Comment by echelon
2 days ago
I almost totally agree with you, with the exception that I think market distortion does impact non-users.
You can be a Firefox user, and your Firefox usage is impacted by the overwhelming market share capture of Chrome and Chromium browsers.
You can use Librem and be impacted by your government requiring software that will only run on iOS or Android. Or Chrome.
> DOJ refuses to neuter them
Yes, but don't give them the free pass. Even if a company's objective is to take as much of the pie as possible, Google and Apple actively employ lawyers to skirt the regulators.
I expect my experience will degrade. The whole web's felt stale since Flash died, I doubt the next few years will feel any different. We're post-that, sadly. Apple and Google already got the pass, they won't be litigated in this admin unless they fail to kiss the ring.
We have to live with these damages, the same way we've limped alongside a broken internet for the past decade. Its possible these abuses will be encoded in American identity for decades to come. The next step is surviving top-down control, and freely-licensed software will be the only alternative to the digital monoculture.