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Comment by bogwog | Hacker News Reader

Every time theres some news of the US trying to regulate Apple, people here respond with comments like "what about Google?!".

And when theres news of the EU trying to do it, they respond with comments like yours, accusing the EU of trying to fine US companies instead of competing with them.

In both cases, there are also endless (and uninformed) arguments about how Apple isn't a monopoly.

But yours also adds a new element to it, accusing the EU of being anti-Trump, so kudos.

The conclusion I've come to is that tech companies (particularly Apple) can do no wrong in the eyes of a lot of HN readers, and it truly is a waste of time to try and have a productive discussion on this topic. Which sucks, because this place usually does result in interesting discussions, more so than other sites (even if there are a lot bad takes)

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Regulations create the competitive environment that these free market proponents like to talk about as it puts all competitors on a level playing field, usually raising the bar to some minimum they all must do that is a benefit to consumers and the environment. With no regulation megacorps are free to use their size and money to crate anti competitive environment to win rather than compete on the merits of their product, or just buy out the competition.

It's a horseshoe. At some point regulatory capture comes in and makes the environment too expensive to enter let alone compete with established players

No regulation and too much regulation have terrible impacts, but identifying the middle ground is it's own problem.

...which is why the current tech regulations that Apple is running afoul of are only aimed at the top 1% of the market.

You're not gonna run afoul of Europe's antitrust laws by mere coincidence - you have to be a very big and established player before they become relevant (meaning you should have plenty of room to adapt, should you start to approach the limits specified in their legislation[0]). If you're just a small participant in the market, these laws aren't relevant to you.

Regulatory capture isn't really a risk for these regulations because most companies won't ever become that massive in the first place[0].

[0]: For reference, you need more than 75 billion euros in market value, 7.5 billion euros in profits from EU citizens or alternatively, more than 45 million active end users and more than 10k business customers before the real "big teeth" EU antitrust legislation (the Digital Markets Act) becomes relevant for a company. The overwhelming majority of tech companies aren't even close to being in that position (and almost certainly don't have a market cap that comes close to this), it's pretty much only GAFAM and ByteDance that are in this position.

Oh we agree.

Honestly we're well past effective anti trust laws but the EU is leading the way at least in many ways at getting back to somewhere sane.

Apple mostly tends to get defensive fanboys because of buyers remorse. Their products are extremely overpriced and Apple markets their products not as products but as a lifestyle. If you buy Apple, that's to be "different", to be "the Elite". Even if this is pretty measurably false (owning an iPhone doesn't actually split you amongst lower/middle/upper class), a big part of their marketing is aimed at making a (prospective) customer feel like this.

This leads to a particular type of consumerism where criticizing Apple becomes criticizing Apple buyers, even when that criticism is purely aimed at the company.

Like, I think Apple makes good hardware (a good form factor is worth something and their devices "feel" good to use in your hand) and cynically exploits vague concerns about software security and privacy to lock down it's software and make more money from it's customers (and therefore support antitrust action against them), but by saying that, in the eyes of an Apple buyer, I'd just be a "hater".

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