Does the open web require competitive markets?
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@evan competition isnt only the obvious antitrust kind, its the stabs in the back, the bribery, the buying out /destroying the competition, those oligarch bros try to out do each other. Even the space rockets! Academia is packed with competitive salary and job title hunters.
@DrPen which is why I linked the Wikipedia article on competition in markets.
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@evan the open web is in some ways antithetical to competitive markets (so no) and it needs a bit of government help in order to avoid being taken over by capitalists.
@anca what? How is a monopoly web sector "open"? I don't understand your point.
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@anca what? How is a monopoly web sector "open"? I don't understand your point.
@anca I realize that Web markets, like maybe most markets, are vulnerable to capture by monopolies or oligopolies, but I don't think that means the open web is antithetical to competition.
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@evan Yes. We need a combination of publicly funded basic infrastructure and an economy of small to medium sized companies, that offer services for open-source.
Instead of big-tech, we need big-market.
@kaffeeringe so, public, small and medium sized companies that provide a competitive market for products and services?
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@evan I most certainly don't have any answers, but it's a super interesting discussion. Somewhere in there lies the question of interoperability (if I'm using it correctly). I we could all connect and "talk to" FB users using other tools/services then users would have choice (competition would exist). We could have groups for our local community and invite to birthdays without being "slaves" to FB. And if we didn't like the algo, we'd use a tool/service with a different algo (or no algo).
@leanderlindahl thanks! I think it's interesting too.
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Does the open web require competitive markets?
@evan Is it implied that markets will always exist, and the question is (therefore) whether they need to be open or not?
Or is it acceptable to answer "no" because the open web doesn't require markets at all?
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@evan Is it implied that markets will always exist, and the question is (therefore) whether they need to be open or not?
Or is it acceptable to answer "no" because the open web doesn't require markets at all?
@woozle it's always acceptable to answer as you wish!
I really regret using the term "market" instead of "technology sector" or something similar. The technical definitions of "market" seem to encompass tech sectors where many of the products, including labour, are available gratis, but I think a lot of people got hung up on the idea of commercial exchange.
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@woozle it's always acceptable to answer as you wish!
I really regret using the term "market" instead of "technology sector" or something similar. The technical definitions of "market" seem to encompass tech sectors where many of the products, including labour, are available gratis, but I think a lot of people got hung up on the idea of commercial exchange.
@woozle I personally am much more interested in the "competitive" part rather than the "market" part, which is why I linked the Wikipedia article on competition.
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Does the open web require competitive markets?
Wow, what an interesting set of results. I think the answer is "yes".
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Wow, what an interesting set of results. I think the answer is "yes".
I created this poll because I've been thinking a lot about Mozilla since the announcement of their new CEO. A lot of people here criticised the hire, since he said that Mozilla would make Firefox an "AI Browser". I don't mind that, although I don't think AI browsers are that useful, and I think running into the market where Atlas, Comet, Dia and others are already floundering sounds like a dumb bet.
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I created this poll because I've been thinking a lot about Mozilla since the announcement of their new CEO. A lot of people here criticised the hire, since he said that Mozilla would make Firefox an "AI Browser". I don't mind that, although I don't think AI browsers are that useful, and I think running into the market where Atlas, Comet, Dia and others are already floundering sounds like a dumb bet.
What I'm more concerned about is "US vs. Google", the Google Search anti-trust case which showed that Google was using search engine placement deals with operating systems and browser vendors to unfairly inhibit competition with other search engines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2020)
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What I'm more concerned about is "US vs. Google", the Google Search anti-trust case which showed that Google was using search engine placement deals with operating systems and browser vendors to unfairly inhibit competition with other search engines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2020)
Mozilla Corporation has subsisted almost entirely on this kind of deal with Google since the company was founded. When the judge in US vs. Google was considering remedies (like forbidding that kind of deal), Mozilla argued that this remedy would make it unable to compete in the *other* area that Google has a near monopoly, namely browsers:
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/google-remedies-browsers/
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Mozilla Corporation has subsisted almost entirely on this kind of deal with Google since the company was founded. When the judge in US vs. Google was considering remedies (like forbidding that kind of deal), Mozilla argued that this remedy would make it unable to compete in the *other* area that Google has a near monopoly, namely browsers:
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/google-remedies-browsers/
Weirdly, the fact that Mozilla would be unable to find another buyer for its product (search engine placement), and the threat of another monopoly in browsers and browser engines, did not make Judge Mehta take *extra* remedies, like making Google sell Chrome and/or Android. Instead, the judge gave some pretty mild remedies, which probably won't do anything to make Google's 88% of the search engine market less of a problem for consumers or others in the ecosystem.
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Weirdly, the fact that Mozilla would be unable to find another buyer for its product (search engine placement), and the threat of another monopoly in browsers and browser engines, did not make Judge Mehta take *extra* remedies, like making Google sell Chrome and/or Android. Instead, the judge gave some pretty mild remedies, which probably won't do anything to make Google's 88% of the search engine market less of a problem for consumers or others in the ecosystem.
Here's the main point, though: Mozilla is supposed to be somewhat purpose-driven. Its goals and mission are somewhat laid out in the Mozilla Manifesto. In particular, it supports an open and accessible Internet.
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Here's the main point, though: Mozilla is supposed to be somewhat purpose-driven. Its goals and mission are somewhat laid out in the Mozilla Manifesto. In particular, it supports an open and accessible Internet.
I personally think that participating in an anti-competitive business practice that a court has found hurts American (and assumably also global) consumers and other businesses is not compatible with that purpose. I don't think that humans flourish in systems dominated by monopolies that use their power to extend those monopolies. Neither have most economists since about 1875.
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I personally think that participating in an anti-competitive business practice that a court has found hurts American (and assumably also global) consumers and other businesses is not compatible with that purpose. I don't think that humans flourish in systems dominated by monopolies that use their power to extend those monopolies. Neither have most economists since about 1875.
If Mozilla is really purpose-driven, I think the number one goal of the organization should be getting out of the monopoly headlock it's in right now. It should find another buyer for its search engine placement service, and it should diversify its revenue to get the business on a firm footing that doesn't keep governments from enforcing competitive markets.
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If Mozilla is really purpose-driven, I think the number one goal of the organization should be getting out of the monopoly headlock it's in right now. It should find another buyer for its search engine placement service, and it should diversify its revenue to get the business on a firm footing that doesn't keep governments from enforcing competitive markets.
I think "the open web" is by definition a multi-polar environment where many service providers, software creators, and platforms interact using interoperable standards. I think the "open" in "open web" requires multiple actors; a single company cannot be "open" with itself.
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I think "the open web" is by definition a multi-polar environment where many service providers, software creators, and platforms interact using interoperable standards. I think the "open" in "open web" requires multiple actors; a single company cannot be "open" with itself.
I'm honestly surprised to see so many "No" answers to this question. From the anti-commercial replies, I think at least some of the No's come from a concentration on the word "markets" rather on the word "competitive". I think the economic definition of a "market" encompasses non-commercial services and products. But maybe I should have found some wording that doesn't make people hit the "I HATE COMPANIES" button so hard.
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Does the open web require competitive markets?
@evan I answered no because I believe that markets themselves concentrate capital into the hands of monopolies and systematically eliminate the very characteristics that define an open society.
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I'm honestly surprised to see so many "No" answers to this question. From the anti-commercial replies, I think at least some of the No's come from a concentration on the word "markets" rather on the word "competitive". I think the economic definition of a "market" encompasses non-commercial services and products. But maybe I should have found some wording that doesn't make people hit the "I HATE COMPANIES" button so hard.
I also think it's catastrophically bad to think that only computer manufacturers, mobile phone makers, domain registrars, hosting providers, and terrestrial and mobile ISPs should be allowed to get paid for providing Internet services. Many people who spend hundreds or thousands of dollars a year to get access to the Web are reluctant to chip in $20 for their Mastodon server.
Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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@gumnos that's a beautiful post. Thank you for sharing it
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Have you ever wanted to have Theo de Raadt give you his fortune in your GNU Emacs session? I made a package some time ago which serves exactly this purpose. You can find the package, as well as it's history on Codeberg with the following link. It is currently my only Emacs package, but I plan to make more when it becomes useful to.
https://codeberg.org/amadaluzia/theo.el
Appending to the history after the package was published onto Codeberg, I ended up in a call where me and @izder456 were talking about theo.el. I believe in that call, it was also reposted in the OpenBSD room on Matrix. I also remember being suggested to put it on MELPA, so that is exactly what I did.
After creating the pull request and fixing all of the issues that stopped it from being pushed into MELPA, it couldn't make it on as it was a pretty repetitive package, and there were about 5 other `fortune`-esque packages with much more customisability. However, I now have a better package because of MELPA's guidelines, and I believe that I can still give attention to the package, even if not through MELPA.
That's why I wanted to talk about it here, because maybe you are interested in having a fortune package for your GNU Emacs. If so, and assuming you have straight.el, you can simply copy the following snippet into your init.el. After that, you should have it installed.
https://gist.github.com/amadaluzia/be96e325326a9d66619543af410e4bf4
Let me know how the package goes for you. I would love to improve the GNU Emacs ecosystem further, as a GNU Emacs user.
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And here we are
Ho cmq già vinto il rigatino alla lotteria.
Si sbanca.
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I am seeding the original Unix tape with a 40Gbit/s connection. If you want it fast, grab the torrent at archive.org.
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@marxistvegan Does the fact that the Wikipedia article for competition was linked in the poll suggest that the emphasis was more on competition than on markets?
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you ever have one of those moments where a taste or smell brings back memories?
Today I made coffee that brought of a flood of memories from my teen years, of sitting in my Opa & Oma's kitchen, the smell of bacon & scrambled eggs in cast iron on the stove, freshly buttered toast, and an old-school percolator of coffee brewing that he'd share with my dad and me. Opa & Oma & Dad are no longer with us and that house has long been razed, but they all live on in this mug of coffee.
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@evan I think a lot more depends on how one interprets this question... "Does the open web require competitive markets?"
and I see how one can interpret that to mean monopolistic from a 'no' answer, but i think of this more as the internet to not be a place to buy and sell stuff. In fact to be a place for information and exchange of communication, in that sense then market is not needed for an open web.
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The argument shouldn't be:
"I don't have anything to hide, so you can surveil me,"Instead, it should be:
"I don't have anything to hide, so you shouldn't surveil me."
