Why the World Is Drawing Battle Lines Against American Tech Giants

[Ron]

There is Facebook co-opting your news media. Amazon is dominating book sales, while YouTube and Netflix are taking over television and movies. And the smartphone, arguably the most important platform for entertainment in this era, is controlled almost entirely by Apple and Google.

But the battle with tech giants promises to be more spectacular. Over the last decade, we have witnessed the rise of what I like to call the Frightful Five. These companies — Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet, Google’s parent — have created a set of inescapable tech platforms that govern much of the business world. The five have grown expansive in their business aims and invincible to just about any competition. Their collective powers are a source of pride and fear for Americans. These companies thoroughly dominate the news and entertainment industries, they rule advertising and retail sales, and they are pushing into health care, energy and automobiles.

...Europe is on the march against American tech giants. European governments have been at the forefront of an effort to limit the reach of tech companies, most often through privacy regulations and antitrust investigations. Now the European Commission is considering rules that would require streaming companies like Netflix to carry and even pay for local content in the markets they serve.

The European efforts are just a taste of a coming global freak-out over the power of the American tech industry.

The pushing of the social justice warrior agenda by these industry giants is a serious concern. Personally I use all of them from one degree to another, other than Apple. I know Google and Facebook are the enemy but the seamless integration across programs/apps and platforms is hard for me to give up.    

  

[Ben]

Maybe a slight tangent and into the political, but just after I read Ron's post, I popped over to Amazon and this was one of their deals today:

http://www.amazon.com/Humanity-Hates-Trump-Card-Game/dp/B01CYSYQC8?ie=UTF8&ref_=gbps_img_s-3_8062_49baa74b&smid=A1B7M9EQGNCLQA

I didn't spend a lot of time investigating, but  I found a lot of anti-Trump stuff, a small amount of anti-Clinton stuff, and no anti-Bernie stuff.

It does make one think about subliminal messaging by these sites that most of us use everyday. Like Ron, on the one hand I despise them having such a hold on my daily life, but on the other hand it's so damn convenient...

[zahc]

The anarcho-capitalist future of cyberpunk scifi was envisioned as the result of hyper-integrated technology giants making government obsolete and irrelevant. Government doesn't get overthrown so much as crowded out by the Wayland-Yutani corporation, the Tessier-Ashpool dynasty, Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, etc.

With the top 5 technology companies collectively holding enough cash to buy 30 aircraft carriers, profits and services being shifted around globally, continual shirking of the law by everyone from Uber in the US to Google in Europe and China to people setting up VPNs to get around copyright restrictions, bitcoin laundering services...it's  getting rather interesting.

A while back Sony BMG was complaining about Youtube violating its copyright... Google could buy the entirety of Sony BMG outright at market price and put their whole catalog on YouTube for promotion and not even put a dent on it's quarterly numbers.

[brimic]

Alibaba, if I'm not mistaken dwarfs Amazon...
I've been following apple closely for years, not because I!ve used them much until recently or even have any admiration for them, but because I've done pretty good with their stock over the last decade.  Recently both China and India have made some pretty significant moves against apple in protectionist forms to try to keep Apple at bay in their countries (banning certain types of devices from Apple, cloning and selling Apple products for pennies on the dollar).