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U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#291

Post by tick_tock_tick »

zepto wrote: post #221
traib wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of those platforms are less secure than iOS. Do you have a source for this statement, specifically in relation to browsers? Let's consider Android. I wouldn't automatically assume that using Safari on iOS is more (or less) secure than using Chrome or Firefox on Android - they are all provided by well known tech companies with years of expertise building browsers and a focus on security.

Android is definitely less secure than iOS, you can easily verify this by googling. Controlling the execution environment is part of iOS’s defense in depth strategy. Focussing on browsers alone is a red herring. You have to look at the whole system. It’s true that Google or Mozilla may be able to produce an equivalent level of security in a browser engine, but that’s a false comparison, since alternative browsers are…

iOS still runs main parts of its text rendering in kernel space. It is by definition less secure than almost any other operating system.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#292

Post by Karrot_Kream »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #173
dbetteridge wrote: post #6

"A year after initiating the investigation, we received testimony from the Chief Executive Officers of the investigated companies: Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai. For nearly six hours, we pressed for answers about their business practices, including about evidence concerning the extent to which they have exploited, entrenched, and expanded their power over digital markets in anticompetitive…

PG tried to say that "tech" was focused on building better mousetraps, but that's hogwash. THIS is precisely the play that all VC's are after now: find a channel, throw billions at it, run everyone else out of the space, and monopolize it. When people talk glowingly about "unicorns," this is what they're really saying: monopolies.

This is well known. The thesis of Peter Thiel's Zero to One was precisely about how a tech company's ultimate goal should be about creating a monopoly. An op-ed by Thiel in the WSJ talk about exactly this: https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-...

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#293

Post by eunos »

aviraldg wrote: post #206

Not looking forward to a future where the US sabotages its best tech companies and we all end up working for Alibaba, Tencent or Baidu (or founding startups with the aim of being acquired by them.)

Eh China already made an example of Ali anyway (2.8B fine).

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#294

Post by abduhl »

dragonwriter wrote: post #284
rovolo wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To expand on this: they basically won the right to bundle on appeal, but they were found to have abused their market power in support of IE. First Trial: > On June 7, 2000, the court ordered a breakup of Microsoft as its remedy.[19] According to that judgment, Microsoft would have to be broken into two separate units, one to produce the operating system, and one to produce other software components. Appeal: > On Nove…

> they basically won the right to bundle on appeal, If, by “appeal” you mean “settlement negotiated with the new, Microsoft-friendly Administration”, that is correct. That’s not what “appeal” usually means in a legal context.

If you’re convicted of murder because the government dismissed black jurors due to their racial prejudices in order to assure the jury was all white and then the conviction is overturned on appeal and the prosecutor declined to reprosecute, are you guilty of murder? No. You aren’t.

More closely: if you take a plea bargain and plead guilty to breaking and entering instead of murder, are you guilty of murder? What if you only agreed to the plea bargain because you didn’t want to spend the millions of dollars to litigate again? This latter hypothetical is the reality of corporate prosecution in America: companies will settle just to avoid tainting their reputation and spending the cash to win on the merits. That doesn’t mean that they’re guilty.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#295

Post by heavyset_go »

jjk166 wrote: post #250
simion314 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome is a bit more then a skin and you know it and I am sure you can't expect to trick competent people with this argument. If iOS would implement PWA then some native applications could be implemented as as PWA and Apple would lose money(I don't believe the security or privacy excuse either, a PWA will always have less access then a native app)

PWA are supported by iOS

I can't tell if you're joking or not. Apple refuses to implement Web APIs that make PWAs usable, the same Web APIs that Google, Chrome, Firefox, etc have all implemented 8+ years ago.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#296

Post by zepto »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #244
zepto wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Owning a company is a privilege. A privilege you think should be held by the government?

Why would you assume I said that. Government has the job of arbitrating between the needs of all people. Companies should be meeting the needs and wants of consumers without causing harm. When Companies, and the people that own and operate them, cause harm, it is the obligation of government to remedy these problems through action, forceful if need be, against the offenders. Governmental failure to remedy problems re…

> Why would you assume I said that.

I didn’t.

> Government has the job of arbitrating between the needs of all people. Companies should be meeting the needs and wants of consumers without causing harm. When Companies, and the people that own and operate them, cause harm, it is the obligation of government to remedy these problems through action, forceful if need be, against the offenders. Governmental failure to remedy problems results in vigilantism without fail.

What has this ominous generalization got to do with the question?

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#297

Post by jonas21 »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #36
jiofih wrote: post #16

The top 10 tech companies have collectively acquired and shut down hundreds of small, successful startups. I believe this is very detrimental to the web and the economy. Founders need to have that as an option for an exit though. What are the alternatives? Limiting ownership to 49%?

>Founders need to have that as an option for an exit though. What are the alternatives? Limiting ownership to 49%? No they don't. To rephrase, you're suggesting that companies are entitled to getting bought out. That's ridiculous. Owning a company is a privilege, people who abuse that privilege, billionaires, should be stripped of that power. Corporate America is cancerous, consuming and destroying everything indiscr…

You've gotta be kidding. 99% of companies in the U.S. are small businesses, and over half of those have annual revenue under $500K (that's revenue, not profit). In many cases, small businesses offer immigrants a pathway to the middle class, despite lack of credentials, connections, or English skills. Are you saying they shouldn't have the right to sell their business? You talk about "authoritarian control," but what could be more authoritarian than denying people basic property rights?

And even if you limit discussion to only tech startup companies, taking away the option of selling the company in the future completely changes the risk calculation. You'd end up with fewer companies getting started, which would entrench the big players even more.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#298

Post by zepto »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #291
zepto wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android is definitely less secure than iOS, you can easily verify this by googling. Controlling the execution environment is part of iOS’s defense in depth strategy. Focussing on browsers alone is a red herring. You have to look at the whole system. It’s true that Google or Mozilla may be able to produce an equivalent level of security in a browser engine, but that’s a false comparison, since alternative browsers are…

iOS still runs main parts of its text rendering in kernel space. It is by definition less secure than almost any other operating system.

And yet somehow isn’t as plagued by botnets and banking Trojans etc.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#299

Post by zepto »

mindslight wrote: post #243
zepto wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just outlaw dark patterns in general as deceptive practices? All this focus on fixing particular companies or government mandating software architecture seems like it just gets the government more and more invovled while not doing anything to prevent the actual abuses.

It's impossible to formally define dark patterns, especially when trying to except traditional dark patterns (recurring sales, coupons, strategically placed roasting chickens, etc). And so any attempt to do that will necessarily "get the government more and more involved". Either through some administrative body that decides whether a certain thing is a "dark pattern", or through judicial remedies ("Here is your 57 c…

> Meanwhile mandating APIs isn't mandating "software architecture". It's merely just a different form of the website that has a predictable structure.

That is software architecture.

Re: U.S. House committee approves blueprint for Big Tech crackdown

#300

Post by [deleted] »

baq wrote: post #276
zepto wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you just made up a bullshit accusation to discredit Amazon based on no evidence at all, and then claimed I was moving the goalposts?

i know nothing happened in the review and fraud for years, i don't know if it's too expensive to fix - your bullshit against mine. (also, too expensive for amazon? what?) as to your goalposts, poor service is literally bad for customers/consumers, so i don't even know what to say except that you're quite likely incapable of letting go of your beliefs, because logic can't reconcile the dissonance.

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