EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022) • Hacker News Board

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#191

Post by mattrighetti » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:13 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #174

mattrighetti wrote: post #165

This sounds nice, but when you really think about the consequences it really is not. Isn't this going to kill features that only some apps have or offer? What if one day Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp want to implement something "different" that could make messaging better but this policy is making things harder to implement because it would be impossible to make it interoperate with other messaging apps? I don't get w…

> [...] without actually realising that it is actually going to make things worse, that's what regulation does in most cases. Feels like a uniquely american take. Companies that are maliciously compliant are not the norm. Leaving behind that most is an ambiguous enough term that means you could basically discredit anything I come up with, how do you feel about regulations that limit the use of harmful or toxic chemic…

> Regulations are the only tool that society has to prevent companies acting against the social good.

The fallacy here is that you don't get to decide what "social good" is, especially in this case. People get to choose what is good for them, we're talking about tech products here. I see regulations in this specific case as something that goes against progress, whatever that means for the company of your favorite messaging app for the reasons I've explained above.

What about startups that will have to think about this one more thing and maybe put in twice the work when they want to validate their new product?

We're probably leaving out about thousands of other cases here, that's why I made the argument that it sounds nice but it's actually making things worse from my point of view.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#192

Post by soerxpso » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:13 PM UTC

mattrighetti wrote: post #165

This sounds nice, but when you really think about the consequences it really is not. Isn't this going to kill features that only some apps have or offer? What if one day Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp want to implement something "different" that could make messaging better but this policy is making things harder to implement because it would be impossible to make it interoperate with other messaging apps? I don't get w…

> What if one day Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp want to implement something "different"

That's allowed. There's not some new law that all messaging apps must implement the iMessage protocol, or that they must interoperate with iMessage.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#193

Post by mh- » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:14 PM UTC

jjulius wrote: post #179

mattrighetti wrote: post #165

This sounds nice, but when you really think about the consequences it really is not. Isn't this going to kill features that only some apps have or offer? What if one day Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp want to implement something "different" that could make messaging better but this policy is making things harder to implement because it would be impossible to make it interoperate with other messaging apps? I don't get w…

>Isn't this going to kill features that only some apps have or offer? What if one day Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp... Okay, this is where I think we need to make clear who this requirement applies to. If we click through the first link, found in the first sentence in the article, to the actual source text[0] and run it through Google Translate, we can find that this requirement only applies to companies... >... whose…

Aren't there only, say, two or three companies that fit that criteria? The legislators may as well have called them out by name.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#194

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:14 PM UTC

tekknik wrote: post #186

dijit wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] without actually realising that it is actually going to make things worse, that's what regulation does in most cases. Feels like a uniquely american take. Companies that are maliciously compliant are not the norm. Leaving behind that most is an ambiguous enough term that means you could basically discredit anything I come up with, how do you feel about regulations that limit the use of harmful or toxic chemic…

Except in this case there are no lives being saved, it’s turning green bubbles blue. That’s all this regulation is really about.

[deleted]

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#195

Post by adam_arthur » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:15 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #109

adam_arthur wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fact that is not related to the discussion. There have been no laws towards fostering competition within walled gardens in either the US or EU until now. Apple had no app store competition until now. Do you contend the app store will not see material improvements in the future now that it finally has within bundle competition? Why has Apple suddenly started investing so heavily in Safari over the past year, now tha…

Apple has plenty of competition for their product that includes an App Store . If you don’t like their product, you’re free to get an Android device like 85% of the rest of the world and 2/3rd of the EU.

The nuance of anti-competitiveness through bundling or the merits of competition at more granular levels appears lost to you.

If products have to compete on their own merits, rather than leaning on other aspects of a larger bundle, then software and products get better for all of society.

For example, if you were allowed to install any car OS you wanted, rather than forced to use the manufacturers, car OSes would improve significantly. Some people will buy a car for the hardware, despite terrible software. This is bad for the evolution of car software. If a manufacturer was forced to compete, they would have to invest more heavily in improving their software... or simply cede control of the OS to a better implemented third party one, and focus on the hardware. Both outcomes are better for consumers than allowing anti-competitiveness via bundling

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#196

Post by quitit » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:15 PM UTC

This is one of those things which sounds great on the surface, but isn't going to work out like they assume it will. It just seems like it'll end up being SMS 2.0.

For example Meta's Instagram chat doesn't even have feature parity across devices. Let alone into their other properties, so the idea that they'd be able to telegraph features into some interoperable standard isn't realistic, however I can imagine them slashing features until they meet the required level of interoperability.

At its core the problem is that governments write tech legislation under the wrong assumption that these companies will take it then innovate from that point onwards - but that's not how it plays out. Developers aren't mind readers, so the moment the government says they're interested in legislating how some kind of service should be run, development freezes in wait of the final legislation (and if need be, any court cases that may stem from that legislation.)

From this point development is focused on meeting the legislative requirements and the usually short timelines imposed by the EU (Because bugs never happen and testing is just something we do for lolz.)

Depending on the wording of the legislation there are limited opportunities to differentiate the product and there is the constant risk that the EU interprets any new features as an attempt to circumvent the legislation. So the best thing to do is just put the product out to pasture.

I'm also entirely of the mind that this is simply not needed. What is so hard in closing one chat app and opening another? The majority of people in the EU are using whatsapp, and new entrants are constant. This just seems like such a non-issue, especially as the mac notification system allows for immediate replies regardless of where the message came from, that is totally abstracted.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#197

Post by JoeNr76 » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:15 PM UTC

tekknik wrote: post #186

dijit wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] without actually realising that it is actually going to make things worse, that's what regulation does in most cases. Feels like a uniquely american take. Companies that are maliciously compliant are not the norm. Leaving behind that most is an ambiguous enough term that means you could basically discredit anything I come up with, how do you feel about regulations that limit the use of harmful or toxic chemic…

Except in this case there are no lives being saved, it’s turning green bubbles blue. That’s all this regulation is really about.

Not just that, it's removing barriers for competition. Which is what good regulations is all about. (and, technically it more than just bubble color, it's also including everyone in group chats)

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#198

Post by smoldesu » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:15 PM UTC

tekknik wrote: post #186

dijit wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] without actually realising that it is actually going to make things worse, that's what regulation does in most cases. Feels like a uniquely american take. Companies that are maliciously compliant are not the norm. Leaving behind that most is an ambiguous enough term that means you could basically discredit anything I come up with, how do you feel about regulations that limit the use of harmful or toxic chemic…

Except in this case there are no lives being saved, it’s turning green bubbles blue. That’s all this regulation is really about.

The regulation was originally an antitrust case leveled against Apple by the European Commission. It contained many things that are unrelated to saving human lives, but will make developers and users lives better in the long run. We do this because the status quo (Apple having unfettered control over their ecosystem) hasn't worked out for people outside of the ecosystem. In lieu of trusting the world's largest company to build a text-messaging replacement that works on other phones, we do have to drop the life-saving legislation to focus on nannying the next iPhone.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#199

Post by tekknik » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:15 PM UTC

willyt wrote: post #86

If everyone's messaging has to be compatible with everyone else's then maybe we will finally only need one messaging app on our phones again instead of 5. Sounds great. I just want to be able to send messages without thinking about which app I need to go into to communicate with a particular person; that really breaks my flow when I'm trying to get something done. I don't give a shit about any features apart from pic…

But then your messaging app will have to be compatible with discord, and both offer and accept video streams.

It will be impossible to build an app that supports everything. And with 10%-20% global turnover as a fine, the EU is turning into a dictator.

Re: EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)

#200

Post by LinuxBender » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:17 PM UTC

rjzzleep wrote: post #168

LinuxBender wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding to that Pidgin has a nice plugin called OTR that enables E2EE regardless of the platform/transport being used. OTR exists for Weechat [1] as well. [1] - https://github.com/mmb/weechat-otr

Signal encryption was born out of OTR, because of the need to do the key exchanges while one party is offline.

I am not a fan of offline key exchanges through a centralized privacy-focused server as in, the server stores a key. Moxie knows why too. I wish he would come here so we could have that discussion. Perhaps I am old fashioned but I prefer military procedure of go for authentication in an out-of-band communication and verifying via voice each others key fingerprints or better, physically exchanging keys in person.