Elizabeth Warren slammed for wanting to ‘break up Apple’s smartphone monopoly’
Elizabeth Warren slammed for wanting to ‘break up Apple’s smartphone monopoly’
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren says she’s not a fan of “green texts on iPhones” and that it’s “time to break up Apple’s smartphone monopoly,” but statistics show the tech giant doesn’t have exclusive c…
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U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren says she’s not a fan of “green texts on iPhones” and that it’s “time to break up Apple’s smartphone monopoly,” but statistics show the tech giant doesn’t have exclusive control over the market.
The Department of Justice announced a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Apple in March, accusing the California-based company of engineering an illegal monopoly in smartphones that boxes out competitors, stifles innovation and keeps prices artificially high.
Warren took to social media this week, displaying her support for the suit that takes aim at how Apple allegedly molds its technology and business relationships to “extract more money from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, publishers, small businesses, and merchants, among others.”
Warren specifically called out how people who don’t have iPhones are blocked from sending blue iMessages as messages from Androids and other devices are green. Those without iPhones also face other restrictions, the Massachusetts senator added.
“Green texts on iPhones, they’re ruining relationships. That’s right,” Warren said in a video posted on X Thursday. “Non-iPhone users everywhere are being excluded from group texts. From sports teams chats to birthday chats to vacation plan chats, they’re getting cut out.”
“And who’s to blame here? Apple,” she continued . “That’s just one of the dirty tactics that Apple uses to keep a stranglehold on the smartphone market. … It’s time to break up Apple’s monopoly now.”
Critics quickly called Warren out for spreading misinformation and for focusing on what they believe is a non-issue.
“It would be nice if Android users could use iMessage features,” an X user responded, “but why would anyone think this sort of micromanaging of businesses is the legitimate role of the government?”
An alert attached to Warren’s post shows context that readers added and “thought people might want to know.” It includes data from Statista highlighting how the iPhone had a 57% market share compared to Android’s 42% in North America, as of January.
The alert, which was removed as of Friday evening, also contained information from Investopedia around how a “monopoly is exclusive control, or no close substitutes. The current market share of iPhone v Android does not meet that definition.”
Attorneys general from 16 states filed the lawsuit with the Department of Justice in federal court in New Jersey. Massachusetts AG Andrea Campbell did not sign onto the suit which seeks to stop Apple from undermining technologies that compete with its own apps — in areas including streaming, messaging and digital payments.
The suit is the latest example of aggressive antitrust enforcement by an administration that has also taken on Google, Amazon and other tech giants with the stated aim of making the digital universe more fair, innovative and competitive.
“If left unchallenged, Apple will only continue to strengthen its smartphone monopoly,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement last month. “The Justice Department will vigorously enforce antitrust laws that protect consumers from higher prices and fewer choices.”
Apple has called the suit “wrong on the facts and the law” and said it “will vigorously defend against it.”
If successful, the lawsuit would “hinder our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple — where hardware, software, and services intersect” and would “set a dangerous precedent, empowering the government to take a heavy hand in designing people’s technology,” the company said in a statement last month.
Actually that's the case where she, being incompetent, found the right point to press.
She literally attacks the use of network effect to preserve oligopoly. Not knowing that.
And yeah, there is deniability for Apple in the sense that "this isn't intentional, normies are just creating these ape social dynamics all by themselves", but their ads etc have pretty consistent emotional messages. Yes, they do endorse it.
And they couldn't refrain from their usual bullshit even in the answer to this.
Blue texts are sent using proprietary encryption. Green texts are standard SMS/MMS protocol. Apple has pressed GSM to include encrypted RCS for SMS/MMS. The government is not a fan. She can be upset, but there’s no reason for Apple to give away proprietary encryption software or foot the server cost for transmission.
First of all proprietary encryption is BS which should be equated to obfuscation instead of encryption.
Second, I think I've addressed this:
but their ads etc have pretty consistent emotional messages. Yes, they do endorse it.
Permanently Deleted
This is just straight wrong. iMessage on android has worked by connecting to a remote Mac, which then connects to imessage. The protocol is locked to their hardware.
And, even if there was a true open source reimplimplementation of iMessage, that would say nothing about the security of Apple's proprietary implementation of the iMessage end to end encryption.
This is like if a neural net had been fed Apple ads and Apple fans' weird ideas on computing.
Try to understand that imitating the way Apple PR talks doesn't sound geeky, it sounds awfully ignorant.
Thing is with the iMessage argument is nobody is forced to use it. If green bubbles really are “ruining relationships” wouldn’t Americans be installing WhatsApp or another messenger like the rest of the world?
There are plenty of good reasons to criticise Apple’s behaviour. But I’m not convinced the popularity of iMessage is one of them.
How will you move to WhatsApp if everyone else uses iMessage? Europe has the same issue, but reversed. Everyone uses WhatsApp and can't jump to Signal/Telegram because they're not as popular.
As a non-American stuck with a terrible dual Whatsapp setup I can't kill due to network effects, this is true.
The counterargument is that any one platform will have this issue, so you'd need full interoperability. Except in direct messaging full interoperability is a bit of a security issue.
Don't jump to Telegram. It sucks.
WhatsApp sucks too, but at least it's protected from hooligans. Unlike Telegram.
From state surveillance viewpoint both suck.