It's not an illusion, "just don't buy it" would have prevented all of this but clearly the majority of consumers don't agree with you. Whether or not you think it's a good outcome, consumers have largely chosen to buy or use the stuff that these companies make.

Consumers have always come first, and they've already spoken.

You're ignoring that there often simply aren't that many viable choices. And the company that offers something you care about a lot may also do something you hate a lot.

For example:

iOS: Better for privacy than Android but less open to sideloaded apps

Android: Sends tons of data to Google about all kinds of things. Furthermore Google bricked one of my old Android phones by disabling the DNS for the authentication server so I could no longer sign into the phone. (It was too old to support Cyanogen).

Samsung: The last Samsung S-series smartphone in my house had apps pre-loaded on it including Blockbuster (it wasn't that many years ago) that could not be removed without loading new firmware or something. I guess Tizen is open source so theres that? But then again Samsung is one of the most cruel companies on Earth with a long track record of polluting, worker abuse, and blatantly copying others products and inside deals with the government to look the other way.

Microsoft: Abandoned the entire space. Was basically a copycat product with a UI based on squares anyway.

Essential Phone: Dead on arrival

Palm: Got left behind. Missed the whole app store wave

Blackberry: Wasn't really designed for non-business users with all kinds of upcharges for Blackberry data services. Missed the whole app store wave. Pivoted into automotive software after they couldn't keep up

So sure its easy to critique Apple for this or Google for that but ultimately what are the other options that can realistically compete with the above megacorps?

All you're telling me is that there are no choices that you like. All of those are viable choices (except the ones that literally don't exist anymore), and there were many more viable choices before FAANG began their dominance that consumers saw and abandoned in favor of the dominant products we have today.

Not that I don't know how you feel, there are areas where I hate all the options too. I don't always get what I want, that's life. It would be perverse for me to force legions of others to dedicate their efforts towards what I would like instead.

No. You said "just don't buy it" if you don't like it. But I need a smartphone. So I'm going to buy one. My point is if they all have different drawbacks (this one is better for "openness", that one is better for privacy, this one is better for security) then saying people should just not buy Apple to protest one decision isn't helpful. Because by doing that I would probably end up needing to buy an Android phone which means I would give up other things like privacy. And then if I mention that you'll say we should have just not bought Google phones.

Well yeah. But yeah they control the market. So you buy the least evil product you can that is fairly priced and works with all your other stuff.

Or just blame the consumer cause they didn't choose the mythical Linux phone with great battery life and no spyware.

Again, you just don't like your options. You've decided that our modern smartphones are evil and also decided that you must have a smartphone.

I'm not here to tell you that you should have just not bought X phone, I'm here to tell you that you have a choice as a consumer to buy what you want, and if you don't want anything available, that's not anyone's problem.

For millions of consumers, an Android phone or iPhone or Samsung phone is a great option and is largely what they really want. The phones that people buy today are phones that most people have repeatedly chosen over others, including some phones you may have liked. Sorry you don't like the current choices, society has never owed anyone a mythical Linux phone. If you want something that doesn't exist, make it yourself or convince other consumers to buy it as well so companies find it worth their while. Go buy Purism. Don't whine to the government that it's not fair you can't get a mythical Linux phone.

Lol I never whined about not getting a mythical Linux phone. I don't even want one particularly.

My point was that your claim to "just not buy it" doesn't work when its an essential item in modern society like food, water, housing, or a computer.

Its easy to sit here from your armchair and say "well if dumb consumers hadn't bought smartphones like this then we wouldn't have them so they shouldn't complain." But you, of course, have a smartphone from one of these manufacturers because like everyone else you realized you basically need one these days if you work or travel. We created rules that favor tech mega corps and now they dominate the industry.

So your "solution" isn't really a solution. You say people should have made some amazingly insightful decision to boycott all smartphones fifteen years ago but since they didn't we are stuck with the brands we have and its the consumers' fault...

It does work, you just don't like the results. Most consumers have gotten exactly what they wanted. I never said everyone should have boycotted all smartphones, I said that if consumers didn't like the smartphones we have they wouldn't have bought them. They practiced "just don't buy it" for all the other dead tech options that no longer exist today. Consumers clearly don't believe that there is a problem that needs a "solution".

Let me be clear: it's your problem to deal with as a minority consumer who apparently doesn't like anything most other consumers like. The tech world we live in today is the world that most consumers want and are happy with. You are stuck with the brands we have, the rest of the consumer market have bought the smartphones that they've happily, willingly and repeatedly chosen.

Whatever you may think of the tech industry, it very closely reflects what most consumers want. If you want something no one else wants, make it or evangelize, asking the government to forcibly change outcomes is awful.

Nobody wants a phone that doesn't allow them to add a third party app. They tolerate it due to lack of choice because the device still provides exceptional utility.

Why is it so hard to understand?

I like my iPhone. I worked at Apple. I still recognize its limitations. I'm not going to go without a phone to make a point to a $2 trillion company.

Because people do want a phone that doesn't allow them to add a third party app? A lot of people want Apple's walled garden to effectively make their choices for them and stop them from installing malicious garbage. They don't want to care or be conscious of the security decisions that users of more open platforms have to make.

I'm not saying I like what Apple does, but I do recognize that the majority of consumers want the sort of locked down experience that Apple provides.

I don't expect you to make a point to a trillion dollar company, I expect you to recognize that Apple became a trillion dollar company because consumers really want what they're making, as locked down as it is.

I've bought tons of iPhones. You can imply that I want a walled garden. But I don't and I've never met anyone who claimed they did.

Its an Apple marketing point. Its not why people buy iPhones.

I can believe you've never met them, but there they are. And they don't outright say they "like walled gardens" or something like that, they just love everything about the walled garden experience the iPhone provides them. You can even spot some of them in this thread, they want Apple to decide how much privacy they have, they want Apple to control and vet every app they install, they want Apple to limit what other software can do on their devices in ways that you can't limit in open platforms.

And it only matters when it's backed by a purchasing decision. Someone can swear up and down that they hate walled gardens a lot but words mean nothing; if they turn around and purchase an iPhone over the plenty of open alternatives, it only signals that either they don't know what a walled garden is or they care about other stuff far more. Actually paying money for something cuts through all the bullshit consumers say to their friends or the internet about what they really want and what their priorities are.

Markets don't give each individual consumer precisely what they want, they give large groups of consumers what they want weighted by consumer priorities. In that way, most consumers get what they really want. Obviously that means some consumers don't get what they want and perhaps that's you, I don't always get what I want either. But sorry, if most consumers really wanted a device without a walled garden, they wouldn't have willingly and repetitively bought iPhones over more open devices. If there were a large consumer group of people that really want a good device without a walled garden and are willing back up their desires by paying for one, businesses will be aching to take their money. In fact, there already are many open alternatives that serve these people well. According to you your iPhone has issues even though you own one, but evidently these issues are so minor that you won't even give alternatives your money to avoid them. "But I really don't like it" is worth as much as it cost to say that, which is absolutely nothing.

You still somehow don’t get it so I’ll explain it very, very simply.

My iPhone has THOUSANDS of features. Battery life, interoperability with other devices, reliability, familiarity, particular apps that I’ve purchased already, and hundreds of other reasons all contribute to why I like one smartphone brand over another.

And yes access to third party apps is one of those thousands of contributing factors but ultimately I’m not going to buy a phone that has a crappy battery and doesn’t work with any of my other devices just so I can download a couple extra cool apps without the App Store. Besides I can jailbreak this iPhone (at a privacy risk since I have to flash the whole firmware) and run sideloaded apps if I want to but it’s usually not necessary.

So you keep equating making a choice based on thousands of variables with a large scale consumer endorsement of one particular variable which is not at all scientific or logical.

For the average consumer, the fact that they have $200 in iOS apps they’ve already purchased over the last decade and their entire family is on Macs and iPhones that have generally been reliable is enough reason to stay with another iPhone. They’re not thinking about walled gardens when they’ve probably never even realized the distinction.

Every other iPhone alternative has thousands of features as well, they're all very competitive with an iPhone yet don't have such a locked down system. Smartphones that no longer exist also had thousands of features, that didn't stop consumers from abandoning them.

There's only so many ways you can tell me you care so little about walled gardens that it ranks below about a thousand features that you actually base your purchasing decision on. Let me explain it very, very simply: I and many others actually give a shit about walled gardens, we actually make purchasing decisions based on that by not buying Apple. I personally refuse to buy Apple devices for myself that are incredibly locked down and limited and so intentionally incompatible with every other device on the market; Oh, that describes every single Apple device including the very first iPhones since before Apple became a trillion dollar company by selling a billion iPhones. You and millions of others could have made a similar decision but you didn't, you found about a thousand other things more important.

Over countless choices of countless combinations of thousands of features from companies all vying for more money and attention, consumers have consistently demonstrated that walled gardens are not just a very distant concern that they won't bother paying for, it's often a desirable choice and a top priority amongst many consumers who openly desire features & limitations that are only possible in Apple's locked down walled garden.

I don't think it's helpful to continue this conversation any further. I find your depiction of consumers to be hopelessly out of touch and I think it's kind of pathetic to claim that walled gardens are important yet find a thousand other reasons to ignore it. Every purchasing decision is a trade-off, not everyone gets literally every last thing their heart desires, nor should they because that's a waste of resources. Consumers get what they really want, the market has done well to ensure that, and evidently you've fulfilled your top thousand most desired features in a phone with Apple too.

Calling for the government to step in and override the choices of millions of consumers is the last thing I want, even if it runs contrary to my own consumer choices.

What phone do you use?

You care very strongly about the walled garden so much so that you’ll ignore thousands of other compromises compared to other devices that you may not like. That’s rare, but you’re on Hacker News so of course you aren’t like normal people when choosing a phone. You can’t assume most people will do what you do when they haven’t even heard of the walled garden issue so it literally could not be on their list of considerations.

I’m guessing I could say you don’t care about privacy or usability or something else based on your phone choice. But you’d say no I care about not having a wallet garden and thats why I chose it. Well in the same way most people didn’t choose to have a walled garden. They went to the store and bought one of the most popular phones and regardless of brand all their apps came from an App Store so they didn't even know the difference when they were deciding between other compromises like price, availability, network, battery life, ease of use, etc.

In fact, most these people never had an App Store before their iPhone so it seemed like an extra thing no one else had instead of a locked down Apple monopoly. Hindsight is 20/20.

None of these people would be upset if you put in a power user setting to allow third party apps. They wouldn’t even know it was there. So don’t say they “chose” that they didn’t want it. You can’t say people chose to ban something they don’t even know exists.

I use a Google Pixel. You can definitely say I don't care about data collection/privacy because I don't. You can also say I care less about usability than I do about walled gardens / software limitations because that's true.

Of course it's rare to prioritize walled gardens, that's the point. That's why the industry is like this. No one really cares about walled gardens, they don't care about it enough for them to make any real decisions about it.

People don't go "I really want a walled garden", they just say "I really want a phone that does and chooses everything for me" and proceed to buy a locked down device that applies restrictions that are only possible in a locked down platform.

By the way, Android already does put in a power user setting to allow third party apps. They're still being sued by Epic, and Google believes that allowing third party stores are needed to resolve potential antitrust issues (Google has started working on this). I'd be very surprised if antitrust action doesn't tread similar ground with Apple, and you can bet that all the people who liked & supported Apple's iron fist are going to start complaining if a bunch of popular apps move to their own app stores to keep their revenue cut.

You said: People don't go "I really want a walled garden".

So you admit after all this my exact point in the first place. Almost nobody is deciding based on this because there are thousands of other things that are either more important, easier to understand, more talked about in marketing and reviews, or simply because they've never even heard that some are walled gardens and some aren't. Clearly someone who has never had a smartphone before wouldn't choose based on specifics of the App Store when they're probably trying to figure out how to make a phone call.

No, I said that people don't say something as obvious as "I really want a walled garden", they express their desire for a walled garden through action and by wanting things that are only possible through a walled garden. People want Apple to make their decisions for them, that's a vote for Apple's walled garden.

"Walled garden" is just some jargon that some of us use to describe this kind of platform. Consumers have long been familiar with the concept of a platform that is locked down and makes decisions for you. "Walled garden" isn't a magic phrase that one needs to utter in order to want.

> Nobody wants a phone that doesn't allow them to add a third party app. They tolerate it due to lack of choice because the device still provides exceptional utility.

No, people DO want phones like that. You are in a niche group of users that don’t want it. Most iPhone users and even many developers love the walled garden and the security and quality it brings with it.

You're assuming that. Apple may position it as a feature but I've never heard one person say they want that. You're making a big jump simply because they buy the phone. Look you could make it so most software goes through the store but no one wants their own program to need to get approved to go on their own device. Clearly.

Our governments are empowered to change behaviors by threat of force, but we're letting corporations conduct an authoritarian insurgency within our national borders while libertarian apologists cry "free markets" and "consumer choice".

There is no choice and the markets for highly sophisticated technologies are not free or efficient. It's farcical.

If the government really believed that FAANG is conducting an authoritarian insurgency within our national borders, they wouldn't be pursuing antitrust. If that's what you want to argue, fine, but it's not relevant to antitrust action discussed here.

There is plenty of choice, many of which I'm happy with and many of which I'm not. I think it's farcical to say that there is no choice, millions of consumers have chosen freely without coercion from many options. The choices we have today are options that consumers have chosen willingly and repeatedly over other options that no longer exist.

That was really well phrased - there are options, but just because you don’t like them doesn’t mean you get to force other people to make something you do like.

I didn't say people should be forced to make something.

I was responding to the other person's argument that you can simply not buy products like Apple's to show you don't like their lack of openness. My point was that all of the available products have different drawbacks so its not so simple as "don't buy Apple" when there are only a few options left from monopolies and they all have similar issues.

But on the other hand if a majority of us feel this way and the free market doesn’t seem to be doing the job, then that is the job of government and regulation - that is our voice.

Of course, an obvious counter-example is the Defense Production Act, which allows the government to force other people to make something they like.

Customers really liked having lead in their gas, and asbestos in their walls, yet somehow, it was still a bad idea

Government regulators were also fine with having lead in gas for decades, they didn't do much better. In fact government regulators allowing themselves to be swayed by auto-manufacturer paid safety studies probably gave the public a false sense of security.

I often wonder if we would have gotten rid of things like lead and asbestos faster if consumers had to decide for themselves rather than depending upon regulators to determine what is safe.

Consumers can only choose from what options they're given, and if every option is leaded then that's what they'll buy. Also, if they're unaware of the negative effects of lead (or even unaware that their gasoline HAS lead) then there would be no incentive for them to choose what they're told is a worse product. This was before the internet, so it was difficult and time-consuming to do research on something like this. Gas companies said leaded gasoline was safe so everyone went with it.

The government's job here is to do that tedious research and ban/regulate anything that's hazardous to health and safety. The alternative would be a grassroots campaign by citizen experts who decide to go against the advice of what should be trusted sources, which is how you end up with stuff like the anti-vax movement.

If consumers all want unleaded and every available option is leaded, someone will make unleaded fuel and become enormously successful. That's how a market functions.

If they're unaware of the negative effects of lead or a business is being dishonest about what's in the fuel, that definitely falls under unfair/dishonest practices and the government should prosecute that.

But how on earth is that relevant to Facebook or Apple antitrust? Facebook operates a bunch of websites that millions of people voluntarily sign up for and can leave at any time. The government isn't suing Facebook for safety issues or anything, they're suing them for antitrust which means they believe Facebook has somehow unfairly coerced consumers into using their product over their competitors.

Hardly relevant considering Facebook is being sued for antitrust, not for being as unsafe as lead additives or asbestos.

Consumers really didn't like having lead in their gas or asbestos in their walls, the problem was that the dangerous effects of leaded gas and asbestos weren't well-known at the time.

Maybe you should elaborate on what you believe isn't well-known about Facebook that warrants an antitrust lawsuit.

Most consumers do not understand the repercussions nor do they understand the power these companies can weld, so you can't say they have spoken.

And I say they do, they don't just don't value it as highly as you do. It's awfully convenient to blindly assert that people can't be trusted to make their own choices, especially when the proposed solution is take away their choice with government regulation.

How is their choice being taken away? They would only be gaining more freedom and control over their devices, not losing anything.

You know, it is possible that many people like Facebook as it is today considering that it's the most popular social network in the world. I'm also really curious what additional freedom and control over their devices consumers would gain from this antitrust suit given that no one is coerced into using Facebook (or Instagram, WhatsApp etc) and Facebook doesn't even make the devices that run those apps.

This thread is about Apple, not Facebook. Right-to-repair and having freedom to install the software you want on the hardware you buy is an important pursuit. Tell me again what choice you're losing with this?

Extremes are never good or useful. We need moderation. Capitalism with guardrails. We already have regulation to ensure certain corporate behaviors don't harm consumers, and even protect them from themselves, which has massively improved quality, safety and reliability of the things we buy.

Sure some regulations are overreaching or outdated, but the rise of giant software/internet companies has upended all of the old considerations of antitrust. There are a few trillion-dollar companies that impact a vast amount of our lives and there's no effective way to disengage from them while living in modern civilization. That's a major problem because pretty soon they will be the "government" that controls your life - but without any of the accountability or transparency.

Evidently it's not important, almost no one pays for it. There are (and were) devices that are very repairable, that aren't so locked down and closed, but few actually care about this when they spend money and it soon goes away when companies realize how little consumers care about it. Saying you wish for X, Y, and Z is worth as much as it costs to say that, which is absolutely nothing. Actually paying money for stuff cuts through the bullshit consumers tell their friends or the internet about what they want or where their priorities are.

My points apply to Apple as well, consumers wanted this and continued buying devices like this. I don't doubt that some people complain about various flaws in the products they buy but it's largely meaningless because they clearly don't care enough about these flaws to put their money where their mouth is. No one forced them to buy hard-to-repair, locked down Apple products when there were more open alternatives, they simply decided that repairability is so unimportant they'd still buy Apple products over a product that is more repairable.

It's one thing if Apple were dishonest or consumers were somehow forced to buy Apple, but they're not. There's nothing actually stopping consumers from buying the phone they want. Consumers aren't being harmed, they're getting what they really want.

This is the choice I lose with this: the ability to buy a product that is locked down and tightly integrated/controlled by Apple. It's a choice millions of consumers have already willingly made. I'm personally living happily without buying Apple's locked down products for myself, I and every other non-Apple consumer didn't need the government to make this choice for me. I don't want the government to remove a choice that millions of consumers have made on their own.

Railroads and the like could have just not sold to the oil men. Or consumers could've just not bought from Standard Oil. ... Until they couldn't.

This is a bad example and a common misconception. Standard Oil was an efficiency monopoly. It was a tremendous boon to consumers:

Instead of buying oil from jobbers, they made the jobbers’ profit by sending their own purchasing men into the oil region. In addition, they made their own sulfuric acid, their own barrels, their own lumber, their own wagons, and their own glue. They kept minute and accurate records of every item from rivets to barrel bungs. They built elaborate storage facilities near their refineries. Rockefeller bargained as shrewdly for crude as anyone before or since. And Sam Andrews coaxed more kerosene from a barrel of crude than could the competition. In addition, the Rockefeller firm put out the cleanest-burning kerosene, and managed to dispose of most of the residues like lubricating oil, paraffin, and vaseline at a profit.

Between 1870 and 1885 the price of refined kerosene dropped from 26 cents to 8 cents per gallon. In the same period, the Standard Oil Company reduced the [refining] costs per gallon from almost 3 cents in 1870 to 0.452 cents in 1885. Clearly, the firm was relatively efficient, and its efficiency was being translated to the consumer in the form of lower prices for a much improved product, and to the firm in the form of additional profits.

https://fee.org/articles/41-rockefellers-standard-oil-compan...

It is difficult to overstate how much Standard Oil revolutionized the oil refinement process, resulting in oil that was significantly cleaner and cheaper than its competitors’.

> Standard Oil

Sounds like the government should and did step in at the "until they couldn't" part, which is not where we're at. Hard to imagine someone unable to stop using Facebook or Instagram or whatever, there's a lot of social media out there.

> Railroads

Considering the US returned control of the railways to their original owners in 1920 and most rail today is privatized, I'm not really sure what you're getting at.

Consumers and competing businesses were still harmed during Standard Oil's rise. Why wait until there are no practical alternatives left?

Other businesses are always harmed during the rise of a dominant business, that's what happens when a dominant business takes marketshare away from you. The question at hand is whether they took their share unfairly. In Standard Oil's case, the government found that they did, which maybe happened too late in Standard Oil's case.

But even though it takes time to determine wrongdoing, we still prosecute crimes after they happen instead of before for obvious reasons. You wait until there is evidence of harm to consumers. Maybe the government has evidence, this is just an early article after all, but again, it's hard to imagine someone unable to stop using Facebook or Instagram or whatever, there's a lot of social media out there.

Where to draw the line is the controversy. Consumer harm isn't always obvious or easily reversible given corporate adversaries with more resources than mid-sized countries.

> Consumers should come first before massive corporations.

No one can come first. If the terms aren’t mutually agreeable, the other will not participate in a transaction. They don’t have to make things to sell you just like you don’t have to buy from them. It can’t work any other way.

Yes, consumers and society come first before the corporations that serve them. The corporations only exist to provide, only survive because they do.

Free markets and capitalism are great, the best system we have, but there are still guardrails to ensure proper behavior and mitigate harm. This is the problem being discussed. The balance in recent times is completely off with these massive software/internet companies that control so much of our lives with little oversight or accountability. This is what people are arguing against, and I believe you would agree with that.

> Consumers should come first before massive corporations

And yet corporations don’t exist to do your particular bidding and make your desires real. Unless a corporation is doing something illegal, you have no right to tell them what to do and what to make.

Apple could, for all intents and purposes, sell useless slabs of aluminum. Your demands to have the government coerce them into creating open APIs would be just as outrageous in this scenario.

Finally, giving the government this much power is shortsighted at best. Has the Trump administration not shown you the extremes the government can go to? The TikTok debacle after Trump’s Tulsa rally was ruined by it, calls to repeal Section 230, etc.

The government is not your friend and it never will be. There will always come a time when it will abuse its powers to the greatest extent possible. Unless corporations are actively and illegally harming consumers, I don’t see why your proposal is necessary.

Consider supporting companies that further your ideals with your own wallet rather than telling other companies what to do.

> "Unless a corporation is doing something illegal, you have no right to tell them what to do and what to make"

Exactly, legislation and legality is how we tell them what to do.

> Your demands to have the government coerce them into creating open APIs would be just as outrageous in this scenario.

I didn't demand govt-forced open APIs? Where did you come up with that? However right-to-repair and other freedoms and ownership over the hardware you purchase, especially when it's so critical to your life and centrally controlled, is worthwhile to pursue.

> "giving the government this much power is shortsighted at best"

Either the corporation or the government has the power. The challenge is finding the right balance, because neither should have complete authority.

> Exactly, legislation and legality is how well tell them what to do.

What legislation do you propose?

> I didn't demand govt-forced open APIs? Where did you come up with that?

OP’s comment, which you seem to be arguing in favor of. Apologies if I misinterpreted.

> Either the corporation or the government has the power.

Obviously. So long as there are anti-monopolistic practices in place, you can choose the corporation you want to interface with easily. Nothing is stopping OP from buying an Android phone, PinePhone, or Purism Librem 5.

Governments are not something you can choose, not really, and giving them wholesale control of how corporations can create tech products is granting them an absurd level of power, especially when viable alternatives already exist on the free market.

This line of thinking about viable alternatives goes to extremes when you don’t consider the capabilities of average consumers and differences in quality of product.

Like what the hell am I supposed to do on a purism libre that has 100x less apps of 1/10th the quality as iOS? It currently does not support signal, banking apps, maps, Spotify, slack, Feedly, pocket and millions more. Yes, a dev could potentially spend 100s of hours making shitty homegrown alternatives for every little app - this is a VERY long stretch. And even then 99% of people are not devs and will never ever ever do that. It’s like saying a horse is a viable alternative to a car. It’s not even in the same damn universe yet.

Just because you don’t like the options on the market doesn’t mean they don’t exist. That’s life. You don’t get to force other people into developing something that perfectly fits your desires.

For the record, the Librem 5 does indeed support many of those apps via Anbox.

No ones talking about forcing anyone to develop any thing.

We also need to stop talking about individual purchasing decisions as if they represent the broader market. The point is not that there are zero competitors in a monopolised market. It’s that those competitors suffer at the will of the monopoly and cannot bring viable competing products to market. Hence all the competitors outside of the big two in the mobile space having effectively zero market share combined.

Far from forcing people to develop something anti-trust is design to increase competition by opening up the market. Offering more people the opportunity to build the innovative things they want and consumers the ability to choose. As we saw with the results in this happening to MS it works reasonably well.

I didn’t say anything about forcing people to develop anything.. and yeah that’s life without legislation, but with the right laws it doesn’t have to be.

Right-to-repair and freedom to install and operate apps without going through a single centrally-controlled app store.

Here's a question: Should the wireless networks that your phone requires to function follow net neutrality? Why or why not?

Apple is approaching a monopsony over phone profits. Given time it could hollow out the competition until there is no practical alternative.

Support such companies or actually work on projects that further them.

The idea that the government is going to create an open software utopia is hard to understand.

> Unless a corporation is doing something illegal, you have no right to tell them what to do and what to make.

OK so we make it illegal. Governments are good at that.

The war on drugs has entered the chat

Make what illegal?

In this case, possibly nothing, since antitrust already exists. But I'm not qualified to decide. It is probably best to wait and see how this and the Apple/Epic case play out to see if changes are required.

I'm just a bit sick of the argument "It's OK if it is legal" when laws exist to serve us and can be changed. Discussion is the first step. My comment was a response to that.

Mandating right to repair and open platforms and formats (such as the circuit diagrams we used to get within our instruction manuals) would be one possibility.

You’d have to make that mandate global, otherwise you’d see countries that do permit trade secrets simply dominate the computing landscape.

This is not a realistic option.

I don't think it needs to be fully global, just a significant market. EU's mandate on USB-C chargers is one example where you lose a lot by opting out.

How is a standardized charging socket in any way comparable to banning trade secrets?

This doesn’t make sense to me.

It's an example of a law in one country changing what a company does in another country to access the market, without a global mandate. I read that as the main point, not trade secrets.

In your example, a company with trade secrets may want to (and be allowed to) keep circuit diagrams or charger designs secret in country A, but have to open them up to be allowed to sell in country B. It becomes a choice that carries a cost without a global mandate.