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Calling for Antitrust Reform

blog.mozilla.org

81–90 of 212 posts

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#81
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not arguable. Bills of Attainder refer to criminal laws and are specifically to stop government abuses of personal liberty. Corporations don’t have a guaranteed right to consistent laws, otherwise they wouldn’t spend so much on lobbying. The knife cuts both ways.

Huawei has argued that sanctions against their company constitute a bill of attainder.[1] The provision that an executive can have 100% of their income from the company seized, though, is arguably a criminal provision. But looking at the history of bill of attainder cases, this probably won't be considered one. [1] https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/LSB10274.pdf

That's related to national security, which has (little to) nothing to do with antitrust?

Also, I don't really think the courts would agree with you based on their interpretation of civil forfeiture laws. The only unusual thing in the Huawei case is that it happened to someone with serious money.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#82
"We are disadvantaged by the fact that current and future Firefox users, many of whom are privacy and security focused, cannot easily install and keep Firefox as their preferred browser because of confusing operating system messages and settings."

uhhh really?

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#83
post #64

This Techdirt piece describes that lawmakers fixed none of the problems and actually exempts a lot of actual monopolies such as telecom (Example: AT&T and Verizon) and retail (Example: Walmart and Target): https://www.techdirt.com/2022/05/27/senator-klobuchar-fixed-...

How the hell are Walmart and Target, stark competitors in the same space, both monopolies?

An oligopoly, then? A cartel?

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#85
post #46

the irony of this being on mozilla.org while ostensibly using google's money to post it.

If an injured war veteran is paying their internet bill with government disability payouts, are they not allowed to criticize the government on the internet?

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#86
Ask for pureness meant we do not deal with the dirtiness. Moz can bite its feeding hand. The real question is where are those who ask for pureness … I am not paying but you continue to fight for me?

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#87

The vertical monopolies enjoyed by tech behemoths are absurd. Ever since the Internet Explorer antitrust case [1] it should be clear that things like Apple disallowing other browsers in iOS or Google promoting its own sites in search results are illegal and anticompetitive. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor... .

Google literally positioned the Chrome team in the SF office building shared by Mozilla, then did PR stunts like baking cakes and crap to create pretext to poach key employees to cripple the org.

Originally the intent was they were a search company, that would pay well, and folks could donate to charities... like Mozilla. Then they decided to start their own browser, and... well here we are today.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#88
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari on mobile has lagged behind standards for a long time, because doing so wouldn't strengthen their app business. E.g. webrtc. Safari still lags behind many things. When you call people to be careful, you are missing the conflict apple has internally. Between the two, i choose chrome any day of the week because that's what allowed web to progress this fast

The web has been progressing too fast, and most of the things that Safari has held back on are features that developers want but users don’t, like push notifications.

If push notifications are so bad why does every mobile app spam me with them?

All of these things "users don't want" are right there for use in App Store apps. They're only held back from the browser because they want you to give them 30%. In some cases they literally added features to Safari but restricted them for use in advertisements only (WebGL for one example, IIRC) because the features aren't the problem, the problem is developers accessing customers without paying 30%.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#89

"We are disadvantaged by the fact that current and future Firefox users, many of whom are privacy and security focused, cannot easily install and keep Firefox as their preferred browser because of confusing operating system messages and settings." uhhh really?

Maybe privacy focussed users have just moved somewhere else or given up and installed Chrome after disasters like Firefox Focus, Firefox Suggest, Leanplum or the TV series Mr. Robot extension that was silently installed.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#90

This Techdirt piece describes that lawmakers fixed none of the problems and actually exempts a lot of actual monopolies such as telecom (Example: AT&T and Verizon) and retail (Example: Walmart and Target): https://www.techdirt.com/2022/05/27/senator-klobuchar-fixed-...

It's worse than you think. The definition of a Covered Platform is so overbroad that basically if you allow any kind of user interaction on your website (or OPERATING SYSTEM!) then yours is a covered platform. So imagine you run a restaurant and allow for a customer feedback form that is visible on the website... congratulations, you've now become a covered platform and are obliged to allow other people to sell products on your website. No, I'm not kidding. That is precisely how badly written this thing is.
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