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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

#811

Post by account42 »

jlokier wrote: post #778
stale2002 wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you do have a real choice. Simply only use the Apple app store and you will have the same phone you had before.

> Simply only use the Apple app store and you will have the same phone you had before. That's not really true. Apps you need and currently use may well be moved from the Apple app store. For example WhatsApp. Some people have to use it, not because they want to. Some have to use it for work. One day they may have to install the Meta app store to get WhatsApp, and agree to permissions and access to their personal data…

> Apps you need and currently use may well be moved from the Apple app store

This is isn't the case on Android.

> For example WhatsApp. Some people have to use it, not because they want to.

That's already a separate problem and hopefully also one that the EU will address. Imagine if to call someone you'd have to sign up with the same provider as them. That we allow this kind of mess in the the software world is pure insanity.

Legislation is simply lagging behind technology but that is an argument for updating legislation to deal with the modern world, not for letting a private company play judge, jury and executioner.

> Some have to use it for work. One day they may have to install the Meta app store to get WhatsApp, and agree to permissions and access to their personal data that they don't like at all, because there will be no gatekeeping pressure from Apple on WhatsApp to not do that.

If your work requires you to install something on your private phone that is not completely isolated than that should also be regulated. If its on a work phone then your work should be interested in restricting what the app can do.

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

#812

Post by criddell »

gamblor956 wrote: post #783
criddell wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's relevant because this discussion is about removing app store restrictions from consumer devices. You're saying there are lots of places for developers to sell PS5 software but that's irrelevant if you still need Sony's blessing and have to pay Sony some type of fee. From a distribution perspective, PS5 developers are not better off than iOS developers. There's no way, AFAIK, for a developer to release…

No, you don't need Sony's blessing, unless you want to use Sony's software and marketing IP. Unlike Apple, you can reverse engineer the PS5 hardware if you want, and in fact, that is the whole reason that the console market is structured the way it is. See Sega v. Accolade for more information, but in a nutshell, the console maker can't prevent unlicensed games from running on the hardware. However, they don't have t…

Have you read the PS5 TOS[1]? It's pretty restrictive. You aren't allowed to run any unauthorized software on it nor can you reverse engineer the software. Even if you were to avoid touching the OS, there's still the firmware that's covered by this. What you are claiming can't practically be done and AFAIK, nobody is using the PS5 in this way.

I don't think you can say with a straight face that the PS5 is more open than the iPhone. I can point you to a bunch of write-your-first-iOS-app tutorials that you can complete after a relatively small investment of time and money. The app you make can only be given away through Apple's app store but it sounds like that's changing. Sounds like Sony's going to have to change as well.

Edit: I should add, you can also give people your source code and they can compile it and install the executable on their phone. Is there an analogous process on the PS5? AFAIK, individuals can't register as PS5 developers. Only companies with a current domain name can access any PS5 developer info.

[1]: https://doc.dl.playstation.net/doc/ps5-eula/ps5_eula_en.html

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

#813

Post by account42 »

mpweiher wrote: post #165
silvestrov wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple simply chose to pay a $5.5 million fine every week for months in the Netherlands instead of obey orders from the Authority for Consumers and Markets How to piss off the EU political system in one simple step. This ruling is no surprise after such behaviour from Apple. They made their own bed.

Yep. "So you think our fines are too puny to make you comply?" "There fixed that for you."

Fines, at least for corporations, really need to have increase exponentially without limit for repeat offenses so that violating the law can never just be shrugged off as the cost of doing business.

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

#814

Post by kaba0 »

bun_at_work wrote: post #542
dingleberry420 wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to personal agency? Let people make mistakes, you don't need to infantilize them.

People are easy to manipulate at scale. The idea that people are rational agents who can make educated decisions as consumers is deeply flawed. Yes, people _can_ make educated decisions, but more often than not, they don't have the requisite knowledge to make an informed decision. Letting those consumers get scammed because they aren't technical enough isn't a good solution to complicated problems.

With the same logic, setting sane defaults and putting “dangerous” options behind enough GUI options will give you the best of both - no (statistically) people will be motivated enough to press n menus deep for a setting, while the few that want full access to a very expensive device they supposedly own get to use it to its max.

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

#815

Post by depressedpanda »

freedomben wrote: post #648
Barrin92 wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been using laptops and desktops (including from apple), on which they can run their own software, for literally decades. Closed systems are new, not open ones. My 60 year old boomer father who has 9 years of education can find his way around on the command line. Yes, people don't understand tech very well any more because we're giving them crippled tech, and treat them as if they are helpless . It's the p…

Thank you, reading through most of this thread I feel like I've been dropped into some crazy world where freedom and security are somehow now mutually exclusive, and the user has become an infantile ignoramus who must be diligently protected from herself by the altruistic benevolent dictator, fearlessly and selflessly defending them from the nest of vipers that is every other company/developer/person. war is peace, f…

And thank _you_ for expressing my own thoughts so well.

Unfortunately I think that a large portion of any demography has a strong authoritarian bias, even in the ostensibly "free" West.

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

#816

Post by kaba0 »

aljungberg wrote: post #650
car_analogy wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “for my own good” No, for the common good. We are all harmed when Apple or Google can decide which businesses will succeed or fail, which apps get censored and which are allowed.

Can us common people get to decide what the common good is, or is that exclusively your choice? Censorship is something governments do, not private companies selling an optional product. If the greater good is a free for all app store, then let the greater populace decide that by choosing that product, not by outlawing the alternatives.

> Censorship is something governments do, not private companies selling an optional product.

Since when? Private companies have exceedingly large powers and they are not chosen in a democratic manner by people at all. Apple could on a whim cut me off from most of my data or impersonate me, facebook feeds false information to whole countries, swaying public opinion.

At least most governments are more-or-less democratically elected.

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

#817

Post by account42 »

laserlight wrote: post #792
stevewatson301 wrote: post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As stated elsewhere on this thread, the 30% isn’t entirely going to Apple’s pockets — they have costs such as App Store bandwidth costs, support costs for purchases made, and the likes.

Let's say Apple pockets all 30% as profit. Who is to say Apple should or shouldn't profit that much from the App Store? Who decides how much they should profit? I find the discussion around commissions shallow and entitled. We should discuss the fundamentals: market definition, competition, abuse of power, etc. PS: In case I couldn't make it clear, my questions are not directed to parent comment.

> Let's say Apple pockets all 30% as profit. Who is to say Apple should or shouldn't profit that much from the App Store?

All of us. The very same society that gave Apple exclusive control over their "intellectual property" in the first place which allows them to pocket that profit without having to compete for it. The same society that pays for enforcing that exclusivity. Corporations like Apple and their business models are only allowed to exist because we think that suits us - and we should continuously reevaluate that decision and correct it when corporations do more harm than good.

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

#818

Post by depressedpanda »

n8cpdx wrote: post #596
ko27 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People don’t choose iPhone because they want those things Your argument is ridiculous. People didn't choose iPhone because they wanted to deprive themself of an option to switch browsers engines or payment vendors either. People actually chose iPhones for a thousand other reasons.

People choose iPhone because it works better and is reliable for longer. It works better and is reliable for longer because the APIs are better and more stable, the browser is relentlessly optimized for performance and energy consumption, and because Apple can limit bad behavior through App Store restrictions. If Facebook tells people to install the meta store, and TikTok tells people to disable the setting and insta…

Note that the law mandates that it should be as easy to opt out of tracking as it is to opt in. If you visit a site that doesn't comply with this, please report them.

https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/more-about-edpb/contact-us...

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

#819

Post by account42 »

summerisle wrote: post #499
threeseed wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do understand that uBlock Origin has private, profit-generating relationships with advertisers. And you want them to have full access to every URL that you visit ? Rather than use AdGuard or any other ad-blocker that can't go and sell your data to third parties for money.

That's uBlock you were thinking about, which is owned by AdBlock. I'm 98.9% certain that Raymond Gorhill's project which I can build from source and install is not doing that.

And Gorhill / uBlock Origin doesn't even maintain the block lists (but does ship with a default selection).

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

#820

Post by ece »

arlort wrote: post #183
JoeNr76 wrote: post #114

The only questionable part is end-to-end encryption. I don't see how you can make your messaging apps interoperable and have E2E encryption. Most of the other things: mostly good. Apple and Google need to be taken down a peg or 10.

You can't, not in a perfectly verifiable way At some point app A needs to know how to decrypt messages received on app B and/or vice-versa Nicely designed apps will do so on your device, shady apps will do so on servers, as a consumer you'll have to decide which companies behave and design their apps in a way that is satisfactory to you But you have to do that to use any app in the first place. If you're using a mess…

If an app is decrypting on a server instead of your device, it's not E2EE period. It's false advertising to call it E2EE. People can have bridges and such, but you know if you're controlling it or not, or it can just be local.
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