Catching up on some of the "Little Tech" rhetoric from a16z. A lot more to say here.
But one thing that stands out as a rhetorical flaw in the pitch: curbing Big Tech startup acquisitions is listed as bad for little tech. Even as little tech is presented as the enabler of competition and innovation, contra Big Tech's market consolidation. Consolidation that is, of course, facilitated via acquisitions.
@Mer__edith How the fuck – excuse my French – does a fucking billionaire purport to champion “little” anything without getting laughed out of every fucking room?
@Mer__edith You want Small Tech, this is Small Tech:
https://small-tech.org/about/#small-technology
It’s the exact fucking opposite of what Marc fucking Andreessen and his fucking cabal of fascist-adjacent VCs stand for.
@aral @Mer__edith You should have been there during that hearing in the European Parliament where a Facebook lobbyist (and former German MEP for S+D) with a straight face argued that the GDPR should not be burdensome to SMEs like Facebook (which at the time had fewer than fifty employees in Ireland)...
@whvholst @Mer__edith Oh I’ve been in the EU Parliament sitting on a panel next to a Facebook drone.
It did not go well for them.
https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/
@aral @Mer__edith Sadly, the composition of that particular panel clearly had been clearly vetted to carefully avoid any contributions based in objective reality.
@whvholst @Mer__edith As is so often the case.