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EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

politico.eu

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Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#271

Post by natch »

oxplot wrote: post #244
natch wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t allow people to install abusive and spyware apps on their spouse’s, girlfriend’s, coworker’s, roommate’s, and children’s devices… not to mention harmful ones on your own… that’s a feature. If you really want some nasty stuff on your phone for some reason you can always write it yourself or find something open source and install it with Xcode. You are free to do this; the idea that you are not is a myth reg…

> that’s a feature It's a feature that can be implemented, with similar if not better effectiveness, in various ways that doesn't completely lock down a platform. Don't ask me how because I'm no match for brains at Apple but if EU succeeds in forcing Apple to open things up, Apple will rise to the challenge and will figure it out, just the same way they figure out how to roll out an ECG monitor that complies with loc…

Nobody ever said Apple was static. They roll out updates all the time, of course. No different here. It helps to understand the reasons behind some of the lockdown.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#272

Post by macinjosh »

sofixa wrote: post #238
macinjosh wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your wild edge case is someone else's life and living. People who love controlling other people (like the government and those who support it) never seem to understand that.

"the government" lol > Your wild edge case is someone else's life and living. Yes, the person whose name is mangled by a shitty bank's IT systems. Or the people who can see what a shitty data vacuuming company has on them( that now has to ask for consent beforehand). Regulations are there to protect people like that, not just for fun.

In the 20th century 151,000,000 people were killed by "the government". lol? Maybe don't laugh about people that kill people for power.

https://hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.CHAP1.HTM

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#273

Post by LadyCailin »

philjohn wrote: post #53
zdkl wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You believe the (very public) inquiries had no effect on the market?

I don't - I think a better product came along, one that was aggressively pushed by the dominant search engine that swathes of the internet used each day (which is not in and of itself a good thing either, FWIW).

Maybe you’re right in this case, but I find it impossible to believe that apple would allow third party apps ever, if not for regulatory intervention. Given that the existence of Android has not caused that to happen naturally yet, there’s basically no other chance that any other market player would be able to reasonably upset that. Same with google search, Bing and Baidu have a laughably small market share in search, despite both being multibillion dollar companies behind them. And forget small players like DDG or Pinephone, they don’t even register on the charts.

So yeah, market regulation is necessary here, I’d rather roll back useless regulation later than continue with the status quo.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#274

Post by tyrfing »

GuB-42 wrote: post #253
hrnnnnnn wrote: post #2

> Parliament also succeeded in convincing the Council of interoperability requirements for messaging services, meaning outfits such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms. For group chats, this requirement will be rolled out over a period of four years. This would be great. I remember using pidgin back in the day and it was really convenient…

What about Signal? Moxie is strongly against it. Although the app and protocols are open, he doesn't tolerate third party clients on Signal official servers and he doesn't want federation. Even though I disagree, he has some good arguments. And if WhatsApp has to interoperate, why not Signal?

Signal, Twitter, Snapchat, Discord, Zoom, etc won't be affected. Maybe even TikTok. It's basically just anything by Google/Apple/Facebook/Amazon, and perhaps a few odd ones like Steam and Epic's services.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#275

Post by thatguy0900 »

chockchocschoir wrote: post #84
pabs3 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pidgin is still there, still works and supports modern chat platforms too, via plugins: https://pidgin.im/plugins/ Of course, some platforms ban you for using alternate clients.

> Pidgin is still there, still works and supports modern chat platforms too, via plugins Nice! > Of course, some platforms ban you for using alternate clients. Less nice... Doesn't seem like that list outlines which platforms will/could ban you either, which makes the entire list a no-go for me, and I'm sure others.

Hard to even say on some of them. Discord for instance will only really ban you if they think you are spamming even though they say you can't use them at all

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#276

Post by fatboy »

ericmay wrote: post #166
Vespasian wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same thought. Apple makes great hardware and the main thing that was holding me back from getting one was their heavy handed approach on what applications I am allowed to install on my device and from what source. If this works I would probably go for it.

I’m the opposite. I buy an iPhone specifically because I want a locked-down device. World is about to get a little worse on this front.

It's a shame that apple has been so obstinate for so long. Their behaviour is very clearly about money and not consumer protection, which is just used as a convenient excuse to hide behind.

They could have allowed third-party payments through vetted providers. They could have reduced their rates to match those providers and no one would be so keen to use them anyway. They could mandate subscriptions must be cancellable with one click and even mandate using an api to make these all appear in the settings app. They could have ensured that their review staff were better trained to prevent capricious rejections.

They instead decided to ride the wave of the apple tax for as long as they possibly could and then deal with whatever that caused later. And this is what it's caused.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#277

Post by Luker88 »

Honestly? Looks good.

They only missed one: must provide human support for any and all products and supported services.

Google/MS/Apple have 0 user support for account/app suspension/removal and we have seen many stories here on how final those things are, and without any recourse possible

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#278

Post by blue1 »

giorgioz wrote: post #85
blue1 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*Marquis

Both Marquess and Marquis are correct so I guess I merged them into Marquees XD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess In Italian, which is my native language, it would be MARCHESE. Fun fact, there is a whole Italian region called Marche: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marche

Further fun fact, still in Italy, the territory around the city of Treviso is called La Marca since medieval times (and still today): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_of_Treviso

, instead, is an ancient HTML abomination.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#280

Post by MattJ100 »

spiffytech wrote: post #209
zaik wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but that means your phone's radio can never enter low power mode, hurting battery life. This problem has been solved by https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0352.html

> Version 1.0.0 (2020-10-14) Glad to see it's being addressed, but: - The proposal is stable, but not finalized - 13 years is a long time to wait for a solution (iPhone debuted in 2007, got apps in 2008) - Plus however long it takes for implementations to adopt this - Plus whether they adopt it at all, since this is a protocol extension and not a protocol requirement. The XEP requires client-server cooperation, which…

> "The proposal is stable, but not finalized"

Is "stable" now a negative thing? I don't understand. If you are referring to the "document lifecycle" at the side of the XEP, and the "Final" status there... "Stable" is the "widespread adoption" stage. "Final" is a dead-end status that means the extension is frozen. It's rarely used for extensions that are actively in use until they are beyond updating.

> "13 years is a long time to wait for a solution (iPhone debuted in 2007, got apps in 2008)"

This extension was created in 2014, and implementations were already performing traffic optimizations (using other non-standard methods) before then (which is why we decided to standardize it).

> "Plus however long it takes for implementations to adopt this"

It's already adopted, implemented and deployed. You can see deployment stats at https://compliance.conversations.im/test/xep0352 - as for the handful of servers there that don't implement it, on investigation these tend to be private, abandoned or special-purpose servers.

> "Plus whether they adopt it at all, since this is a protocol extension and not a protocol requirement. The XEP requires client-server cooperation, which means the clients and all servers the user connects to have to implement this to see the benefit."

As I said, it's already implemented and adopted in clients and servers. It has been a requirement in the XMPP compliance suites for years (for reference, latest is here: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0459.html#mobile ).

All in all, your comment seems to contain a lot of unfounded scepticism and negativity. This problem is solved, since a long time :)

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