On mute, don’t give him a microphone.

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/50124871

As a Canadian, I’m seeing too many people thinking everything can now immediately go back to “normal”. None of the actual work has started yet.

Yes, absolutely celebrate this, but if you act like things are “over” you need a reality check. Americans voted against Trump in 2020, and then elected him again after seeing what he did the first time.

So yes, this is absolutely a great first step, but it needs to be followed with criminals being held accountable and Americans not voting the other way again in 2 or 4 years. Considering Democratic leaders are already talking about not holding criminals accountable it seems prudent to splash some water on people acting like this is over and they can stop pushing.

Then you’ll be glad to know he’s never happy. Everything he has and it’s never enough. It’s never enough money, enough power, enough control, enough praise… He is always perpetually unhappy that he doesn’t have more.

That would just encourage hidden convoluted cheat codes that the devs you use to clear the checks.

I believe AI is smarter than Sam Altman.

Sam Altman believes he is smarter than scientists.

The difference between $473 million and Elon Musk’s total net worth is roughly a trillion dollars.

They haven’t finished cheating harder this time. The results still have to be honored and the new representatives sworn in.

Yes, I fully agree you’ve said nothing at all.

Except in minority report the system was accurate over 50% of the time.

If there’s no difference in meaning then it doesn’t matter which you use. If there’s a difference in understanding it makes more sense to choose the clearer option.

As I said before: we’re not going to find a middle ground between you claiming your distinction is meaningful, and me saying it’s meaningless. One we remove that from the conversation there’s nothing left because you haven’t really said anything else.

even if they’re confused about what monopolies are.

So if you just said obscenely large market value that doesn’t diminish or minimize the risk, and neatly avoids the confusion about what monopolies are.

why does overwhelming market share matter?’ and the answer is ‘because that’s a monopoly.’

That’s a tautology. It would be equally relevant to say “why do monopolies matter? The answer is because that’s an overwhelming market share.”

Neither the word “monopoly” nor the phrase “overwhelming market share” inherently share the concerns of that situation. You’ve even been arguing that the using the word monopoly doesn’t actually matter: “do nothing about it, keep doing what you’ve been doing is fine”.

And to be clear: are you saying to disagree with the fact that Steam does not satisfy the dictionary definition of monopoly? Or with that fact that people are more likely to be familiar with the dictionary definition rather than the legal definition?

Fact: Steam meets the legal definition of Monopoly

Fact: Steam does not meet the dictionary definition of Monopoly

Fact: Steam has an obscenely high market share regardless of which definition you are using.

Please let me know which fact you disagree with.

Give the conversation you remember so well from a year ago, you are well aware some people will have the dictionary definition of monopoly in mind. Likely because it is the most accessible. You could have bypassed all this nonsense about facts 1 and 2 if you just went straight to fact 3, but that would have required you actually caring about fact 3 more than fact 1.

Meanwhile any conversation about Steam’s marketshare - for example an article asking “Can anyone overthrow Steam on PC?” - kinda has to bring this up anyway. It has an impact… and a lot of people will implicitly or explicitly say nuh-uh, at length.

Except, the article doesn’t say the word “monopoly” anywhere in it. If you wanted to have a conversation about Steam’s market share you could have just mentioned Steam’s market share. Then you don’t have to worry about other definitions of monopoly. “Steam has a significant portion of the market share” is true regardless, and easily followed with “and that’s a concern because…”

But you’re not interested in a clearly communicated conversation. You’re just arguing semantics and pretending you’re making a point.

You want people to acknowledge that Steam meets the legal definition of a Monopoly. I acknowledged that.

I am explicitly telling you there’s no mandatory action

But you said before

The risk is still real when what we do about it is shrug and wait.

And now your saying to do nothing but shrug and wait.

you are still implicitly arguing against that label

Implicit arguments are allowed now? People insisting that Steam is a monopoly are implicitly arguing action should be taken about it.

In the same vein as your claim that insisting people use the word monopoly, is just insisting on the word used and nothing more; me arguing that the word used doesn’t matter, is just me saying it doesn’t matter what word you use if the actions are the same and nothing more.

It is crucial for people to recognize…

And then do nothing about it? Why is that so crucial?

Steam is a vanishingly rare example of a monopoly that works out fine. It is still a monopoly. The “fine” part is far less durable than the “monopoly” part.

I don’t disagree with you, I just don’t see the point you’re making other than pedantry. “Steam is fine right now, it might not always be fine, I suggest doing nothing about it” has no practical difference from “Steam is fine. Do nothing about it.” The actionables are the same.

I am literally telling you the practical path forward is whatever you were doing already

“I only care about the language being used.” As I said, pedantry and nothing else.

be it today or next year, I will still try

And will you be just as upset in a year from now when your failure to say anything of substance has again caused me to not remember you?

Let’s take a step back here: You want people to acknowledge that Steam meets the legal definition of a Monopoly. I acknowledged that. We both agree that by the same legal definition Steam is a legal monopoly. We agree that Steam is currently fine but that doesn’t mean it always will be. We also agree that beyond these acknowledgements you aren’t suggesting any action be taken, or behaviours be changed.

So now we’re just arguing about the words used to describe your argument, just like you were arguing about the words used to define Steam: further pedantry. We’re not going to find any common ground between you thinking your distinction is meaningful and me calling it meaningless.

So your response to Steam being a monopoly is indistinguishable from

shrug and wait.

As I said before, you don’t actually have a point other then pedantry. It is very important to you that people use the legal definition of monopoly and apply it to Steam, behaviors don’t have to change at all, actions don’t have to be taken, but my god you will spend days arguing for the label being used.

The risk is still real when what we do about it is shrug and wait.

I’m going to quote the thing I said before, that you quoted and didn’t actually reply to:

what do you propose be done about it?

You’re going on and on about how important it is the we recognize Steam is legally speaking a monopoly, but for the life of me I don’t know what your point is. “Steam has a large market share”? No shit. Maybe I’m getting confused because you keep insisting the sky is azure, not blue, and I’m expecting you to have a fucking point where the difference matters.

I don’t see any practical difference between “we need to be aware that they could potentially abuse their position” and “shrug and wait.”

It was the sixth thing you said, well after you invited me to a conversation you hadn’t even started yet. You seem upset that people aren’t reading your mind to know what definitions you are wanting to use, or to know the thing you are concerned about is the thing you haven’t even said yet. If you want to have conversations with people you need to communicate what’s in your head to them first, instead of getting pissy that they aren’t responding to the things you haven’t said.

I never said Steam being a Monopoly is a good thing, but Steam being a monopoly is not because Steam is a bad thing. I would absolutely love more alternatives to Steam in the market, but that needs to come from competitors who aren’t garbage. Calling Steam a monopoly is again irrelevant because what do you propose be done about it? Break up Steam into smaller companies? Steam is a monopoly because it does better than the competition, that’s not legal grounds to break it up. Encourage competition? That can be done regardless of Steam being a monopoly. But competition needs to bring more to the table than “not being Steam” in order to be supported.