[jeletonskelly]

I, for one, still look up to them. I don't completely understand where the negative views started, but I suspect it was with Facebook, fake news, and the election or maybe the Amazon HQ2 disaster.

Now, for some reason, they are being demonized for being large and participating in a system that has existed for centuries. They got large because they built things people wanted. What's wrong with that? I just don't get it. It's like a mob with pitchforks is forming to break-up "big tech" and they won't be satisfied until they've slayed the giants whether it's justified or not.

[techsupporter]

> Now, for some reason, they are being demonized for being large and participating in a system that has existed for centuries.

I think for a lot of people, myself included, it's because we weren't supposed to just "participate" in that system. We meant to improve it, to make it more fair, and more useful for all people. To improve lives and do no evil, as it were.

Instead, we've wound up with the exact same robber barons of old. This time, instead of trains or oil or telegraph poles, we've created behemoths that actively try to spy on, categorize, and monetize people to extents never before dreamed possible.

Worse, lots of the people around us--people who claimed to be interested in the same things we were--are now demonizing us for our long-held views, "privacy obviously isn't that important because people so willingly give it up just read the terms of service" and "steady jobs with benefits stifle innovation being paid by the piece as a transient worker with no employment protections is the new hotness because people so willingly sign up for it just read the terms of service."

Lots of people lined up to take hatchets to Microsoft twenty years ago but now Google and Amazon get away with much worse far more often and they're deemed untouchable. That baffles me. I can't "look up" to those companies who came after and trampled over the imperfect vision of people who came before, especially when they started out trying to build the vision we thought we said we wanted but then turned to the path that makes the most money in bulk even though it compromises almost all of those beliefs.

[indigochill]

>They got large because they built things people wanted.

Yes, but since then they've all made some public missteps. Facebook has repeatedly abused user data, Amazon routinely sells counterfeits, Google leverages user data for advertising and has a questionable track record with China, etc... People see that and feel like they want to switch to some competitor, but they don't know of one because Google, Facebook, and Amazon are the dominant parts of their experience of the internet.

What I think most people don't realize is that the world does not in fact revolve around Google/Amazon/Facebook and despite their market share, they don't actually have monopolies in their industries. *diaspora is a thing. So is Duck Duck Go. So is Ali Express (or, you know, just buying stuff at a brick and mortar store) And so on.

In the context of this ignorance, I think it becomes easier to sympathize with some pitchfork rattling.

[rchaud]

You seem to hvae a very black and white view of how history unfolds. There isn't a single moment when the tide turns (and I don't believe it has). It's the result of small things adding up over time.

Since the late '90s, states and local communities have argued that Amazon's ability to skirt charging local sales tax in most states gave it an unfair price advantage. It took years for the laws to close that loophole because we didn't previously have a major business that could sell exclusively online without opening in-state stores.

> They got large because they built things people wanted.

Again, this is a selective reading of history. Amazon was making losses consistently until about 2004, 10 years into its life. It was kept afloat by investors and lenders, not customers.

[justaguyhere]

I just don't get it

There have always been powerful business entities in history and there will always be - they could be banks, oil companies, rail companies etc. The difference between these companies and tech companies is this - tech companies are extraordinarily powerful and pervasive. It is very, very difficult to avoid using Google for example. Even if I stopped using all Google products today, I still have to email people who are using gmail. I don't use Facebook, but I am pretty sure they have tons of info on me, because of shadow profiles. And so on.

"Big tech" as you call them, they have unbelievable amount of power over our lives than other "big" whatever. That is why people are worried, and rightfully so.

[atom-morgan]

> They got large because they built things people wanted.

True, to an extent. They could become even bigger because city governments were openly willing to give them billions in tax breaks.

Small businesses don't get benefits like this from the government. Nobody should.