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EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

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Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#741

Post by neop1x »

chris_st wrote: post #119
ParksNet wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's greed (in maintaining the egregious 30% commission for so long) is going to undermine their entire ecosystem. If Apple moved voluntarily to 10% or 15% for all, there never would have been the industry pressure for this sort of regulation. The EU would have been better to just mandate a maximum % commission for all digital marketplaces above a certain level of revenue. This new solution will get poked full of…

I see this, and it just makes me think that if they had, we'd be seeing posts that say, "Apple's greed (in maintaining the egregious 10% commission for so long) is going to undermine their entire ecosystem. If Apple moved voluntarily to 5% or 3% for all, ...".

30% is almost 1/3 of the app price! It is higher than income tax in most countries. It is stealing money from developers because their app is not successful due to being released on App Store, it is successful because it is a great product and people would buy it on whatever store it would be available. Developers were just unable to publish it in another store or use a different payment processor with lower fees.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#742

Post by dwaite »

smoldesu wrote: post #672
filoleg wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you can keep using app store, so I don't understand the issue Apps with massive following that are into the idea of violating privacy rights will leave App Store and its restrictions, and will be available only on third party app stores where they can do whatever they want. Imagine Facebook leaving App Store and becoming available only on Meta Store (or whatever they would call it). Oh, and they dont have to abide b…

I can't for the life of me figure out why everyone cites Facebook here. Nobody is forcing you to download the Facebook app. It's perfectly usable inside a web browser, nevermind the fact that a sideloaded version of Facebook could still leverage the same security benefits provided by iOS' sandboxing model. At this point you're basically arguing that Apple should be the one who dictates what privacy should look like..…

> I can't for the life of me figure out why everyone cites Facebook here. Nobody is forcing you to download the Facebook app. It's perfectly usable inside a web browser, nevermind the fact that a sideloaded version of Facebook could still leverage the same security benefits provided by iOS' sandboxing model.

I'll see if I can help.

1. A lot of people feel forced to use the Facebook ecosystem - there are groups and markets that are only accessible to Facebook users, let alone the ability to stay up to date with family and friends. Facebook/Meta also provide internet services in some countries, making them utterly unavoidable

2. Facebook has caught in several privacy abuses in the past, including one that used enterprise certificates to side-load a non-reviewed app which set Facebook as a VPN to monitor internet traffic and app usage.

3. There is no guarantee that Facebook will continue to allow full accessibility via a browser if they have sufficient benefits to installing a native app. See Reddit heavily pushing for their native app over the browser on mobile, or Google blocking whole services (or essential features for some services, such as the ability to edit Google Docs) to "encourage" people into native apps.

4. There are many security and privacy features of the App Store that come not from technical measures but from Apple acting as a quasi regulatory enforcer. For instance, application developers must ask for consent for tracking, and the setting chooses whether an advertising identifier is released. But the App Store contract limits _all_ cross-party tracking methods without this consent, including things like sharing device fingerprinting and IP addresses with third parties. These protections only exist for iOS users because of Apple's ability to block publication.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#744

Post by stevewatson301 »

concinds wrote: post #528
n8cpdx wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don’t choose iPhone because they want those things, they choose iPhone because they want to be protected from them. Look at the Lumenate app that was just on hacker news yesterday: - Android users are complaining about having to create an account to use it - iOS users just pushed a button and didn’t even have to share their email or make a password - iOS users who subscribe have one place to manage their subsc…

German politicians were discussing banning Telegram. With centralized monopoly App Stores, they easily can. With sideloading, they can't under current frameworks; and they're unlikely to mandate remote-uninstalls of "illegal apps" anytime soon. Sure, central subscription management and "Login with Apple" are convenient, but I'd much rather governments not have the ability to block apps on my personal devices.

While I agree with your sentiment, how do you think that might work out if phone manufacturers were required to have an app ID blocklist?

As an example (I’m not sure what the current state of things is on Firefox these days as it has been a long time since I’ve used it), Firefox ships with a blocklist of extensions that works even if you get the extension from a third-party source. This was mostly used to prevent users from installing malware, but if governments have problems banning an app they’ll just go this route and require phone manufacturers to do the same.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#745

Post by neop1x »

pchristensen wrote: post #248
superb-owl wrote: post #5

This is huge. Forcing Apple to allow app side-loading, third-party payments, etc is going to wrest away control of the iOS ecosystem (and eat pretty heavily into their revenues [1] [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/10/apple-implies-it-generated-r... I hope some of these regulations spill over into the U.S. and the rest of the world.

For many (most?) users, Apple's restrictions, especially sideloading, protect users from bad actor app owners (looking at you, Facebook). To me, allowing sideloading is like allowing chemical weapons to be used in war. Yes, it's a new tool and capability at your disposal, but it's also available to every powerful and unscrupulous participant.

So people with Android where sideloading has been a normal thing for many years have been dangerous? Could they harm other people by creating their own app and installing it on their Android without paying anyone a yearly subscription?

It used to be normal in the past that people would OWN a computer and they would run ANY software on it. Why should we allow a greedy company like Apple to change that? Both android and ios implement sandboxes and apps can't gain complete access over the device in most cases so I don't see any security benefit.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#746

Post by Retric »

nl wrote: post #728
chrischen wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If transactions are small, like 99 cents, transaction fees can exceed 29%.

And you think Apple can't negotiate that?

Not much, Apple can negotiate with the payment processor but but the minimums are still quite high.

https://usa.visa.com/content/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/vis...

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#747

Post by bageljr »

MatthiasPortzel wrote: post #719
depressedpanda wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I see, as a web dev, is that finally Apple will have to keep Safari/iOS up-to-date with Safari/macOS, and that in turn up-to-date with all other browsers. I.e., they will no longer be able to artificially hamstring the web in order to prevent web apps from competing with their App Store. They certainly have the money to keep pace with Chrome, and I certainly don't want to put up banners saying "works best in [an…

“They certainly have the money to keep pace with Chrome” This point has been made before. But Chrome is a moving target. I actually am skeptical that Apple can spend more money on WebKit than Google can on Blink. The way Chrome rose to prominence was by implement brand-new web standards faster than anyone else. If the question is only, “what engine supports the most websites,” I suspect Chrome will increase their dev…

Isn't that a good thing? Like I'm a full time firefox user but what you're saying is "Google and Apple will fund development of web browsers/engines that support new APIs to outcompete each other"

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#748

Post by stevewatson301 »

simion314 wrote: post #142
s1k3s wrote: post #89

I can't make up my mind if this is good or bad. On one hand, FAANG has a huge advantage over anyone else on the market, but they did build that product and they did spend their own money to do it. I'd be curious if there are any other occurrences in history of something so big ending up regulated by the government?

Microsoft was forced to create open standards for documents, the docx format.

This is a particularly bad example since the OOXML standardization process was fraught with issues and there are deviations between the standard and Microsoft’s implementation.

For starters, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#749

Post by neop1x »

pchristensen wrote: post #261
eklavya wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exclusively Apple user here, couldn’t be more happier for the announcement. Keeps my favoured platform alive and innovative. Btw, you can keep using App Store so I don’t understand the issue here.

With sideloading, developers with market power will be able to force iOS users into worse conditions than the standard App Store. You can bet that FB will get everyone onto their sideloaded version ASAP, and I doubt it will respect the "Ask App Not to Track Me". Then, once everyone has figured out sideloading with FB, the bar will be lower for other apps and suddenly the consumer protections of the App Store are weak…

It has been like this on the desktop since forever and some apps are still not available from app stores like Adobe creative suite and it has worked fine.

It has created new business opportunities for anti-virus companies initially but the need for those diminished over time as OS-level "defender apps" and overall 3rd-party app handling got better.

I don't see any problem here. If Facebook forced users to install spyware and spy on users without their consent FB itself would be fined by regulators. And you can always use the web FB version if you are afraid of using their app or stop using FB completely.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#750

Post by mr_toad »

blablablub wrote: post #369

A lot of talk about the Apple tax of 30%. But who is actually paying the vat of the purchase price? The developer or apple? If it is Apple, then with VAT rates of ~20% in the EU, a 30% cut all of a sudden does not sound so unreasonable.

Value added taxes are taxed on value added. Apple pays tax on the 30% it charges, less expenses.
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