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Calling for Antitrust Reform

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Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#181

Post by shakna »

mschuster91 wrote: post #174
greyface- wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AICOA 2(a)(9): ONLINE PLATFORM.—The term “online platform” means a website, online or mobile application, operating system, digital assistant, or online service that— (A) enables a user to generate content that can be viewed by other users on the platform or to interact with other content on the platform; (B) facilitates the offering, advertising, sale, purchase, payment, or shipping of products or services, includin…

Linux is a kernel, on its own it does not meet any of these criteria. An "operating system" would be something like Debian or Ubuntu, and at least the latter one has already had scandals regarding advertising.

Unless operating system is clearly defined, I absolutely would not assume that it must mean something more than kernel. These are legal stipulations, they are meant to be interpreted by an audience. They're not meant to be razor-thin in what they cover.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#182

Post by CrimsonRain »

mschuster91 wrote: post #175
rvz wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What are the alternatives? How should Mozilla fund itself? It's the same problem that every piece of open source software has: developers cost serious money and relying on unpaid volunteers is unsustainable as well as dangerous (see https://xkcd.com/2347/ for the appropriate meme). Some projects have attempted to solve that problem by providing enterprise consulting (MySQL), SaaS hosting (Elasticsearch), getting fund…

maybe focus on building the browser better and allowing donation for it instead of spending money (including any donation) on rubbish executives/political causes?

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#183

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #173
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?

Maybe people who are privacy and security focused shouldn't use operating systems that track you. This is like trying to save a sinking ship by keeping your shoes dry.

Privacy is not a binary state, but rather something of a spectrum ( and partially a reason as to why Google and others try different avenues for siphoning data ). Every little bit helps a little bit depending on your tolerance and skill level. I genuinely do not expect my mom to run FF with appropriate plugins from a scrubbed VM each time she wants to check something. But I can give her some sane defaults instead.

I agree with your general point, but ignoring an issue just because there is no 100% solution is not reasonable either.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#184

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

zugi wrote: post #142

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 switch…

There is a good argument over the use of limited resources, but, as we likely all know from experience, best product does not always win -- the default product wins ( at least to a casual user ).

I have some minor beefs with Mozilla, but not for fighting MS over defaults, because it is a bad use of those resources. Last time I checked, Win10 still has a very annoying tendency to reset defaults after update ( please correct me if I am wrong; it is possible this was finally corrected ).

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#185

Post by mschuster91 »

CrimsonRain wrote: post #182
mschuster91 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the alternatives? How should Mozilla fund itself? It's the same problem that every piece of open source software has: developers cost serious money and relying on unpaid volunteers is unsustainable as well as dangerous (see https://xkcd.com/2347/ for the appropriate meme). Some projects have attempted to solve that problem by providing enterprise consulting (MySQL), SaaS hosting (Elasticsearch), getting fund…

maybe focus on building the browser better and allowing donation for it instead of spending money (including any donation) on rubbish executives/political causes?

Donations are a notoriously fickle beast. Other than Wikipedia, no successful open-source project is being dominantly funded from donations - and one might argue that Wikipedia only gets so many donations because their funding drives are pretty damn obnoxious (Yes I'm aware that it's Wikimedia Foundation but let's be honest the side projects are pretty much irrelevant). To make it worse, even the behemoth that Wikipedia is creates barely 160 million dollars a year in revenue [1]. That is orders of magnitude less than the amount of money that Google, MS and Apple have at their disposal.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statisti...

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#186

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #5

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/299... 6 Republican and 6 Democrat cosponsors. I like when they work together :]

I am currently going through it and I was initially leaning against it, but I am slowly starting to lean closer.

The bill among other things prohibits covered platforms to:

>> 7) materially restrict or impede a business user from accessing data generated on the covered platform by the activities of the business user, or through an interaction of a covered platform user with the products or services of the business user, such as by establishing contractual or technical restrictions that prevent the portability by the business user to other systems or applications of the data of the business user;

Unless I am reading it wrong, does it only apply to info you put on platform?

>> (4) materially restrict, impede, or unreasonably delay the capacity of a business user to access or interoperate with the same platform, operating system, or hardware or software features that are available to the products, services, or lines of business of the covered platform operator that compete or would compete with products or services offered by business users on the covered platform;

That seems like a win. What are the arguments against it?

>> (3) discriminate in the application or enforcement of the terms of service of the covered platform among similarly situated business users in a manner that would materially harm competition;

This feels important. I don't see any teeth though. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I am much less amused by:

>> 8) materially restrict or impede covered platform users from uninstalling software applications that have been preinstalled on the covered platform or changing default settings that direct or steer covered platform users to products or services offered by the covered platform operator, unless necessary—

where it 'security' is a simple way to bypass it ( because that is easy to claim ).

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#187

Post by throwawy6969 »

judge2020 wrote: post #140
HWR_14 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The thresholds are insanely high - like 1 in 8 people use it. Literally. 50 million US MAU or 1 billion worldwide (a smaller threshold of 100k business customers). And a market cap of 550 billion dollars (which automatically adjusts with inflation).

> which automatically adjusts with inflation) For reference: > adjusted for inflation on the basis of the Consumer Price Index; Hmm... I wonder if this sort of verbiage might make much more of an impact on a hundred million working class Americans' lives if it were applied to other sections of the US Code...

No post body was provided.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#188

Post by scarface74 »

DoughnutHole wrote: post #180
scarface74 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had a VC firm, should HN be forced to give my post looking to hire the same prominence it gives their own? Should grocery stores not be allowed to market their own brands? Shouid a TV network not be allowed to market its own shows above that of competitors?

If any of those entities have a functional monopoly, then yes they will (and in my opinion should) experience restrictions on those activities. The bill is drafted to target the big players. Antitrust laws aren't meant to be fair, they're specifically intended to make business harder for the monopolies affected and easier for their competition. They're meant to put a finger on the scales to counterbalance the massive…

Which one of those “monopolistic” companies are actually legally a monopoly?

For instance, does poor little Walmart - the largest retailer in the US - really need help competing with Amazon?

Much more travel already goes through Priceline than Google. Do people really not know about Priceline from the years of Shatner commercials?

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#189

Post by DoughnutHole »

scarface74 wrote: post #188
DoughnutHole wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If any of those entities have a functional monopoly, then yes they will (and in my opinion should) experience restrictions on those activities. The bill is drafted to target the big players. Antitrust laws aren't meant to be fair, they're specifically intended to make business harder for the monopolies affected and easier for their competition. They're meant to put a finger on the scales to counterbalance the massive…

Which one of those “monopolistic” companies are actually legally a monopoly? For instance, does poor little Walmart - the largest retailer in the US - really need help competing with Amazon? Much more travel already goes through Priceline than Google. Do people really not know about Priceline from the years of Shatner commercials?

Google is unambiguously a monopoly - they have a 90%+ market share in search. Whether or not they're engaging in anti-competitive behaviour is the big question - whether or not they have a monopoly in search is not really debatable. For example Standard Oil, the 20th century poster child for monopolistic abuses and origin of modern anti-trust law also had a market share of ~90%.

[EDIT because I found bad data about Walmart] Walmart is definitely also a monopoly or close to it - they have a share of ~70% of the grocery market, and should also be subject to restrictive antitrust rules, or even broken up. They don't have a monopoly in online retail where Amazon controls over ~55% of the market. But the fact that Walmart has a monopoly in one industry does not say anything about possible anti-competitive behaviour by Amazon in another. Amazon's not quite a monopoly in online retail yet but it's definitely trending in a worrying direction.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#190

Post by scarface74 »

DoughnutHole wrote: post #189
scarface74 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one of those “monopolistic” companies are actually legally a monopoly? For instance, does poor little Walmart - the largest retailer in the US - really need help competing with Amazon? Much more travel already goes through Priceline than Google. Do people really not know about Priceline from the years of Shatner commercials?

Google is unambiguously a monopoly - they have a 90%+ market share in search. Whether or not they're engaging in anti-competitive behaviour is the big question - whether or not they have a monopoly in search is not really debatable. For example Standard Oil, the 20th century poster child for monopolistic abuses and origin of modern anti-trust law also had a market share of ~90%. [EDIT because I found bad data about W…

By what definition is 55% a “monopoly”? And by “breaking up Walmart”, what do you suggest? That they are forced to remove groceries from their stores?

In “online travel sites”, Google is a tiny player.

https://www.statista.com/topics/2704/online-travel-market/#d...

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