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U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#241

Post by ABCLAW »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #11
capableweb wrote: post #5

> potentially barring companies like Amazon.com from operating the markets in which they also compete Absolutely bananas that this haven't been fixed yet! How can Google own the entire ads market and still be allowed to compete in it? Obviously for-profit companies will abuse their positions if it'll earn them more money, and fines ends up being the cost of doing business instead of deterrents. How is Apple allowed t…

> How can Amazon be allowed to sell competing products in their own marketplace, when they own the actual marketplace? They should have been forced to divide their busin Depends on how you define “marketplace”. Costco/Walmart/Best Buy/Target/Home Depot/Lowe’s/grocery stores all sell their own brands next to competing brands in their stores. Is their one store the marketplace? It takes considerably more effort to go t…

>Costco/Walmart/Best Buy/Target/Home Depot/Lowe’s/grocery stores all sell their own brands next to competing brands in their stores.

These are almost all 'control brands'; similar or identical products from the same suppliers, but they don't have marketing spend allocated to them. The delta in sales between the control brands and the 'brand-name' ones allows you to calculate goodwill.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#242

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

ryan93 wrote: post #185
Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Founders need to have that as an option for an exit though. What are the alternatives? Limiting ownership to 49%? No they don't. To rephrase, you're suggesting that companies are entitled to getting bought out. That's ridiculous. Owning a company is a privilege, people who abuse that privilege, billionaires, should be stripped of that power. Corporate America is cancerous, consuming and destroying everything indiscr…

It's not a privilege. The company is their property. Political opinions you dont like on facebook is just something you are going to have to get over.

You're talking past my arguments. Owning a company is a privilege just as much as owning guns are. Companies are registered with government and violators are prosecuted. Do I need to link to articles about children getting their lemonade stands destroyed by cops or what?

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#243

Post by mindslight »

zepto wrote: post #237
mindslight wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm proposing it and saying it would be a better remedy than whatever regulatory-capture-ripe "reform" they're proposing is. I actually like house brands of stuff, when compared to the thousands of gensym brands. The problem isn't marketplace companies privileging their own brands - it's with singular companies owning the marketplace to begin with. Humans are creatures of habit, and the way to make it so we aren't in…

Why not just outlaw dark patterns in general as deceptive practices? All this focus on fixing particular companies or government mandating software architecture seems like it just gets the government more and more invovled while not doing anything to prevent the actual abuses.

It's impossible to formally define dark patterns, especially when trying to except traditional dark patterns (recurring sales, coupons, strategically placed roasting chickens, etc).

And so any attempt to do that will necessarily "get the government more and more involved". Either through some administrative body that decides whether a certain thing is a "dark pattern", or through judicial remedies ("Here is your 57 cent media credit because Amazon lied about shipping cutoff times. They admit no wrongdoing but promise to never do it again").

Meanwhile mandating APIs isn't mandating "software architecture". It's merely just a different form of the website that has a predictable structure. Amazon could even choose whatever structure they want, as long as it is documented and versioned.

Both approaches aren't mutually exclusive, so I'm not arguing against the former. I just don't hold out hope for it to create meaningful reform - centralized bodies are just as likely to bless abusive practices.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#244

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

zepto wrote: post #201
Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Founders need to have that as an option for an exit though. What are the alternatives? Limiting ownership to 49%? No they don't. To rephrase, you're suggesting that companies are entitled to getting bought out. That's ridiculous. Owning a company is a privilege, people who abuse that privilege, billionaires, should be stripped of that power. Corporate America is cancerous, consuming and destroying everything indiscr…

> Owning a company is a privilege. A privilege you think should be held by the government?

Why would you assume I said that.

Government has the job of arbitrating between the needs of all people. Companies should be meeting the needs and wants of consumers without causing harm. When Companies, and the people that own and operate them, cause harm, it is the obligation of government to remedy these problems through action, forceful if need be, against the offenders. Governmental failure to remedy problems results in vigilantism without fail.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#245

Post by justapassenger »

gruez wrote: post #234
justapassenger wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shorting is much more legally risky. SEC basically doesn’t view shorts as investors, and that has interesting outcome. The don’t care if you illegally cause stock to go up, and you profit from it, as other investors also profit. But causing stock to go down opens you to much higher liability, for hurting investors. And if you profit of it via short, you’re in much more legal risk.

>The don’t care if you illegally cause stock to go up, and you profit from it, as other investors also profit. They clearly do, as we've seen with musk's "funding secured" tweet.

Do they? He got financial slap on his wrist, didn’t have to admit to any wrong doing, kept absolute power in the company, ignored any corrective actions of the settlement, and continues to pump stock on weekly basis, to a place that made him one of the richest people in the world. And in the free time he’s pumping other meme investments, just for fun.

SEC vs Musk is perfect example of how powerless/not interested in pumping stock schemes regulators are. Until stock start to go down, then they get more power.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#246

Post by yoz-y »

ABCLAW wrote: post #241
lotsofpulp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can Amazon be allowed to sell competing products in their own marketplace, when they own the actual marketplace? They should have been forced to divide their busin Depends on how you define “marketplace”. Costco/Walmart/Best Buy/Target/Home Depot/Lowe’s/grocery stores all sell their own brands next to competing brands in their stores. Is their one store the marketplace? It takes considerably more effort to go t…

>Costco/Walmart/Best Buy/Target/Home Depot/Lowe’s/grocery stores all sell their own brands next to competing brands in their stores. These are almost all 'control brands'; similar or identical products from the same suppliers, but they don't have marketing spend allocated to them. The delta in sales between the control brands and the 'brand-name' ones allows you to calculate goodwill.

Not in my experience. Except for very well known brands like Coca Cola and Mars, the store-brand products are always front and center in all shelves, and all in-store marketing (flyers, catalogs, promotions) is for the store branded products. This is for Carrefour, Franprix and Monoprix, not sure how it is in the US.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#247

Post by 8note »

capableweb wrote: post #20
lotsofpulp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can Amazon be allowed to sell competing products in their own marketplace, when they own the actual marketplace? They should have been forced to divide their busin Depends on how you define “marketplace”. Costco/Walmart/Best Buy/Target/Home Depot/Lowe’s/grocery stores all sell their own brands next to competing brands in their stores. Is their one store the marketplace? It takes considerably more effort to go t…

It's not just whatever marketplace, anti-monopoly legislation focuses on markets where the players own a significant share of the full market. In the case of Amazon, it seems like they have above 52% of the e-commerce market in the US in 2019 ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/955796/global-amazon-e-c... ) so probably it's even higher now. When one player now has over half the market, you need to carefully watch w…

How much of the home tools and amateur construction market does the hone despot have? I'd image they have more than 50 as well

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#248

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

magicalist wrote: post #227
Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has a better record on this than every other company I can think of. So it is actually a good analogy. Perhaps Epic didn't want to abide by these rules and used the fees as a cover? https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/94213

> Apple has a better record on this than every other company I can think of. Rent seeking on things you find immoral? > Perhaps Epic didn't want to abide by these rules and used the fees as a cover? Is this something Apple has alleged? Because otherwise it looks like you're speculating wildly to appeal to emotion. "It's ok because maybe they're bad people."

That's not even an argument. It seems you're commenting in bad faith trying to trap me in some linguistical mistake.

I did say perhaps which, last I checked, is a sign of a rhetorical thought.

Apple is not perfect, I don't like Apple, but epic is selling crack to kids in my community. at least apple keeps intermediaries between them and their child slaves. I'm not taking sides here. All these huge companies are deplorable and should never have been allowed to grow so large.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#249

Post by jonny_eh »

zepto wrote: post #221
traib wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of those platforms are less secure than iOS. Do you have a source for this statement, specifically in relation to browsers? Let's consider Android. I wouldn't automatically assume that using Safari on iOS is more (or less) secure than using Chrome or Firefox on Android - they are all provided by well known tech companies with years of expertise building browsers and a focus on security.

Android is definitely less secure than iOS, you can easily verify this by googling. Controlling the execution environment is part of iOS’s defense in depth strategy. Focussing on browsers alone is a red herring. You have to look at the whole system. It’s true that Google or Mozilla may be able to produce an equivalent level of security in a browser engine, but that’s a false comparison, since alternative browsers are…

> Android is definitely less secure than iOS, you can easily verify this by googling.

You can also verify that the world is run by lizard people by googling.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#250

Post by jjk166 »

simion314 wrote: post #222
jjk166 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "make it a website argument also fails because Apple is does not let you install a better browser". I'm currently on chrome on my iphone. Maybe you can't install arbitrary browsers, but you can certainly install different ones. And there's always jailbreaking.

Chrome is a bit more then a skin and you know it and I am sure you can't expect to trick competent people with this argument. If iOS would implement PWA then some native applications could be implemented as as PWA and Apple would lose money(I don't believe the security or privacy excuse either, a PWA will always have less access then a native app)

PWA are supported by iOS
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