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Calling for Antitrust Reform

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Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#201

Post by dathinab »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #117
dathinab wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are to focused on the mono-part. IMHO appropriate laws should be applied to any company which directly or indirectly affects some "high" threshold of people. Or another way to think about it would be if it's practically impossible to enter a market even with a decent start capital because of it being dominated by a small number of mega cooperation it's not (much) different then a monopoly. What does it matter…

Having 5 companies that actually compete for business wouldn’t harm consumers. Having 5 companies that avoid competition would, and that’s called a cartel and it’s already illegal according to the anti-trust laws (the Sherman and Clayton Acts).

A cartel is illegal yes, but proving a cartel is dam hard. And depending on jurisdiction requires proving that the companies actually had some "agreement"/"communication" wrt. their non-competing (as far as I remember).

But if you look at markets all around the world having situations with the same harmful dynamics as cartels but for legalities not counting as cartels is not uncommon.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#202

Post by dathinab »

judge2020 wrote: post #120
dathinab wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are to focused on the mono-part. IMHO appropriate laws should be applied to any company which directly or indirectly affects some "high" threshold of people. Or another way to think about it would be if it's practically impossible to enter a market even with a decent start capital because of it being dominated by a small number of mega cooperation it's not (much) different then a monopoly. What does it matter…

Monopolies might be harmful in that sense, but the issue is that monopolies tend to happen naturally as a company grows and expands into a national corporation, which is the most textbook definition of capitalism and the american dream. In general antitrust laws are meant to 'allow' competitors to exist should a new competitor attempt to challenge the incumbents, but they're not an attempt at forcing competition by h…

> happen naturally as a company grows

It happens because (especially but not only the US) economics system is designed to feature monopolies as it's a efficient tool to economically suppress/control other countries.

And as far as I know some of this laws where meant to force competition. It's just lobbyist have effectively defused/removed/reinterpreted them.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#204

Post by wffurr »

mc32 wrote: post #110
wffurr wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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%

Voting population is also typically less than half. 2020 US election was an outlier at 66.8%.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#205

Post by indymike »

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.

Agreed that web push is abused by media websites.

This is the the most important feature in when converting from a mobile app to pwa. For example, how can my applicant tracking app tell the user they have a new job candidate? How do you alert a user they have a new message on mobile without being able to use notifications? Without proper support for mobile apps from the browser, we're stuck with even more invasive native apps.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#206

Post by dralley »

pitaj wrote: post #64
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-...

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

There are huge swathes of the country, rural areas primarily, where Walmart is the only local option.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#208

Post by gbear605 »

kevingadd wrote: post #88
gbear605 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If push notifications are so bad why does every mobile app spam me with them? All of these things "users don't want" are right there for use in App Store apps. They're only held back from the browser because they want you to give them 30%. In some cases they literally added features to Safari but restricted them for use in advertisements only (WebGL for one example, IIRC) because the features aren't the problem, the…

Many push notifications are spam that developers want to send and users don’t actually care about. But more than that, the fact that you actually downloaded an app is much higher proof that you want to get notifications than just going to a site and clicking yes on a dialog. Dialogs basically mean nothing because users will just click yes without thinking about it.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#209

Post by phendrenad2 »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #183
phendrenad2 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> ignoring an issue just because there is no 100% solution

But that isn't what I'm proposing. I'm saying that when you buy a vehicle, and the driver's-side door, by design, unchangeably, cannot be locked, maybe you shouldn't buy that model of car, rather than try to hack privacy into the vehicle by adding an aftermarket passenger-side door with laser tripwires and barbed wire.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#210

Post by tehlike »

gbear605 wrote: post #208
kevingadd wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If push notifications are so bad why does every mobile app spam me with them? All of these things "users don't want" are right there for use in App Store apps. They're only held back from the browser because they want you to give them 30%. In some cases they literally added features to Safari but restricted them for use in advertisements only (WebGL for one example, IIRC) because the features aren't the problem, the…

Many push notifications are spam that developers want to send and users don’t actually care about. But more than that, the fact that you actually downloaded an app is much higher proof that you want to get notifications than just going to a site and clicking yes on a dialog. Dialogs basically mean nothing because users will just click yes without thinking about it.

Then you want solution to notification problem. Very specific issue vs broader "web sites are bad, apple is doing good" issue.
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