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EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

309 points by raimue 4y ago

tebbers 4y ago
Pretty funny to think that Apple has been going on about their platform without realising that they run on the EU's legislative and societal platform. Which also comes with rules.
- lowbloodsugar 4y ago
  Pretty funny that you think it's ok for EU government monopoly to enforce rules but not ok for Apple to do so, despite not being a monopoly. Which is it? Are rules ok or not ok?
  - pzduniak 4y ago
    Apple didn't win any elections, so they can fuck off.
    - lowbloodsugar 4y ago
      People voted with their cash: "Shall I spend my money on an iPhone or an Android?" And that is the whole point. Apple represents freedom of choice. You people want winner-takes-all, might makes right. It's the tyranny of the majority. If you want a phone you can install anything on, get an Android. Don't take away my right to freely choose a phone that behaves differently.
chmod775 4y ago
> mandates to allow users to install apps from third-party platforms Some people at Apple are getting a headache right now. Other companies that have been dabbling with the idea to lock down their OS probably too. If this happens my next phone might even be an iPhone.
- arlcode 4y ago
  I had the same thought. Apple makes great hardware and the main thing that was holding me back from getting one was their heavy handed approach on what applications I am allowed to install on my device and from what source. If this works I would probably go for it.
  - ericmay 4y ago
    I’m the opposite. I buy an iPhone specifically because I want a locked-down device. World is about to get a little worse on this front.
    - m101010 4y ago
      I fail to understand how this is affecting you. Do you think that the existence of other App-Stores is reducing the quality of the apps in the Apple-Store?
      - ericmay 4y ago
        Yes it will once it happens on iOS. Large companies like Facebook (not picking on Meta, just an easy example) really don’t want to follow Apple’s privacy guidelines, don’t want to ask users for permission to track their location, and don’t want to tell users what info they gather and how it’s used. Once Apple has to allow third-party app stores, many major software companies will either create their own App Store (great now I have to download 15 different stores) or move to a third-party store where these rules are non-existent. So what will happen is that there will be a major exodus of software from the Apple App Store and on to third-party stores, which for me means a rollback of all of the momentum and progress Apple has made by collectively bargaining on behalf of users against developers. In addition, this will fracture things that are easy and convenient, like Apple Pay, or Sign-in With Apple being a privacy-focused mandatory alternative to other SSO options. It’ll also long-term enable more dark patterns. Oh you signed up for this $14.99/month app? Well gotta call if you want to unsubscribe. Hell maybe even have to send a letter! For some completely asinine reason people think that “allow third party stores” means “I get all the same stuff now but stuff will be cheaper and ‘more innovative’ because developers won’t have to pay the ‘Apple Tax’” but the reality is you’ll just get the same stuff, at the same prices, but it’ll be less convenient and you’ll lose any benefits that we previously had when Apple was able to collectively bargain for users. Companies will not lower prices. > “This hasn’t happened on Android” Yes. Because when companies start enacting these rules, users will flee to iOS. You need to be able to launch your store and dark patterns on both platforms simultaneously. Otherwise users have options. > “I disagree, this won’t happen”. Ok sure. What assurances do I have? What are you doing to make me feel better that my experience won’t get worse? Until then I’m firmly against third-party stores. > “Apple enables oppression and a single point of failure for regulation - China for example can ‘control’ what’s on the store” Any third-party App Store that’s not a complete scam will be forced to comply with any exact rules that Apple has to. There’s no difference.
pjerem 4y ago
Did I interpret correctly that I’ll soon be able to install a multi-protocol IM app on my iPhone without going through the App Store ? I can barely believe it. It looks monumental in terms of competition potential.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  The primary feature will be end to end decryption.
  - slaymaker1907 4y ago
    Yep, because we have absolutely no way to do e2e encryption without closed protocols like GPG.
    - Spivak 4y ago
      Okay sure but how do you reckon Signal to Messenger is gonna work? Not gonna be E2E that’s for sure. It’s gonna be “this chat will be unencrypted because one or more parties doesn’t support E2E.”
- toyg 4y ago
  The "soon" has to be interpreted in a political context, so we're likely talking a few years. FAANG will put their lobbyists on overdrive to get extensions to whichever cut-off date is approved.
candace20 4y ago
emilfihlman 4y ago
This is awful. EU has no idea how to properly regulate tech.
hrnnnnnn 4y ago
> Parliament also succeeded in convincing the Council of interoperability requirements for messaging services, meaning outfits such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms. For group chats, this requirement will be rolled out over a period of four years. This would be great. I remember using pidgin back in the day and it was really convenient to have every messaging app in one interface.
- 2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
  Yeah, saw this and immediately thought of Pidgin. This is also great for smaller platforms -- If I could use something like Pidgin again then I'd probably log into ICQ again for the first time in... a very long time.
- kuboble 4y ago
  I wish so much for that to happen. I still remember jabber being popular in Poland 15 years ago. One of the reasons I switched to gtalk at the time was the fact that it allowed me to keep my jabber contacts. Little did I know they would kill it in a couple of years.
- 8fingerlouie 4y ago
  > meaning outfits such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms The way i read it, they're calling for open standards, which can be a good thing. Sadly, open standards also slow down the development of new features, as everybody needs to be "on board" for new features to roll out. Take email (SMTP, IMAP, etc) as an example, where no major progress has been made in 25+ years, despite the platform being hopelessly insecure. There has been some unsuccesful attempts at security, like PGP and Protonmail/Tutanota, but as they're addons they haven't seen widespread adoption. Feel free to replace email for TCPv4/v6. The only successful open standard i can think of would be HTTP. Open standards, once they mature, usually mean "lowest common denominator".
  - kuboble 4y ago
    Yes. That lowest common denominator will be probably being able to send text messages. Maybe a little more. It's a big thing. And it's a great thing. Already in email you have some cool features that only work Gmail to Gmail but you can still send basic emails to people outside of Gmail. Businesses will not need business accounts on 6 different platforms just so thay can have a simple chat with all their customers.
eterevsky 4y ago
> EU officials have agreed on landmark rules I'm not sure what this means in terms of the timeline. Will it be voted for in European Parliament and if yes, when? To what extent this may be changed in the final edition? And if it's adopted as a law, how much of a grace period will the companies have?
- arlcode 4y ago
  The trilog between the parliament and the member states decided upon a text. Next each chamber will vote on it but this is usually just a formality since they gave the negotiators a mandate beforehand. If it passes, the text will become a EU directive which needs to be incorporated into national law by the member states. After that it becomes enforceable.
  - the_duke 4y ago
    Edit: whoops
    - arlcode 4y ago
      I'm pretty sure it's the other way around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_%28European_Union%29?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_%28European_Union%29... Regulations can built upon the foundations laid down by directives and they apply directly.
  - M2Ys4U 4y ago
    >If it passes, the text will become a EU directive which needs to be incorporated into national law by the member states. The DMA is a Regulation, not a Directive. It doesn't need to be transposed in to national law in member states. Regulations become law across the whole EU (and usually the EEA as well) as soon as they are published in the Official Journal.
    - arlcode 4y ago
      Aaah damn it you are right. For some reason I thought it was a directive... Too late to edit my comment.
FreeHugs 4y ago
One reason the EU missed out on the internet is our unlimited willingness to be regulated. And we keep piling more and more bureaucracy on top of it. This only cements the power of US big tech like Google and Facebook. And it sets the stage for the next big applications of the web all being build outside the EU as well. Here in Germany, everyone is afraid to start a web startup. And if they do, they spend endless amounts of energy on agonizing over the GDPR and how to build useful international services without using international tools. We sanctioned ourselves by making the use of foreign SAAS illegal. If you are in the EU, try out surfing the web via a non EU IP once. It is an eye-opening experience. No cookie banners! Only Europeans have to deal with those. But it gets worse: Look at European websites from a US IP. You do get cookie banners. European companies deal with degraded user experience, slower build time and worse monetization. On a worldwide basis. While the rest of the world only applies these downsides to the European part of their business.
- sofixa 4y ago
  > This only cements the power of US big tech like Google and Facebook Au contraire. This regulation will force the big tech companies to open up their platforms, thus enabling innovation and competition.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > One reason the EU missed out on the internet is our unlimited willingness to be regulated. Bollocks. The key difference between here and the US is the simple fact that we don't have enormous amounts of "dumb money" from pension and hedge funds screaming to be invested into anything that remotely smells like it could be worth money one time - remember Yo! which got 1M funding?! - and then founders making big money at IPO time, which many of them then choose to invest into new startups. That means that you have to either rely on philantropic investors, family or borrow money from banks at ridiculous interest rates (and often requiring deposit of a car/house or other expensive assets to back the loan). Navigating GDPR and the laws here is easy - one might say, life is even easier here than in the US for startups because you don't have to fear getting kicked in the nuts over bogus patent and other IP claims or absurd multi-million dollars civil damages lawsuits.
ivancho 4y ago
> The new rules for so-called gatekeeper platforms, derived from years of antitrust enforcement in the digital economy, include restrictions on combining personal data from different sources, mandates to allow users to install apps from third-party platforms, prohibitions on bundling services, and a prohibition on self-preferencing practices. The first one sounds very damaging to adtech, but might not be enforced.
37rucxuu 4y ago
emsy 4y ago
It will be fun to see how tech companies will react when they get to taste their own “my platform my rules” medicine.
- giorgioz 4y ago
  ah wow this is a brilliant sentence! I never saw governments as platforms but they DO ARE! In fact I was always critizing Apple App Store 30% by saying: "What is the App Store a government that can charge me a 30% tax?" and in fact my fear is the reconstruction of a DIGITAL FEUDAL SYSTEM. Where there is a King that charge a tax and then there is smaller and smaller nesting of feudal lords that charge other taxes. KING US Government charging 20-45% income tax DUKE Apple charging 30% App Store tax DUKE Google charging 30% Google Play Store tax DUKE Microsoft charging X% Microsoft Store tax MARQUEES Spotify/Netflix/Airbnb charging a fee for their platform I think we need to be careful to not smother the fire of innovation which brings social mobility across classes/income groups. If we allow Apple/Google/Amazon/Facebook to suffocate the innovation coming from the smaller companies we might find ourselves into a new medieval/dark age period with a lot of zero sum games and hierarchy and little innovation.
  - blue1 4y ago
    *Marquis
    - giorgioz 4y ago
      Both Marquess and Marquis are correct so I guess I merged them into Marquees XD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess In Italian, which is my native language, it would be MARCHESE. Fun fact, there is a whole Italian region called Marche: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marche
      - blue1 4y ago
        Further fun fact, still in Italy, the territory around the city of Treviso is called La Marca since medieval times (and still today): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_of_Treviso https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_of_Treviso <MARQUEE>, instead, is an ancient HTML abomination.
can16358p 4y ago
While I think big tech needs to be controlled, I think this is the wrong approach. This will slow down development by being forced to implement interop where they shouldn't be forced to IMO, and will confuse less savvy users (e.g. "Why can't I send this $platform_native_content to Bob but can send perfectly to Alice in the same app?"). Controlling entities' presence within the public (the Internet) is one thing, forcing to do things within their own platform/domain is another. Sadly, EU picked the latter.
- arlcode 4y ago
  Well then they better get their shit together and implement the features on both ends. They have lots of devs and project management experience. If they don't want to do interop it's just fair that customers are complaining. Nothing a typical chat group on WhatsApp uses is particularly innovative or unique. Text, Voice, Images, Video, map links and attachments probably cover roughly 99% of the use case and everyone supports that. They are free to compete on additional features.
  - can16358p 4y ago
    They can, but why they should be forced? I mean its their own platform, they shouldn't be used to offer interop. They _could_, if they wanted to, but it's their platform after all, and forcing a private company to open their own pripriatery platform to 3rd parties is plain wrong and against the rights of the company. It's theirs after all. The right thing here would be making a standard, modern way of communication that supersedes SMS/MMS with a push for global adoption that has all the necessary features of sending videos/images/links/locations etc. with E2EE that is part of GSM technology suite which is either super cheap or free, to offer a sensible alternative to free but closed down services offered by giant companies. That would be much more fair play for a free market.
    - arlcode 4y ago
      I (and apparently the EU law makers) think they should be. When elected officials decide that a Plattform/network is now part of the public space the owners loose out. It happened to railways, telephone grids and all in all was an improvement.
Havoc 4y ago
Seems like a good thing. Looking at the google lawyer privilege drama it sure seems like big tech needs a firmer hand
naoqj 4y ago
It's so easy to destroy a sector when you have nothing to lose.
- giorgioz 4y ago
  Can you clarify in this instance what is - the sector - who has nothing to lose - and what could be lost I think I understand who/what you imply but I don't want to misunderstand you.
  - naoqj 4y ago
    * Tech sector * The EU * Tech sector
    - giorgioz 4y ago
      Thanks for clarifying. >Included in the rules' scope will be platforms with a market capitalization of €75 billion or turnover in the European Economic Area equal to or above €7.5 billion So the rules are meant to target only the TOP part of the Tech Sector. Not the Whole Tech Sector. There could be backfires on everyone though. I do feel though that the Apple/Facebook/Microsoft/Google/Amazon are innovating less and less and are going into cash squeeze mode. There has been a lot of talk on Hacker News on how Google search quality is decreasing. All the privacy laws containing Facebook push them to bet on something new Meta/Oculus. So I think here the effort is to allow smaller tech to thrive and grow.
      - postingawayonhn 4y ago
        > There has been a lot of talk on Hacker News on how Google search quality is decreasing. I have a lot more faith in a viable competitor coming out of California than I do in EU regulations improving search results.
        giorgioz 4y ago
        Me too...not sure where you are going with this...
igorkraw 4y ago
I pray that this, especially the interoperability requirements comes through not only with teeth, but with claws and a ravenous hunger. I believe one of the key things that allow innovation to foster is beating down the rentseekers,i.e. enabling adversarial interoperability https://www.eff.org/fr/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability https://www.eff.org/fr/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interop... and making it easy for individuals to tinker and innovate without needing capital or lawyers to protect themselves. I am severely envious of the californian "right to compete" for these reasons https://www.callahan-law.com/are-non-competes-enforceable-in-california/ https://www.callahan-law.com/are-non-competes-enforceable-in... and a "right to interoperate" will go a long way towards breaking monopology-enabling network effects.
- sofixa 4y ago
  There are serious fines attached ( up to 10% of global turnover, 20% for repeat offenders) so it will have plenty of teeth.
  - tomp 4y ago
    “up to” isn’t serious “at least” would be serious But that would require for politicians to actually want to do something to benefit the people, not just themselves and their bribers/lobbyists.
  - lekevicius 4y ago
    GDPR was up to 4%. As far as I know, this was never applied to anyone. I would expect the same here. Fines will likely be somewhat reasonable.
    - xavxav 4y ago
      Well, GDPR fines are ramping up over time, regulators seem to have been easing companies into it rather than starting off with the 10B fines from day 1. I still hope to see some serious fines on FB / Google in the coming years.
    - foepys 4y ago
giorgioz 4y ago
Oh founders please do not sell your shares to Apple/Google/Microsoft/Facebook/Amazon! We are in danger of creating Big Monsters that will devour everything until there won't be founders anymore...only employees. Once there will be only employees in truth there will be only servants. We need a lot of small/medium tech companies to maintain freedom and competition instead of 2-5 mega corps.
- tommiegannert 4y ago
  The future will be/is that entrepreneurs create new cool stuff, and runs it until the valuation is high enough they feel it's pay day. They sell to big corp, who are large code maintenance (and patent accumulation) shops, scales them to bigger users and runs until deprecation. The entrepreneurs, though, continue on with the next idea.
belter 4y ago
Digital Markets Act- [Status]: "Awaiting Parliament's position in 1st reading" https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2020/0374(COD)&l=en https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheproc... "The Digital Markets Act: ensuring fair and open digital markets" https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en#:~:text=The%20Digital%20Markets%20Act%20(DMA,regards%20large%2C%20systemic%20online%20platforms https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/euro... From here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30777016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30777016 "...The legislation is now expected to target companies that have a market capitalisation of at least €75bn and run one core online “platform” service such as a social network or web browser, according to two people directly involved in the deal..." "...To qualify as a “gatekeeper” — the powerful internet groups that are the focus of the new law — a company will also have to have at least 45,000 active users, the same people said..." "...Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft all meet this standard, but it is likely to also include far more groups than previously thought such as accommodations site Booking.com and ecommerce group Alibaba..." ---------------------------------------- Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to: - Allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations - Allow their business users to access the data that they - generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform - Provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper - Allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform Example of the “don’ts” - Gatekeeper platforms may no longer: - Don't treat services and products offered by the gatekeeper itself more favourably in ranking than similar services or products offered by third parties on the gatekeeper's platform - Don't prevent consumers from linking up to businesses outside their platforms - Don't prevent users from un-installing any pre-installed software or app if they wish so ----------------------------------------
nonrandomstring 4y ago
This has to extend to business as well as consumer use. Give people the power to choose technology in all contexts. That's all we need. You use Zoom, Teams, Facebook or whatever you like, I'll use my Jitsi or home grown WebRTC solution. Fairness can be that simple. But interoperability legislation can only go so far to fixing things because we also need to tackle: - Regulator and institutional capture by vendor lobbying (bribes) - "Preferred solution" impositions masquerading as fake security "policy" - Lack of skills in organisations. - Poor education about the risks of technological mono-cultures - Technical lock-in measures, DRM, TPM enclaves BigTech domination has been going on for 10-15 years now, and it has become more than just than just a set of facts around market shares and network effects. It's gotten soaked into our culture and the marrow of our institutions and will take a good deal of pain to chase out.
- kmlx 4y ago
  > You use Zoom, Teams, Facebook or whatever you like, I'll use my Jitsi or home grown WebRTC solution. Fairness can be that simple. that's naive. the problem is that we moved away as an industry from that model for 2 specific reasons: - widely used standards take decades to change just slightly, or never (see SMS, email) - interoperability means either lowest common denominator or a huge cost to keep things interoperable both are horrible for innovation, both are a killer for funding, both pull money away from other things. all for giving "jitsi" or your "home grown webrtc solution" a reason to exist. meanwhile apps like zoom simply took everyone by storm during covid even thou lots and lots of others (including webrtc and jitsi) existed for a long time.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    > that's naive. Please attack my arguments, don't make aspersions as to my disposition. > the problem is that we moved away as an industry Please don't try to define the narrative from a parochial viewpoint. No. we didn't. Some of us did. And those few have arguably done a great deal of damage to "the industry". > widely used standards take decades to change just slightly, or never (see SMS, email) It's arguable that they _should_ take a long time to adapt, because stability is also a value. That doesn't preclude the emergence of new and better standards which have a fair chance of adoption in the market for protocols. Interoperability would be a key factor in their success of course. > interoperability means either lowest common denominator I see no justification for this statement. There are many factors that portend lowest-common outcomes, like efficiency, reckless engineering in pursuit of fast time to market... but interoperability isn't one of them. > or a huge cost to keep things interoperable This is what you're really shooting at isn't it? Less profit for people who want to "move fast and break things" and get out when they're done extracting. I prefer to build lasting things and treat technology as a part of long-term culture. It's just a personality type thing. > horrible for innovation Advancing dichotomy between standards and innovation is simply disingenuous. The entire existence of the internet is a counterexample. > killer for funding, both pull money away from other things. Money. > all for giving "jit.si" or your "home grown WebRTC solution" a reason to exist. No. Everything else you've said is about differences of value and philosophy. Fair enough. But on this point you are missing some fundamental understanding of technology. It is not "all for" my choice. Choice is a means not an ends. Choice is what underpins the drive for innovation, but ultimately there is telos (purpose) in technology beyond making profit. Those ends include resilience, opportunity, reliability, hybrid vigor of hetrogenous systems to name a few. Naivety is having a partial or immature understanding of a bigger picture, though I would not accuse you of that of course. respects
sofixa 4y ago
Honestly that's some great news and it was about time for such a regulation. It will curtail monopolies/oligopolies and enable a lot of new innovation. Win-win, with the only "losers" ( as in lower profit margins, not actually losing anything) being the huge tech companies like Google, Meta and Apple.
niemandhier 4y ago
The interoperability features are needed. We all should have a look at Russia and see what can happen if your infrastructure depends to strongly on locked systems. Sure this time we all support the sanction, next time it might be us.
- tgv 4y ago
  Interop can be useful, but who gets to collect all the data when you hoopkup e.g. WhatsApp and Telegram? Both, I'd imagine. How would you remove data/opt out of a platform you never accessed before? There's a lot of leeway there.
ddaalluu2 4y ago
I imagine being told which tech I have to use when developing my services. When they pay my bills they just might have a saying but only just. What even is the reasoning for this?
wil421 4y ago
So now we will have to accept 2 pop ups on every website?
dzink 4y ago
If only they’d apply those rule to grocery store chains as well. The model for the big ones is to charge stocking fees for any shelf space (250k per item at times) and then replace the best sellers with proprietary generic brands. So soda giants who don’t want competition can just buy out the shelf space to keep smaller players out and then lower the quality of ingredients of their mass stocked products and boost the marketing to keep the shelf space monopoly. The best new products try out and then fizzle out in that environment in exchange if more generic tastes or artificially tasting junk. This model needs to be stopped in more than just online marketplaces. It is the original sin of chain retail.
hda111 4y ago
I‘m not sure if this is a good thing. Despite email being an open standard we have now the situation that most emails are processed by either Google or Microsoft. When the same happens to Matrix we will have a situation where it’s so hard to make your own home server that nobody wants to do it anymore.
- oxplot 4y ago
  > processed by either Google or Microsoft Let's first clear up why this is: spam control. Google along with the rest of the industry has essentially killed email spam through the many additions to classical email standards. From reputation based delivery, to spam databases, crypto signatures and more. This isn't just to reduce an eye sore in your inbox. Spam does real damage, financial and otherwise. Despite the complexity needed to run a reliable email system, it's still possible to do and many do. It also allows for innovation without a lot of capital (e.g. licensing fees paid to walled garden owners). Without open interoperability, it's either impossible (e.g. general iMessage), limiting (e.g. iMessage, WhatsApp for business) or expensive to do.
  - pflanze 4y ago
    > Let's first clear up why this is: spam control. I'm running my own mail server. The problem with regards to spam is not that it's hard for me not to be inundated by spam: I'm just running spamassassin and qpsmtpd with mostly standard configuration and my account on my own server is rather better at catching spam and not ham than my Gmail account. The problem I've always been fighting with (it's better lately) is that Google (and to a lesser degree Yahoo and Microsoft) tends to put my mails into the recipients' spam folders. It's understandable that a minimal level of centralisation is necessary with email so as to build up server reputation. I think that level is already satisfied with just a few dozen or maybe hundreds of emails sent per day. If there are many installations of that size, companies like Google are forced to accept mails from them, and there's no need for further centralisation. > Google along with the rest of the industry has essentially killed email spam through the many additions to classical email standards. From reputation based delivery, to spam databases, crypto signatures and more. I don't see Google having had an exceptional role in "killing" email spam that way. Spam databases (both server reputation as well as content fingerprints) existed before Gmail started, DomainKeys was designed by Yahoo[1], the DKIM (the current way to add cryptographic signatures) RFC[2] does not list anyone from Google as its authors, bayesian learning was published by PG[3] in 2002. Gmail launched 2004[4]. Giving reputation much weight was something easy for them to do and it does tend to come at the cost of small legit servers. They had a solid implementation early on (both the spam filter and, for the time, a top notch HTML UI), had of course a good name, and were free, so they were a default choice for anyone who was with an email provider that didn't do well (like many (most?) ISPs). There are reasons for people to flock to a strong, large company, that's not different here, but I contest that spam necessitated this. That said, any new protocol would do well to take the problem of handling spam seriously and learn from and improve upon the past. TL,DR: my argument is that spam is (somewhat) easier to handle in a centralised way, just like most problems are, but handling spam doesn't inherently require centralisation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys [2] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6376.txt https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6376.txt [3] http://paulgraham.com/spam.html http://paulgraham.com/spam.html [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail
cryptica 4y ago
IMO, based on their current business models, big US tech companies would be better off financially by pulling out of the EU entirely than by allowing interoperability via public APIs. They will lose most of their users to small platforms if they provide too much interoperability - Not just in the EU but all over the world. Their monopoly over the bulk of the world's user accounts is their only real competitive advantage. That said, in terms of social good, open APIs would be great.
- toyg 4y ago
  They can (and likely will) produce a layer of bureaucracy that could keep out any non-EU player if they wish, stuff like having to register with them with EU-based company information before they give you an API key (this is just an example).
- TheCoelacanth 4y ago
  If they did pull out, that would be probably the largest business opportunity in human history, with a $16 trillion economy suddenly having no large competitors in many sectors. I'm sure entrepreneurs in the EU are salivating at the thought of that happening.
- paxys 4y ago
  If that's really the case then they'll pull out of the EU market rather than comply with this law. Let's see if that happens or not.
Luker88 4y ago
Honestly? Looks good. They only missed one: must provide human support for any and all products and supported services. Google/MS/Apple have 0 user support for account/app suspension/removal and we have seen many stories here on how final those things are, and without any recourse possible
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Pretty sure a ton of companies would cease to exist if they had to provide human support. Maybe that's a good thing, but really all it would do is strengthen incumbents who can afford the massive call center bill.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Markoff 4y ago
so, all the software companies need to do is implement also SMS feature in their messengers like Signal does for instance and they will be immediately interoperable, while keeping their own messaging service separated
acd 4y ago
Mind boggling that content recomendation by tech giant algorithms that is used by european consumers are unregulated. The algorithms maximize content view / platform usage diregarding mental health and addiction. Further there is no regulation that the content from recomendations are from reliable truthful sources.

309 points by raimue 4y ago

Pretty funny to think that Apple has been going on about their platform without realising that they run on the EU's legislative and societal platform. Which also comes with rules.

lowbloodsugar 4y ago
Pretty funny that you think it's ok for EU government monopoly to enforce rules but not ok for Apple to do so, despite not being a monopoly. Which is it? Are rules ok or not ok?
- pzduniak 4y ago
  Apple didn't win any elections, so they can fuck off.
  - lowbloodsugar 4y ago
    People voted with their cash: "Shall I spend my money on an iPhone or an Android?" And that is the whole point. Apple represents freedom of choice. You people want winner-takes-all, might makes right. It's the tyranny of the majority. If you want a phone you can install anything on, get an Android. Don't take away my right to freely choose a phone that behaves differently.

chmod775 4y ago

> mandates to allow users to install apps from third-party platforms Some people at Apple are getting a headache right now. Other companies that have been dabbling with the idea to lock down their OS probably too. If this happens my next phone might even be an iPhone.

arlcode 4y ago
I had the same thought. Apple makes great hardware and the main thing that was holding me back from getting one was their heavy handed approach on what applications I am allowed to install on my device and from what source. If this works I would probably go for it.
- ericmay 4y ago
  I’m the opposite. I buy an iPhone specifically because I want a locked-down device. World is about to get a little worse on this front.
  - m101010 4y ago
    I fail to understand how this is affecting you. Do you think that the existence of other App-Stores is reducing the quality of the apps in the Apple-Store?
    - ericmay 4y ago
      Yes it will once it happens on iOS. Large companies like Facebook (not picking on Meta, just an easy example) really don’t want to follow Apple’s privacy guidelines, don’t want to ask users for permission to track their location, and don’t want to tell users what info they gather and how it’s used. Once Apple has to allow third-party app stores, many major software companies will either create their own App Store (great now I have to download 15 different stores) or move to a third-party store where these rules are non-existent. So what will happen is that there will be a major exodus of software from the Apple App Store and on to third-party stores, which for me means a rollback of all of the momentum and progress Apple has made by collectively bargaining on behalf of users against developers. In addition, this will fracture things that are easy and convenient, like Apple Pay, or Sign-in With Apple being a privacy-focused mandatory alternative to other SSO options. It’ll also long-term enable more dark patterns. Oh you signed up for this $14.99/month app? Well gotta call if you want to unsubscribe. Hell maybe even have to send a letter! For some completely asinine reason people think that “allow third party stores” means “I get all the same stuff now but stuff will be cheaper and ‘more innovative’ because developers won’t have to pay the ‘Apple Tax’” but the reality is you’ll just get the same stuff, at the same prices, but it’ll be less convenient and you’ll lose any benefits that we previously had when Apple was able to collectively bargain for users. Companies will not lower prices. > “This hasn’t happened on Android” Yes. Because when companies start enacting these rules, users will flee to iOS. You need to be able to launch your store and dark patterns on both platforms simultaneously. Otherwise users have options. > “I disagree, this won’t happen”. Ok sure. What assurances do I have? What are you doing to make me feel better that my experience won’t get worse? Until then I’m firmly against third-party stores. > “Apple enables oppression and a single point of failure for regulation - China for example can ‘control’ what’s on the store” Any third-party App Store that’s not a complete scam will be forced to comply with any exact rules that Apple has to. There’s no difference.

pjerem 4y ago

Did I interpret correctly that I’ll soon be able to install a multi-protocol IM app on my iPhone without going through the App Store ? I can barely believe it. It looks monumental in terms of competition potential.

robertlagrant 4y ago
The primary feature will be end to end decryption.
- slaymaker1907 4y ago
  Yep, because we have absolutely no way to do e2e encryption without closed protocols like GPG.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Okay sure but how do you reckon Signal to Messenger is gonna work? Not gonna be E2E that’s for sure. It’s gonna be “this chat will be unencrypted because one or more parties doesn’t support E2E.”
toyg 4y ago
The "soon" has to be interpreted in a political context, so we're likely talking a few years. FAANG will put their lobbyists on overdrive to get extensions to whichever cut-off date is approved.

candace20 4y ago

emilfihlman 4y ago

This is awful. EU has no idea how to properly regulate tech.

hrnnnnnn 4y ago

> Parliament also succeeded in convincing the Council of interoperability requirements for messaging services, meaning outfits such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms. For group chats, this requirement will be rolled out over a period of four years. This would be great. I remember using pidgin back in the day and it was really convenient to have every messaging app in one interface.

2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
Yeah, saw this and immediately thought of Pidgin. This is also great for smaller platforms -- If I could use something like Pidgin again then I'd probably log into ICQ again for the first time in... a very long time.
kuboble 4y ago
I wish so much for that to happen. I still remember jabber being popular in Poland 15 years ago. One of the reasons I switched to gtalk at the time was the fact that it allowed me to keep my jabber contacts. Little did I know they would kill it in a couple of years.
8fingerlouie 4y ago
> meaning outfits such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms The way i read it, they're calling for open standards, which can be a good thing. Sadly, open standards also slow down the development of new features, as everybody needs to be "on board" for new features to roll out. Take email (SMTP, IMAP, etc) as an example, where no major progress has been made in 25+ years, despite the platform being hopelessly insecure. There has been some unsuccesful attempts at security, like PGP and Protonmail/Tutanota, but as they're addons they haven't seen widespread adoption. Feel free to replace email for TCPv4/v6. The only successful open standard i can think of would be HTTP. Open standards, once they mature, usually mean "lowest common denominator".
- kuboble 4y ago
  Yes. That lowest common denominator will be probably being able to send text messages. Maybe a little more. It's a big thing. And it's a great thing. Already in email you have some cool features that only work Gmail to Gmail but you can still send basic emails to people outside of Gmail. Businesses will not need business accounts on 6 different platforms just so thay can have a simple chat with all their customers.

eterevsky 4y ago

> EU officials have agreed on landmark rules I'm not sure what this means in terms of the timeline. Will it be voted for in European Parliament and if yes, when? To what extent this may be changed in the final edition? And if it's adopted as a law, how much of a grace period will the companies have?

arlcode 4y ago
The trilog between the parliament and the member states decided upon a text. Next each chamber will vote on it but this is usually just a formality since they gave the negotiators a mandate beforehand. If it passes, the text will become a EU directive which needs to be incorporated into national law by the member states. After that it becomes enforceable.
- the_duke 4y ago
  Edit: whoops
  - arlcode 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure it's the other way around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_%28European_Union%29?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_%28European_Union%29... Regulations can built upon the foundations laid down by directives and they apply directly.
- M2Ys4U 4y ago
  >If it passes, the text will become a EU directive which needs to be incorporated into national law by the member states. The DMA is a Regulation, not a Directive. It doesn't need to be transposed in to national law in member states. Regulations become law across the whole EU (and usually the EEA as well) as soon as they are published in the Official Journal.
  - arlcode 4y ago
    Aaah damn it you are right. For some reason I thought it was a directive... Too late to edit my comment.

FreeHugs 4y ago

One reason the EU missed out on the internet is our unlimited willingness to be regulated. And we keep piling more and more bureaucracy on top of it. This only cements the power of US big tech like Google and Facebook. And it sets the stage for the next big applications of the web all being build outside the EU as well. Here in Germany, everyone is afraid to start a web startup. And if they do, they spend endless amounts of energy on agonizing over the GDPR and how to build useful international services without using international tools. We sanctioned ourselves by making the use of foreign SAAS illegal. If you are in the EU, try out surfing the web via a non EU IP once. It is an eye-opening experience. No cookie banners! Only Europeans have to deal with those. But it gets worse: Look at European websites from a US IP. You do get cookie banners. European companies deal with degraded user experience, slower build time and worse monetization. On a worldwide basis. While the rest of the world only applies these downsides to the European part of their business.

sofixa 4y ago
> This only cements the power of US big tech like Google and Facebook Au contraire. This regulation will force the big tech companies to open up their platforms, thus enabling innovation and competition.
mschuster91 4y ago
> One reason the EU missed out on the internet is our unlimited willingness to be regulated. Bollocks. The key difference between here and the US is the simple fact that we don't have enormous amounts of "dumb money" from pension and hedge funds screaming to be invested into anything that remotely smells like it could be worth money one time - remember Yo! which got 1M funding?! - and then founders making big money at IPO time, which many of them then choose to invest into new startups. That means that you have to either rely on philantropic investors, family or borrow money from banks at ridiculous interest rates (and often requiring deposit of a car/house or other expensive assets to back the loan). Navigating GDPR and the laws here is easy - one might say, life is even easier here than in the US for startups because you don't have to fear getting kicked in the nuts over bogus patent and other IP claims or absurd multi-million dollars civil damages lawsuits.

ivancho 4y ago

> The new rules for so-called gatekeeper platforms, derived from years of antitrust enforcement in the digital economy, include restrictions on combining personal data from different sources, mandates to allow users to install apps from third-party platforms, prohibitions on bundling services, and a prohibition on self-preferencing practices. The first one sounds very damaging to adtech, but might not be enforced.

37rucxuu 4y ago

emsy 4y ago

It will be fun to see how tech companies will react when they get to taste their own “my platform my rules” medicine.

giorgioz 4y ago
ah wow this is a brilliant sentence! I never saw governments as platforms but they DO ARE! In fact I was always critizing Apple App Store 30% by saying: "What is the App Store a government that can charge me a 30% tax?" and in fact my fear is the reconstruction of a DIGITAL FEUDAL SYSTEM. Where there is a King that charge a tax and then there is smaller and smaller nesting of feudal lords that charge other taxes. KING US Government charging 20-45% income tax DUKE Apple charging 30% App Store tax DUKE Google charging 30% Google Play Store tax DUKE Microsoft charging X% Microsoft Store tax MARQUEES Spotify/Netflix/Airbnb charging a fee for their platform I think we need to be careful to not smother the fire of innovation which brings social mobility across classes/income groups. If we allow Apple/Google/Amazon/Facebook to suffocate the innovation coming from the smaller companies we might find ourselves into a new medieval/dark age period with a lot of zero sum games and hierarchy and little innovation.
- blue1 4y ago
  *Marquis
  - giorgioz 4y ago
    Both Marquess and Marquis are correct so I guess I merged them into Marquees XD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess In Italian, which is my native language, it would be MARCHESE. Fun fact, there is a whole Italian region called Marche: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marche
    - blue1 4y ago
      Further fun fact, still in Italy, the territory around the city of Treviso is called La Marca since medieval times (and still today): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_of_Treviso https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_of_Treviso <MARQUEE>, instead, is an ancient HTML abomination.

can16358p 4y ago

While I think big tech needs to be controlled, I think this is the wrong approach. This will slow down development by being forced to implement interop where they shouldn't be forced to IMO, and will confuse less savvy users (e.g. "Why can't I send this $platform_native_content to Bob but can send perfectly to Alice in the same app?"). Controlling entities' presence within the public (the Internet) is one thing, forcing to do things within their own platform/domain is another. Sadly, EU picked the latter.

arlcode 4y ago
Well then they better get their shit together and implement the features on both ends. They have lots of devs and project management experience. If they don't want to do interop it's just fair that customers are complaining. Nothing a typical chat group on WhatsApp uses is particularly innovative or unique. Text, Voice, Images, Video, map links and attachments probably cover roughly 99% of the use case and everyone supports that. They are free to compete on additional features.
- can16358p 4y ago
  They can, but why they should be forced? I mean its their own platform, they shouldn't be used to offer interop. They _could_, if they wanted to, but it's their platform after all, and forcing a private company to open their own pripriatery platform to 3rd parties is plain wrong and against the rights of the company. It's theirs after all. The right thing here would be making a standard, modern way of communication that supersedes SMS/MMS with a push for global adoption that has all the necessary features of sending videos/images/links/locations etc. with E2EE that is part of GSM technology suite which is either super cheap or free, to offer a sensible alternative to free but closed down services offered by giant companies. That would be much more fair play for a free market.
  - arlcode 4y ago
    I (and apparently the EU law makers) think they should be. When elected officials decide that a Plattform/network is now part of the public space the owners loose out. It happened to railways, telephone grids and all in all was an improvement.

Havoc 4y ago

Seems like a good thing. Looking at the google lawyer privilege drama it sure seems like big tech needs a firmer hand

naoqj 4y ago

It's so easy to destroy a sector when you have nothing to lose.

giorgioz 4y ago
Can you clarify in this instance what is - the sector - who has nothing to lose - and what could be lost I think I understand who/what you imply but I don't want to misunderstand you.
- naoqj 4y ago
  * Tech sector * The EU * Tech sector
  - giorgioz 4y ago
    Thanks for clarifying. >Included in the rules' scope will be platforms with a market capitalization of €75 billion or turnover in the European Economic Area equal to or above €7.5 billion So the rules are meant to target only the TOP part of the Tech Sector. Not the Whole Tech Sector. There could be backfires on everyone though. I do feel though that the Apple/Facebook/Microsoft/Google/Amazon are innovating less and less and are going into cash squeeze mode. There has been a lot of talk on Hacker News on how Google search quality is decreasing. All the privacy laws containing Facebook push them to bet on something new Meta/Oculus. So I think here the effort is to allow smaller tech to thrive and grow.
    - postingawayonhn 4y ago
      > There has been a lot of talk on Hacker News on how Google search quality is decreasing. I have a lot more faith in a viable competitor coming out of California than I do in EU regulations improving search results.
      - giorgioz 4y ago
        Me too...not sure where you are going with this...

igorkraw 4y ago

I pray that this, especially the interoperability requirements comes through not only with teeth, but with claws and a ravenous hunger. I believe one of the key things that allow innovation to foster is beating down the rentseekers,i.e. enabling adversarial interoperability https://www.eff.org/fr/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability https://www.eff.org/fr/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interop... and making it easy for individuals to tinker and innovate without needing capital or lawyers to protect themselves. I am severely envious of the californian "right to compete" for these reasons https://www.callahan-law.com/are-non-competes-enforceable-in-california/ https://www.callahan-law.com/are-non-competes-enforceable-in... and a "right to interoperate" will go a long way towards breaking monopology-enabling network effects.

sofixa 4y ago
There are serious fines attached ( up to 10% of global turnover, 20% for repeat offenders) so it will have plenty of teeth.
- tomp 4y ago
  “up to” isn’t serious “at least” would be serious But that would require for politicians to actually want to do something to benefit the people, not just themselves and their bribers/lobbyists.
- lekevicius 4y ago
  GDPR was up to 4%. As far as I know, this was never applied to anyone. I would expect the same here. Fines will likely be somewhat reasonable.
  - xavxav 4y ago
    Well, GDPR fines are ramping up over time, regulators seem to have been easing companies into it rather than starting off with the 10B fines from day 1. I still hope to see some serious fines on FB / Google in the coming years.
  - foepys 4y ago

giorgioz 4y ago

Oh founders please do not sell your shares to Apple/Google/Microsoft/Facebook/Amazon! We are in danger of creating Big Monsters that will devour everything until there won't be founders anymore...only employees. Once there will be only employees in truth there will be only servants. We need a lot of small/medium tech companies to maintain freedom and competition instead of 2-5 mega corps.

tommiegannert 4y ago
The future will be/is that entrepreneurs create new cool stuff, and runs it until the valuation is high enough they feel it's pay day. They sell to big corp, who are large code maintenance (and patent accumulation) shops, scales them to bigger users and runs until deprecation. The entrepreneurs, though, continue on with the next idea.

belter 4y ago

Digital Markets Act- [Status]: "Awaiting Parliament's position in 1st reading" https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?reference=2020/0374(COD)&l=en https://oeil.secure.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheproc... "The Digital Markets Act: ensuring fair and open digital markets" https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en#:~:text=The%20Digital%20Markets%20Act%20(DMA,regards%20large%2C%20systemic%20online%20platforms https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/euro... From here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30777016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30777016 "...The legislation is now expected to target companies that have a market capitalisation of at least €75bn and run one core online “platform” service such as a social network or web browser, according to two people directly involved in the deal..." "...To qualify as a “gatekeeper” — the powerful internet groups that are the focus of the new law — a company will also have to have at least 45,000 active users, the same people said..." "...Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft all meet this standard, but it is likely to also include far more groups than previously thought such as accommodations site Booking.com and ecommerce group Alibaba..." ---------------------------------------- Examples of the “do’s” - Gatekeeper platforms will have to: - Allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations - Allow their business users to access the data that they - generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform - Provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper - Allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform Example of the “don’ts” - Gatekeeper platforms may no longer: - Don't treat services and products offered by the gatekeeper itself more favourably in ranking than similar services or products offered by third parties on the gatekeeper's platform - Don't prevent consumers from linking up to businesses outside their platforms - Don't prevent users from un-installing any pre-installed software or app if they wish so ----------------------------------------

nonrandomstring 4y ago

This has to extend to business as well as consumer use. Give people the power to choose technology in all contexts. That's all we need. You use Zoom, Teams, Facebook or whatever you like, I'll use my Jitsi or home grown WebRTC solution. Fairness can be that simple. But interoperability legislation can only go so far to fixing things because we also need to tackle: - Regulator and institutional capture by vendor lobbying (bribes) - "Preferred solution" impositions masquerading as fake security "policy" - Lack of skills in organisations. - Poor education about the risks of technological mono-cultures - Technical lock-in measures, DRM, TPM enclaves BigTech domination has been going on for 10-15 years now, and it has become more than just than just a set of facts around market shares and network effects. It's gotten soaked into our culture and the marrow of our institutions and will take a good deal of pain to chase out.

kmlx 4y ago
> You use Zoom, Teams, Facebook or whatever you like, I'll use my Jitsi or home grown WebRTC solution. Fairness can be that simple. that's naive. the problem is that we moved away as an industry from that model for 2 specific reasons: - widely used standards take decades to change just slightly, or never (see SMS, email) - interoperability means either lowest common denominator or a huge cost to keep things interoperable both are horrible for innovation, both are a killer for funding, both pull money away from other things. all for giving "jitsi" or your "home grown webrtc solution" a reason to exist. meanwhile apps like zoom simply took everyone by storm during covid even thou lots and lots of others (including webrtc and jitsi) existed for a long time.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > that's naive. Please attack my arguments, don't make aspersions as to my disposition. > the problem is that we moved away as an industry Please don't try to define the narrative from a parochial viewpoint. No. we didn't. Some of us did. And those few have arguably done a great deal of damage to "the industry". > widely used standards take decades to change just slightly, or never (see SMS, email) It's arguable that they _should_ take a long time to adapt, because stability is also a value. That doesn't preclude the emergence of new and better standards which have a fair chance of adoption in the market for protocols. Interoperability would be a key factor in their success of course. > interoperability means either lowest common denominator I see no justification for this statement. There are many factors that portend lowest-common outcomes, like efficiency, reckless engineering in pursuit of fast time to market... but interoperability isn't one of them. > or a huge cost to keep things interoperable This is what you're really shooting at isn't it? Less profit for people who want to "move fast and break things" and get out when they're done extracting. I prefer to build lasting things and treat technology as a part of long-term culture. It's just a personality type thing. > horrible for innovation Advancing dichotomy between standards and innovation is simply disingenuous. The entire existence of the internet is a counterexample. > killer for funding, both pull money away from other things. Money. > all for giving "jit.si" or your "home grown WebRTC solution" a reason to exist. No. Everything else you've said is about differences of value and philosophy. Fair enough. But on this point you are missing some fundamental understanding of technology. It is not "all for" my choice. Choice is a means not an ends. Choice is what underpins the drive for innovation, but ultimately there is telos (purpose) in technology beyond making profit. Those ends include resilience, opportunity, reliability, hybrid vigor of hetrogenous systems to name a few. Naivety is having a partial or immature understanding of a bigger picture, though I would not accuse you of that of course. respects

sofixa 4y ago

Honestly that's some great news and it was about time for such a regulation. It will curtail monopolies/oligopolies and enable a lot of new innovation. Win-win, with the only "losers" ( as in lower profit margins, not actually losing anything) being the huge tech companies like Google, Meta and Apple.

niemandhier 4y ago

The interoperability features are needed. We all should have a look at Russia and see what can happen if your infrastructure depends to strongly on locked systems. Sure this time we all support the sanction, next time it might be us.

tgv 4y ago
Interop can be useful, but who gets to collect all the data when you hoopkup e.g. WhatsApp and Telegram? Both, I'd imagine. How would you remove data/opt out of a platform you never accessed before? There's a lot of leeway there.

ddaalluu2 4y ago

I imagine being told which tech I have to use when developing my services. When they pay my bills they just might have a saying but only just. What even is the reasoning for this?

wil421 4y ago

So now we will have to accept 2 pop ups on every website?

dzink 4y ago

If only they’d apply those rule to grocery store chains as well. The model for the big ones is to charge stocking fees for any shelf space (250k per item at times) and then replace the best sellers with proprietary generic brands. So soda giants who don’t want competition can just buy out the shelf space to keep smaller players out and then lower the quality of ingredients of their mass stocked products and boost the marketing to keep the shelf space monopoly. The best new products try out and then fizzle out in that environment in exchange if more generic tastes or artificially tasting junk. This model needs to be stopped in more than just online marketplaces. It is the original sin of chain retail.

hda111 4y ago

I‘m not sure if this is a good thing. Despite email being an open standard we have now the situation that most emails are processed by either Google or Microsoft. When the same happens to Matrix we will have a situation where it’s so hard to make your own home server that nobody wants to do it anymore.

oxplot 4y ago
> processed by either Google or Microsoft Let's first clear up why this is: spam control. Google along with the rest of the industry has essentially killed email spam through the many additions to classical email standards. From reputation based delivery, to spam databases, crypto signatures and more. This isn't just to reduce an eye sore in your inbox. Spam does real damage, financial and otherwise. Despite the complexity needed to run a reliable email system, it's still possible to do and many do. It also allows for innovation without a lot of capital (e.g. licensing fees paid to walled garden owners). Without open interoperability, it's either impossible (e.g. general iMessage), limiting (e.g. iMessage, WhatsApp for business) or expensive to do.
- pflanze 4y ago
  > Let's first clear up why this is: spam control. I'm running my own mail server. The problem with regards to spam is not that it's hard for me not to be inundated by spam: I'm just running spamassassin and qpsmtpd with mostly standard configuration and my account on my own server is rather better at catching spam and not ham than my Gmail account. The problem I've always been fighting with (it's better lately) is that Google (and to a lesser degree Yahoo and Microsoft) tends to put my mails into the recipients' spam folders. It's understandable that a minimal level of centralisation is necessary with email so as to build up server reputation. I think that level is already satisfied with just a few dozen or maybe hundreds of emails sent per day. If there are many installations of that size, companies like Google are forced to accept mails from them, and there's no need for further centralisation. > Google along with the rest of the industry has essentially killed email spam through the many additions to classical email standards. From reputation based delivery, to spam databases, crypto signatures and more. I don't see Google having had an exceptional role in "killing" email spam that way. Spam databases (both server reputation as well as content fingerprints) existed before Gmail started, DomainKeys was designed by Yahoo[1], the DKIM (the current way to add cryptographic signatures) RFC[2] does not list anyone from Google as its authors, bayesian learning was published by PG[3] in 2002. Gmail launched 2004[4]. Giving reputation much weight was something easy for them to do and it does tend to come at the cost of small legit servers. They had a solid implementation early on (both the spam filter and, for the time, a top notch HTML UI), had of course a good name, and were free, so they were a default choice for anyone who was with an email provider that didn't do well (like many (most?) ISPs). There are reasons for people to flock to a strong, large company, that's not different here, but I contest that spam necessitated this. That said, any new protocol would do well to take the problem of handling spam seriously and learn from and improve upon the past. TL,DR: my argument is that spam is (somewhat) easier to handle in a centralised way, just like most problems are, but handling spam doesn't inherently require centralisation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys [2] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6376.txt https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6376.txt [3] http://paulgraham.com/spam.html http://paulgraham.com/spam.html [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail

cryptica 4y ago

IMO, based on their current business models, big US tech companies would be better off financially by pulling out of the EU entirely than by allowing interoperability via public APIs. They will lose most of their users to small platforms if they provide too much interoperability - Not just in the EU but all over the world. Their monopoly over the bulk of the world's user accounts is their only real competitive advantage. That said, in terms of social good, open APIs would be great.

toyg 4y ago
They can (and likely will) produce a layer of bureaucracy that could keep out any non-EU player if they wish, stuff like having to register with them with EU-based company information before they give you an API key (this is just an example).
TheCoelacanth 4y ago
If they did pull out, that would be probably the largest business opportunity in human history, with a $16 trillion economy suddenly having no large competitors in many sectors. I'm sure entrepreneurs in the EU are salivating at the thought of that happening.
paxys 4y ago
If that's really the case then they'll pull out of the EU market rather than comply with this law. Let's see if that happens or not.

Luker88 4y ago

Honestly? Looks good. They only missed one: must provide human support for any and all products and supported services. Google/MS/Apple have 0 user support for account/app suspension/removal and we have seen many stories here on how final those things are, and without any recourse possible

colinmhayes 4y ago
Pretty sure a ton of companies would cease to exist if they had to provide human support. Maybe that's a good thing, but really all it would do is strengthen incumbents who can afford the massive call center bill.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Markoff 4y ago

so, all the software companies need to do is implement also SMS feature in their messengers like Signal does for instance and they will be immediately interoperable, while keeping their own messaging service separated

acd 4y ago

Mind boggling that content recomendation by tech giant algorithms that is used by european consumers are unregulated. The algorithms maximize content view / platform usage diregarding mental health and addiction. Further there is no regulation that the content from recomendations are from reliable truthful sources.