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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

#821

Post by account42 »

mike_hearn wrote: post #172
kinnth wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If iPhones had different app stores with 15% fees, then consumers would decide. I think the real issue here is consumers are gona get hyper confused and it wont be a better experience for anyone. Every single app creator out there will now want their own "app store" and it's going to be a mess. 30% fee initially to capture that market was what our company factored in and grew exponentially with. A 15% fee is nothing…

More likely, some apps will simply bypass the whole app store concept entirely. There are a lot of downsides to requiring every app install be intermediated by a third party, especially for internal or very niche apps where the app store isn't really adding any value because the provider is a trusted/known brand to the customer already (e.g. they may have a negotiated contract). For consumer apps, there doesn't seem…

Unfortunately, the App Stores tend to bundle both the store (i.e. curation and discovery) part and the on device package management part somewhat so apps installed outside the store will need to provide their own update mechanism. There is of course no real reason why there can't be a standard way to provide update channels that can be managed in a central package manager application without also requiring the store part, just so far no incentives for platform holders to separate these two.

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

#822

Post by account42 »

caramelcustard wrote: post #203
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…

Pretty sure 30% commission is not an Apple-exclusive thing. Google Play, consoles and Steam have the same rate.

Steam's commision has also been (IMO rightfully) criticised but the situation is hardly the same because Steam doesn't (and can't) prevent other stores or direct app installations on the platforms it runs on so that 30% is much more justifiable as something the "free" market is willing to pay for the services Steam provides. Apple on the other hand doesn't even let anyone compete.

(Of course, Steam still greatly benefits from first mover advantage and network effects that IMO mean they should also be subject to more regulation, including being required to support alternate clients for all Steam services as well as federation for their social network and communication channels.)

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

#823

Post by oblio »

thrown_22 wrote: post #663
oblio wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are middle points in there, before your extreme.

What extreme? Letting people decide what permissions on their apps is the middle ground. The extremes are letting Apple decide what you can and can't run on your phone, or letting apps decide what you can or can't run on your phone. That some people are too ignorant to set phone permissions is their problem. We still sell sharp knives even though people cut themselves all the time. Demanding Apple protect us is the d…

There's a ton of regulation for knives and everything you can think of, and where there isn't, we call it "the Wild West" and it's not a compliment.

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

#824

Post by TheGeminon »

pessimizer wrote: post #671
sircastor wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they don't just "Find an obscure setting". A website tells them exactly where to look, exactly what to do, and they have motive to do it because they want whatever this app is promising. These kinds of scams are all over the place. Open up your browser's developer console while on Facebook and you'll see FB's desperate attempt to get you to not start typing in commands. When Epic got up in arms about Google's fee…

That's why it's FUD. It's happening today. There will never be a perfect circumstance where a determined enough attacker cannot get a determined enough sucker to give them their savings.

“This is FUD because it’s already happening and there is nothing you can do about it” is a weird take.

Just because something is possible doesn’t mean that making it harder isn’t worthwhile. Perfect is the enemy of good, after all.

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

#825

Post by kaba0 »

aljungberg wrote: post #692
car_analogy wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can us common people get to decide what the common good is, or is that exclusively your choice? This legislation is the result of democratic process - i.e. decided by the "common people", if indirectly. > let the greater populace decide that by choosing that product "The only legitimate power citizens have is that of consumers, not voters." - shall we also decide to only buy from companies that don't use child labo…

> This legislation is the result of democratic process - i.e. decided by the "common people", if indirectly. Do you know that for a fact? The EU is famously opaque to its voters. What is being done in the name of the voters is likely for the most part entirely unknown to said voters. Very likely many more EU citizens have “voted” on this issue in a more direct fashion by buying Apple products. Should we disregard the…

> Very likely many more EU citizens have “voted” on this issue in a more direct fashion by buying Apple products.

Can you honestly tell what exactly they voted on? I voted for the good hardware and privacy-aligned actions, which did overcome their closed, proprietary-only software’s problems. By your logic, my vote should count towards the latter as a goal.

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

#826

Post by freedomben »

nicce wrote: post #786
freedomben wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As long as there are options (Android), then iPhone is just a product for specific group. I don’t get it why everything should be the same. Is iPhone so good the everyone is mad because they can’t sideload an app? A lot of iPhone’s success is based on to that very thing that you can’t sideload and paying is easy. Different products for different people.

If it was as limited as you say, I would agree, just use a different product. That's what I've done for years by using Android.

However this philosophy is being extended to nearly everything nowadays. Apple is a leader and has proven that extreme authoritarian and lockdown works and few people will complain. As a result, nearly every company that makes mainstream products just follows their lead. For example the removal of a headphone jack, after which basically all Android makers (even OnePlus) followed suit.

Despite the much held opinion on HN of the lockdown beinga feature rather than a bug, the vast majority of people I talk to just use apple because the hardware is nice and everyone else uses them and there is social stigma around being a "green bubble". I don't think Apple's success is because of the draconian policies.

The reason why I care so much and think this ideology is harmful is not because I want to side load an iphone. If apple were just a niche product maker, then I couldn't care less what they do. Unfortunately that is not the case. What apple does directly affects me even though I don't buy apple products.

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

#827

Post by kaba0 »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #404
krzyk wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that already exists on Android and the negatives didn't happen (with modern android versions), on the contrary. My phone supports multiple payment vendors using nfc. I can have Tasker do magic with my phone etc.

And that's great! but why force apple to do it when it doesn't have a monopoly status in the phone market?

Because they have better hardware I would like to use, but can’t on a supposedly general purpose handheld computer I paid a shitton of money for.

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

#828

Post by kaba0 »

martin8412 wrote: post #809
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.

No, because apps will be moved to other stores with less strict guidelines on permissions. Meta will for sure do it. They mentioned Apple as a major reason for their poor financial performance, after Apple introduced further restrictions on what they can and can't do. They've also been caught red handed before, and had their enterprise developer account disabled for abusing it to do things they weren't allowed to on…

And why Apple should be the arbiter of truth in the question? They are free to make the UX for enabling side-loading as inconvenient as they want (I haven’t heard anyone accidentally unlocking dev mode on Android for example), and presumably Facebook is not big enough to overcome that burden, effectively still forcing them to play by Apple’s rules. But why should everyone do so?

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

#829

Post by arlort »

ece wrote: post #820
arlort wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hence the "shady" part

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

#830

Post by account42 »

Someone wrote: post #198
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.

They still (rightfully, IMO) can charge third parties for getting access to their customers, just as super markets charge for getting stuff on their shelves, or as amusement parks take a cut for the right to sell ice cream. Now, as to what’s reasonable there? That will be a separate discussion. So far, Apple has put the bar at over 20% for countries that have passed similar legislation, likely on the argument that pa…

> They still (rightfully, IMO) can charge third parties for getting access to their customers, just as super markets charge for getting stuff on their shelves, or as amusement parks take a cut for the right to sell ice cream.

Super markets charge for use of shelf space and logistics. The customers don't belong to anyone. The super market can't prevent you from opening a store next door to sell to the same customers directly. Similarly, I don't see any problem with Apple charching for hosting, downloads, payment, curation etc. but it should not be their place to sell permission fro what you are allowed to install on your own device just as it would be ridiculous for Ikea to control what you can put on your shelf.

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