this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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Judge in US v. Google trial didn’t know if Firefox is a browser or search engine::Google accused DOJ of aiming to force people to use “inferior” search products.

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[–] ZeroCool@feddit.ch 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

The judge in question is 51 years old. He’s not old enough to be this clueless about basics like the difference between a search engine and a web browser and popular examples of each.

[–] sping@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Kids often don't know the difference between "wifi" and the Internet. It's not an age thing these days.

[–] Elderos@lemmings.world 5 points 1 year ago

Since smartphone became a thing it has always been my theory that millenials, and up to a point GenX, would be the only two generations to be forced into being tech-savy. Boomers and GenZ have been overwhelmingly tablet and phone users. Whoever still logging on a PC nowadays will have a vastly different experience than what it used to be.

It is a different world really. I am a huge geek and I have been in tech for a long time now, but I still get confused look at family gathering when I tell them I have no idea how to fix someone's Ipad or what app/settings/touch gesture to do whatever.

[–] schmidtster@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Kids often aren’t explained the difference and if they have been they just don’t understand, wifi IS the internet to them.

A 51 year old Judge has a vastly different brain and should be able to retain the difference when explained.

[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You'd think they'd notice they can use the internet from their phones when there's no wifi.

[–] clgoh@lemmy.ca -2 points 1 year ago

Pretty sure they call cellular data “wifi”.

[–] Hanabie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Only a few years older than me. Absolutely not yet old enough to be a boomer.

[–] clif@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I teach a programming class to young adults (18-25, usually) and was flabbergasted last semester when I realized that a couple of them didn't know what a directory hierarchy/file system was.

My suspicion is that the ease of use angle of "just tell me what you want and I'll find it" led to this. Not saying ease of use is bad, but I expected more from people wanting to learn programming.

And I'm over here meticulously organizing my music library into folders by band, album, year, etc...o the humanity.

[–] DeadlineX@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lawmakers and judges should not be allowed to make decisions on something they know nothing about. This is a huge problem with people not even wanting to educate themselves, and then deciding how the rest of us get to interact with the internet.

That being said, Firefox is only popular with tech folk. They have just over a 3% market share. I’m a developer and I don’t know anyone but myself that uses it. My mother would think I was talking about a cartoon if I brought it up. A lot of lemmings use it, but o would not call it a popular example.

[–] Elderos@lemmings.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Experts are supposed to break it down to them. But yeah, this is a flawed system but I fear the honnest take is that most humans know nothing about most things (even if we're tempted to believe otherwise), so you'd be running out of avalaible judges real quick.

[–] DeadlineX@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

That’s a fair point. This case is even more complicated, as either the author of the article doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or a word was missing. The article says the judge wasn’t sure if mozilla was a browser or search engine, and Mozilla is neither.

I still hate the confidently incorrect assertions people in charge are making to negatively impact the way the largest and most complete telecommunications and information system works. Just look at facebooks trial where zuck had to explain how the internet works to the people who were deciding if his company was doing something wrong.