4 ms·

Perhaps the monopoly law should be changed to adapt to multiple scales. E.g. you shouldn't be able to use product 1 that has 100Y market in A to create any adv

Perhaps the monopoly law should be changed to adapt to multiple scales. E.g. you shouldn't be able to use product 1 that has 100Y market in A to create any advantage for product 2 in market B if you know user uses competitor in B who's market in B is < 10Y (e.g. 10x less than market of product 1). For example if you have 2B market in OS you should not be allowed to use OS to advertise your own browser to user who uses another browser with under 200M users. That would also cover Apple exerting power over 50,000 installation apps. And by "know" here I mean that if you know user is not using your product yet, you must check the condition or not be allowed to use the advantage (e.g. either you should see Chrome ads in Chrome, or Google cant advertise Chrome to Edge users).

_heimdall 3y ago
How would a regulation like that actually be enforced? Whenever a regulation compares against what you "know" it is usually pretty easy to just not look, or claim that you numbers were inaccurate, or that team A knew but team B which implemented feature didn't (potentially even claiming that's a privacy feature by protecting user data). Even more difficult, the stats needed would be owned by the same party. I.e. Microsoft would be the one collecting and owning data of what apps a user already installed, and Google would be doing the same for any pertinent data related to Chrome use and advertising. Its effectively a black box to regulators, they would be asking MS for their own internal data that both sides already know must fit a very specifically defined legal requirement. This is exactly how VW got away with fudging the numbers on diesel regulations for so long.
- lostmsu 3y ago
  That's why the knowing caveat. E.g. either you HAVE to advertise to your own users (so if your browser is already the default, you still have to show the notification to suggest to change), or you are treated as if you know, and then you can't advertise based on the 10x rule. To put it differently you can't hide ad for Chrome users and then pretend you did not know others used FF.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    How would the regulator know when you break the rules though? I may very well be misunderstanding the idea here, but it still seems like it would come down to (for example) Microsoft being required to limit how they send user notifications/recommendations based on Microsoft's own internal analytics for user metrics. For the Chrome example, the regulator would have to know how Google's proprietary ad targeting algorithm works to confirm that it doesn't target based on user agent or browser manufacturer. I'm not sure how the regulators would really be able to pull that off any better than regulators asking VW software for VW diesel emissions measurements.
    - lostmsu 3y ago
      Users will report it. 3rd parties could collect statistics.
- lostmsu 3y ago
  As for stats: at least in software you can definitely get independent sources of statistics.
  - _heimdall 3y ago
    That might be possible, I'd be really curious how. For something like data on what apps a user has installed, what hardware they're on, etc those data really would be first-party analytics. Some things can be collected through third party sources, though that depends on those third party tools being used, not being blocked by a user, and on API access for those third party tools to collect the necessary data. I would hope such regulations wouldn't depend on regulating specific API design, but that could be necessary.
    - lostmsu 3y ago
      You are overthinking. In the Internet age it is pretty easy to learn that Google never shows "Use Chrome" banner to users of Chrome.

_heimdall 3y ago

How would a regulation like that actually be enforced? Whenever a regulation compares against what you "know" it is usually pretty easy to just not look, or claim that you numbers were inaccurate, or that team A knew but team B which implemented feature didn't (potentially even claiming that's a privacy feature by protecting user data). Even more difficult, the stats needed would be owned by the same party. I.e. Microsoft would be the one collecting and owning data of what apps a user already installed, and Google would be doing the same for any pertinent data related to Chrome use and advertising. Its effectively a black box to regulators, they would be asking MS for their own internal data that both sides already know must fit a very specifically defined legal requirement. This is exactly how VW got away with fudging the numbers on diesel regulations for so long.

lostmsu 3y ago
That's why the knowing caveat. E.g. either you HAVE to advertise to your own users (so if your browser is already the default, you still have to show the notification to suggest to change), or you are treated as if you know, and then you can't advertise based on the 10x rule. To put it differently you can't hide ad for Chrome users and then pretend you did not know others used FF.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  How would the regulator know when you break the rules though? I may very well be misunderstanding the idea here, but it still seems like it would come down to (for example) Microsoft being required to limit how they send user notifications/recommendations based on Microsoft's own internal analytics for user metrics. For the Chrome example, the regulator would have to know how Google's proprietary ad targeting algorithm works to confirm that it doesn't target based on user agent or browser manufacturer. I'm not sure how the regulators would really be able to pull that off any better than regulators asking VW software for VW diesel emissions measurements.
  - lostmsu 3y ago
    Users will report it. 3rd parties could collect statistics.
lostmsu 3y ago
As for stats: at least in software you can definitely get independent sources of statistics.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  That might be possible, I'd be really curious how. For something like data on what apps a user has installed, what hardware they're on, etc those data really would be first-party analytics. Some things can be collected through third party sources, though that depends on those third party tools being used, not being blocked by a user, and on API access for those third party tools to collect the necessary data. I would hope such regulations wouldn't depend on regulating specific API design, but that could be necessary.
  - lostmsu 3y ago
    You are overthinking. In the Internet age it is pretty easy to learn that Google never shows "Use Chrome" banner to users of Chrome.