Comment by drsim | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drsim | Hacker News Reader

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Distribution has always been monetized. What margin did a retailer take for putting your boxed software on the shelf? How about that magazine ad? Google search? And so on. Get over the idea that a platform should give you their distribution for free.

The problem comes when there is no way for you to own the distribution, pay nothing to the platform, and still be able to build on top of it. That’s the closed portion we should rally (legislate?) against.

There is an argument, similar to mine on distribution, that there is no inherent right that a platform should be open. That the extra utility that comes from being open should make the platform more competitive in the market vs. closed platforms.

The challenge is that with dominant platforms they are monopolistic. There is no chance for competitive forces to reward openness.

These two parts of the debate are often conflated, which hides what is truly troubling: dominant platforms controlling both distribution and access.

> Distribution has always been monetized. What margin did a retailer take for putting your boxed software on the shelf? How about that magazine ad? Google search? And so on. Get over the idea that a platform should give you their distribution for free.

As 'amelius said below, there used to be more platforms. This matters, because it made for a different balance of power. Especially with retailers - the producers typically had leverage over distributors, not the other way around.

> This matters, because it made for a different balance of power.

In actual practice, it just means that users get fucked from every side: You have 100 different "launchers", just like the 1000 toolbars in the internet's early days. You have to keep track of 100 different emails, accounts, recurring bills and all sorts of shit.

You'd have to be naive as heck to believe corporations fighting against a platform's monopoly are benefactors who want distribution of power and access for the benefit of users, instead of mobsters wanting a cut of each user's pie.

They don’t have to be benefactors (in an idealistic sense) to be useful in their presence.

100 crabs are easier to deal with (and way less likely to be dangerous for a human!) than 1 tiger, as it were.

The problem with these platforms is that there tend to be only a few of them, and regulation by the platform owner (inside their inner market) is worse than regulation by the government.

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