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Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

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101–110 of 348 posts

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, get rid of their 2nd largest market, at size ~⅔ of the US one. Yes, that will definitely show the EU who's the boss. /s

But what if they will though? Won't china happily replace the EU market? It's much bigger too and Winnie the Pooh doesn't care about ppl privacy that much

This assumes Apple has something to offer the Chinese market that it incumbents aren't already providing. I'm skeptical.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#102
post #29

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

GDPR is mostly only excessively onerous when the business model involves gathering and processing information of people who haven't actually consented to what you want you do with it, or you don't have secure storage for the information.

If a business can only survive by extracting and processing against the wishes of the owner, or by storing it unsafely, maybe that's not actually a desirable business.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#103
post #41

I always scratch my head about articles that lump Meta, Apple, and Google together when it comes to regulations. They all have different problems that require different solutions. Apple - consumers give the company for hardware which is locked into a closed ecosystem. Apple extracts extra revenue by enforcing this closed ecosystem. There can be no competition other than not purchasing their hardware in the first plac…

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 ??

They’re a monopoly on Apple *platform*.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#104
post #81
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 ??

What choices do you have as an iPhone user to download apps from? Or as an iOS developer what choices do I have to distribute the said app?

As a developer, sure, I have no choice in this.

As a user, I was quite happy with my personal Android phone while developing for iOS, both for hardware and software, because absolutely nothing is requiring consumers to buy Apple in the first place as basically every App you care about is shipped to both platforms anyway.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#105
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.

Isn't this standard door-in-face technique? Throw an absurd proposal in your face to make the next proposal look reasonable even if it is not even close to the original demand?

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#106
post #41

I always scratch my head about articles that lump Meta, Apple, and Google together when it comes to regulations. They all have different problems that require different solutions. Apple - consumers give the company for hardware which is locked into a closed ecosystem. Apple extracts extra revenue by enforcing this closed ecosystem. There can be no competition other than not purchasing their hardware in the first plac…

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 ??

Apple may not have a monopoly, but they have enormous market power. By themselves, monopoly or market power are neither illegal or even undesirable.

However, they become undesirable when they are abused to undermine cometition in other markets. For example: Apple has successfully prevented competition to Apple Pay for a long time, by only allowing their own products access to NFC. This meant that parties that were already specialized in handling payments, had no chance to compete, despite them being in an excellent position to do so.

If this behaviour is left unchecked, over time we will end up with one single company dominating most markets. I feel that's undesirable. Given the number of dystopian novels on that premise, most of society considers that future to be undesirable.

Preventing that future is a major part of DMA.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#107
post #48
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's governments vs corporations; the 500 million people aren't actually being represented in either camp. Being a subject is little better than being a consumer, and in some ways much worse.

Most are citizens rather than subjects and EU elections are at the start of June.

s/Most/All

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#108
post #77
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. App…

It’s not a fraud, but it’s scummy.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#109
post #13

The EU will win this if they want. Their trump card is that, actually, making the EU not a viable market for the most annoying US tech companies would be a huge win for many of their constituents.

Apple should play their Trump card and threaten to pull out of the EU. The EU would blink first because the public backlash would be career ending.

That would be a net win for Europe, European citizens and companies.

As soon as Apple/Meta/Google/... sulk and leave, other companies would find the space to grow and fill that space with similar products which would respect the users.

Users outside of Europe would realise it's possible to have those kinds of products without abusive practices, and would start demanding Apple/Meta/Google/... for the same.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#110

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.…

> Imagine a world in which the EU instead funded research & implementation of public protocols to undermine US big tech?

That was tried, decades ago. Machines Bull. Plan Calcul. Cyclades. Minitel. Didn't win.

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