alt Hacker NewsRegulatory capture doesn't necessarily mean the regulated get to decide what the regulators do in precise steps. It can simply mean they support and exist within a regulatory regime that greatly benefits the regulated.
In fact, you generally don't want them directly telling the regulators what to do. Instead, the regulators make complex, costly rules that only large establishment players can follow. The regulators look like they're doing their job; the regulated enjoy higher margins and protection from disruption.
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Exactly! The thing that squeezes out new entrants isn't only the compliance cost, it's that your whole roadmap ends up resting on access you don't control.
We already saw the terms moved under us once with Fable, the retention policy changed and some requests started routing to a weaker model, none of us small operators had any say in that. Now access itself is a government decisions.
For anyone building on top of these APIs that's the real barrier, not the rule-following overhead but the fact that the ground can shift mid-flight and you can't negotiate with whoever's moving it.
Which is exactly why open weights start looking less like ideology and more like risk management.
And the regulated may even publicly complain about the regulations, to increase the illusion that it isn't regulatory capture.