This „we own the glass“ idea is completely insane. How does an industry degenerate to the point where they consider acceptable to base their business model on owning part of the product they sell you?
These days devices do what we ask when it benefits their real owners, and refuse to do what we ask of them when it doesn't.
It wasn't an overnight thing, but the temperature in the pot has been increasing for well over a two decades and it's getting more than a bit sweaty.
It's not like Doctorow, the EFF, and a bunch of others didn't warn us. They told us this would happen. Like exactly this.
[1] Zig is, I think, the only living counterexample.
But you're right I'm sure that if there hadn't been the GCC there wouldn've been a ton of competing compilers. I'm sure that it was the existence of Apache that ruined computing and brought about the enshittification of the web not MS trying to force everyone to cater to IE and then Google doing the same with Chrome, it's all just because of that evil Open Source.
Sure, sure. And how exactly is software not also free-as-in-beer when any consumer can just download it themselves?
> if there hadn't been the GCC there wouldn've been a ton of competing compilers.
As I already noted in reply to your sibling comment, which you conveniently chose to ignore, every single one of those competing compilers bar one is funded by big tech. You can count the number of compiler developers who make a living without being funded by big tech, in the entire world, on your hands. GCC development is itself supported by big tech.
> Google doing the same with Chrome, it's all just because of that evil Open Source.
Do you need to be reminded that Chromium is open-source software? There is no market for competition to Chrome because no browser developer could compete with "free". Firefox is open-source and also propped up by billions in Google funding. There are zero consumer-viable browsers that are not just a Chromium or Firefox reskin.
You even brought up IE, which is an example of the exact principle I'm talking about. It wasn't open-source, but, same as open-source software, it was free, and this big tech-funded free software killed its paid competitor (Netscape). This was a huge deal at the time, enough for the US government to get involved in antitrust. Then MS got let off with a gentle warning, everybody shrugged their shoulders, developed amnesia, and decided actually it's great if we let 5 or so tech monopolies undercut all of their competitors with 'free' software and solidify complete control of the market.
Active regulation of the marketplace is needed.
I can remember when this simple point was obvious to almost everyone.
you sell a product -> you are responsible about the product
with a ".. -> you must be honest about the product (/what the products does, provides, etc.)"
to see how absurdly not followed this common sense(^1) is in the us look at supplements
1. provider are not hold responsible, non small parts of sold supplements are harmful in one way or another. Even cases like supplements advertised for pregnant woman with highly dangerous components for pregnant woman existed, no major change followed.
2. high amounts (AFIK 80% or so) of supplements sold in the US are severely dishonest and don't quite contain what is advertised. And this isn't just about it technically containing the supplements, but in a form the body can't absurd. But it goes so bad that "it's just sugar pills" is more on the harmless side... (and even that is dangerous given that many people take supplements for fixing health issues caused by to little of what the supplement).
not only has the US not fixed it when it started going out of hand, they went explicitly out of their way to not fix it.
(^1): (Common sense for anyone looking a bit into market dynamics/consumer protection etc.)
Just to make clear that while (2) is at least an exaggeration unless you really stretch the issues with GRAS components not being adequately safety tested, it's certainly true that evidence of benefit is thin.
Personally I'd love to see the FDA actually regulate supplements, including actually testing additives for safety rather than falling back on GRAS sketchiness.
But we can't even test food for parasites and bacteria so I guess it falls to the consumer to somehow get enough information to make an informed decision.
That said, I’m not arguing that we don’t need laws today - we do, or at least I have no other idea how to do a course correction from where we are. Preferably wide-range ones that alter the whole consumer-producer relationships.
But the key thing is not the laws, it’s the attitude (individual and corporate) towards others. Can’t legislate that, I’m afraid.
It also wasn't universally true. E.g. the story of Mad Munz creating TVs that worked only for 90% of the customers (who had good enough reception and needed less signal cleanup). His idea was to capture 90% of the market with a cheaper product, while shafting 10% of the consumers and shamelessly send them to other vendors when they reported their troubles and he already had their money.
https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/madman-mun...
I'm implying that parliaments in multiple developed countries are rapidly devolving and ceding their powers and/or work to the unelected or unrelated officials.
The fact that it's now infecting other non-software consumer products is a reason why congress should kill this with fire. Companies are putting screens onto products specifically so they can force an EULA on customers.
Literally every business is working towards a solution where consumers own nothing and they own everything. Games, music, movies. They want to sell you subscriptions to use shit like your car or your fridge. They want to double dip on that by making you not only pay for the ability to use the stuff you bought, but also so that they can sell everything you do on it to advertisers. This is even especially true with all the shit people feed LLMs daily for work or personal purposes.
This is the end state of an unregulated capitalist market without consumer protections.
It's called stage-4 capitalism: profit by any and all means.
Alternatives existed. People thought they were getting more for their money with “smart” tvs, and bought those. It was fucking dumb, and nearly everyone participated.
Sony is out there with no ad/data platform to speak of, I believe? And projectors, I suppose. But there are almost no clean alternatives in living room appropriate panels. Even monitors are starting to go the way TVs did.
Neoliberalism. The only thing that keeps companies in good behaviour are strong regulations and harsh penalties (prison time) for perpetrators. Remove that and corporations will become feudal systems to pay tribute to.
https://www.streamtvinsider.com/advertising/roku-vizio-lean-...
If consumers are unwilling to shell out for a TV priced high enough that the manufacturer doesn't need to do things like this to earn a (decent) profit, then what we've got is what you get.
You could certainly argue that the industry should've held the line, but that ignores human nature. One "innovative" manufacturer was always going to break ranks then the rest would follow, especially since the typical consumer appears (judging by the lack of non smart TV's for sale at consumer prices) to prefer lower prices to lack of tracking features. I think people very much like being able to buy a 65" tv for USD399.
If you want to mandate the sales of TVs that don't track, get a law passed. I suspect it'd be deeply unpopular once the resulting price rises were known.
The problem is, even if the device is priced at cost plus a reasonable margin, they can make more margin by selling data that they acquire by spying. No matter the margin on the sale, there's still more money to make by selling that data. There is no upper limit that magically prevents the manufacturer from looking for other avenues to increase profit. "Premium" device priced 3x the "reasonable" price? Still more money to be made selling data.
Now, factor in the race to the bottom on selling price, and those data sales just look that much more enticing.
They wanted the “smart” tvs. Overwhelmingly. “We” chose this hellscape when we had the opportunity to say no.
So I think the person you’re replying to is kinda right. We didn’t get forced into this so much as everyone collectively said, “Yeah, that’s what I want.”
But you're right: obviously there must have been people buying smart tvs in a time when there were still dumb tvs available, but what motivated these "people", where they came from, and where they have been hiding,... it's all a complete mystery to me. Last time I bought a tv, there were still some dumb models available. I may get a new display for whatever computer I'm working on every couple of years, but to me a tv is the sort of appliance you'd replace maybe once every 20 or 30 years at most, so I guess I have only been able to vote with my wallet once. Obviously voting with your wallet is as pointless as voting for certain politicians: so far I have yet to find any evidence that anything people vote for is subsequently reflected in reality in any way.
You know, I’ve been thinking, I don’t think im being paid enough! Im giving myself a raise. We can do that, right?!
Companies can develop new products without your advice. In fact consumers often don't know what they want.
>people will pay whatever the price is
Then why do businesses have sales? If prices don't matter why would businesses choose to make less money per sale?
I'd urge reading up on revealed preference and product discovery. It cuts both ways in that, sure, a company can offer a product on the market that no buyer asked for and have it sell well, but then, the media can expose some rather unsavory facts about that same product and subsequently (consequently?) have it not sell.
> Then why do businesses have sales? If prices don't matter why would businesses choose to make less money per sale?
It's worth picking this apart. Prices not mattering is usually expressed in economics-ese as price-inelastic demand, and that's usually not what's happening. Sales are a mechanism for drumming up demand for a product, with the hope that the additional volume will compensate for the marginally lower margin.
I'm not sure what point you are contesting.
>It's worth picking this apart.
They were rhetorical questions.
>price-inelastic demand
With this you could argue that the absolute price does not matter, but the relative price between products that can substitute each other do. In this comment chain it is being argued that this kind of device wins on relative price.
>Sales are a mechanism for drumming up demand for a product, with the hope that the additional volume will compensate for the marginally lower margin.
It is for increasing demand, but making a higher rate of profit on the item is not the main reason. Things like being able to clear inventory, or to learn about what the current demand curve looks like (to know if prices should be adjusted) are more common purposes.
No??? Revealed preference is dependent on what information is known. The analysis is made easier if the information is perfect, but that is not at all a prerequisite to being able to lean on revealed preference.
> In fact, the revealed preferences is for TVs that appear not to spy on you, that's why they hide that information!
Exactly! Consider though that, as the information landscape changes, so does the revealed preference. Notably, when things like TVs spying on their buyers comes to light, a preference can be revealed that buyers don't want TVs that spy on them.
Like, it's entirely rational for LG to want to hide this fact about their televisions, provided that they have the inkling that this would be unpopular. Their behavior in trying to suppress this press leads me to believe that they know exactly how unpopular this is, and they're trying to get away with it anyway.
The reason it's bullshit is that we don't have a free market. There are constraints and asymmetric information and inelastic demand and all kinds of other forces at play that completely negate any supposed wisdom you might hope to find in free market theory.
And if the market is not free—if consumers do not have a fully open choice, where every possible feature and option (including things like "lower price in exchange for constant surveillance") is individually selectable, or they don't have enough access to different options, or they don't have enough time and brainpower to exhaustively research every option—then what consumers buy in aggregate is not reflective of what they choose.
It's reflective of what the manufacturers choose to push.