This is a serious problem. Internet marketplaces are so big now that its really hard to even have a business without them at all.
I think that after a certain size, these marketplaces should be regulated to insure due process between the parties. That way the whims of the marketplace owner can't destroy thousands of prosperous businesses at the push of a button.
We have similar regulations for utilities. The power company can't kick you out on a whim. I think the same rationale applies here.
I've argued this before; these companies have taken on a utility role and need utility-type regulation, i.e. an obligation to provide service fairly and universally, an ombudsman, viable oversight, physical presence, a local call center to provide local employment and to give back to the community, etc.
This situation where 100% of the taxi and food delivery profit from every small town in the world gets siphoned off back to a single office in California just isn't viable. Even from a within-US perspective it isn't viable.
That's exactly the thinking that led to the Digital Markets Act in the EU. Those marketplaces are effective monopolies or oligopolies in their space, so access to them needs to be regulated to ensure a level playing field.
Apple have already started using USB-C in iPhones, have already announced how they'll allow apps to be installed on iPhones without their App Store. Google have stopped shoving Google Maps on Search results.
Many companies, including Google, Facebook and similar, have changed how they do things because of the GDPR, and have been fined for not complying.
The FTCs fine on Facebook from a few years ago exceeds the combined value of all GDPR fines levied to date.
The Irish government fills its coffers with the largesse of tech companies that are headquartered there specifically to dodge taxes and regulation.
Likewise, while GDPR has some initial changes in privacy after many months of inaction tracking levels started to rebound because everybody figured out nobody was going to enforce it.
> The FTCs fine on Facebook from a few years ago exceeds the combined value of all GDPR fines levied to date.
Which is quite ironic, because when the GDPR was introduced just about everyone on HN adamantly insisted that one-person startups would be getting a €20M fine every time they made the slightest mistake.
The fun thing about hacker news is that for all you know I may be directly involved in these issues and speak from direct first-hand, but highly confidential, knowledge.
Or I’m just some moron, posting opinions with absolutely no basis in fact.
I am assuming that the parent poster worked in Google’s ad tech or analytics unit. Perhaps another FAANG. Perhaps Facebook.
Still: that doesn’t make the assertion about the size of Facebook’s FTC settlement and all GDPR settlements as significant as they think, for a bunch of important reasons that start to be obvious once you break it down.
The parent poster could be posting from a FAANG C suite, and it wouldn’t change that it’s an apples and oranges comparison.
> I think that after a certain size, these marketplaces should be regulated to insure due process between the parties.
The solution is not for them to be big and regulated, it's for them not to be so big.
The main thing that would help here is to inhibit vertical integration. For example, suppose people had a legal right to pricing information. Companies like Amazon and eBay would be encouraged to provide an API and have no right to stop anyone from scraping their site for anything it doesn't provide.
Now anyone can make a product search engine that will show you results from any site. You're not stuck with Amazon's gawdawful search. And since anyone can do this, it's easy to enter the market and none of them will have dominance. Conversely, if you want to start a new retailer, or sell your own products directly from your own site, you just submit your site for indexing to the popular product search engines and customers appear. But none of the search engines can destroy you because there are dozens of them and the biggest one is only 15% of the market.
We need more competition. The target of the rules should be to lower barriers to entry.
Look we all know governments can do some crazy things and regulatory capture is awful, but you libertarian types really have some strange ideas about regulation.
Half of this forum would be out of a job if it wasn't for Google, but still they down vote my comment and demand government regulation. They have no clue what they're in for. While Google has it flaws – big flaws – at least for the most they give anybody a chance to compete in the results ranking. A government regulated search engine or web portal won't be anything like that.
> Half of this forum would be out of a job if it wasn't for Google
This is similar to the Great man theory. If there wasn't for google there would be something else. Maybe something similar maybe something totally different. The idea that half of us would be sitting on our ass doing nothing if it weren't for google is just nonsense.
> Half of this forum would be out of a job if it wasn't for Google
Hahaha wat.
> still they down vote my comment and demand government regulation. They have no clue what they're in for.
Oh, we do have a clue. We have close to two centuries [1] of data to draw from. Corporations and big companies will always go for the worst possible things and are only reigned in when the government steps in. Without fail.
> at least for the most they give anybody a chance to compete in the results ranking.
No, they don't. And they haven't done this for a very long time now.
[1] Well, more. Government regulations are as old as governments, but let's take the last two centuries as something resembling more modern capitalism.
> No, they don't. And they haven't done this for a very long time now.
They do. I've launched several projects in the past years from nothing, with no backlinks, that are ranking high on Google and making good money. Just by adding the pages to their index in the box they provide. That's just the truth, no matter how strongly you feel for your ideology.
I think that after a certain size, these marketplaces should be regulated to insure due process between the parties. That way the whims of the marketplace owner can't destroy thousands of prosperous businesses at the push of a button.
We have similar regulations for utilities. The power company can't kick you out on a whim. I think the same rationale applies here.