iFixit wants Congress to let it hack McDonald’s ice cream machines

TLDR: Mcdonalds and an ice cream machine company are up to some scummy shit to fuck over franchises and customers for more profits.

TLDW: Mcdonalds and the company that makes almost all fast food ice cream machines, Taylor, have had a long time partnership.

Through this partnership, Mcdonalds franchises are only allowed to buy a singular type of Taylor machine. All of Taylor's machines that other chains use work just fine, but the ones Mcdonalds is forced to use through the partnership are basically designed to be shitty. They break all the time, and when it breaks down, the error code doesn't even tell the employees what's wrong, even if it's something simple the employee could fix themselves. It forces the Mcdonalds franchises to get a repair technician from Taylor making them pay assloads of money on repair costs, and these repairs of Mcdonalds' machines account for a massive amount of Taylor's revenue.

Mcdonalds corporate is hurt none in this process, only the franchises, so Mcdonalds Corporate and Taylor stay buddy buddy. Some other company made a third party addition for the Taylor machines that puts out proper error codes that allow employees to fix minor issues on the fly, Mcdonalds has banned their franchises from using these for "safety issues".

I would still suggest watching the video in your spare time though, it's a really fascinating case study of how companies collude to fuck over customers and even their own lesser partners.

Edit: Grammar, Formatting