Cory Doctorow

So they have lots of money to spend on policy adventures.

So we don't have to.

So what that means is that if the companies use the power they have in the market to abuse you, we no longer have competitors who are acting as a check on their behavior.

But we also don't have regulators.

The regulators don't step in either.

And so you get this combination where you could have competitors.

a system that was integrated and worked from top to bottom and was quite seamless, right?

And it's not necessary for firms to all be under one roof to do that, although it sometimes helps.

But like, you know, all the light bulbs in your house work, even though the light sockets and the light bulbs are all made by different people, like standards are a thing.

And we can do standards that allow stuff to work.

You know, it's very weird when you think about social media that, like, which network you're on matters as to who you can talk to.

That is the most, like, prodigy, copy-serve-ass technology thing to arrive at that you can imagine.

Like, imagine if this were, like, phones, where you would have to care whose SIM was in someone's phone before you could give them a call.

That is, like, a legitimately weird and primitive thing that we've arrived at here.

Well, let me just refine that question in two ways.

So first is Google didn't just lose one antitrust case last year.

They lost three.

So they were convicted three times of having a monopoly.

The other thing is that when the judge talked about Apple specifically, it wasn't because of AI.

It was even weirder.