So no, this will not affect startups and harm innovation, it will just force the monopolistic behemoths to play nice and cease actively harming innovation.
Further it seems more like a moat to keep anyone else from getting as big as these "digital gatekeepers" are as suddenly when you get to a certain size you have an enormous expense.
If these companies really are that large that they have to get special laws for them isnt the solution to dissolve their monopoly and split the company up instead of starting to create separate classes of laws.
Like tax brackets? Treating big things exactly the same as small things seems ideological, not rational.
Behavior that applies marginally avoids most "discontinuity" and distortions in incentives that come along with them. For example, people whose income increases from $99,999 to $100,001 are only incentivized by a 100,000 bracket to hide the marginal $2, rather than suddenly needing to hide all of their income.
EU regulations that apply to companies above a certain size are not like this. Once you pass a certain level, it applies to all the business below the level. That already has a distorting incentive on growth and incentivizes companies to stay small. Maybe that's something you want in this case, but it's almost always an unintended consequence.
Perhaps if we formalized legal code as code, we could apply automatic differentiation (just kidding... I think)
Continuous laws do seem more fair in general. But it seems more important (to me, at least) that this sort of fairness is applied to individuals. For companies... they aren't people, we don't need to worry about making their lives confusing or miserable. They have legal departments to sort this sort of stuff out, they'll respond rationally to incentives, it is just a business decision.
So, if there were any medium companies just below the regulation threshold, the discontinuity argument would make sense. But there isn't, and there won't be, precisely because of anti-competitive behavior of the giants, they can sustain walled gardens precisely because they are giants.
And short term cap gains are just regular income.
I can’t speak for all member states but I do know some have a threshold and from that point you have to pay a percentage of the total amount. So some investment firms will game your portfolio to bring you in just enough to fly under that threshold.
The U.K., while not technically an EU member any more (and I’m still bitter about that), also operates this way.
Stamp duty is a U.K. tax placed on purchases of property. It’s free for properties under a threshold but the moment you go over it you have to pay a percentage of the total price of your house. Stamp duty does have incremental percentages but it isn’t calculated like income tax. Thus you’ll often see a lot of properties for slightly under each increment and then a jump in prices after. Some sellers even go as far as to put the house on for £x (under that threshold) but charge extra for additional purchases outside of the property (like a gazebo, hot tub, etc). I’ve even seen some buyers/sellers ask for private bank transfers for the additional extra. Which is outright fraud. But it does still happen.
So, exactly the same thing with a bottom bracket marginal rate of 0%?
Whereas the capital gains and stamp duty go from (again made up numbers) 0% on 15k to 15% on anything above 15k. So if you had 15k you get taxed nothing. But if you get 15,001 then you pay 15% on ~15k (just by gaining an extra £1) rather than 15% on £1 (like how income tax works). Thus that extra £1 actually ends up costing you _a lot_ more in tax than it’s face value. And thus why people game such taxes to slide under the threshold in ways that doesn’t make sense with income tax.
I think it is.
I have no recourse against Big Tech scamming me. They are an oligopoly sharing the same anti-consumer practices.
But if I regularly buy something from a friend, maybe I'm a 10th of their customer base.
Giants can afford to skimp on any single customer relationship. Go read Amazon reviews, etc...
The one-person show with only continental shipping taking PayPal payments for their hobby business absolutely cannot afford to screw over 10% of their customer base. PayPal (or any other provider) has no patience, and anecdotally will always side with the customer.
And sure, citation needed, I know :)
Amazon has completely refunded every defective or damaged products I have ever received. I've done two returns of $100+ items in the past month, in one case the seller disagreed with me and Amazon took my side. In total I've probably had 30 refunds over the past 10 years of which at least 5 were Amazon intervening to prevent the seller from screwing me.
I cannot remember the last time I had to return something. I rarely buy from Amazon though, and choose quality products from reputable sources, not the cheapest offer.
Or maybe I'm just lucky.
Amazon is full of minor counts of fraud like this and at their scale I bet it adds up to real money.
YES, like tax brackets. Everyone should pay 30k$ per year to the government, no matter how rich or poor, for the services they get, and it would be the literal individual fair share.
The percentage-based taxes are already an unfair distribution of cost for the rich, and the progressive taxes amplify it even more. After all, who costs more at school, a Jeff Bezos, or an unruly one?
This is completely normal for laws.
Your kitchen at home doesn't have to follow the same rules as restaurant kitchen, for example. You as a driver of your personal car don't have to go through the same process and registration as truck drivers do. Small stalls selling things have different rules than big stores. And so on.
This is a very perceptive extension of the famous Steinbeck quote. The sentiment is certainly not limited to the blue-collar labor class of which the original referred.
Sure, and it's possible to heavily discount your opinion when compared to the hundreds of opinions of experts in antitrust law that helped shaping this legislation. This would be less the case, maybe, if this legislation actually targeted you, so your insight would be relevant; but the fact is that it doesn't.
And it makes sense. Let the small business experiment a bit, give them a bit leeway and once they grew to a certain size, expect that they think about the bigger picture. Which our dear monopolists only do in their favor.
A person, even if very rich, has a limited lifetime and a limited amount of hours in a day to spend. A corporation is immortal and can have 100,000 people simultaneously working on something. It’s bizarre if the law pretends that such an entity is just another human.
If you start a grease fire, you burn down your house.
If you serve meat that's been stored at room temperature, you make your family and some friends sick.
But a commercial kitchen's potential for harm is much higher in many ways.
They are literally the internet. That’s not about some companies to get some of there dollars. They literally gatekeeping. Amazon just shut down a whole social media platform. You can’t sell apps to iOS without paying Apple a big part of it (15 % - 30 %). Yeah you could say just create your own phone that would be fine right? How realistic is this. You can’t even build a good one because the bigger companies have so many patents you can’t go out. Then you write your own OS because you don’t want to pay and global company for using there OS. So give me my 200billion $ to get in the market. You can’t even advertise your product because they wouldn’t show your ad at all. That’s equal?
Also the EU can’t just split up companies. It’s a step to get some freedom back.
I mean, after the facebook-whatsapp merge (and the whole aftermath) we mostly lost all hopes.
we are not treated the same, If I killed 300 people the way boeing did with its Max debacle, I would be serving 15 consecutive life sentences.
for all the times a corporation kills people, almost never does anyone go to jail
> isnt the solution to dissolve their monopoly
Why is that the preffered solution? If you are arguing for that, you need to provide some reasoning or benefits.
I am sure they would prefer not to be split up.
We already do that. We always did that. We regard things that are used larger than a certain scale as infrastructure. Roads. Justice system. Military. Power network.
We always heavily regulated these. Entire world except the US also regulated the Internet backbone as a utility. So nowhere in the world do people and companies have to still pay mid-2000s prices for bandwidth like they have to in the US after 1990s regulations expired and major ISPs started to consolidate entire backbone. They even tried to declare the Internet backbone, therefore the Internet, their 'private property' to be able to do whatever they wanted.
When tech monopolies go over a certain size and become literal infrastructures that everyone HAS to use one way or the other, they should get the same treatment.
Anti-American company sentiments are high across Europe, especially when it comes to big tech companies. Our people are sick of US companies playing wild west and stomping all over regulations - AirBnB and Uber caused the most public backlash here (AirBnB because of people complaining that they were priced out of their homes and illegal hotel-style operations disrupting their lives, Uber because taxi drivers have pretty good lobby connections), followed by Facebook (which was mostly a topic for privacy nerds). Also, we have not forgotten who caused the 2008 financial crisis and who keeps dodging tax and labor laws while the taxpayers are left to deal with the followup costs.
Pay up and behave or get kicked out, GDPR was just the beginning (and once we get the Irish authorities to behave, your companies are done). The EU bureaucracy is like a big tanker ship, slow as molasses, but once it is moving it is not stoppable other than by going out of its way.
I went for 2 weeks abroad with a week vacation and other week working remotely. There was no hotel in the area to provide me with the proper accommodation. But Airbnb did that just fine.
So I don’t necessarily see those services and companies behind as pure evil. I would say the government running behind and reactively setting limitations rather than proactively thinking about the way to move forward is an issue here.
A taxi may be more expensive at "idle" times - but ever tried to grab an Uber at a big event like a concert, a soccer game or Saturday night out drinking? You'll pay triple or more. Regulated taxis are more expensive, but always consistent which is a value on its own. Also, you can be sure that the driver doesn't live in poverty [1] or works ridiculous hours.
> and if I imagine a foreigner catching one on the street without the meter - that could get even worse.
I can't speak for countries other than Germany, but at least here this is simply not a thing.
What is a pain point with German cabs (and other German services) is that the acceptance of credit and especially debit cards is still a bit lackluster, but the situation has massively improved during covid.
> There was no hotel in the area to provide me with the proper accommodation. But Airbnb did that just fine.
Yeah, because wherever you were is most likely zoned residential, meaning no hotels and the associated noise from partygoers, vehicles and the likes. Are the neighbors of your AirBnB fine with someone renting out a room to randoms? Most likely not.
[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/He-drives-60-ho...
You absolutely can't. Taxi drivers are independent contractors in most european countries too, with no minimum wage protections or enforcement of hours worked.
The prior here is simply not having enough taxis available. Fixed cost and capacity versus incentives that increase capacity when needed.
Even Linux is more an American product at this point than a European one with Intel being iirc the biggest contributor. I just think it's a bit of a joke that the EU strategy is to regulate American companies to this extent without having any coherent vision on developing genuinely viable alternatives and providing incentives to stay in the EU.
But we have apparently forgotten about this [0], nearly a decade later and it still remains a completely ignored issue that pretty much nobody was held accountable for except the people who drew attention to it.
[0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/2014...
Not "especially" but exactly those. Almost no other american companies are known here. Of course there are McDonalds and Coca-Cola, but their bad reputation is for their unhealthy products, not the companies themselves.
The 2008 financial crisis might have started in the US, but outcomes in European countries varied greatly depending on local policies and debt levels. It's hardly Americas fault that some European countries had taken on very high levels of government debt.
AirBnB and Uber seems pretty easy to regulate on a local level and in many places in Europe they are.
The cold war has already gone hot thanks to "Fuck the EU" US interference in Ukraine [0] by now having escalated into a full blown open war, just like there is no "LNG pipeline from the US" to Europe.
> not sure they’re even able to without mass protests
Do you mean mass protests like they we had over the invasion of Iraq? That didn't lead to anything and thus has crippled the global peace movement to this day.
That's why the idea that European people will "take to the streets" to protest for "American gas", is pretty out there and quite fantastical.
Before that happens you will see people take to the streets to protest the sanctions that are mainly responsible for this economic hardship, sanctions pushed for by Washington.
The Cold War got hot cause of Russia, no one else. Russia is the one who decided to invade Ukraine, Russia is the one who decides to bomb children, Russia is the one who decides to commit genocide against the Ukrainians, Russia is solely responsible for this war.
No amount of “Ukrainian bio weapons” or “Ukrainian witch battalions” or “Ukrainian inhuman super soldiers” stories pushed by the kremlin will change this fact.
To hear Russia tell it, Ukraine has bombed a lot of children in the last 8 years and was committing genocide in East Ukraine. Ukraine also got couped.
Note: I personally have no ability to determine the truth of the Russian side beyond reading the wikipedia page and noting it plausible. I wonder if you have some extra information on things like how many civilian causalties occurred in the Donbas before 2022 or what the real support for Crimea joining Russia was?
Except that's not how Russia tells it, that's what actually happened.
On February 21 then acting Ukrainian president Yanukovych signed a transition deal with the Ukrainian opposition, brokered by the EU and Russia [0].
That should have been the end of most of it, but it wasn't, later that day Yatsenyuk, aka "Yats our guy" from the Nuland tape, and Tyahnybok, who both agreed and signed to the deal, went on stage on Euromaidan and then declared how "That's not enough" riling up the protesters to demand more.
Klitschko, who was constantly trying to keep the peace [1], and was Merkel's aka the EU's choice [2] was completely left out of that. More context on that in the leaked Nuland call, where she rates Klitschko's governmental experience not high enough for such a position, thus their go ahead with "Yats is our guy" and "Fuck the EU".
That situation escalated then so much, that by the early morning of February 22 the leader of Right Sector announced how they had taken over, and secured, the parliament and several other local government buildings [3].
It's exactly that part the current "Russia lies" narrative always leaves out, by claiming Yanukovych just randomly fled from a completely peaceful protest.
After Yanukovych fled, Yatsenyuk announced their new post-coup government to rather frosty reception on Euromaidan [4].
As a German I was actively following the situation back then, that's why I still have most of these sources. But since then so much information was straight up "deleted" from the web. It used to be extremely easy to find violent footage from Euromaidan on Twitter and YouTube, not anymore, all deleted as "Russian propaganda" so the "peaceful revolution, there was never a civil war" narrative can keep getting pushed without too much of an factual opposition.
Another, rather concrete, example is Yatsenyuk's "Open Ukraine Foundation", that went online shortly after the coup, it's partners page had all the usual US regime change actors bluntly spelled out [5]. First the foundation changed from his name, to his wives, and ultimately that partners page vanished completely, too blatantly incriminating.
[0] https://www.politico.eu/article/yanukovych-signs-transition-...
[1] https://youtu.be/5bPKFto1AFY
[2] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/ukraine-merkel-will-k...
[3] https://www.unian.net/politics/888104-verhovnaya-rada-admini...
[4] https://youtu.be/wegtWNIFX1Y
[5] https://web.archive.org/web/20140302111543/http://openukrain...
Alleged Nuland tape, it hasn't been in anyway shape or form authenticated and we know from this war that Russia is more then happy to use deep fakes to control the narrative.
> It's exactly that part the current "Russia lies" narrative always leaves out, by claiming Yanukovych just randomly fled from a completely peaceful protest.
It's not a narrative, unless you seriously believe in Ukrainian weaponised witches/black magic and Ukrainian bio engineered super soldiers.
Its funny you paint a very different picture to the wikipedia article.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
> The following day, police withdrew from central Kyiv, which came under effective control of the protesters. Yanukovych fled the city.[33] That day, the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove Yanukovych from office by 328 to 0 (72.8% of the parliament's 450 members).
Looks like Yanukovych ran away after he got ousted by the parliament themselves.
Except the USG officially apologized for the "undiplomatic language" on the tape [0]
Do you think the USG is in the habit of apologizing for Russian fakes or what happened there?
> It's not a narrative
Yes, the "peaceful revolution" is very much a manufactured narrative, you should check out your own link [1]
> unless you seriously believe in Ukrainian weaponised witches/black magic and Ukrainian bio engineered super soldiers.
Can you please stop the bad faith arguing and strawmanning? I didn't write a single thing about anything like that.
> Its funny you paint a very different picture to the wikipedia article
Lets take a look at the actual TIMES article that's the citation for that [2];
"Ukraine’s beleaguered President Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev Saturday as protestors took full control of Ukraine’s capital"
Beleaguered president fled after protesters took control of the capital, which also involved taking control of the parliament and the local security authorities, Right Sector announced it very much themselves in the very early morning of 22 February [3];
"“The Seventh Hundred is located inside the Verkhovna Rada. Also there is a division of the "Right Sector". Protected by the Cabinet. The nineteenth and third hundreds are guarding the Presidential Administration. The Fifteenth Hundred guards the Ministry of Internal Affairs,” Parubiy said."
Right Sector had control over who they let enter the parliament and who not. Want to guess who they let in, and who don't? That's also why the Wikipedia article has several different numbers for that how many actually participated in those parliamental votes. Sometimes it talks about 328 attending, then it's 386 and then it's suddenly "450 members voted 332-0", the Wikipedia article is all over the place on that.
Additionally; Did Russia also fake McCain shaking all the right hands [4]? Was it Russia who then made an American investment banker the new minister of finance for Ukraine, complete with fast-tracked citizenship? [5]
The evidence is overwhelming and blatant, that's also why all you can do is deny, even trying to strawman the discussion by talking about "weaponized witches".
Very much the same as back in the early 2000s when everybody knew the USG was lying about Saddam being responsible for 9/11 and the WMD, yet everybody played along for appearances and not wanting to get called a "terrorist supporter". But unlike back then, this time the stakes actually involve nuclear weapons.
This might or might not be the reason US authorities have lately been very active in educating their population about the proper response to a "radiation event" [6] [7] [8].
Mostly unnoticed in the US, yet to those who was alive during the cold war, particularly in central Europe, that's just quite scary, particularly in combination with the even worse than war on terror levels of information distortion.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/06/us-ukraine-rus...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity#/media/F...
[3] https://www.unian.net/politics/888104-verhovnaya-rada-admini...
[4] https://www.businessinsider.com/john-mccain-meets-oleh-tyahn...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Jaresko#Citizenship
[6] https://youtu.be/N-5d7V4Sbqk
[7] https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/emergencies/index.htm
[8] https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlyterrifying/comments/ufbx40/the...
> Except the USG officially apologized for the "undiplomatic language" on the tape [0]
>> Victoria Nuland reportedly said ‘Fuck the EU’ speaking of Ukraine crisis, though department didn’t confirm it was her voice on tape
There’s no confirmation whos voice is on that tape although the tape itself is reportedly said to be authentic
> Yes, the "peaceful revolution" is very much a manufactured narrative, you should check out your own link [1]
The Russians often lie _is not a narrative_ the Russian government nearly never tells the truth. All you need to look at is there state media during this war to see many examples of it, from downing civilian aircraft to weaponised witches, the firehose of falsehood is well and alive.
> Yes, the "peaceful revolution" is very much a manufactured narrative, you should check out your own link [1]
The only person on that page that suggests this is a coup is the former president who got deposed and ran away back to his masters in Russia. No amount of images will change the fact it wasn’t a coupe, no amount of walls of text from you will either.
> The evidence is overwhelming and blatant, that's also why all you can do is deny, even trying to strawman the discussion by talking about "weaponized witches"
Do you think the Russians lie?.
What has lately been up with the voting system on HN? Apparently people I reply to, with much newer accounts, can just instantly downvote my comments.
Yet most of the time I don't even get a downvote option, and pretty much never to any of the replies to my comments.
Feels like the system is being gamed by people with alt accounts.
Russia likes to tell a lot of lies and half truths to muddy the waters of everything I wouldn't trust what they they also generally don't provide any solid evidence of any of there claims either, just take these examples.
"Russian State Media Claims to Discover Militarized Ukrainian Witches".
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dypmpk/russian-state-media-c...
"Russian lawmakers baselessly claim their army is up against biologically modified Ukrainian super soldiers"
https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-lawmakers-tout-basel...
"U.S. Ramps Up Ukraine Warnings as Russia Denies Invasion Plans"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-17/russia-te...
Russian state media just cannot be trusted to tell the truth, I wouldn't believe a single word they say.
> Note: I personally have no ability to determine the truth of the Russian side beyond reading the wikipedia page and noting it plausible.
This would be a mistake, the "firehose of falsehood" is a well known Russian tactic, they lie constantly just to muddy the water. All you need to do is look at MH70 (the civilian airliner that Russian troops pretending to be separatists shot down) to see it in action, before it was publicly revealed to be a airliner they where posing with pictures of the wreckage and bragging about downing a Ukrainian military plane then when it was revealed what happened a whole bunch of Russian pushed conspiracy theories started popping up regarding it.
> I wonder if you have some extra information on things like how many civilian causalties occurred in the Donbas before 2022.
Because of the way that Russia lies and muddies the water, the real numbers will never be known just look at how little casualties they are claiming on their side for the current war.
> or what the real support for Crimea joining Russia was?
Again because of the tactics the Russians use this will never be actually known. But maybe once Ukraine retakes Crimea we may know more.
Because decades of NATO expansion have nothing to do with this [0], having literal NATO exercises at the border of Russia [1], just completely normal and not at all an escalation. Nobody ever warned about any of this, it just came completely out of nowhere [2].
While the US would have no issue with Russia holding military exercises in Mexico, and couping the Mexican government. It wouldn't react in any way, most certainly not with the military, it's not like we have a precedent like the Cuban missile crisis, and the US military illegally occupying parts of Cuba to this day, in a very similar way to what Russia has done to Crimea.
> Russia is solely responsible for this war.
Sure, as long as you just wholesale ignore and deny what actually led to the war and how it was an active choice by US officials to undermine a diplomatic and peaceful solution, brokered by the EU, because "Fuck the EU".
In that context most online debates about this topic are similarly dishonest and toxic as war on terror debates in the early 2000s were; Anybody who doesn't join in with the blatant jingoism shall be declared an "enemy supporter", back then it was "terrorist supporter" nowadays it's "Putin supporter" and allegedly the only way out of this is more conflict, more weapons, any diplomatic solution shall be considered "pro Russia propaganda" because the forever war can't stop.
In that context you might as well tell me about WMD in Iraq, that's the level of argument you can bring that solely rests on ignoring a coup and insisting how a civil war, resulting from that coup, is totally not a civil war.
[0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-jul-07-me-10464...
[1] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/us-army-to-...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/international/bush-pulls-...
Ukraine is free to lick whatever alliances it wishes to join.
> Because decades of NATO expansion have nothing to do with this [0], having literal NATO exercises at the border of Russia [1], just completely normal and not at all an escalation. Nobody ever warned about any of this, it just came completely out of nowhere [2].
Decades of NATO are literally driven by the current actions of Russia and the past actions of the USSR. To view this in a vacuum is disingenuous at best, and malicious at worst.
Those NATO exercises where in Ukraine in 2014. In what world is that on the border with Russia?. In it’s a _country_ that borders Russia far far away from the actual border, in Lviv on the border with _Poland_.
> While the US would have no issue with Russia holding military exercises in Mexico, and couping the Mexican government. It wouldn't react in any way, most certainly not with the military, it's not like we have a precedent like the Cuban missile crisis, and the US military illegally occupying parts of Cuba to this day, in a very similar way to what Russia has done to Crimea.
The worlds changed (at least outside of Russia). Since Cuba, if this is your best comparison maybe it’s a bet of a stretch. This comparison would also require Ukraine to plan to host US nukes to be comparable.
> Sure, as long as you just wholesale ignore and deny what actually led to the war and how it was an active choice by US officials to undermine a diplomatic and peaceful solution, brokered by the EU, because "Fuck the EU".
Sounds like your suggesting that Russia was forced to invade Ukraine and murder there citizens.
You need to remember that Russia has the ability to not invade and subjugate countries, although given their history this may be hard to believe.
Russia is solely responsible, no one else. Ukraines also had 3 elections since the revolution and different people got elected each time, amazing isn’t it.
Your source for [0] is from the 50s the world was a very different place back then.
Putin has told the world many times that the Ukrainians (and other former Warsaw Pact countries) aren't real countries and destined to be colonies at best. All his actions align with these sentiments. For example, Belarus never threatened to join NATO, but they were invaded and subjugated all the same. This is 100% on Putin and Russia.
The ones really affected by the sanctions are us Europeans.
[1] https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/russia...
oh no anything but that
Speak for yourself. Most users don't hate the GDPR, they hate the way companies tried to game it (very incompetently, I might add) by adding obtuse banners and modal dialogs.
As for companies: mostly US companies hated it because they previously got away with extremely abusive business models whereas EU companies were already facing similar regulations in individual EU member states.
Uh, are you secretly longing for filing the paperwork required to obtain Title V Operating Permit for a major air emission source, or is there some other reason you oppose the idea that different things will have to follow different laws?
Personally I think most people will agree that a company with 150000 employees (Google) is not the same thing as one with 750 (tinder).
Yes, and that's a good thing. It suppresses monopolistic tendencies before they can take hold, rather than trying to prove they are a monopoly and trying to figure out after the fact how to break them in a sensible way.
> If these companies really are that large that they have to get special laws for them isnt the solution to dissolve their monopoly and split the company up instead of starting to create separate classes of laws.
Why? All you're doing is letting that monopoly create the great device/service/whatever that lots of people seem to be enjoying, but levelling the playing field so they are still forced to compete for users instead of exploiting their monopoly power to kill any competition.
Encouraging competition is the ultimate goal because that's where the progress from capitalism comes from. If we can continue to encourage competition without going about the messy business of directly interfering with how a company is structured or how it operates, that seems like a win.
I can't understand why would anyone apply narrative of systemic opression and social issues to corporations.
I understand that awareness of the importance of treating individuals equitably rather than equally has been increased in light of the increasingly public discourse on civil inequity, but these words have always existed outside that context to mean what they do.
The meaning of "equity" in a legal context according to the american heritage dictionary [0]: Justice achieved not simply according to the strict letter of the law but in accordance with principles of substantial justice and the unique facts of the case.
Not seeing how that requires me to anthropomorphise corporations.
Also, I kindly ask you to extend a bit of respect my way and not imply that I suffer from a mental illness because you disagree with me. It's not very civil.
I may have missed the definition in the article, but my cynical take is that it seems geared towards getting companies that enjoyed dominance in the 90s back into the game now.
• with over 45 mil active users • more than €7.5 billion turnover for the past 3 years
[1] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/digital-mark...
I'm getting more optimistic as I look into the details. Open messaging could be interesting, for instance.
Valuation will limit startups chance to raise investment.
Less investment in general will limit startups runway.
How would you approach this otherwise? The EU probably can't break up Google or Apple (how would this even look like?) and the walled gardens are clearly a market failure, including apples fat margins. You mention details, but regulation can be well made and just continuing the status quo is also bad. All regulations open up questions but it's not the wild west here, we have rules and they regulate the economy, even for big multinational giants like apple. Sometimes companies even get nationalised (or nationalised companies get sold)!
This type of comment is everywhere on the Internet and completely predictable.
As an American I think regulation should only be enacted when absolutely necessary, and these laws seem anything but necessary. I’ve rarely seen convincing cases of innovation being stifled or people being harmed by Apple’s walled garden approach. It’s clearly not a market failure because (1) it is extremely profitable and (2) it is not a monopoly. As you can see in this thread, tons of people prefer differently, and those people can buy Androids. I also don’t like how this EU legislation mainly targets American companies.
Forcing Apple to allow other voice assistants will only strengthen Google and Amazons dominance in the voice assistant ecosystem.
Forcing messaging apps to allow cross compatibility only will give them more of my unencrypted messages.
I could go on, but I’m very curious what all of these “massive goods” that I’m not seeing are.
You don’t personally have to benefit from this legislation, you can stay in an “official” configuration until the day you die. For some of us, this opens the door to have a FOSS App Store, or custom apps without having to rebuild them once a week.
If Microsoft continued its monopolistic practices, it's very likely that the iPhone that you like so much now won't be existing today.
I don't even know what to say to this. Backwards thinking? Apple employee speaking? I seriously wonder why you would use this argument.
The default remedy isn't break up, it's 10% of the total worldwide turnover (20% for repeat offenders). The EU can very much fine Google or Apple (and already did so).
If break-up is not possible, retricting or prohibiting access to the EU market is quite possible.
Edit: also, on my dealings with Google, I am contracting with Google Ireland Limited, a company that the EU can break up.
I wouldn't call it a market failure, there's plenty of benefits with wall gardens and it's not done solely for profit. BUT there's also drawbacks and places where walls don't make sense.
Not being able to install arbitrary apps from various app stores provides security, UX consistency, and stability of the software. But there's also drawbacks for things like privacy or abusive censorship or copyright policies.
Given the benefits/drawbacks, the best solution is to have options in the marketplace. If you prefer having more control, don't mind sacrificing deep horizontal product integration, or doing the leg work to make it ideal (doesn't need to always 'just work' predictably), etc, then you should have the option to use an OS/device that offers that.
Personally I'd rather see Google make Android more flexible (for ex: making Google Play Services less restrictive) rather than forcing every OS to be like Android.
But I'm not sure how that could be done via restrictive policy without throwing the baby out with the bath water (other than targeting monopolistic behavior like preventing choice in browsers). Otherwise taking a more-freedom approach would be best, maybe by investing in open platforms, investing in public relations campaigns to make people understand why lack of choice is bad or a consumer-friendly 'open platform' label to guide shoppers, incentives like small tax breaks for offering more open platforms, etc.
For Apple, they could offer a stripped down iOS (like a server edition of a desktop) without all of the services and side-loading restrictions, without having to ditch the current approach that people like.
Do you realise the irony of arguing for free market and a walled garden (not a free market)- simultaneously?
You can't have it both ways, pick your poison
Do you think free-markets means corporations also need to run their business operations and products/platforms like a market? Because that's not what that means. (Even if it did ideological purity is dumb)
Inversely governments forcing companies to all operate with the same business model is not on a free market.
The only thing that would prevent a walled garden from operating in a free market is if Apple et al was a monopoly/oligopoly and you had no other choices. I've already said antitrust laws for things like browser choice is one of the better solutions than the one proposed.
If you want to sell an app, you have to deal with rules of App Store or Play Store, or Windows Store. You can't even sell pornographic apps - this is the definition of an unfree market.
Android has those options. Please point me to this great privacy and security conscious competitor to Google Play Store.
- smartphones
- desktop/laptops
- music and video streaming
- App Store and payments with Apple Pay
- chip design
- physical stores
All of those could stand on their own.
Edit: I'm not saying that the EU can break them up but Apple is not a company with a single field where breaking it up is impossible. I misread the parent a bit.
Perhaps they might pull a China and require them to open a 51% EU-owned subsidiary to do business here, which would then be subject to all sort of restrictions including company size.
As a EU citizen, I would absolutely love it. But I suspect that the EU is bound by many more and much more comprehensive free-trade treaties than China is, and such a draconian approach would require many of them to be renegotiated or exited outright.
1. Making unsubscribing is as easy as subscribing, and 2. Guaranteed interoperability between instant messaging services, and 3. Sharing marketing and/or advertisement performance with business users
will "kill competition"?
What? They have a choice in whom they vote for.
Or you mean that all legislation is "monopolistic"?
Again I am curious how you believe this will "kill competition" by regulating for points 1-3 in my previous post.
For example imagine a new company trying to build an iPhone with minimal app store, well guess what, now they have to also build support for third party store, developer tools, etc… which increases their cost to launch. Apple on the other hand will have all this taken care of. It will have multiple people making sure regulators are happy (or rich).
While I later found that this will not target small companies, so in this aspect this regulation will likely have minimal impact.
That new company won't have neither 45 million users nor over 7.5 Billion EUR turnover in the last 3 consecutive-years.
You are making a false and bad-faith argument against the regulation in question just to promote your laissez-faire ideology.
Sometimes I really do wonder whether some commenters, given their counter arguments, work at a facebook/amazong/netflix/google, or that they hope/dream to work for one of those or all one after the othe, or if they naively believe like gospel what these companies tell them as consumers of their products filled with privacy concerns and dark marketing patterns. Or a combination of the 2 out of the 3. The other possibilities are of course sarcasm or generalised brainwashed syndrome.
I'm against all form of regulations. Life is wild and I would rather advocate education. But hey, since we heavily regulated the 99%, let's at least regulate the 1%. They alone have far more damage power than everyone else combined.
This regulation increases freedom for everyone (users and businesses), except for large platform operators.
You as a user are free to continue exactly as you were, and if you are a business that is not Apple or Google you have more flexibility and freedom to choose.
If anything, this is anti-monopolistic.
With sideloading, unlocked nfc and alternative stores and payment providers this will likely kickstart whole new markets (eg: a better app store for the iphone).
This is just great.
Let's see what we get when we google this? Here's one: https://www.akingump.com/en/news-insights/digital-markets-ac...
Core platform services include:
online intermediation services.
online search engines.
online social networking services.
video-sharing platform services.
number-independent interpersonal communications services.
operating systems.
web browsers.
virtual assistants.
cloud computing services.
online advertising services, including advertising intermediation services.
> “Gatekeeper”, in turn, refers to an undertaking providing core platform services that meets the following qualitative and quantitative criteria, set out in Article 3:
> First, it must have a significant impact on the EU internal market. An undertaking is presumed to satisfy this requirement where (a) it either has achieved an annual EU turnover equal to or above EUR 7.5 billion in each of the last three financial years, or where its average market capitalization or its equivalent fair market value amounted to at least EUR 75 billion in the last financial year, and (b) it provides the same core platform service in at least three Member States.
> Second, it must provide a core platform service which is an important gateway for business users to reach end users. This requirement is presumed to be met where the undertaking provides a core platform service that had on average at least 45 million monthly active end users established or located in the EU and at least 10,000 yearly active business users established in the EU in the last financial year.2 Users are to be identified and calculated in accordance with a methodology set out in an Annex to the DMA.
> Third, it must enjoy an entrenched and durable position in its operations. This requirement is presumed to be met where the threshold points in the paragraph above were met in each of the previous three financial years.
Well that would depend, are you a "gatekeeper", as defined in the Regulation?
That is, do you have a significant impact on the EU's internal market (a turnover of €7.5bn or a €75bn market cap), provide a core platform service which is important for business users to reach end users (have have 45m monthly active end-users in the EU or 10k monthly active business users), enjoy an entrenched and durable position in your operations or foresee that you will enjoy such a position in the near future (i.e. you meet the above for three consecutive years)?
If you answered "no" to any part of that then you are not a gatekeeper, and these regulations do not apply to you.
I don’t know how useful this particular hypothetical is, but it’s definitely a “code smell” that the proposed company’s seemingly only options would be to limit sales to retain the “not a gatekeeper” status or stop doing business in the EU.
I would love to read some surveys on this matter, because I highly doubt that security/privacy is a significant factor for more than a few percent points of iPhone buyers.
(I base this hypothesis on the fact that, in virtually every field of technology, end users have shown that they will overwhelmingly sacrifice privacy and security in exchange for convenience and cost savings.)
I expect that the main motivations for iPhone purchases are aesthetics, performance, ease of use, integration with the Apple ecosystem, and especially fashion/status symbol factor.
As for the rest of the comment, as other people have already pointed out, you can prevent evil maid attacks by putting the legally-required "open" mode behind a factory reset. Which is roughly what Android phones do with their unlockable bootloaders.
That's a false assumption.
At the end of the day, consumers aren't children. If they so choose to destroy what the manufacturer gives them, that is their choice.
I did some cool things with early Android that made the phone tailored to me. If I wanted stock, it was just a reflash away. This is the way.
This is how Xbox currently works in that you can’t play any regular games if you enable developer mode to run unsigned code. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that, if Apple complied by disabling apps downloaded via their own store when a user is using a 3p store, then the EU would laugh and fine then $x millions of dollars per week.
To avoid this it seems you’d either be forced to sell it at an insane markup (to avoid having too many users) or means test people to make sure they don’t purchase it if they’re not super vulnerable to attacks that matter.
The obvious solution, for your hypothetical, would be to give a setting to the user, that turns on "safe mode" and make this setting only changeable on factory reset.
So any user could choose, at startup, to have safe mode on or off, on their own device.
Problem solved.
The restrictions inherent in the device (including only having a few apps that have been thoroughly reviewed by security researchers) would keep most people away.
The players this regulation target are pretty obvious. It's those that have gained such market dominance along the years that it has become unfair competition for newer players. It is the outcome of years of consumer pressures and entrepreneurs who are calling out for some government actions because markets are regulated anyway everywhere in the world, and these US based companies (for the most part for now) have lobbied along the years to get away with their practice but the EU has decided their lobbying won't do with them. At least not anymore.
> This looks like it will kill competition and harm European innovation
I don't really understand how you got from "you are not allowed to stifle competition" to having less of it?
Well rent control is also supposed to lower rents but usually what it does is make them more expensive and lower the quality on the long term.
Otherwise any regulation could be skirted by having a constantly revolving roster of fronts that import your product.
Otherwise they'd be in trouble.
And I first want to approach it from the "good faith" point of view. The past 20 years have seen a sea change in what surveillance and devices can do. And as such we (society at large) needs to adjust our understanding and approach to this new technology.
Firstly the opportunities are immense. With almost (*) every person having some kind of heart, lifestyle, monitoring and measurement we could see transformational medical and epidemiology breakthroughs. On top of which access to (free, correct!) information, hell GPS is amazing. We know
Secondly there are opportunities for abuse, and there is justifiable concern about privacy, about affect on democracy, truth etc. I personally think these are..the wrong terms to use, but never mind.
I think we have to assume Good Faith from the EU here. They don't know the answers any more than the rest of us do. But they have been upfront abut tackling obvious big problems - the GDPR, for all its many faults was first, and a again big Good Faith step in right direction (pace all the stupid cookie warnings)
As for answers
Which devices apply - which ever ones are "owned" by a Gatekeeper (45 Million users / 7Bn turnover). Should Sony open up Playstation. Yeah basically. Xbox too. Will that cause problems - I expect so. In 99% of cases a big warning saying "you are side-loading this is dangerous" will prevent most horrors.
I expect this will not lead to an Open source free for all. I expect there will be develop licensing programs and approvals - because I certainly see the walled garden of iOS as a real benefit.
The bank transaction signing thing is interesting. The definition of a gatekeeper (Article 2 in the Act) is fairly specific to things like online search engines, intermediation services, OSes etc. I think its unlikely 45 million users is a big floor for such a thing.
(#) 4.5 Bn smartphones are in use globally, that's almost every adult. In "western" countries there are 10s of millions of people with daily heart rate monitoring.
1. What devices have to comply? 2. Who decides what device has to comply? Should playstation open their system too. What about a niche bank transaction signing device that internally uses an android capable hardware. Is this illegal now? 3. What about a car infotainment system that can theoretically run linux. 4. What if a European startup wants to compete with the iphone? Now they have so many regulations instead of focusing on a great device for their niche.
This looks like it will kill competition and harm European innovation, while major players will find their ways around it.