Hacker News Reader

Comment by placebo | Hacker News Reader

>Like a frog enjoying a nice warm bath...

Exactly :-)

Call me naive but I think dark patterns are a short term strategy for winning and I'm optimistic that in the long run they will be replaced with those that are more respectful and oriented to the greater good (granted, the long run might take more time than one hopes for).

Given that the pendulum can sometime swing back fast enough to be able leverage it, it might be a good time to focus on models that are both open weights and economically viable to run to build the next great thing.

View on HN

> [...] dark patterns are a short term strategy for winning and I'm optimistic that in the long run they will be replaced with those that are more respectful and oriented to the greater good

This is definitely not the way most software has been going in the past decades. It's rather the opposite: Companies play friendly to obtain a user base, then start applying more and more dark patters to further increase their profit. Facebook, Evernote, Instagram, Komoot... The list goes on and on.

Also, see Android and iOS which have a monopoly on the mobile OS market

Sorry about the nitpicking, but s/monopoly/duopoly/

I don't think that's the economical definition of monopoly. It's not about 1 single actor owning the market but rather about unilateral change. Obviously a single actor owning 99.99% will be able to shape the market ... but also one owning a lot less, e.g. 30% if even if they don't collude with another actor owning e.g. 21%.

what you are describing sounds like an oligopoly not a monopoly. A company cannot realize monopolistic benefits without > 50% control of a market. That's not to say there aren't benefits to a large market share, but they are different and we have different terms for them.

US law sets the breakpoint for when a company is considered a monopoly at 30% of a market. It's never actually enforced, of course, but may be worth noting.

[what does the ftc say about it?](https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...)

    Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area. Some courts have required much higher percentages. In addition, that leading position must be sustainable over time: if competitive forces or the entry of new firms could discipline the conduct of the leading firm, courts are unlikely to find that the firm has lasting market power.

>A company cannot realize monopolistic benefits without > 50% control of a market.

I don't think that's true at all. Why 50% specifically? This is not about political votes or anything like that. It's about being the largest player by a margin, usually.

not nitpicking; huge difference between 0 and 1 competitor

Huge difference while both are competing. But it’s a huge risk in a market with such high cost of entering. If either divests then it rapidly degrades.

"Naive" is a big understatement.

I can’t think of any example in which it has gone like this, but some in which it has: The most prominent in my mind would be software transitioning from “of course you get the code so you can extend it yourself” to what we have today (please correct me if I’m wrong about this, I’ve only read about it).

Users at large (individuals and companies alike) don’t care much about a freedom taken away when a product is a few % better than another, so the biggest player sees if they can get away with it. And once they do it, everyone else does too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com