The US Department of Justice and 16 state and district attorneys general accused Apple of operating an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market in a new antitrust lawsuit. The DOJ and states are accusing Apple of driving up prices for consumers and developers at the expense of making users more reliant on its iPhones.
It would take a big dose of hopium to believe this will amount to anything.
The anti-trust pressure has increased with this administration. Lina Kahn has been effective at the FTC in bringing a number of cases forward.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/ is a very well executed newsletter with more detailed information regarding anti-trust if you’re interested.
She was pretty good on Planet Money : https://www.npr.org/2023/11/03/1197954506/lina-khan-interview-amazon-ftc-antitrust-paradox-monopoly
Yeah and hasn’t she lost pretty much every case she’s brought forward? She failed big fucking time with the Microsoft/Activision merger even though all the antitrust evidence was right in front of her nose. I’m glad the FTC is trying, because they’re actually doing their job, but they’re doing an awful job when it comes to actually being in court and proving their case.
People shit on Sony for trying to block the merger, but they absolutely were right for trying to block it and now games like starfield, the new Indiana Jones, and probably more in the future will be deliberately left off the PlayStation platform altogether. But that’s all okay right? Because now you get call of duty on gamepass!!! RIGHT???
I see a bunch of complaints against Kahn, but I haven’t been able to find articles on what she did that someone else would have done to be more effective. I don’t normally follow this type of news, so if anyone can point me to some articles, I’d appreciate it.
I’ve heard a few interviews with Kahn, and she sounds like someone looking to make a difference, so I’d like to cheer her on, but if she’s not the right person for the job, it’d be nice to see some examples why. I’d think much could go on to make her lose without it necessarily being due to her actions or inactions.
https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2023/07/18/lina-khans-antitrust-losses-cast-doubt-on-her-sue-dont-settle-philosophy/?slreturn=20240221150002 apparently she’s just taking the sledgehammer approach of suing companies instead of working with them to understand their motives and to make reasonable concessions that will benefit everyone. If those concession discussions fail then you sue and have more leverage in your case I guess. Either way, it’s a fair criticism IMO, and for the record I’m not really a right leaning individual, I just think she’s jumping into lawsuits without doing her homework first.
Dang paywall. That’s at least something I can look into more directly though, so thank you.
Lemmy makes me feel right wing anymore. I think the general news and politics here might be worse than Reddit, which is a shame. There’s a lot of things I’d like to learn or discuss, but half the threads might as well be bizarro MAGA rallies with how cultish they get.
I just came back to this post from one on Angela Chao, and just like the last one about that story, people are cheering on this lady’s death because they don’t like her brother-in-law. I haven’t been able to find anything about Angela that would indicate she had it coming, but that isn’t stopping anyone. If people have valid criticism of a person or idea, share it. Don’t just keep shouting “such-and-such bad!” over and over.
It’s getting worse and worse, completely agree. The reasonable people are getting pushed out by brainless zombies, just like on Twitter or something.
We need to work more on getting in the first few comments before they get there. If I come in and hot takes are all I find, I just move on. I’m sure others do the same.
It didn’t used to seem that way but some of the discussions I’ve had here are actually worse than reddit recently. Take a discussion about Instagram drug sale spammers. I mean, people selling likely counterfeit “xanax” etc to anyone on social media by spamming. Who would stand up for these scumbags? People on Lemmy, apparently, who consider themselves leftists and communicate like sophomoric 19 year olds. “Drugs should be legalized anyway!” Well, that’s not going to make it legal or safe for addictive drugs to be sold on social media and uh, Xanax is legal. I found discussion of the same article on Hacker News and the difference in quality of comments was vast.
Lol that’s exactly the stuff I mean. Legalize drugs, sure. Make them safe and take the business from cartels. Legalize anonymous strangers selling random chemicals, nah.
It was good maybe the first 3 months of the Great Migration, then had a sharp decline. Those first few months were great.
I’m not here for anyone’s militant views on politics, software licensing, diet, or religion. I just tend to avoid most comment sections anymore.
Why are so many people misspelling her surname? Or is the URL to the news article wrong?
I looked up the difference, and it seems that the majority of us have probably been raised in a place where Kahn is the more common spelling we’d encounter.
I mean the Activision case was a bad case though. Microsoft bought their way into… Third place, it’s not enough to need anti trust. Furthermore, Starfield and Indy were already going to be exclusives, those are Bethesda and that acquisition was already long since completed. Plus, it’s not like that’s the invention of exclusives. Sony isn’t exactly pumping over their games to Xbox here.
Substack 🙄
The content is good, so I support the content.
If all we ever do is hold purity contests over secondary and tertiary concerns, like the platform, we’ll never accomplish anything.
I didn’t say anything about the content. Just… Like… Substack 🙄
I’m willing to take the movement as a good sign. The fact that we haven’t even been talking about this shit for decades now was just depressing. It’s long past time for this shit, and the ball needs to get rolling.
There’s a lot of corporate competitive behavior that’s ok, when you’re one of many, that isn’t anymore when you dominate the market.
Apple has dominated the smartphone market since the iPhone 5 in the us. I’ve managed my works mdm tool for a decade and never have I seen the android collective share surpass 10% in the pie chart it shows me of versions
Looks like the stats are all over the place but iPhones are about 50% of US market ± 10%. Neither you nor I are representative
Very true, mine is just anecdotal evidence in the end, no matter how much it is
All I want is RCS on iPhone. I know Apple already said they’re working on it, but I hope legal pressure like this will force them to make the RCS/iMessage integration actually work well (instead of half-assing it which I assume is what they want to do, cuz they want their users to feel frustrated when texting their Android friends)
Can’t we just move past carrier managed messaging? I’d rather my telecom to just be dumb pipes and move everyone to Signal and similar.
The iMessage lock-in is too real for some of us. I know some iPhone users who won’t even install FB Messenger (I know, I don’t use it either. Fuck the Zuck) because it’s not Apple/iMessage. I finally got my family on Signal and “OMG! We can send videos and pictures now!” Yeah, been saying it for years lol.
Me too, but isn’t this a chicken and egg situation?
Damn, I am stealing this. Too many good uses:
“She lives in a hopium den”
“Hopium addict”
“Hopium of the masses”
Oh it’s a pretty common Internet thing these days. Hopium and copium.
We can hope. Happy to take a chunk out of Apple as they’re often given a free pass as their marketing and branding is so good that customers lap it up.