4 ms·

Probably because unlike 25 years ago, US lawmakers and enforcers, realized a large chunk of their economic dominance is dependent on big-tech abusing their mark

Probably because unlike 25 years ago, US lawmakers and enforcers, realized a large chunk of their economic dominance is dependent on big-tech abusing their market position as gatekeepers, so they intentionally look away when they see how much of their GDP these companies bring in, not to mention aiding the US dragnet mass-surveillance capabilities being the icing on the cake. What else are they gonna do to earn $? It's not like the world is lining up to buy their ultra reliable and high quality cars and planes. Sorry for the tongue in cheek.

lapcat 3y ago
That's a nice sounding story, but what actually happened was that George W. Bush was awarded the Presidency after a 5-4 Supreme Court vote stopped the recount in Florida, and the Bush DoJ announced a slap on the wrist for Microsoft just a few days before 9/11, which wiped the story off the map, and everyone forgot. (I'm not suggesting a 9/11 conspiracy, by the way.)
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  So Bush is to blame for the war on terror AND for failing to regulate Microsoft? Wow, just when I thought that being a war criminal was enough of a reason to be hated, now comes the cherry on top.
- votepaunchy 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - lapcat 3y ago
    This very misleading. It was an unusual per curiam opinion, not attributed to specific justices. The anonymous author of the opinion, who turned out to be Kennedy, “included Souter, Breyer and Stevens as agreeing that there were equal protection "problems" without consulting them.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore#Equal_Protection_Clause_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore#Equal_Protection_...
- bsdpufferfish 3y ago
  I hadn't considered that people might still be complaining about Florida in 2000 in light of 2020.
  - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    what happened in 2020?
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      accusations by Trump of getting the election stolen from him. Personally, I think there were shenanigans going on and we should be investigating them but I also feel like the hanging chads was a far bigger issue than the shenanigans that happened in 2020. I don't believe the election was stolen but I also don't believe it's everyone's imagination that some shady shit was going on in places. I suspect that kind of crap happens every election.
      - Timon3 3y ago
        Every election will have some shady stuff going on from all participating parties if it's big enough. But it's important to remember that every election has even more stuff going on that can look shady from the outside, but is absolutely normal on further inspection. 2020 was special because the sitting president (who has accused others of election and voter fraud against him in AFAIR every election he's been part of) has primed his emotionally invested base to expect fraud everywhere. They saw a bunch of things they thought were shady, part of which were caused by unrealistic expectations (e.g. "I can just show up and be Poll Watcher without registering beforehand"). If you are aware of shady going-ons that have not been investigated I'm open to hear them, but all the occurrences I've seen have been investigated and explained - but since many people aren't open to normal explanations, the fraud idea keeps and keeps on festering.
        PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        this is a contradiction. If every election has some shady things happen then it's not possible for every bit of shadiness to be explained as anything other than shadiness. So was there shadiness or wasn't there? A lot of it can be explained away, which is why I said the hanging chad issue was a bigger problem. but ALL of it? I don't think so, even at the time there were a few things that gave me pause.
tomas789 3y ago
Usually, I would not engage with this kind of conspiracy theory like comments but I think that this particular case has some merit. We are solid in a gray zone where we have to decide where are priorities are. Fair market vs tech dominance in US is a great example. Another one is carbon neutrality vs strong industry in EU. I’m sure there are so many others. It is just important to keep that in mind when building your business because we can easily slide from one side of this gray zone to the other.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  It's not a conspiracy theory, i'm not quite sure even how that term could possibly apply -- since this describes the ordinary practice of politics. The modern republican party does not support anti-trust enforcement, or indeed, most executive enforcement of anti-corporate regulations. So when they are in office, there isnt any. There's been some increasing bipartisan support for anti-tech anti-trust because republicans perceive them to be (largely accurately) biased towards the cultural left.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    The Republicans would be exposing the thinking that has resulted in them losing almost every culture war battle in the last ... I don't know how long. The bureaucracies enforcing anti-trust will lean left. Eventually there will be a bias of anti-trust action used to break up any companies that look to be helping Republican candidate elected. It'll be these Donald Trump court cases all over again. What actually works for the right is free markets. Turns out if they just leave YouTube alone they get Rumble. If they ignore Twitter they get X. If Amazon makes a habit of booting right-wing sites, there will be a right wing version of Amazon. There are more than enough right wing media consumers for a free market to reward right-leaning content. Anti-trust will eventually lead to overregulation and lock in of companies hostile to the right in general and republicans in particular. There is a much better argument for anti-trust to try and defuse the risk of a vast an hasty flash-mob forming and doing something stupid, but as a political response it just isn't going to be effective.
    - 3y ago
latexr 3y ago
> big-tech abusing their market position as gatekeepers No no, you see, that is called “innovation”. And whenever the EU does anything to try to curtail those abuses of power, what they are doing is stifling innovation. Because as we all know, the one thing that matters in life is growth growth growth, particularly company growth, and there’s nothing more innovative than coming up with ways to exploit people’s privacy and attention for profit. And if you can get the ones exploited to rally in your favour, you’ve hit the jackpot. All hail corporate America, let’s raise a glass to the obscenely rich getting richer at the expense of everyone else, that is working out great. https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
- withinboredom 3y ago
  > the one thing that matters in life is growth growth growth, particularly company growth, and there’s nothing more innovative than coming up with ways to exploit people’s privacy and attention for profit. But wait, there's more! The only reason growth is pushed for so hard is because most of the investors are retired or retiring soon and don't want to work any more. If the companies stop growing then their stock prices might go down. They gambled hard when they removed pensions from US companies and they can't lose the game before they die!
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > most of the investors are retired or retiring soon Where are you getting this? Baby Boomers are smoothly transitioning their share of stock ownership to younger generations [1]. [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/#quarter:127;series:Corporate%20equities%20and%20mutual%20fund%20shares;demographic:generation;population:all;units:shares;range:2004.2,2021.2 https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      I don't know if you are making a joke, because the data says the exact opposite. When the silent generation had 55% of the "total wealth" (and declining), boomers had 40% of the remainder, but now boomers have 55% (and climbing, instead of declining), and the younger generations only have 26% (combined). It looks like they are still hoarding (for lack of a better term) wealth than relinquishing it.
drooopy 3y ago
All I can think of is where we'd be as a species now, at least technologically, If Microsoft, Apple, IBM or even Commodore and Atari had similar abilities since the 70s to restrict what kind of software developers can make and publish for their platforms...
- pavlov 3y ago
  There have always been walled garden software platforms. Nintendo is a very successful example from the Commodore/Atari era.
  - malermeister 3y ago
    Nintendos are specifically gaming devices, though. Smartphones are general purpose computing platforms.
    - paulmd 3y ago
      This is an artificial marketing distinction that you’ve bought into. And insofar as any particular apps exist or don’t on switch, it’s purely a result of gatekeeper decisions on the part of Nintendo - Nintendo keeps there from being an email client or an office suite and that’s the reason you perceive it as “just a gaming device”. They’ve gatekept successfully. This is the problem, there really isn’t a coherent threshold between switch and iPhone or a reason console vendors shouldn’t be equally considered general purpose devices other than marketing. You could plug in some usb peripherals and run office suites on a PlayStation just fine.
      - Jensson 3y ago
        > This is an artificial marketing distinction that you’ve bought into No, nobody buys a nintendo to do banking on them. I bought a phone since I needed it to do banking. This is a real difference, not just a marketing distinction. > it’s purely a result of gatekeeper decisions on the part of Nintendo Yes, and that gatekeeper power ensures Nintendo isn't a general purpose device. If they allowed it to be a general purpose device like Apple did with phones then things would be different. Controlling such a major share of general purpose devices like Apple does is a serious issue. Controlling a share of gaming computing like Nintendo doesn't matter nearly as much, so therefore lawmakers aren't going after them to the same degree. It doesn't matter if technically they are the same, in practice one doesn't cause issues for society while the other one does.
pokepim 3y ago
[dead]

lapcat 3y ago

That's a nice sounding story, but what actually happened was that George W. Bush was awarded the Presidency after a 5-4 Supreme Court vote stopped the recount in Florida, and the Bush DoJ announced a slap on the wrist for Microsoft just a few days before 9/11, which wiped the story off the map, and everyone forgot. (I'm not suggesting a 9/11 conspiracy, by the way.)

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
So Bush is to blame for the war on terror AND for failing to regulate Microsoft? Wow, just when I thought that being a war criminal was enough of a reason to be hated, now comes the cherry on top.
votepaunchy 3y ago
[flagged]
- lapcat 3y ago
  This very misleading. It was an unusual per curiam opinion, not attributed to specific justices. The anonymous author of the opinion, who turned out to be Kennedy, “included Souter, Breyer and Stevens as agreeing that there were equal protection "problems" without consulting them.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore#Equal_Protection_Clause_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore#Equal_Protection_...
bsdpufferfish 3y ago
I hadn't considered that people might still be complaining about Florida in 2000 in light of 2020.
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  what happened in 2020?
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    accusations by Trump of getting the election stolen from him. Personally, I think there were shenanigans going on and we should be investigating them but I also feel like the hanging chads was a far bigger issue than the shenanigans that happened in 2020. I don't believe the election was stolen but I also don't believe it's everyone's imagination that some shady shit was going on in places. I suspect that kind of crap happens every election.
    - Timon3 3y ago
      Every election will have some shady stuff going on from all participating parties if it's big enough. But it's important to remember that every election has even more stuff going on that can look shady from the outside, but is absolutely normal on further inspection. 2020 was special because the sitting president (who has accused others of election and voter fraud against him in AFAIR every election he's been part of) has primed his emotionally invested base to expect fraud everywhere. They saw a bunch of things they thought were shady, part of which were caused by unrealistic expectations (e.g. "I can just show up and be Poll Watcher without registering beforehand"). If you are aware of shady going-ons that have not been investigated I'm open to hear them, but all the occurrences I've seen have been investigated and explained - but since many people aren't open to normal explanations, the fraud idea keeps and keeps on festering.
      - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        this is a contradiction. If every election has some shady things happen then it's not possible for every bit of shadiness to be explained as anything other than shadiness. So was there shadiness or wasn't there? A lot of it can be explained away, which is why I said the hanging chad issue was a bigger problem. but ALL of it? I don't think so, even at the time there were a few things that gave me pause.

tomas789 3y ago

Usually, I would not engage with this kind of conspiracy theory like comments but I think that this particular case has some merit. We are solid in a gray zone where we have to decide where are priorities are. Fair market vs tech dominance in US is a great example. Another one is carbon neutrality vs strong industry in EU. I’m sure there are so many others. It is just important to keep that in mind when building your business because we can easily slide from one side of this gray zone to the other.

mjburgess 3y ago
It's not a conspiracy theory, i'm not quite sure even how that term could possibly apply -- since this describes the ordinary practice of politics. The modern republican party does not support anti-trust enforcement, or indeed, most executive enforcement of anti-corporate regulations. So when they are in office, there isnt any. There's been some increasing bipartisan support for anti-tech anti-trust because republicans perceive them to be (largely accurately) biased towards the cultural left.
- roenxi 3y ago
  The Republicans would be exposing the thinking that has resulted in them losing almost every culture war battle in the last ... I don't know how long. The bureaucracies enforcing anti-trust will lean left. Eventually there will be a bias of anti-trust action used to break up any companies that look to be helping Republican candidate elected. It'll be these Donald Trump court cases all over again. What actually works for the right is free markets. Turns out if they just leave YouTube alone they get Rumble. If they ignore Twitter they get X. If Amazon makes a habit of booting right-wing sites, there will be a right wing version of Amazon. There are more than enough right wing media consumers for a free market to reward right-leaning content. Anti-trust will eventually lead to overregulation and lock in of companies hostile to the right in general and republicans in particular. There is a much better argument for anti-trust to try and defuse the risk of a vast an hasty flash-mob forming and doing something stupid, but as a political response it just isn't going to be effective.
  - 3y ago

latexr 3y ago

> big-tech abusing their market position as gatekeepers No no, you see, that is called “innovation”. And whenever the EU does anything to try to curtail those abuses of power, what they are doing is stifling innovation. Because as we all know, the one thing that matters in life is growth growth growth, particularly company growth, and there’s nothing more innovative than coming up with ways to exploit people’s privacy and attention for profit. And if you can get the ones exploited to rally in your favour, you’ve hit the jackpot. All hail corporate America, let’s raise a glass to the obscenely rich getting richer at the expense of everyone else, that is working out great. https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

withinboredom 3y ago
> the one thing that matters in life is growth growth growth, particularly company growth, and there’s nothing more innovative than coming up with ways to exploit people’s privacy and attention for profit. But wait, there's more! The only reason growth is pushed for so hard is because most of the investors are retired or retiring soon and don't want to work any more. If the companies stop growing then their stock prices might go down. They gambled hard when they removed pensions from US companies and they can't lose the game before they die!
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > most of the investors are retired or retiring soon Where are you getting this? Baby Boomers are smoothly transitioning their share of stock ownership to younger generations [1]. [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/#quarter:127;series:Corporate%20equities%20and%20mutual%20fund%20shares;demographic:generation;population:all;units:shares;range:2004.2,2021.2 https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    I don't know if you are making a joke, because the data says the exact opposite. When the silent generation had 55% of the "total wealth" (and declining), boomers had 40% of the remainder, but now boomers have 55% (and climbing, instead of declining), and the younger generations only have 26% (combined). It looks like they are still hoarding (for lack of a better term) wealth than relinquishing it.

drooopy 3y ago

All I can think of is where we'd be as a species now, at least technologically, If Microsoft, Apple, IBM or even Commodore and Atari had similar abilities since the 70s to restrict what kind of software developers can make and publish for their platforms...

pavlov 3y ago
There have always been walled garden software platforms. Nintendo is a very successful example from the Commodore/Atari era.
- malermeister 3y ago
  Nintendos are specifically gaming devices, though. Smartphones are general purpose computing platforms.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    This is an artificial marketing distinction that you’ve bought into. And insofar as any particular apps exist or don’t on switch, it’s purely a result of gatekeeper decisions on the part of Nintendo - Nintendo keeps there from being an email client or an office suite and that’s the reason you perceive it as “just a gaming device”. They’ve gatekept successfully. This is the problem, there really isn’t a coherent threshold between switch and iPhone or a reason console vendors shouldn’t be equally considered general purpose devices other than marketing. You could plug in some usb peripherals and run office suites on a PlayStation just fine.
    - Jensson 3y ago
      > This is an artificial marketing distinction that you’ve bought into No, nobody buys a nintendo to do banking on them. I bought a phone since I needed it to do banking. This is a real difference, not just a marketing distinction. > it’s purely a result of gatekeeper decisions on the part of Nintendo Yes, and that gatekeeper power ensures Nintendo isn't a general purpose device. If they allowed it to be a general purpose device like Apple did with phones then things would be different. Controlling such a major share of general purpose devices like Apple does is a serious issue. Controlling a share of gaming computing like Nintendo doesn't matter nearly as much, so therefore lawmakers aren't going after them to the same degree. It doesn't matter if technically they are the same, in practice one doesn't cause issues for society while the other one does.

pokepim 3y ago

[dead]