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Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

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Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#71

Post by throwaway_qiwuw »

makeitdouble wrote: post #64
ein0p wrote: post #34

I’m an Apple fan and I keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in Apple stock, and I still hope we at least get side loading out of all this. I do not believe this would be in any way detrimental to Apple - most people don’t give a shit. But for me and others like me it’d be pretty neat to do on my iPhone and iPad what I can already do on my Mac: install my own software that is not arbitrarily time limited.

> I do not believe this would be in any way detrimental to Apple They wouldn't be ropped in kicking and screaming if that really was the case.

Much like my 8 year old, I think they lack the perspective to behave like an adult here.

Several companies have fought what they thought were unwanted regulations only to view them as useful later on. Time will tell if they were right to kick and scream or not.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#72

Post by nottorp »

Sharlin wrote: post #57
nroets wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, on the other hand, have a lot more sympathy for Apple: Many highly successful people and many businesses have never owned any of there products. They are not a monopoly. Why can't market forces just regulate them ??

Because personal computer market (let’s face it: the primary or only personal computing device of most people today is a phone or a tablet) are a duopoly, with the other actor also being one of the monopolistic tech giants.

Just to emphasise, the mobile device market IS a duopoly because you may have multiple sources for Android phone hardware, but for software you have exactly two options: iOS and Android.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#73

Post by tasuki »

yard2010 wrote: post #45
yxhuvud wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? No, that is laughable. What would be career ending would be the massive reduction of income within Apple. That would end careers, and quickly change enough minds that they would change policies.

Excuse me for my nativity but can't they just buy back a trillion more stocks or something, keeping the stock price where it is no matter what? I don't think something can really hurt your income when you have that much money.

> Excuse me for my nativity but can't they just buy back a trillion more stocks or something, keeping the stock price where it is no matter what?

Stock buybacks are net neutral wrt the company's value. They're just one of the ways to return money to stock holders. It's not a magical perpetuum mobile kind of thing.

> I don't think something can really hurt your income when you have that much money.

Of course many things can hurt your income no matter how much money you have. The only entities whose income can't be hurt are the ones who don't have any!

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#74

Post by bitpush »

yard2010 wrote: post #45
yxhuvud wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? No, that is laughable. What would be career ending would be the massive reduction of income within Apple. That would end careers, and quickly change enough minds that they would change policies.

Excuse me for my nativity but can't they just buy back a trillion more stocks or something, keeping the stock price where it is no matter what? I don't think something can really hurt your income when you have that much money.

Apple's cash reserves are not infinite. And any desperate attempt to "hold up" the price will be punished by the market. This is very different from usual $15B stock buyback, which you can explain but try doing it with $200B and you are seriously weakening the company.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#75

Post by Scrapemist »

mrweasel wrote: post #66
servus45678981 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it wouldn‘t. Instead European Brands like Nokia, Fairphone, Gigaset and Nothing would grow.iMessage and other Apple specific services are not really popular, even if the iPhone sells good.

This comes up everything the EU/Europe and Apple comes up: iMessage is hugely popular, it is just not the most popular (or even third or second) messaging platform. Also the largest is Facebook Messenge, and in the top five is another Meta product, WhatsApp. So it's not like it's all Signal, Viper or Telegram, it's mostly platforms from another US tech giant.

Switching is easy

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#76

Post by Hamuko »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #63
patrickmcnamara wrote: post #37

> the eight-year-old General Data Protection Regulation Wow. It's actually only been enforced for six years but that time absolutely flew by.

Remember when local US companies with zero EU presence were geo-blocking EU visitors in-case they were found to be in-violation of the GDPR? Presumably the fear was a crack team of EU secret service agents would kidnap and illegally extradite them to stand trial in Brussels.

You mean remember the thing that is still very much a thing?

I also occasionally get geo-blocked by Japanese websites too.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#77

Post by bitpush »

qp11 wrote: post #52
_the_inflator wrote: post #3

Very valid points. In my view they miss the mark however. Blaming Apple for optimizing their platform model isn’t the problem, it became a problem. Imagine 2007 and the following years already with the EU act in full effect. AppStore would be dead on arrival. In my view Apple’s AppStore went from feature some people have when they buy a smartphone to necessity. 2007 and even 2016 was a perfect time to opt for a live…

Apple and Google are not the same thing. Google is a ponzi scheme propped up by trapping everyone in a War for finite Attention. They tell content creators/advertisers+marketers(corporations that pay)/politicians we can get you eyeballs, no matter how much content explodes, not matter how many people are competing for finite attention. Its basically Fraud. People will work it out in their own sweet time cause its the…

Bud, are you OK? You seem to be raging against everything. Capitalist companies exist to make money, and they make money by providing a service that users want. Sometimes they are bad for uses (alcohol, cigarretes, gambling) but nobody is forcing anyone to buy any of these things.

Just because a user likes to spend $1500 every year on latest iPhone because it makes him "feel cool" or "have self worth" isnt fraud. Apple is just catering to that person.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#79

Post by pythonic_hell »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #60

Imagine a world in which the EU instead funded research & implementation of public protocols to undermine US big tech? IE, they mention chat clients in the text, why not create something in the spirit of XMPP (or even revive it if the technical merits remain relevant?) I can almost feel it in my bones that there's a protocol behind "feed" websites like twitter & linkedin. Break the walled garden with open standards.…

The irony of your statement is that many of the core tech, protocol and software systems underpinning these big tech companies were developed in the EU.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#80

Post by davidgerard »

pheggs wrote: post #29
userbinator wrote: post #22

I'm in favour of opening up platforms and interoperability, but not the GDPR. Maybe in this case, "an enemy is an enemy of a friend".

I feel the same. The GDPR appears super difficult to comply with, even impossible in some cases, and very restricting. I just hope negative effects of (in my opinion) overregulation wont hurt the EUs economy too badly, but that wont be visible for another couple of decades

UK sysadmin here. I assure you that the GDPR is not hard to comply with at all - unless your business is to abuse your customers' data.

The main technical thing is that all data stores containing Personal Data must be redactable.

For years I've read bizarre GDPR fanfic from panicked Americans claiming that the world will end if they have to pay the slightest attention to data protection. I assure you literally from personal experience that this is not the case.

I wrote this up several years ago: https://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/606812.html

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