A company that provides a phone service (mobile or other) has to conform to a large amount of regulatory red tape. Why? because either a company before tried to monopolise the entire country, or they killed someone.
Now, large tech companies haven't wholesale killed people (unlike say tobacco, or talc powder, 3M and half of their solvents, weed killer, most car makers, etc etc)
but they have been trying desperately to stop all competition.
They've also been trying to extract as much personal info as possible for profit. Because regulators in the USA are hamstrung, they are used to being able to basically doing stuff that would be illegal if it were in physical stores/pre-existing industries.
Nobody is against regulation that disfavors large incumbents to support competition instead.
You'll struggle to find people who are against the Digital Markets Act for this reason. It literally only targets the potential monopolists.
However, virtually every other piece of regulation does the opposite.
Regulation usually gets trotted out after the downside of doing [new innovation] is experienced. This always happens, because doing something new always involves unknown risk. Most people aren't entrepreneurs and hate risk, so they pass regulation, and the market gets locked down so nothing new happens again. Incumbents and their army of lawyers can easily comply or are grandfathered in, and challengers are permanently disadvantaged. That market is officially dead until the next fundamental leap forward in technology.
What's different now though, is the hysteria over AI is leading regulators to pass this incumbent-cementing regulation before we've even had a chance to experience both the upside and downside, so the innovation never happens at all.
Combine this with a rapidly aging demography in Europe, and I only see this trend increasing. If there's one thing old people hate, it's risk and doing new things. Meanwhile, those same old folks are expecting massive payouts (social benefits) via taxation of the same private sector they're currently kneecapping with red tape. While ironic, those two trends converging aren't great for Europe.
Specifically with AI I don’t want to experience the downside of innovation before we regulate because of how wide spread its use already is, and it’s problems have already become apparent.
For example, it’s being used to job screen applicants even though we have proven that AI models still suffer from thing like racial bias. Companies don’t disclose how their models are trained to negate bias or anything like that either and that’s one example I remember off the top of my head
there maybe better examples of why AI biases provide deep systemic problems but: CV screening? are contemporary LLM really worse that previous screening tech and processes?
I think a worse feature for them to have is consistency. Imagine being someone that has fallen through the cracks of software a significant number of employers are using... Basically soft-locked out of employment with no recourse.
Isn't not knowing that bias exists just the same problem that the average HR department has? You solve that by educating people about biases. If anything that should be easier with LLMs because you're not asking people to alter their sense of self ("I wouldn't do that!"), you're just informing them of technical limitations.
I don’t understand your argument. The whole purpose of AI-driven recruitment is to reduce human effort by doing some work for them. If AI due to existing bias reduces diversity in your pool of candidates, what can you do with it? You either do not notice the bias and just think that those people are indeed the best fit, you willingly accept the bias („But it reduces our hiring costs! We deal with diversity later, when this technology matures!“), or you go to see the unfiltered stream and put such an amount of work into it that makes AI useless. HR departments are not the people who will build their own solution, they will buy it from a third party and they won’t have control over or the budget for the fine-tuning.
How can you combat bias in a team of humans if humans are susceptible to bias? How do you even know what neutral is if it's not a physically measurable quantity?
> This sounds like an argument for never educating people and doing nothing about the problem.
I feel like it's really the opposite.
There is a major problem with using AI to screen CVs, which is that AI is bad at screening CVs. It excludes good candidates and offers mediocre ones, and opens up a bunch of hacks the equivalent of black hat SEO, which gives an undesired advantage to people inclined to dirty tricks.
But "it's racist" is a political hot button, so before people can start to point that out, someone scrambles to push the hot button and suck all the oxygen out of the room. Then the purveyors of snake oil can munge the algorithm until it passes the naive oversimplified racial bias test someone made up (probably making it even worse at its intended purpose), and then claim "the problem" is solved, as if that was the main and only problem.
There are still plenty of proxies that can amount to the same thing. Not a lot of white graduates of HBCUs, for instance. Are we removing the names of all schools, too?
It‘s 2024. There are decades or research with a lot of data, there exist best practices and products that help combating the bias. The toolkit available to HRs is rich and there’s plenty of things that work. E.g. I have absolutely no problem hiring women in tech roles, because I simply adjusted my process. I heard complaints from other engineering leaders that they want to increase diversity but struggle to find candidates: they do not realize that they have bias in job descriptions, they apply same screening criteria and do the post-interview evaluation the same way regardless of candidate gender or background. Many people can do the job, but they communicate it differently and it is important to account for that when you see the CV or talk to them.
You do not understand how HR works then. They are not LLM researchers and just apply the available toolkit, e.g. organizing regular training for hiring managers. When they buy AI-driven solution from a third party, they have no tools neither to detect if it’s just a statistical fluctuation or there’s a bias they need to find a workaround for, nor to act on this information in a cost-efficient way. Most likely they won‘t even have enough data to reach any statistical significance. The vendor in theory could do it, but most of them are startups now and they do not have diversity in their OKRs, at least not now. It’s not the UVP of their product.
Of course they could be. A company that doesn't want a racial bias won't intentionally filter on names, but might accidentally deploy an LLM that can discern race from name.
The humans will do it unconsciously if they can see the names.
It is like orchestras used to use auditions where the judges could see the people; when they went to auditions where they couldn't see the people, the number of women being hired went right up.
See, this is the problem with just deciding to invent your own facts.
There is a famous study on this topic, usually presented in much the way you describe. But usually people are more careful not to lie about the results. The rate of women being hired went down, not up. The "success" for women was contained to advancement through particular audition rounds.
The original paper is not exactly a model of investigative integrity:
>> Women are about 5 percentage points more likely to be hired than are men in a completely blind audition, although the effect is not statistically significant. The effect is nil, however, when there is a semifinal round, perhaps as a result of the unusual effects of the semifinal round.
Are you citing a weird racist blogger on medium that disagrees with the stated conclusion of the paper? Is that how science works now?
Abstract from the original paper:
> A change in the audition procedures of symphony orchestras--adoption of "blind" auditions with a "screen" to conceal the candidate's identity from the jury--provides a test for sex-biased hiring. Using data from actual auditions, in an individual fixed-effects framework, we find that the screen increases the probability a woman will be advanced and hired. Although some of our estimates have large standard errors and there is one persistent effect in the opposite direction, the weight of the evidence suggests that the blind audition procedure fostered impartiality in hiring and increased the proportion women in symphony orchestras.
It's almost guaranteed there are people trying to sell an AI version of Robodebt right now to the Australian government, even though the last (non-AI) version of it was an absolute cluster fuck:
Other governments around the world have done similar (non-AI) things in the past with similar terrible results. They'll likely try an AI version of things too in the near future, just because "AI" apparently solves all the problems. Ugh.
You realize this is a huge problem right? Even if that was my only complaint (it’s not!) that is 100% not acceptable. If it’s doing it with CVs it’s doing it with other things in other scenarios.
Another is that a health insurance company was caught using AI to determine if a claim should be denied or not which lead to a scandal as a whistleblower leaked the practice, as it was wrought with errors and ethical concerns
> For example, it’s being used to job screen applicants even though we have proven that AI models still suffer from thing like racial bias.
Can't we just say racism is illegal, and if a company uses an AI to be racist, they get fined the same way they would if they were racist the old fashioned way?
Look up the Dutch tax return scandal where the Dutch tax arm of the government (‘IRS’) used machine learning to identify fraud but it turned out to be very racially biased and it uprooted thousands of families with years of financial struggles and legal battles.
Fence at the top of a cliff (make sure the AI is unbiased and can be fixed when it turns out it is) vs. Ambulance at the bottom (letting people sue if they think the machine is wrong).
I would argue that we already have experienced enough of the downsides of "AI" that there is reasonable cause for concern.
The implications of deepfakes and similar frauds alone are potentially devastating to informed political debate in democracies, safe and effective dissemination of public health information in emergencies, and plenty of other realistic and important trust scenarios.
The implications of LLMs are potentially wonderful in terms of providing better access to information for everyone but we already know that they are also capable of making serious mistakes or even generating complete nonsense that a non-expert user might not recognise as such. Again it is not hard to imagine a near future where chat-based systems have essentially displaced search engines and social media as the default ways to find information online but then provide bad advice on legal, financial, or health matters.
There is a second serious concern with LLMs and related technologies, which is that they could very rapidly shift the balance from compensating those who produce useful creative content to compensating those who run the summary service. It's never healthy when your economics don't line up with rewarding the people doing the real work and we've already seen plenty of relevant stories about the AI training data gold rush.
Next we get to computer vision and its applications in fields like self-driving vehicles. Again we've already seen plenty of examples where cars have been tricked into stopping suddenly or otherwise misbehaving when for example someone projected a fake road sign onto the road in front of them.
Again there is a second serious concern with systems like computer vision, audio classification, and natural language processing and that is privacy. It's bad enough that we all carry devices with cameras and microphones around with us almost 24/7 these days and the people whose software runs on those devices seem quite willing to spy on us and upload data to the mothership with little or any warning. That alone has unprecedented implications for privacy and associated risks. With the increased ability to automatically interpret raw video and audio footage - with varying degrees of accuracy and bias of course - that amplifies the potential dangers of these systems greatly.
There is enormous potential in modern AI/ML techniques for everything from helping everyday personal research to saving lives through commoditising sophisticated analysis of medical scans. But that doesn't mean there aren't also risks we already know about at the same kind of scale - even without all the doomsday hypotheticals where suddenly a malicious AGI emerges that takes over the universe.
Let’s stipulate that all you said was true. How is EU regulation suppose to prevent that? Are they going to stop open source models from being used in Europe? Are they going to stop foreign adversaries from using deep fakes?
It’s just like trying to restrict DVD encryption keys from being published or 128 bit encryption from being “exported” in browsers back in the car.
The issue is, the regulations are tailored to address any of those concerns, some of which may not even be solvable through regulation at all:
> The implications of deepfakes and similar frauds alone are potentially devastating to informed political debate in democracies, safe and effective dissemination of public health information in emergencies, and plenty of other realistic and important trust scenarios.
The horse is out of the barn on this one. You can't stop this by regulating anything because the models necessary to do it have already been released, would continue to be released from other countries, and one of the primary purveyors of this sort of thing will be adversarial nation states, who obviously aren't going to comply with any laws you pass.
> The implications of LLMs are potentially wonderful in terms of providing better access to information for everyone but we already know that they are also capable of making serious mistakes or even generating complete nonsense that a non-expert user might not recognise as such.
Which is why AI summaries are largely a gimmick and people are figuring that out.
> they could very rapidly shift the balance from compensating those who produce useful creative content to compensating those who run the summary service.
This already happened quite some time ago with search engines. People want the answer, not a paywall, so the search engine gives them an unpaywalled site with the answer (and gets an ad impression from it) and the paywalled sites lose to the ad-supported ones. But then the operations that can't survive on ad impressions lose out, and even the ad-supported ones doing original research lose out because you can't copyright facts so anyone paying to do original reporting will see their stories covered by every other outlet that doesn't. Then the most popular news sites become scummy lowest-common-denominator partisan hacks beholden to advertisers with spam-laden websites to match.
Fixing this would require something along the lines of the old model NPR used to use, i.e. "free" yet listener-supported reporting, but they stopped doing that and became a partisan outlet supported by advertising. The closest contemporary thing seems to be the Substacks where most of the stories are free to read but you're encouraged to subscribe and the subscriptions are enough to sustain the content creation.
The AI thing doesn't change this much if at all. A cheap AI summary isn't going to displace original content any more than a cheap rephrasing by a competing outlet does already.
> Next we get to computer vision and its applications in fields like self-driving vehicles. Again we've already seen plenty of examples where cars have been tricked into stopping suddenly or otherwise misbehaving when for example someone projected a fake road sign onto the road in front of them.
But where does the regulation come in here? When it does that it's obviously a bug and the manufacturers already have the incentive to want to fix it because their customers won't like it. And there are already laws specifying what happens when a carmaker sells a car that doesn't behave right.
> Again there is a second serious concern with systems like computer vision, audio classification, and natural language processing and that is privacy.
Which is really almost nothing to do with AI and the main solutions to it are giving people alternatives to the existing systems that invade their privacy. Indeed, the hard problem there is replacing existing "free" systems with something that doesn't put more costs on people, when the existing systems are "free" specifically because of that privacy invasion.
If a government wants to do something about this, fund the development of real free software that replaces the proprietary services hoovering up everyone's data.
> What's different now though, is the hysteria over AI is leading regulators to pass potential market killing regulation
This is entirely because the experts and fundraisers in the field promoted the technology as existentially and societally dangerous before they even got it to do anything commercially viable. "This has so much potential that it could destroy us all!" was the sales pitch!
Of course regulators are going to take that seriously, as there's nobody of influence vested in trying to show them otherwise.
The experts did that specifically so we would regulate barriers to entry into existence. It isn't a mew trick. Regulatory capture takes many guises, "think of the":
Children,
Consumers,
...
Under booked hotels we could put you in.
>> Most people aren't entrepreneurs and hate risk, so they pass regulation, and the market gets locked down so nothing new happens again
I think that the bigger issue is that the people who suffer when the risk goes bad and the people who benefit when the risk goes well usually aren't the same people.
"before we've even had a chance to experience both the upside and downside, so the innovation never happens at all."
----
Let me laugh out loud. Those, who govern these companies know 10 years ahead how and what will happen. Bigdiks higher up has 10-20 year plans. And people talk about "before we had a chance to experience the upsides and the downsides". Get a grip on reality.
Yea, so wildly out of touch with reality. The governing elite are wizards of prediction!
Sundar at Google knew LLMs were going to be huge after Google invented them, so that’s why they were first to market and…
Oops. Maybe not?
While it might make risk-averse types feel good to imagine the people in charge are all-knowing (see religion), the truth is the world is a chaotic and reflexive system of unpredictability. Scary, I know!
> You'll struggle to find people who are against the Digital Markets Act for this reason. It literally only targets the potential monopolists.
I'm against the way it's being applied to Apple. I don't think that the government should dictate that consumers aren't allowed to choose a platform that's a locked down walled garden if that's what they want.
We have platforms that aren't walled gardens (Android) that many of us happily use (myself included), and Apple shouldn't have to become something that it didn't set out to be just because a few other big tech companies feel stifled by Apple's rules.
> Not to mention the simple freedom of choosing what you want to install yourself, and not just what Apple allows you to...
I have the freedom to install whatever I want. I get that freedom by using Linux and Android. I choose to have that freedom by selecting platforms that provide it.
Many HN users seem to want all the benefits of Apple's approach with none of the downsides, and it doesn't work that way. Apple is what it is because it has a tight, coherent strategy, and forcing Apple to change that strategy will have knock-on effects that most Apple users won't like.
If you value freedom to install whatever you want, you chose the wrong ecosystem, and hijacking the ecosystem to satisfy your values is unfair to the vast majority of customers whose values already align with the ecosystem's.
Apple is providing an entry into the free smartphone market that is a closed system with a highly controlled and curated software ecosystem. That is their product, that's what they offer.
It's no different than Nintendo's entry into the game console market being what it is—some people will choose that experience because what it offers is valuable for them.
For myself, I'm an Android phone user and a PC gamer, but just because I wouldn't choose those experiences for myself doesn't mean I begrudge their existence.
The DMA does not allow you to install what you want.
It does not apply to consoles.
It does make it possible for companies to keep some more money, but most importantly it allows them to sidestep the protections for my privacy that I pay a premium to Apple for.
A real DMA would force facebook, twitter, etc to open up for alternative clients. That would bring competition in and benefit the end user.
Not that whatever digital slot machnine company is allowed to keep a higher percentage of the diamonds they sell you in their free to pay game.
Apple does have every right to take 30% of every sale on the App Store (it’s more like 15% for most apps). Not even the EU is disputing that. Just like Android and the game consoles.
What the EU is saying that Apple doesn’t have the right to prevent other app stores or side loading.
Apple needs to get out of the infrastructure business if they want to play by their own rules. They aren't selling Gameboys and washing machines, they are storing people's private data and selling primary communication devices. That needs to be regulated and the consumer needs to have the final say, not Apple.
> they are storing people's private data and selling primary communication devices.
To be clear, I think privacy laws like GDPR absolutely have a place for consumer protection.
I just don't think the DMA does. Watching how the DMA applies to Apple, it feels far less about consumer protection than it does about businesses, and that's what makes me uncomfortable. The EU is in this case listening to complaints from a bunch of other businesses who do not have consumer interests at heart and ignoring the very real damage that their actions could do to consumer protection.
The Apple App Store protects users from myriad abuses by myriad bad companies. The EU wants Apple to build a blessed, paved off-ramp that companies can strongly encourage prospective customers to use that brings them deeper into the manipulative control of those companies.
> complaints from a bunch of other businesses who do not have consumer interests at heart
Apple (and other big tech companies) locking the competition out of the market, or buying them, hurts consumers. It robs them of other innovative choices.
Having more choices and interoperability is generally good for consumers.
If you stick with the Apple defaults how does this hurt you?
To clarify: I don't use Apple. I chose their competitors instead because I like the features offered by the competition better.
> If you stick with the Apple defaults how does this hurt you?
Because people won't be able to stick with the defaults. One of the first dominoes to fall if the EU gets its wishlist will be Facebook, which will put a version of its app that wouldn't pass Apple's review out through unofficial channels and strongly encourage or force users to switch to it. Once Facebook has paved the way many other companies that are similarly inclined to abuse their users will follow.
A walled garden with a wide-open back door is no walled garden at all, and the many Apple users who liked the garden are going to be cranky when they realize what tech lobbyists have done in the EU.
Interesting. I had thought of the garden walls as being in the way of users, based on my personal experience, but you bring up the point that the walls can also be in the way of nefarious companies. I assume both can be true.
And perhaps the legal system sees some of these garden wall as protecting Apple, falling under anti-trust, like the 30% markups on all financial transactions?
You mentioned malicious versions of the Facebook app that do an end-run around Apple's review. Maybe the EU is trying to cover this with new laws like the GDPR and DMA, making malicious app behaviour illegal. Might that not be better, protecting all users regardless of platform?
> Maybe the EU is trying to cover this with new laws like the GDPR and DMA, making malicious app behaviour illegal. Might that not be better, protecting all users regardless of platform?
If I thought the EU could actually execute on that? Maybe. But I know that Apple executes on it, and the fallout from the gdpr doesn't give me a lot of confidence that the EU knows how to regulate tech in a way that achieves desired outcomes and doesn't just lead to the same behavior as before with malicious compliance stamped on top.
> Think of all those evil hackers waiting around the corner for the poor unsuspecting iPhone users.
I'm not talking "evil hackers". I'm talking about Facebook just for a start. Once they pave the way and teach users how to use the off-ramp (or else not be able to use Facebook!) they'll be followed by dozens of smaller abusive companies that are eager to pass by Apple's review requirements.
I'm far less concerned about software vulnerabilities than I am about the companies that Apple's business policies currently keep in check.
Crypto comments aside, that could have happened on a Windows desktop too. Yet when MS tried to go walled garden with their store everyone complained. I don't see why Apple should get a free pass.
I guess with the iPhone it was walled from the start so anyone buying one knew what they were getting. I'd be pissed off if they walled gardened my mac. I've got an iPhone and have mixed feelings about the restrictions on it. They can be annoying but on the other hand I have significant investments and more and more banks are insisting you access them via an app and for that I'd probably prioritize security.
But it doesn't have to be, you can simply NOT regulate every damn little thing, especially when there are no victims and you are forbidding a simple trade between two entities who are both willing to engage.
No, developers who want to make money on the Apple Store are not victims. They can develop for Linux and sell apps there if they don't want to pay what Apple wants.
I'm one of them, I'm not supporting Apple or Google and I build everything on the web paying nothing.
I agree, mostly. It is worth noting that until the forced opening of the market occurred, safari was conspicuously lacking in PWA support, especially wasm support. I am a recovering libertarian, and I now see the need for regulation in more places. Largely because of regulatory capture, true, but I don't think anarcho-capitalism works. It just makes lawyers top of the heap instead of warriors (in pure anarchy). Which, when the lawyers command the soldiers, isn't any better.
If PWA support is the great panacea that its advocates suggest, why are companies still making iOS apps, Android apps and web apps for computers instead of just making iOS apps and telling Android users to just use PWAs?
Because they can collect more data with a native app. A native app is far better from their perspective, but not from the user's, unless it is something computationally bound that can't handle overhead (mostly games?). The last exception is banking apps. They do a lot of weird stuff to fingerprint your phone too, but in this case the user definitely wants them to.
this argument doesn't work, because you could always argue that the consumer chose this product, and thus its features and practices should be allowed. Apple had it coming for a long time already, one way or another. And Microsoft also will again the way they are going.
Yeah, sure, you could always argue that about anything, but that's not a refutation of this particular argument in this particular situation. Apple's walled garden produces a lot of real benefits for its customers that are part of what make it successful, and dismantling their walled garden is going to harm consumers.
I would never pick an Apple device for myself. I would also never recommend an Android phone to my mother-in-law. I, myself, know to avoid the many Android security holes that exist because it's a relaxed platform. But for my non-technical loved ones, Apple provides a much better experience in large part because it's a walled garden that makes it very difficult to install garbage.
> Apple's walled garden produces a lot of real benefits for its customers that are part of what make it successful, and dismantling their walled garden is going to harm consumers.
What are those benefits, and why would they evaporate if Apple adds an "Install from other sources" toggle? If you want to exclusively benefit from Apple's discernment, keep that toggle off and stay in the walled garden.If the benefits are so great, then surely everyone will choose to stay in the walled garden.
> If the benefits are so great, then surely everyone will choose to stay in the walled garden.
Surely you've seen enough of the free market to know that this is baloney. The instant that the walled garden is gone abusive apps (Facebook et al) will start ushering users away from it into their own, abusive paths as the only way to install. And once the big abusive apps have started the trend, the walled garden is effectively gone. Businesses don't choose regulation if they can help it.
The only reason we don't see this with Android and Google Play is because Google hardly has any rules at all about what can go on the Play Store.
> Surely you've seen enough of the free market to know that this is baloney. The instant that the walled garden is gone abusive apps (Facebook et al) will start ushering users away from it into their own, abusive paths as the only way to install.
Nah. Users don't grok sideloading.
Even on android where it's always been possible, it's a fringe phenomenon. And every app is on Google Play. In fact it basically killed Huawei in the West not being able to offer it anymore.
The only exception is the epic store but they do it to make a point. Not because it actually works.
First and most importantly: you're imagining a sideloading method that is much less first-class than that the EU wants to impose.
Even aside from that, you can't compare the Play Store to Apple's because the Play Store is a thousand times less restrictive. There's a reason why people are constantly complaining about the App Store and (aside from Epic) never the Play Store. Apple has a lot of restrictions, and while some of them are there to extract more money most are there to protect their customers.
Does that change the garden for you? Can't users such as yourself remain in the Apple ecosystem? Do other users leaving affect you? Or Apple? Maybe they won't have as much cash?
Does Apple deserve the extra cash in perpetuity for being the first with the network effect? There might be a lot of better ideas out there, if they were given a chance, like Apple had back before them and Google took over the market.
> abusive apps (Facebook et al) will start ushering users away from it into their own, abusive paths as the only way to install
> Do other users leaving affect you?
To clarify, I'm not an Apple user. I use their competitors in all categories because they're not really my style. (Yes, choosing something other than Apple is a choice you can make!)
I'm just someone who feels the need to represent normal Apple users inside the HN bubble.
Facebook will leave the AppStore. Grandma can’t find Facebook anymore on her new iPhone, and will google “how to install Facebook on iPhone”. Thousands of websites will SEO for that, and give instructions (“There will be a popup that says ‘You might install dangerous software. Are you sure?’ Press YES.”) on how to install their AppStore with some Facebook clone/spyware/VPN MITM attack/keyloggers. They will have complete control of grandma’s phone, collect all the data they want. Soon she’ll have a new default browser with 7 toolbars, a new search engine, and be mining crypto on the side.
The App Store review provides protections which are not a technical protections. Earlier someone talked about the failing of allowing a $50 subscription flashlight app into the store (dunno if they’d be able to find a citation). This was a failing of the expected business controls. There’s nothing technical to even be done to prevent these sorts of abuses.
One example from a while back was banning an internal Facebook enterprise developer account because they were using it to install a VPN onto users devices for the purpose of monitoring user behavior for competitive market analysis. This is not anything that can be prevented by technical controls, and was only able to be published because enterprise profiles can deploy apps outside the store.
Apple wants their customers to be safe. Third party marketplaces take that responsibility and control out of their hands. Apple stopped that VPN abuse immediately upon finding out about it. How long would it take for European regulators to force Facebook to turn off such a self published app of their own accord?
> Earlier someone talked about the failing of allowing a $50 subscription flashlight app into the store (dunno if they’d be able to find a citation). This was a failing of the expected business controls.
How about LassPass, then? That made it onto the AppStore despite being designed to make money and steal credentials.
Maybe not $50/month, though. I love one Apple apologist's remarks on that aspect:
> Instead, the scam LassPass app tries to steer you to creating a “pro” account subscription for $2/month, $10/year, or a $50 lifetime purchase. Those are actually low prices for a scam app — a lot of scammy apps try to charge like $10/week.
Emphasis mine. "Look, I know you got your credentials stolen, but at least you didn't also get scammed out of as much money as some other scammy apps!"
The problem is that having the option of exiting the walled garden kills the garden. As soon as the most important apps aren’t available on the apple App Store any more, everyone will have to exit the garden. You can argue about the pros and cons of that, but you can’t deny that this has an effect on every apple user, not just the ones that choose to exit.
When the tech support scammer calls your mother, there’s a decent chance it convinces to check that box and install who knows what that backdoors the phone.
You need app Foo on your phone for work (like Slack, maybe). Foo is in the App Store and worked great on your iPhone but decides they want to install via their own store so they can monetize employees’ data (location, whatever) to make more money. The new store launches, the new app version abuses private APIs, and the App Store version stops working. Your company announces that all employees need to download from the new source. Do you really have a choice about staying in the walled garden? Sure, neither your company nor Foo should suck, but we all know plenty of companies that don’t care about employees or users.
Game company Bar decides to launch their own store and pull their game - we’ll call it Nortfite - from the App Store so they can add something shady like crypto features. Nortfite is a massive social game that all your friends play and it’s a huge part of your teenage social life. Your only device capable of playing it is your second-hand iPad. Do you really have a choice about staying in the walled garden? Who needs friends anyway, amirite?
The question isn't whether anyone could choose to stay inside if they want to, the question is whether I can trust that {insert older relative here} will stay inside the garden and not get tricked by a sketchy website into installing something through the back doors the EU is mandating.
If the opening up of Apple were as difficult to use as getting root on Android is I wouldn't have a problem. But that's not what's being proposed, and any attempts by Apple to make it less than perfectly smooth for someone to exit the walled garden are most likely going to be shot down.
> You'll struggle to find people who are against the Digital Markets Act for this reason
You missed most of the discussions about DMA on HN, I guess. There's always someone ready to say how EU will kill all innovation and make Google/Apple exit the market because they dare to question anything.
It's not that most people hate risk. It's that individuals whom are harmed by sociopathic individuals that exploit methodologies, techniques, and products to enrich, steal, and harm the population. (When I say that I mean financially, emotionally, socially, physically, etc). To add further insult to injury, defending ones self against these individuals is disproportionately impossible.
Socially: Creating and cultivating a culture that screws up dating.
Emotionally: Filter bubbles, and data analyitics to push proganda and motivate people in directions (cambridge). Additionally subjecting people to material to manipulate.
Stealing: Scooter companies are actively stealing the public space to operate their business (sidewalks), endorsing their users to run over people on the sidewalk (also making it difficult to identify the individual), etc.
Privacy wise: Companies are forcing you to give up your private info to live. (Retail tracking to individuals.. even accross multiple companies [see "The Retail Equation"])
I'm not insulting people who hate risk. For the stability and health of society, it's good that most people are that way. We need people who shake their fist at anything new or different to keep us sane (people like you it seems, from your laundry list of frustrations).
But we also need the people who do like risk taking and new stuff, and there's less of them. So innovation is much more of a fragile thing than stasis.
Even if you think society and human life in general can't be improved in any way, to just maintain the way things are now...will require many new innovations and people taking risk on new stuff. Your welfare, lifestyle, and security depends on the risk taking of others. So we should probably be careful about making it too hard for the folks taking risk (it's already hard enough).
Trust me, the risk-averse folks will still be the dominant voice either way. Even this forum--which started as a community of risk-taking entrepreneurial types--is now dominated by the risk-averse majority.
In theory I agree with your argument, but in practice I find it’s very often the AI and other dominant companies — often tech — that are at the root of the risk averse landscape you observe. To put it simply, major tech companies are among the greatest driving forces of that landscape because they would prefer to operate without any competition.
My point being “letting the risk adverse take risks” is not the same thing as “don’t rein in VC backed attempted monopolies”. You can do the latter without doing the former (theoretically of course; in practice doing the latter is impossible without a substantive change in the underlying incentive structure of current global society).
"full-self-driving doesn't self drive", "wear a helmet on the bird scooter", and "safety is our first priority at facebook" is the 21st century version of "don't get roundup all over yourself"
I wasn't attempting to express my entire worldview in a comment. Yes, technology often brings both risk and reward. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't recognize/criticize/discuss those risks.
This is the cost of progress. There will never (ever) be a a major new technological shift that does not kill people. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you will never stop someone from dying because of some new major technology.
You might, however, kill far more people in the process of delaying progress that could have ultimately culminated in them having been saved.
Not all progress is good progress. Adding lead to paint was progress at the time. Same with using asbestos for insulation. We’ve since decided that the costs outweigh the benefits there.
Regulators should and do weigh both the harm and good of restricting the usage of new technology. The fact that they don’t always get it right isn’t a reason to stop regulation altogether.
I don't disagree, in general. Roundup also fed many people. But there are certainly poor choices evident in the above examples that weren't necessary for the progress to be made, but were just disregarded by an organization operating without guardrails. They deserve the pressure to course correct.
Most importantly all this tech is not reducing cost of living, but is increasing it. Tech is reducing prices of compute and memory and software but everyone's monthly bill increases. This is only possible through parasitic behavior. And we know how to kill parasites. The life and times of a parasite are not as fun as the worthies who come up with these unsustainable business models think.
> Now, large tech companies haven't wholesale killed people (unlike say tobacco, or talc powder, 3M and half of their solvents, weed killer, most car makers, etc etc)
It's nearly as bad. Social media causes addiction and mental health problems especially for the youth. PISA scores are going down. It can already be seen now, although not many 20 year olds have had a smartphone for more than 10 years. Here in this country every 7 year old has a smartphone and it will get only worse. Physical health is impacted because of kids are tapping on a screen instead of running and playing. It has impact already to language learning and social development of babies because parents interact with their smartphone several hours a day and instead of interacting with their baby.
Of course there is other tech than social media and smartphones. But at least in these areas equally strong regulation as for tobacco and alcohol would be required.
Large tech companies haven't wholesale killed people in the same way big tobacco haven't killed any people. Nobody smokes a cigarette and immediately die. But one would have to be immensely dense not to see the correlation between smoking habit and lung disease, or Facebook refusing to moderate social media activity in Burma and some of the worst atrocities committed on humans anywhere this century.
I have a feeling there's a lot of analogies to be had between parenting, regulation and AI alignment.
All three are about trying to persuade an intelligent organism to adopt acceptable, rich and virtuous behaviour. All three seems to have similar failure modes.
Too much red tape and you'll get over fitting, lack of creative and new behaviour.
Except listed companies are sociopathic. They have no empathy. And their only goal is shareholder value. There’s no appealing to their conscience, so carrots and sticks it is
> large tech companies haven't wholesale killed people
Facebook's and Twitter's recommended feed algorithms and blocking procedures, have to a significant extent determined the outcome of elections, coup attempts, protest movements. These companies have custom tuned their algorithms for particular countries at particular times, during such events. Many people have died, or their lives negatively affected because of the decisions by these companies.
Do increases in suicide rates from social media addiction count?
There are emails unearthed from the early days of Facebook where utilizing addiction feedback loops were discussed to retain and maximize young users.
The Anxious Generation provides a lot of evidence correlating the rise of social media and a major increase in depression and anxiety related disorders.
> A company that provides a phone service (mobile or other) has to conform to a large amount of regulatory red tape. Why? because either a company before tried to monopolise the entire country, or they killed someone.
you sweet summer child
no, that's not how the red tape got put in place. the government put the red tape in place to protect the established companies in the space from upstart competitors
I think you're making a mistake confusing the way things are today in terms of market concentration with the way things were in the past. In terms of market concentration in the US at least, things were massively different even 20 years ago.
I read that as saying there's nothing to be done, monopolies are natural, we can't stop the order of things without making everything worse, we must just acquiesce and learn to live with them.
Is that correct? I have a hard time thinking that is true.
> Why would you expect a company not to pursue profits?
People keep talking about the obligation to shareholders for a company to maximize profits, but there's a wide list of possibilities between not doing that and seeking to actively, wholesale ruin privacy.
I expect the people in companies to take responsibility for their actions instead of pretending that they're beholden to the company's wants.
> They've also been trying to extract as much personal info as possible for profit. Because regulators in the USA are hamstrung, they are used to being able to basically doing stuff that would be illegal if it were in physical stores/pre-existing industries.
Did you actually read the article? I don't know how you square this kobayashi maru situation, unless you think Meta is outright lying about it:
> Europe recently charged Meta with breaching EU regulations over its “pay or consent” plan. Meta’s business is built around personalized ads, which are worth far more than non-personalized ads. EU regulators required that Meta provide an option that did not involve tracking user data, so Meta created a paid model that would allow users to pay a fee for an ad-free service.
This was already a significant concession—personalized ads are so valuable that one analyst estimated paid users would bring in 60 percent less revenue. But EU regulators are now insisting this model also breaches the rules, saying that Meta fails to provide a less personalized but equivalent version of Meta’s social networks. They’re demanding that Meta provide free full services without personalized ads or a monthly fee for users. In a very real sense, the EU has ruled that Meta’s core business model is illegal. Non-personalized ads cannot economically sustain Meta’s services, but it’s the only solution EU regulators want to accept.
Also, what about the CUDA situation? I don't see how any consumer is harmed by this, which is quite different from a social media company doing its thing.
- makes it too difficult for consumers to find out what exactly they give to facebook in exchange for this ‘free’ service
- is not clear enough about the fact that paying will not remove all ads
- forces existing users to choose between paid and ‘free’ versions before they can use the service again.
Nowhere do they say on that page that Meta "provide free full services without personalized ads or a monthly fee for users”. Am I reading the wrong page?
Yes. That's a separate investigation; "Today's action focuses specifically on the assessment of Meta's practices under EU consumer law and is distinct from the ongoing ... , and the assessment by the Irish Data Protection Commission under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)."
But it's an extremely settled matter. The GDPR says explicitly that consent is not "freely given" if the provision of a service is dependent on said consent. (Where the service does not absolutely require the data processing in question; See Article 7, recital 43)
Meta should've been nuked when Cambridge Analytica happened; the fact that US lawmakers did nothing after that is a complete joke. Zucc should be in jail alongside every other piece of shit who thinks it's their right to mass-harvest every single person's personal data indiscriminately for profit.
You know what they say: Only old people use Facebook.
All the younger people I know are on Instagram (yes Meta owns that). But another social network will take its place like it always has. I’m pretty sure Meta knows this since they also own WhatsApp.
BS. Lot's of companies / entities moved there because of said "millions" so you are unwillingly forced to use them as a mean of contact. And sadly open alternatives are blocked/unavailable...
My sister has kids, and their school exclusively uses whatsapp to broadcast events and other things happening in the school, despite repeated complaints from many parents. There's millions of little things like this out there. Many small businesses like repairmen or such only do Whatsapp. It's quite literally unavoidable in some countries.
Sorry, this is just how technology works. There is going to be a way that the vast majority of people want to communicate and if you don't want to use it, it's going to be a pain in the ass for you. This is always going to be the case, and nobody is under any obligation to accommodate you. If you didn't want to have a home phone in the 90s it would have been the same thing.
Whatsapp is not Facebook, and it's not social media. It's a messaging application. Different thing. I quit Facebook -- I didn't exit every messaging platform. Yes, if you eschew every messaging platform, nobody can reach you. That's obviously correct.
However, nothing I use could be called a Facebook replacement, either. WhatsApp isn't a Facebook replacement.
I don't use Facebook but for example KLM/AF at least 5-6 years ago pushed hard "means of contact" as "talk to us at whatsapp/facebook". And they weren't the only one. And the track of thinking was probably "If everyone/millions use it then let's move away from this old pesky email"...
There are groups/communities (real ones, for example building or school) that settled on WA/FB group so while you are not necessarily forced to if you don't there is a high chance that you will miss some crucial info…
I don't use it in any manner for personal communication though…
That’s a pretty glib stance. Plenty of people have difficulty finding a friend group and not everyone can be an island until they do (see the loneliness epidemic). Perhaps consider that there are other people with different life situations than yours for whom demanding individualized treatment does not work, and they may have much less choice about what technologies they have to use as a result.
For what is worth, I think Meta is lying about it, or at least playing the victim card too strongly.
> They’re demanding that Meta provide free full services without personalized ads or a monthly fee for users.
Meta is being sued because their paid plan is not honest - they are currently asking for 10€/month which is disproportionate - for comparison, a Business Standard Google Workspace account with 2Tb and Gemini costs 11€. From [1], "EU law requires that consent is the genuine free will of the user. Contrary to this law, Meta charges a 'privacy fee' of up to €250 per year if anyone dares to exercise their fundamental right to data protection".
I don't think reasonable prices are based on what the potential maximum profit per user is. Normally it's based on the expense per user plus a percentage for profit.
What do they do that would be illegal in physical stores? If I wanted to open a physical store that gave away free stuff but you had to agree to give a bunch of personal info that would be completely legal (but not profitable).
Do companies need onerous regulations that increase costs for consumers or do they need the incentive in form of not having their corporate charter cancelled and corporate officers banned from doing business as a threat to maintain a fair market?
The EU is free to pass laws preventing gatekeepers and insisting on interoperability requirements and Apple is free to refuse to do that and not offer their non-competitive gatekeeping products in the EU.
There's zero reason to think that this will mean the EU won't have a tech market. It just won't have one that includes Apple products which refuse to follow the law. Seems like a massive win for the EU, and because Apple is the one deciding to pull their products rather than follow the law they can't really complain either, so win/win I guess.
Anything that gets close gets bought or killed by non-european giants.
Tencent buys basically all game companies, microsoft buys basically all communication companies (skype, nokia come to mind), google buys basically everything. Even ARM is owned by Softbank after starting out in the UK.
The Automotive industry and ASML are just about the only things resistant to this because they're so large already; Automotive acts a lot like big tech. (a clear similarity I saw after being in BMW R&D and Googles Zurich and SF campuses)
There is an issue with that perspective though. The Europeans sell out. Ok. Maybe they are bad at valuation and don't realise that their companies are worth more than they are being paid for. Or maybe an EU company can't capture as much value as a US/Chinese company. And those are really the only two options - either the decision is rational or irrational. If it is an irrational decision then there isn't much to talk about. But it is probably the second case - selling out to someone on a different continent generates value. And there is a good chance that is because it helps avoid EU regulators.
For example, you mentioned Nokia. Nokia was blown out of the market by superior Chinese manufacturing and US design [0]. It wasn't a close battle, the EU contender was crushed. Apple's motivation for entering the market was that among other things that companies like Nokia were so bad at making phones that Apple reckoned it could break in to a new vertical. That is a very EU-led-industry problem to have. The reason they sold out was because the EU turned out to be incapable of incubating a modern, successful phone manufacturer in the 21st century even with an incredible lead and Nokia was being outmanoeuvred everywhere.
[0] Both looked like regulatory issues to me, we've seen how the EU responds to things like micromanaging the iPhone charging port.
> Nokia was blown out of the market by superior Chinese manufacturing and US design [0].
No, Nokia was blown out of the market via the exclusive deal with Microsoft, which in turn made the dumbest management decisions ever. Nokia bled under the horrible management of Steve Ballmer and their own ignorance with regards to Android. They also proved later on that you don't need any expertise to produce decent Android phones, as HMD global used their name as a brand and has been thriving.
To add to this: It's not that hard to develop a mobile operating system that's on par or better than Android, despite what Google might want you to think.
Pretty telling though. When dijit was talking about Tencent, Microsoft or Google a few comments ago they were being presented as these huge incumbent behemoths that scoop up everything in their path. And, fair enough, they are.
But when Nokia starts with an overwhelming incumbents advantage, their board doesn't even have confidence that Nokia's internal talent pool can lead them to make a mobile phone! They couldn't defend themselves from multiple companies in completely different industries with no prior competence in the mobile phone world. That was an A-Team EU hardware company's performance.
The issue here isn't company size, it is something specific to the EU. I'm not sure what, but since it is a geographic thing I'd start with regulation and branch out from there.
> their board doesn't even have confidence that Nokia's internal talent pool can lead them to make a mobile phone!
I'm sorry but it's honestly pointless discussing this as no one in this thread wants to spend even an ounce of time into researching this. Reading your comment in it's entirety tells me you weren't there when stuff was happening.
> That was an A-Team EU hardware company's performance.
For the record, the Lumia phones had A-Tier hardware in them. They boasted the best low light cameras on phones for a while around ~2012.
Nokia made the Lumia phones, MS provided the operating system. Previously, Nokia had their own Linux based OS, called Maemo, which was originally supposed to run on what became Lumia. It later formed into Sailfish OS, which had it's own device family.
The issue wasn't the hardware platform itself, it was the fact that Nokia decided to go with the MS ecosystem, instead of Android. And honestly, I don't even think that was a bad move. I am at a loss trying to figure out how device manufacturers actually make profits based on what has turned into extremely restrictive licensing deals with Google in order to get GAPPS on their phones.
EU didn't go into an uncontrolled spree investing every company that had .com in its name and ruined thousands of lives and wasted billions of dollars.
EU usually doesn't let companies to grow uncontrollable sizes that the government is completely controlled by them not the citizens.
The existence of Big Tech means that the government did a very poor job in protecting the consumers and the free and fair market
> EU didn't go into an uncontrolled spree investing every company that had .com in its name and ruined thousands of lives and wasted billions of dollars.
This is the thing that so many Americans in tech don't seem to understand. VC Twitter is full of smugposting about how the US has "$5 trillion market-cap of startups" and the EU doesn't.
And what they miss is that the EU doesn't want Silicon Valley. It doesn't want the "trillions in startups". Because essentially none of them turn any profit. Why on earth would anyone want $5 trillion dollars in companies that do not make financial sense yet have awful externalities.
I understand you were rebutting OPs point that not every tech company is a capital furnace, but when framed in this manner, this sounds like something to be solved, not something to be proud of. That’s the difference between the EU and the US, and there is a strong case to be made that life is better in the EU when observing majorities.
Who is benefiting from Apple’s profits being the size of a small country’s GDP? Not most people, therefore, why would this be optimized for?
Apple makes a lot of profit because their products provide a lot of value.
Do you think that if you compare the profit that Apple makes to the value that that users get that Apple has the larger share of it? To a disturbing degree?
Certainly, if a company’s profits are the size of a small country’s GDP, I find that disturbing regardless of the value they’re delivering. Value is the experience and consumer excess, profits are fiat. Could that same value be delivered with compressed profits leading to greater consumer excess? I believe so. Not all profits are earned, some are inherent once an org achieves a certain maturity or industry position. Visa and Mastercard skimming a non insignificant amount off of US GDP, for example. Is that value?
I thought my comment was clear, I will attempt to be more explicit: I am of the opinion that Apple’s profits are excessive, regardless of the consumer value delivered. I respect that others may have opposing views that profits should have no limits as long as value is delivered.
Well if EU politicians think Apple's profits are excessive what about introducing laws to foster some competition? You can complain about other countries running circles around you all you want but at the end of the day if you can't make a phone, piece of software or a CPU you will be at the mercy of those who can. The way to reduce "excessive profits" is to make it easier to start businesses which could provide the "overpriced" goods and services cheaper.
> Who is benefiting from Apple’s profits being the size of a small country’s GDP? Not most people, therefore, why would this be optimized for?
Off the top of my head, probably the millions of people who have a pension through one of Apple’s institutional investors like CalPERS. The effects of Apple’s profitability goes far and wide.
> Off the top of my head, probably the millions of people who have a pension through one of Apple’s institutional investors like CalPERS. The effects of Apple’s profitability goes far and wide.
That's like a member of the working poor who owns one share of stock, "benefiting" from company lobbying to keep the minimum wage down.
He's got two-hundredths of a cent more in dividends, and has lost many hundreds of dollars in potential wages.
These numbers are always trotted out like these people have a material majority investment in the equities market (“won’t someone think of the teacher pension”), when per the Federal Reserve, the top 10% of Americans by wealth hold 93% of US equities.
This doesn’t entirely discount that CalPERS holds almost 40M shares (~$8.7B) of Apple (its top holding), just that them doing so is not reason enough to be more judicious about governing corporate profits. Still profits, but less. Those profits have to come from somewhere.
(CalPERS has $502.9B AUM ending June 2024, making APPL ~1.72% of their total assets)
That seems all quite orthogonal. You asked who benefits and I’ve given you an example. Some benefit directly and some indirectly. But millions in the economy benefit and not just through institutions such as CalPERS.
This is about startups, the companies ostensibly stifled by Europe's regulatory regime.
The only thing that's holding back the likes of Apple in Europe is an inability to rent-seek off the app store, which is something Europe quite knowingly chooses to restrict. (Rent-seeking is just profit at the expense of the rest of the economy, again, why would Europe want this?)
And no, current startups aren't going to grow into the "next Apple".
American culture in a nutshell is to be in awe of large numbers without thinking very hard about whether you’re measuring the right things in the first place.
Not on Apple's scale, but with apple pulling products from the market, this opens the door for someone else to step up and fill that highly profitable gap in the market apple abandoned. I really hope that they do. The more players there are in the game from other countries the better off we'll all be.
This is the first product miss. And I don't know where Apple goes from here. Others will also leapfrog them is my instinct. Basically they are too big now and startups have a chance of beating both Google and Apple.
Apple has had other misses. They themselves cancelled the iPhone mini. There was the newton, quite similarly a product that the technology level was not quite ready for but they had great success with later. They constantly screw up with the Mac pro, introducing one version and then letting it whither away for many years.
Nah, the first iPhone was too expensive, slow, and limited in capabilities (no App Store). They quickly iterated to improve on all of that. The first watch also kind of sucked. The initial iPod wasn’t a blockbuster, either - didn’t work well on Windows, required FireWire. I’m sure there are other initial misses. I think there’s something there with Vision Pro, they just need to iterate and get the cost down.
In my opinion, nothing is lost here. They will either put out new improved and cheaper versions until they get the interest they want, or wait for someone else to innovate and then copy it better, the apple way (TM). I don’t see a way where this is apples downfall until they continue to f it up again and again.
The only other OS option being Android (on mobile) and Windows (on desktop) I don't think Apple is going anywhere anytime soon. A lot of Apple's moat is in its OS (however degrading in has been in last decade). It's the perfect duopoly in both segments. Do you see that changing? If not then all other OEMs will keep fighting among themselves for loose change.
Did they? It really felt to me like they weren't trying for a moonshot with it: their sales projection of ca. 1M units falls under the single-digit percentage range of their annual revenue.
Yeah, they've actually sold less than that, but in context, it's still very much a "let's throw it at the wall and see what sticks" kind of thing. It also nonetheless fits how Apple communicates their product vision in new areas.
Yes. Everyone has set targets and expectations, which imply a certain product strategy, that are all completely at odds with everything Apple has indicated. Then, they call AVP a failure for. It meeting those set expectations. It’s not all that impressive to win an argument when you get that much freedom over framing things without much regard for the realities.
What's the product strategy? How's it at odds with what Apple has indicated?
The accusatory use of the second person implies that you're in my head enough to know that I'm trying to win an argument. It's patently untrue; I want to be loudly wrong so that I have more than merely a snowball's chance in hell of garnering understanding here.
If you have corrections to offer, I'm receptive to them.
How important is technological industry? Pretty damn important I'd say if you're interested in economic growth and hence supporting your social safety net.
Big tech is not inherent in the concept of a tech industry. Big tech is like 6 companies that want to swallow the world. Not being able to separate these two concepts is grade school level literacy and critical thinking. It’s not acceptable to conflate them. It’s completely ridiculous.
Accenture, Siemens, Nokia, Ericsson, Capgemini, Atos, Dassault Systems, Bosch, Ahold Delhaize, Dassault Systèmes? maybe little known outside the EU, but the EU has something like 20% of the world's software developers.
GP will have to explain to me, at a grade school level, how they want to differentiate big tech and BIG tech.
The technological industry is indeed very important, the mistake is thinking VR goggles and chatbots are somehow the only or even particularly relevant form of technology. Europe is of course full of high technology firms, (the awkwardly named https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana) contains a non trivial amount of high value added industry in the world.
What we need more of these days is 155 mm shells, chip fabs, nuclear power plants, solar cells and rail, not Facebook and Apple equivalents complaining about regulations.
Are they separable? Teens in particular appear to be bad for each other's mental health. Connectivity increases that effect, anonymity makes it worse, likes and other status features makes it worse still. Not sure where you draw a line between not quite bad enough and too bad.
It doesn’t help there are algorithms designed to keep them looking at things that aren’t great for them to be looking at though does it. Can you provide an example in the past wheee this has existed before outside of big tech ?
> The EU is free to pass laws preventing gatekeepers
I'm intentionally taking this out of context to point out that laws can act as gatekeepers and help preserve incumbent's positions.
Stuff like "minimum service requirement" which require new entrants to front a massive initial investment, preventing them from getting a foothold (see: France telecom landscape in the 90s-'10s). GDPR was crafted by the likes of Google & Meta that were strong enough to weather the transition, but kill off smaller competition.
There are always tradeoffs, but those aren't talked about as much.
It's absolutely true that regulations can be written by corporations to keep out competitors. Regulations are just tools. They can be used to protect and benefit the majority or to further enrich a small number of wealthy and powerful individuals. I haven't seen anything to convince me that the Digital Markets Act was written to hurt competition at the expense of the public.
> The EU is free to pass laws preventing gatekeepers and insisting on interoperability requirements and Apple is free to refuse to do that and not offer their non-competitive gatekeeping products in the EU.
Apple is also free to lobby the US government and people to take action against the EU. Especially if Trump gets elected, Apple complaining about Europe taking advantage of American companies would resonate with a lot of the officials likely to staff such an administration.
Given Russia, it is likely that the US has far more leverage on the EU than the EU has on the US.
Why should the US government care if Apple chooses not to sell some of their products in the EU because they don't want to abide by the EU's laws? The EU isn't taking advantage of US companies, or looking to pressure the US. The EU has every right to set their own laws and businesses can decide for themselves if they want to sell their products there. The fact that Russia exists doesn't change that.
Eu has lots of leverage too against US. Lobbying for actions against eu may have absolutely bad consequences and it's totally bonkers to think/prise that an us company has this much power proving once again that maybe it's a good think eu doesn't have such big corpos
> Apple is free to refuse to do that and not offer their non-competitive gatekeeping products in the EU.
Currently Apple has been complying with the letter of EU law (opening their devices to alternative app stores, etc) but not the spirit of the law (leaving the EU market).
"Europeans could end up living in an online backwater with out-of-date phones, cut off from the rest of the world's search engines and social media sites, unable to even access high-performance computer chips."
Sounds like a paradise. More healthy lifestyle. For most people much of this stuff is unnecessary. If one wants to live life "online", glued a screen digesting garbage and propaganda 24/7, then one can relocate to some country where that's what people do. Chances are, tourists from such countries will want to visit Europe even more.
We are all living in an "online backwater" in case the author hasn't noticed. The web is a sewer of surveillance, marketing and ads. Despite the information access possibilities the internet presents, the distribution of factual information seems to be at an all-time low, at least in the lifetime I am living. I have never seen people who were so detached from commonly shared reality as a result of "search engines and social media sites". To access facual information, cf. marketing and propaganda, worthless opinions, and "AI" generated garbage, one did not and does not need the latest "phone" or "high-performance computer chips". This stuff is not making people smarter. Is it is not making society better.
I would be willing to bet the countries that have the populations that are most reliant on "search engines and social media sites" and "high performance computer chips" are going to have the highest rates of mental illness and other complications that arise from too much screen time, and the lowest test scores. These will be dumbed down, whacked out societies. They will have the worst quality of life.
I was listening to an interview with Jonathan Kanter recently and the interviewer tried to get him to comment on Europe's approach to regulation of "Big Tech". He was hesitant to accept any comparison. But I am confident there are plenty of folks, generally _not people who comment on HN_, who are envious of the direction Europe is taking.
The idea that regulating Apple and Meta, companies that exploit people commercially as they use computers, e.g., as data collection sources and ad targets, is going to contribute to cause "poverty" or deprive Europe of useful networking and computer technology, e.g., the type used for national defense, is absurd.
There is no equivalence between (a) "internet" or "high end computer chips" (much less "technology" or "innovation") and (b) "search engines" or "social media sites". Except if one is Silicon Valley VC, Big Tech employee, "tech" journalist, payola recipient or other supporter of "Big Tech". This is false quivalence, a flawed premise. Arguments relying on a flawed premise are, of course, inherently flawed.
It’s a short term paradise. You’re not going to be able to keep it that way when the rest of the world is more technologically advanced and you slip into poverty.
> It’s a short term paradise. You’re not going to be able to keep it that way when the rest of the world is more technologically advanced and you slip into poverty.
I think you're failing to make important distinctions. Being "less advanced" in algorithmic addiction machines, ad targeting, personal privacy invasion, or monopoly is not going to cause any of those things.
As an American, a good chunk of American consumer technology is more akin to a parasitic burden than any advantage.
It's also naive in that they somehow think they wouldn't get invaded the second some dictator decides they want some lebensraum. You can't have an entire continent (save Poland, Finland, Britain, France, and a handful of others) more or less ignore defense (via technological advancement) and hope to keep pax liberalism
What an interesting point of view. Very European. I wonder what will those Europeans do that do need the high-performance computer chips to create something new, to innovate.
They will probably move to those whacked out societies.
> What an interesting point of view. Very European. I wonder what will those Europeans do that do need the high-performance computer chips to create something new, to innovate.
You mean the ones fabricated with European photolithography machines?
I think you missed the GP's point: a lot of so-called "innovation" is crap, providing as much true value as a parasite (maybe one of those lovely ones that will kill you if you try to kill it).
> You mean the ones fabricated with European photolithography machines?
Interesting discussion recently, I forget if it was on here. Those lithography machines are built with the worst spaghetti code imaginable and the engineering is so close to black magic that development is painfully slow. In other words, that space is ripe for disruption and there might be some attempts at that in the near future.
> Interesting discussion recently, I forget if it was on here. Those lithography machines are built with the worst spaghetti code imaginable and the engineering is so close to black magic that development is painfully slow.
It sounds like "spaghetti code" is not actually the competitive disadvantage software engineers imagine it to be.
I say that as a software engineer.
Pretty sure there's a lot more to those machines than software.
> In other words, that space is ripe for disruption and there might be some attempts at that in the near future.
Not because of "spaghetti code," but because of US-led sanctions. China has technical talent, a lot of money, and now motivation to enter that space.
I don't live in Europe, but wish we had these sorts of regulations in the US.
If tech companies cannot provide us a means to control our personal information, and require us to be locked into their gatekeep-y, nanny-state, walled gardens and submit to using locked-down devices that don't actually obey what we want them to do, then those tech companies should not exist.
I've gotten a little bit of a taste of some of this stuff in the form of the CCPA/CPRA, and it's delightful. Getting to tell companies they're not allowed to sell any of my information to third parties is wonderful. I just wish that was the default and I didn't have to opt out.
Big tech is far, far under-regulated, even in Europe, too, and that needs to change.
IMHO the problem has been that FAANG has not been regulated enough. The sheer size of these companies and their market share means there's little chance of competition from anywhere.
Though TBF when it comes to poorly thought out regulation, the amount of human time lost to clicking cookie consent/reject screens surely has to be a net loss to society.
If you spent real money on something, you're far more likely to buy it again or buy it for someone or send that link to someone than a completely new product.
The great thing about them selling you something made to be as crappy as you will stand, is that then you'll then have to refund it all the time, making their re-targeting ads even more "effective" :)) What a virtuous cycle!
What exactly do you mean by "targeted advertising"? I'm guessing you probably mean "behavioral advertising", which is a subset of "targeted advertising".
Targeted advertising includes contextual advertising (e.g., a company putting an ad for their bird watching binoculars on a bird watching blog) and I'm having trouble thinking of any reason to ban that.
I'd even go to banning all commercial ads, like several cities have done offline.
Reasons?
Click bait, boosts consumerism, ads imply essentially a tax for everyone (remember that ads have to be paid by the consumers), CEO spam, annoying, environmental costs
Oh no, companies can't manipulate people as easily and some will go bankrupt, because they can't give people as much FOMO and there will be less trash in the internet
Making everything rely on subscription (consider European TV license fees as such) and word-of-mouth is what you end up with. Except in the case of former, over-subscription is getting into a problem too.
I have some excellent news for you about the legality of targeted advertising under the GDPR.
The GDPR is very clear about this. Advertising is not a legitimate interest or a functionally-required data processing, ergo, it may only be done with user consent. And that user consent may not be coerced in any way at all, you may not even refuse access to services if users reject their data being used.
It's taking a while to go up and down the courts, but the days of ad-tech are numbered.
Good intentions but how well is that working out so far?
Only thing we got was annoying cookie popups everywhere, where consent is one click away and reject is three layers behind a small “learn more” button.
That just shows us that the companies don't give a shit and are implementing every dark pattern under the sun to keep harvesting data. The ePrivacy bill, GDPR and the EU cookie laws say nothing about cookie banners or anything of the sort, companies just make it as annoying as possible so that people get tired by it and mindlessly click reject.
Guess what, the whole hidden reject thing? That's not legal. Opting out should be equally as easy (or easier) than opting in, which a lot of EU companies realize.
> Why would it benefit society to get less targeted ads as opposed to more targeted ones?
Because more targeted ads require a dangerous and abusive system of pervasive surveillance while less targeted ads can still be targeted without hurting as many people in the process.
If I am Tylor Swift fan I should get her merch advertising only when I am visiting swifties forum or group - but not when I am checking my fishing forum where I expect fishing gear ads. But nowadays I get adsg
Tracking stats of your customers using the data they willingly gave you and making marketing decisions isn't the problem. Neither is making sponsorship agreements with content producers who make relevant content.
Creation of global markets with interconnected networks to track and share detailed personal information about mental states, political alignment, sexual life and more is the problem.
All advertising is a step too far, I think. But banning accepting any remuneration to deliver, display, or cause to be viewed any advertisement, and limiting physical ads in places viewable from public areas seems like it would improve things. Buildings shouldn't be covered in ads, and the internet shouldn't be largely based around scamming as much information out of people as possible to jam ads down their throat, but a business should be allowed to put up flyers on their own storefront. I mean, if you're really pedantic about banning all ads, that probably precludes restaurants posting menus out front.
Extremely limited, focused, designed to deliver facts rather than entertainment or flashy catchy content 'ads' could be informative and beneficial. The structure of the ad should be as close to sanitized textbook as possible, maybe even follow a regulated formula. Something like, "This is a thing that exists. Here's the benefit without dramatizing or 'selling' someone something they don't need. X brand can be found at Y location for Z cost."
It's easy to agree with all advertising. I think that's the quickest, easiest measure to cut that yields an outcome beneficial to society, and that more ads are nearly always worse.
I also think that sales are worse for society than every day prices that deliver value; sales do make sense for things like seasonal items which are in abundance due to just being harvested.
I’ve wondered the same thing. How much does a company have to spend on ads just to keep up with their competitors’ ad spend? I don’t know but if I had to guess I’d say most of the ad budget. Not to mention that ads are a cancer that infest and overrun anything they touch.
> Untargeted ads pay less than 5% what targeted ones do.
Even assuming that is true, companies are bidding for user's attention and against each other. What do you think will happen to prices for context-based advertising if targeted advertising goes away?
> and the one billion YouTube viewers would likely be quite upset about it
Great example. Many of the ads that finance the YouTube ecosystem are context-based and not targeted.
> What do you think will happen to prices for context-based advertising if targeted advertising goes away?
It's quite obvious, isn't it? They will stop buying ads altogether.
The entire reason targeted ads pay better is because they have a higher conversion rate, so advertisers can afford to pay more.
> Many of the ads that finance the YouTube ecosystem are context-based and not targeted.
And that's why shovel-ware "personal finance" crap YouTube channels make mega-bux, while actually interesting creators earn pennies. If you want more "junk food content", have at it: Ban all the targeted ads!
Just don't come crying in five years when there's nothing good to watch or read.
The Internet existed before Internet ads (and particularly targeted ads) did. Personally, while I don't necessarily disagree with the point you're making, I'm curious to see what a pendulum swing in the opposite direction might look like.
