Many have commented on my suggestion that something as powerful as US Congressional action might be required to fix some of the totalitarian behavior of the internet giants.
I do realize that this is sort of thing often comes with collateral damage. I for one don't want to see government in my life. Their function is to do a few things, do them well and stay as invisible as possible. This is far from what we have today.
Yet I wrestle with this issue of monopolies, particularly when they behave as badly as PayPal, Google, eBay and others seem to be doing with some frequency. Because they are monopolies they don't encounter any force that might compel them to fix some of these issues. Under a normal competitive environment participants would improve their offerings at many levels in order to gain points here and there. This would include improvements in customer service because this is most-definitely one item that could sway customers to use one service over the other. Examples of this effect abound.
However, once a monopoly takes root the leverage disappears. The company who owns the market can then focus its attention on activities and policies that benefit them the most. Customer service is hard and it is expensive. Internet companies would much rather have algorithms make decisions. These are cheap and you don't have to feed them. Here the decision is simple: If the collateral damage caused by the brutality of a system without any semblance of customer service is but a rounding error in our revenue: Go forth and prosper. And that's how you end-up with what we are seeing happen with alarming regularity today.
The fact that your business might go down in flames because of their algorithmic decisions is a rounding error in their revenue stream. Devoid of competition there is no incentive to expend any effort chasing after rounding errors.
And so I search for solutions and can't seem to find any. A startup to compete with PayPal? Google? eBay? Not likely. Huge barrier to entry. They are in-effect, monopolies. It could happen, but I would not bet on this approach.
How about a united front of users, bloggers, etc., making a lot of noise in very public ways? Hmmm. Well. If you are in good standing with PayPal and Google, do you want to risk the wrath of the machine and get banned for life? Because that is exactly what will happen in one way or another?
How about suing them? Same issue. You almost can't exist on the internet without using services from these giants. Who wants to risk their wrath? For example, I'd sue eBay and Paypal in a second if I had the financial support and had a reasonable good certainty of a positive outcome. They have both caused me damage in the past with unfair unilateral/totalitarian actions. The problem is that when you look around you can't find a solid way to replace them. I'm willing to bet that thousands upon thousands of people just take it on the chin and move on precisely because of this effect.
And so, that leads me to where I really didn't want to go: Governmental action. The only way to kick these giants in the nuts seems to be to meet force with force. As consumers of the services of monopolistic companies we have no leverage whatsoever. None. However, we do have the ability to get our government/s to take note and take action with overwhelming force. This is just about the only kind of fight that monopolies are afraid of. Everything else might very well be an exercise in futility.
So, how does one get the ball rolling on something like this? While I have not been affected at the level that some of these stories relate I've had enough of a taste of how these machines work to be very concerned that one day I could incur tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage because of these unfair practices. I would prefer to see them corrected before that happens.
What's the consensus among HN users? Is this something worth pursuing?
What could be the repercussions for a bit of law that says "If you hold customer money in an account, you cannot simply close and freeze the account without a certain set of procedures and an appeal process that looks like x"?
A bank can't do it. A stock trading brokerage can't do it. There are even laws to protect you from a company deciding suddenly that your gift card money is all theirs. (These laws are newish -- they can charge a small maintenance fee after x mos, but THE MONEY IS YOURS.)
There's no reason why Google or PayPal should get away with more theft than Macy's Gift Cards department.
I do realize that this is sort of thing often comes with collateral damage. I for one don't want to see government in my life. Their function is to do a few things, do them well and stay as invisible as possible. This is far from what we have today.
Yet I wrestle with this issue of monopolies, particularly when they behave as badly as PayPal, Google, eBay and others seem to be doing with some frequency. Because they are monopolies they don't encounter any force that might compel them to fix some of these issues. Under a normal competitive environment participants would improve their offerings at many levels in order to gain points here and there. This would include improvements in customer service because this is most-definitely one item that could sway customers to use one service over the other. Examples of this effect abound.
However, once a monopoly takes root the leverage disappears. The company who owns the market can then focus its attention on activities and policies that benefit them the most. Customer service is hard and it is expensive. Internet companies would much rather have algorithms make decisions. These are cheap and you don't have to feed them. Here the decision is simple: If the collateral damage caused by the brutality of a system without any semblance of customer service is but a rounding error in our revenue: Go forth and prosper. And that's how you end-up with what we are seeing happen with alarming regularity today.
The fact that your business might go down in flames because of their algorithmic decisions is a rounding error in their revenue stream. Devoid of competition there is no incentive to expend any effort chasing after rounding errors.
And so I search for solutions and can't seem to find any. A startup to compete with PayPal? Google? eBay? Not likely. Huge barrier to entry. They are in-effect, monopolies. It could happen, but I would not bet on this approach.
How about a united front of users, bloggers, etc., making a lot of noise in very public ways? Hmmm. Well. If you are in good standing with PayPal and Google, do you want to risk the wrath of the machine and get banned for life? Because that is exactly what will happen in one way or another?
How about suing them? Same issue. You almost can't exist on the internet without using services from these giants. Who wants to risk their wrath? For example, I'd sue eBay and Paypal in a second if I had the financial support and had a reasonable good certainty of a positive outcome. They have both caused me damage in the past with unfair unilateral/totalitarian actions. The problem is that when you look around you can't find a solid way to replace them. I'm willing to bet that thousands upon thousands of people just take it on the chin and move on precisely because of this effect.
And so, that leads me to where I really didn't want to go: Governmental action. The only way to kick these giants in the nuts seems to be to meet force with force. As consumers of the services of monopolistic companies we have no leverage whatsoever. None. However, we do have the ability to get our government/s to take note and take action with overwhelming force. This is just about the only kind of fight that monopolies are afraid of. Everything else might very well be an exercise in futility.
So, how does one get the ball rolling on something like this? While I have not been affected at the level that some of these stories relate I've had enough of a taste of how these machines work to be very concerned that one day I could incur tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage because of these unfair practices. I would prefer to see them corrected before that happens.
What's the consensus among HN users? Is this something worth pursuing?