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“No Apple tax means we will lower prices” - Proton announces lower prices for users by up to 30% after US ruling against Apple fees

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  • Andy Yen went out of his way to criticize Democrats on antitrust, which is how you can tell it's actually a pro-Trump position unsupported by the actual facts.

    I like Gail Slater. She's possibly the best choice among people who Trump likes, to head DOJ's Antitrust Division. She has bipartisan bona fides.

    But to say that Democrats, after 4 years of Lina Khan leading the FTC, and a bunch of the reforms that the Biden FTC and DOJ made to merger standards and their willingness to sue/seek big penalties for antitrust violations, aren't more serious than Republicans about reining in big tech consolidation and about stronger enforcement of antitrust principles, completely flips around the history and is a bad faith argument.

    Andy Yen could've praised Gail Slater, and that would be that. Instead, he took a post by Trump that didn't even mention Democrats, and made it about how the Democrats are bad on taking on big tech. That's the problem everyone had with it.

    Andy praised Gail Slater publicly, and they even worked together.

  • He endorsed the republican party. He said we should clean house of democrats. Is that not declaring party loyalty? It was also a completely unnecessary comment, in response to nothing. It was shortly after Trump's election when every CEO went out of their way to kowtow to the new regime. Its transparently a loyalty pledge to the new boss

    He didn't endorse the republican party.

    The fact that you inflate the meaning of that tweet to make it more meaningful than it is, doesn't mean he did anything of the sort.
    The tweet happened after the election but before the government, and it was an endorsement of the antitrust appointee. He also expressed his opinion that republicans were more likely than democrats to fight big tech monopolies in the antitrust space. This is far from an endorsement.

    It was also a completely unnecessary comment, in response to nothing.

    It was in response to Trump's tweet about the antitrust appointee. I would say quite relevant context for a tweet about the antitrust appointee.

    It was unnecessary, true. Like every tweet. He expressed his unnecessary opinion, the same way we are doing now.

  • I can only speak for myself... But I had 2+ years at university before declaring a (STEM) major, allowing me to take courses in political science, history, etc.

    So, as someone with a STEM degree, in a field of specialists who have zero understanding of the real world outside of their field, the difference is instantly recognizable.

    The idea that a more well rounded education can ever be a bad thing is just straight up ignorant and it comes off as some sort of insecurity on your part.

    Nobody is kept from taking additional education if they want to, like you did. But the general education should be from school and school education needs to define the standard of what everyone should know or should at least have known at some point so he or she can refresh upon it.

    If you make it mandatory to make academic education contain every subject like school did, you will end up with programs taking 20 years instead of 5 years to graduate. If you want to discriminate against certain subjects you end up in the same trap of defining certain subjects as relevant and others as irrelevant, like the criticized "STEM-lords"

  • Maybe you should reconsider your threat model. You seem to be very light on information. If political views is an issue than you're the issue.

    Political views are 100% the issue, they drive all other business decisions. If you're fucked enough to support what's going on in the US government, I can't trust you to be a normal human, let alone run a business.

    Fuck off with your apologisim for nazis

  • This. It's amazing how naive people here can be just because they fanboyed some random CEO before they were revealed to be problematic.

    That's just as hominem to say people are fanboying the CEO. I never heard the name of the CEO until people started complaining about him. Then I read the statements he put out and that people are hysterical over and reading into as if he's some Trump fanboy. The guys not even an American. He doesn't live in the US. He just runs a service as an alternative to the big tech companies. Was he even in the US for anything but his university years and he's 40?

    Americans read more into him than his record and statements say. Not everyone's politics revolve around Americans. I'm waiting for American leftist to turn on Shawn Fain too for supporting Trump auto tariffs and be anti auto workers union because too many in the union are Trump supporters and even someone in opposition like Shawn Fain is supporting a Trump policy. That's even more direct and influential than a guy in Europe that runs a niche privacy centric internet service company

    Problematic, barely. It's a handful of statements months ago compared to his life of work. Magnifying glass to your whole life and people would likely find something problematic. If this guy is representative of what a problematic person is, the world would be pretty solid. Waste of energy to be so anti this guy and Proton when it's a service more conducive to privacy rights than anything I or probably any of us have done. Problematic has become such an empty insult with how easily it's thrown around with such passion. Waste of passion

  • He didn't endorse the republican party.

    The fact that you inflate the meaning of that tweet to make it more meaningful than it is, doesn't mean he did anything of the sort.
    The tweet happened after the election but before the government, and it was an endorsement of the antitrust appointee. He also expressed his opinion that republicans were more likely than democrats to fight big tech monopolies in the antitrust space. This is far from an endorsement.

    It was also a completely unnecessary comment, in response to nothing.

    It was in response to Trump's tweet about the antitrust appointee. I would say quite relevant context for a tweet about the antitrust appointee.

    It was unnecessary, true. Like every tweet. He expressed his unnecessary opinion, the same way we are doing now.

    10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.

    Bro I mean come on, this is literally an endorsement of the republican party. I don't know how more explicit it can get. You're asking people to not believe their own eyes here

  • Well, it's worth leveraging your status to communicate to the politicians (i.e. this tweet). In this case, it cost him more than I think he was expecting.

    lol that is done with money, not social media posts. A CEO should know that.

  • This post did not contain any content.

    Companies lowering prices is unheard of

  • lol that is done with money, not social media posts. A CEO should know that.

    why would he want to donate to trump? Public praise is more important in many instances, besides.

  • In a sufficiently competitive market, the maximum is related to costs.

    Proton is trying to get cheap marketing.

    It's not. It's just related to the competition AKA what people are willing to pay.

  • It's not. It's just related to the competition AKA what people are willing to pay.

    With enough competition, someone is going to compete on price to attract customers. They obviously can't sell for less than their costs (again, sufficiently competitive so you don't get monopolies starving their competition), so that's the floor for what they can sustainably charge.

    It doesn't matter what the service is, if there are enough viable alternatives, at least one of them will go for the value play. Customers aren't willing to pay more than they have to, so they'll be attracted to lower cost options.

  • With enough competition, someone is going to compete on price to attract customers. They obviously can't sell for less than their costs (again, sufficiently competitive so you don't get monopolies starving their competition), so that's the floor for what they can sustainably charge.

    It doesn't matter what the service is, if there are enough viable alternatives, at least one of them will go for the value play. Customers aren't willing to pay more than they have to, so they'll be attracted to lower cost options.

    What I'm saying is that competition is included in "what people are willing to pay". Cost of production is not.

  • Yeah, even of the companies don’t pocket the difference, he’s an idiot to suggest that this will cut inflation.

    This guy is just not very smart, I think.

    So, I initially wanted to just kneejerk respond yes, it is absurd to suggest this ruling against Apple... would have any kind of generally noticable effect on inflation.

    But I wanted to check the actual numbers.

    Ok, so, total US consumer spending in 2024 is about $64 Trillion.

    ... The Apple App Store generated $105 Billion in revenue in 2024.

    Ok, napkin math: 30% off of lets just say literally all App Store payments... , ok, we've cut costs by about $32 Billion... shave that off the $64 Trillion...

    And voila!

    A rough general price reduction of... 0.05%

    Call a median US yearly income $60K, and they've saved $30 bucks. Maybe the cost of either one or two DoorDash meals, depending on where you live.... probably much closer to just one.

    We're saved from inflation rofl!

  • What I'm saying is that competition is included in "what people are willing to pay". Cost of production is not.

    Sure. But if people aren't willing to pay more than the cost of production, games wouldn't be made. The cost of production is the floor, and the cost people are willing to pay is the ceiling, and competition finds a line somewhere in the middle. The more competition, the closer it is to the cost of production.

  • Companies lowering prices is unheard of

    They lowered the price of Pass. https://proton.me/blog/proton-pass-price-change

  • Political views are 100% the issue, they drive all other business decisions. If you're fucked enough to support what's going on in the US government, I can't trust you to be a normal human, let alone run a business.

    Fuck off with your apologisim for nazis

    I bet every company has at least one employee with right-wing political views. Choosing a product based on some random quotes by employees is stupid.

  • Microsoft Bans Employees From Using DeepSeek App

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    L
    (Premise - suppose I accept that there is such a definable thing as capitalism) I'm not sure why you feel the need to state this in a discussion that already assumes it as a necessary precondition of, but, uh, you do you. People blaming capitalism for everything then build a country that imports grain, while before them and after them it’s among the largest exporters on the planet (if we combine Russia and Ukraine for the “after” metric, no pun intended). ...what? What does this have to do with literally anything, much less my comment about innovation/competition? Even setting aside the wild-assed assumptions you're making about me criticizing capitalism means I 'blame [it] for everything', this tirade you've launched into, presumably about Ukraine and the USSR, has no bearing on anything even tangentially related to this conversation. People praising capitalism create conditions in which there’s no reason to praise it. Like, it’s competitive - they kill competitiveness with patents, IP, very complex legal systems. It’s self-regulating and self-optimizing - they make regulations and do bailouts preventing sick companies from dying, make laws after their interests, then reactively make regulations to make conditions with them existing bearable, which have a side effect of killing smaller companies. Please allow me to reiterate: ...what? Capitalists didn't build literally any of those things, governments did, and capitalists have been trying to escape, subvert, or dismantle those systems at every turn, so this... vain, confusing attempt to pin a medal on capitalism's chest for restraining itself is not only wrong, it fails to understand basic facts about history. It's the opposite of self-regulating because it actively seeks to dismantle regulations (environmental, labor, wage, etc), and the only thing it optimizes for is the wealth of oligarchs, and maybe if they're lucky, there will be a few crumbs left over for their simps. That’s the problem, both “socialist” and “capitalist” ideal systems ignore ape power dynamics. I'm going to go ahead an assume that 'the problem' has more to do with assuming that complex interacting systems can be simplified to 'ape (or any other animal's) power dynamics' than with failing to let the richest people just do whatever they want. Such systems should be designed on top of the fact that jungle law is always allowed So we should just be cool with everybody being poor so Jeff Bezos or whoever can upgrade his megayacht to a gigayacht or whatever? Let me say this in the politest way I know how: LOL no. Also, do you remember when I said this? ‘Won’t someone please think of the billionaires’ is wearing kinda thin You know, right before you went on this very long-winded, surreal, barely-coherent ramble? Did you imagine I would be convinced by literally any of it when all it amounts to is one giant, extraneous, tedious equivalent of 'Won't someone please think of the billionaires?' Simp harder and I bet maybe you can get a crumb or two yourself.
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    kolanaki@pawb.socialK
    Internet access should be a utility like electricity and water until all three, along with housing, medicine, and food, can be free to all.
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    When a Lemmy instance owner gets a legal request from a foreign countries government to take down content, after they’re done shitting themselves they’ll take the content down or they’ll have to implement a country wide block on that country, along with not allowing any citizens of that country to use their instance no matter where they are located. Block me, I don’t care. You’re just proving that you can’t handle the truth and being challenged with it.
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    IMO stuff like that is why a good trainer is important. IMO it's stronger evidence that proper user-centered design should be done and a usable and intuitive UX and set of APIs developed. But because the buyer of this heap of shit is some C-level, there is no incentive to actually make it usable for the unfortunate peons who are forced to interact with it. See also SFDC and every ERP solution in existence.
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    ulrich@feddit.orgU
    If you want a narrative, look at all the full-price $250k Roadster pre-orders they've been holding onto for like 8 years now with zero signs of production and complete silence for the last...5 years?
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    Yesterday on reddit I saw a photo a patient shot over the shoulder of his doctor of his computer monitor. It had ChadGPT full with diagnosis requests. https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1keqstk/doctor_using_chatgpt_for_a_visit_due_to_knife_cut/
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    Sure, he wasn't an engineer, so no, Jobs never personally "invented" anything. But Jobs at least knew what was good and what was shit when he saw it. Under Tim Cook, Apple just keeps putting out shitty unimaginative products, Cook is allowing Apple to stagnate, a dangerous thing to do when they have under 10% market share.
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    This is why they are businessmen and not politicians or influencers