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Apple doesn't match the description of a monopoly, as far as I can see. Amazon might. But Google is dominant. You could add Facebook to the monopolies, unless y
by tgv 2y ago
Apple doesn't match the description of a monopoly, as far as I can see. Amazon might. But Google is dominant. You could add Facebook to the monopolies, unless you think it shares the same space as Twitter.
- Workaccount2 2y agoYou generally cannot have friends as an American under 25 without owning an iPhone. Outside of HN tech heads, regular young Americans use phones that "can send pictures that don't look like garbage!". I consider Apple by far the most insidious, since they leverage your friends and family against you to put heavy social penalties on not submitting. They then use this dominance to bend devs to their will, and take an egregious cut of their profits while doing it.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoWhatsApp offers very simple high quality image/video sharing. If you are being excluded by your friends, it’s not because the image quality is bad. It’s because they want to exclude you.
- merlindru 2y agoEveryone already uses iMessage. It's like getting everyone in the EU to switch to Signal because Meta owns WhatsApp: it's impossible. There's not enough incentive to switch off of the current solution because the hurdles to doing so is getting everyone else to do so. If your family & friends use WhatsApp, they'll eventually be "pressured" by others to use iMessage, simply because the people that they know don't use WhatsApp. This effect cascades, and now everyone is back to <existing solution> since the "pain" that solution inflicts on a couple individuals is not nearly big enough to make everyone switch.
- Workaccount2 2y agoWhy would I get a whatsapp when I already have a perfectly working messaging app? Everyone needs to download this random app because one kid is too broke to get an iphone? Some people are painfully unaware of what it looks like on the ground here...
- lotsofpulp 2y agoYes, if your friends and family are too lazy or unwilling to take 30 seconds to install a very widely used app for you, you are getting a valuable signal from them on where you rank in their social graph.
- throw-the-towel 2y agoLecturing people on their morals is fun but painfully useless. Peer pressure exists, and corps know how to leverage it, and that's a fact that we need to deal with.