> The US Department of Justice accused Apple of operating an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market in an expansive new antitrust lawsuit that seeks to upend many of the ways Apple locks down iPhones.
US DOJ alleges #Apple is a monopoly engaged in uncompetitive behavior and sues under the Anti-Trust Act. This is some serious sh*t - following on the heels of the EU and other suits. Hear the Attorney General break it down on this short video… #Antitrust#DOJ#monopoly
@ned
I live in the US. Whenever my for-profit, predatory health insurance provider sends out a feedback survey, I respond similarly.
Them: How can we serve you better?
Me: Healthcare is a human right. Profit has no business anywhere near healthcare. Your company shouldn't exist. You should lobby the US government for a universal single-payer healthcare system.
Apple has repeatedly demonstrated they will do whatever they can to tighten their grip on US consumers and app developers while intentionally and artificially making it as painful as possible to interoperate with others. It’s straight out of the 90s Microsoft playbook, but cranked up to 11.
One of the world's richest companies is now under fire from the #UnitedStates govt. #Justice & 16 states filed a #lawsuit against the Silicon Valley giant on Thurs, accusing the company of abusing its #power as a #monopoly to edge out rivals & ensure customers keep using its products.
The lawsuit centers around claims that #Apple stopped smaller companies from accessing the #hardware & #software in its #iPhones, which led to fewer options for #consumers.
Apple is worth ~$3T, making it one of the highest valued cos in the world. & its iPhone is one of the most popular phones on earth, dominating the global #market, acc/to market analyst firm IDC. The #DOJ alleges it's by no coincidence that Apple was able to ensure its place at the top.
The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday sued Apple, the first major antitrust effort against the iPhone maker by the Biden administration, alleging it monopolized smartphone markets.
« En 1903, Elizabeth "Lizzie" MAGIE dépose le brevet du Landlord's Game. Ce " jeu du propriétaire foncier " tente de démontrer le danger du monopole (à l'époque représenté par […] Andrew Carnegie et John D. Rockefeller). On n'enseigne pas l'économie à l'école : à travers ce jeu, Lizzie espère faire comprendre aux enfants comme à leurs parents qu'il est possible de s'opposer à ce système qui enrichit les propriétaires tout en appauvrissant les locataires. »
There's a new ride hailing app in the PH called Peek Up. I hope it, together with InDrive, Maxim and Owto, can compete with monopolistic Grab in the 4-wheeled vehicle category. Initially, "the service is available in Metro Manila, Laguna, Cavite, Rizal, and Bulacan."
Why is this legal?
"In 2023, UHG raked in a jaw-dropping $22.4 billion in profits with $5.5 billion in the fourth quarter alone. Revenue was up by 14.6% to an incredible $371.6 billion.This financial windfall has come via rewriting healthcare industry practices through vertical integration ... to essentially be a value-chain monopoly, controlling everything from health insurance to medical services to healthcare data to pharmaceuticals." #Healthcare#Monopoly https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/prescriptionsforabrokensystem/109088
PS: This looks like an objection to federated or decentralized #SocialMedia as such, even a preference for #monopoly, as if we'd learned nothing from #Facebook and #Twitter. Kept expecting that the rest of the article would dispel that impression, but it didn't.
"Landlords and property managers can’t collude on rental pricing. Using new technology to do it doesn’t change that antitrust fundamental. Regardless of the industry you’re in, if your business uses an algorithm to determine prices, a brief filed by the FTC and the Department of Justice offers a helpful guideline for antitrust compliance: your algorithm can’t do anything that would be illegal if done by a real person."
For the pro-monopoly crowd that absolutely dominated antitrust law from the Carter administration until 2020, Amazon presents a genuinely puzzling paradox: the company's monopoly power was never supposed to emerge, and if it did, it should have crumbled immediately.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
@pluralistic From the post - an incredible insight:
Amazon is the poster-child for monopoly run amok. As Yanis Varoufakis writes in Technofeudalism, Amazon has actually become a post-capitalist enterprise. Amazon doesn't make profits (money derived from selling goods); it makes rents (money charged to people who are seeking to make a profit)
BTW - personally I have not purchased anything from amazon in years. I stopped my once in a random blue moon shopping at #WholeFoods, and absolutely refuse to become a #prime member.
New study: "The current level of implementation of transformative agreements is insufficient to bring about a large-scale transition to fully #OpenAccess. A key finding…is that TAs maintain market concentration…The three largest commercial publishers #Elsevier, #SpringerNature & #Wiley dominate, particularly with regard to OA provided through TAs. Together, the 3 publishers accounted for 3/4 of OA articles through TAs." https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.18255
#AAPL's recent changes to #PWA (#ProgressiveWebApp) functionality in #iOS, specifically in the #EU, has sparked outrage among #webdev. The company's late acknowledgment of intentionally limiting PWA capabilities, presented as compliance with the EU's #DigitalMarketsAct, has been criticized as deceitful. This move, seen as an attempt to protect its #appStore#monopoly, undermines open #webStandards and harms #developers and users.
Internet outage of about 4 hours. I learned that now the local company (Oi) actually leases its fiber network from a company (Vital) which belongs to some bank. And apparently several fiber providers do the same.
It has already been possible to change an #iPhone's default web browser through the "Settings" app since iOS 14.
#Apple has a March 6 legal deadline to introduce app sideloading in the European Union in order to comply with the Digital Markets Act #DMA, and iOS 17.4 will add support for this. #Sideloading will allow Apple users to download apps outside of the App Store, but the change will be limited to customers in the EU.
Now is an opportunity to improve your web experience… and your safety…
Update. "The need to publish in English even when it is not the local language affects the type of research undertaken & further consolidates the global North-centric view of scientific approach. The bibliometric databases on which assessments of universities and journals are based are owned by two large [corporations], and this concentration of the market has in turn concentrated the research environment. #OpenInfrastructure offers an alternative option." https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/c8yq3
DOJ sues Apple over iPhone monopoly in landmark antitrust case (www.cnbc.com)
Apple and its iPhone and App Store business have been eyed by the Department of Justice, which previously filed antitrust suits against Google.