Good. Get rid of proprietary messaging apps and unfettered access to our data. Bring back standards.
Sad iMessage didn’t get categorised as a gatekeeper, even though in here, the absolute ass of Europe called Czechia the iPhone market share is just above 1/3 of all phones active (which if I remember is way higher than it used to be) I completely expect for this number to rise, since people buy for the brand, and these brain-dead people are the ones to use the default messaging service, thus I can’t wait to get shamed in 10 years for using my android phone and not being able to use iMessage
It’s been a painful few decades for consumers having the teeth of unregulated tech titans sunk into them.
It’s not over with this bill, at least until pluralism returns in operating systems, hardware and internet protocols.
I just hope they don’t stop the pressure with this.
I think that we can expect more propaganda from big tech, including political pressure from the USA. Fighting capitalism is going to be a long battle!
By default big business is narcissistic. They abuse the hell out of everything (see what you made me do to be profitable?) then play the victim when the government hits back.
I was around during the IE/ Netscape war. It occurred to me back then that given the same set of opportunities, any business would likely do the same. It sucks.
And not just businesses. I am always horrified by how many people are obsessed with protecting the precious intellectual property of their posts on the Fediverse from “scraping”. It’s exactly the kind of “Private Property! Keep out!” thinking that gives the tech monopolies the stranglehold over their users.
Maybe they’re just worried about meeting an AI trained on cat memes and inflammatory racist rants from socially awkward incoherent individuals with anger and self love issues.
I kid! I kid!
Maybe…
It’s normal. In today’s social media it just takes more time to ask the author whether you can use what they’ve created, especially relative to clicking that repost button.
In the 00s you’d just ask and most likely get permission and also the author would be flattered. If you wouldn’t ask, though, that’d be very impolite and the author would be pissed.
Just like IRL among normal people.
I don’t think you’re quite following here.
EG have you ever heard about Power Ventures? That was a social media aggregator. You gave the website your credential for Facebook and others. It would fetch contact lists, messages, and so on, and present them in a single place. That gave you a kind of interoperability, or even a kind of federation. Obviously, Facebook didn’t like that. This kind of thing just weakens their hold on users.
You’d think users here should like this sort of thing. But it’s full here with people who passionately hate it, just as much as Facebook did. Facebook completely destroyed the company in court. The Fediverse is full of people who think that that’s exactly right.
Aha, okay, I agree it’s not.
Yes, which is why we have anticompetition laws. It’s just for some reason, people can’t always see competition problem when it’s technology.
Tech looks like magic to the average person. It’s even hard for tech people to definitively tell if something inappropriate is happening, unless they have access to the source. And even so, companies will hide behind the ‘trade secrets’ excuse. Most of the time we can only imagine the shenanigans happening behind the veneer of the corporate copy, because it’s what we would do, given the vast amounts of data and lack of accountability/ transparency available for exploitation.
All true, but they are also failing at simple stuff. Requiring a closed company’s format or services is a monopoly. Especially if “everyone else is doing it”. That is when regulators need to step in as it’s a market failure when there is a single vendor “everyone is using”.
Correct. I feel the regulators lost the plot when they didn’t keep up with market demands for next gen messaging, leading first to the proprietary protocols and then the proliferation of third party apps growing out of a person’s social clout. It’s sucks having to check which app someone is on before I can communicate with them. Some of us here in Asia have 10+ messaging apps on our phone, a combination of pre installed bloatware and apps installed because someone else didn’t have my one, esoteric app. Each time we are handing over more and more of our personal data, network, metadata (so they say) etc.
It was a problem before IMs on phones. Or smart phone. (Maybe not IMs because of IRC). Microsoft have been conflating monopolies with standards since forever. Not only dominating desktop operating systems, but office software on it. Using monopoly of one to get a monopoly of the other. And lets not forget what they did with browers. The EU is only body in the world dealing with the problem at all.
Phones in Asia sound even more dystopian than here in the UK. Surely you can still go LineageOS, GrapheneOS, etc?
It’s called “capitalism”. You should avoid it if you can.
This isn’t a ‘painful day for tech titans.’
Corporations don’t feel pain. C*Os insulate themselves from it. They’re getting steadily richer, probably making more money than you’ll ever see in your life.
This is a good day for tech consumers. That should have been the headline.
I get depressed whenever I read about those salaries. I get paid the bare minimum to pay the bills. I will never have the life those people have - not that I care about luxury, but simply not having to worry about basic necessities.
Life those people have is enriched with power, which I’m grateful I don’t have.
Most people to have power are very different from Marcus Aurelius or king Canute, and very unhappy.
This, spez for example with his almighty great ideas paid himself $193 million last year, that’s more than I’ll ever see my whole life (thanks to me being born in this fuckhole called “Eastern Europe” (technically Central but who cares, it’s just as shitty in the countries more east))
The act doesn’t apply to all tech companies, only to those with either a market capitalisation of more than €75bn (£64bn), or having at least 45 million users and €7.5bn annual turnover in the EU.
In effect, this means just Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and ByteDance (owner of TikTok). The fact that five of the six are US companies has, of course, led to complaints that the pesky Europeans have it in for poor defenceless American giants. Cue violins.
The act imposes serious obligations: companies will have to allow third-party apps and app stores on their platforms; provide transparent advertising data; allow users to easily uninstall pre-installed software or apps; enable interoperability between different messaging services, social networks, and other services, allowing users to communicate seamlessly across platforms; and be more transparent about how their algorithms rank and recommend content, products and services.
It also prohibits certain practices by gatekeepers: favouring their own services over third-party ones, for example; engaging in self-preferential activities; and using private data from business users to compete against them. In other words, an end to tech business as usual.
Sweet. What the corrupt US departments couldn’t - and refused to - do.
Member that time micro$quash was in court for a decade to prove they weren’t a monopoly despite being a monopoly, and then after all that the court declared they were a monopoly? Member? And then absolutely sweet fuck-all happened and they’re still out there monoply-ing without any care or hindrance? Yeah.
US, you fucked that up royal. As usual.
You remember how all the US politicians are funded by the same huge corporations and rich people who all benefit from the regulators doing nothing but pretending to care?
Remember how the politicians pander to Americans by blaming rich people for all of life’s problems and saying they’ll make them pay their fair share, but those politicians have multiple houses and blatantly conduct insider trading every day, but Americans still vote for them time after time?
I’d like to say you could just not use their products, but that means you have to replace windows with some other os, not buy a major manufacturer cell phone, or do much else 🤷
This right here. It is so far gone, and deeply entrenched into how society works at fundamental levels, that it is impossible to avoid any mega corporations and their influence on how we live (not just tech companies too).
I know that pointing fingers does nothing to help, but this really is Reagan’s fault with his so-called trickle down economics.
I hear what you’re saying. I counter with low effort LLM reply. I don’t live by what LLMs say, but they generate some good starting points to go and do much more narrow research.
I don’t think it’s entirely Reagan’s fault, I think the idea existed before him. He just sold the idea to the American public. So I guess I could fault him for either believing in it, or just saying he did to support the desires of the wealthy.
this really is Reagan’s fault with his so-called trickle down economics
CLAUDE 3:
“Did any American politicians, economists, or general capitalism principles regarding ‘trickle down economics’ exists before president Reagan? What examples of trickle down economics existed before him? Did he invent the idea, or just the phrase?”
The concept of “trickle-down economics” predates President Ronald Reagan and his administration’s economic policies. However, the specific phrase “trickle-down economics” became more widely used during Reagan’s presidency to describe his economic policies, which were based on the idea that reducing taxes on businesses and the wealthy would stimulate economic growth, creating more jobs and wealth that would eventually “trickle down” to the broader population.
Examples of trickle-down economic principles before Reagan include:
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The “Horse and Sparrow” theory, attributed to the French economist Jean-Baptiste Say in the early 19th century, which suggested that if the rich were allowed to get richer, their increased consumption would benefit the working class.
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In the 1920s, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, advocated for lower taxes on the wealthy and businesses, arguing that it would spur economic growth.
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The “Laissez-Faire” economic policies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which favored minimal government intervention and regulation, with the belief that unfettered capitalism would benefit society as a whole.
While Reagan did not invent the underlying economic theories, his administration’s policies and rhetoric, particularly the use of the phrase “trickle-down economics,” brought the concept to the forefront of public discourse and became closely associated with his presidency.
It’s important to note that the effectiveness and fairness of trickle-down economics have been heavily debated among economists and policymakers, with critics arguing that it primarily benefits the wealthy and does not necessarily lead to broad-based economic growth or income redistribution.
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Remember how the politicians pander to Americans by blaming rich people for all of life’s problems and saying they’ll make them pay their fair share
That’s a minority of US politicians and you know it. Not to mention it’s a minority of a minority of those politicians that get elected.
We got exactly what we voted for and that’s the truly maddening thing.
Part of that is definitely manipulation of representation (i.e. gerrymandering) but not all of it.
The comment was meant to be syndical and sarcastic.
Of course it’s not representative of the entirety.
But it does express my frustration with political hypocrisy and insider trading. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find me any politicians that haven’t engaged in that at some point, to some degree. One of the famous ones that comes to mind is Nancy pelosi, but she is not alone, and this is not particular to one party or another, they both definitely engage in it, it’s been well documented and is irrefutable.
If you look past one party or another, you’d see that it’s a broken system. The fact that it’s legal for our elected representatives to conduct in activities that would otherwise be illegal for the general population is outrageous, and the fact that we all know they do it and they are the only ones that can control it in police themselves is also outrageous. It’s the only self-serving career that I can think of that is completely unchecked, has unlimited benefits for only 4 years of service, and the only ones that can control it or police it is themselves.
but that means you have to replace windows with some other os
Any problems with installing Linux? Try openSUSE if you don’t like Fedora, Ubuntu and Debian, which are the most often recommended ones. It’s the distribution most polished for that abstract “average user” that I’ve seen. And it’s one of the traditional mainstream ones and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. (Btw all those Arch-based schoolboy distributions are trash and I don’t use them, I also don’t use Arch btw. I use Void.)
not buy a major manufacturer cell phone,|
BQ is nice. It is a major manufacturer though.
These are good suggestions for tech people IMO. I was thinking more general population that just wants to buy a product and use it as is. My mom isn’t going to get a laptop and then install linux. I’d have to. 😇
I’ve never heard of BQ before, so that was an interesting mention. I didn’t look hard enough to find out if it was available in the US.
I think the overall sentiment I’m conveying is that as a consumer, I’d like to just stop doing business with entities I deem bad faith (which is easy to say until you need a new TV and the ‘good’ company TV is twice as expensive). There’s not a lot of choices for average people in this category (big tech). You’ll be exposed to them almost out of necessity. I suppose appropriate regulation for those giant companies, and the US wont, but at least the EU will.
I also wonder if MS/Google/Apple were EU based corps, if they would take the same actions? I can’t say how much of an average EU country’s economy a company like Microsoft would be, but just the thought of how much that would be makes me think they’d get preferential treatment in which ever country that would be. I’d have to look at brands like BMW and see how they did doing that MPG scandal, things like that.
What the corrupt US departments couldn’t - and refused to - do.
I heard an interesting podcast interview with someone from one of those departments.
It sounds like they just genuinely don’t have enough funding, as in enough staff, to do their job properly.
Nothing corrupt within the departments - they’re doing the best they can with what they’ve been given . Congress needs to raise taxes and fund the departments better and then there will be proper regulation in the USA.
If course, congress can’t do hardly anything at all so that’s never going to happen. At least not at a federal level.
At a state level though? Maybe that could work.
Well, in some sense this is architecturally correct. That corps from one country may lobby its politicians, but the network effect would be broken by other important countries’ politicians not going along with that.
Looking like that - there’s nothing US institutions could do in the context of human nature, and for EU we can say “about goddamn time”.
Just a weird thought.
Lol sure. First of all “lobby” is a very transparent euphemism for “bribe”. In second place the lack of proper rules in the US is creating behemoths that are very difficult to deal wIth. These companies are richer than nations and will be impossible to contain.
Home country politicians are easier to bribe. This creates sort of relativity of the same kind that prevents too large wars from happening.
Remember when Nokia was king? Yup, lack of regulations then. I’m not saying it’s not a coincidence, but it certainly could be. I am glad to see Nokia’s resurgence in the infrastructure area in tech though.
Did Nokia even have official digital markpetplace for their phones? I only remember silly 3rd party stores selling ringtones and backgrounds through text messages. Maybe when smartphones became a thing and when iOS and Android phones were already dominating the industry. If I recall correctly some Nokia phones even supported sideloading with data cable.
Their phones where also generally fairly durable with replacable batteries and chargers (3rd party options being available for both) and from what I gather fairly easy to open and repair.
yeah, interoperability should work to encourage development
I’m sorry to break it to you, but look at how much E-Mail, the biggest open Standard has developed.
Without a central Authority behind it, Developement doesn’t work.
Heck, even with a central authority it’s difficult. Just look how many Businesses still use Java 8.
Speaking of email, spam becomes an inevitable problem. Anyone in theory can spin up a federated bot instance to spam the hell out of everyone.
XMPP actually started becoming better fast after those authorities (like Google) dropped it.
It sounds paradoxical, but that’s exactly what i meant.
There were multiple authorities with different ideas which blocked developement. As soon as there was only one Authority left, developement sped up rapidly.
Sorry, but no, that’s not how it happened.
There were multiple authorities with different ideas which blocked developement.
Google didn’t block anything, just rolled out XEPs which its client supported and others sometimes did, sometimes didn’t, and didn’t really want to, because, first, around 2007 the expected requirements to an IM were different, so nobody felt pressed, second, they didn’t discuss it with anyone.
So, for example, Jingle (VoIP) support was more like a toy - a few clients had it, but disabled by default and nobody cared to test it much.
As soon as there was only one Authority left, developement sped up rapidly.
Eh, and which would that be? What I see is exactly how useful XEPs were introduced by different people, and sometimes even replaced old XEPs for the same purpose, organically, with no authority involved.
By market forces, one could say.
Yeah, of course google didn’t physically block anything, But you had multiple visions diverging and that harmed progress.
, and which would that be?
The enthusiasts faction running the servers.
And there were “multiple visions” long after than and now too.
What do you need in email that isn’t already there?
Title should be adjusted to “Tech giants no longer treated like coddled babies by EU”
Thank you EU.
*cries in British
*cries in American
This headline implies that EUs moves are agressive and brutal while they arent. Breaking up monopolies is an ordinary step of keeping the market competitive.
It should be ordinary. But it isn’t. Which means the market stagnants as competition basically stops. Like how Microsoft basically closed IE development when IE “won” the browser market by achieving monopoly.
There is the laissez-faire approach of abolishing patents and copyright so that these monopolies at least couldn’t squash competitors on that basis, and then they’d slowly die without breaking them up by force.
But that’s not plausible now.
It would be amazing if even a small portion of EU fines for big tech companies went to supporting open source alternatives.
In the Linux world, we are seeing right now how much things like Valve putting a bit of money into Linux, Germany’s Sovereign Tech Fund giving €1m to the Gnome foundation, etc, is improving things massively. Funding helps. Developers/designers/etc like being paid.
Imagine if even 1% of these big tech fines went into a pot that an independent body chooses open projects to invest in. It’d be huge.
Open source has a sustainability problem in terms of funding, developers, and burnout. To me it seems we have a relatively easy and politically palatable solution.
The EU spends plenty of grant money on FLOSS. It’s part of the general Horizon grants, there’s a bug bounty programme (as replacement for the hackatons which didn’t work as well as imagined), and last but not least the EU publishes lots of software as FLOSS.
You don’t want to make that stuff contingent on big tech misbehaving. The fines go into the general EU budget but the EU doesn’t get to keep it, membership fees are lowered in the next year by the same amount thus the windfall goes to member state’s budgets.
Germany’s Sovereign Tech Fund giving €1m to the Gnome foundation
Why, in Germany of all countries they should have supported KDE. Granted, it’s already doing fine, but then Gnome’s problem is not with lack of money.
Probably because Gnome is used in more businesses and Gnome is pretty good at implementing accessibility features, which was one of the main conditions of the grant.
And it’s not a big deal, KDE is already getting a lot of support, and the work Gnome is doing is going to be an open, cross-desktop framework. It benefits KDE too.
and Gnome is pretty good at implementing accessibility features, which was one of the main conditions of the grant.
At the same time yes and … they are very unorthodox in their understanding of what makes things more accessible.
Not making their DE yet another Windows clone does not mean it’s inaccessible.
I get it, you clearly have a personal issue with Gnome. Just don’t use it then. There’s no need to be upset about an amazing open source project getting support and improving the accessibility stack for the entire Linux desktop.
I use FVWM with 2-pixel solid borders and no window titlebars or buttons or panels, except for one FvwmButtons instance with digital clock, all keyboard-controlled. EDIT: … so I obviously don’t prefer Windows
The issues with Gnome are that it’s resource-heavy and inconsistent in UX, and setting it up is PITA.
Cinnamon as its fork is much better.
I use FVWM with 2-pixel solid borders and no window titlebars or buttons or panels, except for one FvwmButtons instance with digital clock, all keyboard-controlled. EDIT: … so I obviously don’t prefer Windows
k
The issues with Gnome are that it’s resource-heavy
No it isn’t. Stop making shit up.
inconsistent in UX
Gnome is easily the most consistent DE out there. By far. Honestly, by far and away the most consistent. Even MacOS is less consistent, and that’s saying something.
and setting it up is PITA.
? Install it and it’s done. I change a couple of keyboard shortcuts too but that’s unnecessary.
Cinnamon as its fork is much better.
So a Windows UX clone. Not everything has to be yet another Windows clone. What happened to you not preferring Windows UX lol
No it isn’t. Stop making shit up.
I’ve even seen benchmarks. In my own experience it’s slow where default KDE5 is fast. I didn’t dig why, because I’m not going to use a full-fledged DE over my cozy FVWM setup anyway.
Also accusing better people than you of lying is impolite.
Gnome is easily the most consistent DE out there. By far. Honestly, by far and away the most consistent. Even MacOS is less consistent, and that’s saying something.
I already guessed that’s your opinion, but OK. “Even”? It’s the same horror as MacOS.
So a Windows UX clone. Not everything has to be yet another Windows clone. What happened to you not preferring Windows UX lol
It can look like Gnome 3 UX clone too, and that’s how it looked when I used it. Just more consistent and usable.
Anyway, there’s such a thing as ergonomics. It’s not really subjective, it can be measured in clicks and keystrokes, with accounting for mistakes and searching for elements of UI. Gnome devs are clearly ignorant of it.
MacOS and Gnome are sometimes worse than even modern Windows in that regard.
BTW, about Windows - w2k and xp were very good in terms of ergonomics.
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I apologize, but I initially read “imagine if just 1% of these fines went into pot” and I was 100% on board for a brief time
Yeah, but until then we can support these projects. Even a one-time 10€ donation can go a huge distance, or monthly 1€ even. These add up.
P.S. To any open source devs, please allow us to donate yearly recurring 10-15€! There are so many projects to support, but i have to live from something as well.
Won’t someone think of the poor shareholders /s
You are right, we should tax capital gains drastically so to disincentivise speculation, and force investor to rely on dividends. This would put a stop on the crazy run for growth we are experiencing as companies try to make their market valuation go up in this unsustainable eternal race to the top.
I wonder why it isn’t titled from consumer’s perspective.
Schadenfreude gets clicks.
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This is great news but how long are we talking for this to go live? Shouldn’t they already be DMA compliant?
Today. The orders and regulations were laid out years ago. This is the deadline. Most mandated changes are already in place or have been worked to go online today. This is the reason the latest iOS update dropped one or two days ago, for example. It introduces some of the mandatory changes for the EU market.
The headline is yummy
