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Calling for Antitrust Reform
- Animats 4y agoThat's not "antitrust reform". It's so narrowly drawn that it affects only maybe Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Read the definition of "covered platform". Arguably it's a bill of attainder.
- pessimizer 4y agoAny antitrust legislation will be targeted at trusts.
- arrosenberg 4y agoNot arguable. Bills of Attainder refer to criminal laws and are specifically to stop government abuses of personal liberty. Corporations don’t have a guaranteed right to consistent laws, otherwise they wouldn’t spend so much on lobbying. The knife cuts both ways.
- Animats 4y agoHuawei has argued that sanctions against their company constitute a bill of attainder.[1] The provision that an executive can have 100% of their income from the company seized, though, is arguably a criminal provision. But looking at the history of bill of attainder cases, this probably won't be considered one. [1] https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/LSB10274.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/LSB10274.pdf
- arrosenberg 4y agoThat's related to national security, which has (little to) nothing to do with antitrust? Also, I don't really think the courts would agree with you based on their interpretation of civil forfeiture laws. The only unusual thing in the Huawei case is that it happened to someone with serious money.
- stale2002 4y ago> That's not "antitrust reform". It's so narrowly drawn Almost by definition, anti-trust law is only going to narrowly effect a few companies. If a company isn't huge already, then the whole motivation for applying anti-trust law goes away. The whole point of anti-trust law is to narrowly target only a few of the very worst offenders in a market.
- judge2020 4y agoWhy does size matter in this context? For example, Apple will likely be forbidden from making a device where the selling point is that it only runs code from their own app store, but if some random Android company does the same thing by vastly modifying AOSP/their hardware to the point where it can't be rooted and can only install apps via their own store, why are they not punished? as a consumer I'm equally harmed in the same ways by both companies, the only difference is that, in the second situation, my freedom being violated is less important when 50 million other americans aren't also suffering at the hands of that company.
- EMIRELADERO 4y agoI think the difference lies on the number of people affected. The philosophy behind those laws is that it's generally a bad idea to let one single company (or very few companies) control the pipe from which so many economic activity flows.
- stale2002 4y ago> Why does size matter in this context? Size matters in anti-trust law as the larger a company is, the more market power it has, and therefore more ability to have anti-competitive effects on the market. > but if some random Android company does the same thing..... why are they not punished? Because in standard anti-trust law theory, the same exact action done by a smaller company is legal, but can be illegal if done by a larger company. The reason being that a smaller company is unable to anti-competitively control an entire market as well as a larger company can. > as a consumer I'm equally harmed Anti-trust law does not agree that consumers are equally harmed by a large company, with more market power, engaging in anti-competitive practices as compared to when a smaller company, with less market power, does the same. As in literally yes, according to the law, certain actions are only illegal if a large company does it, and literally yes a smaller company is allowed to do the same exact thing simply because they have less market power.
- HWR_14 4y agoI don't think you know what a bill of attainder is. How is it punishing the companies?
- superb-owl 4y agoThe vertical monopolies enjoyed by tech behemoths are absurd. Ever since the Internet Explorer antitrust case [1] it should be clear that things like Apple disallowing other browsers in iOS or Google promoting its own sites in search results are illegal and anticompetitive. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
- threeseed 4y agoApple allows other browsers. They don't allow other browser engines. And I actually don't see how cementing the Chrome engine's dominance on iOS as well as other platforms is good for the web. Because inevitably that is what will happen as just like in the IE days, websites will only work on that browser as it offers the most proprietary features. And why would you develop for multiple browsers when Chrome is available on all platforms and has such dominant market share. People really need to be more careful with this because it could make the web less private, less secure, less driven by a spec and more beholden to Google's interests at the time.
- abirch 4y agoI thought you could change your search engine. I just did it on my iPad: Setting > Safari > Search Engine https://9to5mac.com/2021/02/09/duckduckgo/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/02/09/duckduckgo/
- coder543 4y agoThe comment you replied to did not mention search engines at all. Yes, you can change your default search engine.
- abirch 4y agoYou're right. I misread browser engine as search engine.
- richardsocher 4y ago
- joecool1029 4y ago>A fair playing field is vital to ensure that Mozilla and other independent companies can continue to act as a counterweight to big tech You literally exist on Google revenue provided in order to prevent antitrust litigation, hardly independent.
- kajaktum 4y ago(Corrupt execs aside) What other forms of revenue can Mozilla use? Everyone thinks Pocket is a meme, no one really cares about Mozilla VPN, any attempts at making money will be seen as Mozilla turning for-profit. Donations? Lmao. Good engineers are extremely expensive to buy.
- joecool1029 4y agoRealistically their business would not be able to function without tech giants funding it. The only reason those tech giants fund it is to both continue to promote their own products and to reap the benefit of arguing that it is to foster competition. This is a longterm no-win situation for Mozilla. I guess I could see government drafting bids for developing browser technology (make a national security argument like this stupid bill does) that Mozilla would be able to win. Of course then we'd have articles written by people freaking out about government influence.
- cma 4y agoDoesn't Google outbid Bing for the role? Would it be existential for moz if they had to take Bing's smaller bid?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoWhy do people act like that's some kind of "gotcha"? To me that fact gives it more weight, not less.
- threeseed 4y agoBecause Google has been the weakest when it comes to privacy measures. And so when you're giving them money, data, traffic and users you're increasing their ability to set the privacy agenda and promoting a single search engine, single browser view of the world. It's hypocritical and short-sighted.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agohttps://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2992 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/299... 6 Republican and 6 Democrat cosponsors. I like when they work together :]
- wudangmonk 4y agoI only skimmed the bill but wheneven I see both parties working together I know I need to be extra careful and look for hidden dangers because I am cynical like that.
- mc32 4y agoIsn't it even worse when only one party sponsors or works on something? It could signal that they are completely willing to ignore the sentiments of the other half the congress represents.
- wffurr 4y ago“Other less than a quarter”.
- mc32 4y agoWell, 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%
- wffurr 4y agoVoting population is also typically less than half. 2020 US election was an outlier at 66.8%.
- roenxi 4y agoIf only one party wants something, the other party will loudly and thoroughly catalogue everything wrong with the idea and throw extra at it to see if the smear sticks. There'll generally be loud warnings of a problem. If they are cooperating, that means it might be something really nasty that, eg, lobby money from the military-industrialists supports.
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- phillipcarter 4y ago
- warkdarrior 4y agoI gotta hear this. How does Bitcoin solve the Big Tech issue, especially the self-preferencing part?
- throwaway_1928 4y agoJohn Oliver also covered tech monopolies recently. Tech Monopolies: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXf04bhcjbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXf04bhcjbg
- leotravis10 4y agoHere's Mike Masnick's response over on Techdirt on that. A big swing and a miss which is rare on Oliver's part: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/06/14/john-olivers-big-whiff-just-because-you-agree-theres-a-problem-doesnt-mean-that-this-is-the-right-solution/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/06/14/john-olivers-big-whiff-j...
- doitLP 4y agoI disagree. He has covered three big topics in his jokey rants which I happened to know intimately and he’s gotten them horribly wrong all three times. Like embarrassingly wrong. To pretend all the rest are hard-hitting and well-researched would be some hardcore Gell-Mann amnesia.
- oefrha 4y agoSame. Used to enjoy it until it touched some topics I’m very familiar with — gosh they are as bad as any other one-sided crap out there, only more entertaining and hence more persuasive to outsiders. Like, all important facts counter to their narrative are withheld, it was painful to watch. I decided it’s just a comedy show after all, and gradually stopped watching. I’d rather shape my world view with a range of not-so-effective propagandists than a single very effective propagandist.
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- dado3212 4y agoI think he's mostly right here in identifying the problem. I'd agree with the linked comments on this post that the solution (and AICOA as discussed by the link for the post) is likely bad/inadequate.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago> We are further challenged by app store rules designed to keep out Gecko, our independent browser engine that powers Firefox, Tor and other browsers. Ironically, getting rid of Apple’s browser restrictions will likely result in website developers writing their sites just for Chrome. With Chrome now available on every platform, it will be cheaper and easier to only support that one browser.
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- nine_k 4y agoWhy can't Mozilla offer a a way to make a recurring donation, Patreon-style, or Github-style? It should be locked to specific projects though: Firefox, Thunderbird, MDN, experimental projects, etc. Of course introduce gold / platinum / titanium / etc tiers for corporate donations, along with donations from private persons. They are already a non-profit, making this tax-deductible would be a piece of cake.
- ocdtrekkie 4y agoThey actually did for MDN, it's called MDN Plus: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/plus https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/plus
- leotravis10 4y agoThis 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-none-of-the-problems-with-her-antitrust-bill-but-made-sure-to-carve-out-actual-monopolists-like-telcos-and-finance-companies/ https://www.techdirt.com/2022/05/27/senator-klobuchar-fixed-...
- judge2020 4y agoThe big issue explained in the Techdirt piece is how it only has a chance of passing because it's a trojan horse for other companies to sue the big companies (FB, Google, Apple) for the moderation decision they make, including Google downranking spammy sites that nobody likes being sent to.
- ocdtrekkie 4y agoTechdirt/Copia Institute is a lobbyist which is sponsored by Google. Mike Masnick reads like a Google public policy playbook, because that's what he's copying from.
- tomComb 4y agoAny evidence that Google pays masnick or techdirt?
- ocdtrekkie 4y agoMike's own website: https://copia.is/ https://copia.is/ (scroll down to sponsorship logos) Copia has also been listed on Google's own public policy transparency website in the past, though it's absent at the moment. EDIT: This version of the disclosure is still up: https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/trade_association_and_third_party_groups.pdf https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/trade_association_... Note that the Google Public Policy Team's explicit purpose is to influence laws to be favorable to the company. Paying "think tanks", lobbyists, and political action groups is explicitly about avoiding government regulation for Google, as Mike is doing here.
- roenxi 4y ago> (2) BUSINESS USER.—The term “business user”— > [skip a little] (B) does not include a person that— > [skip a little] > (ii) is controlled by the Government of the People's Republic of China or the government of another foreign adversary. Might want to read not only the article but the actual legislation. This is an interesting snippet that says interesting things about how Congress is looking at the broader business situation. Someone believes that the PRC/CCP needs to be explicitly addressed.
- bombcar 4y agoSo is this good or bad for them I wonder? The word “adversary” seems to imply that it’s antagonist but hmmm.
- HWR_14 4y agoIt says that companies controlled by the PRC do not count for establishing monopoly status, and that companies can take steps to prevent those companies from exfiltrating data even if the act would normally forbid it. It's very against China
- zaarn 4y agoIt means that users in China do not count towards a monopoly. So american firms are allowed to monopolize the Chinese market without restrictions in this bill.
- throwaway0x7E6 4y agoMozilla was in "corporations should be able to do whatever they want" camp when something else was in question. reap what you sow
- kevingadd 4y agoWhat something else? Be more specific
- throwaway0x7E6 4y agohttps://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...
- 0des 4y agothe irony of this being on mozilla.org while ostensibly using google's money to post it.
- kevingadd 4y agoIf an injured war veteran is paying their internet bill with government disability payouts, are they not allowed to criticize the government on the internet?
- logicalmonster 4y ago1) Does anybody have a digestible summary of what the the AICOA actually does and how this law might be abused? In this article they glossed over what effect they think it might have, but I don’t think they simply spelled out what the law actually is, or went over any possible unintended consequences. 2) Whether or not Mozilla’s opinion here is right is something I’m not quite sure about, but what I’m sure about is that Mozilla comes across badly. They lost their extremely big league in the open web by focusing more about woke politics than the tech, and now are whining that they can’t compete. Boo hoo. You have millions and millions of dollars in resources. Build a better browser rather than writing about political censorship and other nonsense you’ve been doing in the past years.
- encryptluks2 4y agoIf Microsoft can use Chromium backend for Edge than so can Mozilla, but here they are complaining that Google needs to allow them to compete. Geezus Mozilla really is something special, and not in a good way.
- kevingadd 4y agoWhy does the world need another Chromium reskin? What's the point of a Firefox that's just Chrome? How is it competing to slap your brand on top of a competitor's product like you're reselling wholesale electronics from an overseas manufacturer? Look at Edge's market share and explain to me how Mozilla is going to deliver a better Chrome reskin than Microsoft with a tiny fraction of the budget.
- encryptluks2 4y agoThe point is that Google does not prevent them from competing. They (Mozilla) are the ones proverbially shooting themselves in the foot. Mozilla to me seems like a cult of grifters in denial with ADD that never even attempt to focus on improving their browser (especially on Linux) and instead would rather build iPhone password managers and act like they aren't enabling a lot of anti-privacy telemetry and data collection by default.
- throwaway43583 4y ago"We are disadvantaged by the fact that current and future Firefox users, many of whom are privacy and security focused, cannot easily install and keep Firefox as their preferred browser because of confusing operating system messages and settings." uhhh really?
- jupp0r 4y agoMaybe privacy focussed users have just moved somewhere else or given up and installed Chrome after disasters like Firefox Focus, Firefox Suggest, Leanplum or the TV series Mr. Robot extension that was silently installed.
- bombcar 4y agoPrivacy focused users who want to use the worst privacy OS in the history of the world have a hard time installing our privacy focused browser so they can use the default privacy suck search engine that is Google! I don’t know if anyone actually says that with a straight face.
- jupp0r 4y ago> Firefox Focus, Firefox Suggest, Leanplum or the TV series Mr. Robot extension
- woojoo666 4y agoYeah there was a lot of controversy around how Windows 11 made it difficult to change the default browser [1]: https://geeks.afela.org/news/microsoft/microsoft-reverses-windows-11s-annoying-default-browser-setting-changes/ https://geeks.afela.org/news/microsoft/microsoft-reverses-wi...
- phendrenad2 4y agoMaybe 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.
- ngcc_hk 4y agoAsk for pureness meant we do not deal with the dirtiness. Moz can bite its feeding hand. The real question is where are those who ask for pureness … I am not paying but you continue to fight for me?
- formerkrogemp 4y agoGoogle, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple all need their monopolies controlled and broken up. Developers and software need a reality check on their pay levels and valuations. We should get back to building more real shit instead of being the world's provider of advertising and PII theft.
- andsoitis 4y agowhat is Mozilla's business model?
- rvz 4y agoNone. Just being bank-rolled by Google's money.
- tannhaeuser 4y agoYeah Mozilla, wasn't it you who lended credibility to those pay-as-you-go wannabe "standardization bodies" W3C, WHATWG in the first place? To give us our modern web of shit nobody wanted, and where nearly every bit of the tech stack, from HTML (WHATWG), CSS (W3C), HTTP (IETF) was foobar'd by Google via their puppet organizations? That the HTML 5/WHATWG "process" and CSS is anti-competitive crap and unproven as a spec is already evident by no new browser engines having been coded from scratch; in fact, both Opera and MS (!) stopped development of their browsers due to completely and utterly unwarranted complexity. But you Mozilla stood by cheering, and taking Google's money, alienating your user base and sinking money into side projects instead. Calling for new antitrust law seems just a multi-year detour to keep the status quo when there's an enforcement and bribery problem: how was Google able to acquire DoubleClick and YouTube, and Facebook to acquire WhatsApp with Zuckerberg basically lying to most governments in the world? So you want a law to force Firefox onto iOS, including its inferior and power hungry rendering engine? Personally I'll be returning to using Mac OS later this year (after having used iOS the last three years), specifically to get away from the crap that fscking need-to-restart-now FF, and the frustratingly stalling or regressive PC hardware and O/S landscape has become.
- zugi 4y agoLongtime Firefox and Thunderbird user. I can't speak about Apple but in my experience on Android, Windows, and Linux it is trivially easy to install Firefox and make it the default web browser. Just earlier today I was browsing HN on Android in Firefox and two articles that I opened would load and display initially, but then the page would go blank and show only white. Refreshing showed the same behavior. So I switched to browsing with the DuckDuckGo mobile browser for now. So I was pretty frustrated to read this article. It's over-the-top self-congratulatory. Sheesh Mozilla, spend your time and money fixing and improving your product, and people will tell their friends to use it. Instead of lobbying the government based on misinformation about how hard and scary it is to make Firefox your default browser.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoThere is a good argument over the use of limited resources, but, as we likely all know from experience, best product does not always win -- the default product wins ( at least to a casual user ). I have some minor beefs with Mozilla, but not for fighting MS over defaults, because it is a bad use of those resources. Last time I checked, Win10 still has a very annoying tendency to reset defaults after update ( please correct me if I am wrong; it is possible this was finally corrected ).
- cokeandpepsi 4y agoI'm going to be honest, the only real way the government is going to be able to fight these 'monopolies' is slowly and surely funding alternatives, and implementing a few general regulations here and there that impede them these giant overly scoped anti-trust pushes will probably go no where and are to easy to fight
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- dado3212 4y agoAICOA feels wildly vague to me. It would make it unlawful to > materially restrict, impede, or unreasonably delay the capacity of a business user to access or interoperate with the same platform, operating system, or hardware or software features that are available to the products, services, or lines of business of the covered platform operator that compete or would compete with products or services offered by business users on the covered platform; TikTok and Snapchat compete with each other as "social networks". Size restraints aside, given that this law pretty much only affects like 4 companies, would this mean that Snapchat not building a cross-platform API for allowing an ad to be posted to TikTok would be illegal? It would seem like Snapchat is "materially restrict[ing]...the capacity of a business user to...interoperate with the same...software features that are available to the products...of the covered platform operator [TikTok] that compete...with products...offered by business users on the covered platform [Snapchat]".
- dado3212 4y agoAlso, you're not allowed to > preference the products, services, or lines of business of the covered platform operator over those of another business user on the covered platform in a manner that would materially harm competition I really like this when you think about the problem that it's trying to solve (Amazon ranking Amazon products at the top, or Google showing Google Flights above all other services). But in practice, how in the world is this enforceable/provable? Let's say you Google "flights from tucson to denver". If it shows Google Flights in the search results at all, whether it's above Expedia, or Yakak, or United, or something no one would use for that flight like Emirates, couldn't you argue in court that it's "preferencing the product of the covered platform"? How do you explain the output of a blackbox ML model? Even if you can exactly prove why a result was ordered the way it was, how do you prove that it's preferencing it? Doesn't any ordering according to the likelihood that a user will engage with the service have a chance of "harming competition"?
- scarface74 4y agoIf I had a VC firm, should HN be forced to give my post looking to hire the same prominence it gives their own? Should grocery stores not be allowed to market their own brands? Shouid a TV network not be allowed to market its own shows above that of competitors?
- bennysomething 4y agoHow's does gecko power tor?
- sgift 4y agoTor browser.
- bennysomething 4y agoYes I know but it certainly doesn't power tor, coming from Mozilla it seems a bit poor technically.
- jl2718 4y agoSelective enforcement and executive orders are replacing rule of law. This is impossible to decipher and interpret consistently. It goes the other way too, in that these platforms have a monopoly on de facto immunity from other regulatory action like illegal user content, hate speech, and accessibility. You are looking at the intractability and obsolescence of centralized governance in a digital world.
- aidaman 4y agolol thought this said antirust reform