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Comment by fooey | Hacker News Reader

The Beeper vs Apple battle is already getting the attention of US legislators

https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/10/senator-warren-calls-out-a...

There's something funny about Warren posting on Twitter while shouting about antitrust. I really wish government wouldn't make public announcements on closed platforms.

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That aside, it seems like an easy way around that would just be for Apple to adopt RCS in addition to iMessage.

Let's not turn mountains into molehills here, Twitter isn't really closed, it's just authwalled. So, burner email is all you need to read all the tweets, errr, X's?, that you want.

Also, far simpler to take care of beeper, just make all the message bubbles the same color. They'd lose their entire userbase if that happened.

It's viewable via Nitter: https://nitter.net/SenWarren/status/1733956234200445130

But I agree with the earlier point, that it is a closed platform. If you want to respond, I thought it requires a phone number now in addition to email? It used to at least. And if Twitter doesn't like you, why is your ability to communicate with an official regulated by this private company? And Nitter is likely to get shutdown by Twitter any moment now in the same way as Apple is trying to shutdown Beeper.

> I really wish government wouldn't make public announcements on closed platforms.

Unlike Apple, the government has to meet the people where they are.

Apple needs better critics.

Senator Warren would be a lot more effective if she or her staff understood how technology actually works. Senator Markey is another person who cares about this stuff but is also incompetent to regulate it.

I don't think it's just a matter of not understanding technology, but not having any sway in politics. Most of their peers care more about personal brands and culture wars and virtue signaling than doing the boring day to day task of regulating minituae for consumers.

People like Warren and Bernie are like the determined sergeants in the trenches, while most of Congress is busy grandstanding and trying to become the next Napoleons or Trump.

They just don't care to actually do anything useful, instead focusing on optics and pork barrels and revolving doors.

Most voters couldn’t care less about Apple’s iMessage antitrust concerns. Even within the realm of antitrust questions it’s an extremely low priority.

Yeah, good point, lol.

Let's see... abortion, school shootings, jobs, climate change, blue bubbles...?

Well, you can't pass legislation to shut down the school shootings factory or invade climate change's homeland. However, Europe has shown us that tying your economy's profitability to a basis of digital standards can easily compel more open behavior.

Given that Apple is quite literally the Largest Company, they're somewhere on that list. Maybe not next to abortions and climate change, but Apple antitrust is an inevitability unless they get smaller or the economy gets bigger.

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