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This will sadly be the end of FCC/FTC and all the antitrust efforts that were graining steam over the last few years.
by paxys 2y ago
This will sadly be the end of FCC/FTC and all the antitrust efforts that were graining steam over the last few years.
- nsokolsky 2y ago[flagged]
- dang 2y agoPlease make your substantive points thoughtfully, and omit name-calling, as the site guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nsokolsky 2y agoHello, I apologize! I've edited the comment now to be much better, thank you for your feedback.
- PeakKS 2y agoThe FTC would be well within their duties to obliterate every single tech company in existence
- compootr 2y ago> Lina Khan's policies were very harmful for the tech sector As they should! It's quite literally the whole reason they exist. Email unsubscribe links have worked well, and click-to-cancel hopefully can too! The only opponents of these policies are massive companies who rely on predatorial dark patterns. Everyone with a brain should support these "wasteful policies" because they benefit consumers. I absolutely LOVE having one link to instantly stop being emailed from mailing lists, and I can't be happier for click-to-cancel and related legislation. "oh no, big tech company XYZ will make 0.0001% less money this year!!!" is the energy you're giving
- hackernewds 2y agocelebrating saving some clicks vs entire livelihoods jobs and industries for actual people, is the kind of elite disconnect that Trump exploited to win
- nsokolsky 2y ago>Email unsubscribe links have worked well, and click-to-cancel hopefully can too! Yes but that's not what my complaints about the FTC are. My complaint is about them trying to stop Microsoft from buying Blizzard or trying to stop Adobe from buying Figma. I don't believe there's such a thing as 'monopoly on video games' or 'monopoly on website design software'. Them working on general, consumer-friendly, sane policies is fine! But they shouldn't be preventing M&As/investments unless critical goods are involved without a substitute - which Call of Duty and Figma clearly aren't.
- mrkeen 2y agoWould your arguments be any different if you switched them arbitrarily? Why can't monopolies instead be "very harmful for the tech sector", and Lina Khan's policies be "not a big deal"?
- nsokolsky 2y agoMonopolies can only be harmful for essential goods that don't have alternatives. The water supply is essential. Access to the internet can (perhaps) be essential. "Software to design website mocks" is definitely not essential.
- behringer 2y agoPrepare for the end of net neutrality, again.
- vuln 2y agoEveryone already dead from the last time it was ended.
- trinsic2 2y agoI see this first hand. In my town, ATT owns the lines that supply our street that has fiber and our local ISP Sonic.net is prevented from using these lines to provide service. Its my worry that our local ISP's ability to do business in a market dominated by Comcast and ATT is going to be majorly impacted and its only going to get worse. Not saying it would be prevented if Dems where in office because they pretty much tow the corporate anti-competition line but are much more quiet about it.
- _hyn3 2y agoWho paid for those lines?
- behringer 2y agoThe customer
- horsawlarway 2y agoI mean - generally speaking the US taxpayer did. If you're curious - you can see this funding here: https://fundingmap.fcc.gov/home https://fundingmap.fcc.gov/home The most recent of which was BEAD (The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program) which allocated 42.45 BILLION in broadband rollout funding. If you think those companies are paying for the lines out of their pocket... you are very confused about the economics of broadband rollout. The best case is that they are loans at sweetheart rates that translate into additional subscriber fees tacked onto the customers. Most times it's just literal grant cash, though. --- So to recap - you and I paid for those lines. Sure as fuck wasn't ATT.
- internet101010 2y agoAnd the DoJ, who recently sued RealPage for engaging in a price fixing scheme that has played a large role in the rise in rents across the country.
- api 2y agoPrice fixing only works if supply is constrained via some kind of cartel, which cities often have by way of density limits and NIMBYism. Not a Trump voter, but this is a huge area where many Democrats are flat wrong. Talking to some Democrats about the supply problem with housing is like talking to some Republicans about why a hard line abortion ban makes maternal mortality go up. It can’t possibly be true because the ideology says it can’t be true.
- trinsic2 2y agoThere is collusion between real-estate owners and property management software companies that are using Large Language models to keep prices high. This has nothing to do with cartels. Here is an article [0] that talks about the issue. This is a real problem driven by this collusion, don't act like it isn't. And now that Trump is in office, these kinds of investigations are going to disappear and the housing crisis is going to get worse. [0]: https://thehustle.co/why-is-rent-skyrocketing https://thehustle.co/why-is-rent-skyrocketing
- bluesroo 2y agoI don't think they believe collusion isn't happening. I think the argument above is that democrats are one of the drivers of building restrictions, leading to the ability to collude. If new entrants to the market were plentiful then the existing cartels would be undercut. Also, rent control puts a tight lock on the rental market by forcing landlords to keep their rents high lest they become locked into the low rents they may otherwise offer. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader whether to be on board with that assessment, but there is a reasonable argument to be made that a free-er market could actually benefit housing costs.
- cm2187 2y agoDon't think Trump is a great friend of Google
- prince_nerd 2y agoHe can be. He is extremely transactional in nature. So it's all about the right incentives for him.
- chucke1992 2y agoConsidering how Google was suppressing the stuff related to elections - not showing Rogan's video, not showing directions (and was called out multiple times by Twitter and Musk) to voting locations etc. I don't think the new admistration will be nice to Google.
- ethbr1 2y ago> by Twitter and Musk Is there a difference? I thought Twitter was Musk's broadcast platform.
- ajross 2y agoThe directions thing was debunked repeatedly, including by Google itself, to which Musk himself responded in public with thanks for clearing up the confusion. Very weird to see it repeated here on HN. Basically: it's because "Harris" is a county name in Texas.
- m463 2y agolol. I remember trying to navigate to "aqui" which is a restaurant and it dropped a pin where I was. (aqui means here in spanish)
- hackeraccount 2y agoSo you're saying he's a politician?
- palata 2y agoGood that Europe is working on that to some extent, I guess?
- chucke1992 2y ago[flagged]
- palata 2y agoI don't understand what this means.
- chucke1992 2y agodue to amount of regulations it is hard to start business in europe and thus they mainly have old business (like BMW etc.) that are in decline. but innovation happens in other places. There are two exceptions though - France (partially) and Sweden.
- palata 2y agoRight, I guess it depends on your metric. Happiness, someone?
- chucke1992 2y agohappiness ends when your economy goes down the drain.
- FirmwareBurner 2y agoProblem is European youth and pensioners can't see the connection, so they keep voting for more taxes on the middle earning class to pay for more welfare and higher pensions.
- palata 2y ago
- chucke1992 2y agothey will probably merge FTC back into DOJ
- stronglikedan 2y agoWouldn't that have already happened, given that he was already president for four years?
- galleywest200 2y ago> over the last few years He was president before it was gaining steam.
- mrkeen 2y agoI think he was busy dismantling other stuff. He got anti- Roe v Wade judges installed. He got rid of net neutrality. He put a climate change denier in charge of the EPA. He got rid of the pandemic response unit in 2018, and will do that again this time. He pulled US out of the Paris agreement. He's threatened to leave NATO repeatedly. He pulled out of the Iran Nuclear deal.
- hintymad 2y agoI don't agree with all your points, but I very much respect that you criticize Trump's policies. That is so much more reasonable and productive than using hoaxes after hoaxes like the media and Harris' campaign team did. Speaking of abortion rights, I believe few people will even talk about it in the next election cycle, as it has become a state issue. I also find it interesting that many pro-lifers hate Trump for overturning Roe vs Wade because they won't get millions and millions of dollars every year for the sake of fighting abortion rights.
- marcosdumay 2y agoNow it's up to see if the world will decouple form the US monopolies.
- ryan29 2y agoIf you want a simple example of how important good regulators are, look at the NTIA / DoC's handling of the .com cooperative agreement in 2018. The US gave up control of the most important technical asset on the planet and no one even knows it happened :-(
- hackernewds 2y agocan you expand or link to any sources?
- result2vino 2y agoYou could verbatim google the string in the comment and the first result will almost certainly tell you everything. There aren’t two sides to this.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Seattle3503 2y agoTrump's FCC approved ATSC 3.0, which allows bradcasters to put DRM on their over the air TV broadcasts. Decryption requires a license and internet connection. I run into this every time I use my TV now. This is not only inconvenient, it makes me less safe in the event of an emergency. The FCC should not have allowed this to happen on the public's airwaves, but I expect more of the same in Trump's second term.
- hackernewds 2y agothis is in spite of Trump, not because of