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Comment by adamsmark | Hacker News Reader

Platforms need to be regulated and not with the anti-trust laws created to deal with industries before software even existed.

We need a new Sherman or Clayton act specifically for platforms. You can split them out, social media platforms over X users are regulated in this way. Marketplaces over x users are regulated in this way.

We cannot rely on platform owners to update policy in response to mounting public pressure. Because you get things like this - rules on Apple's platform that won't be applied to significant platforms, just the developers who are too small to have any influence.

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Ben Thompson has argued for this, but more in the abstract: government is focusing too much on using preexisting legal frameworks to handle these issues. In reality, the right framework doesn't exist yet!

In the States, this is on Congress: we need new laws and a new process to sort out this flavor of antitrust issue. The current stuff on the books doesn't cut it.

Also of note: I'm also not saying we need more laws. It's not a question of to what degree we do regulate this sort of thing: my point is that we don't even have a process to think about the issues! It's totally archaic.

Cannot agree more, there's this in the guidelines:

> Also avoid piling on to a category that is already saturated; the App Store has enough fart, burp, flashlight, fortune telling, dating, and Kama Sutra apps, etc. already. We will reject these apps unless they provide a unique, high-quality experience. Spamming the store may lead to your removal from the Developer Program.

I totally agree that there's enough of these types of apps, but you'll need to convince a reviewer that your "special" if you want to compete in that space. I'm torn between agreeing with Apple and being disgusted at the anti-competitive nature communicated. I just wonder if Apple uses this to say "oh, there's already enough find-my type apps" "oh, there's already enough music apps" "oh, there's already enough word processor apps" and you're left holding the bag of software you've spent the last year writing.

>Platforms need to be regulated

No. God no.

Regulation has its place. But regulation is also a slooow bureaucratic process. Regulators have no incentive to change with market conditions and in a fast moving industry will be a hindrance in no time. They also increase the cost of development benefiting the big guys that can afford an army of HR, Regulatory and Legal people to handle compliance.

what about forcing them to be developed in the open? (everybody get's to read and audit all their code and processess)

We do need regulation that will protect developers and consumers from the huge monopolistic power of platform owners like Apple, Facebook, and Google. The regulation would be targeted specifically at those behemoths and not at small fry developers, since those don't have significant market power.

Today you don't need an army of legal people to deal with existing anticompetitive regulations if you're not a behemoth yourself. To argue that regulation designed to protect from monopolists will actually help those monopolists by its mere existence is ridiculous.

I've had this same thought for a while now, anti-trust is completely tangential to the current situation; we need new laws. I'm just worried that the new laws are generalizable enough to serve their purpose without creating loopholes or stifling innovation.

I haven't seen a good reason for needing new laws. Seems like a great way to carve out special rules for companies that think they can skirt existing anti-trust laws.

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