#tech monopolies

[hempseeeeds]

Google wants to monopolize Android

Here's how, and also apparently there are some Things you can do about it:

Keep Android Open

Advocating for Android as a free, open platform for everyone to build apps on.

[punksrespectpronouns]

[greater-than-the-sword]

On April 4th we unite to put people back in control of tech.

Congress is considering strong antitrust bills that will give internet users more power and choice, and stop dominant tech companies from abusing their gatekeeper status. Join us in helping pass these bills.

So, there’s some really important antitrust legislation coming up. These are to prevent Big Tech from directly harming their competition. For example, this would make it illegal for a phone maker to ban a third party app store from their phone; (they can no longer directly control what apps you are able to download) and it would require interoperability, giving you access to more app options and opening up competition for things like alternate social medias, payment apps, and so forth.

This legislation is supported by  DuckDuckGo, Protonmail, The American Booksellers Association (likely fighting Amazon’s book monopoly) and Automattic (the owners of Tumblr, not surprising that they support this after their fiasco with the Apple store) among many others.

You can follow the steps on the page to find out how to contact your representative.

[tomorrowusa]

What Mark Zuckerberg Really Means When He Talks About the Metaverse

In the parallel world of augmented reality, Facebook’s new Ray-Ban smart glasses contain cameras for taking photos/videos and a microphone for taking calls. The addition of more sensors and cameras increases the amount of egocentric data that Facebook can collect.

The metaverse, it turns out, is less cryptographic origami and more high-tech medical exam. The metaverse inextricably links the user’s individual, corporeal body and the ideas and actions that person takes. It’s about ever more granularly tracking and defining the individual consumer, down to our subconscious and involuntary reactions. The shocking thing about this is how easily the wow-factor of VR helmets and tricked out Ray-Bans have distracted us from the core, inevitable problem. The more deeply these devices are connected to Facebook’s ecosystem of apps and identity, the more the same old Facebook problems will come straight back to the fore: systematic mass surveillance, development of biased and opaque algorithms, and a general disdain for transparency or accountability.

Zuck’s Metaverse is just another data collection scheme – albeit on steroids. Sadly, many internet users who are easily dazzled by shiny objects will fall for it.

Mark Zuckerberg is a megalomaniacal James Bond villain. And he’s relying on masses of gullible users to volunteer for world domination under his cyber-totalitarianism.

We’re quickly running out of time to deal with tech oligarchies.

For those who care about social justice and free expression, getting caught up in the metaverse hype cycle would be a big mistake. But ignoring it would be, too. The problem is that Facebook is a trillion-dollar company that can afford to pay the attorneys and lobbyists and data scientists and product developers at the same time. Facebook’s “embodied internet” is not only a gross expansion of its ambition to total surveillance, it is an attempt to outpace the regulatory debate. As the whistleblower hearings and regulatory fracas continue, we can expect that Facebook will continue to delay, deny, and deflect.” But that’s in Washington. In Silicon Valley, D is for data.

As is the case with climate change, we need to act quickly. Of course the first thing everybody can do is to permanently leave Facebook.

The Facebook-clingers claim, “but that’s how I keep up with friends”. Look, Fb in its earliest form was created in 2004. For thousands of years before that, people managed to communicate with friends. d’oh!

It's a remarkable failure of the imagination (as well as a bit of laziness) that people claim they will lose touch with friends by exiting a massive data collection vacuum cleaner.

Deleting Facebook will not only improve your mental health but could even be profitable. After a New Zealand publisher deleted Facebook, her readership soared.

This News Publisher Quit Facebook. Readership Went Up

[dr-archeville]

Tech Monopolies: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) [source]

“John Oliver discusses tech monopolies, and how to address the hidden harm they can do.”  [26 min 49 sec]

[juicetrump2]

Google owns YouTube (two most popular sites in Jan 2022) and Facebook (now Meta) owns Instagram (the 3rd and 5th most popular sites in Jan 2022). Just think of all the personal information these two companies have collected on EVERYONE which they then SELL to advertisers and third-party vendors (companies that send you email spam to buy their products or put malware on your device).

Both Google and Facebook (Meta) are monopolistic and buy any site/platform that is potentially competitive. This needs to be stopped via federal regulation and both companies should be broken up into smaller, competitive companies. The types and amount of personal, private info these companies harvest from their users must also be regulated and limited.

Twitter WAS fourth most popular before Elmer bought it.

[the-funtime-autocrat]

Outrage of the week was surely Utah Senator Mike Lee getting his S.386 bill through the U.S. Senate. S.386 means a massive loosening of the rules for foreign workers to take up white-collar jobs in the U.S.A. Washington Watcher II wrote on Thursday: 'The deceptively-named Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act scraps country caps on migration and allows India to dominate our immigration system. It’s estimated that over 90 percent of professional employment-based visas would go to Indians for the next 10 years under the bill. The Act is heavily touted by the Indian lobby and Big Tech.' Lee didn’t have to break much of a sweat to get his bill passed. He used a Senate rule called “Unanimous Consent,” which allows the chamber to pass legislation with no hearings or debate, so long as no Senator objects. No Senator did—not one. One of my themes about immigration, which I’ve been airing for at least seventeen years, is that it’s really really hard to get people to think about immigration. It’s a slow, silent process, working away invisibly in the background of our national life. There’s always something more urgent, more dramatic, for politicians to make speeches about. Immigration policy is the classic case of frog-boiling.

John Derbyshire, “US Senate (INCLUDING Republican Senators) to U.S. Citizen Tech Workers—Drop!” (December 5th 2020).

[forsakebook]

We now know exactly what Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg think about before they acquire a startup

We now have a unique insight into the thought processes of these powerful men on the eve of big purchases.