Anything at all?
[+] [-] yosito|4 years ago|reply
You're really understating the problem here. It's not injected content, or paid for content that's really a problem. It's that state of the art social engineering has been used to create platforms in which the ability to manipulate people and their attention, beliefs and behaviors is sold at scale.
[+] [-] tjpnz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elvischidera|4 years ago|reply
I personally would still mostly use the free ad-supported version.
[+] [-] causi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JKCalhoun|4 years ago|reply
I've tried advocating for Satan in that way as well ... but could honestly find no compelling points with which to argue the case. It always boiled down to enabling one party to get money from another party irrespective of the one's party need for or ability to afford said product.
[+] [-] Ericson2314|4 years ago|reply
When aggregate demand is weak, people spend lots of money to try to redirect that demand towards them, when demand is strong people are too busy fulfilling orders to waste money on demand.
Crank up the fiscal policy and reduce working hours, and banning ads will be a lot more politically feasible than it is today.
[+] [-] Tenoke|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clairity|4 years ago|reply
if we really want to inject fairness and competition into the ad business, we must accept that the quest for money, and all that it represents, is the driving force behind these kinds of behaviors, and that the only effective means of curtailing them is to ultimately rein in the drive for money (not simplistically to limit advertising).
both money and ads are useful tools in context, which also means in moderation. money is an overly simplistic metric poorly correlated to what we all want, which is human worth: to be loved, respected, esteemed, and included. having been gamed for so long, it now represents, and correlates with, our vices more than worth. we need to get beyond money as this simplistic on-size-fits-all metric for human worth.
[+] [-] BurningFrog|4 years ago|reply
To me it's a mistake to think "we" here. You or me will never make any online advertising regulations.
Making regulations is a political process, and the outcome will be determined by those with political power.
So the question is if you want them to regulate online advertising?
[+] [-] cblconfederate|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trapped|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tfehring|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fencepost|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1vuio0pswjnm7|4 years ago|reply
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
[+] [-] shoto_io|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tenoke|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StevePerkins|4 years ago|reply
All the noise doesn't necessarily translate into action.
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arihant|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] junon|4 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/22/google_facebook_antit...
[+] [-] aasasd|4 years ago|reply
Truly PR statements can be generated with Markov chains, for a long time now. Every single statement and press release from a major company is at least half self-aggrandization: these robots really expect that the sentiment will be imprinted in our brains, instead of making us vomit a little each time. I'm surprised they don't walk around with twisted and bruised arms from patting their own backs so hard.
[+] [-] aasasd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kwertyoowiyop|4 years ago|reply
Ah, the ol’ “Congress oughta do sumthin’” move! Facebook just used this one in their response to Haugen. It’s a classic, like fine wine.
[+] [-] coldcode|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zwaps|4 years ago|reply
This is a company which had (sometime in the past) a "Don't be evil" in their statutes.
By contrast, the collection of misdeeds are mustache-twirling villainy. Like, I would make a joke about stealing from children and so on, but if you look at the section about them trying to delay child protection legislation, well, my humor seems to have dissipated.
Quite shocking, to be honest.
[+] [-] xvector|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawayay02|4 years ago|reply