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App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

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Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#431

Post by monopoliessuck »

dangus wrote: post #418
monopoliessuck wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're moving goal posts. Not all problems with our market are the result of simple consolidation of market leaders. Put simply, don't buy products that lock you in if you don't want products to lock you in. It seems like consumers are capable of making decisions based on price, durability, features, color etc. why is any other variable sacred? The answer is consumers don't care about these issues enough to p…

It's still blame for being non-technical. People rightfully don't really know how a lot of these highly complex products work. They just want to (e.g.) make sure their photos of their kids won't get deleted. The whole purpose of regulations is to protect the consumer against predatory companies. Companies are showing up armed with a massive information asymmetry. They’re paying thousands of data scientists and market…

Many consumers are aware their information is being scooped up and sold to the highest bidder on Facebook and Google. If they are not, I support more thorough and approachable information disclosure mandates. Most consumers don't care or at least the benefits of Facebook outweigh the cost as far as they see it. That's a calculated market decision.

I, myself do not have a Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, WhateverZuckBuysNext account because Facebook is a bad company and I don't wish to give it a dollar. When WhatsApp decided to merge Facebook and WhatsApp user data, consumers reacted by switching to Signal, a more equitable competitor. Facebook then had to placate them, at least temporarily. This is how conscious consumption works and in a capitalist economy transactions and boycotts are one of the purist ways to show your approval or disapproval of a company's products, services and behavior. It punishes bad actors in their wallets and rewards good ones in theirs instead.

I am 100% in favor of mandated information disclosure laws. I think consumers cannot make a voluntary and informed market decision if they don't have adequate information. Things like nutritional values, ingredients lists, explicitly enumerated contracts, hazards, precautions, demarcated place of product origin, assembly and material origin etc. etc. These are the tools with which consumers can make market decisions.

We live in a society where this information disclosure is obviously inadequate but consumers are also part of the equation and should be more vigilant and aware of their part in this dance.

I don't think the only two options are between a heavily regulated corporate hegemony (with consumer safeguards) and pro-corporate monopolist authoritarianism. We can do better but people need to do better too.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#432

Post by zepto »

dv35z wrote: post #429
ok_dad wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for on my iPhone! I can't compile on Linux and publish software onto an iPhone without major trickery.

I have the vision of hanging at the coffee shop, jamming to headphones, pop open the iPad, open the iCloud synced IntelliJ project I was working on my MacBook Pro in the morning. To those who would say, but that's not what an iPad is for - consider this thought: The iPad is a pretty good expression device. You can draw with the pencil in Good Notes. You can paint with your fingers in Procreate. You can make music wit…

It seems like you want to force Apple to adopt a roadmap you have laid out for them.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#433

Post by idle_zealot »

hparadiz wrote: post #319
idle_zealot wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they're sandboxed the same as other apps and have fine grained permission controls I'd do a lot more sideloading. They are subject to the same permission request/granting system as apps installed through a store. That system is OS-level and applies to all non-system apps.

This is actually exactly the same as how MacOS does it except for, ironically, terminal based tools (like homebrew).

> except for, ironically, terminal based tools

Are you sure? I've had to go into Accessibility Settings and grant command line tools permissions there.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#434

Post by Mindwipe »

simondotau wrote: post #378
Gareth321 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Pretty much all Apple has to do to keep apps in App Store in the face of competition is drop their fees to less than 10% for all apps and drop bullshit like "you can't even link to your website if it lets users pay from there", and almost everyone except the most brazen will stay on App Store. Exactly. Apple would have to actually... compete. I suppose I can understand why this fills them with dread, but they have a…

Why should Apple compete with third parties on the value of licensing Apple intellectual property? Maybe I should be allowed to sell my own licenses to Unreal Engine. I’m sure I can undercut Epic’s prices.

If Apple could do that they wouldn't need to control the signing process. They do because most of what you're discussing as "intellectual property" isn't protected from independent implementations.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#435

Post by Mindwipe »

LexGray wrote: post #249
Arcsech wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If being forced to compete fairly requires them to drop their prices by 60%, I think that’s a pretty good argument that they’re not competing fairly at the moment.

When you are competing against stores that require you to use their ad-tech framework to make up the difference it is a different equation. The idea of billions of devices out there with constantly running background ad-tech frameworks horrifying to me. It would make the AirTags stalking seem like a joke if every phone secretly tracked every Bluetooth. Right now Apple is in the stream to say no to that. The argument…

Apple literally has an ad tech network that it would literally force on all apps in the store if it didn't know it would get an anti-trust slapdown.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#436

Post by hparadiz »

idle_zealot wrote: post #433
hparadiz wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually exactly the same as how MacOS does it except for, ironically, terminal based tools (like homebrew).

> except for, ironically, terminal based tools Are you sure? I've had to go into Accessibility Settings and grant command line tools permissions there.

The issue is that once you grant access to terminal.... anything you run in it has access. So it's not very useful since almost everyone will have granted that access within a few minutes of being in the terminal.

Re: App store bill sails out of Senate Judiciary Committee

#437

Post by dangus »

shuckles wrote: post #276
dangus wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the status quo on desktop OSes, and it's largely a solved problem. A centralized monopolistic app store isn't solving the same "problem."

Is that true? I still have to remove AltAdBrowser fairly often from my mother’s relatively new Dell laptop when I visit.

It solves it as much as any app store.

There have been numerous cases of Apple missing malware in the App Store, here's one: https://www.wired.com/story/apple-app-store-malware-click-fr...

Desktop has much better tooling than it used to, including code signing, built-in browser scam website filtering, and automatic malware removal tools distributed by OS vendors. The late 90's was full of "take over your computer, time to wipe your hard drive" level viruses and malware (and I downloaded many of them!)

Macs even have recently added sandboxing for manually installed apps similar to the ones seen on App Store apps, such as OS prompts asked to allow access to personal folders, camera, desktop sharing, and other sensitive areas. Even a manually installed app is less likely to access private things because of this addition.

If AltAdBrowser (which, I assume is spyware/adware) is our level of harmful software we're talking about, it should be noted that app stores allow this type of data collection with user consent. Just check out the privacy tab in Apple's App Store for Facebook or TikTok.

Just like on a PC, all it takes is one uninformed download button press to install spyware/adware on your iPhone.

Your relative could also just only click download buttons within the app store on their desktop. That would be a very easy piece of advice.

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