Daily-Dose

Contents

• From New Yorker
• From Vox
• From The Hindu: Sports
• From The Hindu: National News
• From BBC: Europe
• From Ars Technica
• From Jokes Subreddit

From New Yorker

• As Omicron Spreads, Jerome Powell Is in the Hot Seat - With inflation and the new coronavirus variant buffeting the economy, the Federal Reserve chair is attempting a feat that Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke failed spectacularly to pull off. - link

• The Accidental Revolutionary Leading Belarus’s Uprising - How Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya came to challenge her country’s dictatorship. - link

• The Ultra-Nationalist Éric Zemmour Makes a Bizarre Bid for the French Presidency - The far-right leader’s campaign carries alarming echoes of Vichy France. - link

• How Bruce Foxworth Changed the Rules of the Game - The tennis pro specialized in defying expectations. - link

• The Pro-Life Movement Plans for a Future Without Roe - Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, is preparing for new abortion laws to pass in at least thirty states. - link

From Vox

• Germany’s new government has big plans. It might be a shock after Merkel. -

  

  Olaf Scholz takes over as the new chancellor. What to know about the “traffic light” coalition he leads.

  The Angela Merkel era is officially over. Germany’s new coalition government takes power Wednesday, a break with 16 years of conservative-led rule under Merkel.

  Maybe not too dramatic a break. German politics are built on stability and consensus-building. This new government, a three-party coalition forged through compromise, is a prime example of that.

  But the new chancellor Olaf Scholz, a center-left Social Democrat (SPD), will lead a coalition government of the SPD, Greens, and the pro-business Free Democrats that has a more modern vision and set of policy priorities. It looks as if it will replace Merkel’s piecemeal approach to governing — pulling the country along slowly, slowly, to avoid any controversy — with a government that is a bit more progressive and a bit more future-oriented.

“After 16 years of very little progress, I think Germany is in for a bit of a modernization shock,” said Christian Odendahl, the Berlin-based chief economist for the Centre for European Reform.

The coalition is embracing policies like lowering the voting age to 16, expanding citizenship rights, investing in affordable housing, legalizing marijuana, and accelerating some of the country’s climate commitments.

This isn’t a revolution. But modest change is still change — if the coalition can deliver on its proposals. This is still an odd political marriage, and the compromise that brought the government to power will be tested early on. Scholz will take over as Germany is facing a dangerous coronavirus wave, and how this government handles it may hint at how cohesive, effective, and stable it really is. And stability, maybe more than anything else, may be the measure of political success.

Scholz has already pulled off a victory by getting the coalition together

Olaf Scholz and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) narrowly won the September federal 2021 elections. He previously served as the vice chancellor and finance minister in Merkel’s government, and the campaign framed him as a competent and stable leader — the next best thing to the still very popular Merkel.

It worked, just enough. The SPD didn’t win enough seats in the Bundestag (the German parliament) to govern on its own, but neither did any other party, which meant some combination of parties would need to get together to form a governing coalition. This is the norm in German politics.

Neither of the two big parties, the SPD or the Christian Democratic Union, wanted to form a grand coalition (which had existed for 12 of Merkel’s 16 years as chancellor), which meant three parties would need to join up, a pretty rare phenomenon at the federal level that hasn’t happened since 1949. But the vote was close enough that the pro-business Free Democrats and the left-leaning, pro-environment Greens could choose who they wanted to work with, the SPD or the CDU. That gave them a lot of leverage, as they could basically anoint the next chancellor. Ultimately, the SPD, the Greens, and the Free Democrats agreed to go into talks.

It was still a bit awkward. This “traffic light” coalition — named for the respective party colors of red (SPD), yellow (FDP), and green (well, Greens) — isn’t exactly a natural ideological fit. The SPD and the Greens exist on the left side of the political spectrum, so they’re more in sync. But the Free Democrats are very pro-free market, and supports lower tax, which doesn’t always mix well with an ambitious social agenda.

Given these gaps, it seemed Merkel would be caretaker chancellor for many months more. Tense, long-drawn out negotiations, potentially lasting into 2022, were predicted. Instead, the negotiations happened with little public squabbling and few leaks. The three parties finalized a coalition deal in just about two months, outlined in a fairly detailed 177-page document. The consensus meant Merkel would come a few weeks shy of the record for longest-serving chancellor.

The coalition found ways to fit together everyone’s big priorities. Each got some, if not all, of what they wanted, which allowed them to sell this agreement to their respective bases.

The SPD, of course, gets the chancellery, along with important ministries like interior (think homeland security), which will allow them to beef up their security credentials, and housing and labor, core to their constituencies and reflective of the party’s platform on wages and housing.

The Greens scored the foreign ministry, to be led by party co-leader Annalena Baerbock, who has embraced a more human rights-centric foreign policy, especially when it comes to Russia and China, which is reflected to a degree in the document outlining the coalition’s vision. The Greens co-leader Robert Habeck will also lead a new economy and climate ministry, which will give the Greens the chance to work with Germany’s all-important industrial sector as it transitions to more climate-friendly policies.

The Free Democrats, for their part, won the very coveted finance ministry, to be headed by party leader Christian Lindner. This will give them power of the purse strings, potentially keeping any too-ambitious spending plans in check. The coalition agreement right now uses some interesting accounting, but has broadly agreed not to increase taxes to pay for programs on its agenda.

As far as compromises go, it’s not too bad.

Bernd Von Jutrczenka/picture alliance via Getty Images

But how stable this government will be once it takes over is the big question. Even before the coalition government was formally announced, the SPD, FDP, and the Greens started finding ways to work together. In November, the three parties worked together on possible new Covid-19 measures, and are planning to introduce new vaccine mandates. At the same time, the Bundestag let federal emergency orders expire in November, which Merkel’s government had used to help coordinate the country’s pandemic response over the past year. The FDP was largely opposed to those orders. Compromise, in action.

It’s just one data point, but there are some other hopeful signs. Sudha David-Wilp, a Berlin-based senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, said this coalition was really a choice — the parties wanted to do this, and work it out, and all had something to gain from doing it. It wasn’t, as in the past, a government of last resort. As Scholz himself said, negotiations happened in a “friendly but intense atmosphere, an atmosphere full of trust.”

If anything, self-interest could help keep the coalition intact. “All three parties agree that they are running this coalition with an eye on the 2025 election,” Odendahl said. “They want to make sure that this is not just a one-off, but that all three parties can gain from this and do reasonably and equally well in the next election.”

And despite the differences, the three parties are unified around some big things. All three are fairly socially progressive, for example, on things like LGBT rights, and the coalition has proposed an agenda including greater protections for trans people and ending restrictions on blood donations from gay men. The parties, too, may have different ideas of what progress means, but they are coalescing around the idea that Germany has to move a bit forward, and faster, to tackle challenges like climate change.

Scholz called the coalition “united by the will to make this country better.” Baerbock called it “a new start for more progress.” Lindner said: “It is our remit to modernize this country together.”

Supporters of both the Greens and the Free Democrats are some of Germany’s youngest voters, and so this orientation made sense — especially, again, if this is as much about holding power now as it is about holding power four years from now.

The coalition wants to lower the voting age in Germany to 16. It wants to legalize weed, an issue Merkel never really got behind. Climate change was a big issue among all parties during the 2021 elections, and this agreement speeds up the timeline for Germany to abandon coal, from 2038 to 2030. The plan also calls for social investments, like building 400,000 affordable housing units and raising the minimum wage to 12 euro an hour.

As big as some of these ambitions are, it’s worth remembering that the chancellor himself, Scholz, is still a 60-something guy who served as Merkel’s finance minister and ran with the campaign slogan “Kompetenz.”

“Olaf Scholz, who has the disposition, has the temperament, has even some of the affections of the outgoing chancellor who is admittedly rather legendary, so they’re getting almost more of the same in terms of the type of leadership,” said Eric Langenbacher, an expert on German and European politics and a professor at Georgetown University.

“But on the other hand,” Langenbacher added, “when you actually look at the details, this [coalition] document has the potential to be an incredibly progressive document.”

Big changes might come in domestic politics, but Germany may have a little different foreign policy too

From the outside, Merkel’s absence from the world stage feels like the major transformation.

Merkel asserted Germany’s role globally, and as she did so, her own profile grew, which also elevated the importance of Germany. “It was a hand-in-hand phenomenon,” David-Wilp said. “When she first entered office in 2005, it’s not like she thought that one day we were going to call her leader of the free world.”

Merkel leaves this legacy to the next German government. And on paper, at least, the major contours of German foreign policy remain intact. “It’s more about continuity than change,” said Markus Kaim, international security senior fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Kaim said the coalition agreement repeats a lot of the same themes as past coalition deals, including the importance of the trans-Atlantic relationship and the importance of the European Union.

Still, there are some shifts, especially when it comes to relations with China. There are specific mentions of issues like Taiwan, Xinjiang, and human rights violations, among others. The tone of the rhetoric in the coalition agreement is much more hawkish, which experts said has a lot to do with the Chinese government’s actions, and Germany’s perception of those policies, in the last four years. “It’s not just vague rhetoric, there’s actual mention of change,” said Tyson Barker, head of the technology and global affairs program for the German Council on Foreign Relations.

This may also tie into a subtler shift to a more values-driven foreign policy. The Greens, especially, have pushed to confront Russia and China on human rights abuses, and to elevate those concerns over financial ties with those powers. Merkel also espoused these values, she was also a pragmatist when it came to international politics.

Of course, no one is exactly sure what this might look like in practice, or if it is practiced at all. Merkel centralized foreign policy in the chancellery; she dealt with Europe, and China, and Russia, and the United States. Most experts believed the chancellery, and Scholz, would continue to define and guide foreign and EU policy, but his worldview is not really well understood. Another big question is how much influence the Greens will have, and whether any power will devolve back to the foreign ministry, giving Baerbock a larger international profile.

At the very least, experts said, it will likely help elevate climate change as an international issue even more. “When Baerbock goes into a meeting with another foreign minister, be it from Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, the United States, whereas in the old talking points or order of issues, climate change might have been sixth, or tenth, it’s going to be two or three,” Barker said.

Foreign policy or EU policy didn’t really factor very much into the election, but Scholz may quickly be tested on diplomatic skills, especially with the brewing crisis in Ukraine. At the same time, the new German government likely wants to focus much closer to home, especially on the pandemic, the recovery, and its social and economic policy agenda.

“Most people, I think, recognize that there needs to be this kind of greater domestic focus, and that will also renew, and perhaps empower Germany, so that it can continue this global role abroad,” Langenbacher said.

• Why adoption isn’t a replacement for abortion rights -

  

  From the dangers of pregnancy to the trauma of adoption, there’s a lot the Supreme Court didn’t acknowledge last week as Roe v. Wade hangs in the balance.

  Americans don’t need abortion because adoption exists.

  That, at least, was the implication of comments made by Justice Amy Coney Barrett last week, as the Supreme Court appeared to edge closer than ever to overturning the landmark 1973 decision Roe v. Wade and stripping Americans of the right to an abortion before viability.

  During oral arguments December 1 in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which concerns Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks, Barrett noted that all 50 states have safe haven laws, allowing a baby to be surrendered for adoption shortly after birth without criminal consequences for the parent. If abortion rights advocates are worried about the burdens of forced parenthood, she asked, “Why don’t the safe haven laws take care of that problem?”

  The idea that adoption is a panacea for unplanned pregnancy and a substitute for abortion is far from new. Anti-abortion activists “have been making this argument for decades,” says Marcela Howell, president of the nonprofit partnership In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda. According to researchers and people who work with parents and adoptees, it’s always been wrong.

  The argument that adoption can effectively replace abortion assumes that people who choose the former are able to simply sidestep all the challenges associated with parenthood. But people who choose adoption still become parents — they just don’t raise their children. They often experience significant grief and loss, for which they struggle to get support in a culture that views adoption through rose-colored glasses. Barrett seemed to be “assuming that people who terminate their rights are moving quickly past this termination,” says Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist with Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, a group at the University of California San Francisco. But “that is not something that I have ever seen in my research.”

  Thinking of adoption as a stand-in for abortion also ignores the very real dangers people face when they carry any pregnancy to term. Maternal mortality has been rising in the US for 20 years, and the most recent data places the country a dismal 55th in the world when it comes to the safety of childbirth.

  All of this, reproductive justice and adoptee advocates say, makes the argument that adoption can replace abortion at best a distraction, and at worst a willful misrepresentation of the facts. “As an adoptee, it’s infuriating,” says Joanne Bagshaw, a psychology professor at Montgomery College in Maryland who also works as a therapist with other adoptees.

  Adoption is often difficult and traumatic for birth parents

  Promoting adoption has long been a mainstay of the anti-abortion movement, with conservative groups like Focus on the Family providing resources on adoption and anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers” sometimes steering pregnant people toward the practice. It’s not just conservatives, however, who support adoption as a good alternative to abortion — “adoption has been understood as this common ground in the abortion debate by both parties for a very long time,” Sisson said.

  Both Democrats and Republicans have embraced the view that even if they can’t agree on whether abortion should be legal, they can agree that more people should choose adoption instead. There are multiple problems with thinking of adoption as a substitute for abortion, however, researchers and advocates say.

  In order to choose adoption for a child, someone still has to carry a pregnancy to term and give birth. Both are risky propositions in America, which ranked 10th out of 10 comparable countries in a 2018 study of maternal deaths. Black people are at especially high risk, dying in childbirth at three to four times the rate of white patients. “For Black women, carrying pregnancies to term is very dangerous in this country,” Howell said.

  Beyond the medical risks, there are social consequences to consider, from fielding unwanted questions to potential abuse from family members or partners who find out about the pregnancy. Homicide is a leading cause of death for pregnant people, with Black women and women and girls under 25 at the highest risk, according to a study published last month by researchers at Tulane University.

  Though pregnancy discrimination is illegal, it also remains widespread — “many of the country’s largest and most prestigious companies still systematically sideline pregnant women,” Natalie Kitroeff and Jessica Silver-Greenberg wrote in a 2018 New York Times investigation.

  Then there’s “the emotional toll that goes on if someone is forced to carry a pregnancy to term that they didn’t want in the first place,” Howell said.

  “I felt as if I were carrying my son for them, for everyone else,” Merritt Tierce wrote in the New York Times Magazine of her unplanned pregnancy when she was 19 years old. “I was afraid, and I was estranged from myself, and I felt an unbearable load of guilt for being the mother my son had to have. He didn’t get to choose, either.”

  Barrett did seem to acknowledge some of the burdens of unwanted pregnancy last week, calling it “an infringement on bodily autonomy, for which we have another context like vaccines” (never mind that the side effects of vaccines, for most people, last a mere few hours). She did not acknowledge, however, that any sort of burden might continue after a person gives birth. Just give up the baby for adoption, her questions seemed to suggest, and everything will be fine.

  That’s far from the case, many experts and advocates say. Surrendering a baby for adoption can be traumatic, Sisson says. “A lot of birth mothers feel pretty intense grief and mourning right after their adoption.”

  As the years go by, that initial grief can be compounded by a sense of alienation. On the one hand, “there’s a lot of politicized and religious messaging around adoption that tells birth mothers that they have made a very courageous, brave, and loving decision,” Sisson says. But those messages don’t come with support for birth parents when it comes to negotiating and managing contact with their biological children (increasingly common as open adoptions become the norm), or in understanding and dealing with their ongoing sense of loss. Many birth parents “feel very alone,” Sisson said.

  Pregnant people often anticipate some of this, which is why adoption is a relatively rare choice in America. They may know, too, that their child may not find a home quickly — there are more than 400,000 children in foster care in the US, and the average child spends nearly two years in the system. In one study of people who wanted an abortion but were turned away, just 9 percent chose to place the baby for adoption, Sisson and her team found. The other 91 percent chose to parent the child. “There were a lot of women who said, ‘If I couldn’t have an abortion, I was going to parent; there was no way I was going to give up my child,’” Sisson said.

  In general, “Women are not often choosing between abortion and adoption,” Sisson said. “Adoption is always the second choice to either parenting or abortion.”

  It’s not a panacea for children, either

  In addition to grief and loss for birth parents, adoption has an impact on children as well. “Relinquishment is traumatic for adoptees, even for adoptees who had a good adoption experience,” Bagshaw said. Adoptee clients who come to her often deal with “lifelong issues of feeling abandoned,” as well as “a lifelong search for identity.”

  And the question of whether and when a child is adopted at all is influenced by systemic racism. Research shows that Black children take longer to be adopted than white children, and dark-skinned Black children take longer than children with lighter skin, Howell said. Choosing adoption, then, is no guarantee that a child will soon find a permanent home.

  There will likely always be a need for adoption, advocates say. They argue that what’s needed is not a blanket promotion of adoption over abortion but reforms to make adoption itself more just. That would include a requirement that adoptees be able to access their original birth certificate and information about family history for medical and other purposes. “All information about an adoptee’s identity should always be available,” Bagshaw says. “This is a human rights issue.” (Safe haven laws, which allow people to relinquish a baby anonymously, can make it harder for adoptees to access this information.)

Beyond that, what’s needed is “transparency about how a person gets in a situation where they’re deciding adoption,” Bagshaw said. “Why are we not assisting that person to keep their baby if they can and want to?”

These are complicated questions that will require a hard look at America’s social safety net and the politics and economics of adoption. But Dobbs v. Jackson isn’t about any of those things. It’s about abortion, and whether a state has the right to ban it prior to viability, usually dated at about 24 weeks.

According to Vox’s Ian Millhiser, all signs currently suggest that next year, when the Court hands down a decision in Dobbs, it will rule that a state does have that right, at least in certain circumstances. Shortly thereafter, it’s likely that states across the South and Midwest, armed with the decision, will so heavily restrict abortion access that their residents will no longer be able to get a legal abortion unless they have the money and time to travel out of state, perhaps thousands of miles, to a place where abortion is still allowed.

Many abortion opponents argue — and Barrett, with her questioning, has implied — that it won’t really matter because anyone who doesn’t want to have a child can simply give that child up.

To many reproductive justice advocates and people who study adoption, that argument is a red herring. It ignores, they say, a simple truth: that carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term irrevocably alters the course of a person’s life. Banning abortion will take some of the power to determine that course away from pregnant people and give it to the state, and the availability of adoption does nothing to change that.

• How much control should Apple have over your iPhone? -

  

  Some say Apple’s App Store is a monopoly. Apple says it’s just giving customers what they want.

  This story is part of a Recode series about Big Tech and antitrust. Over the next few weeks, we’ll cover what’s happening with Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft.

  We love our mobile apps. It’s hard to think of something that at least one of the nearly 12 million apps out there can’t do. Order a taxi, buy clothes, get directions, play games, message friends, store vaccine cards, control hearing aids, eat, pray, love … the list goes on. You might be using an app to read this very article. And if you’re reading it on an iPhone, then you got that app through the App Store, the Apple-owned and -operated gateway for apps on its phones. But a lot of people want that to change.

  Apple is facing growing scrutiny for the tight control it has over so much of the mobile-first, app-centric world it created. The iPhone, which was released in 2007, and the App Store, which came along a year later, helped make Apple one of the most valuable companies on the planet, as well as one of the most powerful. Now, lawmakers, regulators, developers, and consumers are questioning the extent and effects of that power — including if and how it should be reined in.

  Efforts in the United States and abroad could significantly loosen Apple’s grip over one of its most important lines of business and fundamentally change how iPhone and iPad users get and pay for their apps. It could make many more apps available. It could make them less safe. And it could make them cheaper.

  The iPhone maker isn’t the only company under the antitrust microscope. Once lauded as shining beacons of innovation and ingenuity that would guide the world into the 21st century, Apple is just one of several Big Tech companies now accused of amassing too much power over parts of the economy that have become as essential as steel, oil, and the telephone were in centuries past.

  These companies have a great deal of control over what we can do on our phones, the items we buy online and how they get to our homes, our personal data, the internet ecosystem, even our online identities. Some believe the best way to deal with Big Tech now is the way we dealt with steel, oil, and telephone monopolies decades ago: by using antitrust laws to place restrictions on them or even break them up. And if our existing laws can’t do it, legislators want to introduce new laws that target the digital marketplace.

  In her book Monopolies Suck, antitrust expert Sally Hubbard described Apple as a “warm and fuzzy monopolist” when compared to Facebook, Google, and Amazon, the other three companies in the so-called Big Four that have been accused of being too big. It doesn’t quite have the negative public perception that its three peers have, and the effects of its exclusive control over mobile apps on its consumers aren’t as obvious.

  For many people, Facebook, Google, and Amazon are unavoidable realities of life on the internet these days, while Apple makes products they choose to buy. But more than half of the smartphones in the United States are iPhones, and as those phones become integrated into more facets of our daily lives, Apple’s exclusive control over what we can do with those phones and which apps we can use becomes more problematic. It’s also an outlier; rival mobile operating system Android allows pretty much any app, though app stores may have their own restrictions.

  Apple makes the phones. But should Apple set the rules over everything we can do with them? And what are iPhone users missing out on when one company controls so much of their experience on them?

  Apple’s vertical integration model was fine until it wasn’t

  Many of the problems Apple faces now come from a principle of its business model: Maintain as much control as possible over as many aspects of its products as possible. This is unusual for a computer manufacturer. You can buy a computer with a Microsoft operating system from a variety of manufacturers, and nearly 1,300 brands sell devices with Google’s Android operating system. But Apple’s operating systems — macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS — are only on Apple’s devices. Apple has said it does this to ensure that its products are easy to use, private, and secure. It’s a selling point for the company and a reason some customers are willing to pay a premium for Apple devices.

  Apple doubled down on that vertical integration strategy when it came to mobile apps, only allowing customers to get them through the App Store it owns and operates. Outside developers have to follow Apple’s approval process and abide by its rules to get into the App Store. Apple has a lot of content restrictions for apps that the company says are intended to keep users safe from, for instance, “upsetting or offensive content.” Apple says in its developer guidelines, “If you’re looking to shock and offend people, the App Store isn’t the right place for your app.” But that means Apple mobile devices — more than 1 billion of them worldwide — aren’t the right place for your app, either.

  Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images

  Developers whose apps do make it into the App Store may also find themselves paying Apple a hefty chunk of their income. Apple takes a commission from purchases of the apps themselves as well as purchases made within the apps. That commission is up to 30 percent and has been dubbed the App Store tax. There’s no way for apps to get around the commission for app purchases, and users have to pay for goods and services outside of the app to get around the in-app payment system’s commission.

  Some of those developers are also competing with Apple when it comes to making certain kinds of apps. Developers have accused Apple of “Sherlocking” their apps — that’s when Apple makes an app that’s strikingly similar to a successful third-party app and promotes it in the App Store or integrates it into device software in ways that outside developers can’t. One famous example of this is how, after countless flashlight apps that used the iPhone’s camera flash became popular in the App Store, Apple built its own flashlight tool and integrated it into iOS in 2013. Suddenly, those third-party apps weren’t necessary.

  Apple has also been accused of abusing its control to give it an advantage over streaming services. Spotify has complained for years that Apple has given an unfair competitive advantage to its Apple Music service, which came along a few years after Spotify. After all, Apple doesn’t have to pay an App Store tax for its own Music app, which comes pre-installed on iPhones and iPads, or the streaming service, which Apple can and does promote on its devices. (Apple points out that it only has 60 of its own apps, so clearly it’s not competing with every single third-party app in its store, or even the vast majority of them.)

  “What Apple realized is that if they could control the App Store, they really control the rest of the game,” Daniel Hanley, senior legal analyst at Open Markets Institute, an anti-monopoly advocacy group, told Recode. “They don’t just control the hardware, now they control the software. They control how apps get on — it’s unilateral.”

  This has all been a big moneymaker for Apple. Apple won’t say how big, but an expert said he believes the App Store alone made $22 billion in 2020, about 80 percent of which was profit. That profit margin estimate suggests that the mandatory commissions Apple takes from those apps far exceed the company’s costs for maintaining the App Store.

  Gabby Jones/Bloomberg via Getty Images

  Because Apple refuses to allow alternate app stores or in-app payment systems, there’s no competition that might motivate it to lower those commissions — which could, in turn, allow developers to charge less for apps and in-app purchases. The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust’s report from the Democratic majority cited numerous examples of developers claiming that they had to raise their own prices to consumers to compensate for Apple’s commission.

  Apple disputes some of these numbers but, again, refuses to give its own. Its financial statements lump the App Store in with other “services,” including iCloud and Apple’s TV, Music, and Pay. Even so, there’s little doubt that the App Store’s success has helped, if not driven, Apple’s transition from being primarily a hardware company to a goods and services provider.

  “It’s a nice, fat [revenue] stream where they don’t have to do a ton of R&D,” Brian Merchant, technology journalist and author of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone, told Recode. “All they have to do is protect their walled garden.”

  The case for only one App Store (Apple’s)

  Apple says the security and privacy features its customers expect are impossible to provide without having this control over the apps on its phone. The company calls this a “trusted ecosystem.”

  Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, recently said that allowing Apple users to get apps through third-party app stores or by downloading them directly from the open internet (a practice known as sideloading) would open them up to a “Pandora’s box” of malware, though iPhones aren’t exactly immune to spyware. Similarly, Apple says its in-app payment systems are secure and private, which it can’t guarantee of anyone else’s.

These arguments aren’t necessarily wrong — there are plenty of malicious apps out there — but they don’t account for the fact that Apple doesn’t seem to have any problem with its Mac computers getting their apps from third-party app stores or through sideloading.

As for those commissions, Apple is quick to point out that the vast majority of apps, which are free, don’t pay Apple anything at all and still get all of the App Store’s benefits. Many apps are funded by selling ads and user data, which they don’t have to share with Apple, though Apple has recently tried to make this outside revenue stream less lucrative for developers by introducing anti-tracking features into iOS.

Those measures, which Apple says are designed to improve user privacy, could ultimately force developers to charge users for apps (more money for Apple!). So when Apple decided to stop much of that data flow, it upended an entire ecosystem worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year — Facebook was even reportedly considering filing an antitrust lawsuit over it. That’s how much control Apple has over its devices and, by extension, a considerable part of the global economy.

Christoph Dernbach/picture alliance via Getty Images

The App Store tax is also in line with what other app stores charge, per an independent report that Apple commissioned last year. Apple, the app store pioneer, was the one that set that 30 percent app store commission rate in the first place.

And Apple does allow for ways to get around some of its App Store taxes. People can purchase subscriptions and certain in-app services outside of apps if they have an account with the developer, which means no App Store tax to either raise prices or cut into the developer’s profit margin. Going to the developer’s website to pay also takes several more steps and more time on the part of the customer to do it.

But in the US, Apple’s best defense against accusations that its App Store is an illegal monopoly may be to simply point to existing antitrust laws, or at least how courts interpret them. Apple does have a monopoly on app stores on Apple devices, but there’s nothing necessarily illegal about that. Monopolies are only illegal if they operate in anti-competitive ways, and the bar to proving even that is pretty high. For the last four decades, courts have interpreted the law as protecting competition (and, by extension, the consumers who supposedly benefit from it), not competitors.

“Our law is very, very conservative,” Eleanor M. Fox, a professor of antitrust law and competition policy at New York University, told Recode. “Companies — even monopoly companies — do not have a duty to deal, and they don’t have a duty to deal fairly.”

We’ve seen this precedent at work in the Epic Games v. Apple case. In August 2020, Epic Games, the developer behind the popular game Fortnite, sued Apple over its refusal to allow alternate app stores and payment systems, as well as its anti-steering policy that forbids developers from linking out to alternate ways to pay for app services or even telling users that other payment methods are possible. Apple kicked Fortnite out of its App Store when Epic tried to flout its rules. A federal judge ruled in September that Apple was well within its rights to do so.

The judge noted that the App Store had “procompetitive justifications.” Even though she found that Apple had a large part of the mobile gaming transactions market and that the App Store’s profit margins were “extraordinarily high,” she didn’t think it created a barrier to entry for developers, nor that it was harming innovation. (Epic has appealed this ruling.)

“Success is not illegal,” the judge wrote.

Epic’s only victory was that the judge ordered Apple to allow developers to link out to and inform users about other ways to pay for app services. Apple has appealed that particular ruling, and according to a court filing, the company may even try to charge commissions on purchases made through the alternate payment systems if it’s forced to let developers link out to them. Even when Apple loses, it tries to find a way to win.

Apple’s attempts to avoid antitrust actions

While Apple insists that it isn’t doing anything wrong, the company appears to be concerned that its control over its devices faces some real threats. Apple historically refuses to give up ground on just about everything, yet it’s already made notable adjustments to some of its more controversial policies that could make some apps or services cheaper, or at least easier for the user to find cheaper ways to pay for them. Some of these changes were mandatory, yes, but others appear to be an effort to ward off harsher regulations or judgments.

For instance, Apple loosened its notoriously tight grip on repairs to its devices, allowing more independent shops and, very recently, individual consumers, to have access to the parts and instructions necessary to make certain fixes. This comes in the midst of a push for “right to repair” laws and pressure from the Biden administration and the Federal Trade Commission. But Apple still requires that its own parts be used for these repairs and sets the prices for them.

The stickiness and required usage of Apple’s native apps has long been a gripe from many iPhone users and a bad look for the company from an antitrust perspective. So this year, Apple started allowing users to select their own default apps for web browsing and mail; previously, Apple’s Safari and Mail apps were the mandatory default. Users have been able to delete most of the Apple apps that come pre-installed on their phones since 2018.

Apple has also given some developers a break on the App Store tax and anti-steering policies, which could reduce prices for consumers. Developers who make less than $1 million a year now only have to pay a 15 percent App Store tax. This came about as part of a settlement of a class action lawsuit, but Apple has presented it as a “Small Business Program” that’s “designed to accelerate innovation” (a phrase that could be read as implying that the 30 percent commission decelerated innovation).

Apple is also going to let developers contact customers outside of the app to let them know about alternate payment methods. As part of an agreement with the Japan Fair Trade Commission, Apple will soon let “reader” apps (that is, apps like Netflix and Spotify that offer media for purchase or subscription) link out to their own websites to make it easier for users to purchase subscriptions outside of Apple’s in-app payment system.

In 2016, Apple also cut its commission to 15 percent for subscription apps after the first year. Of course, this change was revealed at the same time as Apple’s announcement that it would sell search ads in its App Store, giving itself yet another exclusive source of revenue (and giving users a bunch of ads when they search the App Store).

But these concessions do nothing for the source of the vast majority of the App Store’s commissions: games from developers that make more than $1 million a year. And Apple hasn’t wavered on the practices that have drawn the bulk of the accusations that Apple’s practices — including the company not allowing alternate App Stores or sideloading, and not allowing alternate payment systems — are anti-competitive, increase prices for consumers, and reduce their choice. It seems unlikely that Apple will give way any time soon. Unless, of course, it has to.

How does Apple’s walled garden grow — or die?

There are plenty of reasons why Apple might have to change its ways. The company may have won most of the Epic Games lawsuit (pending Epic’s appeal), but it still faces antitrust action on several fronts that will play out over the coming years.

A growing number of countries have introduced or proposed laws that specifically target certain App Store practices, or are investigating Apple for potential violations of their competition rules. These include but are not limited to the European Union, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, and Australia.

Those could result in fines, which Apple, a $2 trillion company, probably isn’t too worried about. It also wouldn’t be the first time Apple has paid a considerable sum over antitrust violations. Another outcome — one that would be a much more troubling prospect for Apple — would be if the company were forced to change its business practices in order to keep operating in those countries.

But in the United States, courts haven’t seemed too bothered by Apple’s App Store rules. A federal judge recently threw out a class action lawsuit from developers that said Apple was abusing its monopoly power by refusing to allow their apps in the App Store. As the Epic Games ruling indicates, American antitrust laws (and most courts’ interpretation of them) haven’t done much to change or force change on Big Tech companies. If you’re a lawmaker who is concerned about Big Tech’s considerable power, that’s a green light to propose laws that will.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), for example, said the ruling showed that “much more must be done” about the “serious competition concerns” app stores raise. As chair of the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, as well as a member of the Commerce Committee, she’s in a pretty good position to push through bills that do just that.

Klobuchar is a co-sponsor of the Open App Markets Act, a bipartisan, bicameral bill that would do most of what Epic Games wanted. The legislation would force Apple to allow third-party app stores and the sideloading of third-party apps, require that app stores allow alternate payment systems, and forbid anti-steering policies. It would also ban app stores from giving their own apps special treatment or using non-public data from third-party apps to develop their own, competing apps.

Patrick Semansky/Getty Images

The Open App Markets Act isn’t the only bill that could drastically change how Apple runs its App Store. Several more are currently making their way through both houses of Congress as part of its package of antitrust bills that target Big Tech. If passed, they’d also force Apple to include other app stores on its devices and forbid it from giving its own apps special treatment. One bill, the Ending Platform Monopolies Act, would even force Apple to break up its App Store and app development units into separate businesses.

All of these bills are bipartisan, but it’s far from certain that any of them will become law. If they do, and in something close to their current form, they could benefit consumers by giving them more choice of apps on their phone, and it could make those apps cheaper. It may also subject iPhone users to additional safety and security threats, as Apple alleges, while prices stay largely unchanged.

Apple says it supports updates to laws and regulations that benefit consumers, like privacy legislation — which the current bills on the table don’t do much to directly address.

The Department of Justice, which has been investigating Apple since 2019, is reportedly preparing a lawsuit concerning the App Store. It and the FTC enforce America’s antitrust laws. Both agencies are headed up by people who have accused Apple of anti-competitive actions or worked for firms that have. Lina Khan, a Big Tech critic who helped write the House’s report, is now the chair of the FTC, and Jonathan Kanter, who advised Spotify when it lobbied Congress to take action against Apple, leads the DOJ’s antitrust division. Both agencies may get a major, needed funding boost if the Build Back Better Act and a bill that increases merger fees for large companies pass.

With all of this said, Apple, “the warm and fuzzy monopolist,” is probably in a better position with its ongoing antitrust problems than its fellow Big Tech titans are with theirs. It has, so far, faced relatively less criticism in general, and many of the proposed bills and regulations don’t threaten its business model as much as they do that of the other companies. If Apple were forced to allow other app stores on its devices tomorrow, it would still have plenty of very healthy revenue streams.

Those may still include the App Store. It’s not clear that many of Apple’s users would even use or want another app store. The fact that they use an iPhone and not an Android speaks to this. They could prefer or trust the security and privacy protections in the App Store over those of, say, a Facebook app store. Then again, if those other app stores took a lower commission from developers, allowing them to charge less than the Apple App Store does, Apple’s customers may well vote with their wallets, and developers might only offer their apps in stores that give them a better margin. In which case, Apple might just find itself finally having to compete for apps and customers — and maybe even lowering the App Store tax to do it.

Apple wouldn’t be thrilled, but it would be just fine.

From The Hindu: Sports

• The Ashes | Captain Cummins takes 5 wickets; England crash to 147 on rain-curtailed opening day - England had slipped to 11-3 in the sixth over

• India vs New Zealand | Photo that went viral - Ajaz Patel has revealed the story behind the photograph that has gone viral on the social media. “The beauty of that photo is that it came through a f

• Champions League | Do-or-die for Barca - All four teams in Group G still in with a chance to advance

• National senior women’s championship | It’s Manipur vs Railways again in the final - Both come off best in their last-four shoot-outs against Odisha and Mizoram

• ISL 2021 | FC Goa edges SCEB in seven-goal thriller - FC Goa registered its maiden win in ISL Season 8, defeating SC East Bengal 4-3 in a match of fluctuating fortunes.Goa had the better of the exchanges

From The Hindu: National News

• HC shocked over NCERT having pulled down transgender manual from its website - Says no one can be allowed to arm twist a State run council

• Private bus operators in Kerala to go on strike from December 21 - Services to be indefinitely withdrawn to highlight demand for higher fares, starting with ₹12 as minimum fare and ₹6 for students

• CSK moves Madras HC challenging two provisions of CGST Act & a show cause notice - Says, Govt will end up collecting more tax if input tax credit is denied under reverse charge mechanism

• Thrissur Mayor boycotts school function - He alleges that his photo in banner was smaller than that of MLA

• Indian Air Force helicopter crash analysis | Will VIPs ever learn? - The tragic helicopter crash in the Nilgris is another addition to the long list of fatal accidents involving VVIPs. The weather forecast for the hilly

From BBC: Europe

• Germany’s Olaf Scholz takes over from Merkel as chancellor - Olaf Scholz is sworn in as chancellor, leading a three-party coalition after 16 years of Merkel rule.

• Sanna Marin: Finland’s PM sorry for clubbing after Covid contact - Sanna Marin went on a night out on Saturday, hours after her foreign minister had tested positive.

• Biden warns Putin of ‘strong measures’ amid Ukraine invasion fears - In a call with President Biden, Russia’s Vladimir Putin seeks guarantees against eastward Nato expansion.

• Is Russia preparing to invade Ukraine? And other questions - What you need to know about Russia’s troop build-up around eastern Ukraine.

• Russian rocket blasts off with Japanese billionaire - Yusaku Maezawa will spend 12 days at the International Space Station before returning to Earth.

From Ars Technica

• Microsoft rolls out revamped Notepad app to Windows 11 Insiders - Dark mode and updated look are the biggest changes to Notepad in quite a while. - link

• Anime convention of 53K is first US case study for omicron spread, CDC says - CDC says over 35,000 anime fans have already been contacted. - link

• Report: Apple CEO Tim Cook engineered a secret $275 billion deal with China - Apple invested heavily in Chinese tech to prevent hostile regulations. - link

• Power companies band together for coast-to-coast EV fast-charger network - Coalition will focus on Interstate Highway System to alleviate range anxiety. - link

• Verizon overrides users’ opt-out preferences in push to collect browsing history - Verizon renamed scanning program and enrolled customers who previously opted out. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• I just found out Canada isn’t real. -

  Turns out it was all maple leaf.

  submitted by /u/Sea-Economist1001
  [link] [comments]

• A Politician Dies And Has To Spend Just ONE Day In Hell -

  A politician dies and ends up standing in front of the pearly gates. Saint Peter looks at him for a second, flicks through his book, and finds his name.

  “So, you’re a politician…”

  “Well, yes, is that a problem?”

  “Oh no, no problem. But we’ve recently adopted a new system for people in your line of work, and unfortunately you will have to spend a day in Hell. After that however, you’re free to choose where you want to spend eternity!”

  “Wait, I have to spend a day in Hell?!” says the politician. “Those are the rules,” replies St Peter, clicks his fingers, and WOOMPH, the guy disappears. He awakes, curled up with his hands over his eyes, knowing he’s in Hell. Cautiously, he listens for the screams, sniffs the air for brimstone, and finds… Nothing. Just the smell of, is that fabric softener? And cut grass, this can’t be right?

  “Open your eyes!” says a voice. “C’mon, wakey wakey, we’ve only got 24 hours!” Nervously, he uncovers his eyes, looks around, and sees he’s in a hotel room. A nice one too. Wait, this is a penthouse suite… And there’s a smiling man in a suit, holding a martini. “Who are you??” The politician asks.

  “Well, I’m Satan!” says the man, handing him the drink and helping him to his feet. “Welcome to Hell!”

  “Wait, this is Hell? But… Where’s all the pain and suffering?” he asks.

  Satan throws him a wink. “Oh, we’ve been a bit misrepresented over the years, it’s a long story. Anyway, this is your room! The minibar is of course free, as is the room service, there’s extra towels next to the hot-tub, and if you need anything, just call reception. But enough of this! It’s a beautiful day, and if you’d care to look outside…”

  Slightly stunned by the opulent surroundings, the man wanders over to the floor-to-ceiling windows through which the sun is glowing, looks far down, and sees a group of people cheering and waving at him from a golf course.

  “It’s one of 5 pro-level courses on site, and there’s another 6 just a few minutes drive out past the beach and harbour!” says Satan, answering his unasked question.

  So they head down in the lift, walk out through the glittering lobby where everyone waves and welcomes the man, as Satan signs autographs and cheerily talks shop with the laughing staff. And as he walks out, he sees the group on the golf course are made up of every one of his old friends, people he’s admired for years but never met or worked with, and people whose work he’s admired but died long before his career started. And out of the middle of this group walks his wife, with a massive smile and the body she had when she was 20, who throws her arms around him and plants a delicate kiss on his cheek. Everyone cheers and applauds, and as they slap him on the back and trade jokes, his worst enemy arrives, as a 2 foot tall goblin-esque caddy. He spends the day in the bright sunshine on the course, having the time of his life laughing at jokes and carrying important discussions, putting the world to rights with his friends while holding his delighted wife next to him as she gazes lovingly at him.

  Later, they return to the hotel for dinner and have an enormous meal, perfectly cooked. As everyone is falling about laughing and flinging bread sticks at each other, his wife whispers in his ear… And they return to their penthouse suite, and spend the rest of the night making love like they did on their honeymoon. After hours of passion, the man falls deep into the 100% Egyptian cotton pillows, and falls into a deep and happy sleep… and is woken up by St Peter.

  “So, that was Hell. Wasn’t what you were expecting, I bet?” “No sir!” says the man. “So then,” says St Peter. “You can make your choice. It’s Hell, which you saw, or Heaven, which has choral singing, talking to God, white robes, and so on.”

  “Well… I know this sounds strange, but on balance, I think I’d prefer Hell,” says the politician. “Not a problem, we totally understand! Enjoy!” says St Peter, and clicks his fingers again.

  The man wakes up in total darkness, the stench of ammonia filling the air and distant screams the only noise. As he adjusts, he can see the only light is from belches of flame far away, illuminating the ragged remains of people being tortured or burning in a sulphurous ocean. A sudden bolt of lightning reveals Satan next to him, wearing the same suit as before and grinning, holding a soldering iron in one hand and a coil of razor-wire in the other. “What’s this??” He cries. “Where’s the hotel?? Where’s my wife??? Where’s the minibar, the golf-courses, the pool, the restaurant, the free drinks and the sunshine???”

  “Ah”, says Satan. “You see, yesterday, we were campaigning. But today, you voted.”

  submitted by /u/ChequeMateX
  [link] [comments]

• I was in Russia listening to a stand-up comedian making fun of Putin. -

  The jokes weren’t that good, but I liked the execution.

  submitted by /u/jorenryckaert
  [link] [comments]

• If alcohol can damage your short term memory… -

  …Imagine the damage alcohol can do

  submitted by /u/TheyreNotListening
  [link] [comments]

• If I could have sex with any person on the planet -

  I would

  submitted by /u/Cunt_Bucket_
  [link] [comments]