California state senator Scott Wiener, who’s drawn the ire of Silicon Valley for his bills regulating AI, has come out with a new bill that some venture capitalists are actually supporting.
The so-called Blocking Anticompetitive Self-preferencing by Entrenched Dominant Platforms Act (BASED Act) goes after big tech companies that are stomping on young startups to protect their home turf. But the A in BASED might as well have stood for Apple. The same day the bill was announced, The Information revealed how Apple was secretly blocking vibe-coding startups like Replit and Vibecode from updating their apps.
Vibe coding poses a threat to Apple because it lowers the barrier to entry to get into its prized app store, and has contributed to a flood of new iOS apps. Vibe coding could one day threaten walled gardens like Apple’s, because it allows anybody to replicate complex software that for decades only big tech companies have been able to provide.