Calling for Antitrust Reform • Hacker News Board

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#101

Post by dane-pgp » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 1:02 AM UTC

gbear605 wrote: post #52

tehlike wrote: 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.

> The web has been progressing too fast

How many Apple engineers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: None, they just declare darkness to be an innovative new feature.

I joke, but they did recently reveal that they're adding a toggle for Dark Mode in Safari:

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/03/01/safari-feature-light-da...

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#102

Post by dathinab » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 1:06 AM UTC

joecool1029 wrote: post #4

>A fair playing field is vital to ensure that Mozilla and other independent companies can continue to act as a counterweight to big tech You literally exist on Google revenue provided in order to prevent antitrust litigation, hardly independent.

> exist[...] in order to prevent antitrust litigation,

How does it exclude independent acting.

It literally requires independent acting of the pseudo competition as if not it would count as a cartel and make antitrust actions _easier_ not harder.

The reason they might not be seen as a real competition is not because you do control them, it's because you have so much more money and monopoly-like power that you don't fare their action no matter what hey do.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#103

Post by woojoo666 » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 1:06 AM UTC

throwaway43583 wrote: post #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?

Yeah there was a lot of controversy around how Windows 11 made it difficult to change the default browser

[1]: https://geeks.afela.org/news/microsoft/microsoft-reverses-wi...

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#104

Post by dathinab » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 1:13 AM UTC

encryptluks2 wrote: post #78

threeseed wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Google has been the weakest when it comes to privacy measures. And so when you're giving them money, data, traffic and users you're increasing their ability to set the privacy agenda and promoting a single search engine, single browser view of the world. It's hypocritical and short-sighted.

Mozilla is every bit as weak when it comes to privacy defaults.

not quite, a lot of the weakness comes solely from the fact of it not being used super widely and as such being easier to finger print.

Through then the moment flutter became semi successful any hope for preventing/limiting fingerprinting was lost as the only way I know of to prevent fingerprinting through WebGl and similar is by not allowing it's usage. I.e. only allow it for special use-cases like games and tell the user of the drawback of reduced privacy. But flutter needs/wants that tech for normal websites...

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#105

Post by tomComb » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 1:14 AM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #98

tomComb wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any evidence that Google pays masnick or techdirt?

Mike's own website: https://copia.is/ (scroll down to sponsorship logos) Copia has also been listed on Google's own public policy transparency website in the past, though it's absent at the moment. EDIT: This version of the disclosure is still up: https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/trade_association_... Note that the Google Public Policy Team's explicit purpose is to influence laws to be favorable to the compa…

Interesting, and good to know.

The part I don’t get is that Google is listed right next to Yelp, who are the #1 advocates for regulatory action against Google.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#106

Post by wffurr » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 1:19 AM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #27

wudangmonk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only skimmed the bill but wheneven I see both parties working together I know I need to be extra careful and look for hidden dangers because I am cynical like that.

Isn't it even worse when only one party sponsors or works on something? It could signal that they are completely willing to ignore the sentiments of the other half the congress represents.

“Other less than a quarter”.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#107

Post by bombcar » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 1:24 AM UTC

jszymborski wrote: post #83

pitaj wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

An oligopoly, then? A cartel?

These anti-monopoly laws always end up as “make restrictions preventing new competitors at some cost the big companies can easily handle”.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#108

Post by userbinator » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 1:27 AM UTC

logicalmonster wrote: post #99

kevingadd wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do "woke politics" have to do with Mozilla's failure? What is woke about that company to you in particular? Their political leanings are basically unchanged dating back to before Chrome even existed.

> What is woke about that company to you in particular? My main issue is them getting involved in them supporting censorship, deplatforming wrong-thinkers, and more nonsense. Plenty of articles about this here: https://reclaimthenet.org/?s=mozilla > What do "woke politics" have to do with Mozilla's failure? 1) The more time and effort they spend focusing on non-technical issues is time away from the one thing that ma…

Although I'd probably be described as "far right" according to some opinions, I still use Firefox for the sites where IE won't work, because the alternative is Chrome. I loathe all their politics, but still further hate the fact that all browsers seem to be going down the same (Google-lead) path.

When it comes to computing, the enemy isn't really "the other side" politically. It's Big Tech. I agree that the politics are a distraction, and that might actually be the intended effect --- to distract away from the monopoly that's forming. Both sides should realise and unite against that.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#109

Post by formerkrogemp » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 1:28 AM UTC

Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple all need their monopolies controlled and broken up. Developers and software need a reality check on their pay levels and valuations. We should get back to building more real shit instead of being the world's provider of advertising and PII theft.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#110

Post by mc32 » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 1:28 AM UTC

wffurr wrote: post #106

mc32 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it even worse when only one party sponsors or works on something? It could signal that they are completely willing to ignore the sentiments of the other half the congress represents.

“Other less than a quarter”.

Well, it's more like each party has a core 25 to 30% and the rest are independent moderates and then the core of the other party --so when one party does something it's more or less representing 25 to 30% of the voting pop. So the other are 70 to 75%