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At this point I don’t believe that public discussion can change anything. Antitrust can, though, and in my opinion it would be better if the discussion was steered that way.

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I agree. I'd go further and say nothing will change it. IMHO companies like this own our (and international) government+the justice system and our votes are meaningless. The same interests control both parties, but I digress.

The EU seems to exercise some control in limited cases, or that privacy law that somehow got passed in California, but those actions are the exception by far.

I wouldn’t say that these are exceptions or that they’re meaningless. EU and US antitrusts are just very slow, but we’ve already seen examples how antitrust authorities in other countries change the situation (see South Korea vs Apple, but there are more). These cases usually affect rules in a single country, but they contribute to the big ones (EU and US) too.

I would say slow is a charitable characterization of US antitrust enforcement, just because I consistently see these huge mergers go through that the Justice department or FTC should have prevented in the first place. We had that case against Microsoft but it was a very long time ago and basically had no effect.

If Justice approves Adobe-Figma you can be sure our antitrust teeth are gone.

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