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by IshKebab 87 days ago
> Gamers' vehement defense of what is effectively a monopoly continues to confuse me.

It is a monopoly but that can be a good thing sometimes. Steam is really good! Is it 30% cut good? Maybe not but I do think Valve has managed to keep Steam good for a very long time and if they lose their monopoly they're going to have a strong incentive to fuck things up.

Another example is WhatsApp. Sure, sucks for Google and Apple that WhatsApp have a watertight monopoly in most of Europe (and probably much of the rest of the world; I haven't checked). But it's pretty great for actually users. We've had at least a decade of totally free messaging that everyone has with no ads and e2e encryption.

Meta are just about starting to fuck it up but it's been a pretty great run.

1 comments

Why would Apple care if WhatsApp has a monopoly? They don’t make money from iMessage
Network effects on iMessage mean people buy iPhones
That must be why they're so happy to open up iMessage to Android in the US!
iMessage works fine with SMS and RCS. How would “opening iMessage” benefit Android users?
> iMessage works fine with ... RCS

...because europe forced it to be...