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Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

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Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#311

Post by m463 »

ein0p wrote: post #34

I’m an Apple fan and I keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in Apple stock, and I still hope we at least get side loading out of all this. I do not believe this would be in any way detrimental to Apple - most people don’t give a shit. But for me and others like me it’d be pretty neat to do on my iPhone and iPad what I can already do on my Mac: install my own software that is not arbitrarily time limited.

> arbitrarily time limited.

I think this statement is unclear. You can currently sideload applications on ios, but you have to agree to terms from apple, have an appleid, and then you can compile and run an app for a few days. Then the app stops working. lather, rinse, repeat.

Honestly, I think apple is back to the wandering misguided apple before steve jobs returned. There seems to be no leadership, just the 1984 commercial, maybe with bright art-deco colors added. leadership would cut through all this nonsense and straighten things out.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#312

Post by inkyoto »

addicted wrote: post #121
mrweasel wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes up everything the EU/Europe and Apple comes up: iMessage is hugely popular, it is just not the most popular (or even third or second) messaging platform. Also the largest is Facebook Messenge, and in the top five is another Meta product, WhatsApp. So it's not like it's all Signal, Viper or Telegram, it's mostly platforms from another US tech giant.

iMessage is “hugely popular” only because it essentially replaces SMS. No one actually goes out of their way to communicate through iMessage. WhatsApp, OTOH, is huge, and that’s an app that’s not installed by default and automatically consists of your entire address book as contacts but instead you have to go ahead and download it and explicitly add contacts to it, and yet it’s almost certainly bigger than imesssage…

> WhatsApp, OTOH, is huge, and that’s an app that’s not installed by default and automatically consists of your entire address book as contacts but instead you have to go ahead and download it and explicitly add contacts to it […]

… which has become a privacy issue now. If WhatsApp has been granted full access to the contact list, the contacts are passed onto Meta that uses numbers to track users, build out shadow profiles and whatever else they are not telling us about. It can be easily seen, e.g. if you add a new phone number that trickles through into WhatsApp, and if that new person happens to have an Instagram account, their Instagram profile will appear in the Instagram suggestions feed pretty much the next moment.

Meta has been agressively pushy in recent years with its attempt to monetise WhatsApp where they can't glean into the actual messages due to them being encrypted (unlike in Facebook Messenger). So they use the metadata and contacts (phone numbers, email, physical addresses etc) that Meta sells to third-parties, data brokers and businesses including. Messages on WhatsApp from South African, or Malaysian, or similarly remote locations offering jobs (!) or business opportunities are now a fairly regular occurence.

Considering the scale, the reach and popularity, the best option for WhatsApp would be to divest it from Meta (not that they would agree to it), however, the cost of running the platform, plus overall maintenance and feature development would be a substantial expenditure that has to be somehow funded since WhatsApp users will never agree to pay for WhatsApp, and many (who comprise a substantial to very large cohort) will not be able to afford paying for it.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#313

Post by seec »

lispm wrote: post #137
davidgerard wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yep. From Baldur Bjarnason: > For months, we’ve been hearing leaks about Apple’s talks with the EU about the Digital Market Act. Those talks were not negotiations even though Apple seems to have thought they were. https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/facing-reality-in-the-e... The EU cannot allow a large business to mess around like this.

> The purpose of is the EU single market That's also a misconception. The EU single market is an important project, but there is a constant failure to understand the actual reason why the EU exists or also a purposeful misinterpretation. Countries joining the EU are requested not to join because of the single market, but because they want to join the political project of a more peaceful and an improving Europe. At it…

France and Germany are still at war, just not overtly but in a covert feminine way. They very much butt head politically and economically. And as a French I will say I wish Germany would just fuck off because the political power they gained because of the industriousness of their rules abiding citizens is not very well deserved. They keep making terrible choices and try to force everyone into them. It's not surprising to me that France is the country that created a revolution while Germany is the country that elected a dictator.

This is what Britain got right, the political projet is not going anywhere, there is just too much difference in heritage (in different meanings of the term) and I believe it is unreasonable to ask the citizens of each country to let go of those heritages. The differences exist for a reason and are keys to keep an equilibrium in power.

As for the economic project, it makes sense in a way it's much more efficient, but since monetary creation gives so much power in ou current system it is problematic in many ways. The standardization efforts are useful but forcing everyone into a dominant economic ideology is not serving everyone equally. Funniest thing is that Germany who was the one dominating the conversation, found a way to fuck up politically. Fiscally conscious but socially inept that is the way of the Germans.

All that being said, I'm all for the EU regulations concerning the DMA but it's just because our interests align and that's pretty much it. France has an history of calling out Apple on their bullshit, so it's not like if there is no precedent.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#314

Post by seec »

inkyoto wrote: post #312
addicted wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iMessage is “hugely popular” only because it essentially replaces SMS. No one actually goes out of their way to communicate through iMessage. WhatsApp, OTOH, is huge, and that’s an app that’s not installed by default and automatically consists of your entire address book as contacts but instead you have to go ahead and download it and explicitly add contacts to it, and yet it’s almost certainly bigger than imesssage…

> WhatsApp, OTOH, is huge, and that’s an app that’s not installed by default and automatically consists of your entire address book as contacts but instead you have to go ahead and download it and explicitly add contacts to it […] … which has become a privacy issue now. If WhatsApp has been granted full access to the contact list, the contacts are passed onto Meta that uses numbers to track users, build out shadow pr…

But any other app that would get big enough would end up just like that. All those behaviors are just what happens when power gets concentrated (in a single company/group/hand, whatever the case may be).

So, what is actually needed is an interoperable standard so that people have choices to go and leave as they please depending on the behavior of the developers/companies.

Which is exactly what is being done, so that's convenient.

Now I wish we could legislate a way to make a new standard for email and allow people to run it from their home (just like personal mailbox) to remove that power from big tech. The technical solution is probably not that hard but getting adoption without some sort of leverage is almost impossible...

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#315

Post by dmz73 »

kernal wrote: post #13
bee_rider wrote: post #8

The EU will win this if they want. Their trump card is that, actually, making the EU not a viable market for the most annoying US tech companies would be a huge win for many of their constituents.

Apple should play their Trump card and threaten to pull out of the EU. The EU would blink first because the public backlash would be career ending.

100% agree, Apple should play their Trump card and end up in the positions where Trump is now, sued for their user hostile and ant-competitive practices. And if Apple does pull out of EU and let their competitors roam free in a market of 400 mil people, what could possibly go wrong for Apple?

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#316

Post by seec »

martimarkov wrote: post #307
simion314 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody forces you do not use the Apple Store, Apple Pay, Apple Music, Apple Siri Competition COULD make Siri improve, competition could make the Store better etc. You did not told me why you reading the text "if you buy your subscription from our website cheaper" is harming you? Are you having trouble with extra usefull information, I am not aware of this health issue.

No, the problem is I’m sharing my card data with a randomly company on the internet. I trust Apple and I want to be protected by their platform and to be able to easily cancel and not go into dark patterns where I need to call someone. We all know that if this is an option and developers are greedy (which they are as humans) then they will do everything they can to push ppl to the payment gateway with least fees rega…

As they have shown repeatedly Apple is not more trustworthy than any other company. Do you also shop only at Amazon because of this irrational fear?

You have been properly brainwashed; you don't understand what you say.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#317

Post by simion314 »

martimarkov wrote: post #307
simion314 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody forces you do not use the Apple Store, Apple Pay, Apple Music, Apple Siri Competition COULD make Siri improve, competition could make the Store better etc. You did not told me why you reading the text "if you buy your subscription from our website cheaper" is harming you? Are you having trouble with extra usefull information, I am not aware of this health issue.

No, the problem is I’m sharing my card data with a randomly company on the internet. I trust Apple and I want to be protected by their platform and to be able to easily cancel and not go into dark patterns where I need to call someone. We all know that if this is an option and developers are greedy (which they are as humans) then they will do everything they can to push ppl to the payment gateway with least fees rega…

>The text on its own is fine but it also increases the attack vector for most people.

Sure, information is dangerous, so Apple needs to keep the users uninformed.

Don't you see that this information can affect Apple\s profits and they hide it for that reason not to protect anyone? Their App Sore is filled with stuff that is not good for the users but if that makes money for Apple then it is allowed, including those shitty mobile games.

When Apple protects users only when they make money from it then some semi intelligent person would manage to figure out the truth.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#318

Post by seec »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #180
ein0p wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It already dominates the market though, at least in the US, the wealthiest market there is.

They actually have to put effort into competing in Europe, lol.

And they have been rather uncompetitive lately. Nowadays, the only thing they do better than others is their own silicon but since it's not that relevant for phones anymore they need to do better. The worst is that because of greed they find a way to purposefully limit the phone usefulness to artificially force higher price poing (RAM/storage).

Just as an example, you gotta be really into the ecosystem to choose an iPhone 15 over a Pixel 8. But I think most stick with Apple because it is complicated to switch and all the software "investment" is lost.

Previously as an Apple "believer" I was against cross-platform apps but now I feel like a transferable licence is almost a requirement. It is very worth the small performance cost.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#319

Post by EasyMark »

I would love to see the EU to tell some US tech companies to drop dead and some new smaller corps emerge within a more customer friendly attitude. I would certainly sign up from across the pond if they extended the same customer friendly policies, even if it cost a bit more.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#320

Post by EasyMark »

bee_rider wrote: post #8

The EU will win this if they want. Their trump card is that, actually, making the EU not a viable market for the most annoying US tech companies would be a huge win for many of their constituents.

It could be a big boon to US customers looking for other options if European companies step up. There are literally -dozens- of us who will sign up for their services that are more or less feature comparable to US with more privacy protections guaranteed by EU regulations.
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