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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • Oh but he will. Trump will put all the blame on Vance. He threw him under the bus during the debate and he’ll do it again.

    Vance will try to be reasonable but forgets he isn’t dealing with reasonable people. Eventually he’ll turn on Trump as a way to cozy up to “normal” Republicans. He’ll get a few TV appearances and then disappear.

    When 2028 comes around he might try to run in the primary but he’ll get stomped on and be one of the first to drop out.

    He’s in the Senate now and that’s where he’ll stay. Maybe he’ll get reelected, but I doubt he’ll be around much longer than that.



  • I’m voting FOR Harris in the same way I was previously voting FOR Biden. Biden/Harris & Harris/Walz support policies that most closely match those policies I support.

    If Trump died tomorrow I still wouldn’t support Vance or any other Republican because they support policies that I am strongly opposed to.

    I would like to have more options, but realistically those are my choices.

    I don’t have to agree with Harris/Walz on 100% if issues. I’m allowed to criticize them. But at the end of the day I’m voting FOR something and not just against the worst possible choice.



  • Yes but PROVE IT. Define what wrong they did. That’s my point.

    Take a look at the recent monopoly trial, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/05/technology/google-antitrust-ruling.html

    They claim that spending $18 billion per year to be the default search engine makes them monopolistic. That’s it? That’s all they got?

    So the result will be Google stops paying $18 billion and device/browser manufacturers have to put up a Browser Choice dot EU type option.

    Go back 10 years and put that law in place. AFAIK Apple has always defaulted to Google. Samsung probably would have sold out to Bing to be the default (although in this case Bing wouldn’t reach a monopoly, so I guess that’s ok for some reason).

    I’m not saying paying to be the default didn’t help, but is that the reason they have 90% of the searches? No.

    Did they do some else? Maybe. Someone should prove it and we can have an actual change.


  • Being a monopoly and engaging in negative monopolistic behaviors are also different things.

    For example if the only two burger joints in the world were McDonalds and Burger King, and Burger King decided to replace their burgers with literal shit, actual human and animal feces, would McDonalds be a (I hope and assume) monopoly? Probably. Are they engaging in negative monopolistic behavior? Not necessarily.

    Obviously, as a quick aside, fuck Google for their shitty software decisions, their cancelling of great products and their enshittification of a majority of their applications.

    However simply having 90% of the market does not technically mean they have done anything wrong. You can’t say they have 90% of the market therefore they have done something illegal or have abused being a monopoly.

    You have to be specific. You have to call out payment to companies to be the default. But even that isn’t quite enough because companies sold access. Can a company be at fault for buying access as the default? It was for sale. It’s a weak argument, or at least an incomplete one. You need to prove they abused their position. Or you need to make a case that the industry they are in requires additional regulation as a whole.

    I say this because although it sounds like I’m defending Google I’m not. There is a difference between something feeling illegal and something being illegal. Technically, although a recent judgement would disagree with me, they haven’t done anything wrong. It feels like they have. I agree it feels like they have. But they haven’t (or there are further pending results which will prove otherwise).



  • Re Concentration I’m not concerned that it is as of yet a problem. However I do think it is also a larger problem for Mastodon and other user-centric platforms than it is to Lemmy and other community-cetric platforms.

    If a Mastodon user wants to leave their server there are migration pains. If your server makes a controversial change, you may have to migrate. As a follower if something goes wrong I have to remember that I was following Ada & Bob, but maybe Bob now goes by Bobby.

    However as a Lemmy user I can just abandon my server and be done with it. If my server makes a controversial change, I can just leave. As a community follower can watch as Star Trek Memes becomes Risa, or Risa becomes Ten Forward. The names changed completely but it’s easy to find my community again.


  • There are many Trump supporters who don’t think Trump is racist. In the same way many Trump supporters don’t think he is at fault for Jan 6th. He didn’t literally tell his followers exactly what to do. They just happened to do exactly what he wanted then to do (until they failed).

    The same is true for viewing Trump as racist. He can dog whistle all he wants. He can align himself with other racists, but he isn’t racist because he didn’t say the exact words.

    You are right that for some people, him saying something gives them the freedom to say it (in their view). However for a sizable portion it will be clear proof that yes, he is racist. Not 100% mind you, cults are hard to leave, but 5%? 10%? Elections are won/lost in the margins and those are sizable margins.

    If course I don’t actually want it to happen. There is enough hate in the world and we don’t need more.



  • Is the problem account making or data having persistence/backups?

    Or is the issue having an account on service A, service A dieing and then when you create an account on service B you have to start over again, so we need to improve account portability?

    I guess I also wonder… Is that a real problem for Lemmy? For Mastodon where you follow users sure, but does anyone care about their Lemmy account?









  • To frame this question differently, why is Apple able to sell default access on their devices?

    Quick math shows Apple makes ~100 Billion per year. The article states Google pays ~20 Billion to Apple per year. That’s a significant value to Apple.

    I’m not necessarily disagreeing with the decision, but curious how Google paying Apple is a monopoly, but Apple offering search to the highest bidder isn’t also a problem (or maybe it is).

    As another example, how well did the EU browser choice ruling have on consumers choosing a browser.