Apple has avoided an inconvenient constraint on the way it runs the App Store, thanks to what a political opponent has described as “a tidal wave lobbying effort.” The Cupertino company, along with other owners of very large software storefronts, can now carry on promoting its own apps and giving them preferential treatment, leaving smaller developers to struggle for exposure.
Last month, Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) proposed the BASED Act, the name standing for Blocking Anticompetitive Self-preferencing by Entrenched Dominant platforms. The idea of this legislation was to prohibit owners of platforms with a market cap above $1 trillion and at least 100 million monthly users in the U.S. from pushing those users towards their own offerings, which is clearly aimed at Apple.
“Anticompetitive behavior is everywhere on the internet,” argued Wiener. “From rigged search results, to manipulative nudges boosting the ‘house’ product, to anti-discount policies that raise prices, to the dreaded green bubble that ‘breaks’ the group chat. When the world’s largest digital platforms rig the game to favor their own products and services, we all lose. By prohibiting these anticompetitive practices, the BASED Act will protect competition online, empower consumers and startups, and promote innovations to improve all our lives.”
This sounded promising for smaller app makers, many of whom formed an alliance to support the bill. But they were unable to defeat the far greater resources brought to bear by Apple and Google, which would also have been affected because of the size of its Play store, and the measure was “buried in little more than a month,” Bloomberg reported this week.
The trade group Chamber of Progress, of which both Apple and Google are partners, reportedly identified defeating the BASED Act as its top priority for this year. Lobbyists against the bill also included the California Chamber of Commerce.
“They absolutely flooded the Capitol with lobbyists to trash the bill and to spread misinformation,” complained Wiener. “It was a tidal wave lobbying effort, and we were at a real disadvantage.”
Apple has never been shy about dabbling in politics and is fairly open about its lobbying activities. On the company’s site, it describes this process as working to “help policy makers at every level of government understand our products, our innovations, and our business.” You can scrutinise these activities using the dropdown state-selection tool.
As well as the Chamber of Progress, Apple belongs to the App Association, which works “to promote a policy environment that rewards and inspires innovation”; the Digital Media Association, which “advocates for music streaming services by championing policies and public conversations that encourage innovation”; NetChoice, which is very keen on “light-touch regulation”; and more than 40 other groups and trade associations.
At the start of this decade, a report found that Apple spent $1.56m on political lobbying in three months, and that number is likely to have risen significantly in recent years. Tim Cook, meanwhile, has given time and money to develop a fruitful relationship with President Trump, an occupation that will likely dominate his duties as chairman of the board from this fall. Any further attempts to curb the company’s power through political means will face an uphill struggle.
