The bill, sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), would create a new agency called the Digital Consumer Protection Commission that would be empowered to go after giant tech firms for a slew of anti-competitive behaviors and failing to protect consumer privacy.
Pointless unless:
The agency has authority
The agency can enforce that authority
The agency can levy fines and other deterrents significant enough to make tech companies fear #1 and #2.
Otherwise it’s just another agency that will face regulatory capture and dole out slaps on the wrist that Big Tech can effectively ignore.
…and is properly funded.
I don’t trust a bunch of crusty trust fund relics to regulate anything. You have to actually understand the technology to not make an absolute shit show of it, and they don’t.
The alternative is trusting a bunch of billionaire tech sharks to police themselves swimming with us seals.
I empathize with your sentiment, but what’s the alternative?
Seems like Big Tech wins no matter what happens. One way you have regulatory capture, the other you have private regulatory.
Vote out the crusty relics, promote candidates that actually understand tech or are willing to listen to people who do. Even if you don’t believe the crusty relics can be voted out, they cannot live forever. Eventually they must be replaced.
I mean, is Warren now among the crusty relics who don’t understand technology? That’s the implication here.
If you read the article, it sounds like a bunch of very sound and reasonable first steps being outlined. Seems like this is being torpedoed without a second thought based on pretty flimsy reasoning.
If the concern is they won’t go far enough… the counterfactual is doing nothing.
I probably wasn’t being fair to Warren by using OP’s words (crusty relics). I trust her far more than I trust most politicians, but I don’t trust Lindsey Graham at all, or any other Republican for that matter. “Bipartisan” bills like this include the likes of SOPA, PIPA, COPPA, and I’ve mailed my senator to protest them all.
Around the world, people look at the US parties and don’t see “left wing and right wing,” they see “right wing and lunacy.” Ultimately I want more regulation of big tech, I want to see the busting up of the AAAMM monopolies, but the political environment that would create that kind of effective, authoritative, savvy regulator… well, we don’t live in that environment. So until our system and parties resemble the EU’s, these kinds of bills are kneecapped by bribery disguised as political donations (a la Citizens United), regulatory capture, and the other Reagan-era failed policies that have brought us to our current position.
Like yeah, this part is great, especially considering Google’s WEI proposal:
Specifically, the commission would ban the largest tech companies like Amazon, Meta, and Google from providing favorable treatment to their own products on their platforms to those of their competitors, otherwise called “self-preferencing.” Along with the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department, it would also be allowed to authorize merger proposals and review past ones retroactively.
I’ll take what I can get for now, but the US has a very long way to go.
She basically wants to end cryptocurrency… Crusty? No. Understand technology though? Also no.
Well yeah, she’s a huge advocate for consumer financial protections and crypto has the potential to delete all forms of consumer protections in financial transactions. This isn’t a surprising position for her to take and it doesn’t imply a lack of understanding of the tech. Just tells you that her politics don’t line up well with the Venn diagram of anarchists and libertarians that think there’s no downsides to crypto.
I don’t know that that’s a fair assessment. She seems interested in ending cryptocurrency, not ensuring it’s used responsibly.
Oh no! That’d be almost as bad as losing NFTs!
While well intentioned, in the hands of the right the agency could what the supreme court is doing now for big tech.
It’s either something like this, or you trust big tech corporations to police themselves. Do you have a 3rd option?
I prefer the second.
“Corporate self governance” doesn’t exist. Whatever fucks the consumer for more profit is the only rule they follow.
I’d prefer the current state of affairs than the tech industry getting restricted by a budge SCOTUS. It doesn’t exist, but it’s still better than the other, since the SCOTUS people probably benefit corporate anyways
Yeah, I’m not even sure which option I’m in favor of. It’s a shit situation all around.
Strange bedfellows. Although I suspect Lindsey Graham is used to that by now.
The SEC does such an amazing job reigning in banks and wall street, I’m sure it’ll be a raging success
The answer to a dysfunctional government is not dismantling government, but replacing it with a functional government.
Replace it with an anarchy government!
So, look at the failures of the SEC and avoid those problems.
What will happen is the same as the SEC, but the opportunity to learn exists.
Don’t we already have agencies that are supposed to be doing this? Why would creating a new agency make a difference if the people we’re already paying to do it can’t be bothered?
