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Only competition can provide a solution. We have lost sight of this principle even though all Western democracies are built on the idea of separation of powers,

Only competition can provide a solution. We have lost sight of this principle even though all Western democracies are built on the idea of separation of powers, and making it hard for any one faction of elites to gain full control and ruin things for everyone else. Make them fight with each other, let them get a piece of the pie, but never all of it. That's why we have multiple branches of government, multiple parties etc. That's why we have markets with many firms instead of monopolies. There has never been a utopian past and there will never be a utopian future. The past was riddled with despotism and many things that the average man or woman today would consider horrific. The basic principle of democratic society is to prevent those things from recurring by pitting elite factions against each other. Similarly business elites who wield high technology to gain their wealth must also compete and if there is any sign of them cooperating too closely for too long, we need to break them up or shut them down. When Apple and Google agree, cooperate, and adopt the same policies - we are all doomed. It must never happen and we must furthermore break them up if they try, which they are now doing.

samrus 1y ago
This doesnt work if the market incentives themselves encourage these rent seeking actions. We have given capitalists more and more power pver the last few decades and instead making things better, its just allowed them to nueter the government regulations that would have prevented them from fucking common people over. The market can not solve for this the same way it cant solve for education or the military. This needs laws
- safety1st 1y ago
  Of course I'm in support of consumer protection laws but what needs to be more widely understood is that with Google specifically, probably with Apple and maybe with Microsoft, we are at a unique point in history where passing laws isn't enough. There are laws on the books, Google's breaking them, and it's just forging ahead with more of this anti-consumer control crap anyway. Google's unique in American history, it has recently been ruled an illegal monopolist in two cases in two markets and a third ruling against them in a third market is likely to drop soon. Even Standard Oil didn't achieve a rap sheet like Google's. Yeah of course we need government action and I'm calling for that. But people need to realize that this monster is way bigger than just passing a law. The judges need to be choosing harsher remedies including a breakup. The enforcement apparatus needs to be stronger, willing and able to seize direct control of the company if it doesn't comply or complies maliciously. EVERYTHING in the system needs an upgrade because Google is so uniquely huge and criminal in the context of American history. They are a different, far larger and more intractable problem than your standard, garden variety corporate criminals and extreme measures are needed to rein them in. Now, imagine a future where the Web platform didn't become a duopoly and Phone+Tablet+PC OSes didn't become a triopoly. A half dozen vendors globally for one, and a different half dozen for the other. That's a very very different world where someone is going to carve out plenty of market share by letting you continue to install your own apps even if they're ad blockers or whatever else you would like. You just wouldn't get 12 companies plus the US, EU and Chinese governments or whoever to all agree on a single platform. We need the big guys to fight. We need the market to be divided. We need competition. We need to slay Google and never have another Google again.
  - JustExAWS 1y ago
    So exactly what law is Google breaking? They are not a monopoly in the US or even 50% of the phone market. And are you going to force app developers to support all of these platforms?
    - safety1st 1y ago
      > So exactly what law is Google breaking? I mean, why do you need us to repeat these very well publicized convictions that have been all over the news? They've been found guilty of anti-trust violations in multiple cases in multiple American markets. The details are just a Google search away... Are you disputing the court rulings that Google possesses a monopoly? Which court?
      - JustExAWS 1y ago
        In the US where has Google been found guilty of anti trust when it came to mobile?
        safety1st 1y ago
        For your convenience, I've accessed a summarizer technology which you can try out any time you need it. You'll find it at https://chat.openai.com/ https://chat.openai.com/ . Here are the big, recent U.S. antitrust rulings against Google, with what each court actually decided and where things stand: #1 Search monopoly (DOJ v. Google – “Search” case) — liability found (Sept 2024) A federal judge found Google illegally maintained monopolies in general search services and general search text ads, violating Section 2 of the Sherman Act. Remedies are being handled separately. #2 Open-web ad tech (DOJ & states v. Google – E.D. Va.) — liability found (Apr 17, 2025) The court ruled Google monopolized multiple digital advertising technology markets (tools used by publishers and advertisers), harming publishers, competition, and consumers. Remedies proceedings are underway. #3 Android app distribution & in-app billing (Epic Games v. Google) — jury verdict + injunction affirmed on appeal (Dec 2023 → Oct 2024 → Jul 31, 2025) A jury found Google violated antitrust laws through exclusionary Play Store practices and tying Google Play Billing. The trial judge issued a nationwide permanent injunction (Oct 2024) requiring Google to open the Play Store to rival stores and payment options; the Ninth Circuit unanimously affirmed (Jul 31, 2025). Case #3 is the direct answer to your question, but I want to again point out that the really serious problem is how Google has abused its market power in MANY US technology markets, and found guilty of these abuses independently by multiple judges in a short span of time, a feat of criminality even Standard Oil failed to achieve. This is why a historic level of action against Google, probably greater than that taken against Standard Oil, needs to be taken. It's all in the court cases and it's all available publicly online for the interested public to read. Edit: also, this comment is already too long, but in case it doesn't stand out as obviously to everyone else as it does to me, Google now introducing an additional layer of Google approvals above the multiple app stores that the court is forcing them to accept in case #3 is so amazingly, obviously a telegraphed case of malicious compliance, they are not even trying to hide it. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I'm saying passing more laws is part of the solution but not nearly enough on its own.
turblety 1y ago
I wish this was a higher up comment because it's such an important point, and it's totally an achievable thing. Governments should be supporting this competition, or at the very least not encouraging monopolies/duopolies. Give loads of support/help to startups, small businesses. Let the large corps fund themselves. But instead, we end up giving them huge tax breaks, anti-competitive legislation and even give them a voice in government.
NeuralNomaD123 1y ago
in the face of large monopolies such as today's platforms, to keep competition you must regulate with laws that stop consumer abuse
Levitz 1y ago
>There has never been a utopian past and there will never be a utopian future. I wouldn't call it utopian, but I'd say we are way past "peak democracy" at this point. There was a time in which corporations did get broken up when too large, when we did understand that it's about serving the population first and accumulating wealth after that, when corporations influencing politics was widely seen as a negative. It does seem to me we are now way past that.
- worldsayshi 1y ago
  There's no reason why democracy can't peak again and reach new heights. But that won't happen automatically. Personally I think there are technological preconditions for stable democracy that have recently been countered by authoritarian leaning technology. We need to invent counter technology to those things.
  - komali2 1y ago
    I disagree that there's a technological solution to late stage capitalism and the slow death of liberal democracy. New technology doesn't change anything about social institutions - the most powerful groups before the technology was invented simply own the technology after it's invented and use it to further cement their power. I think the luddites were on to something. We don't need technology, we need humans doing things a little differently, maybe even doing bizarre things like setting factories on fire. Personally I hope we can try other things before setting factories on fire, see Keith McHenry's version of The Anarchist Cookbook for peaceful resistance solutions as well. The point is though without a restructure, new technology doesn't liberate, in fact it further entrenches existing power structures.
    - safety1st 1y ago
      > New technology doesn't change anything about social institutions This is of course demonstrably untrue. Marshall McLuhan devoted his life to illuminating how technology changes society. The printing press, radio, television and the Internet have all undoubtedly changed our social institutions. It's hard to imagine secular democracy ever becoming a thing if we hadn't been able to mass produce books and newspapers, and writing manuscripts had remained mostly under the control of the Church. It seems less probable that the Nazis would have come to power if not for the immense skill Goebbels and Hitler had in the use of radio. And I doubt Trump would have been elected if he hadn't known how to press people's buttons so well on social media. Let's not forget that more ancient things like fire, agriculture and accounting are also technology that irrevocably changed humanity and put new people in power. Or take a look at how railroads remade American society. Or how sufficiently advanced sailboats placed half the world under the thrall of colonialism... Absolutely there can exist technologies which are anti-democracy, and surveillance technologies are exactly that. You become afraid to say or write the wrong thing in public, and then to say or write it in private, and then to even think it, and finally the thing is forgotten. I felt like Orwell made the point well enough in 1984. All that said I don't see technology saving us from our current problems, it needs to be invented, it needs to mature, there needs to be adoption. One might imagine mesh networking and censorship proof distributed messaging or something having an influence on society but we simply aren't there yet.
lwhi 1y ago
In fact true competition is only possible via open standards, protocols and technology stacks. We need agreement to ensure the large corporations adhere to these.
- _heimdall 1y ago
  This doesn't seem right to me. It is often in companies' best interests to adopt standards, but that is because it allows them both to have an optimized supply chain. Car manufacturers today have a lot of standards that I expect would make competition from any new contenders harder not easier. Tesla would be an example of that, they did survive but the industry thought it was never going to work precisely because of all the standards and regulations required. On the other hand, early car manufacturers didn't have standards and shared technology stacks. At that time new car makers popped up everywhere and we had a ton of competition in the space. Open standards are good for the consumer and good for any features that require interoperability. It has nothing to do with competition though.
  - lwhi 1y ago
    Sorry, but you're incorrect. If a particular product is tied to a specific proprietary tech stack, then the consumer is also tied to specific suppliers. This is known as vendor lock in. Microsoft used this approach with Internet Explorer back in the old days; ensuring that it provided proprietary elements and implementation, that would encourage developers to provide websites that only functioned using their browser. Open standards allow choice.
    - _heimdall 1y ago
      That can be one aspect of it, though I would argue that doesn't mean open standards are always better for competition. I think you're also assuming the only competition that matters is long term. In the short term the potential for locking users into your own ecosystem can incentivize short term competition. Long term competition seems like a good goal, but that assumption wasn't part of it at the beginning of this chain.

samrus 1y ago

This doesnt work if the market incentives themselves encourage these rent seeking actions. We have given capitalists more and more power pver the last few decades and instead making things better, its just allowed them to nueter the government regulations that would have prevented them from fucking common people over. The market can not solve for this the same way it cant solve for education or the military. This needs laws

safety1st 1y ago
Of course I'm in support of consumer protection laws but what needs to be more widely understood is that with Google specifically, probably with Apple and maybe with Microsoft, we are at a unique point in history where passing laws isn't enough. There are laws on the books, Google's breaking them, and it's just forging ahead with more of this anti-consumer control crap anyway. Google's unique in American history, it has recently been ruled an illegal monopolist in two cases in two markets and a third ruling against them in a third market is likely to drop soon. Even Standard Oil didn't achieve a rap sheet like Google's. Yeah of course we need government action and I'm calling for that. But people need to realize that this monster is way bigger than just passing a law. The judges need to be choosing harsher remedies including a breakup. The enforcement apparatus needs to be stronger, willing and able to seize direct control of the company if it doesn't comply or complies maliciously. EVERYTHING in the system needs an upgrade because Google is so uniquely huge and criminal in the context of American history. They are a different, far larger and more intractable problem than your standard, garden variety corporate criminals and extreme measures are needed to rein them in. Now, imagine a future where the Web platform didn't become a duopoly and Phone+Tablet+PC OSes didn't become a triopoly. A half dozen vendors globally for one, and a different half dozen for the other. That's a very very different world where someone is going to carve out plenty of market share by letting you continue to install your own apps even if they're ad blockers or whatever else you would like. You just wouldn't get 12 companies plus the US, EU and Chinese governments or whoever to all agree on a single platform. We need the big guys to fight. We need the market to be divided. We need competition. We need to slay Google and never have another Google again.
- JustExAWS 1y ago
  So exactly what law is Google breaking? They are not a monopoly in the US or even 50% of the phone market. And are you going to force app developers to support all of these platforms?
  - safety1st 1y ago
    > So exactly what law is Google breaking? I mean, why do you need us to repeat these very well publicized convictions that have been all over the news? They've been found guilty of anti-trust violations in multiple cases in multiple American markets. The details are just a Google search away... Are you disputing the court rulings that Google possesses a monopoly? Which court?
    - JustExAWS 1y ago
      In the US where has Google been found guilty of anti trust when it came to mobile?
      - safety1st 1y ago
        For your convenience, I've accessed a summarizer technology which you can try out any time you need it. You'll find it at https://chat.openai.com/ https://chat.openai.com/ . Here are the big, recent U.S. antitrust rulings against Google, with what each court actually decided and where things stand: #1 Search monopoly (DOJ v. Google – “Search” case) — liability found (Sept 2024) A federal judge found Google illegally maintained monopolies in general search services and general search text ads, violating Section 2 of the Sherman Act. Remedies are being handled separately. #2 Open-web ad tech (DOJ & states v. Google – E.D. Va.) — liability found (Apr 17, 2025) The court ruled Google monopolized multiple digital advertising technology markets (tools used by publishers and advertisers), harming publishers, competition, and consumers. Remedies proceedings are underway. #3 Android app distribution & in-app billing (Epic Games v. Google) — jury verdict + injunction affirmed on appeal (Dec 2023 → Oct 2024 → Jul 31, 2025) A jury found Google violated antitrust laws through exclusionary Play Store practices and tying Google Play Billing. The trial judge issued a nationwide permanent injunction (Oct 2024) requiring Google to open the Play Store to rival stores and payment options; the Ninth Circuit unanimously affirmed (Jul 31, 2025). Case #3 is the direct answer to your question, but I want to again point out that the really serious problem is how Google has abused its market power in MANY US technology markets, and found guilty of these abuses independently by multiple judges in a short span of time, a feat of criminality even Standard Oil failed to achieve. This is why a historic level of action against Google, probably greater than that taken against Standard Oil, needs to be taken. It's all in the court cases and it's all available publicly online for the interested public to read. Edit: also, this comment is already too long, but in case it doesn't stand out as obviously to everyone else as it does to me, Google now introducing an additional layer of Google approvals above the multiple app stores that the court is forcing them to accept in case #3 is so amazingly, obviously a telegraphed case of malicious compliance, they are not even trying to hide it. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I'm saying passing more laws is part of the solution but not nearly enough on its own.

turblety 1y ago

I wish this was a higher up comment because it's such an important point, and it's totally an achievable thing. Governments should be supporting this competition, or at the very least not encouraging monopolies/duopolies. Give loads of support/help to startups, small businesses. Let the large corps fund themselves. But instead, we end up giving them huge tax breaks, anti-competitive legislation and even give them a voice in government.

NeuralNomaD123 1y ago

in the face of large monopolies such as today's platforms, to keep competition you must regulate with laws that stop consumer abuse

Levitz 1y ago

>There has never been a utopian past and there will never be a utopian future. I wouldn't call it utopian, but I'd say we are way past "peak democracy" at this point. There was a time in which corporations did get broken up when too large, when we did understand that it's about serving the population first and accumulating wealth after that, when corporations influencing politics was widely seen as a negative. It does seem to me we are now way past that.

worldsayshi 1y ago
There's no reason why democracy can't peak again and reach new heights. But that won't happen automatically. Personally I think there are technological preconditions for stable democracy that have recently been countered by authoritarian leaning technology. We need to invent counter technology to those things.
- komali2 1y ago
  I disagree that there's a technological solution to late stage capitalism and the slow death of liberal democracy. New technology doesn't change anything about social institutions - the most powerful groups before the technology was invented simply own the technology after it's invented and use it to further cement their power. I think the luddites were on to something. We don't need technology, we need humans doing things a little differently, maybe even doing bizarre things like setting factories on fire. Personally I hope we can try other things before setting factories on fire, see Keith McHenry's version of The Anarchist Cookbook for peaceful resistance solutions as well. The point is though without a restructure, new technology doesn't liberate, in fact it further entrenches existing power structures.
  - safety1st 1y ago
    > New technology doesn't change anything about social institutions This is of course demonstrably untrue. Marshall McLuhan devoted his life to illuminating how technology changes society. The printing press, radio, television and the Internet have all undoubtedly changed our social institutions. It's hard to imagine secular democracy ever becoming a thing if we hadn't been able to mass produce books and newspapers, and writing manuscripts had remained mostly under the control of the Church. It seems less probable that the Nazis would have come to power if not for the immense skill Goebbels and Hitler had in the use of radio. And I doubt Trump would have been elected if he hadn't known how to press people's buttons so well on social media. Let's not forget that more ancient things like fire, agriculture and accounting are also technology that irrevocably changed humanity and put new people in power. Or take a look at how railroads remade American society. Or how sufficiently advanced sailboats placed half the world under the thrall of colonialism... Absolutely there can exist technologies which are anti-democracy, and surveillance technologies are exactly that. You become afraid to say or write the wrong thing in public, and then to say or write it in private, and then to even think it, and finally the thing is forgotten. I felt like Orwell made the point well enough in 1984. All that said I don't see technology saving us from our current problems, it needs to be invented, it needs to mature, there needs to be adoption. One might imagine mesh networking and censorship proof distributed messaging or something having an influence on society but we simply aren't there yet.

lwhi 1y ago

In fact true competition is only possible via open standards, protocols and technology stacks. We need agreement to ensure the large corporations adhere to these.

_heimdall 1y ago
This doesn't seem right to me. It is often in companies' best interests to adopt standards, but that is because it allows them both to have an optimized supply chain. Car manufacturers today have a lot of standards that I expect would make competition from any new contenders harder not easier. Tesla would be an example of that, they did survive but the industry thought it was never going to work precisely because of all the standards and regulations required. On the other hand, early car manufacturers didn't have standards and shared technology stacks. At that time new car makers popped up everywhere and we had a ton of competition in the space. Open standards are good for the consumer and good for any features that require interoperability. It has nothing to do with competition though.
- lwhi 1y ago
  Sorry, but you're incorrect. If a particular product is tied to a specific proprietary tech stack, then the consumer is also tied to specific suppliers. This is known as vendor lock in. Microsoft used this approach with Internet Explorer back in the old days; ensuring that it provided proprietary elements and implementation, that would encourage developers to provide websites that only functioned using their browser. Open standards allow choice.
  - _heimdall 1y ago
    That can be one aspect of it, though I would argue that doesn't mean open standards are always better for competition. I think you're also assuming the only competition that matters is long term. In the short term the potential for locking users into your own ecosystem can incentivize short term competition. Long term competition seems like a good goal, but that assumption wasn't part of it at the beginning of this chain.