Free Market Obstructionists Hurt Consumer Choice

In an opinion piece for the Washington Times, Reactionary Times Editorial Director Julio Rivera, laid out the case against industry watchdog group AppEsteem. They arbitrarily set industry standards and have been regularly called out for their predatory business practices.

Among the highlights of the article:

Some of these groups operate in a fashion not unlike the Costa Nostra in some ways, in that monetary requests are customarily made in return for inclusion and private businesses that refuse to subscribe to their heavy-handed demands are routinely blacklisted from their respective industry.

One industry that suffers at the hands of this treachery is the ever-growing anti-virus/anti-malware software industry. According to Statista, “In 2015, global annual revenues from security software reached 22.1 billion U.S. dollars, representing a significant segment in the overall information security market, which itself was expected to achieve revenues of 75.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2015.” Statista also forecasts revenues growing to $120.7 billion by the year 2021, which represents a surge of more than 35 percent growth over just a six-year period.

That growth is threatened by a group known as AppEsteem. According to their website, AppEsteem claims to “fight the bad guys so you don’t have to — and so you can download and use apps without fear.”

AppEsteem, and their intention to destroy a business model that has been in place since the mid 90's, threatens to put many independent software publishers out of business by "cutting Independent non-OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) software publishers out of an information security products and services market that produced more than $89 Billion in total sales in the year 2017 in favor of larger industry giants creating an artificial oligopoly," according to the article.