 So, I mean, I wonder if Jonathan should really start by introducing the mad stuff because I did so little fucking work, but Jonathan, do you have things you want to open? So the way we usually do it is that we take a look at those themes and try to extract some points I didn't do my work. But I think you did, if you want to start. Yeah, I mean, so just to maybe kind of take a step back of at least the themes that I think we sort of discussed prior, like one of the things that I think that was super interesting is we're trying to like come up with ideas for how to organize this was trying to at least have some sort of grounding on like, how did we get to where we are? So like monopoly is an anti competitiveness. I think there are some interesting things that hopefully we can dive into in a second about what is like good and bad about a monopoly. And I think without having that grounding, it's hard to sort of identify what are the bad things that can come out of what we see today? Because I do think there is a version and especially when we think about like the modern application of like, how do we treat things like a COVID response? Like coming up with like, what are the things that we're trying to protect against and where is like they're good and where is they're bad? And also monopoly versus centralization. Are those two necessarily the same thing are kind of interesting points? Anywho, so I think like the genesis of this was as we were discussing in preparation for the call was trying to figure out how do we get like some sort of basis so we can talk about like what are ways that and I wouldn't even argue that the three listings that we have are like comprehensive. They're just like how the EU and the US historically looked at monopolies and anti competitive work and whether those are even like sufficient definitions is maybe an interesting opening place to start. But then try to dive into if those are at least necessary, like the bound some bounding conditions, are they sufficient for like all the skip of things? Because they focus in very sort of like ambiguous. Well, some ways very specific, some more ambiguous, then try to piece out what are the things that we think we should address? Like what are the things that are potentially good that can come from them, slash bad, and then diving into like maybe what are we seeing today? Because I think we have a really practical example that we could talk about. So maybe starting at least at the beginning here with like the anti competitiveness thing, I don't know, maybe to open up, I'm not sure who is able to actually take a look or read. Is there someone who'd like to give a quick summary or like high level take from the readings of like I can give my two cents of like if I was to give my takeaways from the readings, like how I see the two differences between like EU and US and like how they think about the world. So my understanding and people correct me if I have walked away with a false one is like the US, the way that the US has historically approached antitrust that's changed pretty significantly. And I think, I think it was Milton Friedman who is like proposed or what they claim who proposed like the way that we should consider antitrust is from a very consumer driven lens. Where like the primary argument ends up being around and I think like the actual history of this, which is not in a reading, there's like some really interesting case about how like supermarkets, there was some antitrust case that was brought against like some supermarkets that got like 10% market share or something in some region. And like there was an antitrust case brought against them. And then Milton Friedman wrote this whole thing that became like very popular, which was like, if it's not hurting the consumer, then why do we care, which is basically like how the US thinks about the world. And largely, I think the legislation that's been like passed and the way that it's been pursued in courts has been around like price. And so if you can't and it's interesting because when we talk about consumer harm, we're talking about a specific like lens of consumer harm. We're talking about it from this one kind of imperfect metric of did you pay too much or not. And I think that's an interesting contrast to the European definition. And like there's functional differences in the law as well, where like the European law is not written as specifically it is written. And I think in the, I forgot which article, one of them talks about this where like the two key operative words inside of like the EU legislation is for example, where they say like this should not hurt consumers. And for example, like there's a number of things that are listed. But by saying for example, it gives the European courts a lot of flexibility when they define what has actually violated consumer like need or like what is put or what is like disadvantaged consumers. And that's been pretty broadly interpreted to also include things that have been stifling competition or made it like less useful for. Not less useful for users necessarily, but it's like things that would prevent one group from having too much power. So I think that's like the high level of grounding. There's like I think both views of the world, the EU and the US center on we want to do things that are good for consumers. I think the definition of what good is, is I think where things are kind of fuzzy and in the US and in the classic American form. We think of it as like the purely economic lens of the world and not necessarily what are the other externalities. Are we truly pricing in all the other forms of harm, whether it be fewer options, which is how the European courts have interpreted it, or does it mean to violations or potential violations of civil liberties? You can even look at like other readings that were not included. Like what are like potential national security risks? If you think about it from if one org has too much data and Saudi Arabia, like they did with Twitter, pays a Twitter employee three hundred thousand dollars to leak information. Is that dangerous, too? Anyway, so sorry, that is going a little too far, I think, from a grounding perspective. I'd love to hear other people's reactions or thoughts. Yeah, I really like, I mean, that's a really great summary. The only thing that I would maybe pick on a little bit is the. The US one definitely has this metric around price versus the EU one based on that New Yorker article. My impression was that it talked about in both of them, the intent was to not stifle innovation. The idea was that monopoly stifle innovation. But then it was kind of a question of innovation to what end and the American interpretation ended up being innovation to the end of consumer protection versus the EU take is maybe innovation as an end in itself. And sort of contrast that with from the Goliath reading, there was that Brandeis quote, which is anyone living under a monopoly subject to the women caprice of a few self-appointed industrialists is therefore not a free citizen versus this concept, which is much more freedman that. Regulation of any kind is inherently bad and stifling to free democracy. If you've got something to say there, I'm sorry. Do you have something to say? Do you want to say something first? I mean, I think that there are these, well, the EU-US divide to me in some ways is, you know, was useful to hear, but is like for me, in a little, to certain extent uninteresting, like I don't care what's been kind of instantiated as law in different jurisdictions. I am interested in what models exist for describing the, what are the ills that can result from monopolistic capitalism or just from monopolies in general. And it seems to me that there are like two main conceptions at work in the conversation so far. One is purely about consumption. And the other has been described here as innovation, but it seems to me it just has a broader consumption of what bad results from monopolies. So like, these are really two different lenses. One is, is there an economic penalty that we pay for the existence of monopoly? And the other is, is there some form of social good which is sacrificed when a monopoly comes into being? And that social good could be, you know, like kind of economic in a broad sense. So it could involve innovation or it could have like a kind of less well-defined ill effect on like a kind of moral effect, you know, on how we live, how we think of ourselves, how we relate to one another in a society, and as Mandai says, it has some effect on freedom, whatever that means. And it seems to me that ultimately this broader conception is the one that's interesting, right? Like we wouldn't be all like up in arms about the monopolies that Google and Apple exercise for the sake of $7 a month or, you know, $28 a year. Like that, I just can't believe that that would like, get us all, get our, you know, get our boxers in it and twist it in a knot, you know? But I think it's the idea that there's some like, there's some moral harm that comes to us as a result of living under a monopoly. And that's why we care. Yeah, I think you make a lot of really good points, Matt. The sort of broader theme is the one that's interesting. But I don't think that this, I think that the specifics of the, as Kelsey sort of pointed out in the chat, is the idea that having these two interpretations are really important. I think antitrust is a really interesting category of work, right? It's this very strange pressure release valve for like an otherwise balanced, seeming to some balanced capitalist equation, right? This idea that, you know, it all works, Hunky Dory, it's fine. But like, again, I'm not, this isn't necessarily my view, but in the traditional interpretation of society as a functioning working thing, you have this like, yeah, we need, capitalism is great, unbridled capitalism is a problem. Generally we need some sort of referee, right? And that's, I think, sort of where antitrust, the admission, the existence of antitrust as a category of thoughts, as a category of laws and as enforcement, the existence of the regulation that derives from that is all sort of like, it is an admission that like there's a rounding error here. There's the thing that needs to be brought in to sort of balance this seemingly perfect equation. And I think that it's really interesting to dive into, I'm gonna quote Malcolm Gladwell's podcast to send into the particulars on this one and really see how, to see how it shakes out, right? Like, is I think the framing of consumer good that you see in the US is a really, is like exhibit A of where a data monopoly is as Jonathan said, like a failure to price in certain problems become really, like they sort of become a way to like carve around a lot of this. And if you read any of Jeff Bezos' letters to his investors like it is a magnum opus on antitrust, right? Like he's just, he's a masterful mind when it comes to designing something that evades the current understanding of antitrust in the world. And then I think the EU's interpretation of something is being far more broad, but also like, I mean, the EU is continually accused of being nonspecific and the sort of like big American engines of capital, the Googles and the apples of the world are very frustrated with the, right down to like requiring the USB-C port on their USB Mini, what did they settle on for charging phones? So yeah, I think there's like a really, and I think those particulars are really interesting and they're a really interesting point for departure because they really quickly get you back to the big conversations really quickly because they're the result of a lot of thought, right? They're the result of someone trying to say, oh, let's just reduce a ton of this and a frequent sort of characterization of like consumer good or consumer benefit because they don't even have a lot of ideas that really didn't scale well. And this might be one of them. I think like one of the interesting points, just to build off what you were saying, but touches on like the one specific example and the what are things we worry about with monopolies, like those two readings. Basically, it's an interesting use case looking at like the Getty and the Google thing where it's like, here is an example where like there is a clear harm, maybe not to the direct consumer, but to like the suppliers of like Google is enabling the piracy whether willfully or not of like a bunch of information, they're stealing ad revenue too from like Getty and that's causing material harm to like all the people up that chain. And so of course the EU does what seems like the right thing and like enables like Getty to actually like pursue and like win a case against Google. And yet that leads to a quote unquote, like it leads to outrage from people. And like there is a question also of like, yeah, I mean, $7 a month is not a huge fee if that's what you were paying to like pay for Google services but are we too cheap to even do it? Like, should it just be like a matter of like what is the choice and the optionality? And like, I think about this a lot with all the sites that have done GDPR stuff, like they require you to acknowledge and like we have gone from like you have no choice to because you have so much choice you will just like on autopilot be like, yep, okay I just wanna get to my, or like, yeah. I think there's like something, there's even a design question here, which is like, can you even get away from it? Because like, if the volume of things that you need to end up doing in order to protect against some of these bad things is so high friction then you end up just like, like people collapse under their weight. But I see a handsome Kelsey. Yeah, I mean, just from what you were talking about and then this diverges from the reading. So I guess everybody's welcome to bullshit on this, but what do we see as the role of open source in sort of combating that sort of, that sort of that like gap between what we don't wanna pay for stuff, but also we want stuff to be good and free and not an awfully company. I go here, Matt, do you wanna go? I think it's really dangerous. I think that burdening open source with filling some missing piece is like so problematic. I think that that's the bad side of open source, this expectation that there is just this like, untapped vast well of developer that is willing to sort of like fill the necessary gaps in our stack is just painful. And I think that the GDPR stuff really speaks to this, like how much ink spilled over the way that the regulations put out through GDPR places undue burden on small companies that are far less able to sort of deal with this. And oh, somebody will open source the thing. Yeah, but like you've, it's a very frustrating thing. That is another issue in another queue and another person who another burnt out developer somewhere, thanks. That's another, you know, license change to somebody saying, we're no longer can support the open source side of this. Like, I think that's a, yeah, that's fine. That's my risk. I'm not saying it's a solution. I'm not saying that, I mean, like it doesn't work if all open source is done for free, but it doesn't have to be the same thing. I have a first believer in the existence of some middle ground utopia where you can have open source and paid developers. It must exist. Peter, Peter. So the title here is data monopolies. Have we defined the data monopoly or is there a definition in the reading that would be the way you agree on? Yeah, I think so far we've mostly been, I've been wanting to get to a data monopoly proper instead of just monopolistic activity more broadly. And I think somebody else should say what we really mean by data monopoly since I haven't thought too much about it. But can you give examples of what feels like a data monopoly to you? So one thing that Jonathan was discussing was that geographical data sets owned by Google and Apple. So, you know, of course monopoly is maybe a little too strict a term, but these are non-competitive databases for two sets of users. And the fact that, I mean, the kind of possession of those data sets confers to the owner's set of privileges that kind of market position into ecosystems that like, what's the word I want to use that? That's like an advantage multiplier, right? So they have these market positions that are already well-entrenched and the construction of their services around data to which they and only they have, over which they and only they have control is a way of rendering permanent their market advantages. So that's one way to think about that movement data. And then it's been interesting during COVID to watch them try to figure out how to deploy that data in something like the common good. And so that's sort of an example, Peter, is that? And maybe Jonathan has something to say or Peter, do you wanna just go? I was just gonna quickly tap just to underscore, I think, I don't know if you actually ever formally defined it. I think the idea of a data monopoly is just taking as I am currently defining it in my head is like taking the ideas of like, why do we refer to it as a monopoly? And that's where like, usefully grounding ourselves and like how have we thought about what a monopoly is previously and applying it to a specific context, which is when we think about data and like exactly what you were describing, I actually linked to something that I did not include in the cut for the reading, which is Ben Thompson talks about this idea of like aggregator theory. And he applies it more broadly than just for like the specific tech platforms that are doing things with like user data. He applies it to like Netflix and other things as well. But I think there's a point that you made that I think really nicely intersects there, which is like, you have this ephemeral thing that is like, like you could think of like the social graph of like, how do we know each other and like know other things? And that's not something that is owned by Facebook, but there is like a function of like by us all having put in that data into the specific organization. Like they now sort of reclaiming ownership of the maintenance of those relationships. And there's something to be said about how that has, there's like market potential where like Facebook can cut off access to other apps and like there is like from other aspects like economic impacts from like companies that can or cannot exist or need to exist within like the rule of like Facebook. But I think there is like an underlying issue which is this is not a pricing issue. This is like a power issue of like when we think about how is that like power leveraged if like specific people want to like, at least yeah, in my view. Yeah, the main issue is when you have these types of things that have a whirlpool effect for as more people adopt like more of this data is like pumped into this one monopoly. And if we assume or we don't challenge the notion that this is like owned by a specific organization or that this data should be owned by an organization then I think there's questions that fall out about yeah, what are like the restrictions on power or do they have unbridled power? And I think like one of the things that's interesting I think that we may or may not see in this COVID era is there are applications for like having these organizations with such a vast reach and like pretty comprehensive like ability to use the data how they need to has led to like some positive social outcomes where like Facebook is like publishing data on like how faster people spreading like or like not socially or not maintaining quarantine and like Google and like Apple are able to leverage those data assets to like public or create this like contact or like large scale contact tracing thing for the world which is amazing. I think there are questions still about how like yeah, how is that decision making being made? There are still other questions about what other like consequences and also like one thing we haven't even touched on which I didn't even think about prior to the reading is like natural monopolies as like a thing that exists as well with like utilities where like we agree that there are certain things where it makes sense to have like one entity like just build and maintain the thing and like there are rules and restrictions around it but we haven't really talked about that in a tech context either. But to bring it back to your point I think that is what I think of when I think of data monopolies I'm thinking mainly from the user context and that then ends up boiling down so like a handful of like very specific tech entities. I don't know if other people have different definitions. Sorry, my internet keeps cutting out but B5 I saw your handout and I missed you the last little bit of your sorry, Jonathan. Yeah, I think I have a definition of a data monopoly that I personally use and it's more boring so less useful and has a bit of a higher bar. I think higher bar not in the good not that it's more valuable because it's higher. But I think it's important to like distinguish between like the way that I sort of understand this problem is like through the idea of like is this in a monopoly or is this an economy of scale? Meaning like do we, if we consider the original notion of a monopoly like you can say, hey, Apple has a monopoly on the iPhone. Or Apple has a monopoly on great laptops and it's like, no, they have an economy of scale. It's very expensive to spin up a company that makes laptops and they figured out a way to sort of get there. And I think that's kind of healthy innovation where you see a lot of folks who can sit in garages and figure out ways to create these breakthrough things that sort of like work well. And then I think a monopoly in the if we use the classic thing and then sort of leverage ourselves into the data side monopoly is quite specifically and when an actor in a market leverages their position to suppress competition. That may not be the like right definition but that's generally kind of the vibe we're working with. And I think when you use the phrase data when we talk about the phrase data monopoly I think it's really important to sort of distinguish those two things. And I think that I sort of like subscribe pretty heavily to the belief that all data is about people and all data has some grounding in reality. Almost everything is all data at some level is an observation of what we call the real world and structured into some way and jammed into a database somewhere. There are, and I think that's really important when you talk about data monopoly because I think for something to constitute a data monopoly the actual correctness of the data must reside with the owner of the data which is distinct from the observed world style of data. And I think that the Facebook sort of example is a really great place where I actually don't think that Facebook social graph is a data monopoly because at the end of the day my friends are my friends and I choose who they are. And if I ever logged on to Facebook and said unfriend this person and Facebook said no or if I discovered that they continue to advertise us as friends elsewhere I would be very frustrated I might leave Facebook. Because I know a thing to be true I believe a thing to be true and Facebook is not the arbiter of that truth. Yeah, people you may know it's that stuff. And I think this gets sticky but like bear with me for a second. Like I think that it's important that like I think it's a really it should be a very high bar for someone to say that you have a data monopoly. A data monopoly should imply that like if we change this number in this database you are no longer friends. Like that should be the bar for a social graph monopoly. Maybe that's true. Positive that there is like like to use a different example and maybe this is a good and useful one. It's like does Amazon have monopoly on online sales? Like functionally you could argue no like you could easily stand up your own website but like what percent of e-commerce is going through Amazon? And I think there's a similar effect when you think even if like you as the user get to like modify and update the data there is a question to what is the ability of a competing social network or anyone else to actually create that data asset? And does Facebook by its mere existence like negate that like network effect? And I wonder like yeah, like some of it is like kind of anti competitive in like the actions Facebook takes. So like obviously you look at like what does Instagram do when Snapchat is about to like release something like rep as quickly as possible. But I think there's also like this lock-in mechanism as well which is like what do they do that is like kind of anti user but like pro Facebook and like so there's like specific actions on the platform but I think that also like if you were to say I need to like leave Facebook, how do they enable that? Like so while yes you do own the correctness of the data, do you actually like or if you were to like turn off your profile like I think now with GDPR there's like some more information or like there were more rights associated with you but like there are still questions about like what has already been like scraped and like pulled elsewhere. I forgot the name, there's like clear view AI has been in the news as like super creepy on this front but like yeah, like do you even have control at that point? And I think there's like then an underlying technology. So those are like two divergent thoughts but like the first one being like I think there is a maybe it is an economies of scale and at a certain functional scale like you suffocate everyone else. Like the act of you building out your social network again is like pretty high and maybe one might argue that that's like not impossibly high but I do wonder if there is like something there and then two is what are the choices? Like if Zuckerberg has the ability do or yeah like yeah, what sort of choices do we then subscribe to based on like if Facebook has the ability and the ability to keep most of us on there and like retain this information what choices are we subjected to outside of that from like yeah, what algorithms are like value choices that are made on our behalf that get serviced. And like some of all of the stems I think from like a they can maintain the data or like they have an ability to make it harder to migrate off of like their platforms which yeah, I don't know. Maybe it doesn't meet the bar of monopoly. It's just, it's a something. I don't know what it is like. If I look like you have a response but can we get Peter in first? Yeah, it's hard. Like there's a real loss of coming out. I mean, you know, I mean the biggest themes in our relationship to Facebook is this feeling of loss of control. And it isn't just about data, right? It isn't just about data representation. It's about, you know, to what extent we can shape our social relationships and so forth. I think like all this gets really, you know, if we don't talk about like where do our distributions for monopolies come from? And for me, it's like the company town with the company store and your ability to choose alternatives and in that environment, it's pretty clear, you know, what an alternative to the company store might look like. But like what service is Facebook providing? I'm sure that they have some very carefully chosen narrative that their lawyers would present in answering that question. But each of us actually does use it a little bit differently. It plays a whole bunch of different roles in social life and organizing community events and getting your brand out there, whatever. And so it's really hard to think about. I think, you know, any one of those people might be able to bring a case about how they don't have a real alternative. Is that a, is data central to that? I mean, I guess is data the unit of control? Is it the mechanisms at the forum? I don't know, you know, just sort of on a philosophical level, I don't really know how to grapple with this. But it is really deep, really close to my heart and in particular that sense of control is not just the data itself that I put in there, you know, the particular records and interaction or whatever, but my ability to shape those interactions, right? Which is a bit more what people are concerned with, with the timeline, which is actually super disempowering because nobody knows even how it works. You know, if they shape the UI in a particular way and that impacts how I can interact with the world or they change the sort of, you know, spam control, whatever, like that's one thing I can sort of understand that I have no idea what's going on with it. I can't say, you know, like show me all of the coefficients for how much you think I like this person so I can tweak them. So I don't know, I don't really know where to start. I think Facebook is especially a confusing place for me to start. If we think that there's a class of things that are data monopolies, Google Maps is a little bit easier for me to grapple with. Yeah, go ahead. I think Brennan had I am right. I did. If you want to go Kelsey. No, okay. Yeah, I think I would pause it. Your social security number, your credit score. Those I think are better examples of like things that are in fact condoned monopolies where we say, hey, like if someone changes your social security number, your life is over. Like you're not, there's the source of truth for social security numbers is whatever, when somebody looks up the social security number and whatever answer they get back, that's the source of truth, your credit score, right? Like when you, whoever controls the association between your name and your credit score, that is where there's an inversion between what's real on the ground, right? My actions and a figure in a database and where a modification of that database has horrific real impacts that go the other way that impact sort of the real world, not necessarily. Not starting from like who my friends are and sort of propagating outward. And I think that's where like whoever has control over those things become like really, to me, that would be the examples, those would be examples of monopolies that I think are an easier framework for understanding what a monopoly is. I think it's really important to cleave apart something that can be frustrating or bad or an economy of scale from like, okay, like when, where do we need to step in from a regulatory perspective? And that should be a really, really, really like break class in case of emergency moment in my mind, like there should be other mechanisms to fix stuff like Facebook being terrible. So coming all the way back to Peter's question, what's a data monopoly? What's become clear to me here is that we don't have a great solid definition, which I think is a valuable and unsurprising result. So I checked the dictionary online in the meanwhile and a monopoly is quote, the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a model or a service. I think that's from Oxford, which is really not what we're talking about here. Brendan's definition definitely talked about active suppression, which leads me to the question of like, is it possible then to accidentally or incidentally be a monopoly if you're not being evil per se? Can you still be a monopoly? Because kind of, yeah, I think then there's the kind of the pragmatic definition that you can get out of the Getty lawsuit. They had this great quote in there, which is that the Getty folks, well, the Getty folks were suing Google over this whole image available in HD thing. They were saying, well, nobody visits our site anymore because your site just finds our stuff and surfaces it to people better, which totally sensible. And then Google said, well, fine, we can exclude you if you want. You can either be on our site or not be on our site. And the Getty response was that that was no option at all, quote, allowing the harm to continue or becoming invisible on the internet. And that's a pretty great pragmatic definition of monopoly is like, you do it our way or you don't exist. I have more to say, but I'll stop there. I think that's important that was an important moment because Google has monopolistic power as a search provider. That is power, that is however, power over data. So what it fundamentally has is a gigantic database of links and how they're related to each other. And it leverages that power in lots of different ways. And in this case with Getty to force conformance to its kind of parameters. That's distinct from what Brandon was talking about. It seems to me where, because I don't think it's the same thing as being the source of truth. I thought that that nonetheless, I was really interested in why we tolerate a government monopoly on the assignment of social security numbers. And it seems to me, there are probably really good reasons to do so, right? Which you might question if you start to question the legitimacy of the state. So, I don't know, I was pretty interested in both. I didn't wanna drop that, but I thought what Kelsey said, there was really insightful. I can expand on that thing I dropped in the chat, which was just in the case of the Getty versus Google. So Google has a bunch of data that allows it to, that means it protects it from competition by other search engines. Getty's problem is one of publicity and Google is the only way that you can get that. That it's Google and nothing, just so those are just sort of two different issues or issues at two different levels of, does that make sense or did you have, I don't know that anything deeper to say than that. That was really interesting, just by itself it's an important point. There's a lot of different ways that that very wise looking quote could be interpreted. Well, yeah, I'm good at that. They gave me plenty of time to figure out what I meant. Go ahead, be fine. That was great. Yeah, I think you did a really good job of cleaning apart the two, right? Like I think there is a classic monopoly but today we're talking about data monopolies, like what's that? We're exploring what this term even means. We kind of just threw it at the wall and I think that this is the perfect way to do this. And if we spend the whole time defining a data monopoly, I think that's a really worthwhile exercise. Because I think we had some talking about sort of like the notion of data monopolies in the era of coronavirus. And I think that this is like an interesting, I wanna turn us a little bit and sort of pivot on the idea of a social security number and take the idea that you're, there's a foundation of a sort of immutable thing, right? Or actually, no, let's use a credit score because it's better. There's like this like truth that is intrinsic to the world that we're trying to model with the database, right? Which is basically your financial reputation. And we are just like intelligence actually measuring the raw thing is impossible. And so we use these proxies and we write down those proxies and then we rely on the people that keep the proxies. And so we get these sort of chains where there's a thing that is true in the world and then there are people who are in the sort of like business of running down that thing and becoming a proxy for truth. And I think that's where that sort of organization is particularly problematic when the thing that you are modeling is immutable, such as are you or are you not presently infected with a virus or what is the current status of your health? That kind of, there's a reason that we really care about healthcare data and that we have a massive amount of regulation about what you can and cannot do with it because it's a thing that once, it's the kind of information that once learned, if it is learned truly, it can't be unlearned because it's tied to a sort of like truth in the world. And I think that I have to come out and admit, I hate admitting this on this call. I have done a bit of a 180 on blockchains in the world of coronavirus. I know because if you really think about it, if you tie like this question of like trust in state and like for me the frustration with blockchains has always been that they seem like a lot of work for very little payoff. But when we talk about this idea of like, okay, now we have these immutable sources of information and we're going to put some intermediary between us and that thing and somebody, like we now have a very pressing need for accuracy on this. We need to know, to be able to contact trace to actually understand how a virus is propagating through the community. This is a situation where the freedoms of the individual and the freedoms of the group are in direct diametric pressure there and they need to be solved. And if you end up in a situation where someone steps forth and says, you look at any system designs says, okay, we will have, we'll put one person forth and they will become the sort of like arbiter of contract tracing or like Apple and Google's sort of partnership to put forth a framework for this. I find that to be subpar. I think that that's in the long run. I think that it's like putting healthcare data that this is fundamentally healthcare data. This fundamentally cannot change. And like putting all the cards in that stack like longterm, like imagine we had enough time to like work out a blockchain. Like this should be on a blockchain. This should actually be, we should actually be using a decentralized ledger for this kind of thing and participation in this should be sort of like, you should be, I personally now have switched to the view that like, yeah, you should probably just be mandated to participate in that sort of like thing. I know it sounds crazy, but like, I think that it, to those who know me, the idea of me being okay with the idea of a blockchain is a weird feeling, but but it feels like it's a solution for which or a problem for which many of the existing solutions just don't feel like they cut it. Like I just like, how do you not get the NSA out of whoever holds those keys? How do you not get some really dramatic, like this, this is a lot of material effects on people's lives and the disclosure of that information is like, it's really problematic. So I'll just back away from that. But I wanted to try and tie this to coronavirus because that was in the room. Can I ask a clarifying question? I think that other people want to respond. I just was a little confused at the end there. I mean, the problem that I see is, the thing that's an obvious problem is, is privacy with healthcare data. I wasn't clear of me how blockchain fixes that because what it does is it allows, blockchain allows you to authorize, to validate a claim, but it doesn't really help you keep things private, does it? It can also be used to mean that the number of actors in a space cannot be totally known, right? So you can actually set up a blockchain so that everybody participating, it's basically like a network of only social security numbers that can change, but have to change in a causal way. This isn't a blockchain in a classic sense, but the notion that you would, any situation, any sort of system design that involves a central arbiter that says we are going to be the sort of source of truth on this, again, I think that's important to sort of highlight the problem here. Because you have an immutable source of information, and then a lot of people who are vying to be a central arbiter of truth. And to me, this is like, that is the definition of a data monopoly that are being asked to be granted a monopoly over a sort of truth granting style of information. And you can, anybody can join the sort of mining process of a blockchain, right? Anybody can participate in, you can, I could right now create a key pair and buy Bitcoin and assign it to a wallet. There is, I can be an actor in a sort of system that allows me to be a part of it. So anybody can start participating in a blockchain of that properly hides your identity, but allows you to just control the disclosure of information. Does that make sense? I feel like I'm a little bit slow on it, but I want a lot of other people to respond. I think other people have responses. No, I don't feel like talking about a blockchain. Probably. I know it's, I know it's an ethnic in many, in many contexts. I'm sorry. We can actually- There's a case to be made, but... What if we instead said, instead of blockchain, let's take away the sort of like radicalizing word and just talked about a decentralization where you need the thing that you need, because that's the characteristics that you need to focus on, right? You need some system where I think that we need a system where like ideally we would be speaking out alternatives to this type of data monopoly, where you don't have- Have you been keeping up with like the design of privacy and those solutions? Yeah, that they're putting forth. And the one specifically the Apple paper, the Apple Google paper? Yeah, there was that. And then I think France had another model, France and Germany, although last time New Germany had capitulated to... There was a privacy trade-off, right? In terms of sort of who? Well, I don't remember very well now. But the design of that system was such that, if I remember correctly, and it's been a little while and I didn't pay that much attention, but... Like the design was such that a person could find out whether they'd been in contact with other people infected without actually there being a central database of people. Yeah. Google, despite being, they don't do big evil cooperation, was the one advocating for, people can find out. Oh, I think it was with more precision, geographic and time precision, enough geographic and time position that you could actually figure out exactly who it was. Whereas the European solution would just tell you that you had been around, somebody had been infected, but that required more of a central source of truth, as you say, synoptic view of the world. Whereas the global solution, you just sort of match numbers up and then you knew your numbers, the set of numbers that you'd ever advertise yourself under. So that seemed okay. Yeah, and actually I should have backed away from the phrase blockchain. It was the wrong phrase to use at the time because it's too problematic. So that's the point that I'm trying to seek in on, although it is not classically called a blockchain, it is leveraging many, many, many techniques that have been really, really hardened and improved in the blockchain space in a way that I think we would not... I honestly don't think that we would be in a position to vet the kinds of those papers. Like I know just personally, there's no way I would have been able to without like reading around cryptography that we do for privatized decentralized ledgers. So yes, I think that I don't want to be a triggering with the phrase blockchain, but I very much agree. I think that's the thing we want, right? We want the Apple Google paper as proposed in the sense of being a decentralized source of information. I apologize for saying the wrong word, James. I'm just gonna start sipping my whiskey over here. No, I don't know, what were we talking about? We were starting talking about social security numbers and credit card scores. Are we still mining that thread as it were? I have a totally different direction if anyone wants that. Yeah, sure. Yeah, so I'm curious about, and this might be a short topic because some of you might be more informed than me on this, but if we say that a monopoly is having the sole source of a particular thing or type of thing, given that, well, so an exercise that I would like to do sometime if this exists somewhere, I would love to see it, is I wanna see the parts of me that Google has come to own over the years. The most dramatic of those, I think, is when they bought Fitbit quietly. Most people don't even know that. It's just like, huh. So you have been reading my emails for years. Know who all of my contacts are and where I go based on my phone and you're probably in my home listening to every word that I say and there's a camera and additionally, you know my heart rate every day at every moment. If we take all that and feed that into machine learning model, the number of columns they've added means that they can make categorically different models of people than anybody else. So I'm kind of positing that as a data monopoly that's quite different from our other definitions. Go ahead, Peter. Yeah, no, it's really interesting. I'm trying to sort of model that sort of philosophically, like what's going on? Who has a monopoly on what? They have a great deal of information. That's a resource, right? That allows them to do certain things that other people can't provide to me. And so I have no alternative, but it's also, I have no alternative for certain, no, that's not true. They do a better job of certain things because they have all of that data, but it's not actually that much better of a job, to be honest. Well, I guess I can clarify, right? So I don't mean that as a consumer, we have no choice but to be owned by Google. What I'm saying is that Google, like if I were purchasing models of people, Google would be the only supplier of this complete model. You know, why isn't that just because they have a better product than other people? Isn't that where monopolies come from? I don't think so. I mean, you know, monopolies, that a lot of them come from guns and dollars, you know, like where do the oil monopolies come from? They come from suppressing various kinds of dissent over the course of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So, yeah, I don't think it's about being better. But I mean, it is a good question. Just like, is doing something really well or having a lot of power in that sense, a threat in a similar way to monopoly? Although, I guess that wasn't the point you were making because you were talking about if I wanted to buy personas and I'm still in the consumer frame. This is where I really think that the economic origin of the term monopoly is unhelpful because I think that the problem that monopolies pose is a concentration of power which is difficult to dislodge. So it's a concentration of power that by its nature increases, right? And so it arises perhaps in part from a market position and so it maybe has its origins in economic phenomena, but the problem that matters the most is the increasing scope of the entities of the corporate entities control over your actions. And so what we're wary of, I think, is this sense of a positive feedback loop for corporations operating at a certain scale with data at a certain scale that makes it increasingly difficult for alternatives to emerge, whether those are other companies or other ways of life. I don't know, that's what seems to me like the evil that one would be concerned about. Yeah, and the mechanism in Google, Facebook, Twitter's cases is actually making things free which is sort of interesting, right? That's the lock-in. People lament the loss of Google Reader, not just because it was such a wonderful thing but because they made it free and totally took all the oxygen out of the system. That just seems worth pointing out. I really like your framing a lot better, Matt. Just like how do we dislodge people who have ended up in positions of power? And I think that the data monopoly term that we sort of initially came up with and built a whole rooting group around sort of led us in this, leads us and sort of puts an economic slant on things that creates this like self-disqualifying thought loop because I think that like every time we've gone to talk about a data monopoly, we kind of want to talk to, we don't want to talk about the sense of powerlessness. We want to talk about the sense of like a frustration and then the like, I think I sort of helped poison the well with the economies of scale type thing because there is a point where this tops out where like Google just gets so deep into your life that nobody could ever get that deep into your life. No one could ever amass such a complete picture because of these positive feedback loops of sort of like, well, we bought Fitbit and then we blah, blah, blah, blah, and it becomes something that could not ever be replicated and worse than, but I think that that's not nearly as sort of important as the question that you've put forth Matt of like, how do we have a framework for understanding a threshold at which it feels like someone has amassed a sort of picture of you that you are now beholden to instead of it being beholden to you where like can, I think, and I just to throw a heuristic out there like every now and then I'll just like pretty routinely just try and change my behavior really aggressively on the internet including like writing bots that'll just like go to very different websites or like do all kinds of weird stuff just to like see if I can shake the ads or the bucketing of which sort of like thing I'm in into like a more interesting, it's purely for fun but it's fun to see how easy it is to get the machine to think that you're somebody else and it makes me feel like re-empower because it's like, oh cool, I've just like I've been out searching for like pregnancy tests and like, you know, a bunch of like classic like different things that would not match my typical characteristics. Although these days, it's more common than it used to be but it's, yeah, I think it's just fun and interesting but like that feels like really like a gorilla tactic and really like a sort of last resort to what is admittedly a sense of helplessness in the face of a very complete picture of who I am as a person. Are you saying that we should be like to me those issues of sort of privacy and autonomy are you saying that we should understand are you saying those are more interesting than in a monopolies or are you saying that those are related to the idea of monopolies? I think it is, I think we have the framing wrong and then like, I just want to talk about that that sense of helplessness and like that like where does that come from and how do we do that? Yeah, for sure. I think that's the drive behind the whole set of decentralization wave is wanting to sort of cut free. I mean, I think there's like an interesting test for this which is like if you were to think of like Apple do you feel like Apple has a data monopoly for those of you who use Apple devices? Do you feel like Apple has a data monopoly on your data? And like when I put that test to myself I don't feel the same way that I do about Facebook and Google and like it's interesting to try to piece apart why I think that is like there's definitely lock any bits like there's a running joke with my roommates about how we will not let someone into our apartment who's not on iMessage because we can't have a roommate group chat and like so there are like lock any bits that could tick the anti-competitive bit but like fundamentally I don't think there's the same feeling of like there is a specific aside from maybe like USB ports like that there is like yeah like a lack of control over my information but then I do notice if anyone has ever ventured to check out Apple Maps in the last decade like it does use some weird stuff if you haven't tried using it or like if after using it because I was using it when I was up in my mountain cabin like it does pick up things where it kind of gets like kind of awkward like it'll predict like oh you're about to like go so like I will give you directions because like on Thursdays you go to this restaurant to like order stuff or like we think this is home for you when I was like in Canada like eight guests my Airbnb is home and like it marks it as home and like I think if it was another like it was creepy from Apple's perspective but knowing what Apple has already said it felt less creepy but thinking about like there's something I think there about like what is the autonomy of choice but even the, yeah I think there's like a nugget of a thing there which I will leave it at that before having more in but or yeah, I mean maybe it is like business models versus motivations like when a business model is like very clearly aligned with like ads and like the access of your information it feels a little bit different and then like when it's also then compatible by they will make more money if you stay on so how do they engage you and this idea of like psychological manipulation Apple while overpriced is like very direct to like you're just gonna hand us money and that's gonna be the end of this transaction and like yeah, I don't know. I think that's a really important characteristic and sort of jump in if anyone else had a thought but like it seems that your trust your belief that you are or not participating in a, that you are not being dominated by a power structure is tied to your faith in the institution that you are being you're participating in. Fair? What do you think Jonathan said that rather than? I think so. I think there's like something about like and like not to get back into the Z-Webby side of this I do think there is something about like how these technologies came to be where like I think there is something that is about like there is always like an implicit choice and some of it is like a function of the technology stack where then it feels like it is much more natural for things that are funded by ads to like imply that there is some sort of access like even thinking like what does Facebook even do when they say like I don't know if anyone's ever tried this as an experiment I signed up for like their ads platform just to see like if I was an advertiser what would I have access to and like it is interesting like I mean you basically can put in a bunch of keywords and you can specify like a geography and stuff and like yeah like it or you can even like take a look and see like Facebook now let's you see what they think they know about you and it's like wildly off and so there is like definitely a lot of outrage and I think rightly like there's directionally correct outrage I guess is maybe the right thing to phrase it as or it's like I think there's like principles that are like not necessarily enthrined in like any law or like there's no faith that like Facebook is like abiding by things that are like giving freedom of choice and then in this black box people get really worried about like what are all the ways in which this could be misused and used incorrectly and I think that's like part of the issue where there's like not a ton of trust and especially when the business model it would skew heavily in the favor of this other organization if in this other organization being Facebook the business model would be benefited greatly by abusing that trust then it's really hard and especially I mean Facebook is a specific example where like the CEO has many times of them like I don't care about data privacy so like there's also that, yeah I don't know. I was gonna say we're all kind of ribbing on Facebook's ability to give advertisers like the ways you can get around the algorithms and how the targeting is honestly not that good but I'm trying to remember what book it was that I was reading that made this point but basically just because they're not good at it now doesn't mean that the huge amount of data that they have when are continuing to gather won't become usable in much better models and in fact that is the most likely outcome. Yeah, I mean I think it's hard to know if maybe the term data monopolies is not so useful and really all we care about is the coercive power of data stores and maybe there's something to be said for the way in which the distribution of that data creates coercive power so like, so if you're the principal actor that has access to this particular data store then you have the capacity to coerce the market but also to coerce people into certain kinds of actions and I think maybe a lot of our thinking in the last three, four years is influenced by the, this idea that there's this kind of dark nexus between experimental psychology and fine grained profiling that creates a manipulative power that is incompatible with democratic practice and also incompatible with the Enlightenment, with the idea that is possible to create a state of free individuals who are capable of autonomous rational thought and they're able to create a state of free individualism who are capable of autonomous rational thought. I think that there's something about data concentration that undermines that, but data monopoly is not, maybe that is kind of probably what we care about, probably that's along the lines of what we care about with data monopoly, but data monopoly is actually a great term for describing that. Peter. But I mean, I like what you just said, oh no, I just lost the first thing I was going to say. If you were going to say something, you'd like to go ahead. Yeah, totally, I just wanted to build on what Matt was saying. I think that the notion of a, that the dark nexus is the capacity to build a personalized hallucination, right? Like this idea that we can sort of like really, and that, and I posted in chat that I'm really, I'm thinking a lot about the right to be forgotten, right? Like this, that we are moving forwards in time and that is always the case, but like right now we are very much at the sort of like dawn of a place where people are starting to amass these profiles and we're in new territory, right? We don't know what this is like. We don't know what the effects of this level of knowledge totality or perceived knowledge totality really are. And my lack of, and the scary thing is like, there are many of us, maybe I'm one of them, maybe I'm, everyone falls somewhere on the spectrum of like the realizing at some point that you're, you were some, the database that accumulates of you is the sum choice of every decision you've ever made on any platform, right? So like every time you choose to post, every single time you choose to disclose something, it is this like little carrot that accumulates and accumulates and accumulates. And it's sort of this like, it is this, it is a unidirectional knowledge acquisition. And that is a very sort of like scary thing when you look backwards, right? When you realize that you have no capacity to control the tale of this thing. And that's, and I mean, I think when we move through the world that we are as a people as a species forget stuff. We don't all as a culture, like I don't remember every bad interaction I've had with everybody in the world. Databases don't and they don't have that forgetfulness property when maintained properly. But, and that's a really, that's a very cognitively difficult thing to get your head around. It's really hard to understand what it's like to live in a world that is permanent in some ways and ephemeral in others, depending on where you are, who you're speaking to and how you are communicating. And I think that that is a really, I think that's the kernel that we're kind of getting at with this data monopolies framing that we've, that the conversation that's evolved out of this is like, to me is the like, I want to be, I want the capacity to turn to that memory machine and say, I would selectively like you to forget about this and have an entranced law that says that I have the choice to do that, that I as a rational person know that this is a one-way thing and I will suffer some loss in service quality for it. But I wanna do it anyway. Isn't there, who has the right to be forgotten? Is that an EU thing? EU? So I just wanted to sort of pull out, I know I'm sort of categorizer, I'm not proud of it, but there's my information which is a no-way quality. It's the things that are in my interactions, the things that I say, my emails and so forth and control over that is sort of one bucket, which I've been thinking about a lot, sort of where my brain has been most of the time is information about me and how I'm seeing, which is I think maybe what you're talking more about. And then there's sort of information that's basically a commodity, whether it's gutty images or, Google's indexes or Amazon's listings, things that they probably could be reproduced. They're things that have been published, or public observations about the world, Google Maps and so forth. Oh, we have to wrap up, do we? I'm forced to have to go as well. Okay, we've been going for a little while. Usually we do an hour and a half. Anyway, I think each of those things we could sort of go down and it would be its own domain and I'd be loved to create the space for that. Just the concerns are very different and the tools we have available are very different. Your question is about like the role of open source, the role of government, the role of trust in non-governmental organizations like Google and Apple. And I'd love to get a chance to talk about the more personal stuff if there's a space for that. I think that's a really actually excellent way to conclude it. Thank you for coming up with all that. I'm glad we got there just in a good time. It's hard to just feel out like a space, right? I've never studied law, I haven't read, I didn't read articles. But it's just a philosophical exercise, right? We have to sort of feel these things out and like figure out what we actually care about. So I really appreciate that, sort of bringing it back to what her body's telling us. Yeah, so thank you all. This has been fun. This certainly exceeded my expectations. Thank you so much, Jonathan, for putting together the reading list. We're doing all the work. So for next time, I should be looking rather than the GitHub thing, I should be looking at one of these things somewhere else, HackMD or something. No, GitHub is, we will just, we'll have a more ratified reading list beforehand. We're in the right spot. It should have been the yard to the read me, but it wasn't, but... That's my bad. Jonathan, it's all good. You can't be expected to both crack the process and facilitate and join the first call in one go. Yeah, and so next one's in a month. Stay tuned, sports fans. We are, I think, Don and I are facility in the next week. Oh, fantastic. That's probably super fun. Is that right, Kelsey? If not, sorry. Yeah, no, that's right. Cool, so we'll, yeah. Trust, trust, trust, yeah. Yeah, I will come up for you. I got it. Good to see you. All right. Thank you so much. Thanks for your great spaces and nice to meet you, Peter. Nice to meet you. Yeah, do it again soon. Yeah, sure, I hope so. I mean, I expect it. Don't let those girls give you shit. You tell them who you are. They wake me up every morning at three digging through the fucking house. But, and now they're getting active. Oh, it's killing me. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go bang on my walls. See you guys later. Hi, everybody. Hi, everyone. Hi. Yeah, I do have time to chat, but we can go to a different one that is not recorded. Totally, I will email you a link. Thank you so much. Bye. Bye.