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Calling for Antitrust Reform

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#141

Post by judge2020 »

leotravis10 wrote: post #40

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-...

The big issue explained in the Techdirt piece is how it only has a chance of passing because it's a trojan horse for other companies to sue the big companies (FB, Google, Apple) for the moderation decision they make, including Google downranking spammy sites that nobody likes being sent to.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#142

Post by zugi »

Longtime Firefox and Thunderbird user. I can't speak about Apple but in my experience on Android, Windows, and Linux it is trivially easy to install Firefox and make it the default web browser. Just earlier today I was browsing HN on Android in Firefox and two articles that I opened would load and display initially, but then the page would go blank and show only white. Refreshing showed the same behavior. So I switched to browsing with the DuckDuckGo mobile browser for now.

So I was pretty frustrated to read this article. It's over-the-top self-congratulatory. Sheesh Mozilla, spend your time and money fixing and improving your product, and people will tell their friends to use it. Instead of lobbying the government based on misinformation about how hard and scary it is to make Firefox your default browser.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#143

Post by EMIRELADERO »

judge2020 wrote: post #132
stale2002 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not "antitrust reform". It's so narrowly drawn Almost by definition, anti-trust law is only going to narrowly effect a few companies. If a company isn't huge already, then the whole motivation for applying anti-trust law goes away. The whole point of anti-trust law is to narrowly target only a few of the very worst offenders in a market.

Why does size matter in this context? For example, Apple will likely be forbidden from making a device where the selling point is that it only runs code from their own app store, but if some random Android company does the same thing by vastly modifying AOSP/their hardware to the point where it can't be rooted and can only install apps via their own store, why are they not punished? as a consumer I'm equally harmed i…

I think the difference lies on the number of people affected. The philosophy behind those laws is that it's generally a bad idea to let one single company (or very few companies) control the pipe from which so many economic activity flows.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#144

Post by pessimizer »

bombcar wrote: post #107
jszymborski wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

Yes, that's why the biggest companies are constantly lobbying to pass antitrust legislation. Because of the extensive history of small upstart competitors being destroyed in antitrust cases.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#146

Post by cokeandpepsi »

I'm going to be honest, the only real way the government is going to be able to fight these 'monopolies' is slowly and surely funding alternatives, and implementing a few general regulations here and there that impede them

these giant overly scoped anti-trust pushes will probably go no where and are to easy to fight

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#147

Post by stale2002 »

judge2020 wrote: post #132
stale2002 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not "antitrust reform". It's so narrowly drawn Almost by definition, anti-trust law is only going to narrowly effect a few companies. If a company isn't huge already, then the whole motivation for applying anti-trust law goes away. The whole point of anti-trust law is to narrowly target only a few of the very worst offenders in a market.

Why does size matter in this context? For example, Apple will likely be forbidden from making a device where the selling point is that it only runs code from their own app store, but if some random Android company does the same thing by vastly modifying AOSP/their hardware to the point where it can't be rooted and can only install apps via their own store, why are they not punished? as a consumer I'm equally harmed i…

> Why does size matter in this context?

Size matters in anti-trust law as the larger a company is, the more market power it has, and therefore more ability to have anti-competitive effects on the market.

> but if some random Android company does the same thing..... why are they not punished?

Because in standard anti-trust law theory, the same exact action done by a smaller company is legal, but can be illegal if done by a larger company.

The reason being that a smaller company is unable to anti-competitively control an entire market as well as a larger company can.

> as a consumer I'm equally harmed

Anti-trust law does not agree that consumers are equally harmed by a large company, with more market power, engaging in anti-competitive practices as compared to when a smaller company, with less market power, does the same.

As in literally yes, according to the law, certain actions are only illegal if a large company does it, and literally yes a smaller company is allowed to do the same exact thing simply because they have less market power.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#148

Post by uhuruity »

ethbr0 wrote: post #119
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say I make a miracle drug for people with a rare disease, patent it, and it costs $0.01 to produce, and I'll watch people die unless they pay me >$1M. Am I a monopoly since I only have a few million in revenue?

Not in the sense that we're worried about here. I feel like I shouldn't have to spell this out, but we're using "monopoly" in the sense of "monopolistic abuse specifically enabled by large revenue and/or platform gatekeeping." Whether you think other kinds of monopolies are a problem or not is immaterial, because we're talking about a specific type of monopoly, that a number of us do have a problem with.

I have several friends who work in antitrust consulting. My understanding from listening to them talk is that monopolists are defined with respect to a market, and defining the relevant market is a task in itself. Surely the defining characteristic of a monopolist is that it has a high proportion of the market share for a given market, and it is not required that the market in question be large? You can have a monopoly over a small market.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#149

Post by rvz »

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.

There you go. Mozilla also knows it and the CEO has admitted it. [0] After 14 years of promising to live without Google's money, [0] they still cannot find a way to make money and are chronically reliant on Google bank-rolling them as over 80% of their revenues are from Google. Thunderbird, Firefox VPN, Firefox OS, all failures.

They are essentially on life support. A joke to achieving their mission statement without being dependent on their anti-privacy foe's money and are the weakest counterweight to big tech.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120105090543/https://www.compu...

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#150

Post by diegoholiveira »

Teever wrote: post #125
bombcar wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Always? All anti-monopoly laws, ever?

That’s a hypothesis explored by some authors, like here: https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/big-busin...
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