<story><title>Viral &apos;I&apos;m not a cat&apos; filter is decades-old software</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56010156</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jonas21</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This was actually central to the DOJ antitrust case against Microsoft. As part of the settlement, Microsoft had to agree to allow OEMs to keep installing crapware [1].&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s things like this that make me a little nervous when people say that going after big tech with antitrust law will necessarily be good for the consumer.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;stevesi&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1274453172665253890&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;stevesi&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1274453172665253890&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>fossuser</author><text>This makes more sense to me, I was wondering how that would have gotten set by a clueless user.&lt;p&gt;The answer turns out to be that old dell machines shipped some shitty avatar software (along with lots of other stuff) that defaulted to on. The lawyer is probably using an ancient dell computer with this software and hasn&amp;#x27;t used video chat on it before this.&lt;p&gt;This is extra hostile, because it&amp;#x27;s separate from whatever video chat application they were using - so it would have been harder to know about and turn off.&lt;p&gt;As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost. Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. OS companies should make their own hardware.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fossuser</author><text>If I had to guess (without reading the case specifically), it&amp;#x27;s probably because Microsoft screwed up by forcing OEMs to not install netscape in order to crush them.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s hard to differentiate &amp;#x27;crapware&amp;#x27; from competition, particularly given the context where Microsoft had just leveraged their power over OEMs to crush a competitor.&lt;p&gt;This still sucks though, a better outcome for users would have been Microsoft being able to require the machines to sell with a clean OS and then allowing OEMs to install software for the user at their request (rather than the OEMs being able to bundle crap for kickbacks).&lt;p&gt;Somewhat related, apparently the netscape guys went to Redmond and hung up signs around Microsoft&amp;#x27;s campus mocking them for ignoring the internet. Legend has it Gates saw these and pivoted teams to IE with a focus on crushing Netscape.&lt;p&gt;Startup talk often discusses how most startups fail not due to competition, but because of internal collapse. Big companies can&amp;#x27;t compete, innovator&amp;#x27;s dilemma, etc. There&amp;#x27;s a lot of truth to that but this is a counter example (and others exist too).&lt;p&gt;Wildly stupid to antagonize the elephant that&amp;#x27;s focused on other things to direct all of their resources to destroying you.</text></comment>
<story><title>Viral &apos;I&apos;m not a cat&apos; filter is decades-old software</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56010156</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jonas21</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This was actually central to the DOJ antitrust case against Microsoft. As part of the settlement, Microsoft had to agree to allow OEMs to keep installing crapware [1].&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s things like this that make me a little nervous when people say that going after big tech with antitrust law will necessarily be good for the consumer.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;stevesi&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1274453172665253890&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;stevesi&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1274453172665253890&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>fossuser</author><text>This makes more sense to me, I was wondering how that would have gotten set by a clueless user.&lt;p&gt;The answer turns out to be that old dell machines shipped some shitty avatar software (along with lots of other stuff) that defaulted to on. The lawyer is probably using an ancient dell computer with this software and hasn&amp;#x27;t used video chat on it before this.&lt;p&gt;This is extra hostile, because it&amp;#x27;s separate from whatever video chat application they were using - so it would have been harder to know about and turn off.&lt;p&gt;As an aside, Microsoft fought in court to force OEMs to not install this crap alongside Windows (reasonably since it was damaging their brand and making the machines less secure), but they lost. Another reason why the macOS model is better for users. OS companies should make their own hardware.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>haram_masala</author><text>Matt Stoller’s “Big” includes an interesting (though flawed) history of how anti-monopoly efforts have often been sacrificed for the good of the consumer. Which arguably was a short-term good.</text></comment>