It may seem like a good thing that apple has this single app store for all of its devices, but the reality is that it is a monopoly. Monopolies tend to be a really bad thing for markets. If allowed to continue, monopolies tend to harm competition badly. Thing is, that they've got a solid revenue stream and nobody else even has a hope of getting a fair shot at obtaining a big enough chunk of the market to make them matter. The monopoly could also dictate unreasonable terms to people wanting to make use of their system.

Apple, for example, has been demanding a 30% commission from paid apps, subscriptions must be handled via its payment platform (again, with this 30% commission), and, oh yes, if Apple decides to compete with your app, you've already lost because they don't have to pay that 30% commission to themselves and they just preinstall their competing app with the next update.

This allowed them to branch out in other markets, competing under favorable terms with others. They're, for example, competing with Netflix and Spotify. While those are established brands in their respective markets. At the same time Apple does not want to be compatible with Android, it's only so because it was forced to be through anti-trust action.

Another monopoly is Microsoft. It used its dominant position on the desktop to push all competition to the point of irrelevance. Dr.DOS, Netscape, and Be Inc. (BeOS) come to mind here. Also, it is bending over backwards to make sure its office products are incompatible with the rest of the world.

In what universe?

The EU is a bigger market than the USA, you know.

Monopolies have always been illegal and should be appropriately dealt with.

A lot of the monopolies in tech benefit the USA a lot, but basically suck the rest of the world dry. Go to a given website: it's AWS; search for anything: one way or the other, it's Google (Alphabet); The dominant desktop OS in the world: Windows (Microsoft). All of this has lead to significant harm to the competition, no matter where they come from. Worse, they invade adjacent markets and suck the life out of those. So, yes, monopolies ought to be dealt with.

Who actually owns AND DAILY DRIVES an Ubuntu Phone? Sailfish anyone? Yeah, that's because of the Google/Apple duopoly.
Ok, Social media than: anybody got family members even familiar with any alternatives to facebook/instagram/X? Anybody familiar with Mastodon here?
Let's try messaging? Any real people use anything else than WhatsApp?

It's good the monopolies are being dealt with. Because, yes, they are a danger to our freedom... our freedom to choose.

The Apple ios app stores have been used to distribute malware and will be continued to be used for such.

They must either stop accepting third party apps in their app store (which will mean that they don't have a product anymore), or accept the fact that people are going to figure out ways to get malware in.

In the EU the government is actually doing it's job by trying to make things difficult for monopolies - and they should; any government should. Wherever the monopoly comes from, it's life should be made really hard to allow the market to flourish. Monopolies suck the life out of the industry they occupy. The fact the USA has a disproportionate amount of monopolies, shows that corruption has reached baffling proportions over there.

Imagine:
You own a shop which is the ONLY place where people can buy parts for their car. When a competitor wants to sell parts as well, they need to go through YOUR shop. Because it's your shop, you ask companies who want to offer products via your shop to pay 30% of their revenue to you. They are also required to use all your other services. When you notice someone has a good product, you start offering the EXACT same thing, but cheaper.

In what universe is this called fair? It's a good thing the EU actually does something about such behavior.

Pretty soon you can't disable this field in systemd.

It's not about whether others have the same capability; it's because Anthropic refused to allow the US government to use their AIs to be involved in combat action. They're being turned into an example: "this is what happens to you when you refuse to do as we tell you to."

Trump really is a fascist and all tech companies should stand together against that clown. However, there's two things in the mix here which prevent them from standing together: 1) They're actually afraid, 2) They smell money. Anthropic will be bust soon and when that happens, Trump or some other clown in that government will make a remark which will come down to "Anthropic was your example, you could be next." Of course not literally that, it will be stated such they can wiggle themselves out from under any wrongdoing allegations, but still, the announcement will be made as soon as Anthropic is off the stage.

Perhaps they should sanction all the USA companies having ties with the USA military? Not selling them rare earths anymore, for example?

Sooooo... they want us to trust US companies and their lackeys, accept their bribes, and feel safe when we get fucked over by the CLOUD act or some other US law which tell US companies to hand over data whenever the US government feels like it?

No thanks.

However, there should be proper oversight and verification of what is flagged by the machine. If the machine makes a mistake, and an innocent suffers because of that mistake, they should be compensated in proportion to the amount of damage they suffered.

Over here (in the Netherlands) we've got something called... errr... I know this might sound strange... errr... are you ready? Sure? A government which basically granted every government contract to Microsoft without so much as a single thought. Every. Single. Government department uses Microsoft per the blanket government contract. Oh, the fun of it? There's supposed to be procurement rules. Conveniently, they ignored those, otherwise Microsoft might have been facing stiff competition from other contractors.

The argument for ignoring those procurement rules (established by the EU)? There's no other market participant who can deliver on such a scale. Never mind they did zero actual investigation and just went with Microsoft. To me this smells of corruption.

And now there's this. Who would have thought?

Thinking their laws apply all over the world.

Reminder: the authority of USA laws ends at its borders. Yes, there's treaties. That still doesn't make USA laws binding in other jurisdictions.

Of course the Americans will show up to downvote this post into oblivion.

The EU seems already busy with moving in the direction of open source software.

By the way: there is a difference between the EU and Europe. That being said, neither is a country.

I'm glad I don't live in the USA, which scores 94th on the world crime index and 58th in the safety index... Seems to me the USA isn't such a safe country.

A child cannot be expected to act responsibly or to have an idea of the consequences of its actions. The law and society should bend over backwards in order to protect any child, no matter what it has done.

Then again, the USA hasn't ratified the rights of the child treaty. It's the only country which hasn't done so yet. Disgusting.

Humans exist thanks to coffee. If it were not for coffee, we would be extinct right now.