[HN Gopher] Calling for Antitrust Reform
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Calling for Antitrust Reform
Author : cpeterso
Score : 70 points
Date : 2022-06-16 20:14 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.mozilla.org)
| roenxi wrote:
| > (2) BUSINESS USER.--The term "business user"-- > [skip
| a little] (B) does not include a person that-- >
| [skip a little] > (ii) is controlled by the Government of
| the People's Republic of China or the government of another
| foreign adversary.
|
| Might want to read not only the article but the actual
| legislation. This is an interesting snippet that says interesting
| things about how Congress is looking at the broader business
| situation. Someone believes that the PRC/CCP needs to be
| explicitly addressed.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| Mozilla was in "corporations should be able to do whatever they
| want" camp when something else was in question.
|
| reap what you sow
| 0des wrote:
| the irony of this being on mozilla.org while ostensibly using
| google's money to post it.
| throwaway_1928 wrote:
| John Oliver also covered tech monopolies recently.
|
| Tech Monopolies: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXf04bhcjbg
| leotravis10 wrote:
| Here's Mike Masnick's response over on Techdirt on that. A big
| swing and a miss which is rare on Oliver's part:
| https://www.techdirt.com/2022/06/14/john-olivers-big-whiff-j...
| phillipcarter wrote:
| warkdarrior wrote:
| I gotta hear this. How does Bitcoin solve the Big Tech issue,
| especially the self-preferencing part?
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > We are further challenged by app store rules designed to keep
| out Gecko, our independent browser engine that powers Firefox,
| Tor and other browsers.
|
| Ironically, getting rid of Apple's browser restrictions will
| likely result in website developers writing their sites just for
| Chrome.
|
| With Chrome now available on every platform, it will be cheaper
| and easier to only support that one browser.
| Animats wrote:
| That's not "antitrust reform". It's so narrowly drawn that it
| affects only maybe Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Read the
| definition of "covered platform".
|
| Arguably it's a bill of attainder.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Any antitrust legislation will be targeted at trusts.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Not arguable. Bills of Attainder refer to criminal laws and are
| specifically to stop government abuses of personal liberty.
| Corporations don't have a guaranteed right to consistent laws,
| otherwise they wouldn't spend so much on lobbying. The knife
| cuts both ways.
| Animats wrote:
| Huawei has argued that sanctions against their company
| constitute a bill of attainder.[1] The provision that an
| executive can have 100% of their income from the company
| seized, though, is arguably a criminal provision. But looking
| at the history of bill of attainder cases, this probably
| won't be considered one.
|
| [1] https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/LSB10274.pdf
| superb-owl wrote:
| The vertical monopolies enjoyed by tech behemoths are absurd.
| Ever since the Internet Explorer antitrust case [1] it should be
| clear that things like Apple disallowing other browsers in iOS or
| Google promoting its own sites in search results are illegal and
| anticompetitive.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| I teach antitrust to grads and undergrads.
|
| It doesn't do anyone any good to call any of these firms
| "monopolies." It's not accurate, not for any of them.
|
| Nor was monopoly the issue in the Microsoft case (that was
| about bundling).
|
| There may be reasons to look at antitrust law and to change it
| with some of these firms and their behaviors in mind but
| "vertical monopoly" isn't an accurate characterization of any
| of them.
| geysersam wrote:
| Maybe the words as used in court don't reflect the generally
| understood meaning well.
|
| Controlling and overcharging use of (one of the few) roads to
| the market, even in the case there are other roads farther
| away, and you can build your own road at an incredibly
| unfeasible cost, is what most people understand as a monopoly
| situation.
|
| Arguably this is what Apple and Google are doing when they
| charge exorbitant fees from developers targeting their
| platform.
| christkv wrote:
| So is bundling a more productive attack vector?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| What do you prefer? Vertically bundling monopsonies?
| roenxi wrote:
| It is worth expanding a bit on _why_ it is inaccurate to call
| them monopolies. A lot of people aren 't sure what the word
| means.
|
| I'm suspect there is a substantial cohort that thinks making
| a much better product makes a company a monopoly.
| Hellbanevil wrote:
| When a company can loose money on a competiting company just
| to drive the competing company out of business; I call that a
| monopoly.
|
| No not monopolies like we had like the Bell telephone, but we
| have 2-3 huge companies that collude and stifle competition.
|
| Proving collusion is hard these days though. Too many fresh
| faced MBA's who are atheists.
|
| (I'm a Watch Repairer. I can't buy parts from The Swatch
| Group, or Reichmont. Why do we even have The Sherman Anti-
| trust Act if it's never used? I'm not saying dissolve these
| obvious conglomerations, but let's not encourage them. Why
| was ATT and T-Mobile allowed to combine. To tired to go on,
| but tired of ogliopolyssssss.
| username190 wrote:
| > Why was ATT and T-Mobile allowed to combine.
|
| AT&T and T-Mobile did not combine, that purchase was (one
| of the few mergers) blocked by the DOJ under the Obama
| administration.
|
| T-Mobile did later (2020) buy Sprint, but it was in a far
| worse position economically than T-Mobile was in 2011 at
| the time of the attempted AT&T purchase.
| threeseed wrote:
| > When a company can loose money on a competiting company
| just to drive the competing company out of business; I call
| that a monopoly.
|
| You can't just redefine what words mean if you want to be
| taken seriously.
|
| Especially when what you described is a legitimate and very
| common business tactic [1]
|
| [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lossleader.asp
| tomtheelder wrote:
| When it's done to force competitors out of a market it's
| called predatory pricing [1], and it is not a legitimate
| business tactic. It is illegal in many jurisdictions, and
| generally considered unethical even where it's not
| specifically outlawed. It is also considered a strategy
| to achieve a monopoly or near-monopoly pricing.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing
| nine_k wrote:
| > _When a company can loose money on a competiting company
| just to drive the competing company out of business; I call
| that a monopoly._
|
| But this may happen even on a highly competitive market, if
| one company is a large established one (say, controlling
| 10% of the market), and the other is a small startup. Just
| make the key differentiating feature which the new
| competitor is bringing free in your established product for
| some time. Implement it first, if needed.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I agree. I dislike calling them "monopolies". If we use
| inappropriate language it's easier for opponents to undermine
| fair arguments.
|
| But how do we deal with this much _power_ ?
|
| The bill "will facilitate innovation and consumer choice by
| ensuring that big tech companies cannot give preference to
| their own products and services over the rich diversity of
| competitive options offered..."
|
| Sure that's one way of seeing a small part of the problem.
| But it misses so much.
|
| A fair digital market is one thing. A viable technological
| society that isn't a cloaked form of fascism is another. More
| than "consumer choice", it's about the _RIGHT_ to have choice
| - subtle difference but bear with me please.
|
| If I exercise my moral prerogative to say "I will not use any
| Microsoft products because I believe they are a morally
| repugnant company" I may currently lose a job. Not because
| Microsoft are a "monopoly" but because my employer limits my
| choice. Or I may not get medical treatment because my local
| healthcare provider only gives access through a Microsoft
| portal. The problem subsists outside the scope of Microsoft
| (or Google or whomever) qua monopoly.
|
| Where I think the European Digital Markets Act gets thing a
| bit more right is it's crafted within the European
| Interoperability Framework (an older and maybe more ambitious
| project).
|
| The object isn't to weaken concentrated dominance or self-
| preference, but to guarantee the user has a choice including
| the choice NOT TO USE a technology in the case there seems to
| be "only one choice". An employer, health provider, payments
| processor or local government would _have to_ provide
| alternatives or opt-outs without prejudice. That would allow
| genuine alternative service providers (not necessarily
| commercial) a foot in the door. It 's a different approach
| that starts bottom-up instead of top-down.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > At trial, the district court ruled that Microsoft's actions
| constituted unlawful monopolization under Section 2 of the
| Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, and the U.S. Court of Appeals
| for the D.C. Circuit affirmed most of the district court's
| judgments.
|
| > I teach antitrust to grads and undergrads.
|
| Consider updating the curriculum? My understanding is that
| the bundling was actionable _because_ they were considered a
| monopoly.
| threeseed wrote:
| Apple allows other browsers. They don't allow other browser
| engines.
|
| And I actually don't see how cementing the Chrome engine's
| dominance on iOS as well as other platforms is good for the
| web. Because inevitably that is what will happen as just like
| in the IE days, websites will only work on that browser as it
| offers the most proprietary features. And why would you develop
| for multiple browsers when Chrome is available on all platforms
| and has such dominant market share.
|
| People really need to be more careful with this because it
| could make the web less private, less secure, less driven by a
| spec and more beholden to Google's interests at the time.
| abirch wrote:
| I thought you could change your search engine. I just did it
| on my iPad: Setting > Safari > Search Engine
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2021/02/09/duckduckgo/
| coder543 wrote:
| The comment you replied to did not mention search engines
| at all. Yes, you can change your default search engine.
| abirch wrote:
| You're right. I misread browser engine as search engine.
| tehlike wrote:
| Safari on mobile has lagged behind standards for a long time,
| because doing so wouldn't strengthen their app business.
|
| E.g. webrtc. Safari still lags behind many things.
|
| When you call people to be careful, you are missing the
| conflict apple has internally. Between the two, i choose
| chrome any day of the week because that's what allowed web to
| progress this fast
| gbear605 wrote:
| The web has been progressing too fast, and most of the
| things that Safari has held back on are features that
| developers want but users don't, like push notifications.
| xh-dude wrote:
| Maybe there's a counterfactual timeline where Apple didn't
| nuke Flash on phones, hmm... interesting to think about. I
| think I'm happier with apps rather than apps-in-the-browser
| in the end, and this might be a similar contrast - it's
| technically interesting to have browsers do more or do
| everything but I'm not convinced it's the best for users
| living in software ecosystems.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| >A fair playing field is vital to ensure that Mozilla and other
| independent companies can continue to act as a counterweight to
| big tech
|
| You literally exist on Google revenue provided in order to
| prevent antitrust litigation, hardly independent.
| [deleted]
| goodpoint wrote:
| And how is this invalidating the open letter?
|
| Does such message stop being true depending on who said it?
| j-bos wrote:
| If anything that lends weight to the message. Like an ant
| calling out the elephant.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| You can rationalize it that way, I get it. However, last I
| checked Mozilla has a lawyer as their CEO. Why do you think
| they haven't tested this idea in court if the message is so
| good?
| price wrote:
| The blog post you are writing comments about is literally
| about working to get the law changed.
|
| Courts apply the existing law. The existing law puts very
| few constraints on big companies using their power. That is
| exactly why Mozilla is urging Congress to change the law.
| echelon wrote:
| > You literally exist on Google revenue provided in order to
| prevent antitrust litigation, hardly independent.
|
| Google used venture dollars to grow to a scale that they could
| fund the biggest browser team in the world, show download links
| on the web portal every single person on the planet uses, and
| pay OEMs to pre-install it. They then bought in early into
| smartphones and distribute devices with their browser and
| Google defaults.
|
| They use their browser to show preference to other Google
| products, and they cripple ad blocking tech to make more
| revenue.
|
| Firefox had a healthy percent of browser market share before
| Google showed up. This is like private equity buying the land
| your business sits on and giving you a pat on the back for job
| well done.
|
| I am far from anti-capitalist, but you have to realize these
| monopolistic moves are harming competition and making the tech
| landscape harder for everyone else to compete.
| cma wrote:
| Doesn't Google outbid Bing for the role? Would it be
| existential for moz if they had to take Bing's smaller bid?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Why do people act like that's some kind of "gotcha"? To me that
| fact gives it more weight, not less.
| threeseed wrote:
| Because Google has been the weakest when it comes to privacy
| measures.
|
| And so when you're giving them money, data, traffic and users
| you're increasing their ability to set the privacy agenda and
| promoting a single search engine, single browser view of the
| world.
|
| It's hypocritical and short-sighted.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| At the end of the day their very existence has enabled Google
| to argue 'We're not an abusive monopoly. See? We fund this
| very outspoken open web technology company'.
|
| I'm pointing out the hypocrisy of claiming independence when
| they are fully dependent on tech giants. The end result is a
| delay in the courts using already existing antitrust law to
| address the problem.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Mozilla may be getting played. Yet they don't only take
| money from Google for defaults. And at times they've used
| other defaults in the US too, like Yahoo.
|
| There is still value there, and the good need not be enemy
| of the perfect.
| [deleted]
| nine_k wrote:
| Why can't Mozilla offer a a way to make a recurring donation,
| Patreon-style, or Github-style?
|
| It should be locked to specific projects though: Firefox,
| Thunderbird, MDN, experimental projects, etc.
|
| Of course introduce gold / platinum / titanium / etc tiers for
| corporate donations, along with donations from private persons.
|
| They are already a non-profit, making this tax-deductible would
| be a piece of cake.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| They actually did for MDN, it's called MDN Plus:
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/plus
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/299...
|
| 6 Republican and 6 Democrat cosponsors. I like when they work
| together :]
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| My experience has been when they work together, it's because
| it's good for them and bad for us.
| wudangmonk wrote:
| I only skimmed the bill but wheneven I see both parties working
| together I know I need to be extra careful and look for hidden
| dangers because I am cynical like that.
| mc32 wrote:
| Isn't it even worse when only one party sponsors or works on
| something? It could signal that they are completely willing
| to ignore the sentiments of the other half the congress
| represents.
| leotravis10 wrote:
| This Techdirt piece describes that lawmakers fixed none of the
| problems and actually exempts a lot of actual monopolies such as
| telecom (Example: AT&T and Verizon) and retail (Example: Walmart
| and Target): https://www.techdirt.com/2022/05/27/senator-
| klobuchar-fixed-...
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Techdirt/Copia Institute is a lobbyist which is sponsored by
| Google. Mike Masnick reads like a Google public policy
| playbook, because that's what he's copying from.
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