25 ms·
FTC restores rigorous enforcement of law banning unfair methods of competition
- nailer 4y agoSo… they’re going to do something about the app store duopoly?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ClassyJacket 4y agoNo, but the EU is.
- threeseed 4y agoGiven what we saw in Netherlands with the dating apps this isn't going to make a single bit of difference. Yes Apple may be forced to allow alternate stores and payment methods. But they will still collect their percentage (in Netherlands it was standard 15% - 3% discount). What happened of course is that apps ended up being far more expensive on alternate stores than on Apple's one. And even worse for alternate stores is that it would be quite likely for technical reasons that your app could only be sold from one store. Which means you would have to give up the distribution of App Store for your largely insignificant one. And note that this was all found to be compliant with the government: https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/13/apple-dutch-dating-apps-payment-order-compliance/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/13/apple-dutch-dating-apps-pa...
- EMIRELADERO 4y agoThe DMA is much more broader and strict than what happened in the Netherlands. Besides, what would you pay Apple for, exactly, when not using the App Store?
- threeseed 4y agoYou would be paying Apple for the cost of using their platform. No different to how you pay a percentage of sales for using most game engines.
- EMIRELADERO 4y agoWhat platform? I already paid Apple for my use of iOS when I bought the phone. Are you implying people should pay Apple for making apps that call up iOS APIs? APIs that all the people who bought the phone and own a copy of iOS already paid for?
- yazaddaruvala 4y agoAs a customer you are implicitly if not explicitly buying an iOS device with the understanding it can only run iOS Apps. Apple's APIs are proprietary, and they charge 15-30% of all digital sales to to build an iOS App. This is not different than Epic charging X% for use of the Unreal Engine's APIs to build a game. That said, I would like to see Apple forced to document their hardware, and allow dual booting to other operating systems on their devices. While iOS can be AppStore wall garden, it should be possible for me to install Linux or Android on my iDevice / MacBook.
- EMIRELADERO 4y ago> This is not different than Epic charging X% for use of the Unreal Engine's APIs to build a game. It is completely different. You are distributing the Unreal Engine with every game you make. You aren't distributing any proprietary code with your iOS app, it only calls up APIs that are already paid for by the user and for which the user already has a copy. A good analogy would be me making a new control panel for a mechanical machine, where the panel has metal arms and rods that connect to the machine's original mechanisms to bring about a certain result that the machine itself would be incapable of bringing on its own. You wouldn't say I can't distribute that new panel I made because the original machine is patented, right?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- MR4D 4y agoI honestly think the government prefers it. Both app stores are American, and fewer people to call when they need a favor done.
- ridgered4 4y agoI wouldn't even rate the app store duopoly in my top 10 to go after to be honest. Things like the Luxottica group seem like much higher priorities to me.
- _2d30 4y agoReally? Sunglasses before control over the 100s of Millions of devices the vast majority of people use for hours every day?
- ArcticLandfall 4y ago> Sunglasses before control over the 100s of Millions of devices More importantly, medical eyeglasses that many people rely on to see properly.
- nerdponx 4y agoAs always, it's interesting to read any dissent to what sounds like "obviously a good thing": https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/P221202Section5PolicyWilsonDissentStmt.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/P221202Section5... There is also an interesting bit of back-and-forth between the dissent and one of the supporting statements: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Section5PolicyStmtKhanSlaughterBedoyaStmt.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Section5PolicyS... I'm still inclined to think it's a good thing. I'm not educated enough on this topic to agree or disagree with any of the commissioners' opinions, but the FTC is clearly interested in sending a signal to the public. I'm moderately optimistic, although it will be interesting to see what happens after the next presidential election. It's possible that the commissioners are concerned about it, and are trying to make some kind of mark and set precedent before they're all fired and replaced if a Republican (Trump?) takes office in 2024.
- themagician 4y agoIf they were really interested in sending a signal they would do something like shut down Amway. A company that is nothing more than a multi-billion dollar "legal" pyramid scheme which preys on the most vulnerable people in society operates with impunity and has for decades now. Literally brainwashes and robs MILLIONS of people on a daily basis. The FTC, FCC, and SEC are toothless against billionaires. Just like the IRS, they mainly focus on harassing small-time crooks these days because that's the easiest thing to do. The large scale fraudsters operate with absolute impunity. If anything these organizations actually act as a barrier to entry for people looking to get into fraud, because if you don't get big enough fast enough they will come after you. But once you hit a billion in revenue, you are golden.
- gruez 4y ago[deleted]
- themagician 4y agoAmway. Amway and all the clones. In the US you can run a pyramid scheme as long as you have enough money and political influence to do it “legally”.
- wesapien 4y agoI'll believe it when I see it. These people selectively apply the rules.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- throwayyy479087 4y agoI'm sure that this won't be applied to Amazon, Apple, Google - those donate to the right people. Pretty sure this will be applied to the Kochs, Exxon, etc. They all deserve it, of course, but there's a finger on the scales of justice and has been since the 90s.
- tremon 4y agoAnd they will continue to do so as long as corporate america is as lawless as it is. The FTC can't enforce the rules on everyone at the same time, so they have to choose their targets. And why should businesses play by the rules if in another 8 years at the most the FTC will be gutted again and the spectre ofenforcement disappears? The only way for this to change is if the corporations start skirting on the right side of the law, and they won't do that voluntarily unless the risk is sufficiently high (see e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley). Don't blame the FTC, blame the purposeful undermining by alternating administrations.
- CleverLikeAnOx 4y agoI wish loyalty programs would be considered unfair competition. They are a drain on society.
- ClassyJacket 4y agoI agree. I want the Tesco Meal Deal without the bastards tracking me.
- bombcar 4y ago"Areacode" 867-5309 usually works in the US.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- shaoonb 4y agoI think the parent comment was talking about a loyalty card discount at a supermarket that (I assume) only exists in the UK and Ireland.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jetpks 4y ago> I think the parent comment was talking about a loyalty card discount at a supermarket They are & so is the parent of your post. In the US, it's common for supermarket cashiers to lookup loyalty cards by the customer's phone number. The comment you replied to is saying that the phone number <area-code>-867-5309 is almost always tied to an existing loyalty card. Lots of people just give that phone number if they want the discounts without signing up.
- bombcar 4y agoYep, there may be a similar "famous" number in other countries. You can also get a copy of a barcode by various nefarious means, if needed.
- ghostbrainalpha 4y agoTicketmaster has been pissing on the FTC for 30 years. I'm not crossing my fingers for much, but anything they do at this point would be awesome.
- canucklady 4y agoYeah forcing Ticketmaster and Live Nation to unmerge, divest venues and reselling platforms, and preventing exclusive contracts with venues would be huge. Even in a very conservative interpretation of antitrust law there has clearly been an increase in prices to end consumers.
- 0cVlTeIATBs 4y agoThe conspiracy theory is the bands and venues also profit more from what ticketmaster does. Ticketmaster's raison d'etre is to be the punching bag.
- ninth_ant 4y agoFrom the perspective of “is this anti-competitive and hurting consumers” it’s irrelevant if Ticketmaster is the Big Bad End Guy or just a stooge. The important part is, anti-competitive behaviour leads to higher prices and lower levels of innovation.
- dmix 4y agoA small subset of the B2B-level customers always benefits from monopolies. But this only reduces competition in their own markets... in this case the limited set of musicians and record labels who succeed via special treatment by Ticketmaster's monopoly. Ultimately it harms more musicians/labels than it benefits. Especially in the long run. This shows that monopolies not only harm their own markets but plenty of sub-markets as well. The influence successful companies have on gov policy-making is one of the best arguments against ever more specialized gov intervention in markets. The best solution is gov policy that shuts down anti-competitive behaviour full-stop. Not creating specialized 200+ page bills that can be exploited by the big players (see how Dodd-Frank resulted in only 5 mega-banks controlling a market while tons of small/medium banks shut down due to their unrealistic requirements) - which is often what's pushed both by politicians and inadvertently by the public who buy into false narratives about punishing corporate greed.
- rdtwo 4y agoSo we’re going to fight mergers and acquisition’s when interest rates are so high they probably wouldn’t have happened anyway
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nostromo 4y agoThe effect on cheap money on anti-competitive practices is massive and almost nobody knows about it.
- munificent 4y agoCount me as one of the people who doesn't know about it. Can you explain more?
- ravel-bar-foo 4y agoI don't know about this specifically, but my guess is that when loans are cheap it is much easier to perform a leveraged buyout: taking out a loan on the assets of the company being acquired.
- nostromo 4y agoIt's dense, but here's a good paper on it: https://www.nber.org/papers/w25505 https://www.nber.org/papers/w25505 And here's a more accessible article about the relationship: https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/how-low-interest-rates-can-hurt-competition-and-economy https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/how-low-interest-rates-c...
- riazrizvi 4y agoA good thing, since fair methods of competition is the single differentiating policy of the USA that put it into a dominant world position over the last 200+ years. See Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson.
- MR4D 4y agoThe two big oceans on either side of us helped quite a bit. Not being an easy target of your enemies might matter more than any given policy.
- quadcore 4y agoIn that regard, having (almost) the whole population owning firearms is probably quite a strong deterent as well.
- edwnj 4y agoDoesn't make you an economic hegemon.. India is similarly protected by an ocean on both sides and the Himalayan mountains..
- VWWHFSfQ 4y agoIndia is directly bordered by their biggest rival that they have constant conflicts with.
- largepeepee 4y agoWell India didn't have an event where the locals that spoke different were massacred or reeducated/"civilized" like the other super powers of the US and China. Actually the idea of modern India is mostly a product of the British, so in that aspect they are a young nation.
- kazen44 4y agoTo add to this, decolonization of the british raj wasn't all roses and sunshine either. (the split of india and pakistan was especially)
- seanp2k2 4y agoAwesome, when can I expect to see an alternative to Comcast for high-speed (>=1gbps) internet in the Bay Area? The fact that all of Silicon Valley cannot solve this problem after decades is telling of the power of their monopoly.
- ec109685 4y agoAT&T Fiber is good.
- kelnos 4y agoI live in San Francisco, and my only option for high-speed is Comcast. AT&T's fiber trunk runs a block away from me, but they are unwilling to run fiber to my home, and have suggested it would be several tens of thousands of dollars if I were to get it done myself.
- anyfoo 4y agoI guess Sonic did not extend their network to your part of SF yet?
- MarkSweep 4y agoExcept that they make you use AT&T’s crappy router and charge you a monthly fee for it. I like Wave Broadband better where available.
- ec109685 4y agoThey don't charge a fee for me. And we disabled the wifi part of it and just have Eero do everything.
- anyfoo 4y agoSonic is fantastic.
- ViViDboarder 4y ago
- crazygringo 4y agoFollowing the links, here's the actual meat of what "unfair methods of competition" means [1, pg 9]: > There are two key criteria to consider when evaluating whether conduct goes beyond competition on the merits. First, the conduct may be coercive, exploitative, collusive, abusive, deceptive, predatory, or involve the use of economic power of a similar nature. It may also be otherwise restrictive or exclusionary, depending on the circumstances, as discussed below. Second, the conduct must tend to negatively affect competitive conditions. This may include, for example, conduct that tends to foreclose or impair the opportunities of market participants, reduce competition between rivals, limit choice, or otherwise harm consumers. > ...the second part of the principle examines whether the respondent’s conduct has a tendency to generate negative consequences; for instance, raising prices, reducing output, limiting choice, lowering quality, reducing innovation, impairing other market participants, or reducing the likelihood of potential or nascent competition. And selecting from some given examples [taken from pg 13-15]: > loyalty rebates, tying, bundling, and exclusive dealing arrangements that have the tendency to ripen into violations of the antitrust laws by virtue of industry conditions and the respondent’s position within the industry > de facto tying, bundling, exclusive dealing, or loyalty rebates that use market power in one market to entrench that power or impede competition in the same or a related market > using market power in one market to gain a competitive advantage in an adjacent market by, for example, utilizing technological incompatibilities to negatively impact competition in adjacent markets [1] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/P221202Section5PolicyStatement.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/P221202Section5...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- MajimasEyepatch 4y ago> de facto tying, bundling, exclusive dealing, or loyalty rebates that use market power in one market to entrench that power or impede competition in the same or a related market > using market power in one market to gain a competitive advantage in an adjacent market by, for example, utilizing technological incompatibilities to negatively impact competition in adjacent markets A few obvious targets that come to mind here are Amazon Prime and, to a lesser extent, Xbox GamePass.
- Nomentatus 4y agoNote that this statement, while semantically true, is highly misleading: "Congress passed the Federal Trade Commission Act in 1914 because it was unhappy with the enforcement of the Sherman Act, the original antitrust statute." In truth, the laws were harsher vs anticompetitive conduct before the Sherman Act was passed, with a history going back hundreds of years (in England) under the rubrick "Restraint of Trade." This was common law, not statute law. The Sherman Act was the first statute, true, but its main function was to kneecap common law penalties by limiting penalty amounts. President Harrison was sincere about limiting monopolies, according to his writings, at least, but it's not at all clear that sly John Sherman (brother of railroad president and General William Tecumsah Sherman), was.
- Nomentatus 4y agoI should have noted that I'm talking about the original Sherman Act, if you read the Sherman Act now, you're reading a longer document that does much more, it's been much revised over time, with broader, more expected agenda.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- abecedarius 4y agoDo you have a favorite short review of these issues from this point of view?
- Zigurd 4y agoTwitter's C-level privacy, compliance, and security management resigned today (yesterday maybe?). Twitter is currently under two FTC consent decrees. Probably unrelated to anticompetitive practices, but interesting timing.
- Communitivity 4y agoWith two major events in the news, I am wonder which of these (if either) may drivers for this. Is it door #1: Elon Musk allegedly violating FTC restrictions with Twitter changes? Or is it door #2: Binance seemingly doing a backstab of FTX and acquiring it, thereby throwing cryptoland into a panic? Or is it door #3: something completely different, or a combination of both?
- LegitShady 4y agoi have not read a single source that claimed musk violated ftc restrictions.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- threeseed 4y agoOr more likely neither. Because legislation like this takes a long time to produce since you have to meet with stakeholders, have lawyers review for loopholes etc.
- derefr 4y agoNeither; things like this are planned and scheduled on slower timescales than news cycles. This one is likely due Biden being done his "settling into office" period, and having begun (over the last 6–12 months) to push regulatory agencies under the executive into more democrat-oriented stances. If there was any recent event that caused the FTC to (be told to) "pull the trigger" on this, it was the midterm election effectively "taking the temperature of the country", and finding enough confidence remaining there to push through things like this without being likely to set off widespread discontentment in the news media.
- willcipriano 4y ago> The Policy Statement lays out the Commission’s approach to policing them. It is the result of many months of work across agency departments. If it was a particular event it would've happened many months ago.
- edwnj 4y ago[flagged]
- valeness 4y agoHow is this the worker owned means of production (communism)?
- ElfinTrousers 4y agoThis sounds nice...but talk is cheap. Let's see what the FTC actually does before we get excited.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fmajid 4y agoThis won't matter unless the courts in thrall to the Chicago School judicial activism of Robert Bork are curbed by Congress. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/robert-borks-america/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/robert-borks-america... (this is a conservative publication that can't be accused of having an axe to grind against Bork, BTW).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- FredPret 4y agoThanks for a fascinating read
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mdorazio 4y agoUnpopular opinion: I wish this law extended to startups using VC cash to offer products at artificially low prices. When done at sufficient scale (ex. Uber), it massively distorts markets and is very much anticompetitive, even if consumers benefit for some time.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dcgudeman 4y agoIt's unpopular because it's a bad idea. Sometimes products or services aren't unit economical at small scale and need to be subsidized until they are adopted en masse.
- codeisawesome 4y ago“Chip War” by Chris Miller describes how Silicon Valley first successfully pulled this off, when Robert Noyce spearheaded the selling of chips at or under manufacturing cost in the 60s to wean off dependence on government contracts and get regular customers interested. It did work in that instance, but I guess the real question is when & how that framework should be applied. A tempting idea is to judge whether or not the final good/service is indispensable for the users (and how likely monopoly can be established), such that prices can be raised to recoup the losses. But that alone doesn’t seem to be sufficient as shown by the MoviePass collapse. Lots of ingredients to get right!
- surement 4y agoHow is it anticompetitive? Charging lower prices means making less profit. If Uber somehow lost money to drive out competitors (an insane strategy), then the capital of any bankrupted taxi company could be bought up for cheaper than the company originally paid by someone who could then continue to compete with Uber.
- notacoward 4y agoIf a company used its own prior profits, or profits from another product line, to lower prices and drive a competitor out of business before raising prices again, that would be illegal. Why is it any different when the subsidy comes from outside?
- WalterBright 4y agoWhen selecting a price for your product, you have three choices: 1. lower than the competition - unfair competition, dumping, predatory pricing 2. same as the competition - collusion, price fixing 3. higher than the competition - gouging, profiteering All three price points are illegal.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dheera 4y agoClearly the answer is a price that isn't disclosed online, and requires the customer to fill out a form disclosing their name ("ethnicity"), address ("socioeconomic status"), and title/company ("education level") before they can receive a quote on the item. /s
- lesuorac 4y agoExcept they're not. 1) If your costs are legitimately less than the competition then charging less is not illegal. If you're taking a loss to gain market share and then upping the price once the competitors go out of business that's a problem. 2) Have you seen gas stations? If setting your price to be the same was illegal there'd be so many convicted people. 3) I don't remember profiteering being illegal. Literally a ton of companies have been recording record profit and certainly people have been complaining but who was fined/imprisoned? Martin Shkreli wasn't convicted of profiteering cause it's not a crime.
- WalterBright 4y ago> are legitimately less Cost accounting is not a rigorous discipline. It involves a lot of assumptions, guesswork, and handwaving. > taking a loss to gain market share and then upping the price once the competitors go out of business that's a problem. Present a case history of this. > If setting your price to be the same They rarely seem to be at the same price > I don't remember profiteering being illegal Remember all those anti-gouging laws? Warren wants to extend them. https://fee.org/articles/why-elizabeth-warrens-proposed-anti-price-gouging-law-would-be-a-national-disaster/ https://fee.org/articles/why-elizabeth-warrens-proposed-anti...
- theknocker 4y ago
- chiefalchemist 4y ago> Policy statement renews agency’s commitment to exercising Classic Uncle Sam newspeak. If there previously was commitment, there'd be no need for restatement and/or renewal. Put another way, this is a shameless way of saying, "We've been slacking." Bold. That aside, taking it on its word, this type of hard left turns are counter-productive. No one - business or society - likes surprises. They need to set a standard, *do their jobs*, and stick to it. They might also want to send a memo to The Fed asking they refrain from pouring gas on the fire that ultimately benefits those best positioned to capitalize on said pouring. This swerve left only means there'll eventually be a swerve right. And back again. Hardly an effective approach.
- shmerl 4y agoSo Apple is finally going to allow competing browsers on iOS and be held accountable for not doing it until now?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kuwoze 4y agoMy take on this: the stock market tanked, us congress and senate members already sold all their stocks, and now they told the FTC it's safe to go after big tech.
- impalallama 4y agoInteresting idea but wouldn’t stocks and companies being weak incite further protectionism rather than the opposite?
- TheRealNGenius 4y ago