Gruber is part of a strain of thought that masks anti-anti-monopolist beliefs behind the idea of "realism", as Cory Doctorow describes it[0] (the same category

Gruber is part of a strain of thought that masks anti-anti-monopolist beliefs behind the idea of "realism", as Cory Doctorow describes it[0] (the same category blogs like Techdirt belong to). Basically he's operating under the idea that big tech is so massive that any attempt to regulate big tech will fail and just eliminate the smaller competitors in the market (they're arguing that anti-monopolist actions fit the idea of a "compliance moat", where entry in the market is made so difficult by regulations to the point where only big players can exist. A basic example of a deliberate compliance moat are banks - there's an absolute truckload of laws and regulations before you can become a bank because if you're going to keep people's money, you need to be goddamn careful with what you do with it. At least in theory; enforcement of banking regulations has been spotty before and that's why the 2008 banking crisis both occurred and saw almost no legal punishment for those involved.) You can see this with his other articles on the DMA, where he argues that the EU (or Japan in the case of the recent law they passed, see other commenter) are doing this specifically because they want to punish US big tech[1][2][3], rather than acknowledging the fact that these companies all being US giants is a mere coincidence and this would have happened regardless. Even if the monopolist manages to mask himself behind good PR (which Apple has), they're still a monopolist. It's just that the digital age created a new type of monopoly: the platform/ecosystem monopoly, where a company that on paper has other options available in its market, is able to lock in it's business partners and make them unable to move because of the sheer size of it's existing customer network (whilst also keeping those same customers locked to the platform in a vicious cycle). Apple is but one example (and arguably the most egregious as they exploit and enforce theirs to a degree that's pretty extreme), but most of GAFAM operate their own platform monopolies with varying degrees of abuse. It also goes hand-in-hand with absolutely bizarre arguments and misunderstandings surrounding the GDPR[1]. In their heads the destruction of the EU digital tracking market while (US) big tech washes it's hands of the regulation presents itself as a failed anti-competitive measure rather than the clear intent which is to well, destroy the digital tracking market in the EU, which is what the GDPR is entirely about. (Since the EU considers digital tracking to be unethical and a violation of the right to privacy.) The weird thing is that both Techdirt and Gruber are otherwise pretty clearly pro-consumer rights but have this almost absurd belief in the free market self-regulating without laws while a free market without laws (well, they're mostly unenforced or weakly enforced) is what got us here to begin with. [0]: https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/ https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/ [1]: https://daringfireball.net/2024/04/edpb_meta_pay_or_ok https://daringfireball.net/2024/04/edpb_meta_pay_or_ok [2]: https://daringfireball.net/2024/01/apples_plans_for_the_dma https://daringfireball.net/2024/01/apples_plans_for_the_dma [3]: https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/ec_non_compliance_investigations https://daringfireball.net/2024/03/ec_non_compliance_investi...