They are in complete control of the programs that you can install on your iphone, and take 30% of all transactions that occur through that marketplace. Are you a lawyer for apple?
I think the point is that there are other app stores in other platforms, so monopoly rules don't apply.
Their app store is their monopoly, sure, but if you don't want to use Apple products you are not barred from using other cellphones and app stores.
This is different than, e.g. saying that there is a monopoly with the electricity provider. If you don't want to use company A for that, you have absolutely no access to electricity at all.
The question is instead, I think, if after some size, companies wield so much power that they should be regulated as if they were monopolies, just because of the sheer amount of people that depends on their services.
But that's a whole other can of worms and a different discussion than "Apple is a monopoly"
I.e. the term "monopoly" has a very specific legal definition which is not met by whatever behavior Apple is having.
Does that make it ok? not necessarily and the nuance is debatable. But the fact is that as per the current definition, it's not a monopoly.
> as per the current definition, it's not a monopoly.
That's why I said they should be regulated...because they currently aren't. When anti-trust laws were being written, software walled gardens weren't a thing. They should be updated for modern times, since the App Store is basically its own industry. It brings in tens of billions of dollars in revenue every year, which is more than the GDP of some countries.
And Apple built it from the ground up. It's their hardware. They control what runs on it.
iOS isn't great software (ok, "good software" for 13) in a vacuum. It's inherently, inextricably tied in with Apple's world-class hardware; and vice versa as well. To allow unfettered access to both is a risk to users, whose trust in Apple has been built up over more than a decade.
I think the point is that there are other electricity providers in other areas, so monopoly rules don't apply.
Their electric service is their monopoly, sure, but if you don't want to use company A electricity you are not barred from buying a house somewhere else, with a different electric service.
This is different than, e.g. saying that there is a monopoly with the app store. If you don't want to use Apple for that, you have absolutely no access to iPhone software at all.
For me at least, I think the effort and expense of buying a house and moving elsewhere is quite a bit higher than using another phone/app store.
However I do understand that for a lot of people, moving from Apple to Android (and vice versa) is not as easy or straightforward to do, and thus why perhaps the discussion should be about regulating those companies that hold so much power, as if they were a monopoly. That doesn't make them a monopoly by current definitions though.
Another analogy might be that Comcast don’t have a monopoly on Internet service in an area because you can always use dial-up or tether through your phone.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean that it's illegal or calls for another government regulation.
When did being able to access / sell to a private marketplace become an entitlement of public accommodation?
If the Supreme Court rules in favor of this then by all means go ahead and assert this. I personally don't believe the iPhone App Store (or any other app store) yet rises to the level of a forum of open public access and certain pricing in the name of public good.
You are perfectly free to develop apps and sell them elsewhere.
Well, your conclusion that "this needs to be regulated" is highly debatable as a matter of public policy. Clearly I disagree. "Inhibited growth potential", especially in the pursuit of developing apps for iPhone, certainly doesn't fall on the side of being a fundamental right that people are being deprived of. I personally exercise a bit more restraint in saying that things call for government intervention.
> doesn't fall on the side of being a fundamental right that people are being deprived of
What does that have to do with this? Anti-trust laws are to protect competitive forces in the market, not human rights.
Allowing these companies to have limitless control over millions of jobs with no regulation whatsoever gives us the crappy situation we have today. Someone could have their developer account terminated by accident/laziness, and then that person's entire livelihood is destroyed and they're left with no recourse because Apple/Google can't be bothered to even answer the phone. The Play store is an endless sea of malware, adware, and spyware, and any attempt at making a competitive marketplace is hopeless and instantly attacked by Google (remember Fortnite installer fiasco?). There's so much anti-competitive and clearly harmful (for developers and consumers) bullshit going on in these two stores every day that it's ridiculous that there still is not any strong regulatory action against them.
> I personally exercise a bit more restraint in saying that things call for government intervention.
Good for you. I heard that a lot in college. People who just took an economics class for the first time felt compelled to "pick a side", and everyone always picked that same side as you (me too). Yet that decision is made so so far detached from any real life problems or data that it's effectively arbitrary. If you feel that this characterization doesn't apply to you, then please contribute to the discussion with some actual substantive arguments and not hand-wavy virtue signaling.
Your arguments are no more substantive or backed by hard facts than mine. I could quote a multitude of benefits of not stepping in to regulate such markets just as you quote a case (actually, one rare case that made the headlines) of someone whose user account was affected by clearly not-the-most-innocent circumstances. So who's to win? That's why there are courts and policymakers. Glad it's not just up to your (or my) hypothetical victims.
> They are in complete control of the programs that you can install on your iphone,
This isn't a monopoly. With your logic I could scope down to arbitrary levels and call everything a monopoly.
* Oh, Safari is a monopoly because you can only set the search engines Safari lets you!
* Verizon is a monopoly because they look the bootloader on a phone bought from Verizon!
* Target is a monopoly because you can only buy the products Target sells when you're in Target!
Monopolies are considered in the scheme of the wider industry. And in the wider industry, Apple is far from a monopoly. Both users and businesses can move to other platforms that in fact have more consumers.
Just like you could go to another supermarket down the street, you can switch from iOS to Android.
Nintendo is in complete control of the programs you can install on your Switch. Sony is in complete control of the programs you can install on your PS4. Using your logic every platform is a monopoly.
Simplicity of features != UX Simplicity
It's way more simple to tap on a button than to write complex sentences. We've studied this, when users have both options available (buttons and input text), 80% go for buttons.
I remember having to write a small TODO program for an interview. I generally don't do frontend too much and the time limit was really tight.
So I made a simple TODO in like 30min. Naturally part of this is my familiarity with jQuery, the other is, for a small application jQuery is really great. I had a nice UI in no time.
They are already being brainwashed by propaganda in the US, both left-wing (the mass media) and right-wing (some online rabbit holes), I don't see this as much worse.
The US left-wing and right-wing media propaganda is just a piece of cake comparing to the CCP's propaganda. Anyone died in Tianman Massacre? Anyone died in Natural Disaster Years of 1960-1963? None. LOL.
You mean to, in supposed good faith, suggest that USA influence in Europe is similar and/or equivalent to Chinese influence and interference in the USA?
You are simply wrong on so many levels. NATO is the reason why the iron curtain stayed where it was and why the Russian federation hasn't steam-rolled Western Europe.
If you believe the US is the only actor that benefitted from this development, you're somehow ignoring about 800 million people and over two dozen countries who remained free and independent thanks to NATO.
> You are simply wrong on so many levels. NATO is the reason why the iron curtain stayed where it was and why the Russian federation hasn't steam-rolled Western Europe.
There are no historical artifacts claiming that USSR ever had a serious plan to "steamroll" Western Europe. If anything, they were deathly terrified of NATO incursion into Russia and almost pathologically attached to creating a buffer zone of Warszaw Pact states.
Please do not mix up US cold war propaganda with historic facts, those are not quite the same.
This whole thread is based on whataboutism! It’s supposed to be about Chinese influence, and then someone derailed it into talking about American influence, and now the whole thread is 90% comments about America and 10% comments about China.
Note: this also happens in pretty much every other thread about a country that isn’t America. God forbid anyone ever discuss anything else, Americans want to relitigate the same old tired “why my country sucks” debates!
And for what? Is any useful information being conveyed? No, it’s mostly just some kind of social status signalling — Americans of certain insecure social class feel the need to complain about America at every opportunity to distinguish themselves from people of a lower social class because patriotism is coded as a low-class activity.
Yes you’re all very sophisticated and I’m sure you like high speed trains and such. Can we please stop talking about the same thing all the time?
The 2 scenarios are not mutually exclusive - the threat from communism could have been averted without overthrowing democracies, arming terrorists etc.
Something like 200k people died in the civil war that ensued in Guatamala after the US-backed coup. And that is but one example. It could be argued that a lot of the violence and instability in Latin America is as a result of US intervetion.
"red danger"? Like when Cuban intervened in Angola and murdered 10's of thousands or dozens of others horrors around the globe?
Hell, just think of how many excessive deaths have been caused around the globe by the USSR's push of socialism, retarding growth by decades everywhere it won.
You'd have to be a hard core ideologue to not look at the 20th century and think the "red danger" wasn't the most evil thing to ever happen to humanity.
> Hell, just think of how many excessive deaths have been caused around the globe by the USSR's push of socialism, retarding growth by decades everywhere it won.
Hell, just think of the violence, misery and excessive deaths that have occurred across Latin America and the Middle East because of the USA's interventions.
My point is that just because the USSR did worse, doesn't excuse the USA's actions, which still have an impact to this day.
Are you conveniently forgetting the forceful seizure of an entire continent, displacement of native populations, importing millions of human beings to be used as slaves, colonization and plunder of natural resources across the globe, and deliberate destabilization of regions for profit?
You need to check out the rose glasses you're wearing yourself
Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic or ideological flamewar. Also, please be careful not to cross into personal attack, which is a force multiplier on all things bad here.
Quite. I think I'll stop responding to this thread because we're not going to see eye-to-eye here. Despite the current US President's love for despots and totalitarianism, that doesn't describe the USA.
Canada has been involved in every war that the US has been in my lifetime (born in 1993). Don't know what you mean on hypocrisy on nudity, but I only became comfortable with it when I visited Scandinavia when I was 22; seems like Canada has a similar issue.
I'll maybe give you medical care, but this is an incredibly complex topic. To think that public health care isn't monetized is a naïve point of view.
Somehow, the only thing that the Canadian government has done differently than the US is that it has convinced its people that it is not the US. That's my honest opinion.
Violence: We have very different gun control laws, and general perception towards guns and violence. In my kid's primary school, they weren't even allowed to pretend-shoot at each other. Whereas I have to remind my US friends to leave their gun at home if driving to Canada (and yes, one of them had their gun confiscated at the border).
Medical care monetisation: sure there is a big private industry, but it's scales different than in the US. And it did not say that it does not exist, only that we tend to disagree on the trend (ex: pharma insurance, now deployed in some provinces, and likely to become federal).
Nudity: granted, I'm from Quebec, it might be different, but things like nipples, breastfeeding, nudity in art, being naked in locker rooms, seeing friends naked (non-sexually), etc. people tend to be much more indifferent about nudity and more comfortable with their body. Obviously, that's a huge generalization and perhaps anecdotal, but I heard this often.
Ah, and I guess with regards to violence, is our difference in free speech: hate speech is not permitted (with exclusions for religious groups, because of LGBT issues, iirc).
Again, these are what I think are non-aligned trends, and topics that have an impact on moderation/algorithms online, not a hard truth. Obviously not everyone agrees on these topics, some regions are more divided than others, and these views tend to evolve in time.
> Canada has been involved in every war that the US has been in my lifetime (born in 1993).
Canada was not party to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
> Somehow, the only thing that the Canadian government has done differently than the US is that it has convinced its people that it is not the US.
Canada did not suffer a financial crisis to the extent that the US did in 2008 because banks here are regulated very differently than in the US. Also, the likelihood of medical bills causing financial ruin is much lower here.
> Canada was not party to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
That's what is reported. I highly suspect JTF2 was involved since the beginning. This directly proving my point of the government misleading the people.
> Canada has been involved in every war that the US has been in my lifetime
Since the US is Canada's largest trading partner, this will always be the case, but there are huge and important differences in the level of involvement. Famously the level of involvement in the Iraq war was almost non-existent. Canada's involvement consisted of patrolling surrounding waters, and approximately 100 Canadian soldiers who were embedded in American forces as a sort of culteral military exchange[1].
Major US trends, but are people shilling on Reddit to support them? That's an honest question, I don't really read Reddit. I know there are a lot of people in the US who honestly believe in, say, private healthcare, so a lot of the comments in support of it could be explained as coming from Americans expressing their opinions, as opposed to government or corporate agents pushing an agenda.
I guess there can be a lot of influence in a discussion based on how comments are upvoted, how algorithms will favour one type of content over another? (especially when advertising is guiding it all, and lobbies are big advertisers)
I also rarely visit Reddit, but for Facebook and Twitter, I guess there has been plenty of research on how people can manipulate public opinion by sharing/voting, and also the impact of their respective algorithms for promoting content?
Of course, Tik Tok is no different, and we should be worried. They do the same thing, only it's not 'our' lobbies and we have little control on them.
As an eastern european i feel the same just from the opposite perspective.
Western European push for values that fundamentally cannot work in my country.
While i agree with you on the first two as US movies and culture to propagate those values, third you could argue that europe and canada are pushing more privacy onto america due to GDPR and PIPEDA and companies having to follow them, but the last one i entirely have to disagree with you on the last one.
I don't see the US trying to export or push that idea/policy and i can't see it ever gaining traction in canada or the EU.
That might make sense if one believed they were accused of fake charges by a private person, and are to be judged by an impartial legal system.
It makes no sense if one believes that they were accused of fake charges based on political pressure and are to be judged on a rigged legal system.
It would be like if J.E.Hoover had his eyes on you, had his police build some BS charges, and made sure (whether by police planting evidence, fake testimonies, etc or by having his judge pals on the case too) you'll be convicted.
Would you take your chances to have the case judged?
...except Assange would have been transferred to America to stand trial over Wikileaks before he would even have a chance to stand trial over the rape accusations.
I don't think there was an extradition request from the US, was there? Only one from Sweden. And it's very unlikely that Sweden would extradite him to the US for this. They value the free press, but take rape very seriously.
The plan was to get him to the US all along, unless you want to believe it was a coincidence that Sweden kept up the request for ten years but dropped it the minute it got in the way of extradition to the US.
As to why Sweden, who knows why they thought that would be preferable. Maybe just to smear his reputation a bit, to soften the protest at the treatment they want to give him? Very successful if so.
But either way, you're talking about the people who forced down the Bolivian president's plane because they thought Snowden might be hiding in it. When they say "the law only matters when the outcome doesn't", this would be an example of a case where the outcome (stop Wikileaks) mattered.
He know sthat there is little justice in the US system. It's not like he's going to a cushy Scandinavian prison. He will be going to max security federal prison with hardened criminals who will likely beat him to death or shank him.
He didn't fear the charges, he feared the extradition - and that's exactly what happened - Sweden dropped the charges anyway, but he ended-up being extradited.
It is still a choice he could make (and did), which is more than many have.
It is great that people are speaking up about the conditions under which people are punished and the no-win games that put them there. I only wish people could do so when it isn't some high-profile person.
Is this due to the game being poorly optimized for the PS4, or because the TV adds some lag? I have heard that TV lag can be reduced by turning on "Game mode" or equivalents.
No, other games perform fine. TV correctly set up (I know what you mean, some TVs have frame interpolation to fake 60 fps which adds lag) and gamepad connected via cable.
Those are deliberately made to sound unnatural. Not to say it changes anything, and they've already shown up once or twice in anime.
(Though the only example I can name off the bat is Black Rock Shooter, and that doesn't include the voice. It's complicated. Mato is complicated, too.)
