Can we not return to the good ol' days when developers were pumping out actual quality software and not simply listening to their shareholders or being complicit in the surveillance state's program that treats us like guinea pigs?
#consumerWelfare #dataPrivacy #digitalSurveillance #proprietary #software
Maybe the "good Windows, bad Windows" cycle theory still holds and we are just living with another bad iteration of Windows. If so, I am cautiously optimistic that Microsoft will release a quality operating system, one that prioritizes user experience and privacy. Let's hope it delivers.
#Microsoft #Windows #Windows11 #Windows12 #curse #ConsumerWelfare #privacy #surveillance
The #assetization of #automobility through #paywalling can affect the ecology of automobility in ways that entrench powerful + moneyed interests while undermining #ConsumerWelfare + the #PublicGood
👀Bricolageyumyum.bsky.social & mcforelle.bsky.social: https://doi.org/pcgp
"Working at an AI-equipped workplaces is like being the parent of a furious toddler who has bought a million Sea Monkey farms off the back page of a comic book, and is now destroying your life with demands that you figure out how to get the brine shrimp he ordered from a notorious Holocaust denier to wear little crowns like they do in the ad..." - @pluralistic
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/112848383951746469
#AI #tech #business #enshittification #monopolies #ConsumerWelfare
Attached: 1 image Today's threads (a thread) Inside: AI's productivity theater; and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/25/accountability-sinks/ #Pluralistic 1/
There's a cheat-code in US #antitrustm it's been increasingly used since the #Reagan administration, when the "#ConsumerWelfare" theory ("#monopolies are fine, so long as the lower prices") shoved aside the long-established idea that antitrust law existed to prevent monopolies from forming *at all*.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens
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Hey look at this
* #Accelerationism is Terrorism https://crookedtimber.org/2023/10/17/accelerationism-is-terrorism/
* Trust & Safety Tycoon: Try Your Hand At Managing A Social Media #TrustAndSafety Team https://www.techdirt.com/2023/10/17/trust-safety-tycoon-try-your-hand-at-managing-a-social-media-trust-safety-team/
* The Faith of #ConsumerWelfare and #Antitrust Heretics https://www.thesling.org/the-faith-of-consumer-welfare-and-antitrust-heretics/
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The @FTC's lawsuit against #Amazon is a departure from standard #Antitrust thinking and if the suit is successful it could harm #ConsumerWelfare and impede #Competition in the marketplace
Only when offenses against our "#ConsumerWelfare" occurred should the state should step in to protect its people.
This may sound good, but in practice, it's a dead letter. The consumer welfare test isn't "If prices go up after a merger, punish the company." Instead, the government must prove the price raises came from "market power," and not from an increase in energy or labor costs, or some other "exogenous factor," like Mercury being in retrograde:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/10/you-had-one-job/#thats-just-the-as
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The consumer welfare standard, which broadly considers higher output and lower prices as its primary goals, is not well equipped to monitor the numerous competitive harms that consumers face in the 21st century. An effective competitive constraint standard would not replace the consumer welfare standard but rather recognize that market forces can reduce competition in […]
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