That's bullshit. The only way to stand up to large tech companies is with regulation, which the United States is pathologically opposed to. Foreign countries have to write their own consumer protection laws because US juggernaut tech companies are so ruthless. Shareholders fear nothing as much as regulatory backlash.
You're at least right about one thing. Large tech companies will always exploit opportunities to limit the user, which is a privilege Apple has abused for too long. It's time for computing to be democratized again, even if we need to drag Apple though the mud to get there.
> That's bullshit. The only way to stand up to large tech companies is with regulation
I don't know if you realize this, but OP and you are saying the same thing, they are just saying it slightly different.
You: To stand up to large company bullying you need to regulate them through the government.
OP: To stand up to large company bullying you, you need another large company who has the pockets and sway to bring change through congress because our government is bought and paid for by corporations.
We're strongman-ing two sides of the same coin. They're arguing that the free market will solve this, whereas I'm arguing that proactive measures are required. Apple's business is designed so that it cannot be disrupted without forcing them to abide by a common set of rules. By leaving those rules undefined, we have clearly not encouraged innovation or disruption. Our only option is to define our consumer rights that we should have instated a long time ago.
Apple can still regulate your iPhone if they want. They just have to do so with the option to disable that regulation, which seems like a fair concession to me. Macs pull this off without a problem, even letting you install another OS if you're dissatisfied with MacOS. Apple just needs to bring that same philosophy to iPhone, and developers won't be mad at them.
A difference between governments and corporations are that you can walk away from a corporation for another one or none at all in the extreme case an alternative doesn’t exist.
You can’t walk away from government regulation because there is ultimately a gun at your back. Governments do not give up power once they’ve received it. Governments change hands who may wield that power differently than when it was imagined to be when first received.
People in European countries have had to learn this the hard way many, many times over and yet still don’t get why other cultures might take a different view on it.
I don't sit on Dow's board and have zero say in whether they decide poisoning the environment where I live is a good idea or not. We are not afforded democracy like owners and board members are.
The government is the one institution in most people's lives that they have a real say in, and probably the only one that affords them democracy. I doubt any of us sit on Apple's board.
The problem is that the Apple and Google duopoly is stifling choice and competition such that we can't realistically walk away from those companies. Market forces haven't solved this issue, and this is where antitrust legislation kicks in.
How incredibly myopic. And also wrong. It works just fine for users. Not so much for all the greedy, prima donna developers out there. They and governments don’t need this power, they want it.
Just because smoldesu says “Letting software go unregulated didn't work, full-stop” doesn’t make it so. It doesn’t even make sense–you’re the one fighting for deregulation here.
Sling all the mud you want, troll. Just because smoldesu doesn’t like the regulation that Apple enacts, doesn’t mean they are not regulating the apps people try to ship.
You're at least right about one thing. Large tech companies will always exploit opportunities to limit the user, which is a privilege Apple has abused for too long. It's time for computing to be democratized again, even if we need to drag Apple though the mud to get there.