I don't know, it's not as if they have done nothing that benefits society, that we all use daily, forgetting how much of it would not be possible without the contributions and innovation from these companies.
I am absolutely not surprised by the whining and am in no way giving these companies a pass. Something absolutely must be done to better protect user data and privacy.
But babies and bath water come to mind when I read comments like yours.
What I want is for us to reward companies for what they produced, not by what they managed to squeeze out of customers after getting big.
Apple was revitalized by the iPod and later the iPhone? Great, let them sell as many iPods and iPhones as they possibly can. But when they sell it, do not let them keep control of everything. If they are saying the only they can make money is by keeping the iPhone closed and being the gatekeeper of the app store, it means that they are not really making money on the device, so we shouldn't be rewarding them.
Google search was incredible? Ad sense let publishers earn money online? Great. Then let's reward them for that instead of letting them take 60-70% of the ad publishing market.
Does Facebook want to innovate on the communication space by developing an application on XMPP? When was it even working with Google Talk? Amazing, let's reward them for that instead of letting close things down and please let's not them have WhatsApp to feed their endless appetite for user data.
> Google search was incredible? Ad sense let publishers earn money online? Great. Then let's reward them for that instead of letting them take 60-70% of the ad publishing market.
This one sticks out among your examples - that dominant position and the profits from it is the reward. How else would you have a reward work?
This isn't an idle question. Right now companies are doing things that generate their own financial rewards. What other way would you have it work, beyond just some notion of differently?
My possessions were not nationalized at least a dozen times yesterday. It hasn't changed my behavior much, nor that of any company worth mentioning. Perhaps your life has been different from mine.
The absence of a major punishment is not a strong reward. It provides no incentives except to avoid the specific things that produce that punishment.
I’m uncertain on what terms any European nation is going to nationalize Apple, Google, Tiktok, etc. (Is there to be conquest first?)
Because it’s not clear you’re limiting your ideas to the jurisdiction where the DMA applies, I’m only marginally less uncertain about what terms the US would use to nationalize TikTok, and wondering whether the proposal for nationalizing the others - that is to say, taking private property for a public use - would be attached to just compensation (because the trillions involved would surely dent the deficit), or whether there’s some refined subtlety of the case law on Constitutional principles that I have missed or has yet to happen (e.g. trashing the whole takings clause? hard to be certain).
That is to say: this proposal is quite difficult to take seriously, as it implies, but does not identify or engage with, some rather striking changes to the world that would have far reaching consequences.
I absolutely agree and made the cardinal sin of conflating data privacy with the subject of the article, which is about anti-competitive behavior.
But they are both huge issues for the companies we're discussing and I absolutely agree with your thoughts on rewarding them for what they do well but not assuming that everything they do must be just as great and giving them a pass for when they get it wrong or actively hostile to their customers.
Companies are not people. We do not need to "remember their contributions and innovations." Their valuation today is because of those contributions, so they got their rewards, profit and then some.
Commission a statue for them if you want. What is this parasocial relationship some people have with fiscal entities?
That sad thing is... I don't think most people defending Apple in these topics actually own a significant amount of their stock directly. And they're actually undermining the strength of their own portfolios by undermining the strenght and resilience of USA economy due to erosion of free market competition and market stagnation via monopolies.
There is another type of stock: immaterial social capital. As long as Apple products are status-symbols, owners gain social relevance from their ostentatious use. This is why brands promote themselves way beyond what is necessary to just sell widgets: to build identities that people will invest in, binding themselves into enough social stock that they will feel compelled to campaign for a brand just to protect that investment.
I don't disagree, Apple's brand was built before the current shenanigans were even possible. "Think different", am I right? I'm just saying that the previous investment in brand-building can now be leveraged into defending the indefensible.
Kind of ironic that social capital on HN is earned by being being pro-regulation, anti-big-tech, isn’t it? Your point holds but there is more than a little irony in the post.
I think it just shows that large tech companies have lost all credibility even among early-adopting, tech-positive nerds.
New technology, unbridled, inevitably reaches a point where its negatives become clear to society at large. The printing press is regulated, cars are regulated, nuclear energy is regulated - because society recognized that we can't just let anyone build reactors in their sheds. Internet tech has probably reached that point.
Yup, again, yet another thread that devolves into android people doing the 'brainless apple sheeple' meme. It's fucking offensive and it's literally any thread that mentions apple. I wish Dang would crack down - this is not good discourse, it's not making HN a better place.
There is the same problem with NVIDIA, all NVIDIA threads eventually devolve into "people too dumb to buy AMD like me" as well, but, with apple there isn't even a slope, it's right into it from the outset.
We have just utterly normalized this sort of conduct from some of these fanboys to the point where it doesn't even register with most people. We just have taken it as the inherent nature of Android fans to be offensive like this.
Perhaps it is their nature. People with poor social skills self-selecting to the nerdy phone, etc. I have been leaning more and more to this theory after seeing it in thread after thread after thread - people simply cannot restrain themselves even here on HN. But oh gosh you can't say those things back! how uncivil! how dare I soil our sacred discourse of "brainless sheeple buying it for the blue bubbles" etc.
But there's no reason for the rest of us to tolerate it. It's shitty discourse. But it's so utterly normalized that everyone just shrugs and looks past it.
I don't own stock in any of the companies mentioned in the article, although I do own tech stocks.
And I'm not suggesting I have a relationship with any of them, parasocial or otherwise.
I wasn't trying to suggest we treat them like people or put them above us or give them a pass... I simply meant that getting rid of them completely could possibly eliminate the problem being discussed, but would also throw out a lot of value that they created and I didn't think that was the best solution.
> What is this parasocial relationship some people have with fiscal entities?
America’s relationship with the tech giants is distinct from Europe’s. We can directly regulate them, if we want to. And our cities are littered with buildings and institutions named after their founders and senior leadership, as well as start-ups seeded by their cash and alumni. We see tremendous side-channel benefits, in other words, from that wealth.
Europe, not as much. Because the founders aren’t there. That is in part due to Europeans’ aversion to big business—if you don’t like big businesses you won’t have them homegrown. (Exception for industrial companies in Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands.) But it’s also because American companies have been taking advantage of its until-recent regulatory weakness.
It seems the only big company in the USA is tech. The rest is in Europe or Asia. The biggest chemical and pharmaceutical industry is in Europe … cars .. planes…. What’s not big industry about Europe beside the stock price of their industry.
Also, largest companies in the world by revenue [1]. American and Chinese with a handful of Swiss, German and Dutch industrial companies. (Plus Vitol, a Swiss commodities group.)
It is a bit tangential, but this article [0] by Baldur Bjarnason sheds a light on the EU's perspective in crafting regulations such as the DMA, and how that seems to be largely misunderstood by the big US tech companies.
This was a great read. One problem that I have, at least, is that I think the eu is not understanding the tech on this one and actually violating their own, all important, single market principle. With the apple all store, there actually was just one market and a set of standards and regulations that governed it. Now, there will be x many standards. The experience on the foo app will depend on what App Store it was purchased in.
If the eu had taken a more ambitious route then I could see this actually working for apple, who operates, imo opinion, under the principle of balancing what is best for the customer against what the developer can tolerate. This has created the apple ecosystem as the only one that is profitable, precisely for the same reason the author argues the eu seeks to regulate businesses.
So by more ambitious I meant there needs to be a convention that governs technology along a framework akin to a technology user’s bill of rights. No stealing information, no antipatterns, cancel subscriptions with a single click, etc…
> actually violating their own, all important, single market principle
Single-market perspectives only apply to EU member-states. There is no expectation of "singleness" outside the EU borders, any extra-EU standardization is just an occasional side-effect.
This is the same as talking about "free trade" inside and outside the US: outside US borders there is no obligation for the US government to obey "free trade" principles, which is why they will happily apply import tariffs that would be illegal to have between US states.
> apple, who operates, imo opinion, under the principle of balancing what is best for the customer against what the developer can tolerate
Big lolz. Apple operates under the principle of balancing what is best for Apple against what the market will tolerate. The rest is just advertising.
I think you misunderstood what the "single market" in that article means. The EU doesn't want there to be a single marketplace (App store). The single market means unifying the different national European markets. The EU cares about maintaining that market, keeping it healthy and competitive and using it as a glue to keep the European nations together and peaceful.
> convention that governs technology along a framework akin to a technology user’s bill of rights. No stealing information, no antipatterns, cancel subscriptions with a single click, etc…
What you're suggesting is exactly what the EU is doing through GDPR and now the DMA. The balancing act is them recognizing that these big powerful tech companies derive their value partly from their scale, network effect, etc. and trying not to, for example, try and break them up, but instead lay out a set of principles that a sufficiently big tech company has to comply with. These rules are designed to promote consumer interests and limit what is perceived as abuse of market power by forcing the companies to be more open to competitors.
> I think you misunderstood what the "single market" in that article means
I can see your point, and when as I was reading I was definitely finding myself understand better the EU's POV, however at the end, when I tried to apply the same example given in the article to the present circumstances, I had a hard time seeing how DMA furthered those goals. But to see what I mean, let's look at an example:
> The single market means unifying the different national European markets.
This is the general thrust of it, and I agree with it and it makes sense to me. The article even went to great lengths to say that the EU would do this even at the expense of their own industries, because the outcomes would ultimately be better for everyone. The example given was roaming, and I think that makes a lot of sense. Another example given was standardizing on 230v AC, while still allowing each country to maintain their regional outlet shapes.
Ok, so far I think we should be in agreement and I haven't said anything that doesn't come directly from the article. In summary the single market means unifying the national markets, and this is done by making one set of rules, even if it's at the expense of their own industries. So nothing thus far should be controversial.
Now in the case of Apple, the question is what being regulated. They're not requiring iOS and android apps to be cross platform, as that would be intractable and is akin to the example in the article of requiring countries to change their plugs. It's basically "infrastructure" at the point, and the cost doesn't justify the benefits. So in this case, the "what" means iOS apps.
To that end, what remains is defining a set of rules that applies to all iOS apps so they can be some uniformity of regulations, similar to the example of standardizing on voltage or charger format. So what are these things in particular? That would be where apps can be found, how they're downloaded, how people pay for stuff, how they cancel subscriptions, etc...
Ok, so now we've reached the point. All of these things actually were already standardized in a single, predictable way, just that they were done by apple. This was done even at the "expense of industry", which in the case would be the developers. I'm sure developers, like cell phone carriers would love to do bad stuff to their users if it makes them more money, but it's ultimately better for the industry as a whole to forbid it. This only works when your competition can't do the bad stuff either.
There are legitimate complaints that I believe can and should be guided towards apple's stewardship of the App Store, but I don't think requiring multiple app stores was the solution. My point is I think the ethos of what the EU is doing is correct, and I wholly support the effort, as I indicated in my ancestral comment. However, I just don't agree that they chose the right unit of abstraction. They should be forcing apple and Google as app stores to abide by a single set of guidelines, but the implementation therein should be left to those companies. Google allows multiple app stores, great. Apple doesn't want to. That should also be fine.
So if you disagree with me, or if I still don't understand the article, can you explain to me better how? As I see it there are multiple levels they could have chosen to enforce the one market principle. I just don't agree with where they chose it. By the same token, forcing iOS and android to be cross platform would also be incorrect.
Ok, and finally I say this mostly from the pserpsective of an iOS user. I like the platform and I feel like I can trust it, however it really only works if developers don't have alternatives where they can do bad stuff. So if there's another App Store where they're free to do shady stuff then it puts all the developers distributing their apps through the apple App Store at a disadvantage.
On the other hand, if the EU wants to manage and regulate all the app stores with a consistent set of guidelines, then I don't understand what are even the points of other app stores. So help me understand, because to me it just seems like what the EU wants we already had when apple was curating the App Store, and it wasn't even really that bad for anyone besides developers, which the EU seemed to be fine with if it was for the good of the industry.
> All of these things actually were already standardized in a single, predictable way, just that they were done by apple.
If there is only one company, it's not a standard - it's a monopoly.
> They should be forcing apple and Google as app stores to abide by a single set of guidelines
They are. It's just that what Apple does simply won't fit in those guidelines.
> but the implementation therein should be left to those companies.
It is. The DMA doesn't tell Apple how to run their servers or what APIs to allow. It just tells everyone, including Apple, that some behaviors in the market are ok and some are not. It just so happens that Apple falls in the not-ok bin.
> Google allows multiple app stores, great. Apple doesn't want to. That should also be fine.
According to whom, you?
The fact is that European society, as represented in the EU Parliament, EU Council, and EU Commission, determined that such behavior is NOT fine in the market. It strangles competition to Apple in the digital-services arena and effectively allows them to extract rent from the whole industry. Hence, Apple should stop what they are doing or face consequences. This is a side-effect of issuing guidelines for acceptable behavior in the digital marketplace.
If you don't like the directive, go vote for some party in European elections (hey, this year) and national elections (possibly this year, depending on the country) to change it. If you're not in Europe, well, you are not affected by the directive, so you don't really get a say about it.
The Facing Reality article [1] explains what "single market" means in the context of app stores:
"App Stores let private companies subdivide and control the single market to their own financial gain. When much of the digital economy is taking place on phones, tablets, and various other devices that are largely limited to App Stores, this is effectively ceding the single market to a fragmented market that’s entirely under corporate control.
This is against the core operating theory behind the EU."
I think it's a mistake to think that someone we use every day is by default beneficial to society? There are countless examples of the public discovering a thing, and the government then having to spend countless decades getting them to stop doing it in the interest of public health (both rightly and wrongly in different scenarios).
Sure Instagram is great for discovery of events, but we came from a world where local bars would list those events on their own sites for free. Now the data is locked behind Insta, or FB which I consider a real step backwards for true discovery.
>it's not as if they have done nothing that benefits society, that we all use daily, forgetting how much of it would not be possible without the contributions and innovation from these companies.
Perhaps I'm parsing this wrong, but it sounds a lot like "past successes are a license for future abuses." Which is not something I think we should, or can, allow.
Nah, there's no reason to accept terrible behavior from people just because they also do some good, the more we push back and frankly punish large companies in real terms the more likely we are to get a peaceable arrangement.
Google and Apple are not thinking "ah let's figure out how to work with these people to make a sustainable system" they are thinking what the most extractive operation they can get away with is, they do not deserve our regard because we also got blinky toys.
Google and apple have helped ruin society by developing the smartphone. They might have occasionally done something useful but I am convinced they are a net detriment. All their products are about surveillance and control. The positive might be them making some tools they use to do that available for others to use.
And after them, let’s get the television. And I read a pretty convincing opinion piece about how the novel is destroying today’s youth (dated 1910 or so).
Big Tech depends on you buying their hardware (iOS/Android/Mac/Windows) to pull you into their 'ecosystem of services': messaging, payments, streaming video and of course, targeted advertisements.
We need some kind of ecosystem-agnostic hardware vendor that provides/supports:
- a Linux-based GUI OS with minimal telemetry
- Web Apps unencumbered by the whims of monopolistic browser vendors
- a RISC-V desktop-class processor (one day...)
- repairable, swappable components
- some sort of local LLM interface for those who need it
Fairphone, Framework laptops and the to-be-released MNT Pocket Reform 7" laptopnprobably come closest to this, minus the RISC-V.
Nowadays OSS only seems to provide fodder for the big companies to pick up and chew on. Better Linux ain't gonna get many non tech people to not buy laptops from Apple, Dell, etc
Phone manufacturers should be forced to open the bootloader with reasonable hardware documentation so users can install alternatives, the insane situation that we have now is created by this very issue.
I don't think the tech advances these companies made were irrevocably tied to the anti-competition practices. If anything, if we made it easier and cheaper for anyone to build on top of the things already existing, we could have had much more.
But they also monopolized the market and prevented alternatives.
DMA is about fair markets.
Without Google, Apple, or Tiktok, we'd have other platforms. Maybe fairer platforms? It's not like there'd be zero innovation in every category without those companies.
Even as a desktop os Linux in general as a windows/Mac OS replacement for the every day person is strongly disadvantaged by being a shit tier user experience. I've tried to switch several times for laptop OS and just gave up. Even if everything was easy and solid, and it had the same abysmal trackpad support it has now, I wouldn't use it. But basically every facet of the experience is like that trackpad support.
I don't even want to think about what a ghetto the mobile experience probably is.
After having used Linux for multiple years I had to use macOS (and later Windows) and I found the experience shitty as well (ex: no system way to manage programs, strange multi-user support, annoying forced updates, more complex to setup remote connectivity and others). When my parents computer broke I put a Linux on it, and for them works great (just browsing and occasionally printing a document).
Sure, if something is great for you stick to it, but assuming things about "every day persons" seems exaggerated. I also heard macOS <=> Windows switching experience is "bad" so for me it is more "what people are used to/how much they want to improve" than an inherent "quality".
Edit: I'm hardly one to care about karma, but it's funny that I'm getting downvoted just for thinking that that idea is neat. Differences of opinion are okay, no? If there's something you don't like about something I say, I'm open to feedback rather than silent disapproval. :)
After all, what's so terrible about thinking that life without smartphones and Google Search wouldn't be so bad? Haven't a sizeable chunk of us posting here lived without those three things even existing for a good chunk of our lives?
