Meta Platforms Inc. is under immense pressure to ensure that social media content created by artificial intelligence doesn't cause havoc with elections this year. The company's top leaders say they haven't seen that happen yet on their services.
22.03.2024 - 02:06 / tech.hindustantimes.com
The biggest challenge that the Department of Justice has in winning its antitrust case against Apple Inc. is this: The iPhone is really, really awesome.
I'm not trying to be droll. The iPhone's quality, and the way in which Apple continues to make it so, goes to the heart of the case filed against the company on Thursday morning.
And it makes any potential remedy a touchy subject. Leveling the playing field invariably means adding complication, friction and insecurity to a device that became successful because Apple was able to engineer away all of those things.
Also read: US sues Apple for running iPhone monopoly in wide-ranging lawsuit
Unlike other recent antitrust cases filed against big technology companies, in which regulators have targeted Google's search deal with Apple and Amazon.com Inc.'s tactics on price manipulation, this long-awaited filing against one of the richest US companies seeks to draw strength from its breadth, focusing on several crucial parts of Apple's competitive “moat.”
In sum, the complaint contends: “Apple reinforces the moat around its smartphone monopoly not by making its products more attractive to users, but by discouraging innovation that threatens Apple's smartphone monopoly or the disintermediation of the iPhone.”
I disagree with that framing. As any iPhone user knows, Apple clearly does both: It uses its maniacal control over the user experience on the iPhone to make it a vastly superior smartphone that is more attractive to consumers. But in doing so, it shuts out competitors in a manner that has anticompetitive side effects because of the iPhone's scale.
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Attempts to remedy this situation could be painful, unpopular and have a high chance of failure. Just ask iPhone users in Europe, where regulators enforced their tough new rules to increase mobile browser competition — and all users got was a lousy menu. Hardly a tectonic shift in the competitive landscape.
Apple's authoritarianism is what makes an iPhone an iPhone and not an Android. Fans of that competing platform will eagerly say it can do everything an iPhone can do while ignoring the fact that the user experience is a steaming hot mess — particularly for less tech savvy users who aren't as vigilant in keeping out nasty apps or for whom too many separate apps doing similar things would be massively confusing. (It's no coincidence that when my father calls with a tech support question, it's always about his Android phone, never his Apple iPad.)
Forcing Apple to open up to competition in the way the Justice Department is demanding would degrade the iPhone experience. Would it be better for users, for instance, if
Meta Platforms Inc. is under immense pressure to ensure that social media content created by artificial intelligence doesn't cause havoc with elections this year. The company's top leaders say they haven't seen that happen yet on their services.
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