[HN Gopher] EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amaz...
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EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved
Author : Gareth321
Score : 730 points
Date : 2022-07-20 10:26 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.consilium.europa.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.consilium.europa.eu)
| impalallama wrote:
| I'm very interested to see how this will affect closed gaming
| platforms like Nintendo, Sony, etc.
|
| Personally I'd love to be able to install an itch.io app on my
| switch and play some silly indies.
| antioppressor wrote:
| What do you think why Sony started to bring their used to be
| exclusive games to PC?
| simondotau wrote:
| If this law doesn't force the consoles to open up, it will
| prove that it was not grounded in real principles. Consoles are
| computers, just as surely as an iPhone is.
| stolsvik wrote:
| To all the folks that worry that Apple won't any longer be able
| to police Facebook: We can regulate that too. We can some really
| draconian rules wrt. what can and can not be collected etc. See,
| with a working governing body, the people wins.
|
| GDPR is great. USA don't have it, we do. Regulation works here.
| (Not always, not enough, it have unintended side effects and all
| that. But letting the big tech guys run the world instead: No
| thanks.)
| kmlx wrote:
| > GDPR is great.
|
| not at all from my experience. it's been extremely frustrating
| so far.
| plandis wrote:
| One would think that if there is truly a Europe wide market for
| such an unlocked device a competitor should be able to challenge
| Apple and Google dominance. Europe could even subsidize it.
|
| But instead, it's more engineering by bureaucrats. Why is Europe
| so afraid of competing in the open market?
| [deleted]
| pb7 wrote:
| piva00 wrote:
| What a great hot take on a whole continent...
|
| Oh well, carry on, it's just sad to have to read this kind of
| bullshit on HN.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The Open App Markets Act and the American Innovation and
| Choice Online Act are currently making their way through the
| House.
| pb7 wrote:
| What does that have to do with the fact that EU produces
| virtually nothing relative to its size and economy in terms
| of tech? They wouldn't have to be constantly passing these
| knee-capping regulations if they had a competitive industry
| of their own to spread out the market share. It's downright
| embarrassing.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The point is, it's rather shortsighted to call out the EU
| for regulating tech when the U.S. and many other
| governments are actively doing so as well.
| pb7 wrote:
| The difference is that the US is the market where these
| companies are born and develop their innovation so it
| makes sense for regulation to be passed as needed. The EU
| is nothing but a leech. It could focus on actually
| creating competition which would naturally resolve the
| problem but no, it chooses the easy way out by passing
| regulation year after year instead.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It is not a leech to create legislation that is intended
| to act as consumer protection for your citizens. Quite
| the opposite actually. You may argue that the legislation
| doesn't do what it claims to do, but it makes no sense to
| call them a leech when Apple is operating in their
| market, and thus subject to the rules of their market.
|
| Perhaps you may think of the EU as Apple and the common
| market as the App Store if it will make it any more
| palatable.
| pb7 wrote:
| You could create your own products and services that
| would naturally drive competition in the market which
| would benefit the entire world instead of relying on
| someone else to do the hard work just so you can whine
| about how it's done. Europe does very little that does
| not benefit itself exclusively. In short, a leech.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Europe creates consumers, who buy and use goods and
| services. They are literally providing something of value
| to Apple and tech companies.
| piva00 wrote:
| These amazing companies can just leave the EU as we are
| just a leech. Ah no, they love money too much to leave.
|
| Why are you so personally offended by all of this? It's
| rather bizarre to see so much vitriol against a whole
| continent with no nuance, it's actually pretty fucking
| exhausting.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > One would think that if there is truly a Europe wide market
| for such an unlocked device a competitor should be able to
| challenge Apple and Google dominance.
|
| The problem is that such a device doesn't really have a chance
| because it's not compatible with existing infrastructure such
| as WhatsApp, Instagram, your banking app, what-have-you. It
| could be the best device in the world, but there's always a
| catch-22 problem with software that's fundamentally closed and
| can't be implemented by a third party.
| JohnGB wrote:
| That's an ironic take given that these rules are there to take
| away monopoly power and have an actual open market.
| antonymy wrote:
| Apple is not even close to a monopoly, especially in Europe,
| where they have less than a third of the mobile market. That
| said, the rest of the market is divided up between several
| different Android phone companies, so Apple is in fact the
| largest single mobile vendor in the EU (Samsung is neck and
| neck with them though, and may have overtaken them since I
| last checked).
|
| So from a regulatory standpoint, Apple is the problem child
| even if it isn't a monopoly. The EU sees a third of its
| phone-using population as being "captured" by a uncompetitive
| foreign corporation that is far more restrictive and locked
| down than any of its competitors. Apple has also tenaciously
| resisted any attempts to open its platform by citing user
| security as a reason for its draconian level of control over
| the iPhone platform, so it became necessary for the EU to
| resort to powerful big-guns legislation to act. Well the big
| guns are here, and I don't think Apple's "user security"
| defense is going to be aegis enough against them.
| bun_at_work wrote:
| How does Apple have a monopoly? The only thing that comes
| close is the App Store, which requires you buy an iPhone,
| which is not the most common mobile device.
|
| https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/europe
|
| Further, other phone companies start from nothing and become
| quite successful in market place, and some fail, but consider
| OnePlus - they decided to make a "Flagship Killer" and are
| still delivering high quality devices.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| Monopoly power is not the same as a literal monopoly. The
| FTC has a pretty good definition of it:
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-
| guidance/gui...
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > How does Apple have a monopoly?
|
| They have monopoly power and control over app developers'
| access to iPhone users.
|
| If supermarkets offered a loyalty card program that made it
| _physically impossible_ for you to shop at another
| supermarket, then this would be a monopoly /anti-trust
| issue too, even if no supermarket had a majority share of
| the market.
|
| The usual response of Apple fans is "You can just buy a
| second phone", but asking app developers to give away free
| Android phones to their iPhone-using potential customers is
| not really a viable competitive strategy.
| googlryas wrote:
| That example only works if you were denied using the
| actual loyalty card for shopping at another market, which
| is actually the case? Nothing about the Apple ecosystem
| means you can't buy an Android and continue using it
| efsavage wrote:
| > Why is Europe so afraid of competing in the open market?
|
| Because they haven't been winning. It's not a coincidence that
| the revenue thresholds for this bill is conveniently higher
| than any Europe-based companies.
| izacus wrote:
| Talking about "free market" when the gatekeeping megacorp
| selects winners in multiple downstream markets is ridiculous.
|
| I thought it's common knowledge that consolidation and cartels
| cripple free markets to the point of not functioning and
| benefiting society anymore?
| [deleted]
| notanormalnerd wrote:
| Because it is not "one market".
|
| There is free movement of good, services, money and people. But
| it is still 28 similar markets with different cultures,
| different languages, different bureaucracies and sometimes
| different currency.
|
| It is 400 million people but comparing the EU to the US is
| wrong on so many levels.
|
| Also calling the US an "open" market is like saying China is a
| "free" democracy.
|
| "One would think that if there is truly a US wide market for
| such an affordable healthcare service a competitor should be
| able to challenge the current market dominance. The US could
| even subsidize it."
|
| Also it doesn't matter if the EU could do it themselves. Our
| market, our rules. If you don't like the rules, don't play.
| pb7 wrote:
| [deleted]
| from wrote:
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| "I don't mean to be presumptuous, but here's a sweeping
| statement about the entire world economy that assumes
| Google is representative of every industrial sector there
| is. Also, any criticism of monopoly power can only possibly
| come from how jealous other countries are of our American
| Innovation."
| from wrote:
| Every week we hear how Italy or France or Belgium or
| whatever country has fined Google yet again for breaking
| some arcane rule. I get the impression they're mad they
| missed out on all the tax revenue from these massively
| profitable companies. This kind of stuff happens in
| banana republics all the time and we all call it what it
| is there. The only difference here is that the paper
| pushers in Brussels really think that they're protecting
| consumers with their cookie notice mandates or whatever
| the latest thing they're pushing is.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The U.S. itself is also pursuing tech antitrust. This is a
| global phenomenon.
|
| https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/40669/apple-faces-us-
| an...
|
| https://macdailynews.com/2022/07/19/facing-stalemate-
| backers...
|
| https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/antitrust-
| vetera...
| from wrote:
| These are mostly class action suits that will result in a
| settlement. Antitrust enforcement in America usually just
| means the company will sell some of its divisons (maybe
| Google sells the ad business). Half the push for tech
| regulation comes from Republicans looking to "own" the
| Democrats. This EU law would not fly at all in America.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Tech regulation is coming from both sides of the aisle.
| The FTC is under the chairmanship of Lina Khan, who cut
| her teeth as an Amazon critic. Democrats are hugely
| concerned about the app company platforms permitting
| tracking of user personal information, especially in the
| aftermath of _Dobbs_. (I suppose you said "Half the
| push", which is accurate as there are bipartisan
| grievances against Big Tech.) America might not pass a
| law as comprehensive as this one, but it certainly looks
| like the regulatory environment is inching towards that
| direction than ever before. The times, they are
| a-changing.
| delecti wrote:
| The "invisible hand of the free market" doesn't work when
| manufacturing a device requires such a huge infrastructure
| around it, and benefits so much from economy of scale.
| "Exploitative business practices must not be that bad or the
| free market would step in" is a painfully naive take.
| peytoncasper wrote:
| You're totally right. How ever will a tiny company like Apple
| compete against Blackberry with their massive marketshare
| advantage and extensive supply chain...
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Blackberry was never "massive" in the same way that either
| Android or Apple are today. Blackberry had about 85 million
| users at its peak and while that sounds like a lot, it was
| essentially a fancy phone for checking emails and such, and
| is nowhere near the pervasive penetration in all aspects of
| society that have happened since then. All sorts of daily
| activities are harder - or even outright impossible -
| without an Android or iPhone.
| peytoncasper wrote:
| Thats not the argument though. The argument was about the
| ability for smaller companies to compete with larger
| incumbents. Specifically, around the impact that advanced
| manufacturing and supply chain relationships have on that
| competitiveness. Blackberry certainly had all those
| advantages at the time.
|
| You're talking about features, of which a company can
| also develop themselves. There is no app so pervasive on
| either platform that makes owning an Android or iPhone
| such a requirement that automatically disqualifies any
| competitor. Unless of course you mean the UX provided by
| the OS.
|
| It may be a pain to switch to some new phone or start up,
| but thats the job of a business. To convince me that
| their product is worth paying them money for.
|
| Love the username :)
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > Thats not the argument though.
|
| Yeah sure, fair enough. I agree that manufacturing isn't
| key; a small group of hobbyist managed to make the Pine64
| phone, which is not "world class" but certainly not bad
| either, and if some hobbyists can do it then a "real"
| business can certainly do it (and in fact, many have).
|
| > There is no app so pervasive on either platform that
| makes owning an Android or iPhone such a requirement that
| automatically disqualifies any competitor.
|
| I don't know about that; the lack of things like WhatsApp
| can be a huge downside for your social life. This is not
| true for everyone of course, depending on where you are
| in your life, your location, and what kind of friends you
| have (if any), but it is true for many people. I moved to
| a different country a few months ago and making friends
| without WhatsApp is doing it on hard mode.
|
| If I compare this with using FreeBSD and Linux back in
| the early 2000s when Microsoft was omni-dominant, it's
| actually much worse. Proprietary formats like .doc and
| drivers were annoying, but can be reverse-engineered and
| the only thing really stopping anyone from building
| something that works _for them_ was just a time
| investment. Now, it 's pretty much impossible because
| much useful functionality requires access to severs and
| networked protocols.
| peytoncasper wrote:
| That is fair, WhatsApp could be a blocker. Although I
| think that speaks more about Facebook's Monopoly than
| Apple's.
|
| However, I would argue that it's the same answer to the
| hardware problem. You start small, by offering a limited
| product to a segment of the population that believes in
| the same features that you care about. As you grow, you
| then become a target for Facebook to develop a native app
| for your OS.
|
| I'm not saying it's easy, but the Apple/Android market
| was built over decades. The iPhone was terrible when it
| started, but it could call, message and email people.
| Seems like a good starting point.
| delecti wrote:
| Assuming BlackBerry's annual sales were trending up YoY
| prior to the start of the graph in this article [1] (IMO a
| safe assumption), then Apple sold more iPods [2] than
| Blackberry every year starting at least by 2004, 3 years
| before the first iPhone. They were never a "tiny company"
| in comparison to BlackBerry.
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/blackberry-phone-sales-
| decli...
|
| [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ipod_sales_per_
| quart...
| hgazx wrote:
| This is going to be bad. Regarding the iPhone:
|
| It will open the door to apps asking me to install their own
| stores to access them. That will be inconvenient.
|
| It will open the door to apps charging me through methods other
| than Apple's subscriptions. That will make it harder for me to
| cancel.
|
| It will open the door to malware on the phones of my less
| technologically capable relatives.
|
| On the other hand I will be able to install pirated Spotify and
| YouTube much easily. I currently have to use AltStore, which is
| somewhat annoying.
|
| I'm not even going to comment on interoperability between
| messengers. It's simply absurd, no matter the way I look at it.
| cloogshicer wrote:
| How is interop between messengers a bad thing? Wouldn't it be
| amazing if you wouldn't have to switch between 100 messengers
| all the time?
| hgazx wrote:
| Personally I keep a different persona in all those messengers
| and they are all different in the way that they work and the
| features that they offer. I'm happy compartmentalising
| things. Not to mention the spam problem that will likely
| occur.
| Vespasian wrote:
| I read the legislation as that still being possible.
|
| There is no need for you to communicate with anybody who
| you don't want to communicate with.
| baobob wrote:
| Does anyone know if the definition of "gatekeeper" extends to
| infrastructure services like AWS or Cloudflare?
|
| > A small number of large undertakings providing core platform
| services have emerged with considerable economic power that could
| qualify them to be designated as gatekeepers pursuant to this
| Regulation. Typically, they feature an ability to connect many
| business users with many end users through their services, which,
| in turn, enables them to leverage their advantages, such as their
| access to large amounts of data, from one area of activity to
| another. Some of those undertakings exercise control over whole
| platform ecosystems in the digital economy and are structurally
| extremely difficult to challenge or contest by existing or new
| market operators, irrespective of how innovative and efficient
| those market operators may be
|
| Sure sounds cloudy to me
|
| edit: it seems to be explicitly covered:
|
| Article 2
|
| > (1) 'Gatekeeper' means an undertaking providing core platform
| services, designated pursuant to Article 3;
|
| > (2) 'Core platform service' means any of the following:
|
| > (i) cloud computing services;
|
| Article 3
|
| > 1. An undertaking shall be designated as a gatekeeper if:
|
| > (a) it has a significant impact on the internal market;
|
| > (b) it provides a core platform service which is an important
| gateway for business users to reach end users; and
|
| > (c) it enjoys an entrenched and durable position, in its
| operations, or it is foreseeable that it will enjoy such a
| position in the near future.
|
| This act sounds like the US tech equivalent of Thor's hammer
| hrgiger wrote:
| It gives me feeling also kindle covered
| shkkmo wrote:
| Does it also cover gaming consoles?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Hopefully. Game consoles normalized the shit Apple is
| doing.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I'm not sure how this would mean anything for a service
| provider like AWS. You can already install and run whatever
| version of your own services you want on bare EC2s, and if you
| don't want to use the xen hypervisor for some reason, you can
| buy bare metal instances and do whatever you want with them.
| It's already possible to run OpenStack on AWS if you really
| want to do that.
| baobob wrote:
| Many orgs buy AWS for the unified billing and control plane.
| That part is fused shut and precisely addressed by the text
| (not quoted above). I can't as a third party build a service
| that competes with AWS and give it the usability that is
| possible buying direct from AWS
| Dagonfly wrote:
| > The gatekeeper shall not be prevented from taking, to the
| extent that they are strictly necessary and proportionate,
| measures to ensure that third-party software applications or
| software application stores do not endanger the integrity of the
| hardware or operating system provided by the gatekeeper, provided
| that such measures are duly justified by the gatekeeper.
|
| A lot of Apple's system design will hinge on this paragraph. They
| might still be able to require some form of Notarization. I'd
| welcome that. Keep the Security through code signing and a strong
| permission system. Allowing other App Stores to set their own
| review process and "guidelines".
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Apple definitely can do more for iOS user security beyond App
| Store review, and much casual commentary overlooks that. Not to
| mention, given how the EU seems to be fairly pro-consumer
| protection, alternative app store guidelines will probably be
| subject to regulator scrutiny as well.
|
| A lot of the doomsday scenarios about Facebook creating an app
| store to invasively track people seem to forget that regulators
| don't like that, nor their respective monopolistic practices,
| either. I don't think they'll be able to get away with creating
| an user-tracking scammy app store and then taking their
| existing ubiquitously-used apps off of the official App Store
| without drawing the ire of the EU.
| gamesbrainiac wrote:
| > prevent developers from using third-party payment platforms for
| app sales
|
| Does this mean that you can install any application on iOS and
| tvOS now?
| ksec wrote:
| While this will put some pressure on Apple and Google, personally
| I still want a third choice of Smartphone Platform.
|
| People would immediately point to Microsoft being a possible
| third should they decide to do it, I am not looking forward to it
| as much considering Microsoft would be more of the same as
| current Apple and Google.
|
| In terms of consumer facing companies, it is sad there is not a
| single company in Silicon Valley which I like.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Really sad we don't have a Palm or a General Magic around these
| days.
| InTheArena wrote:
| This looks like bad news for Apple, much more so then for Google.
| It doesn't really address Google's ad-driven ecosystem, but goes
| hard after the app store and hardware differences where apple has
| prioritized privacy rather then ad-spend.
|
| I don't see a alternative to apple the to emulate Google and
| ditch privacy in favor of ad-tech after looking at the text.
| chis wrote:
| Might end up being good for Goog if it expands the reach of
| Chrome on iOS. Google currently pays 10+ billion a year to be
| the default search provider on Safari.
| dudus wrote:
| These rules specifically seem targeted at Meta's/Google's ad
| business.
|
| - (Gatekeepers have to) give business users access to their
| marketing or advertising performance data on the platform -
| (Gatekeepers can no longer) reuse private data collected during
| a service for the purposes of another service
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| This is amazing. I can't wait until these changes get
| implemented. I'll never understand boot-lickers that complain
| about this sort of thing. These devices are computers, I couldn't
| imagine my computer getting this locked down. Now, the EU just
| needs to outlaw soldered components that can be made
| interchangeable and all will be good in the world.
| MarkMc wrote:
| So when I attempt to install the Amazon play store on my iPhone,
| will I get the following scary message?
|
| "WARNING: You are about to install non-approved software which
| may be malicious or a virus. If this software causes damage to
| your iPhone we will not fix your device, even if it is still
| under warranty. Are you really sure you want to continue?"
| Gareth321 wrote:
| My reading of the legislation is that this kind of message is
| only permissible if the Gatekeeper _also_ includes that message
| when installing the native equivalent. The legislation requires
| that on initial setup of the device, the user be given a choice
| of services like browsers, and the Gatekeeper cannot unfairly
| prejudice competitors by, for example, including such a warning
| for _only_ the competitors.
| 32163704 wrote:
| I presume so. Does the EU ruling require companies to offer
| warranties for damage caused by users installing malicious
| software?
| jarbus wrote:
| Why is the EU able to pass pro-consumer laws, but America unable
| to? Are big tech companies just unable to properly bribe the
| European Union like they do the American Government?
| lioeters wrote:
| What I'm afraid is that, if the EU continues to successfully
| assert their authority in matters of pro-
| consumer/worker/citizen issues, the affected corporations will
| be more motivated to bribe and thoroughly corrupt the system
| just like they've done in the U.S.
| syrrim wrote:
| Political organizations need to bear in mind the appearance of
| their actions. Big tech companies are predominantly American
| (google, apple). Europe putting more regulations on them reads
| as a patriotic act of defending people from corporate
| imperialism. The US regulating them reads as limiting the
| freedom that enabled them to reach such a dominant position in
| the first place.
| chis wrote:
| The U.S. government is pretty inept in general these days. It's
| hard to see how such an expansive govt regulation would get
| approved by the current Congress which gets deadlocked over
| pretty much anything.
| dbrgn wrote:
| Because of institutional corruption. Lawrence Lessig has some
| great talks about this topic, here's one of them:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okfLPvBjImM Here's another one:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxCo2bE9Gtk
|
| (Lawrence Lessig, a law professor, was one of the founders of
| Creative Commons. He later tried to change US copyright laws to
| be more consumer-friendly, but concluded that it's almost
| impossible to do so as long as corporate interests rule
| politics. He then shifted his research topics to institutional
| corruption in politics. He actually ran for presidency a few
| years ago, with funding only from the popuplation, and limited
| to a certain amount. It failed, he wasn't even invited to TV
| debates because "if he doesn't take company money he doesn't
| have a chance".)
| CaptainNegative wrote:
| EU-based *aaS companies are practically nonexistent relative to
| US-based ones, so there's basically nothing holding them back
| from passing bills like this one gerrymandered to (i) companies
| with a global market cap above EUR75B, (ii) with 45 million
| European users, (iii) and an included web browser or messaging
| app. If they had companies satisfying those criteria, they'd
| certainly see more pushback.
|
| I personally like these changes, but the cynical forum shopping
| underlying the EUR75B threshold they picked is pretty nasty
| behavior, and I hope US lawmakers retaliate appropriately.
| Aperocky wrote:
| So it's basically thinly veiled protectionism.
| biztos wrote:
| Would it not be possible to spin off "iPhone Europe PLC"
| which is worth less than the threshold?
|
| If it were truly independent then Apple's "global market cap"
| would be irrelevant, and Cupertino could collect via IP
| licensing in Luxembourg taxed at 5%.
|
| [edited for clarity, I think]
| antioppressor wrote:
| Retaliate for what? There are zero rules and regulations in
| the US concerning these big behemoths. Those senate hearings
| are just laughingstock kinda theatricals.Just watch back the
| Microsoft Antitrust Depositions with Bill Gates.
| CaptainNegative wrote:
| "No vehicle from an auto manufacturer with annual global
| revenue exceeding $150B USD is eligible for EV credits
| unless they also offer a hybrid or electric vehicle with
| MSRP $27000 or less."
|
| Oh, only the European VW and Daimler would be impacted?
| Such a shame.
| Vespasian wrote:
| Well that is a possibility.
|
| There is a crucial difference. Unlike Google and Apple
| the German Autos employ a lot of Americans and pay quite
| some taxes in America (sometimes in structurally weak
| places). That gives them more leverage than their Digital
| counterparts.
|
| Of course they are not doing that because they are more
| moral but because their products are bulky and need to be
| built locally.
| antioppressor wrote:
| Because tech behemoths are tentacles of the US. Part of the
| country's global strategy. US is also meddling in EU lawmaking
| big time. These rules should be brought around 10+ years ago
| when they were creating the basic rules for their nice
| ecosystem.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| Nice, this means i might consider buying an iPhone again at some
| point. I have an old iPod Touch but since it has been long
| abandoned by Apple it is practically useless - i can't even use
| it as a music player despite it obviously being perfectly capable
| of that. I've given up on Apple devices considering i can't even
| install another OS on their Macs too nowadays so i can at least
| use up-to-date software.
|
| (technically i know it can be jailbroken but the process is so
| annoying and requires downloading some old version of iTunes from
| who knows where - so obviously i'd rather have that sort of
| functionality officially supported)
| capybara_2020 wrote:
| Does this mean that you can install a stock version of Android
| and Google can't prevent apps from running because they fail
| "safetynet" or what ever it is called.
| WebbWeaver wrote:
| So many loopholes
| pnw wrote:
| Obviously this is aimed at phones but does it extend to any other
| computing devices? For example, does it require Microsoft to
| allow access to a third party app store and payment system on a
| game console like Xbox?
| bgdam wrote:
| I hope this means Apple is finally forced to start competing on
| features and not just on being able to block apps from their
| platform. Case in point: Push notifications for PWAs. If there is
| an alternate browser that supports this, that can be installed on
| iPhones, Safari is going to get this real quick.
| fbanon wrote:
| What HackerNews thinks will happen: "zomg, I will finally be able
| to run Arch on my iPhone!"
|
| What will actually happen: "honey, something is wrong with my
| phone, whenever I unlock it, a popup jumps up that says 'Please
| update the Adobe(tm) Updater(tm) to get up to date Adobe(tm)
| Software Updates', could you take a look at it?"
| Aperocky wrote:
| So you're saying this is finally the year of the Linux Desktop?
| lapetitejort wrote:
| So true. On my Pixel phone, which allows alternate app stores,
| I had to update the Adobe Updater to update Adobe Reader, Epic
| EpicStore to update Fortnite Update Store to update Fortnite,
| TenCent Store to update Grindr, and finally F-Droid Pro Max
| Store to update Signal. Why do I have to download so many app
| stores on Android!!
| phoe18 wrote:
| missed the /s.
| nuker wrote:
| Did Google removed IDFA yet? No. So FB is OK with Android so
| far.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It's on its way
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/16/google-plans-android-
| privacy...
| nuker wrote:
| > But while Meta fought against Apple's changes, it
| voiced support for the way Google plans to implement its
| privacy
|
| > "[It is] encouraging to see this long-term,
| collaborative approach to privacy-protective personalized
| advertising from Google," Graham Mudd, vice president of
| product marketing
|
| Not the same thing, looks like. Facebook likes Google.
| thrawway wrote:
| You forgot the best part: the same people who think the former
| are responsible for the latter.
| akersten wrote:
| Yeah, I'm honestly shocked at how welcomed the concept of "the
| government is telling developers that they must make their
| product less secure and streamlined" is here... This will not
| bring the interoperability utopia many believe, unless you mean
| 8 different app updaters bogging down your phone because now
| there's "competition" and the DrainMyBattery Store only charges
| 15% fees so it's the only place you can get CoolApp.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Yeah, and that unsecured Linux is destroying the world!
|
| It's not about making products less secure. That's what apple
| makes you wanna think.
|
| It's about giving customers choice. They can stay in Apple
| ecosystem (I will for example). Or they can not. Companies
| like Apple will have to work much harder now, to give both
| users and developers enough value to justify being locked in.
| nuker wrote:
| > They can stay in Apple ecosystem
|
| Nope, Adobe will make sure all its apps require Adobe App
| Store. Same for Facebook with Whatsapp. No more stupid
| Apple store restrictions, yay!!
| justapassenger wrote:
| Would they? If 90% of users stay on apple App Store, they
| won't.
|
| It's all about value they can provide, both sides.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| There's already a counterexample to this: Android. All
| Adobe apps are on the Play Store
| nuker wrote:
| Check recent story about IDFA on iOS and Facebook gone
| mad about it. No such story with Android.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| Are you imply that if Android got rid of advertising IDs
| like iOS, then Facebook would take their app off the play
| store? Not so sure about that
| nuker wrote:
| They lost and keep losing serious money.
| deadbunny wrote:
| Strange, this isn't an issue on Android.
| nuker wrote:
| Not strange, Google is an Advertising company, unlike
| Apple. Facebook likes Google.
| EUROCARE wrote:
| This actually is an issue on Android. There's the Samsung
| store for example, where I have to create yet another
| account just to get my internal phone apps updated. Same
| shit with Xiaomi and Huawei.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| True, but that's caused by OEMs packaging bloatware,
| which would not be a concern with iOS.
| EUROCARE wrote:
| I mean apps like Camera, Calculator, Contacts... Not
| bloatware. They are much better than the AOSP defaults
| (on Samsung).
|
| I don't see how it's so different. App vendor is forcing
| me to use an alternative app store that I don't want to
| use, don't trust and don't want to share my data with -
| the same thing.
|
| I think Apple should be forced to allow sideloading, but
| forcing them to allow alternative appstores to integrate
| into the OS seems like a road to security/privacy and UX
| hell to me. I always saw single App Store as the better
| thing - finally someone learned from the Linux Desktop
| lessons.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Fair. That does suck that these OEMs gate essential apps
| like that. I didn't know that those are actually ever
| preferable to AOSP or Play Store equivalents. But again,
| hard to see how this situation could apply to iOS,
| regulators aren't going to force Apple to license it out
| to other phone manufacturers.
| nuker wrote:
| It will be AdTech giants instead, Google, Facebook, Adobe
| that will go that way. To avoid Apple store privacy rules
| for apps.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Again, I don't believe they are capable from a
| business/product perspective of luring customers into
| their stores. And if they try to force customers, they
| will have to deal with both angry users _and_ regulators.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32172314
|
| This whole scenario assumes that AdTech has unlimited
| power, that Apple has none, and that the courts are blind
| to their malfeasance.
|
| Finally, Adobe isn't even an ad company. They literally
| sell software!
| EUROCARE wrote:
| Eh, so regulators explicitly force a platform to open up,
| and then they will go after people making use of that
| just in spirit of the law? That seems super weird to me,
| much weirder than the opposite - that MS/FB/Google stores
| are being planned right now during the celebration party
| thrown because of this regulation.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I don't think regulators will allow Facebook to take
| crucial apps like WhatsApp away from the main App Store.
| That seems like an act of monopolistic power and
| overreach as well. We're not talking about a simple
| Contacts app here, of which there are innumerable
| alternatives on the main store. And even if they did
| allow it, they would immediately probe Meta's third party
| app store, because are already concerned with privacy
| violations and data collection.
|
| > MS/FB/Google stores are being planned right now during
| the celebration party thrown because of this regulation.
|
| I hope they are getting their PR team ready too with mea
| culpas once a vengeful public backlashes against third
| party exclusivity.
| EUROCARE wrote:
| I don't see how regulators could forbid them without
| making a joke out of themselves. The whole point was to
| let apps choose - there are dozens of legit points Big
| Tech can claim as the reason. From fees to UX demands to
| review process too expensive to supporting banned (but
| otherwise legit) functionalities.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The whole point was to rein in Big Tech, and to protect
| consumers. Facebook or other companies forcing
| exclusivity into shady third party stores to suck up user
| data does not follow the spirit of these antitrust
| actions. I don't think regulators will just accept them
| doing that at face value. At the very least, the public
| outcry of "where's my Instagram?! Why do I have to sign
| up for this new thing?" will force some sort of inquiry.
|
| Ultimately I have faith that both the public and public
| institutions will do the right thing, and that we
| shouldn't put all of our trust into one private
| corporation to check the power of other private
| corporations.
| EUROCARE wrote:
| It's not going to happen with Contacts and Camera, but
| why wouldn't it happen with Adobe Reader, MS Office,
| Avast antivirus, etc?
|
| And yes, the Samsung apps are _miles_ ahead. Fast, no
| ads, low resource consumption, small sizes, great UX and
| nice UI design. Nothing in Play store comes even close,
| and I tried practically everything. Play store is a
| catastrophe in terms of app quality, you can 't find even
| a decent calculator there.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > why wouldn't it happen with Adobe Reader, MS Office,
| Avast antivirus, etc?
|
| I don't believe it's possible, partly because already on
| Android you don't see Adobe or Microsoft starting their
| app stores. On iOS it would be even more difficult,
| because the sheer overwhelming amount of users already
| find the App Store to be good enough, and I simply don't
| see those other companies as competent enough from a
| product perspective to entice users over to their own
| third party app stores (as I discuss in detail elsewhere
| in my comments).
| EUROCARE wrote:
| Play store has much less demands on your app UX, much
| easier and faster review process, takes much smaller fee
| and doesn't claim any earnings out of the platform and
| the OS isn't locked down too much. It's not 1:1
| comparable. There's not a big good reason to do it on
| Android, there are many on iOS.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Still, you would think they would've done it as a trial
| run. You really believe Facebook likes Google and they're
| not competitors? If they were interested and committed in
| running their own app stores, they would have tried it
| already. Facebook is simply not good at running their own
| app ecosystem, see the collapse of Facebook Apps as a
| platform.
| EUROCARE wrote:
| I don't think it's going to be a real App Store anyways.
| It's going to be updater for their own apps - one without
| fees, reviews, UX demands and API restrictions, just like
| Play store.
|
| Facebook doesn't care about Play store on Android. They
| have deals with most operators on the planet to
| preinstall their app and Play store is a nice updater
| only. A user never installs Facebook, it's already there.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I think you're onto something with the installer idea.
| Curious to think how it would work technically and UX-
| wise on iOS. Maybe users go to Facebook's mobile website
| to download the installer's binary. (Apple would probably
| just ban apps that are just installers for unreviewed
| apps, so Meta couldn't host the installer there.)
| Interesting to imagine how'd that go for them, as going
| through a webpage does complicate things for casual
| users. (And savvy users who might be turned off by it.)
|
| Makes me wonder too if Apple might end up enforcing
| indirect app review outside of the App Store. They could
| bundle the iOS equivalent to Microsoft Defender,
| basically Apple's built-in security tool. It could mark
| binaries found in the wild as unsafe if Apple discovered
| them to be misusing permissions or to be malware. If iOS
| apps can just be sideloaded, they should still be
| inspectable...
| asah wrote:
| small price for an open ecosystem.
|
| honestly, Apple had their chance and while claiming to self-
| police, in fact they enacted an obvious walled garden that
| went way way way beyond security requirements.
| [deleted]
| bloppe wrote:
| It sounds like you don't understand what's actually in this
| regulation. There are some good summaries posted in this very
| comment thread.
| balozi wrote:
| I believe they are simply observing the predictable
| divergence between the intention and the outcome of said
| regulation.
| piva00 wrote:
| Good that in the EU we live under rules that are judged on
| the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law.
| izacus wrote:
| In reality none of that will happen.
|
| The magical rockstar engineers of Apple will listen for their
| best in the world UX and handcraft artisanal UI that will
| respectfully explain users what causes the popup.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Not to mention use plenty of dark patterns to steer them away
| from it.
|
| Not to mention the vast majority of users will not bother to
| deal with alternative app stores when the vast overwhelming
| majority of existing apps will remain on the official App
| Store.
| nuker wrote:
| > when the vast overwhelming majority of existing apps will
| remain on the official App Store.
|
| Oh my sweet summer child! Lol
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Nice condescending snark. Is it based on anything?
|
| My own position, in comparison, actually is. Contrary to
| your insinuation, it is based on jadedness and cynicism.
| I'll give you the Cliff's Notes of this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32163704
|
| 1. Facebook and Google, to put it bluntly, are not
| exactly product powerhouses these days and any attempts
| to present _yet another_ platform will be met with
| skepticism and they simply will not have enough new apps
| to lure over users.
|
| 2. Without customer interest, third party developers will
| keep their apps on the official App Store, just as they
| do on Android on the Play Store, because that's where the
| users are. They want the most eyeballs.
|
| 2.5. Sure, Facebook and co. can try to cut exclusive
| deals with third party devs to get apps on their store,
| but that is tricky, just see Microsoft's or BlackBerry's
| failure to woo devs to their platforms.
|
| 3. Consumers are tired of all of the accounts and
| services they have to deal with at this point, and
| dealing with more app stores will be a source of
| friction. Users are tired of this shit.
|
| 4. Facebook or Google trying to spur artificial growth of
| third party iOS stores by making their apps exclusive
| will likely run into regulator pushback, especially if
| those stores permit greater user tracking.
|
| Okay, now justify your insult.
| nuker wrote:
| Your point 4 is what is going to happen.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| And they will immediately run into 1) ban-happy
| regulators who will probe them for monopolistic power
| (withholding something as crucial as WhatsApp or G-Suite
| from the main App Store is pretty suspect), and for data
| collection (everyone already suspects them anyway) and 2)
| burned-out, pissed-off consumers who are sick of juggling
| all of their user accounts and being jerked around by yet
| another platform.
|
| I have yet to see a convincing argument that any of these
| corporations will be able to charm users into joining
| competing app stores. So instead they will try to force
| them. Leading to backlash, and within _days_ you 'd see
| them putting their apps back on the App Store and begging
| the public for forgiveness. These are not companies who
| are particularly good at delivering huge new products
| anymore, and the difficulty is compounded by the fact
| that they would be _playing on Apple 's own platform._
| idkwhoiam wrote:
| MrYellowP wrote:
| I don't even want to know how bad this is going to turn out to
| be.
| eqtn wrote:
| Will it possible for Apple/Others to create something like Apple
| EU which then will license iOS from Apple US paying license fees
| and stay below EUR75 billion market valuation?
| kevingadd wrote:
| Companies already use local subsidiaries in this way to dodge
| taxes and regulations. The EU isn't likely to overlook it this
| time.
| biztos wrote:
| For obvious reasons most comments are about how this affects
| Apple, but doesn't it also mean I will be able to develop apps
| for Kindle, and those apps will be able to use the built-in
| mobile data on the same terms as Amazon?
| londons_explore wrote:
| The big question now is.... Will this unlock Apple devices
| worldwide, or will apple make special EU-firmware which only
| gives this legally mandated functionality for phones sold in the
| EU?
| formvoltron wrote:
| So does this help smaller players compete with the big guys?
|
| Seems like it might make it harder to compete due to all the new
| rules, but I haven't dug into it for the details.
| a4a4a4a4 wrote:
| I'm not sure how I feel about this. My gut instinct is that
| opening these things can lead to a ton of malware and fake app
| stores, which will lead to a not-insignificant number of people
| being victimized. I'm also annoyed that the EU produces
| effectively 0 innovative tech, and subsequently has very
| suppressed tech salaries, but is so ready to regulate the
| American companies that make the world go 'round.
| origin_path wrote:
| It's worth noting that Android already allows such things and
| there has been no malware apocalypse. In all the years Android
| existed I've never encountered someone with a malware filled
| phone. People stick with the default app store and are fine.
|
| Agree about the EU though.
| bun_at_work wrote:
| The entire history of Android is filled with malware stories.
| Google has gotten better about moderating their PlayStore,
| but there have been plenty of flashlight apps or similarly
| dumb apps that are just rootkits, bitcoin miners, or more
| malicious forms of malware.
| izacus wrote:
| AppStore is also filled with malware apps (including
| explotative flashlight apps and apps that trick you into
| subscriptions).
|
| Yours is a throughly debunked argument.
| fariszr wrote:
| > I'm also annoyed that the EU produces effectively 0
| innovative tech, and subsequently has very suppressed tech
| salaries, but is so ready to regulate the American companies
| that make the world go 'round
|
| Because its almost impossible to compete? These companies have
| so many resources, its impossible for any local competitor to
| compete. Amazon can just crash the prices till the competition
| dies, Google can just not allow YouTube on it, Facebook will
| exist because of the network it has.
|
| What the EU is doing is what is needed to happen long ago.
| These companies are not currently successful because they offer
| the best experience or the best innovativtion, they are
| successful because they crush anyone else.
|
| For example WhatsApp has many many better alternatives, which
| have better features and better privacy, but it still the #1
| because of the monopoly it has on communication.
|
| What the EU did here is smart, they didn't outright ban
| WhatsApp, or funded a direct competitor. They forced them to
| play fair, to stop the monopolistic behavior and force them to
| compete on features, rather than succeeding only because my
| familly is on WhatsApp.
|
| The same thing applies to Apple, which forces to everyone to
| use its crappy, intentionally handicapped browser engine.
|
| And also forcing everyone to use its payment services while
| taking percentage of the profits and not even allowing you to
| increase the prices to cover their percentage!, this is
| absolutely outreagous and finally something is being done about
| it.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| The parent comment was being unfair. There is one market
| where Europeans dominate both in sheer volume and in
| innovation: excuses.
|
| Excusing business, excusing governments; an international
| pastime of the Europeans, apparently.
|
| Europeans did in fact exist before all of the listed examples
| came into being, and so could have outcompeted any of them
| even if they are now dominant. But I still think Europeans
| _could_ compete, even if culturally they are not prepared to
| be competitive. Amazon is only a fraction of retail sales and
| has huge weaknesses; Europeans who know their markets better
| could compete if they wanted to (especially with the huge
| amount of protectionism national governments are willing to
| engage in). LINE exists in Japan, presumably a smaller market
| than Europe that has managed to produce a viable WhatsApp
| competitor. Facebook was unstoppable until TikTok ate their
| lunch.
|
| Again, I'm astounded by the European affinity for excusing
| uncompetitive businesses.
| fariszr wrote:
| > Europeans who know their markets better could compete if
| they wanted to
|
| This is not realistic.
|
| When amazon noticed diapers.com, they were basically forced
| to sell out. because amazon was already selling diapers at
| a loss and was ready to drive the price "down to zero".
|
| No body can compete with that.
|
| https://slate.com/technology/2013/10/amazon-book-how-jeff-
| be...
| danjoredd wrote:
| Sounds like pure copium to me.
| fariszr wrote:
| Well its happening anyway, and companies can face fines up
| to 20% of worldwide revenue if they don't comply.
| a4a4a4a4 wrote:
| > Because its almost impossible to compete?
|
| Explain the number of American unicorns and the (almost)
| complete lack of European unicorns then? Somehow American
| companies and startups find ways to compete and be relevant,
| and it just does not happen in Europe.
|
| If you could snap your fingers and force Apple and Google to
| implement this today, these new markets (app stores and
| browsers for iOS) would be 99% filled by American companies.
| neither_color wrote:
| I'm more worried about product line bifurcation. Europe has
| chosen this point in time to say "ok, the tech is good enough
| we're going to regulate and mandate a tech bill of rights now,
| anything new requires committee and our consent." As soon as
| something better comes along Europeans will get nerfed Europe-
| compliant phones and tech savvy Europeans will be importing
| grey market phones from America and Asia.
| joe__f wrote:
| To my understanding, the EU cookie law has mostly been met with
| malicious compliance; now I get a pop-up window on nearly every
| web page I visit asking me if I'm happy to accept their tracking
| cookies.
|
| Does anyone have thoughts on how big tech might comply to this
| new digital markets act maliciously?
| woojoo666 wrote:
| The GDPR outcome was largely good though. I can download my
| data from way more websites than I could before
| Pulcinella wrote:
| How does this interact with non-Google manufactured android
| phones? Can Samsung lock things down where Google can't?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Samsung specifically is well over the EUR75b threshold, so I
| would think this law applies to them as well.
| golemotron wrote:
| At what point does it just become cheaper and more prudent to
| leave the EU market?
| capableweb wrote:
| Considering that the EU is the second largest consumer market
| in the world (at least according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
| ki/List_of_largest_consumer_marke...), it seems like that point
| is kind of far away.
| golemotron wrote:
| Could be as early as winter. Things are not very bullish for
| the EU right now given their energy situation.
| alkonaut wrote:
| You are suggesting the bad energy situation due to the war
| would make the EU a market small enough to ignore for any
| tech giant?
| zkirill wrote:
| I like to think of this as payback for Android App Bundles and
| mandatory sharing of signing keys [1].
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27699476
| bloppe wrote:
| It blows my mind how many people have bought into Apple's
| position on this. No, Apple restricting your freedom does not
| afford you greater security. You, as an adult, can choose not to
| install shady software. If you're not confident in your ability
| to tell shady from legit, just stick to the App Store. Don't
| demand that Apple treat the rest of us like children just because
| that's how you would like to be treated.
| Volker_W wrote:
| Do you think Apps should not be Sandboxed on iOS?
| pieter_mj wrote:
| All true. At the same time it will undeniably increase
| opportunities for criminal actors. For a technical user,
| usually not a problem (like it is currently the case on
| Android). For an ordinary user caught in the hype of the day,
| not so much.
| bena wrote:
| I would argue it's a problem for a technical user as well.
| It's just a problem.
|
| Defenders have to win every time. Attackers only have to win
| once. That gives the attackers the advantage.
|
| And it may not even directly be your fault. All you need is a
| flaw in any communications system that allows privilege
| escalation and code execution. Then you can be compromised by
| someone who just happens to be in the same room.
|
| Now while this is true even now. It's even worse when every
| user can download and install whatever sketchware promises to
| mine dogecoins while the phone is idle for guaranteed returns
| of 100%. Because every other phone becomes a potential attack
| vector.
| vlozko wrote:
| This is a very myopic view of what it's like for the elderly
| and less tech savvy. Most aren't capable of telling the
| difference and yet they constantly find themselves unknowingly
| getting scammed. I take it you've never had to clean out a
| horribly malware infested computer for a mother-in-law before?
| bloppe wrote:
| While this is certainly a problem, I don't accept it as an
| argument for why we all have to be locked in the walled
| garden. Just add a system setting that controls the walls.
| Let people disable it if they want, and tell your mother-and-
| law to never ever disable it no matter what. If you're
| worried that they'll be tricked into disabling it, then they
| probably should not be in control of a bank account or
| anything else serious anyway.
|
| Anyway, this isn't really relevant to this regulation. People
| already get scammed on iPhones all the time. It's silly to
| think that anybody would be _more_ vulnerable as a result of
| the DMA.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| You don't have to be locked into a walled garden! You don't
| have to buy an iPhone.
| vlozko wrote:
| What happens when installing Facebook requires this setting
| to be disabled because it's only installable with their own
| App Store and rampant with privacy intrusions?
|
| > People already get scammed on iPhones all the time.
|
| I disagree with this assertion. It's certainly far less
| than those getting scammed on Mac/PC.
|
| > It's silly to think that anybody would be more vulnerable
| as a result of the DMA.
|
| There's a failure in imagination here in all the ways that
| companies will take advantage of this to the severe
| detriment of users, often with the user being clueless on
| how much they're compromised. What's undeniable is that
| this regulation dramatically increases the surface area of
| ways to scam people.
| bloppe wrote:
| There are so many other ways to deal with this danger
| that don't involve relinquishing everybody's freedom to a
| monopoly. You could just make the setting unchangeable
| except by an administrator account, then don't give your
| vulnerable relative the admin password. Boom, they're in
| the exact same position as they were before this
| regulation, but I don't have to deal with Apple's
| extortion if I don't want to. Win win!
| sbuk wrote:
| > relinquishing everybody's freedom to a monopoly.
|
| And yet we're consistently reminded that iOS's
| marketshare is globally small and that the macOS share is
| vanishingly small. Which is it?
| runako wrote:
| > setting unchangeable except by an administrator account
|
| Part of the regulation appears to require third-party
| apps to have the ability to use any APIs. Therefore, any
| malicious app will be able to present system dialogs that
| are (possibly) indistinguishable from official OS
| dialogs. This seems bad.
| plandis wrote:
| The thing that's missing is that Facebook can now exploit
| people whereas previously Apple was forcing Facebook to
| act just slightly less shitty. If Facebook can bypass
| Apple then there is no leverage.
|
| Apple was enforcing some baseline of good behavior that
| developers no longer need to abide by. Apples
| subscription management is actually pretty consumer
| friendly, for example and I have to imagine plenty of
| companies are chomping at the bit to extract more money
| from shady tactics once they are no longer forced into
| decent behavior
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Facebook in the EU should be regulated by the EU, not
| Apple. The EU should not be delegating this regulation to
| an American corporation.
| bun_at_work wrote:
| Then why was it up to Apple? The EU failed to regulate
| the pervasive tracking of Facebook on devices, Apple did
| what they could to protect their users.
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| > tell your mother-and-law to never ever disable it no
| matter what
|
| Just like banks telling people they would never ask for
| their password/social security number. Works very well! /s
| plandis wrote:
| > I don't accept it as an argument for why we all have to
| be locked in the walled garden.
|
| You're not, even today. You can of course choose not to use
| an iPhone
| [deleted]
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The apparent desire for paternalism unnerves me. Any time
| people are free to choose who they associate with, they run the
| risk of coming across bad actors who would scam them or worse.
| In most domains of life, we have special protections for the
| senile elderly and children but everybody else is given freedom
| and subsequently expected to develop and exercise a sense of
| good judgement, because freedom is more important than
| security.
|
| But in the specific case of iphones, the argument is made that
| giving rational level-headed adults the freedom to associate
| with the software they wish would imperil children and the
| elderly, and you don't have to look far to find somebody
| arguing that that risk outweigh any other consideration. If
| this belief were likely to be limited to iphones I wouldn't
| really care, I'd simply not buy an iphone. But I fear special-
| case exceptions don't stay that way forever, and I fear Apple's
| style of paternalism (which is very profitable) will inevitably
| spread and become difficult if not impossible to avoid unless
| stomped out soon.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > The apparent desire for paternalism unnerves me.
|
| I find the EU imposing these conditions, under threat of
| force, on Apple that sells a product that people are free to
| buy or not buy, much more paternalistic than anything Apple
| does.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| That is the role of governments. Europeans made the EU for
| this and similar purposes.
| bun_at_work wrote:
| So you're not concerned with paternalism itself, you just
| don't like Apple, right?
| antonymy wrote:
| I think he doesn't like the fact that a corporation is
| controlling people for its own profit first and their
| customers' welfare a distant second. Apple is not a
| charity or a government, it's a business. The EU is a
| government, its purpose is to regulate and legislate for
| the sake of the people it represents. It's more sane to
| trust the motivations of the EU, even if its actions are
| ill-considered at times, than a corporation whose
| primary, overriding objective is to make its owners
| wealthier. The former will generally pursue actions that
| benefit consumers, the latter will only coincidentally do
| this, if it stands to make a lot of money in the process.
| elzbardico wrote:
| > It's more sane to trust the motivations of the EU,
|
| Jesus, people really believe stuff like that? for real.
| Rolling on the floor laughing here. Jeebus! the naivety!
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| EU isn't a government. "Europeans" do not elect members
| of the European parliament. Finally, I would argue that
| the reasons for forming what became the EU, back in late
| 40s and 50s last century, were completely different from
| what we have today.
| minimaul wrote:
| Europeans _do_ elect members of the European parliament:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_to_the_European_P
| arl...
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Indeed. My bad.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Exactly. As if consumers needed to be protected from their
| own choices. Nobody is forced to buy apple. There are
| plenty of other manufacturers. Let the fucking market sort
| this.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| I absolutely agree with you, but here's a hypothesis worth
| considering: What if we're building a society that is so
| complicated that it just isn't feasible for individuals to
| make informed decisions about important matters any more?
|
| Societies have long accepted that things like medical
| treatments have to be prescribed by an expert, and some
| societies have even decided that healthy people can be forced
| to have medical treatments even against their will (i.e.
| vaccines).
|
| My hope is that we are just in a temporary phase, where
| society has learnt how to transmit information freely but not
| how to reliably transmit _trust_. If the reputations of
| software developers and medical practitioners could be
| established without corporate or government monopolies, then
| society might get past this local minimum and into a more
| stable state.
| bena wrote:
| We're not building that society. We're living in that
| society.
|
| I don't understand how people didn't realize this over the
| last couple of years.
|
| We are not qualified to have opinions on a lot of things we
| do have opinions on.
| carapace wrote:
| Many years ago I had a roommate who was an actual Marxist
| (this was in Berkeley CA) and who had a kind of a job or
| volunteer position with a local radical politician trying
| to influence local politics. They would do things like go
| to city council meetings and march around the room
| singing songs. Dumb shit like that.
|
| One day I'm reading in my room and the lights flicker and
| I hear a yalp from the living room. I go out to
| investigate and I can smell the magic smoke (not weed,
| electrical) and the roomie is standing there with a
| screwdriver and a spooked look on her face.
|
| It transpires that she wanted to move a certain bookshelf
| to a certain spot and have it flush against the wall, but
| it was blocked by a little external electrical outlet. It
| was an old house, you see, (old for the West Coast that
| is) and when it was electrified they didn't both to run
| the wires through the walls. Instead they ran little
| conduits along the baseboards and mounted external socket
| blocks so we could plug in lamps, etc. One of these
| external electric sockets boxes was in the way of the
| bookshelf.
|
| You can see where this is going?
|
| She got a screwdriver and tried to remove the electric
| socket box without turning off the circuit. The
| flickering lights were when she shorted the circuit with
| the screwdriver and made the magic smoke come out.
|
| Fortunately she wasn't hurt, just startled.
|
| Now this person was in her fifties! How the hell to you
| get to be fifty years old and not know how electricity
| works!? And yet she felt confident that she knew how
| cities and countries should be run.
|
| I think there are at least two points here:
|
| 1.) We have already made the world more complicated than
| the average person can understand. Computers are like
| pouring fuel on that fire, but it's been burning for a
| while now.
|
| 2.) People can be really stupid and ignorant and yet feel
| like they know what's going on and what to do about it.
|
| I think the obvious though perhaps unpleasant conclusion
| is that we should look to radical simplification in all
| areas, and treat complexity as something that should be
| budgeted, treated as an expense and necessary evil.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _What if we 're building a society that is so complicated
| that it just isn't feasible for individuals to make
| informed decisions about important matters any more?_
|
| Then we should apply the regulator brakes immediately, as
| hard as possible. If the threat new technology poses to
| society is so great as that, then we should regulate those
| technologies, possibly to the point of strangulation.
|
| Ancient Roman urban legend: An inventor came to the Emperor
| to show off a new material, unbreakable glass. He showed
| the Emperor a glass chalice and threw it to the floor.
| Instead of shattering it merely bent, and the inventor bent
| it back into shape with a hammer. The emperor was very
| impressed, then ordered for the inventor to be killed.
| Unshatterable glass was very nice, but it wasn't worth the
| social and economic disruption it might cause.
|
| I am not that Roman emperor. What I support is the
| regulation of business practices, not technology itself.
| But if you (and Ted Kaczynski, for he has argued the same)
| are right and the threat to society comes from the
| technology, then we can regulate the technology as well.
| hkpack wrote:
| It is obviously that we cannot do that because of the
| global competition.
|
| Regulation of technology to reduce risk to society will
| just make competing part of society you have no influence
| on to dominate. And you lose on both fronts - technology
| domination, and ability to control it in the future.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Regulating Apple specifically, or the role of smartphones
| in society generally, imperils national security? Sorry,
| but I'm not buying it. The relevant business behavior and
| technology to squash is the technology that intersects
| with the lives of common people in an intimate way, not
| military R&D. I'm talking about regulating the way online
| banking and ecommerce work, not the etching of silicon or
| production of rocket motors. The cited threat is phones
| getting pwnd by scammers who drain your grandpas bank
| account. _If_ that threat is indeed so severe that
| digital freedoms for everybody need to be curtailed, it
| would be better to ban online banking entirely than to
| put the entire population under the paternalistic control
| of a handful of corporations.
|
| You'll have to dig deep into nth order effects to justify
| such regulation imperiling national defense, essentially
| tea leaf reading.
| bloppe wrote:
| I won't argue with the hypothesis at large (even though I
| hope it's unfounded), but as it applies to this particular
| situation, you're ignoring a crucial factor: the gargantuan
| incentive for monopolists to convince you that their
| monopolies actually protect you. It's incredible how
| successful Apple has been in convincing their users that
| freedom is bad, and I'm absolutely positive it's not
| because Apple is genuinely concerned about society; they're
| concerned about their multi-billion-dollar revenue streams.
|
| If we reach a point as a society that we decide we have too
| much freedom, we should absolutely never let it be
| regulated by corps with such a perverse incentive.
| nathanyz wrote:
| And on top of this increase in complexity, is a decrease in
| legal consequences for bad actors taking advantage of this
| complexity. That is what is going on currently due to how
| the Internet crosses international borders which makes
| policing much more difficult for society.
|
| It is a difficult conundrum as freedom is definitely
| something I value, but I think freedom may not be the best
| solution in a world without legal consequences for those
| abusing that freedom to take advantage of others.
|
| Freedom with no guidelines to prevent use of that freedom
| to abuse others is not real freedom
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| > But in the specific case of iphones, the argument is made
| that giving rational level-headed adults the freedom to
| associate with the software they wish would imperil children
| and the elderly
|
| By whom? You are the first person I heard this from.
| elzbardico wrote:
| You can just keep using an android phone.
|
| I, for one, don't want to waste my time being IT support for my
| entire family. That's the whole reason most of us prefer the
| walled garden of iOS. I don't care if it is as powerful a
| computer as a server from some 15 years ago, I WANT to treat it
| like an appliance, a friggin consumer device, I want to
| standardize it across my home and have some peace of mind.
|
| If I want to hack, I have plenty of other devices at home or
| that I can buy that are far more adequate to this end.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > You, as an adult, can choose not to install shady software.
|
| You assume that everyone is as smart as you in figuring out
| which software is "shady software". Majority of the population
| have no clue and if the path to complying with this regulation
| is to drop the stance on security (regardless of existing
| issues with default security, as implemented today) further,
| well... good luck. Me and you maybe will not get tricked into
| installing some "shady app" but I'm looking forward to reading
| more about how people got hacked via their phone because they
| have installed "a bank app" from "appstore x" thinking that it
| was from "appstore y".
| drstewart wrote:
| > You, as an adult, can choose not to install shady software
|
| But apparently you, as an adult, can't choose to not buy Apple
| if you don't like their policies? Strange.
| pb7 wrote:
| If you don't like a company's offerings then buy something
| else.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > You, as an adult, can choose not to install shady software.
|
| You clearly do not play tech support to elderly family members,
| or have kids
| wbl wrote:
| Remember bonzai buddy?
| wokwokwok wrote:
| Ah, it's so easy to write something like this, but...
|
| > No, Apple restricting your freedom does not afford you
| greater security.
|
| No, Apple restricting _your_ freedom does not afford _you_
| greater security.
|
| You don't know anything about me. How can you possibly make the
| call on what makes _me_ secure or not? Not being able to
| install malware... that is _by definition_ more secure than
| being _able_ to install malware.
|
| > If you're not confident in your ability to tell shady from
| legit, just stick to the App Store.
|
| No, _you_ believe that other people who are not confident in
| _their_ ability to tell shady from legit, can just stick to the
| App Store.
|
| ...but that 's not true for some people. Some people make bad
| decisions. Lots of people make bad decisions. What _you
| believe_ other people _should be capable_ of, is your choice,
| but it 's (clearly) wrong for a certain cohort of people.
|
| > Don't demand that Apple treat the rest of us like children
| just because that's how you would like to be treated.
|
| _You_ may feel like you 're being treated like a child because
| you are being prevented from doing what _you_ consider to be
| something you should be entitled to do.
|
| ...but, other people feel differently.
|
| You don't represent everyone. Your opinions are not shared by
| everyone.
|
| > It blows my mind
|
| ...that other people have opinions. I know, it's astonishing.
|
| Just because you (and I) personally will be positively affected
| by this change, doesn't mean everyone one will be. Does the
| positive benefit to us few outweigh the negative benefit to
| many others?
|
| I don't know. I'm pretty worried about it. I think it's gonna
| to end up with a lot of bad things, for a lot of people, who
| aren't good at making decisions, especially when it relates to
| computers and other technical stuff.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _You, as an adult, can choose not to install shady software._
|
| For some reason every Linux user assumes everyone is as smart
| as they are and anyone who doesn't take the time to learn
| whatever esoteric config file to manage their DE is a child
| that can't tell left from right. Somehow the decade of directed
| scams and proliferation of malware and spyware isn't a problem
| and it's the developers "right" to be able to turn on your
| microphone and send that data to the cloud.
|
| When Facebook mandates that to install Instagram you must
| sideload it from the Facebook store and your entire's family's
| location is being tracked 24/7 I hope you will thank Zuckerberg
| for all the freedom hes giving you
|
| > _Don 't demand that Apple treat the rest of us like children
| just because that's how you would like to be treated._
|
| You could just not buy from Apple. I never understand how the
| anti-Apple crowd is convinced that Apple is run by Satan
| himself, but cannot compel themselves from buying Apple
| products.
| rcpt wrote:
| DJI already does this with their Android app. The play store
| version doesn't work so you need to sideload something from
| their website.
|
| No idea what they're doing with the data but there's no other
| way to fly your drone.
| fyzix wrote:
| Facebook isn't forcing Android users to install their apps
| from an alt store so that point is moot
| nemothekid wrote:
| Facebook doesn't need to; as far as I'm aware Android has
| done nothing as drastic as Apple's tracking opt-in. Android
| is already open enough for Facebook to do whatever they
| want.
| smileybarry wrote:
| If you're browsing the web version of Facebook, the banner
| to install their app links _directly_ to an APK, not Google
| Play.
|
| "Better with the app" shows in a bunch of places alongside
| a "accidentally broken" suggestion bar whose "X" doesn't
| work.
|
| Messenger refuses to work on the web and requires you to
| download the app, unless you pretend to be a desktop
| browser.
|
| Source: I refused to install Facebook's app while on
| Android and had to use the intentionally slowed-down and
| crashy web version. (on a flagship processor)
| koyote wrote:
| > If you're browsing the web version of Facebook, the
| banner to install their app links directly to an APK, not
| Google Play.
|
| Can you please show me how you managed to make this
| happen? I just browsed to Facebook and the top banner
| takes me to the Play store.
|
| I would be VERY surprised if facebook forced users to go
| into the special apps access settings page and enable
| installing apks. That's a power user feature.
| tlamponi wrote:
| 1. Who talked about Linux?
|
| 2. Who said spam isn't a problem or that this act allows or
| even enforce to circumvent the strong privacy rules that the
| EU (not Apple) actually guarantees for their biggest single
| market in the world?
|
| News flash: you can combat spam and scams while keeping open
| and exchangeable basic infrastructure, without any walled
| garden. Otherwise, following your logic Apple would need to
| ban access to protocols like IP instantly, as those can be
| used to transport spam and exchange openly information.
|
| People rather argue that the safety excuse is BS and people
| do not require being a Linux expert to detect spam, that they
| can also get over the landline or in person knocking on the
| door, for that one needs common sense and some not completely
| bad education.
| bun_at_work wrote:
| > People rather argue that the safety excuse is BS and
| people do not require being a Linux expert to detect spam,
| that they can also get over the landline or in person
| knocking on the door, for that one needs common sense and
| some not completely bad education.
|
| This ignores human nature and reality. People are easily
| manipulated at scale, and the proof is that the scams and
| spam calls continue. If it was a matter of "common sense"
| then those things wouldn't be as prevalent as they are.
| nemothekid wrote:
| I don't know why you've decided to focus on confidence
| scams, it's like you are intentionally trying to dodge my
| point.
|
| > _Otherwise, following your logic Apple would need to ban
| access to protocols like IP instantly_
|
| But they _did_. The browser engine is another walled
| garden. HTTP is one of those "open protocols" that has been
| rife with spyware, but for some reasons people don't tend
| to cry as loudly when Apple banned third party cookies.
|
| > _that they can also get over the landline or in person
| knocking on the door, for that one needs common sense and
| some not completely bad education._
|
| I enjoy looking forward to you educating people not install
| Instagram. I don't know why people continue to assume the
| bad guys are blackhats or script kiddies. The company that
| stands to benefit the most from this is the company that
| lost nearly 400 billion dollars when Apple decided to curb
| fingerprinting.
|
| That is 400 billion reasons they have to push you to
| sideload. You really think you can just tell people to
| exercise "common sense" against someone who stands to gain
| $400B?
|
| Again, to circle back to Linux, you are displaying the same
| kind of hubris that developers have when it comes to
| software. It's a refusal to have any empathy for actual
| users - telling people not to install Instagram from the FB
| App Store because it's "common sense" is asinine. FB will
| spend $1B convincing your doctor that the FB App Store will
| cure cancer; how is a normal person supposed to combat that
| with "common sense".
| tlamponi wrote:
| Third party cookies are far from being required by spam
| or scams and that's actually an example how one can make
| platforms safer while keeping them open and exchangeable,
| as for that 3rd party cookies ain't needed at all and
| it's not a tech to prop up their garden's walls.
| > I enjoy looking forward to you educating people not
| install Instagram.
|
| I never said anything about not installing Instagram just
| like I didn't argue those people should add doors or
| landlines to their houses ;-) So please, just stop it
| with propping up and taking down all those straw mans
| nobody talked about!
|
| Rather, think common sense with a sexy lady offering
| their hot single friends to you, or some person offering
| you 10 million bucks as long as you can cover the small
| transaction fee of $1000, independent of the medium its
| send over (whatsapp, instagram, telegram, fb, irc,
| matrix, mail, ...)
|
| And w.r.t your general suggestion that all devs just
| don't care about their users, it's anecdotal but
| personally I actually care a lot about UX and to offer
| users the information to allow them to make the right
| decision, that's one of main things I look out when
| reviewing UI or also API (as API users, even if
| developers themselves, are user too) patches, and I know
| quite a few other devs that try to do the same, not all
| "hate" their users.
|
| > FB will spend $1B convincing your doctor that the FB
| App Store will cure cancer
|
| Besides the point that they don't, that's again a
| complete straw man, nobody talked about that the FB app
| itself is a scam or evil or whatnot, it may even be, but
| that's not the point of the whole EU Act and your defense
| of Apples walled garden mechanisms like banning other
| payment providers, which still can and must be vetted to
| be even legal in the EU, or virtually breaking sharing of
| your data to other apps, that they can still vet and
| ensure basic security on.
| smileybarry wrote:
| > Besides the point that they don't, that's again a
| complete straw man, nobody talked about that the FB app
| itself is a scam or evil or whatnot
|
| The thread you're responding to used the Instagram app
| and a probable "Facebook App Store" as examples. You
| can't ignore a point of contention and just say "well no
| one said anything about that".
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Rather, think common sense with a sexy lady offering
| their hot single friends to you, or some person offering
| you 10 million bucks as long as you can cover the small
| transaction fee of $1000, independent of the medium its
| send over (whatsapp, instagram, telegram, fb, irc,
| matrix, mail, ...)_
|
| > _nobody talked about that the FB app itself is a scam
| or evil or whatnot_
|
| You are continuing to miss the point. It's not a strawman
| if you are ignoring my concern. Instagram _is_ the
| concern. I don't care about confidence scams; my problem
| is Facebook, and the rest of adtech in general building
| massive databases on everyone else. The EU has been
| toothless in preventing this; and adtech is so entrenched
| that this will likely remain the case.
|
| "Opening" the platform is only good for developers, _not_
| for users. Opening the platform just means more ways for
| users to track me and others around me. This is not a
| strawman; this is literally apple 's marketing on what a
| platform like their offers. For you to just ignore the
| problem that platforms like Meta propose is naive. Again
| I don't care about nigerian prince scams; that is not why
| I tell people to buy an iPhone.
| SomeHacker44 wrote:
| Then... stop using Instagram?
|
| Build operating system level controls that function
| regardless of app source?
| nemothekid wrote:
| Just build my own operating system, ok.
| bloppe wrote:
| To your first point: I find it telling that your main concern
| with reducing Apple's monopoly power is that it would elevate
| Facebook's monopoly power. How about we design regulations
| that mitigate against monopoly power in all its forms? Then
| there would be viable alternatives to Facebook and all of the
| sudden their business model based on hostile tracking becomes
| completely unsustainable because there's _meaningful
| competition_ that actually respects their users. We don 't
| need to be serfs.
|
| To your second point: Apple exerts influence far beyond their
| consumers. Even though I'm sure this isn't news to you, I'll
| still point you toward some interesting articles:
|
| https://proton.me/blog/apple-app-store-antitrust
|
| https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/unsigned.html
|
| Much of this is invisible to the typical resident of the
| walled garden, but they actually cause a lot of harm to
| society because of their market dominance. Anybody with a
| small child is probably aware of the harmful effects of the
| "dreaded green bubbles" (I'm sure people will try to counter
| this point with claims that iMessage is somehow more secure /
| more functional than other protocols. I invite those people
| to do some research first. I think you'd be surprised at the
| gulf between your own understanding of iMessage's security
| vs. reality).
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Then there would be viable alternatives to Facebook and
| all of the sudden their business model based on hostile
| tracking becomes completely unsustainable because there 's
| meaningful competition that actually respects their users._
|
| This assumes my problem is with Facebook and Facebook
| alone. My problem is with ad-tech and more generally all
| other developers. I _know_ Apple exersts influence beyond
| their customers and I 'm not sympathetic to developers who
| cry about Apple not letting them run $program.
|
| What the web has shown is that given a free-for-all
| platform, users lose and any new technology is used to
| fingerprint people on the web. Apple has provided an option
| that, sure is a walled garden, but I can be reasonably
| confident isn't doing something I'm not interested in.
|
| I'm not sure what "harmful effects" of green bubbles are
| but I'm sure envy isn't as bad as every ad tech company
| having an NSA style citizen database.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > My problem is with ad-tech and more generally all other
| developers.
|
| Perhaps without Apple taking the 30% cut, and with the
| possibility of new app stores that are designed
| differently from the current App Store, the economics of
| mobile apps might shift so that there could be third
| party app stores that cater to users willing to pay for
| apps up front.
|
| Rather than the current situation that is a race to the
| bottom as the majority apps are free or freemium,
| supported either by that intrusive adtech or by in-app
| purchases that range from subscriptions to outright scams
| or loot boxes.
|
| > users lose and any new technology is used to
| fingerprint people on the web
|
| User data tracking is also of great concern to
| regulators. I doubt they will sit still while third party
| app stores collect user data. Those app stores will still
| be subject to regulation, even if it's not Apple's own
| oversight.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _the economics of mobile apps might shift so that there
| could be third party app stores that cater to users
| willing to pay for apps up front._
|
| > _supported either by that intrusive adtech or by in-app
| purchases that range from subscriptions to outright scams
| or loot boxes._
|
| This is like some cruel joke. Developers constantly
| making the claim that the 30% is too onerous and some
| future system will have some pass savings onto consumers.
| Please point to any proof that the future would be this
| way. 3rd party stores exist on Android _today_, and I
| don't see any thing you talk about. In fact what I do see
| are developers, like Epic, pushing their stores so they
| can charge you whenever you want for vbucks. Like where
| is this software utopia on Android if it's so important?
| Instead, android shows that these changes are potentially
| _more_ user hostile.
|
| Developers pretend its about making things better for
| users when its about making more money for them.
|
| > _I doubt they will sit still while third party app
| stores collect user data._
|
| My friend, they are sitting still _now_, when supposedly
| GDPR was to fix all this. They are rushing to "open up"
| the one platform that pretends to care about user privacy
| bloppe wrote:
| > _Developers constantly making the claim that the 30% is
| too onerous_
|
| This one is honestly difficult to respond to. I encourage
| you to donate 30% of your next paycheck to charity. It
| would be a good deed and would illustrate for you how
| much 30% is in a better way than I ever could.
|
| > _Please point to any proof that the future would be
| this way_
|
| Another stumper. I don't usually claim to have proof
| about the future. I suppose you'll just have to use
| common sense here.
|
| > _Instead, android shows that these changes are
| potentially more user hostile_
|
| This I just find confusing. Where is the hostility in
| offering users choice? If your whole point is that nobody
| would use a 3rd-party app store, then why does this
| regulation even concern you in the first place? You don't
| have to use one! Just stick to the App Store and let
| other people do what they want, then thank them for
| providing the competition that ends up forcing Apple to
| lower their fees.
|
| > _Developers pretend its about making things better for
| users when its about making more money for them._
|
| Actually, it's about competition, which is indeed
| something long considered _essential_ to a healthy
| economy.
|
| > _My friend, they are sitting still _now_, when
| supposedly GDPR was to fix all this._
|
| Ok, I'll come clean. I work for a big tech company. We
| had to overhaul a ton of services to comply with GDPR and
| I honestly believe our customers are better off because
| of it. GDPR did not magically fix all the problems in
| tech, but it's a big improvement.
|
| > _the one platform that pretends to care about user
| privacy_
|
| This level of cynicism is just so difficult to navigate.
| Are you saying Apple can or cannot be trusted? I much
| prefer to enable fair competition so that the best
| platform can actually emerge. Whether that's Apple or
| not, if users value privacy and the market is fair, they
| will be able to find it.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > Please point to any proof that the future would be this
| way.
|
| Please provide your own proofs that the future would
| _not_ be in this way. Prior to this change, the 30% cut
| was mandatory. Tomorrow, it won 't be only the game in
| town. That _alone_ shows that the future is at least one
| step towards a different app economy from the status quo.
| That alone changes things.
|
| > 3rd party stores exist on Android _today_, and I don't
| see any thing you talk about.
|
| But it opens up the opportunity for such a thing to
| arise. Someone _can_ choose to create an app discovery
| platform like AppGratis or Chomp, to create new app
| catalog perhaps more targeted and organized than the
| current sprawl that is the existing App Store. The point
| is this change allows the _possibility_ to arise, as well
| as the economics to shift. At the very least, this will
| lead to disruption of the status quo. That will breed
| opportunity and innovation.
|
| > Instead, android shows that these changes are
| potentially more user hostile.
|
| How have third party app stores made things any more
| hostile on Android? There is literally no competing Meta
| user data collection ap store there.
|
| > Developers pretend its about making things better for
| users when its about making more money for them.
|
| Users need developers, as much as developers need users.
| Anti-developer sentiment is puzzling. If you want Apple
| to build everything themselves, then close the platform
| entirely, allow only web apps (as Jobs intended), and let
| Apple Sherlock the entire App Store.
|
| > My friend, they are sitting still _now_, when
| supposedly GDPR was to fix all this. They are rushing to
| "open up" the one platform that pretends to care about
| user privacy
|
| GDPR was just the start, and further regulation on both
| sides of the Atlantic is in progress. Do you really think
| of all of this was meant to attack Apple specifically?
| Big Tech is under the crossfires by multiple regions,
| multiple nations, multiple political parties.
| bloppe wrote:
| > _I 'm not sympathetic to developers who cry about Apple
| not letting them run $program_
|
| You don't have to be sympathetic to developers. By
| sympathetic to yourself. Apple stifling competition and
| charging exorbitant rents absolutely harms you as a
| consumer.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Apple stifling competition and charging exorbitant
| rents absolutely harms you as a consumer._
|
| Please point to me where these harms are.
|
| It's not about the user - it's about developers getting
| to do whatever they want. It's about _developers_
| complaining that they can't use whatever APIs to track
| me. This is the same thing Facebook says when Apple
| rolled out opt in tracking. It was stifling facebook and
| it harms the facebook user experience. Can you give me an
| example how as a _user_ I am harmed? Replace facebook for
| anyone of your favorite DMPs.
|
| Where is this competition on Android? Surely on Android
| there is a robust market of apps that aren't an exercise
| in how much fingerprintable data can they siphon off? Is
| the harm that I can no longer sell my data for a free
| flashlight app? Or is it just handwaving "harms"? It just
| seems on Android, there is no stifling of important
| industries like mobile location data.
| pb7 wrote:
| No, it doesn't. I extract more value from Apple's
| offerings than they extract from me in $$$.
| bloppe wrote:
| I don't think you're grasping the point of antitrust.
| This was a common sentiment about AT&T in the 70's;
| people actually liked them despite their monopoly because
| they liked having telephones and didn't realize how much
| better things could be.
| spideymans wrote:
| Nothing I've seen from the major players in this industry
| (Meta, Epic, etc...), has convinced me that they're
| capable of doing better. I do hope I'm wrong though.
| [deleted]
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > For some reason every Linux user assumes everyone is as
| smart as they are and anyone who doesn't take the time to
| learn whatever esoteric config file to manage their DE is a
| child that can't tell left from right.
|
| Notably, most of the non-technical users I am acquainted with
| manage to use Windows, which will also let you install any
| software package you want if you click continue on the
| warning.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| It blows my mind how many people have bought into EU's position
| on this. No, the EU restricting Apple's freedom does not afford
| you greater choice. You, as an adult, can choose not to buy
| Apple hardware. If you're not confident in your ability to do
| that, just stick to Android. Don't demand that EU treat the
| rest of us like children just because that's how you would like
| to be treated.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >You, as an adult, can choose not to install shady software.
|
| For whatever reason, my dad cannot choose to not install shady
| software. Keeping him in iOS land is the only thing that has
| worked at keeping his devices clean.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| theplumber wrote:
| I think we should enjoy this promise that we may soon be able
| own/control our computer devices(i.e run the software we want)
| not just to subscribe to services.
| antipaul wrote:
| Part of me would love to see Apple pull out of Europe, and bully
| them to roll this back. Would be fun to watch!
|
| I'd say 50-50, they'd win!
| bluepizza wrote:
| You can replace Apple products with similars. Apple cannot
| replace money with lack of money.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Looks pretty good, and I wish my country (USA) would pass similar
| things.
|
| Still, as an Apple customer, I like having Safari pre installed
| and I like the Message app so I hope it's functionality doesn't
| change.
| djbebs wrote:
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| You're right. It should have gone further.
| ls15 wrote:
| For these companies. As a user, I think that these are great
| changes.
| joshsyn wrote:
| Not really, where is the creative freedom? Is anyone being
| held hostage to choosing a different phone if it doesn't
| allow their favourite track to be played?
| ls15 wrote:
| > where is the creative freedom?
|
| Creative freedom is for companies that are valued below
| EUR75bn and exempt from this regulation. The big ones have
| to comply with more heavy-handed regulation, as it should
| be in my opinion.
| DandyDev wrote:
| Can you explain why this is a bad thing?
| fbn79 wrote:
| This bring more choiche power to the final user. But are
| final users always in position to make such choiches? Do the
| final user always have the competence? If you open the app
| store walled gardens good things can enter, but even bad
| things. Today if you buy an iPhone to you son you sure that
| apps are reviewed by Apple. With this ACT, nor Apple, nor
| other provider can give you this certainty of app moderation.
| simion314 wrote:
| Apple can use their GIANT pile of cash to FUD the users
| into leaving Apple to think for them, also Apple could
| actually improve their security by using safer languages
| and actually collaborating with security people to close
| vulnerabilities faster. So basically if Apple really cares
| for security they can put money into it. Someone commented
| above that his native language support in Siri is garbage
| and Apple did not care to improve because theree was no
| competition, now if there will be competition you will get
| better software.
| bloppe wrote:
| I'm always amazed how people can be so receptive to this
| argument. I personally find it incredibly insulting that
| Nanny Apple tells me I don't know what's good for me; that
| they know what's good for me and it also happens to be
| incredibly lucrative for them and absolutely devastating
| for all would-be competition. Don't let them treat you like
| a child.
|
| Speaking of children, I think you A) massively overestimate
| the security that Apple's current review process provides
| (it's really just an automated virus scanner, and not a
| very good one at that; nobody actually reviews the apps by
| hand) and B) assume for some reason that the EU would
| cavalierly conflate the rights of children with the rights
| of adults. There are tons of regulations that treat the two
| groups quite differently, and allowing parents to control
| the freedoms of their own children would not be
| incompatible with this regulation.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I'm a developer since 30 years and I love the iOS walled
| garden. Not because I hate choice but because I don't
| want my phone to be a computer. I want it to be a dumb
| appliance. Same with my car or my refrigerator. It might
| _be_ a computer, but I want the one that shows that the
| least which is currently iOS.
|
| I _choose_ to let Apple be my nanny and police the apps.
| That's the choice. Does everyone need to be forced to
| make that choice? No. But the reason the platform is nice
| and polished is largely because they can make hundreds of
| millions run the same thing.
| krageon wrote:
| So your stance is folks don't deserve freedom because you
| feel you know better. Such a recipe for a great time.
| fbn79 wrote:
| People are free to choose something different from Apple,
| something more open like Google or even more like a
| Opensource Linux Phone. But are free to choose something
| closed like Apple if they want it and better fit needs.
| After the ACT a closed option such Apple ecosystem cannot
| exist anymore.
| akmarinov wrote:
| Apple currently let through tons of malicious apps that hit
| you with a $1000 subscription, so they're not the best at
| it either.
| momos wrote:
| Your son can also open the door to strangers and let them
| in or can stab himself with a knife or fork. What are we
| going to do to make knives, forks and doors more secure?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Front doors that only allow themselves to be unlocked if
| the person knocking on the other side has been vetted and
| certified by the paternalistic door manufacturer, who by
| the way, gets a 30% cut of any deal you might make with
| that person.
| simondotau wrote:
| I'd buy that door, and I'm not even kidding. It sounds
| fantastic.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Even if the door manufacturer uses a heuristic which
| frequently prevents your friends from visiting, but does
| allow dodgy salespeople to try to squeeze money out of
| you?
| simondotau wrote:
| That is analogistically opposite to my experience as an
| iOS device user. When are my friends being blocked? Who
| are these dodgy salespeople you speak of?
|
| I use an iPhone because I value the managed experience,
| somewhat more like an appliance than a computer. I
| already have enough computers in my life. I don't want
| more of them.
|
| I've literally never had any issue transacting with
| businesses through my phone. I can download the food
| delivery app and get dinner. I can download the transit
| app and get to where I'm going. What are these scams you
| speak of? Who are the dodgy people that Apple would allow
| through my hypothetical door?
| dane-pgp wrote:
| The friends being blocked are people who want to make an
| app for you but don't want to pay a developer tax to
| Apple.
|
| The dodgy salespeople are the ones selling over-priced
| apps that ask for unnecessary permissions.
| sylware wrote:
| They forgot the noscript/basic (x)html interoperability for the
| web. That does enable the possibility to use other browsers than
| big tech browsers. It is related to the "core messaging
| interoperability".
|
| And making core messaging functionality interoperable is fairly
| not enough because we already know what they will do to lock
| users on their software: they will accelerate their planned
| obsolescence, will increase the complexity/size of their protocol
| (or open source software) in order to kill alternatives which
| cannot have full-time bazillions of devs.
|
| Ofc, they will hide their malicious behavior behind words like
| "they have to evolve/adapt" or other security fallacies (I would
| not be surprise if corpos(=state?) paid hackers start to abuse
| the system in order to give corpos "good excuses" to trash
| interop), etc, well you get the picture.
|
| Simple, but good enough to the do reasonably the job, stable in
| time is the way to regulate them.
|
| Those guys are smart, their evil will be too.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > They forgot the noscript/basic (x)html interoperability for
| the web.
|
| I agree that interoperability on the web should be protected at
| least as much as on mobile, since the web as a platform has the
| potential to be more open than the tightly integrated mobile
| ecosystems.
|
| Unfortunately, what that would look like in practice is harder
| to say, as I don't think governments could mandate "Semantic
| Web" versions of all websites, even though that would give true
| client choice and allow the building of complementary services.
|
| My main disappointment with the legislation is that "core
| messaging interoperability" doesn't also require
| interoperability between social networks, since a Facebook user
| should be able to send a DM to a Twitter user, for example, and
| ActivityPub solves the more general issue of social network
| federation.
| amelius wrote:
| > They forgot the noscript/basic (x)html interoperability for
| the web
|
| Noscript has nothing to do with this.
| bloppe wrote:
| They're smart, but the language of the regulation gives
| enforcers enough leeway to fine them for trying to pull
| bullshit like this. Using "bazillions of devs" to try to
| circumvent the spirit of the law would be an enormous waste of
| time and money. Hopefully they realize that before even trying.
| sylware wrote:
| That said, they are actually doing it for the web, and it is
| working.
|
| I am more pessimistic than you about this since I am being
| hit hard by the web issue.
| nuker wrote:
| > give business users access to their marketing or advertising
| performance data on the platform
|
| Is it what Facebook was crying about when iOS hardened its
| privacy?
| cm2012 wrote:
| Since GDPR has an unbelievably wasted time to positive impact on
| people ratio, I fear that this will be the same.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| This is easily one of the most expansive Acts regarding computing
| devices passed in my lifetime. The summary is in the link. As an
| iPhone user, this will enable me to:
|
| * Install any software
|
| * Install any App Store and choose to make it default
|
| * Use third party payment providers and choose to make them
| default
|
| * Use any voice assistant and choose to make it default
|
| * User any browser and browser engine and choose to make it
| default
|
| * Use any messaging app and choose to make it default
|
| * Make core messaging functionality interoperable. They lay out
| concrete examples like file transfer
|
| * Use existing hardware and software features without competitive
| prejudice. E.g. NFC
|
| * Not preference their services. This includes CTAs in settings
| to encourage users to subscribe to Gatekeeper services, and
| ranking their own services above others in selection and
| advertising portals
|
| * Much, much, more.
|
| After the Act is signed by the Council and the European
| Parliament in September, Apple, Google, Amazon, and other
| "Gatekeepers" will have six months to comply. Fines are up to 10%
| of global revenue for the first offense, and 20% for repeat
| offenses.
| benbristow wrote:
| Wonder if this will also apply outside the EU (e.g. now
| Britain)
| mattgperry wrote:
| Surely that's at each company's discretion.
| aloisdg wrote:
| Let's hope that the Brussels effect does its magic
|
| > The Brussels effect is the process of unilateral regulatory
| globalisation caused by the European Union de facto (but not
| necessarily de jure) externalising its laws outside its
| borders through market mechanisms. Through the Brussels
| effect, regulated entities, especially corporations, end up
| complying with EU laws even outside the EU for a variety of
| reasons.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect
| runako wrote:
| > * Make core messaging functionality interoperable. They lay
| out concrete examples like file transfer
|
| It's entirely possible that to enable compliance with this will
| require explicit compromises to the security of iMessage, for
| example by requiring key exchange with startup messaging
| providers. The other rules seem to prohibit Apple from
| describing the risks involved in such a compromise.
|
| > * Use existing hardware and software features without
| competitive prejudice. E.g. NFC
|
| This appears to say that a malicious app can present UX
| elements that were previously limited to the OS. Read
| liberally, that would mean that e.g. any app could now get
| biometric data by presenting a fake privilege escalation screen
| (e.g. FaceID/TouchID) and then capturing the results from the
| Secure Enclave. Is this something people really want?
|
| > * Not preference their services. This includes CTAs in
| settings to encourage users to subscribe to Gatekeeper
| services, and ranking their own services above others in
| selection and advertising portals
|
| This will likely make it harder for users to find safe/private
| services to use. If every offering can find its way into the
| default browser/App Store/etc. settings page in the OS, scam
| services will appear to be endorsed and therefore legitimate.
|
| Edit: Limitation of interop is still possible, the EU is just
| deciding to move decision making from California engineers to
| Brussels attorneys. From the Act:
|
| > The gatekeeper shall not be prevented from taking strictly
| necessary and proportionate measures to ensure that
| interoperability does not compromise the integrity of the
| operating system, virtual assistant, hardware or software
| features provided by the gatekeeper, provided that such
| measures are duly justified by the gatekeeper.
|
| So Apple just needs to explain security & encryption to
| Brussels attorneys to keep iMessage in a silo, for example.
| (Obviously making iMessage interoperable with e.g. Discord or
| ICQ will compromise the integrity of the software features of
| iMessage.) I don't think this is going to increase the pace of
| product improvements.
| Vespasian wrote:
| Apple: it's impossible because of the encryption
|
| Regulator: what are the others using?
|
| Apple: something very similar but slightly different
|
| Regulator: and it's impossible to develop an open standard
| thet allows p2p encryption to be maintained?
|
| Apple: Yes obviously in this specific field of technology
| that's not possible at all.
|
| (Not the) Regulator: Sounds legit
| runako wrote:
| This facile response ignores that Apple Messages is a
| system, not just an encryption algorithm. Of particular
| concern is key management: who manages the keys that allow
| the messages to be decrypted? Currently, it's Apple.
|
| What this Act says is that Apple Messages must interop with
| any other messaging system. If you spin up a VM running an
| iMessage-compatible server on Hetzner, Apple Messages must
| interop with you and cannot privilege Messages (e.g. by
| continuing to use blue bubbles as a differentiator). That
| VM may be malicious (for ex: it may log who communicated
| with whom when), but the Act still requires that it be
| placed on an even footing with Messages.
|
| Similarly, the Act essentially says that once implemented,
| anyone using a phone can unintentionally be sending all of
| their messages to Facebook Messenger, which by law must
| have seamless interop with Messages. Any group chat could
| be logged by Facebook by virtue of one person in the chat
| choosing Facebook Messenger as their default messaging app.
|
| This requirement materially changes the security posture of
| a billion devices currently in use. You may believe the
| tradeoff is worthwhile, but it's still not a free tradeoff.
| ko27 wrote:
| Some of the comments you posted on this thread are
| completely false, like EU forcing Apple to change bubble
| color or forcing them to handover encryption keys.
| Neither of that is even remotely true. If Apple doesn't
| want other companies to have encryption keys they can
| (and should) provide an E2E API. They can document their
| own protocol, or implement an existing open one, like
| Signal's.
| lstodd wrote:
| That only means that the Apple Messages model is outdated
| and a replacement is hereby being required.
|
| If Apple prefers lock-in over innovation, it's their
| problem, not the users'.
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| > It's entirely possible that to enable compliance with this
| will require explicit compromises to the security of
| iMessage, for example by requiring key exchange with startup
| messaging providers.
|
| Is that really much worse than the status quo, where all
| iMessage plaintexts are shared with Apple by default, unless
| every participant in the thread has disabled iCloud Backup?
|
| > So Apple just needs to explain security & encryption to
| Brussels attorneys to keep iMessage in a silo, for example.
| (Obviously making iMessage interoperable with e.g. Discord or
| ICQ will compromise the integrity of the software features of
| iMessage.)
|
| Are you arguing that it's impossible for Discord or ICQ to
| implement the same feature set as the native iMessage client?
| runako wrote:
| Yes, it is. All of the participants in an iMessage chat
| have consented to have their data stored by Apple. We can
| all do rough evaluations on how well we think Apple can
| protect our data.
|
| The wording in the Act appears to not place constraints on
| exactly what services must be able to interop with
| iMessage, and it says Apple can't preference iMessage. So
| presumably the blue bubbles have to go. This means that
| when chatting in Messages now, one will not be able to know
| whether it's Apple alone protecting the privacy of the
| conversation, or whether the weakest link is a company of a
| single person that started this week using an OSS package
| to spin up a new messaging app on a Linode VM and was able
| to achieve parity in iOS messaging simply by virtue of this
| Act.
|
| That's a very different situation than the status quo.
|
| Similar logic applies to the App Store and payment details,
| but messaging is egregious because other participants in
| the chat can make (and potentially change) the security
| posture of the chat without your knowledge.
|
| (Edit, adding reply to this part.)
|
| > Are you arguing that it's impossible for Discord or ICQ
| to implement the same feature set as the native iMessage
| client?
|
| No, I am saying that it's going to be trivial to implement
| the feature set. I fully expect there to be OSS libraries
| to implement the iMessage client.
|
| The issue is that when people use iMessage and see a blue
| bubble, they also know something about how the encryption
| keys are handled & who does the handling, etc. This Act as
| written appears to allow any person to install an OSS
| iMessage server on a VM and achieve OS parity with
| iMessage, and Apple is prevented from indicating that
| others in the chat may be compromising the security of the
| chat. I used ICQ and Discord as examples because Apple
| exchanging my encryption keys with ICQ is definitely
| compromising a core feature of iMessage.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Most of my extended family is unaware that iCloud backups
| sends your words to apple, not to mention all the other
| things. There was no rough evaluation
| runako wrote:
| (This is also about the encryption of the communication
| channel itself.)
|
| I agree with you in general, but it is possible for this
| evaluation to be done by a simple read of e.g. the iOS
| marketing page. The Act proposes a regime where it is not
| possible for a chat participant to determine who holds
| the encryption keys for the chat. You may consider that
| better or worse or neither, but it is a significant
| change in the security posture for billions of deployed
| devices.
| donmcronald wrote:
| > The issue is that when people use iMessage and see a
| blue bubble, they also know something about how the
| encryption keys are handled & who does the handling, etc.
|
| Realistically, the average person doesn't even know what
| an encryption key is and the average tech enthusiast
| doesn't know anything beyond "Apple handles everything".
|
| > So presumably the blue bubbles have to go. This means
| that when chatting in Messages now, one will not be able
| to know whether it's Apple alone protecting the privacy
| of the conversation
|
| Why can't iMessage to iMessage be blue bubbles with
| iMessage to anything else being green bubbles? Do you
| think the average iPhone user understands that green
| bubbles mean insecure rather than thinking they're
| "Android bubbles"?
|
| Why are so many people convinced that consumer choice and
| security are mutually exclusive?
| runako wrote:
| > average tech enthusiast doesn't know anything beyond
| "Apple handles everything".
|
| The new law removes that person's ability to even discern
| this much.
|
| > Why can't iMessage to iMessage be blue bubbles with
| iMessage to anything else being green bubbles?
|
| This would pretty clearly be Apple preferring its own
| service over other services, and is prohibited under the
| new law.
|
| I should be clear here: I think this law is clumsy and
| will have to be fixed or loosely enforced. But even if
| one is in favor of these changes, it's fair to
| acknowledge the reality that the law basically mandates a
| major change in the security posture of a billion
| deployed devices. One may still be in favor, but it's
| important not to lose sight of the fact that there are in
| fact compromises being made.
|
| > Why are so many people convinced that consumer choice
| and security are mutually exclusive?
|
| I am 100% not convinced this is true; security and choice
| can coexist. But this EU law does not aim at the goal of
| preserving security while increasing consumer choice.
| Which is strange, given how a consequence of a prior EU
| Act was the pollution of the Web with cookie banners. (I
| am aware these banners are not specifically required for
| many use cases, which is why I said this is a consequence
| of their Act and not something ordered by their Act.)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > This would pretty clearly be Apple preferring its own
| service over other services, and is prohibited under the
| new law.
|
| Does it really, though? Is it something that that was
| explicitly brought up in the drafting of this law? Or is
| this a doomsday scenario that chooses to interpret the
| law in its most extreme form?
|
| The legislation has been approved. Let us see how
| regulators actually enforce it. Until the EU bans green
| vs. blue bubbles, this is nothing more than FUD.
| runako wrote:
| > The legislation has been approved. Let us see how
| regulators actually enforce it.
|
| We're on the same page here: lawyers are now deciding
| matters of technical import, and that is not a good
| thing.
| donmcronald wrote:
| > This would pretty clearly be Apple preferring its own
| service over other services, and is prohibited under the
| new law.
|
| I don't agree. Green bubbles indicate that messages
| travelled 100% within Apple's ecosystem. Indicating
| interoperability with a 3rd party by using blue bubbles
| doesn't do anything to prevent those 3rd parties from
| having their own green bubbles within their own
| ecosystem.
| runako wrote:
| > Indicating interoperability with a 3rd party by using
| blue bubbles doesn't do anything to prevent those 3rd
| parties from having their own green bubbles within their
| own ecosystem.
|
| The entire point of the law is Apple/Google don't get to
| manage their own ecosystems anymore; EU regulators do
| that. One read of the intent of the Act is that platforms
| should not be able to preference their own services over
| those of third parties. My skim of the Act indicates that
| it would be in bounds for a regulator to decide that this
| means no blue/green message distinction, and a direct
| consequence of that is that anyone in a group chat could
| be using Facebook Messenger as a client and allowing
| Facebook to log all the messages.
|
| Engineering decisions henceforth need to weigh what a
| specific regulator believes the law says, since the law
| is not very specific about many details. This is not
| good, especially coming from the people who caused the
| global cookie disclaimer deluge.
| [deleted]
| jwarden wrote:
| The idea seems good. But after GDPR my confidence in EU
| lawmakers ability to craft truly well-thought-out tech
| legislation is low.
| skc wrote:
| If the will (and financial muscle) was there, this might have
| actually been the spark needed for a tenacious 3rd player in
| the mobile OS space.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| These sound great, but what is the list of bad ideas inevitably
| buried in the 230 pages of this act that we'll come to learn as
| they bite us all in the ass?
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| does anyone know when the messaging interoperability comes into
| force? i am really anxious to have this work finally
| astrange wrote:
| You're really anxious to have infinite amounts of spam from
| bridged messaging services that noone can do anything to
| stop?
| webmobdev wrote:
| And for privacy conscious users and other business competitors:
|
| > _But they can no longer reuse private data collected during a
| service for the purposes of another service._
|
| I hope this is applied retrospectively (for even data gathered
| before the DMA was legislated and came into effect).
| noisem4ker wrote:
| "retroactively"
| paganel wrote:
| It depends on how much the Republicans have started to like on
| Apple and Google again, there's no way a European Union
| starving for gas come winter-time would impose a 10-20% cut of
| the turnover to two out of the 4 biggest US companies. I say
| Republicans because most probably they'll steamroll the Dems in
| November.
| toyg wrote:
| Considering these giants pay very little tax and employ very
| small numbers in the European tech sector, "there is way"
| indeed.
| paganel wrote:
| They pay so little tax exactly because they're US
| behemoths. Again, the EU has a very weak hand in here, it's
| not like these decisions are implemented in a vacuum.
| kaoD wrote:
| Well the US has a strategic interest on EU using their
| spyware.
|
| They're slowly losing their grasp on EU (e.g. threats
| regarding Nord Stream 2 in 2021). This could slowly turn
| into Cold War II and this time around it doesn't look
| like the US is capable of/willing to carry out a Marshall
| Plan if things turn ugly energy-wise. EU is starting to
| realize how they're puppets to the US and an economic war
| is being waged on their soil. The US is not the reliable
| partner that it used to be.
|
| Russia is not looking good but neither is the US. China
| is going to slowly eat the european cake if they play
| their cards well as they're already doing in Africa.
| toyg wrote:
| _> Again, the EU has a very weak hand in here_
|
| I wonder why all these megacorps have had to change their
| data-handling procedure and now ask you for consent to
| tracking cookies... oh wait
| paganel wrote:
| Adding a few pop-ups that almost everyone ignores or
| clicks at random to see them closed (I know I do) is
| different than having one of your main money-making
| ecosystems forcefully changed in a matter of a few
| months. (I'm thinking mostly about Apple here).
| la64710 wrote:
| Europe's requirement of those pesky cookie notices have killed
| the joy of surfing the net. Every goddamn site has this stupid
| cookie popup show up. It is like playing whack-a-mole. They
| should have instead only allow necessary cookies and marketing
| and other cookies should be part of signing up for a specific
| service and not just visiting the website. The thought is noble
| but the implementation sucks.
| chrismartin wrote:
| try easylist-cookies.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23521399
| throw1230 wrote:
| EU requirement was to inform users on how the data collected
| about them will be used and give them a choice.
|
| Cookie notices was the industry response, ignoring the spirit
| of the law and complying at a minimal rate
| d4a wrote:
| Cookie notices > having tracking cookies enabled by default
| with no easy way to turn them off
| the_duke wrote:
| Another significant point: Gatekeepers also must allow
| uninstalling their bloatware software.
| InTheArena wrote:
| This is much more negative then for Apple then google. Google
| subsidizes their (far less profitable) app ecosystem by selling
| user data in the form of advertisements. While there is
| language about Google having to share marketing response rates,
| it doesn't prohibit this practice.
|
| Apple on the other hand makes their money by targeting features
| (privacy, integration, etc) that people pay more for.
|
| Apple will have to transition to a more ad-tech focus in order
| to compete in Europe under this infrastructure.
| astrange wrote:
| Showing advertisements isn't "selling user data", it's
| showing ads. Being the company who shows the ads means
| keeping the targeting data for yourself, which is the
| opposite of selling it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _After the Act is signed by the Council and the European
| Parliament in September_
|
| Lol. The encryption keys being shared with security services
| bits have political cover. Not the rest. It's surprising
| European legislation doesn't yet have a reconciliation process,
| to prevent this sort of burying-the-lede gambit.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| >* User any browser and browser engine and choose to make it
| default
|
| ...only works if the OS doesn't unchange it every. sodding.
| day.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > Install any software
|
| Could we have something like F-droid on iOS? I guess that's
| Cydia now but could Cydia be installed without requiring
| jailbreaking?
| Bilal_io wrote:
| The delicious irony if the Cydia devs come back with an
| official Cydia store.
| neodypsis wrote:
| > Install any software > Install any App Store and choose to
| make it default
|
| I wonder if, just like in Android, this will open the doors for
| a lot of malware targeting iOS users.
| Bilal_io wrote:
| What malware? I've been using Android for over 10 years now.
| I've never had an issue personally. But I consider myself
| tech savvy and I don't install apps from untrusted sources.
| Also, iOS had multiple 0-days in the past. So you don't need
| to give users freedom over their paid for devices for them to
| be compromised.
| neodypsis wrote:
| Sure, iOS has had 0-days in the past. Which major
| OS/Hypervisor hasn't? The point is that Android is more
| susceptible to "lower hanging fruit" attacks, such as in
| the examples below.
|
| For example: https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/camscanner-
| malicious-android-...
|
| Very recent example:
| https://www.techradar.com/in/news/more-brutal-malware-
| laden-...
| aasasd wrote:
| iPhones are now shipped with FreeDOS. Optional iOS is available
| separately.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| And yet, Apple can still charge software companies whatever
| they want to allow software to run on the phones. Nothing says
| anything about the business elements of these user experiences.
| So if anyone thinks this law is going to take money from
| gatekeepers and put it into the pockets of app publishers they
| are kidding themselves
| the_duke wrote:
| I think you might want to read up on the law in question...
| Gareth321 wrote:
| >And yet, Apple can still charge software companies whatever
| they want to allow software to run on the phones.
|
| This is explicitly disallowed in the legislation. See page
| 131:
|
| >The gatekeeper shall allow providers of services and
| providers of hardware, free of charge, effective
| interoperability with, and access for the purposes of
| interoperability to, the same hardware and software features
| accessed or controlled via the operating system or virtual
| assistant listed in the designation decision pursuant to
| Article 3(9) as are available to services or hardware
| provided by the gatekeeper. Furthermore, the gatekeeper shall
| allow business users and alternative providers of services
| provided together with, or in support of, core platform
| services, free of charge, effective interoperability with,
| and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same
| operating system, hardware or software features, regardless
| of whether those features are part of the operating system,
| as are available to, or used by, that gatekeeper when
| providing such services
| enos_feedler wrote:
| The simple work around is to provide lower quality of
| service to all of the platforms features and claim it is
| the only way to achieve _effective_ interoperability
| without jeopardizing the user experience
| Gareth321 wrote:
| They have lots of qualifiers around access and service
| standards. It's 230 pages and quite comprehensive. I'm
| sure Apple and Google will try to get creative, but these
| simple examples of potential malicious compliance are
| already covered.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| I am not speaking with regards to malicious intent. I
| actually mean the scenario where providing a certain
| level of access does in fact degrade the user experience.
| Take for instance if US carriers were required to give
| all MNVO full 5G access with unlimited data simply
| because the carriers themselves sell this kind of
| capability directly to customers. This might put burden
| onto the network that just makes it terrible for
| everyone. We wouldn't want that kind of regulation. I am
| just wondering if this will degrade the phone experience
| in a material way and the only recourse will be to
| uninstall apps.
| browningstreet wrote:
| If this is an accurate description of the regulation, I can
| help but feel they brought it on themselves but closing the
| garden so hard. These were normal computing options before
| iPhone/Android took over.
|
| Does it break any privacy/digital-dignity protections though?
| NeveHanter wrote:
| What about the Google Play Services as a whole? Most of the
| Android apps don't work without these (so you can't for example
| use LineageOS without GApps), does the act in any way reference
| such things? What about contactless payment without "Google's
| approval" which require hiding the root, hiding the fact that
| the system is unsigned or has unlocked bootloader.
| blinkingled wrote:
| That is already not a problem on Android. If you can install
| a 3rd party app store (and you already can install a bunch of
| these on Android) and don't use Google Play Services your app
| will still work. For e.g. Amazon Appstore ships lots of the
| same apps but without using Google Play Services.
| NeveHanter wrote:
| Well, no, many apps require Google Play Services/Google
| Play Framework to work, I can use MicroG
| (https://microg.org/) with the spoofing enabled but this is
| unofficial thing and not everything works with that.
| izacus wrote:
| And many apps don't work without Apple iOS being present
| on device and many apps don't work without Windows being
| present on device, etc.
|
| Play Services are core OS API just like Apple services
| are.
| tristan957 wrote:
| They are pretty obviously not core OS API if you don't
| need them.
| jcfrei wrote:
| Play Services is probably the worlds most expansive data
| collection and user tracking tool. Tying core OS APIs
| into it is just evil.
| foepys wrote:
| Google's push notification framework is baked into the
| kernel. There is no way to make a competing framework as
| efficient as Google's solution in Android, so next to no
| app supports something else.
|
| Every app you see working without Google's tools is simply
| using good old long polling or periodically looks for new
| messages. Both are very inefficient and slow.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Have you read it? Do you have any info on how the vendors can
| react to these changes in terms of policy? Like is there
| anything that disallow apple to offer post-sales support /
| warranty in case you install any software / app store? etc?
| DrBazza wrote:
| Presumably you didn't live through the EU vs MS?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commission
|
| That was the unbundling of Internet Explorer from PCs.
|
| Which in hindsight looks like small beers compared to Chrome
| on-every-device usage, and probably why MS are getting away
| with it, again, bundling Edge and crippling Firefox
| workarounds.
| iasay wrote:
| While I agree with this, I'm interested in seeing what the long
| term security consequences are.
|
| These are all the highest risk API and integration surfaces on
| mobile devices.
|
| Also I hope Microsoft get pulled into this as well because
| they're slowly turning Windows into a marketing device.
|
| Edit: as an iOS user I'm optimistic that this will lead to
| complete device network whitelist capabilities though so you
| can neuter any apps which circumvent the current browser
| restrictions. That would destroy a lot of tracking capability
| instantly and completely stop embedded browser side channel
| attacks.
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| > I'm interested in seeing what the long term security
| consequences are.
|
| Negligible; most large-format computing devices already allow
| you to do all of these things.
| raesene9 wrote:
| However mobile devices have a dual role (in many people's
| lives these days) as being the custodian of all their MFA
| setup. weakening mobile security (which this arguably may
| do) could have an impact there.
|
| Also "large format computing devices" are moving more to
| the lockdown model, at least partially due to the security
| problems inherent in allowing end users to install/run
| whatever they want :)
| judge2020 wrote:
| And it tends to be a bad experience for anyone who doesn't
| naturally gravitate towards HN when they eventually get
| malware or unwanted browser adware extensions.
| izacus wrote:
| And the world will continue turning just like it had for
| the last 50 years of us having general purpose computers
| without an American at Apple telling us what we're
| allowed to do with our products.
| metacritic12 wrote:
| The title says it all: the EU Act aimed against literally half
| the top USA companies.
|
| But that's just realpolitik for you. This is the same reason
| that in the USA it is legal to have California Champaign and
| New York Bordeaux (style in small font) wine.
| sfe22 wrote:
| While I am in the camp of apple allowing side-loading, i am not
| a fan of monopolistic regulations like this. It opens all kind
| of questions, like
|
| 1. What devices have to comply? 2. Who decides what device has
| to comply? Should playstation open their system too. What about
| a niche bank transaction signing device that internally uses an
| android capable hardware. Is this illegal now? 3. What about a
| car infotainment system that can theoretically run linux. 4.
| What if a European startup wants to compete with the iphone?
| Now they have so many regulations instead of focusing on a
| great device for their niche.
|
| This looks like it will kill competition and harm European
| innovation, while major players will find their ways around it.
| ls15 wrote:
| Sony's market capitalization exceeds EUR75bn (the threshold
| over which the regulation applies).
| GoOnThenDoTell wrote:
| Is there something to stop worthless shell companies from
| shielding the parent company's size
| Vespasian wrote:
| Hopefully existing regulations that prevent companies
| from hiding behind shells.
|
| Otherwise any regulation could be skirted by having a
| constantly revolving roster of fronts that import your
| product.
| toyg wrote:
| There is the law and there is the spirit of the law.
| Judges (and European regulators alike) don't like being
| taken for fools.
| sfe22 wrote:
| Enjoy the special edition European only, double i phone,
| now available at the closest Aapple store.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I always see comments like this and they're so confusing.
| They just kind of assume that nobody has thought about these
| questions. Did you even check if they were addressed? If not,
| why are you asserting that these questioned are opened? For
| one, it's not about devices, it's about digital market
| platforms. That's why it's called the digital markets act.
|
| Let's see what we get when we google this? Here's one:
| https://www.akingump.com/en/news-insights/digital-markets-
| ac...
|
| Core platform services include: online
| intermediation services. online search engines.
| online social networking services. video-sharing
| platform services. number-independent interpersonal
| communications services. operating systems.
| web browsers. virtual assistants. cloud
| computing services. online advertising services,
| including advertising intermediation services.
|
| > The compromise text clarifies that the definition of core
| platform services should be technology neutral and should be
| understood to encompass those provided on or through various
| means or devices, such as connected TV or embedded digital
| services in vehicles.
|
| > "Gatekeeper", in turn, refers to an undertaking providing
| core platform services that meets the following qualitative
| and quantitative criteria, set out in Article 3:
|
| > First, it must have a significant impact on the EU internal
| market. An undertaking is presumed to satisfy this
| requirement where (a) it either has achieved an annual EU
| turnover equal to or above EUR 7.5 billion in each of the
| last three financial years, or where its average market
| capitalization or its equivalent fair market value amounted
| to at least EUR 75 billion in the last financial year, and
| (b) it provides the same core platform service in at least
| three Member States.
|
| > Second, it must provide a core platform service which is an
| important gateway for business users to reach end users. This
| requirement is presumed to be met where the undertaking
| provides a core platform service that had on average at least
| 45 million monthly active end users established or located in
| the EU and at least 10,000 yearly active business users
| established in the EU in the last financial year.2 Users are
| to be identified and calculated in accordance with a
| methodology set out in an Annex to the DMA.
|
| > Third, it must enjoy an entrenched and durable position in
| its operations. This requirement is presumed to be met where
| the threshold points in the paragraph above were met in each
| of the previous three financial years.
| ekianjo wrote:
| All these numbers and criteria seem to be completely cherry
| picked to fit specific companies. So bad.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Which specific companies have they been cherry picked
| for? Are there any set of numbers that you would like
| more to generally capture the concept of large tech
| giants?
| judge2020 wrote:
| the first two are very important questions. For example, if I
| make $500 "unhackablePhone", where it literally doesn't run
| web apps and every app is vetted by top-talent security
| researchers for weeks, and then I sell billions of these
| devices, do I then have to open up the ecosystem to allow
| anyone to be able to take a phone, punch in the passcode, and
| install a third party App Store? This is synonymous with the
| current iPhone situation as many people only buy it for the
| benefit of Apple screening everything that can run on their
| phone, albeit at a lower security level where some mistakes
| are fine assuming Apple almost never allows known exploits to
| exist on the most up-to-date iOS release.
| frostburg wrote:
| Yes. Users will just elect not to do that if they want to
| benefit from your curation.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The selling point for this theoretical device is that,
| even if someone steals your passcode, it can't be hacked.
| This enabled evil maid (or customs processors, nation-
| state agencies, etc) attacks on the most vulnerable users
| looking to have defense-in-depth.
|
| To avoid this it seems you'd either be forced to sell it
| at an insane markup (to avoid having too many users) or
| means test people to make sure they don't purchase it if
| they're not super vulnerable to attacks that matter.
| shaky-carrousel wrote:
| Easy, do it like android. In (some) android devices you
| can unlock the bootloader. But doing so will inevitably
| wipe out the device.
| leereeves wrote:
| You wouldn't need to do anything to prevent people from
| buying it.
|
| The restrictions inherent in the device (including only
| having a few apps that have been thoroughly reviewed by
| security researchers) would keep most people away.
| stale2002 wrote:
| I think there are easy to think of solutions to the
| problem, that let's everyone win.
|
| The obvious solution, for your hypothetical, would be to
| give a setting to the user, that turns on "safe mode" and
| make this setting only changeable on factory reset.
|
| So any user could choose, at startup, to have safe mode
| on or off, on their own device.
|
| Problem solved.
| Vogtinator wrote:
| Or just have a way that prevents those kind of attacks.
| Like having the trusted bootloader light a LED or show a
| hash code of the configuration on screen.
| judge2020 wrote:
| What are the chances some third-party OS vendor complains
| that they have to work with iBoot to launch their OS and
| demand they be able to replace it?
| piaste wrote:
| > This is synonymous with the current iPhone situation as
| many people only buy it for the benefit of Apple screening
| everything that can run on their phone
|
| I would love to read some surveys on this matter, because I
| highly doubt that security/privacy is a significant factor
| for more than a few percent points of iPhone buyers.
|
| (I base this hypothesis on the fact that, in virtually
| every field of technology, end users have shown that they
| will overwhelmingly sacrifice privacy and security in
| exchange for convenience and cost savings.)
|
| I expect that the main motivations for iPhone purchases are
| aesthetics, performance, ease of use, integration with the
| Apple ecosystem, and especially fashion/status symbol
| factor.
|
| As for the rest of the comment, as other people have
| already pointed out, you can prevent evil maid attacks by
| putting the legally-required "open" mode behind a factory
| reset. Which is roughly what Android phones do with their
| unlockable bootloaders.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Apple's advertising for the last few years has
| continuously focused on privacy. There must be some
| interest from iPhone buyers if Apple spends their
| advertising money this way.
| visarga wrote:
| The App Store is a garbage dump anyway. There are few apps
| you can pay upfront, the rest are ad-infested or require
| you to repeatedly do in app purchases to keep using them,
| to the point that I can't find games for my kids.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| You can run DNS based ad blockers on iOS. It's just a
| setting you change, mine is called adguard. Still get
| YouTube ads, but most others are blocked.
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| "assuming Apple almost never allows known exploits to exist
| on the most up-to-date iOS release"
|
| That's a false assumption.
|
| At the end of the day, consumers aren't children. If they
| so choose to destroy what the manufacturer gives them, that
| is their choice.
|
| I did some cool things with early Android that made the
| phone tailored to me. If I wanted stock, it was just a
| reflash away. This is the way.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| >For example, if I make $500 "unhackablePhone", where it
| literally doesn't run web apps and every app is vetted by
| top-talent security researchers for weeks, and then I sell
| billions of these devices, do I then have to open up the
| ecosystem to allow anyone to be able to take a phone, punch
| in the passcode, and install a third party App Store?
|
| Well that would depend, are you a "gatekeeper", as defined
| in the Regulation?
|
| That is, do you have a significant impact on the EU's
| internal market (a turnover of EUR7.5bn or a EUR75bn market
| cap), provide a core platform service which is important
| for business users to reach end users (have have 45m
| monthly active end-users in the EU or 10k monthly active
| business users), enjoy an entrenched and durable position
| in your operations or foresee that you will enjoy such a
| position in the near future (i.e. you meet the above for
| three consecutive years)?
|
| If you answered "no" to any part of that then you are not a
| gatekeeper, and these regulations do not apply to you.
| creato wrote:
| It seems clear that the hypothetical company would meet
| this definition, and the regulation would completely
| defeat the purpose of the proposed company.
|
| I don't know how useful this particular hypothetical is,
| but it's definitely a "code smell" that the proposed
| company's seemingly only options would be to limit sales
| to retain the "not a gatekeeper" status or stop doing
| business in the EU.
| hoffs wrote:
| Well people who chose to use other app store don't get
| access to your curated list of apps. They still remain your
| selling point
| judge2020 wrote:
| > Well people who chose to use other app store don't get
| access to your curated list of apps
|
| This is how Xbox currently works in that you can't play
| any regular games if you enable developer mode to run
| unsigned code. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say
| that, if Apple complied by disabling apps downloaded via
| their own store when a user is using a 3p store, then the
| EU would laugh and fine then $x millions of dollars per
| week.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| They will still be able to choose the apple ecosystem.
| Feigning to see? The regulation is to put a stop to walled
| gardens tynany.
|
| The players this regulation target are pretty obvious. It's
| those that have gained such market dominance along the
| years that it has become unfair competition for newer
| players. It is the outcome of years of consumer pressures
| and entrepreneurs who are calling out for some government
| actions because markets are regulated anyway everywhere in
| the world, and these US based companies (for the most part
| for now) have lobbied along the years to get away with
| their practice but the EU has decided their lobbying won't
| do with them. At least not anymore.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| These are excellent points.
|
| And I first want to approach it from the "good faith" point
| of view. The past 20 years have seen a sea change in what
| surveillance and devices can do. And as such we (society at
| large) needs to adjust our understanding and approach to this
| new technology.
|
| Firstly the opportunities are _immense_. With almost (*)
| every person having some kind of heart, lifestyle, monitoring
| and measurement we could see transformational medical and
| epidemiology breakthroughs. On top of which access to (free,
| correct!) information, hell GPS is amazing. We know
|
| Secondly there are opportunities for abuse, and there is
| justifiable concern about privacy, about affect on democracy,
| truth etc. I personally think these are..the wrong terms to
| use, but never mind.
|
| I think we have to assume Good Faith from the EU here. They
| don't know the answers any more than the rest of us do. But
| they have been upfront abut tackling obvious big problems -
| the GDPR, for all its many faults was first, and a again big
| Good Faith step in right direction (pace all the stupid
| cookie warnings)
|
| As for answers
|
| Which devices apply - which ever ones are "owned" by a
| Gatekeeper (45 Million users / 7Bn turnover). Should Sony
| open up Playstation. Yeah basically. Xbox too. Will that
| cause problems - I expect so. In 99% of cases a big warning
| saying "you are side-loading this is dangerous" will prevent
| most horrors.
|
| I expect this will not lead to an Open source free for all. I
| expect there will be develop licensing programs and approvals
| - because I certainly see the walled garden of iOS as a real
| benefit.
|
| The bank transaction signing thing is interesting. The
| definition of a gatekeeper (Article 2 in the Act) is fairly
| specific to things like online search engines, intermediation
| services, OSes etc. I think its unlikely 45 million users is
| a big floor for such a thing.
|
| (#) 4.5 Bn smartphones are in use globally, that's almost
| every adult. In "western" countries there are 10s of millions
| of people with daily heart rate monitoring.
| tirpen wrote:
| Most of these rules apply only to companies above a certain
| size, both in number of users and revenue. Those get
| classified as "digital gatekeepers" and they are the
| companies that have to comply with extra requirements.
|
| So no, this will not affect startups and harm innovation, it
| will just force the monopolistic behemoths to play nice and
| cease actively harming innovation.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| It also starts to bother me quite a bit when we go from
| treating everyone equal before the law to creating certain
| requirements based on other factors.
|
| Further it seems more like a moat to keep anyone else from
| getting as big as these "digital gatekeepers" are as
| suddenly when you get to a certain size you have an
| enormous expense.
|
| If these companies really are that large that they have to
| get special laws for them isnt the solution to dissolve
| their monopoly and split the company up instead of starting
| to create separate classes of laws.
| glogla wrote:
| > It also starts to bother me quite a bit when we go from
| treating everyone equal before the law to creating
| certain requirements based on other factors.
|
| This is completely normal for laws.
|
| Your kitchen at home doesn't have to follow the same
| rules as restaurant kitchen, for example. You as a driver
| of your personal car don't have to go through the same
| process and registration as truck drivers do. Small
| stalls selling things have different rules than big
| stores. And so on.
| pavlov wrote:
| Also, equality principles that apply to actual persons
| don't necessarily make sense if applied to corporations.
|
| A person, even if very rich, has a limited lifetime and a
| limited amount of hours in a day to spend. A corporation
| is immortal and can have 100,000 people simultaneously
| working on something. It's bizarre if the law pretends
| that such an entity is just another human.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Its because your kitchen at home is not a business.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I'd hazard it's more specifically because your kitchen at
| home has a lower ceiling of harm.
|
| If you start a grease fire, you burn down your house.
|
| If you serve meat that's been stored at room temperature,
| you make your family and some friends sick.
|
| But a commercial kitchen's potential for harm is _much_
| higher in many ways.
| toyg wrote:
| I reckon this particular objection actually shows the
| _forma mentis_ of developers. It seems like a lot of them
| feel like they are _temporarily-embarrassed megacorps_ ,
| worrying about things that will never really apply to
| them.
| charcircuit wrote:
| It's possible to have an opinion on laws that you don't
| effect oneself. If a country had a law that if a company
| reaches $1 billion lifetime revenue that it gets
| repossessed by the state I can apply my belief that
| stealing is bad and be against that law despite it likely
| never affecting me.
| toyg wrote:
| _> It 's possible to have an opinion on laws that you
| don't effect oneself._
|
| Sure, and it's possible to heavily discount your opinion
| when compared to the hundreds of opinions of experts in
| antitrust law that helped shaping this legislation. This
| would be less the case, maybe, if this legislation
| actually targeted you, so your insight would be relevant;
| but the fact is that it doesn't.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Democratic societies don't decide laws based off what
| "experts" think is right, but instead based off what the
| entire populace thinks. If I was European my opinion
| should matter just as much as one these "experts."
| fabianhjr wrote:
| Requiring monopolistic platform megacorps to compete is
| similar to expropriating them. Got it.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I was using an extreme example to illustrate my point
| more clearly.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Exactly. Worrying about your company "suddenly" crossing
| the EUR75 _billion_ market cap threshold... that 's the
| sort of problem most people would give an arm and a leg
| to have.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| I think it's more having the mindset to think externally
| to yourself and put yourself into users 'usecases', not
| personal self interest.
| cm2187 wrote:
| How do you break up the iphone? You create one company
| with a separate model of iphone for each country?
| colechristensen wrote:
| Make the App Store a separate company from the one that
| sells you the phone and OS.
| gattilorenz wrote:
| Hardware and software? But of course it's not an EU
| company
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > treating everyone equal before the law to creating
| certain requirements
|
| we are not treated the same, If I killed 300 people the
| way boeing did with its Max debacle, I would be serving
| 15 consecutive life sentences.
|
| for all the times a corporation kills people, almost
| never does anyone go to jail
|
| > isnt the solution to dissolve their monopoly
|
| Why is that the preffered solution? If you are arguing
| for that, you need to provide some reasoning or benefits.
|
| I am sure they would prefer not to be split up.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| > It also starts to bother me quite a bit when we go from
| treating everyone equal before the law to creating
| certain requirements based on other factors.
|
| Uh, are you secretly longing for filing the paperwork
| required to obtain Title V Operating Permit for a major
| air emission source, or is there some other reason you
| oppose the idea that different things will have to follow
| different laws?
|
| Personally I think most people will agree that a company
| with 150000 employees (Google) is not the same thing as
| one with 750 (tinder).
| jszymborski wrote:
| It's the difference between equality and equity.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| there are two kinds of people in the world - those that
| think corporatuon are people, and those who haven't lost
| their mind.
|
| I can't understand why would anyone apply narrative of
| systemic opression and social issues to corporations.
| jszymborski wrote:
| I was responding to the claim that companies were treated
| unequally, which OP claimed was unjust. I'm simply
| stating that treating companies equitably, not equally,
| is just.
|
| I understand that awareness of the importance of treating
| individuals equitably rather than equally has been
| increased in light of the increasingly public discourse
| on civil inequity, but these words have always existed
| outside that context to mean what they do.
|
| The meaning of "equity" in a legal context according to
| the american heritage dictionary [0]: Justice achieved
| not simply according to the strict letter of the law but
| in accordance with principles of substantial justice and
| the unique facts of the case.
|
| Not seeing how that requires me to anthropomorphise
| corporations.
|
| Also, I kindly ask you to extend a bit of respect my way
| and not imply that I suffer from a mental illness because
| you disagree with me. It's not very civil.
|
| [0] https://www.thefreedictionary.com/equity
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I don't think the EU has the ability to break up American
| companies. I guess they could try to ban them from
| operating in the EU, but that would pretty much nuke
| diplomatic relations with the US so it's hard for me to
| see it happening.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Oh we absolutely can do that. Microsoft barely avoided
| that fate over their antics with Internet Explorer back
| in the days.
|
| Anti-American company sentiments are high across Europe,
| especially when it comes to big tech companies. Our
| people are sick of US companies playing wild west and
| stomping all over regulations - AirBnB and Uber caused
| the most public backlash here (AirBnB because of people
| complaining that they were priced out of their homes and
| illegal hotel-style operations disrupting their lives,
| Uber because taxi drivers have pretty good lobby
| connections), followed by Facebook (which was mostly a
| topic for privacy nerds). Also, we have not forgotten who
| caused the 2008 financial crisis and who keeps dodging
| tax and labor laws while the taxpayers are left to deal
| with the followup costs.
|
| Pay up and behave or get kicked out, GDPR was just the
| beginning (and once we get the Irish authorities to
| behave, your companies are done). The EU bureaucracy is
| like a big tanker ship, slow as molasses, but once it is
| moving it is not stoppable other than by going out of its
| way.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Obviously the EU can institute rules and fine companies
| that break them. But forcing companies to break up or
| kicking them out of Europe might be a step too far for
| the American government. Is the EU really willing to
| enter a Cold War with the us? Especially with the Russia
| situation I'm not sure they're even able to without mass
| protests because the lng pipeline from the us will
| immediately dry up.
| antioppressor wrote:
| They let these unregulated behemots to plunder
| effortlessly without any repercussions in the last 10
| years or so. These rules are just topical treatment and
| came already too late.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| When Microsoft made claims like you are back in the day
| we called it FUD. Dude, our government in the USA is
| barely functional right now. If they can't pull together
| for basic necessities but pulls together to go to 'cold'
| war with Europe over business practices the normies here
| would revolt. People can't afford rent, food, but the
| government's focus is ensuring Apple's profits? Yeah,
| good luck getting the people to support that. "I'm sorry
| you are at your breaking point, but real issue is poor
| Apple's profit struggle in Europe!".
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The government had no problem instituting mega sanctions
| on Russia, entire European will obviously be a harder
| political pill to swallow but really doesn't seem out of
| the question.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Oh man. You do realize that some 50% of GPS satellites
| are EU satellites right now? The US doesn't even have a
| fully functioning constellation without the EU's Galileo
| satellites (which are far more advanced in offering a
| cryptographically provable time). If the US were to go
| down that road, I'm fairly confident you'd have to go
| back to MapQuest and print out your directions.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The US barely traded with Russia anyway, and most of it
| was aircraft, vehicles and various services [1].
| Sanctioning off Russia was and is easy for the US, the
| only major problem is the loss of soft power the US had
| with the OPEC and the resulting hike in oil prices.
|
| The ones really affected by the sanctions are us
| Europeans.
|
| [1] https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-
| east/russia...
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Sanctioning Russia was a huge gamble in that it will
| likely lead to a heavily decreased reliance on USD
| globally as well as create competitors to swift which the
| us uses to enforce its hegemony.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The US dollar will always be the major currency of the
| world. What should replace it? The Euro is a good
| valuable currency, but we lack the military power that
| secures the US dollar plus we suffer from internal issues
| like the Italian debt that threatens to destabilize the
| Euro once again. Japan is a major economy, but still
| small and it has issues because its backing by the
| government is uncertain after "Abenomics" and the
| gerontification of Japanese society. The Chinese
| currencies suffer from cashflow control measures, and who
| the fuck would buy anything from Russia even if they had
| more to offer than barely functioning tanks, oil, gas and
| grain?
| [deleted]
| freeflight wrote:
| _> I'm not sure they're even able to without mass
| protests because the lng pipeline from the us will
| immediately dry up._
|
| The cold war has already gone hot thanks to "Fuck the EU"
| US interference in Ukraine [0] by now having escalated
| into a full blown open war, just like there is no "LNG
| pipeline from the US" to Europe.
|
| _> not sure they're even able to without mass protests_
|
| Do you mean mass protests like they we had over the
| invasion of Iraq? That didn't lead to anything and thus
| has crippled the global peace movement to this day.
|
| That's why the idea that European people will "take to
| the streets" to protest _for_ "American gas", is pretty
| out there and quite fantastical.
|
| Before that happens you will see people take to the
| streets to protest the sanctions that are mainly
| responsible for this economic hardship, sanctions pushed
| for by Washington.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/WV9J6sxCs5k
| theplumber wrote:
| EU could break up the EU operations of the said company
| and it leaves it up to the company whether to break up in
| other parts of the world or just in Europe. Just think
| how many shell companies are created to dodge taxes. Same
| can be done here.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| > Anti-American company sentiments are high across
| Europe, especially when it comes to big tech companies.
|
| Not "especially" but exactly those. Almost no other
| american companies are known here. Of course there are
| McDonalds and Coca-Cola, but their bad reputation is for
| their unhealthy products, not the companies themselves.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> Also, we have not forgotten who caused the 2008
| financial crisis and who keeps dodging tax and labor laws
| while the taxpayers are left to deal with the followup
| costs._
|
| But we have apparently forgotten about this [0], nearly a
| decade later and it still remains a completely ignored
| issue that pretty much nobody was held accountable for
| except the people who drew attention to it.
|
| [0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/co
| nt/2014...
| ekianjo wrote:
| whats the mechanism exactly for the EU to be able to
| break US companies? you completely eluded that point.
| mediascreen wrote:
| As a Swede with pretty much the opposite views, your
| monolithic EU "we" sounds pretty offensive.
|
| The 2008 financial crisis might have started in the US,
| but outcomes in European countries varied greatly
| depending on local policies and debt levels. It's hardly
| Americas fault that some European countries had taken on
| very high levels of government debt.
|
| AirBnB and Uber seems pretty easy to regulate on a local
| level and in many places in Europe they are.
| botulidze wrote:
| I just checked Uber from my home to the airport and it's
| 17 EUR. If I call yellow cab, price would be 1.5-2x
| higher and if I imagine a foreigner catching one on the
| street without the meter - that could get even worse.
|
| I went for 2 weeks abroad with a week vacation and other
| week working remotely. There was no hotel in the area to
| provide me with the proper accommodation. But Airbnb did
| that just fine.
|
| So I don't necessarily see those services and companies
| behind as pure evil. I would say the government running
| behind and reactively setting limitations rather than
| proactively thinking about the way to move forward is an
| issue here.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I just checked Uber from my home to the airport and
| it's 17 EUR. If I call yellow cab, price would be 1.5-2x
| higher
|
| A taxi may be more expensive at "idle" times - but ever
| tried to grab an Uber at a big event like a concert, a
| soccer game or Saturday night out drinking? You'll pay
| triple or more. Regulated taxis are more expensive, but
| always consistent which is a value on its own. Also, you
| can be sure that the driver doesn't live in poverty [1]
| or works ridiculous hours.
|
| > and if I imagine a foreigner catching one on the street
| without the meter - that could get even worse.
|
| I can't speak for countries other than Germany, but at
| least here this is simply not a thing.
|
| What _is_ a pain point with German cabs (and other German
| services) is that the acceptance of credit and especially
| debit cards is still a bit lackluster, but the situation
| has massively improved during covid.
|
| > There was no hotel in the area to provide me with the
| proper accommodation. But Airbnb did that just fine.
|
| Yeah, because wherever you were is most likely zoned
| residential, meaning no hotels and the associated noise
| from partygoers, vehicles and the likes. Are the
| neighbors of your AirBnB fine with someone renting out a
| room to randoms? Most likely not.
|
| [1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/He-
| drives-60-ho...
| saddlerustle wrote:
| > Also, you can be sure that the driver doesn't live in
| poverty [1] or works ridiculous hours.
|
| You absolutely can't. Taxi drivers are independent
| contractors in most european countries too, with no
| minimum wage protections or enforcement of hours worked.
| naasking wrote:
| > Further it seems more like a moat to keep anyone else
| from getting as big as these "digital gatekeepers" are as
| suddenly when you get to a certain size you have an
| enormous expense.
|
| Yes, and that's a good thing. It suppresses monopolistic
| tendencies before they can take hold, rather than trying
| to prove they are a monopoly and trying to figure out
| after the fact how to break them in a sensible way.
|
| > If these companies really are that large that they have
| to get special laws for them isnt the solution to
| dissolve their monopoly and split the company up instead
| of starting to create separate classes of laws.
|
| Why? All you're doing is letting that monopoly create the
| great device/service/whatever that lots of people seem to
| be enjoying, but levelling the playing field so they are
| still forced to compete for users instead of exploiting
| their monopoly power to kill any competition.
|
| Encouraging competition is the ultimate goal because
| that's where the progress from capitalism comes from. If
| we can continue to encourage competition without going
| about the messy business of directly interfering with how
| a company is structured or how it operates, that seems
| like a win.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _It also starts to bother me quite a bit when we go
| from treating everyone equal before the law to creating
| certain requirements based on other factors._
|
| Like tax brackets? Treating big things exactly the same
| as small things seems ideological, not rational.
| eastbound wrote:
| Sometimes it's a fun mind experiment:
|
| YES, like tax brackets. Everyone should pay 30k$ per year
| to the government, no matter how rich or poor, for the
| services they get, and it would be the literal individual
| fair share.
|
| The percentage-based taxes are already an unfair
| distribution of cost for the rich, and the progressive
| taxes amplify it even more. After all, who costs more at
| school, a Jeff Bezos, or an unruly one?
| danuker wrote:
| This is the core of the issue.
|
| I have no recourse against Big Tech scamming me. They are
| an oligopoly sharing the same anti-consumer practices.
|
| But if I regularly buy something from a friend, maybe I'm
| a 10th of their customer base.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| This doesn't work online, and is the opposite of how
| fraud works in practice though. Larger sellers have a
| reputation that they care about and invest in. Small
| sellers with 10 sales don't care at all, they will make
| 10 good sales and steal from the 11th for a 10% profit.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Have you used Amazon lately? They not only don't care,
| they push garbage that is obviously fake in their
| advertised/recommend blocks. Go search for an SD card on
| Amazon, and they will recommend a 5000 terabyte SD card
| that costs $9. I've switched to Best Buy because in this
| weird dystopian future they are more worthy of my
| business than Amazon now and I'm not doing business with
| garbage companies any more.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| My personal experience with Amazon in particular has been
| the opposite of yours.
|
| Amazon has completely refunded every defective or damaged
| products I have ever received. I've done two returns of
| $100+ items in the past month, in one case the seller
| disagreed with me and Amazon took my side. In total I've
| probably had 30 refunds over the past 10 years of which
| at least 5 were Amazon intervening to prevent the seller
| from screwing me.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| Why do you buy so many defective or damaged products?
|
| I cannot remember the last time I had to return
| something. I rarely buy from Amazon though, and choose
| quality products from reputable sources, not the cheapest
| offer.
|
| Or maybe I'm just lucky.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| I buy multiple things online every week, probably 200 per
| year on average. I also buy a lot of cheap electronics.
| kjaa wrote:
| Created an account to say: citation needed.
|
| Giants can afford to skimp on any single customer
| relationship. Go read Amazon reviews, etc...
|
| The one-person show with only continental shipping taking
| PayPal payments for their hobby business absolutely
| cannot afford to screw over 10% of their customer base.
| PayPal (or any other provider) has no patience, and
| anecdotally will always side with the customer.
|
| And sure, citation needed, I know :)
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Very different structurally. Tax brackets almost always
| apply _marginally_. The higher tax bracket only applies
| to income made above the higher bracket level.
|
| Behavior that applies marginally avoids most
| "discontinuity" and distortions in incentives that come
| along with them. For example, people whose income
| increases from $99,999 to $100,001 are only incentivized
| by a 100,000 bracket to hide the marginal $2, rather than
| suddenly needing to hide all of their income.
|
| EU regulations that apply to companies above a certain
| size are not like this. Once you pass a certain level, it
| applies to all the business below the level. That already
| has a distorting incentive on growth and incentivizes
| companies to stay small. Maybe that's something you want
| in this case, but it's almost always an unintended
| consequence.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I wonder if there's any way these sorts of regulations
| could be applied marginally.
|
| Perhaps if we formalized legal code as code, we could
| apply automatic differentiation (just kidding... I think)
|
| Continuous laws do seem more fair in general. But it
| seems more important (to me, at least) that this sort of
| fairness is applied to individuals. For companies... they
| aren't people, we don't need to worry about making their
| lives confusing or miserable. They have legal departments
| to sort this sort of stuff out, they'll respond
| rationally to incentives, it is just a business decision.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| They aren't people, but every additional thing they have
| to contend with affects only people. The abstract company
| is just a common understanding of what people are doing
| and what group of people they are dealing with when they
| buy a product.
| [deleted]
| laumars wrote:
| There are other taxes that don't function that way
| though. Like capital gains and stamp duty. Those taxes do
| frequently get gamed.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| US long term capital gains do work that way: they have
| marginal brackets just like regular income taxes. (Your
| starting bracket is calculated based on your regular
| income, rather than from 0 the way regular income tax
| brackets work, but otherwise they work the same.)
|
| And short term cap gains are just regular income.
| laumars wrote:
| The US isn't in the EU though ;)
|
| I can't speak for all member states but I do know some
| have a threshold and from that point you have to pay a
| percentage of the total amount. So some investment firms
| will game your portfolio to bring you in just enough to
| fly under that threshold.
|
| The U.K., while not technically an EU member any more
| (and I'm still bitter about that), also operates this
| way.
|
| Stamp duty is a U.K. tax placed on purchases of property.
| It's free for properties under a threshold but the moment
| you go over it you have to pay a percentage of the total
| price of your house. Stamp duty does have incremental
| percentages but it isn't calculated like income tax. Thus
| you'll often see a lot of properties for slightly under
| each increment and then a jump in prices after. Some
| sellers even go as far as to put the house on for PSx
| (under that threshold) but charge extra for additional
| purchases outside of the property (like a gazebo, hot
| tub, etc). I've even seen some buyers/sellers ask for
| private bank transfers for the additional extra. Which is
| outright fraud. But it does still happen.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I can't speak for all member states but I do know some
| have a threshold and from that point you have to pay a
| percentage of the total amount
|
| So, exactly the same thing with a bottom bracket marginal
| rate of 0%?
| mgraczyk wrote:
| I assumed the discontinuity the commenter was referring
| to here is the >=1 year cutoff for long term capital
| gains. After one year, all of the gains from the previous
| year are instantly converted to a lower tax bracket.
| You're not required to reassess the cost basis at the 1
| year mark or anything like that, so there's a huge
| (intentional) incentive to hold capital for over 1 year.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| And capital gains taxes in particular massively distort
| incentives. But in that case it's intentional
| rkagerer wrote:
| Make the fine 10% of the marginal revenue?
| yulaow wrote:
| Exactly, and this is why the rest of the world is wishing
| and waiting since years that US lawmakers start
| implementing serious anti-trust laws and entities which
| work in that direction.
|
| I mean, after the facebook-whatsapp merge (and the whole
| aftermath) we mostly lost all hopes.
| rch wrote:
| Is being a gatekeeper a function of overall size, or market
| share in a given sector?
|
| I may have missed the definition in the article, but my
| cynical take is that it seems geared towards getting
| companies that enjoyed dominance in the 90s back into the
| game now.
| cteiosanu wrote:
| Check the infographic[1]. Gatekeepers are digital
| platforms :
|
| * with over 45 mil active users * more than EUR7.5
| billion turnover for the past 3 years
|
| [1]
| https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/digital-
| mark...
| rch wrote:
| I see now, thanks!
|
| I'm getting more optimistic as I look into the details.
| Open messaging could be interesting, for instance.
| Tryk wrote:
| Monopolistic regulation? This is clearly aimed against
| existing monopolies, i.e. gatekeepers. Can you explain how
| ensuring that
|
| 1. Making unsubscribing is as easy as subscribing, and 2.
| Guaranteed interoperability between instant messaging
| services, and 3. Sharing marketing and/or advertisement
| performance with business users
|
| will "kill competition"?
| sfe22 wrote:
| It is monopolistic regulation, as in the people of Europe
| do not have a choice on another regulation, or no
| regulation if it doesn't suit them. It affects everyone and
| can severely harm ones freedom of choice in that area.
|
| It is not monopolistic because it is supposed to target
| "monopolies". Apple is certainly not a monopoly, while this
| regulator certainly is.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > It is monopolistic regulation, as in the people of
| Europe do not have a choice on another regulation, or no
| regulation if it doesn't suit them. It affects everyone
| and can severely harm ones freedom of choice in that
| area.
|
| What? They have a choice in whom they vote for.
|
| Or you mean that all legislation is "monopolistic"?
| sfe22 wrote:
| Voting for a ruler isn't really the same as choosing what
| regulations and standards work for you. First you only
| have two or three possible rulers to select from. Second,
| they rarely change, for example every few years or
| decades sometimes. Third, even if you favorite ruler is
| eventually in power, you still don't control their
| thinking or actions.
| Tryk wrote:
| Okay, so would it not follow that all regulation is
| monopolistic by this definition?
|
| Again I am curious how you believe this will "kill
| competition" by regulating for points 1-3 in my previous
| post.
| sfe22 wrote:
| Monopolistic regulation kills competition by increasing
| the cost of entering that market, while established
| players have the capital and necessary connections for
| workarounds.
|
| For example imagine a new company trying to build an
| iPhone with minimal app store, well guess what, now they
| have to also build support for third party store,
| developer tools, etc... which increases their cost to
| launch. Apple on the other hand will have all this taken
| care of. It will have multiple people making sure
| regulators are happy (or rich).
|
| While I later found that this will not target small
| companies, so in this aspect this regulation will likely
| have minimal impact.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| As pointed out in other comments, the regulation applies
| to companies of a certain size. It isn't clear of course
| who will get hit by it in perfectly legal and also
| fairly, but it's crystal clear who have been abusing
| their market position and that they will have to stop
| many of their monopolistic practices.
|
| Sometimes I really do wonder whether some commenters,
| given their counter arguments, work at a
| facebook/amazong/netflix/google, or that they hope/dream
| to work for one of those or all one after the othe, or if
| they naively believe like gospel what these companies
| tell them as consumers of their products filled with
| privacy concerns and dark marketing patterns. Or a
| combination of the 2 out of the 3. The other
| possibilities are of course sarcasm or generalised
| brainwashed syndrome.
|
| I'm against all form of regulations. Life is wild and I
| would rather advocate education. But hey, since we
| heavily regulated the 99%, let's at least regulate the
| 1%. They alone have far more damage power than everyone
| else combined.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| > For example imagine a new company trying to build an
| iPhone with minimal app store, well guess what, now they
| have to also build support for third party store,
| developer tools, etc... which increases their cost to
| launch.
|
| That new company won't have neither 45 million users nor
| over 7.5 Billion EUR turnover in the last 3 consecutive-
| years.
|
| You are making a false and bad-faith argument against the
| regulation in question just to promote your laissez-faire
| ideology.
| sfe22 wrote:
| Did you skip the last sentence so you could make bad-
| faith baseless accusation to promote your one-monopoly
| ideology?
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Sadely it is unlikely unconscious bad faith. It is the
| type of argumentor that would at the same time defend
| taxation, and control of movements, and think that it's
| absolutely necessary to keep education free or at least
| provide government grants. It isn't laissez-faire
| arguments, they would have consistency and merits. It is
| filled with fallacies formed as souless echoes of the
| manipulators behind them. Nothing else. All the comments
| I've read against the regulation are laughable, but let's
| see, the number comments will continue to grow some more.
| It's Popcorn and classical music on my side.
| the_duke wrote:
| That's complete nonsense.
|
| This regulation increases freedom for everyone (users and
| businesses), except for large platform operators.
|
| You as a user are free to continue exactly as you were,
| and if you are a business that is not Apple or Google you
| have more flexibility and freedom to choose.
| LeanderK wrote:
| I very much welcome this legislation (and I use an iPhone).
|
| How would you approach this otherwise? The EU probably can't
| break up Google or Apple (how would this even look like?) and
| the walled gardens are clearly a market failure, including
| apples fat margins. You mention details, but regulation can
| be well made and just continuing the status quo is also bad.
| All regulations open up questions but it's not the wild west
| here, we have rules and they regulate the economy, even for
| big multinational giants like apple. Sometimes companies even
| get nationalised (or nationalised companies get sold)!
| hhh wrote:
| I would allow the same approaches taken today. I don't want
| any of these things, and would buy an android phone if I
| did.
| rtsil wrote:
| > The EU probably can't break up Google or Apple
|
| The default remedy isn't break up, it's 10% of the total
| worldwide turnover (20% for repeat offenders). The EU can
| very much fine Google or Apple (and already did so).
|
| If break-up is not possible, retricting or prohibiting
| access to the EU market is quite possible.
|
| Edit: also, on my dealings with Google, I am contracting
| with Google Ireland Limited, a company that the EU can
| break up.
| wussboy wrote:
| "I oppose this legislation that will bring massive good
| because I can imagine a few edge cases that have almost
| certainly been addressed but weren't explicitly stated in
| the summary I glanced at."
|
| This type of comment is everywhere on the Internet and
| completely predictable.
| x0x0 wrote:
| Plus an inability to accept that there will be corner
| cases and some drawbacks, and that the best you can do
| with legislation is have the good well outweigh the bad.
| expensive_news wrote:
| Frankly I don't see how this legislation could possibly
| bring massive good. For one I like my iPhone how it is
| and don't see how I could possibly benefit from this
| passing.
|
| As an American I think regulation should only be enacted
| when absolutely necessary, and these laws seem anything
| but necessary. I've rarely seen convincing cases of
| innovation being stifled or people being harmed by
| Apple's walled garden approach. It's clearly not a market
| failure because (1) it is extremely profitable and (2) it
| is not a monopoly. As you can see in this thread, tons of
| people prefer differently, and those people can buy
| Androids. I also don't like how this EU legislation
| mainly targets American companies.
|
| Forcing Apple to allow other voice assistants will only
| strengthen Google and Amazons dominance in the voice
| assistant ecosystem.
|
| Forcing messaging apps to allow cross compatibility only
| will give them more of my unencrypted messages.
|
| I could go on, but I'm very curious what all of these
| "massive goods" that I'm not seeing are.
| dannyr wrote:
| I bet you would have said the same thing when Microsoft
| killed browser competition decades ago using its Windows
| dominance. Fortunately, the govt acted against Microsoft.
|
| If Microsoft continued its monopolistic practices, it's
| very likely that the iPhone that you like so much now
| won't be existing today.
| withinboredom wrote:
| It cost me ~$600 in app purchases to switch from Android
| to Apple. So "just buy a different OS if you don't like
| it" is not a reasonable solution unless you only have
| free software and it is also free on your target OS. The
| fact that these licenses can't be transferred is part of
| the problem (though I'm not sure that is even addressed
| in this legislation).
|
| You don't personally have to benefit from this
| legislation, you can stay in an "official" configuration
| until the day you die. For some of us, this opens the
| door to have a FOSS App Store, or custom apps without
| having to rebuild them once a week.
| z3t4 wrote:
| Apple, Google, Microsoft, constantly buy, "sponsor" or
| sue competitors (whatever is cheapest) in order to keep
| their monopoly. All innovation is killed or at best
| assimilated (Star Trek Borg style). It's a bit funny that
| we ended up with two major platforms for smartphones...
| Microsoft did have a good grip on the smartphone market
| before Apple and Google entered, but they couldn't simply
| buy Apple or Google in order to keep their monopoly, nor
| can Google buy Apple or vice versa. But they can kill
| anyone else that tries to innovate.
| dmix wrote:
| > the walled gardens are clearly a market failure
|
| I wouldn't call it a market failure, there's plenty of
| benefits with wall gardens and it's not done solely for
| profit. BUT there's also drawbacks and places where walls
| don't make sense.
|
| Not being able to install arbitrary apps from various app
| stores provides security, UX consistency, and stability of
| the software. But there's also drawbacks for things like
| privacy or abusive censorship or copyright policies.
|
| Given the benefits/drawbacks, the best solution is to have
| options in the marketplace. If you prefer having more
| control, don't mind sacrificing deep horizontal product
| integration, or doing the leg work to make it ideal
| (doesn't need to always 'just work' predictably), etc, then
| you should have the option to use an OS/device that offers
| that.
|
| Personally I'd rather see Google make Android more flexible
| (for ex: making Google Play Services less restrictive)
| rather than forcing _every_ OS to be like Android.
|
| But I'm not sure how that could be done via restrictive
| policy without throwing the baby out with the bath water
| (other than targeting monopolistic behavior like preventing
| choice in browsers). Otherwise taking a more-freedom
| approach would be best, maybe by investing in open
| platforms, investing in public relations campaigns to make
| people understand why lack of choice is bad or a consumer-
| friendly 'open platform' label to guide shoppers,
| incentives like small tax breaks for offering more open
| platforms, etc.
|
| For Apple, they _could_ offer a stripped down iOS (like a
| server edition of a desktop) without all of the services
| and side-loading restrictions, without having to ditch the
| current approach that people like.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Given the benefits/drawbacks, the best solution is to
| have options in the marketplace.
|
| Android has those options. Please point me to this great
| privacy and security conscious competitor to Google Play
| Store.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| F-Droid, probably
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > I wouldn't call it a market failure, there's plenty of
| benefits to [walled garden]
|
| Do you realise the irony of arguing for free market and a
| walled garden (not a free market)- simultaneously?
|
| You can't have it both ways, pick your poison
| foepys wrote:
| Apple can be broken up in multiple ways.
|
| - smartphones
|
| - desktop/laptops
|
| - music and video streaming
|
| - App Store and payments with Apple Pay
|
| - chip design
|
| - physical stores
|
| All of those could stand on their own.
|
| Edit: I'm not saying that the EU can break them up but
| Apple is not a company with a single field where breaking
| it up is impossible. I misread the parent a bit.
| piaste wrote:
| How does the EU force an American company to break up?
| (Not a rhetorical question)
|
| Perhaps they might pull a China and require them to open
| a 51% EU-owned subsidiary to do business here, which
| would then be subject to all sort of restrictions
| including company size.
|
| As a EU citizen, I would absolutely love it. But I
| suspect that the EU is bound by many more and much more
| comprehensive free-trade treaties than China is, and such
| a draconian approach would require many of them to be
| renegotiated or exited outright.
| rnk wrote:
| They can tax and fine them unsustainable fees, prohibit
| them from being used there. Thus they can control them.
| If Apple found that onerous they could choose not to be
| in business there.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| How would the eu force apple to break up? It's an
| American company. I guess they could lobby the US, but
| doesn't seem close to happening.
| znpy wrote:
| > monopolistic regulations like this
|
| If anything, this is anti-monopolistic.
|
| With sideloading, unlocked nfc and alternative stores and
| payment providers this will likely kickstart whole new
| markets (eg: a better app store for the iphone).
|
| This is just great.
| sfe22 wrote:
| See my comment here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32170049
| water-your-self wrote:
| sfe22 wrote:
| Negative interest actually, I sold my tech stocks early
| this year, while as an app developer the revenue cut we get
| are likely to increase after this kicks in. I am more
| inclined to explain the consequences and incentives of
| these actions rather than their intentions.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| I've been seeing more of these comments on HN lately. This
| is snarky
| rvschuilenburg wrote:
| This almost sounds too good to be true. What are the odds of
| this being watered down, or being delayed into eternity?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| My worry is that it will just not be enforced, just like the
| GDPR.
|
| The GDPR wasn't watered down but in the end it just wasn't
| enforced (at least not enough) against the biggest offenders
| it was meant to regulate.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| They did ramp up the potential fines compared to GDPR.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| The DMA and DSA will be enforced by the Commission, rather
| than by member states' local authorities which - hopefully
| - will avoid the problems we've seen with the GDPR.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| That's it? and mostly for pennies? Jesus no wonder so
| many companies just ignore it.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I see your username pretty regularly, have you not seen
| my (many) rebuttals to this link?
|
| TLDR: the enforcement is nowhere near enough.
| fsflover wrote:
| I will not dispute that we need more enforcement, but it
| definitely exists and helps. For example, Google recently
| changed their "cookies" dialogue from "More options" to
| "Reject all".
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Agreed about Google, but not only did it tame 4 years for
| such an obvious breach to be corrected, but I also don't
| believe they were even fined for this particular
| violation - they decided to start complying after the IAB
| consent flow ruling.
|
| They've basically been allowed to willingly and
| maliciously breach the regulation for 4 years.
|
| Facebook appears to still be getting away with breaching
| the regulation on so many levels.
| amelius wrote:
| Or how about Apple crippling their own device whenever
| someone wants to do any of these things?
| bloppe wrote:
| Sounds like a big fine for Apple.
| amelius wrote:
| How do you prove it if the performance difference is
| noticeable but small?
|
| And I don't think any of the big companies is afraid of
| yet another fine.
| stale2002 wrote:
| You send a court order to Apple to give up all their
| internal communications, and you use their own internal
| statements against them.
|
| Is it possible to sneakily get around the law? Maybe.
|
| But it isn't possible to do that, with thousands of
| people working on it? No, one of them will talk.
| bzxcvbn wrote:
| > And I don't think any of the big companies is afraid of
| yet another fine.
|
| Which is why after being found noncompliant a third time,
| the new law gives the power to the EU Commission to
| impose structural changes to the company. Or they can
| stop operating in the EU.
| ben_w wrote:
| Surely the tests that reviewers do every time a new phone
| comes to market would be sufficient to demonstrate
| noticeable-but-small?
| wins32767 wrote:
| That could just be written off as "third party developers
| just aren't as good as Apple's".
| Gareth321 wrote:
| IMHO, extremely low. The DMA has passed final debate and
| review, so it's not changing now. The last step is basically
| a formality. The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial
| influence is _far_ less pervasive than even in the
| governments of member nations. The level of abstraction is
| just too large. Apple, Google, Amazon, et al., can wage a PR
| campaign, but it 's highly unlikely to succeed.
| iasay wrote:
| I think you are completely mad if thy think that corporate
| financial influence is far less. Where do you think the EU
| staff come from?
|
| What happens is you are promoted out of the corporate world
| and into EU council advisory positions (special advisors).
| So you end up a fill time EU advisory position with part
| time and contract work for your parent company. Or there's
| the full time corporate advisors (institutional special
| advisors)!
|
| Some are academically sourced and the universities are
| usually bankrolled by corporations who are just buying
| advisory positions.
| indigochill wrote:
| > The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial
| influence is far less pervasive than even in the
| governments of member nations.
|
| For how long, I wonder, given the megacorps have financial
| resources on par with entire nations, and the EU has been
| taking some pretty strong stances on topics of interest to
| them? Or will the megacorps at some point just decide
| Europe's no longer worth the trouble to operate in
| (probably not the worst outcome)?
| mcphage wrote:
| > Or will the megacorps at some point just decide
| Europe's no longer worth the trouble to operate in
|
| Companies will put up with almost anything if there's
| money to be made there.
| pmontra wrote:
| Considering how they bend to the local rules around the
| world, they will bend to this too. I remember only Google
| shutting down news in Spain and leaving China because of
| censorship. Apple looks at the money. There are too many
| money in Europe. They'll put on some sort of a fight but
| eventually we're going to have third party software on
| iOS that Apple doesn't approve.
| lioeters wrote:
| Off-topic: FYI, the phrase should be "too _much_ money ",
| because money is an uncountable noun (you cannot say "a
| money", but can say "some money").
| visarga wrote:
| You're of course right but "too many money" sounds cute,
| too.
| pmontra wrote:
| Thanks. I'm not a native English speaker but reading
| again my comment those words have a funny feeling. Your
| explanation points out why. So "There is too much money"
| (almost 10 M exact matches on Google.)
| riffraff wrote:
| > The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial
| influence is far less pervasive than even in the
| governments of member nations.
|
| [citation needed]
|
| The reason this regulations went through easily is that
| they mostly target foreign operators.
|
| It's not the same with all regulations, the EU is a
| lobbying battleground as much as everywhere else, you can
| see that in most things, big corps just go through
| governments when not going through MEPs.
| thefz wrote:
| > The reason this regulations went through easily is that
| they mostly target foreign operators.
|
| Because 1) foreign operators do the fuck they want in
| unregulated markets such as the US and 2) there are no
| such operators in the EU because they have already been
| regulated
| buran77 wrote:
| As someone intimately familiar with the underbelly of the
| system I can add 3) most of the local corrupting pressure
| historically came from smaller (than big tech) companies
| outside of tech so less of a spotlight on them in forums
| like this one. Think auto industry.
|
| EU institutions tend to want to do the right thing but
| will easily cave to "lobbying" when it comes to
| regulation that hits too close to home. They will not
| hesitate to regulate to the benefit of the people when
| the regulation hits far from home, lobbying be damned.
|
| In fewer words, they will accept to be corrupted by
| interests close to home and still put the well being of
| citizens at any other time.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| If it's a matter of lobbying aka legal bribery, why are
| foreign companies disadvantaged? These American companies
| have no qualms about lobbying in America, they could do
| the same in the EU. If the EU officials prefer to serve
| the interests of EU companies despite lobbying from
| _both_ of them, maybe it 's because they earnestly
| believe EU interests are better served by EU companies?
| blibble wrote:
| > The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial
| influence is far less pervasive than even in the
| governments of member nations.
|
| the tradeoff is now there's only one entity to bribe
| instead of 27
|
| there's almost 50,000 registered EU lobbyists
|
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/eu-
| affairs/...
| pjerem wrote:
| No. EU is governed by seven distinct institutions with
| distinct roles and interests. You can read more about
| them here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutions_of
| _the_European_U...
|
| The high number of institutions taking part in governance
| is in part responsive for the reputation of EU to be
| "slow" to act but it also means that it's incredibly hard
| to bribe because you have to bribe different institutions
| that don't even share the same mindsets.
|
| Not arguing there that EU is perfect (it's far from it),
| but it's really better that what most people think about
| it, which is because local governments always use the
| "it's the EU rules, we can't do anything". The thing is,
| they also omit to remind that ministers and head of
| states are part of two institutions and that they choose
| the council of the European Commission. So they are the
| ones making the rules and those rules have to be accepted
| by the democratically elected European Parliament.
|
| So when a politician in europe blame the EU for anything,
| they blame rules that they wrote themselves and that have
| been approved by a democratically elected parliament.
| blibble wrote:
| this is not a pertinent distinction: member states aren't
| a single monolithic single institution either
|
| the "7 institutions" is also not relevant: Putin wouldn't
| bother bribing Germany's federal constitutional court or
| government auditors to push his fossil fuels
|
| he'd go after the executive and legislature: exactly the
| same as if he wanted to influence EU policy
| tgv wrote:
| > User any browser and browser engine and choose to make it
| default
|
| Hello, Alphabet world domination. They finally get the chance
| to get rid of that pesky Safari. Next stop: obligatory sign-in
| for using a service.
| onion2k wrote:
| _Hello, Alphabet world domination. They finally get the
| chance to get rid of that pesky Safari. Next stop: obligatory
| sign-in for using a service._
|
| I bet that Chrome adoption on iOS remains under 25% forever.
| People just don't care which browser they use so long as the
| default one works. Safari isn't so bad that people are
| desperate to replace it.
| trasz wrote:
| Until google breaks things on other browsers on purpose
| again.
| summerlight wrote:
| If Apple gets defeated with trillion dollars of budgets and
| full controls on OS and its ecosystem, it may deserve its
| failure like IE6.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| If that's really how it rolls out, doesn't it also mean that
| Safari wasn't viable on itself and nobody wanted to use it in
| the first place ?
|
| Apple is no underdog anymore, if their browser couldn't
| compete on its own merit I won't be crying a river over it.
|
| Firefox, while mired with its own problems, is another story;
| but I don't see Mozilla losing from this decision.
| tgv wrote:
| That's not how it work, is it? You can trick people into
| installing Chrome, and once that's done, they won't switch
| back, unless Apple tries to trick them. I can already hear
| the outcry when that happens.
| robertoandred wrote:
| Why is Firefox another story?
| KerrAvon wrote:
| "This website only works on Chrome."
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| C-w
| makeitdouble wrote:
| This is a serious issue that need to be solved directly,
| and not by carving out weird protected turfs for other
| monopolistic companies.
|
| In the current situation a ton of websites are already
| bailing out and shoving mobile apps to their users
| instead of actually addressing Safari.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Safari is possibly the biggest competitor to chrome, since
| Firefox is falling out of use. It's important for the
| ecosystem to have a strong competitor who isn't dependent
| on google
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Safari is only a competitor because folks don't have a
| choice. This would force Apple to actually compete
| against Chrome by giving users a reason to keep using
| Safari.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| The problem with all of this shit is that the EU is only
| measuring sentiment from developers, not end users. End
| users are happy with Safari. Developers are the only ones
| who care about any of the rest of this.
| carapace wrote:
| If the users prefer Safari they can keep using it, no?
| sbuk wrote:
| "This website only works on Chrome." will be the new
| "Best viewed in Interet Explorer"
| woojoo666 wrote:
| The EU is going after Google too. They might require
| Google to stop adding so many new features to Chrome so
| Safari and Firefox can catch up. Though would be a very
| tricky situation
| Gunnerhead wrote:
| > They might require Google to stop adding so many new
| features to Chrome so Safari and Firefox can catch up
|
| I'm genuinely not sure if this is satire or not.
| carapace wrote:
| They can run both Chrome and Safari?
| finiteseries wrote:
| You can also list/lookup businesses on Facebook and eg
| Bebo, but factors that run contrary to user desire and
| performative obtuseness remove utility from one over
| time.
| carapace wrote:
| "performative obtuseness"?
|
| I do not understand what you are saying.
|
| - - - -
|
| Ah, I think I get it. You're saying that Chrome would
| beat Safari if they were both available?
| izacus wrote:
| Firefox works just fine so stop with this dumb unfounded
| hyperbole.
| sbuk wrote:
| My goodness, the cognative dissonance is dumbfounding.
| izacus wrote:
| Spoken by people who want to eliminate competition of
| richest corporation on the planet because they're
| apparently not capable of building a competitive product
| (despite being the Best at Everything and being able to
| shove down authentication APIs and payment systems down
| everyones throat).
| Apocryphon wrote:
| So is the unsubstantiated FUD.
| sunflowerfly wrote:
| Chrome is becoming the new Internet Explorer. They are
| adding features the marketers want regardless if it is
| good for privacy or other ecosystems. We are already
| seeing websites and services that only work correctly in
| Chrome. Safari is the only viable competition.
| ahtihn wrote:
| Safari is a garbage browser. Why is it good that people are
| forced to use a bad browser?
| tmpz22 wrote:
| What makes Safari a bad browser? Sometimes it feels like
| dev forums rate a browser entirely based on the dev tools.
|
| For the average user Safari behaves identically or slightly
| better (battery life, privacy defaults, integration with
| the OS for login and payments) then chrome and Firefox.
| xxpor wrote:
| Extensions are garbage (tapermonkey specifically), it
| requires multiple redirects instead of allowing third
| party cookies which increases latency.
|
| NB: This is just the desktop version. The mobile version
| has been more or less fine for me.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Funny you mention that because for the last 3 weeks Google
| Search is nagging me to sign in on the iPhone Safari.
| capableweb wrote:
| Article 101 and 102 from the "EU Antitrust policy" already
| protects against anti-competitive agreements and abusive
| behavior from those holding a dominant market position, I
| don't think that will change.
| rvz wrote:
| See. It is frankly pointless. Chrome already has a
| significant amount of mindshare and will grow even more after
| this.
|
| The users have already chosen Chrome (and its derivatives).
| Mozilla has done _absolutely nothing_ to stop it as Firefox
| has become totally irrelevant today. The EU is about to allow
| the world domination of Chrome and its derivatives to
| takeover entirely.
|
| Just like the many choices of a Linux distro, you will have
| the many choices of Chromium based browsers! All thanks to
| 'oPEn SoUrcE'.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| As a Chrome user I feel obligated to defend my use as: "I
| like it the most." As long as Google continues to offer a
| better experience, I don't mind them dominating the market.
| *As long as they don't use anticompetitive practises to
| prevent competition.* IE, backed by the most powerful tech
| company on the planet (at the time), used to be 95% of the
| internet. If IE can fall, so can Chrome.
| sbuk wrote:
| This means, if blink/chromium does come to dominate,
| means an end to the open web. Be _very_ careful what you
| wish for.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| IE wasn't the end of the open web. Blink won't be either.
| And if Google tries to vendor lock the web, I'm sure the
| EU will step in again.
| trasz wrote:
| Microsoft didn't control server infra. Google does. And
| they are already abusing this position.
| sbuk wrote:
| It came _very_ close. Had AOL /Netscape/Mozilla not
| opensourced and push _open standards_ when they did,
| things would be very different.
| pteraspidomorph wrote:
| IE was replaced because it was a hole-riddled nonstandard
| mess, and Google used their position to shove Chrome into
| everyone's mindshare (something this regulation appears
| to forbid, incidentally). Chrome isn't nonstandard
| because Google are very careful to comply with standards
| - which is easy enough when they have many employees
| involved with designing them and tend to manipulate those
| committees in their favor, and even if they fail they can
| just release whatever they want and use the technology's
| widespread adoption to justify its eventual
| standardization. Also, as a modern browser, Chrome is
| patched frequently, so the security angle is also a
| nonstarter.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Mozilla self-sabotages so frequently and severely, I think
| you need to be very naive to not suspect the massive amount
| of funding they get from Google has something to do with
| it.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| I'd believe this if that same money wasn't required to
| keep the lights on. Easier to just stop paying it and
| wait for them to run out of runway.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Two possible outcomes of Mozilla losing Google's funding:
| Maybe Firefox evaporates away to nothing, 0% market
| share, and now Google loses the fig-leaf covering their
| browser monopoly. Or maybe Mozilla loses their
| ineffectual but greedy leadership, allowing people who
| believe in the mission to step into those roles.
|
| I think Google prefers the status quo to either of those
| scenarios. They prefer it to the tune of hundreds of
| millions of dollars a year, for that is how much they pay
| to perpetuate it.
| camhart wrote:
| > * Install any software
|
| > * Install any App Store and choose to make it default
|
| I don't see mention of this in the summary. Where is it
| described?
| Gareth321 wrote:
| It's in the legislation included in the link (https://data.co
| nsilium.europa.eu/doc/document/PE-17-2022-INI...). Page 129,
| for example, details the rules for app and app store
| installation:
|
| >The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable the
| installation and effective use of third-party software
| applications or software application stores using, or
| interoperating with, its operating system and allow those
| software applications or software application stores to be
| accessed by means other than the relevant core platform
| services of that gatekeeper. The gatekeeper shall, where
| applicable, not prevent the downloaded third-party software
| applications or software application stores from prompting
| end users to decide whether they want to set that downloaded
| software application or software application store as their
| default. The gatekeeper shall technically enable end users
| who decide to set that downloaded software application or
| software application store as their default to carry out that
| change easily.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| I am still excited about Apple's answer to this. They have been
| extremely creative so far in mitigating rules.
|
| I believe that they will find a way to somehow undermine these
| rulings. EU hasn't won yet.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| I assume Apple will just release special unlocked phones that
| only work in the EU (only support EU carriers, only support
| EU cell frequencies, etc)
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Does this ban Microsoft from using their privileged position to
| sabotage Firefox and to push their spyware browser?
| pteraspidomorph wrote:
| I'm wondering about this, too. In recent updates Windows
| seems to do a lot to force users into Edge under certain
| circumstances and use cases (and pester the user to switch to
| Edge entirely), in ways that at a glance appear to be
| incompatible with the summary of this regulation.
| chaoz_ wrote:
| Huge. What if Apple claims implementing required feature X will
| take more than 6 months? I could see it happening given that
| planning has already happened and new func will need to be
| smoothly introduced into UX etc.
| ls15 wrote:
| > What if Apple claims implementing required feature X will
| take more than 6 months?
|
| Then that will increase the implementation cost by _at least_
| (edit: _up to_ ) 10% of their global revenue.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| It is very likely that it is much lower than that in the
| beginning of noncompliance, as long as they show that they
| are trying.
| Oarch wrote:
| Up to 10%*
|
| Assuming they won't go with the maximum amount early on.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Jumping to such colossal fines is probably an excellent
| way to annoy the US, too, and given the current
| security/economic/political/world/universe situation I'd
| wager that the US would lean heavily on the EU to reach
| some kind of compromise. These companies aren't just big
| themselves, they also have the most powerful country on
| the planet willing to exert pressure to make them stay
| powerful. I'd be very surprised if Apple/Google/etc. ever
| paid 20% of global revenue even if they blatantly violate
| much of what the EU wants.
| jeltz wrote:
| That would be really stupid. The fines are set by courts,
| not politicians. So by pressuring politicians the US just
| makes an enemy out of the EU without changing the
| verdict. Good thing though is that GDPR shows that most
| European courts try to keep fines low for offenders actin
| in good faith.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _Jumping to such colossal fines is probably an
| excellent way to annoy the US, too, and given the current
| security /economic/political/world/universe situation_
|
| The US military having bases in Europe is a mutually
| beneficial arrangement, not some sort of charity America
| is giving Europe. The US threatening to withdraw from
| those bases for the sake of Apple would be supreme
| stupidity. Not impossible, but supremely stupid. There
| are much bigger fish in this sea than a handful of tech
| companies, large as they are. Apple is a small drop in
| the bucket compared to the vast commercial and industrial
| scope of America's global priorities.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| There doesn't appear to be much of a provision for technical
| delays. Six months is what it appears legislators believe is
| reasonable and fair, given the enormous resources at the
| disposal of these companies. Bear in mind that this
| legislation has been in deliberation since 15 December 2020.
| It would have been prudent for Gatekeepers to be making
| strategic product choices - and likely prototype builds -
| which comply with this outcome; at least for the EU.
|
| Nonetheless, I anticipate teething problems, including some
| form of malicious compliance. The latter of which the EU
| tends to take a dim view.
| capableweb wrote:
| Big companies like Apple are aware of these (proposed) laws
| long before they actually become law. Not having the
| foresight to not have something ready six months after it
| becomes law, is stupidly poor planning if true.
|
| One could also argue that if it takes longer than 6 months to
| add something dictated by law, you simply have to implement
| it faster or accept the consequences.
|
| I don't think companies this big has a lot of excuses for
| taking so long to implement things. They have thousands of
| employees they can shift from other projects (projects that
| doesn't decide if the phone is illegal or not) to implement
| urgent things like this.
| nuker wrote:
| > Install any software
|
| Scams proliferate, praying on elderly and young. Widespread
| tracking of your location, browsing history. Same with other
| points, narrow, selfish thinking.
| vopi wrote:
| Where does it mention side loading? Still skimming the legal
| doc, but it just says basically they need to be fair and non-
| discriminatory about app-store access.
| vopi wrote:
| Nevermind, my ctrl-f'ing failed me. Ignore.
| rvz wrote:
| This sounds like the EU is about to enable a full blown
| griftopia of scammers, hackers, and criminals to allow the easy
| targeting of stealing user data on the go, by allowing these
| side-loading programs to run rampant, unchecked and unverified
| on these users devices.
|
| Now these scammers can create a cross-platform, multi-device
| malware so easily installed by side-loading and and deploy
| zero-click ransomware working on all messengers and they will
| also enable crypto-payments via Monero on all devices for their
| ransomware payments after they get their systems breached.
|
| Congratulations to the EU for setting up the next grift for
| these scammers to easily collect their ransomware payments
| anywhere, anytime and without a trace.
| alaric410 wrote:
| Nonsense. You can't fight spam, criminal or hackers by
| restricting your ecosystem. Such measures only enable
| monopolies like Apple to make money at the expense of the
| consumer or competitors.
| rvz wrote:
| > Nonsense. You can't fight spam, criminal or hackers by
| restricting your ecosystem.
|
| Yes you can. Apple has done it better than the rest for
| iOS.
|
| > Such measures only enable monopolies like Apple to make
| money at the expense of the consumer or competitors.
|
| Is that what the tech bros at the W3C promised about the
| so-called _' open web'_ utopia which that has not only
| enabled a wild west of fraudsters, scammers, hackers and
| state actors that have turned the web upside down, it has
| only exchanged hands from one behemoth to another. Mozilla
| was supposed to do something to 'keep the web open', but
| they failed and got into the pockets of Google to overtake
| them instead.
|
| I can only see that the tech bros that are ones
| complaining. Not the typical users and they have chosen
| Windows, and Mac as their desktops, Chrome (and their
| derivatives), and Safari as their browsers and iOS, and
| Android as their mobile OSes.
|
| There are many other choices for the smartphone industry,
| messengers, browsers, payments (with specific requirements
| and exceptions). Opening up _everything for everyone_ is
| essentially allowing a feast for lots of scammers to now
| target their ransomware on to their victims with zero to
| one-click installs to drain their bank accounts and funds.
|
| This will make it infinitely easier to scam millions very
| easily. Therefore, it is a new griftopia that no-one but
| the tech bros have wanted. They had their chance with their
| free software and open-source snake-oil like Mozilla which
| did nothing to stop them and that has failed.
|
| Perhaps the disorganised nature of the Linux distro
| ecosystem on both its desktop and mobile alternatives and
| its free-software supporters has contributed to this
| failure in stopping this takeover. They need to do better
| at competing against these companies and right now, they
| are doing a poor job despite tons of funding.
| alaric410 wrote:
| > Yes you can. Apple has done it better than the rest for
| iOS.
|
| citation needed.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| This is nonsense. Users would be free to stick to the Apple
| app-store and apps. What it means is those that wish to
| install from alternative locations, can.
|
| Competition in the app store space is a good thing.
| Competition generally is a good thing. This is what it is
| about.
|
| Scaremongering this kind of nonsense to suppose walled-garden
| ecosystems (that primarily benefit the gardener, not the
| plants) is a stretch.
|
| It's the same with payments. Why should Apple not only
| dictate what software I can and can not use on my device, but
| also force those developers to use an officially sanctioned
| payment API so they can take a fat cut?
|
| Congratulations to the EU indeed, for the right reasons.
| mehdix wrote:
| Is this potentially breaking apple's walled garden? I wonder
| wether they will comply at all. Besides, I'm glad to see
| interoperability mentioned there, perhaps one day we could text
| from one messenger to another one without being held back by
| the owner.
| ls15 wrote:
| > Is this potentially breaking apple's walled garden? I
| wonder wether they will comply at all.
|
| They will or there will be a repetition of _Microsoft Corp.
| v. Commission_ , but with much higher fines.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| It depends what you mean by walled garden. If you're
| referring to their ability to secure iOS, then no. The
| legislation includes many exceptions for security purposes;
| but they must be demonstrable and genuine. The current iOS
| implementation already sandboxes applications and only
| provides limited permissions ad hoc, according to user
| approval. So even under the current architecture, allowing
| users to install applications doesn't undermine security.
| parasense wrote:
| > Besides, I'm glad to see interoperability mentioned there,
| perhaps one day we could text from one messenger to another
| one without being held back by the owner.
|
| By forcing message passing platforms to submit to sharing
| private encryption keys? And that interoperability entailing
| the possibility of passing messages to government
| eavesdropping schemes? Sounds like a utopian paradise!
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > forcing message passing platforms to submit to sharing
| private encryption keys?
|
| Why assume that requirement? For E2E encrypted messaging
| services all that needs to be shared are public keys for
| interoperability to work.
|
| In the case of middleman encrypted messaging you already
| trust the provider not to sell you out. If they
| interoperate then you trust N providers, where N is the
| number of providers engaged in a particular chat thread.
| zaik wrote:
| Take a look at OMEMO (Signal encryption protocol for the
| XMPP internet standard). Interoperability and E2EE are not
| exclusive at all.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > I wonder wether they will comply at all.
|
| Of course they will try not to. They will do everything to
| prolong the appeal process and so on - it's unthinkable they
| would allow any other app store on their devices, that's the
| very core of their identity - to be as closed and unified as
| possible. I don't believe the EU has enough power to fight
| Apple. I'll believe it when I see the first iPhone with an
| USB-C charger.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| I don't think USB-C is a good yardstick. Apple could (and I
| think should) move to USB-C voluntarily. They already
| switched laptops and tablets over to USB-C, and most phone
| peripherals these days are wireless, so why should phones
| stick with Lightning?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The other side of the coin is "Does Apple have enough brand
| goodwill to spend it on X years of 'Apple fights EU to keep
| monopoly' news articles?"
|
| Kind of hard to claim you're all unicorns and rainbows,
| when you're actively involved in a court case to defend
| anti-user practices...
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| I think you underestimate them. Off the top of my head:
|
| 1. EU bureaucrats are threatening one of the most
| successful business models ever.
|
| 2. Jealous EU tries to punish successful American tech
| companies as they can't compete with them in the market.
|
| 3. The EU attempts to lower the value of tech stock,
| threatening pensions of millions of Americans.
|
| 4. Apple will need to fire thousands if the malicious
| plan of EU bureaucrats succeeds.
|
| Etc. etc.
| frostburg wrote:
| They have to convince the EU power structure, which truly
| doesn't care about any of that on any level.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| It would seem so, yes. But in fact they need to convince
| the US government that the issue is worth exercising some
| pressure on the EU. And the USA has a wide array of
| options here.
|
| When Chelsea Manning released her cables, there were too
| many of them for any journalist to read or even glance
| not to mention understanding what is going on. But I
| spent several weeks grepping and reading many fragments.
| My conclusion is that the US government cares a lot about
| their business in other countries, especially in Europe.
| Ambassadors reported a great deal about how things are
| going for American companies, what threats are (like
| European citizens realizing what's better for them), how
| to neutralize them and so on.
| jeltz wrote:
| 1. Yes, and they do not care.
|
| 2. If true that is an argument in favor of the EU. That
| means no member countries will undermine the act.
|
| 3. The EU buteacrats do not care.
|
| 4. The EU buteacrats do not care.
| toyg wrote:
| 1. Who cares, it's an American company contributing very
| little to the EU market - in fact, siphoning billions of
| euros to tax havens
|
| 2. see point 1
|
| 3. see point 1
|
| 4. see point 1
| ko27 wrote:
| > I don't believe the EU has enough power to fight Apple
|
| Of course they do. EU Commission, with parlament and member
| state approval (which they have), has supreme sovereign
| power over these matters. Market regulation is basically
| the main point of EU. Because it's a new targeted law,
| Apple has zero chance of appealing this to a higher court.
|
| Thank god that companies don't have "power" over countries
| and sovereign bodies. I don't want to live in a cyberpunk
| world.
| visarga wrote:
| > I don't want to live in a cyberpunk world.
|
| Snow Crash was like that, companies > countries.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > Use existing hardware and software features without
| competitive prejudice. E.g. NFC
|
| What this will mean for me as an iPhone user: instead of using
| Apple Pay which is seamlessly integrated in my phone, watch and
| desktop OS, I will instead have to use my bank's terrible HTML-
| based 'app' to perform contactless payments, making it 100
| times less convenient. This probably will make me switch back
| to using my bank card.
|
| But hey, my bank makes a little more profit at the expense of
| UX.
|
| Thanks EU!
| bluepizza wrote:
| You can also use another bank.
| drampelt wrote:
| I have an Android phone and have every single one of my
| credit and debit cards from 7 different banks in Google Pay.
| Don't need to use the bank app for any of them.
|
| EDIT: to be clear, currently on Android any app can handle
| NFC payments, not just Google Pay. Banks could easily force
| people to user their apps, but that's not happening.
| smileybarry wrote:
| Counterpoint: here in Israel we had (only) the bank apps on
| Android for 2+ years, and they were a combination of "okay"
| and "awful". My bank's app required to unlock your phone
| (with biometric auth), an app-specific pin code, _and_ had
| a 30-second window. It then didn 't work 30% of the time
| and required turning NFC off and on again to work. It took
| them over a year to change to "just unlock your phone".
|
| Then Apple Pay launched here, contactless adoption on iOS
| became _triple_ of Android 's (despite Android having more
| than double the phones), and a few months later Google Pay
| launched in response with their better implementation. I'm
| guessing it was a combined "in response to Apple" from
| Google and "maybe this will increase adoption" from banks.
| kccqzy wrote:
| A possible consequence of the current legislation is that
| instead of a system-wide service where Apple Pay or Google
| Pay can work with different banks, each bank now demands to
| handle NFC payments within its own app. You may find that
| Google Pay is no longer supported by banks.
| drampelt wrote:
| Sorry if it wasn't clear, that was actually my point - on
| Android even though banks have the ability to handle NFC
| payments within their own apps, the vast majority still
| support Google Pay and don't force you to use their app.
| foepys wrote:
| If that's such an important issue for you, why don't you just
| switch to a bank with an app with good UX? There are so many
| banks out there, one will surely either support Apple Pay or
| have a decent app.
|
| Apple Pay will not just die, Android has no restrictions on
| NFC and Google Pay is still supported by banks.
|
| What you do is fear mongering that's not based on reality.
| Android shows that it works and Apple just wants their cut,
| as always.
| veilrap wrote:
| So use Android? I don't get the reason to force all
| companies to be the same when customers clearly have
| preferences.
|
| I've bought mostly Apple products because I prefer their
| system to Androids. People who disagree can buy something
| else.
|
| Competition is better than these father knows best
| overarching regulations.
| skyyler wrote:
| Isn't the point of this to create more competition?
| veilrap wrote:
| Android already is a huge iOS competitor, in fact, the
| majority player in the space. So competition clearly
| exists without this heavy handed regulation.
|
| Legally requiring companies to degrade customer
| experiences is frustrating.
| thunkshift1 wrote:
| No one is forcing you too do that. But they are forcing apple
| to give anyone using apple devices the option to use the
| banks shitty ui app.
|
| Maybe the ui app will stop being shitty as the usage goes up?
| That is the point
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > No one is forcing you too do that.
|
| The bank will by discontinuing Apple Pay support. They have
| every incentive to do so.
| drampelt wrote:
| Then why isn't that happening on Android with Google Pay?
| Banks are able to handle NFC payments through their own
| apps if they want, but the vast majority support Google
| Pay and don't force users into their own app.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| I suspect that is largely due to the success of Apple
| Pay. Banks used to have their own apps on Android for
| years and only grudgingly started to support Apple Pay
| since they couldn't use their own apps. They only started
| migrating from their own apps to Google Wallet/Pay after
| Apple Pay became a success and Android users started to
| feel left out. They would never have supported Apple Pay
| if they hadn't been forced to do so. In fact, even though
| there was no alternative they kept dragging their feet
| and complaining about it for years.
| amelius wrote:
| Can I now install Linux on an iPhone?
| fsflover wrote:
| You already can have a phone running GNU/Linux (Librem 5 or
| Pinephone) though.
| aloisdg wrote:
| Yes but I may have a on old working iphone laying in my
| desktop that I would like to reuse for ecological reason
| fsflover wrote:
| I have little hope that Apple will release enough
| information to develop free drivers for your phone.
| Without such information, you have to forever use an
| outdated, vulnerable Linux kernel. See also:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26593274.
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| I think we should expect Apple and Google to fight this tooth
| and nail. I'm sure they've been following it and looking at
| ways to exploit any holes that are in it.
|
| In short, I expect it to be years before we can do most of the
| things you list in your post. There will be lots of court cases
| before we, as consumers, see any real change.
| the_duke wrote:
| Regulators have learned from GDPR.
|
| Enforcement for the large gatekeepers is with the
| commission,and they have a good amount of tools to enforce
| compliance.
|
| I'm sure A/G will try to drag it out, but it won't be years.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| The EU doesn't operate the same way the courts do in America.
| The EU will require Apple/Google to cooperate with the
| changes _while_ any cases are ongoing. If these cases take
| years to settle, so be it. If Apple /Google wins, any damages
| are back-paid.
| intrasight wrote:
| >Install any App Store
|
| That wasn't one of the bullets in the posted article. Do you
| have a reference to the language of the law that says this?
| webmobdev wrote:
| I am guessing if you can "install any software" (as the DMA
| says), then the device manufacturer can't prevent you from
| installing another app store.
| AnssiH wrote:
| Actually, "software application stores" are explicitly
| mentioned in the relevant Article 6(4) (https://data.consil
| ium.europa.eu/doc/document/PE-17-2022-INI... page 129).
| cced wrote:
| Do you think that this would mean providing these new services
| to phones outsides of the EU i.e. would the whole world benefit
| from this?
| nailer wrote:
| > Use any voice assistant and choose to make it default
|
| Cool. I have an iPhone but everything in my house uses Alexa.
| It would be great to have my phone control my using using
| 'Alexa' as a wake word.
|
| It will also be nice to have a real Brave or Opera or whatever
| (with Blink not WebKit) on my iPhone.
| akmarinov wrote:
| Second this, Apple has shown zero interest to support my
| native language (they went 11 years between adding new
| languages to iOS). This would allow me to switch to Google
| Assistant which supports it and just use that.
| roody15 wrote:
| " * User any browser and browser engine and choose to make it
| default"
|
| This is huge and I cannot believe it has taken this long. Apple
| forcing everyone to use their own browser engine with all other
| ios "browsers" essentially just being skins for Safari was
| ridiculous.
| dagmx wrote:
| You say the summary is in the link, but the first few things
| you mention are not in the summary, or called out at all in the
| article. I don't think this is the "open up your App Store
| mechanism" regulation, as I believe there are two in flight
| right now
| capableweb wrote:
| True, the closest summary as what parent posted I found at
| https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-
| services... under "The consequences for gatekeepers", a page
| which is linked from the submission article.
|
| It includes the following section:
| Gatekeepers will not be able to: rank
| their own products or services higher than those of others
| prevent developers from using third-party payment platforms
| for app sales process users' personal data for
| targeted advertising, unless consent is granted
| establish unfair conditions for business users
| pre-install certain software applications or prevent users
| from easily un-installing them restrict business
| users of platforms Gatekeepers will have to:
| offer more choices, such as the choice of certain software on
| a user's operating system ensure that
| unsubscribing from core platform services is as easy as
| subscribing provide information on the number of
| users that visit their platforms to determine whether the
| platform can be identified as a gatekeeper give
| business users access to their marketing or advertising
| performance data on the platform inform the
| European Commission of their acquisitions and mergers
| ensure that the basic functionalities of instant messaging
| services are interoperable, i.e. enable users to exchange
| messages, send voice messages or files Fair
| competition of digital services is key to ensure that
| companies and consumers can all benefit in the same way from
| digital opportunities. This will also generate more
| innovation and boost consumer protection.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| I read the legislation, included in the link (https://data.co
| nsilium.europa.eu/doc/document/PE-17-2022-INI...). Page 129,
| for example, details the rules for app and app store
| installation:
|
| >The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable the
| installation and effective use of third-party software
| applications or software application stores using, or
| interoperating with, its operating system and allow those
| software applications or software application stores to be
| accessed by means other than the relevant core platform
| services of that gatekeeper. The gatekeeper shall, where
| applicable, not prevent the downloaded third-party software
| applications or software application stores from prompting
| end users to decide whether they want to set that downloaded
| software application or software application store as their
| default. The gatekeeper shall technically enable end users
| who decide to set that downloaded software application or
| software application store as their default to carry out that
| change easily.
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| It's odd that this extremely important component is omitted
| from the press release.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| I agree. The press summary is _very_ concise, and omits
| some of the most impactful parts. Previous reports on
| this legislation provide more details:
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/25/22996248/apple-
| sideloadin...
| varispeed wrote:
| Does it mean Google will have to enable call recording APIs on
| Android?
|
| That would be sweet. Currently none of call recording apps work
| on my phone and this is a must have feature for me. When I take
| a call with my doctor I have to use my separate memo recorder,
| so that I can refer to the call in the future if I forget
| something.
|
| Let's not mention usefulness of this feature when you are
| placing orders over the phone and then the other party claims
| this is what I wanted once they deliver something not as
| agreed. If I could record a call I had evidence in case of
| dispute.
| amelius wrote:
| > If I could record a call I had evidence in case of dispute.
|
| It might not be legal to do that, in all cases, and the
| evidence might not be valid.
| varispeed wrote:
| This is not really a valid argument. If they were concerned
| about legality, we wouldn't have cameras on the phone and
| probably neither the call functionality.
|
| That being said, call recording is legal in my country.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Depending on where they are located... the vast majority of
| US states are one-party consent states. And many businesses
| already have a recording when you call them informing
| parties that the call may be recorded, which clear more
| legal hurdles in more jurisdictions.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| Generally informing the other party you are recording is
| enough consent if they stay on the line. Plenty of customer
| service lines do that with an automated voice: "This call
| may be recorded (for quality control purposes)". So their
| party has already been informed that the call will be
| recorded, and there's no expectation of privacy.
| capableweb wrote:
| It might not be legal to do a lot of stuff with your phone,
| but usually we leave that up to individuals to decide,
| rather than stifling the functionality of the phone.
|
| Similar to how we treat knives and similar things.
| yoavm wrote:
| Interestingly enough, an iPhone that complies with these
| demands is actually the first iPhone I'd ever consider paying
| for. I wonder if this might actually increase adoption.
| mirntyfirty wrote:
| Same although replaceable batteries would make it even more
| compelling. I enjoyed the early Motorola android phones
| because they were phones rather than jewelry and they also
| kept them lightweight.
| DCKing wrote:
| Agreed. I switched from an iPhone to a Pixel because the
| iPhone experience is claustrophobic (admittedly I switched
| from Android to iPhone before that for the much better and
| lengthy software Apple gives). If this means the iPhone is
| getting things similar to F-Droid and NewPipe I'd be happy to
| switch back.
|
| The new iPads have an M1 chip with virtualization
| capabilities, but you wouldn't know it with the stuff Apple
| allows on it. Imagine how much better iPads would be if Apple
| couldn't block Linux VMs just because it doesn't suit them.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Ha, a iPad running Linux would be something I'd look at.
|
| It is a surprise so, that the EU is actually moving, at
| scale, in that direction. Maybe privacy, processed food and
| some other things next!
| closewith wrote:
| What?
|
| The EU has enacted GDPR, 178/2002/EC (food safety),
| 44/1999/EC (consumer protection), any number of consumer
| protection Regulations and Directives.
| hef19898 wrote:
| GDPR is good, just needs reinforcement. The way things
| like the nutrition score are done is just bad so.
| jonkoops wrote:
| GDPR enforcement is getting better. But yeah man nutri-
| score is really flawed.
| k__ wrote:
| How is the nutri-score flawed?
|
| I looked at the rules and it seemed like a really good
| idea.
|
| I even got the impression, products got changed for the
| better in the last year to get a higher nutri-score.
| capableweb wrote:
| If "Install any software" becomes real and I can start
| writing software on Linux for iPhone, without requiring me to
| have a Mac, I'll become an instant iPhone fanboy as the
| hardware is second to none. It's the software that is
| stopping the phone from becoming the best one around.
| iasay wrote:
| I think that's completely unrealistic. It's not going to
| happen even if they open the platform up.
| capableweb wrote:
| If the platform becomes open enough so we can side-load
| applications, I bet you 100EUR we'll be able to develop
| iPhone applications from any operating system, but first
| Linux, within a year :)
| iasay wrote:
| Note that I'm side loading two applications I actually
| wrote myself on my iPhone already...
| capableweb wrote:
| How? I've been looking for ages on how to develop iPhone
| applications on Linux and there is no way that doesn't
| involve installing Hackingtosh, either as a new OS on a
| partition or in a VM, or renting a Mac server somewhere,
| so it's not really "developing on Linux" at all.
| iasay wrote:
| Um, you just create a cert in XCode, pair your device to
| it, load the certs onto the device and run the app on it.
|
| You're not going to do it on a Linux box for sure as the
| tools aren't there but you certainly can run your own
| stuff on iOS. You don't have to sign up for anything
| either - just install XCode from the app store and build
| stuff.
| capableweb wrote:
| Ah, I see. You completely missed the point...
|
| > I can start writing software on Linux for iPhone,
| without requiring me to have a Mac
|
| > we'll be able to develop iPhone applications from any
| operating system, but first Linux
|
| > how to develop iPhone applications on Linux
|
| ^ is what I wrote, and you suggest "just install XCode
| from the app store"? Not sure how that's compatible.
|
| Regardless, I hope we end with a phone that people can
| actually install their own software on, regardless of
| what laptops/desktop computer they own.
| iasay wrote:
| That's never going to happen and I'd rather Apple spent
| money on something else other than make it happen.
|
| The issue is you don't have a Mac and that's really your
| problem, not theirs.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| Random anecdote: if you don't pay 99EUR yearly for your
| developer subscription Apple revokes your certificates
| and disables your apps on the Apple app store. Your
| problem indeed.
| iasay wrote:
| You don't have to pay Apple to deploy to your own device.
| I don't have a developer subscription. You only have to
| pay the 99EUR to access the store and provisioning.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| The only thing you 100% need osx for is the signature /
| certificates crap.
|
| You can build most of an iOS app today on Linux (eg. some
| game frameworks, qt)
|
| Eg: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/development/co
| mpiling...
| amichal wrote:
| I googled. There do appear to be `codesign`
| implementations on other platforms now
| https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14321559/using-mac-
| os-co... as well . No clue if they work
| capableweb wrote:
| That's really helpful, didn't know about this and my
| endless searching didn't reveal this either. Thanks!
| webmobdev wrote:
| I am not sure about this - does install any software also
| mean _system software_ or is it only meant to allow
| installation from sources other than their own app store?
| To allow system software installations, Apple (and other
| mobile device manufacturers) will have to allow unlocking
| the bootloader. (But that alone is limited as without the
| hardware information of the individual parts, developing an
| alternate OS for such devices is painful work as you have
| to essentially reverse engineer everything to create the
| device drivers - as evident with the snail 's pace that
| Asahi Linux are progressing at to port Linux to Apple M1
| and M2 ARM processors. Unless ofcourse, the DMA also forces
| them to publish the hardware literature so that other
| system developers can use it, which would be a real game
| changer ... ).
| alkonaut wrote:
| Having used iPhones since the very earliest ones, I also fear
| this might turn it into an Android situation. I like iPhone
| because I know it's likely the page works in Safari since
| iOS+Safari is a large customer group. While choice, a diverse
| web, competition & all that is important, I personally
| wouldn't want anything but a walled garden monoculture in
| most cases. Being able to integrate a different voice
| assistant??
|
| Sideloading apps as an advanced user concept sounds great.
| But if users who switch on their iPhone for the first time
| had to @choose a store", that would be an absolutely terrible
| UX.
| mission_failed wrote:
| Using Android really sucks. I hate being able to install
| whatever browser I want and old versions of apps
| theplumber wrote:
| >> I know it's likely the page works in Safari since
| iOS+Safari is a large customer group
|
| That until you find out some of the best web technologies
| are not working on safari(i.e indexeddb has been left
| unfixed for years on purpose by apple). I don't think
| people would like a safari only on desktop. Why would they
| want that on mobile?
| fHr wrote:
| antonymy wrote:
| Same, actually. I've seen enough iPhones in the hands of
| friends and family to be envious of some of the features, but
| I've never wanted to be part of Apple's walled garden. A more
| open iPhone that I would be free to choose my own apps for if
| I didn't like Apple's offerings? Yeah I'd try that.
| kibwen wrote:
| Same here. I'm dying for a phone that doesn't balk at the
| idea of long-term support, but I'm simply not using a
| platform where I can't install the software I want and can't
| even get a real version of Firefox.
| deadbunny wrote:
| The Fairphone 4 has 5 years of support IIRC.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| It's not a popular opinion around here, but the reason I like
| my iPhone is _because_ it's a walled garden. It just works,
| reliably, without surprises, for years on end.
| Tozen wrote:
| I don't understand this argument. If you prefer to stay
| behind a "walled garden", then you still can. The
| difference being that you will personally enforce your own
| preferences for all things dictated or suggested by Apple
| versus Apple imposing what they want upon everyone. The
| "walled garden" will be your own mentally imposed
| constraint.
|
| Though you and various others might prefer the "walled
| garden", that is not to say that all Apple users prefer it
| that way. Clearly, as jailbreaking demonstrates, there are
| significant numbers of iPhone users that didn't and don't
| want to stay behind Apple's jail or wall.
| martimarkov wrote:
| Then go and buy an android phone. Honestly this looks to
| me like I bought a petrol car and I want it to be
| electric.
|
| You have a choice when you buy things.
|
| I want the walled garden for my parents so that I can
| tell them - anything you install is safe so don't stress.
|
| I think most engineers are so narrow minded and don't
| understand a vast majority of the user base that it's
| insane.
|
| Ppl made the decision to buy a specific device. Respect
| their choice. You don't like it? Don't develop for that
| OS...
| DCKing wrote:
| This argument keeps on popping up, but I don't really
| understand why. Apple _themselves_ already have a platform
| that 's had a reputation of reliability and "just works"
| that is not a walled garden in most of the ways the digital
| markets act intends to prevent: the Mac. There's no
| evidence the the qualities of Apple products are strongly
| linked with them being walled gardens. Your iPhone will be
| fine.
|
| (Macs may not be as "just works" as iPhones, sure. I've
| personally seen that too many times. But computers are also
| intended to be more flexible and complicated in operation
| than smartphones, and regardless of personal anecdotes
| Apple is still widely regarded as building the most "just
| works" general purpose computers. And whatever faults Macs
| have, you'd be hard pressed to argue that if only the Mac
| was more of a walled garden that things would be better.)
| Patrol8394 wrote:
| True, countless times I had to fix friends/family android
| tablets and phones where all of the sudden apps stopped
| working and will boot crash . It is always some crap like
| apps messing settings and permissions or play not being
| updated etc... I converted most of family to iPhone/iPad
| problem solved.
|
| I am a tech person but when it comes to phones I want the
| damn thing just to work and simple to use.
| amelius wrote:
| That family doesn't know how to keep proper phone hygiene
| shouldn't mean they get to force their locked down stuff
| on the rest of us.
| [deleted]
| pdimitar wrote:
| Unfortunately that's exactly what it means because most
| common folk will never put an effort into learning the
| said proper phone hygiene. :(
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| LeoNatan25 wrote:
| And will continue to work exactly like that after the
| required changes. We'll just have more options.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Not if players like epic games don't support Apple Pay
| (with east cancellation). Don't support the app stores
| rules and are only found in 3rd party apo stores..etc.
|
| It'll turn the iPhone into an android. Which sucks as I
| left android because I enjoyed the walled garden.
| the_duke wrote:
| You are free to not use any app that doesn't want to
| submit to a 30%/20% Apple tax.
|
| No one is forcing you to play Epic games.
|
| But Apple will probably cut down their rates
| significantly so most companies stick with the app store.
|
| Especially if the US follows suit.
| amelius wrote:
| > the reason I like my iPhone is _because_ it's a walled
| garden.
|
| Yeah, but now you can _choose_ which walled garden you lock
| yourself up in, so it 's even better.
| motoxpro wrote:
| Your walled garden gets better, mine (existing Apple
| ecosystem) gets worse. Less people -> less revenue ->
| less developers/features/customer support. Just want to
| highlight the no free lunch in this situation.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| That's fine, just stay on the default settings then.
|
| This however isn't a reason for the rest of the world to
| accept this. And since the power in the market is highly
| concentrated and all of it is moving more and more in this
| direction, regulation enforces these alternative options
| now.
|
| All this does is regulate the power the provider of a
| product has over their customer. This does not ruin the
| walled garden for the people who prefer to stay in it for
| peace of mind, but it adds a door for the people who want
| to leave. There is no negative side-effects for the people
| staying, only the platform providers will have to spend
| some money and lose some revenue.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| > That's fine, just stay on the default settings then.
|
| This isn't going to end well.
| danieldk wrote:
| _That 's fine, just stay on the default settings then._
|
| I agree in principle, but I worry that we end up in the
| situation where if you need to use a particular app, you
| can only get it from a third-party store that you don't
| trust. (Something gross like Facebook starting an app
| store.)
|
| Or course, this is mostly a result of Apple being greedy.
| If they had acted like a good steward of the platform
| rather than trying to extract a lot of money from
| developers, we probably wouldn't be here.
| koyote wrote:
| > but I worry that we end up in the situation where if
| you need to use a particular app, you can only get it
| from a third-party store that you don't trust
|
| I often hear this argument but Android has had third-
| party app-stores and 'side-loadable apps' since day one
| and I can't think of a single major app that needs its
| own app-store.
| com2kid wrote:
| More than one semi-legit app asks you to install the APK
| on its own.
|
| There are also app stores on Android that basically push
| lots of scamware targeted at kids.
|
| We aren't the target audience so we aren't going to see
| much of these going ons.
| vanillaicesquad wrote:
| Pornhub
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I have never needed to install an app from Facebook, and
| never have. Amazon has an appstore; I have never been
| forced to install it or anything from it. Should the day
| come when people are actually forced to use any facebook
| app or appstore, that compulsion is the problem that
| needs to be corrected. The problem isn't having the
| option to install a facebook app; the compulsion is the
| problem.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Apple could make a greater incentive to use their
| approval
|
| Competition
| [deleted]
| summerlight wrote:
| This doesn't happen on Android, so don't worry too much
| about it. I can bet my 2 cents on that 99% of users will
| only use app stores even after this regulation and Apple
| has a power to make it happen. Of course Apple will need
| to spend some of its energy on suppressing real
| competition but that's not what customers need to worry
| about...
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Any of this is already possible on MacOS, Windows, and
| Android. It's not actually so wild as you're making it
| out to be. Just ignore the software merchants you don't
| want to affiliate with. I don't like Valve, so I don't
| install their 'appstore' Steam. That means I can't buy
| games that are only sold on Steam. Big whoop, it's a
| consequence I accept of a decision I am free to make or
| reconsider. Life goes on.
| fyzix wrote:
| There's no precedent for this because you don't see this
| happen in Android en mass
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Yeah, even the ones run by major tech players- the Amazon
| and Samsung Android app stores, are really just there to
| serve their own devices. They don't contain any exclusive
| apps that are forcing Android users off of the Play Store
| for.
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| mattnewton wrote:
| > you can only get it from a third-party store that you
| don't trust. (Something gross like Facebook starting an
| app store.)
|
| As apposed to today where you can't get it at all if
| apple and the app disagree about anything?
|
| I know you are thinking of another large enough player
| you don't trust as much forcing their store as the only
| avenue for an app, but it's hard to imagine how that
| wouldn't provide large incentives for a smaller party to
| make a competitor on the official store.
| danieldk wrote:
| _As apposed to today where you can't get it at all if
| apple and the app disagree about anything?_
|
| Since there is only one app store for iPhones, almost
| every app vendor is willing to conform to Apple's
| guidelines (which are often pro-privacy and protect the
| user). Otherwise they lose out on a significant market
| share with a lot of spending power.
|
| _smaller party to make a competitor on the official
| store_
|
| Sure, they will pop up. But Facebook, Microsoft, and
| Google will start iOS app stores and app developers will
| go to their app stores because of network effects.
| tristan957 wrote:
| > Since there is only one app store for iPhones, almost
| every app vendor is willing to conform to Apple's
| guidelines (which are often pro-privacy and protect the
| user). Otherwise they lose out on a significant market
| share with a lot of spending power.
|
| You've just described why these changes are good. I feel
| like the word "willing" in your statement is carrying a
| lot of weight.
|
| Apple forces developers to publish from Apple devices,
| spend $100 a year for a developer account, give up 15-30%
| of any revenue generated from that app, use WebKit, etc.
|
| That is not at all what I describe as restrictions that
| lead to "willing" app vendors.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > But Facebook, Microsoft, and Google will start iOS app
| stores and app developers will go to their app stores
| because of network effects.
|
| They might try, but it would be a lot harder than you
| imagine.
| roblabla wrote:
| Then don't use this particular app? This already exists
| today: A lot of apps are android-only, or jailbreak-only.
| In the same sense, tomorrow we'll likely have amazon-
| store-only apps.
|
| In practice I doubt many apps will use a third-party
| appstore. Apple has a lot of leeway in how they will
| implement the regulation - they can make it painful
| enough to use a third-party store that most popular apps
| will want to keep using the primary app store to get
| maximum reach. Just like how almost every android app is
| on the google play store - despite sideloading being a
| thing since forever.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Then YOU don't use this particular brand of smartphone?
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| I think they have to make side loading a painful
| developer only endeavor.
|
| Other wise you can end up like the streaming situation
| where people are just giving up with all the
| subscriptions and just pirating everything.
| est31 wrote:
| The issue is what if you _have_ to use a specific app to
| access some service or community. And then that app
| requesting access to your location data and your address
| book even though there is no point in it requesting
| either. Sure you can deny but if you do it, the app will
| refuse service. It can only be solved by the app store
| _requiring_ that users denying access won 't result in
| the app refusing to work, or only the features will
| refuse to work that actually need that data.
|
| "just don't install the app" won't work in many, many
| cases.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _The issue is what if you have to use a specific app to
| access some service or community._
|
| Such compulsions are the real problem. In a free society,
| nobody should be compelled to have a phone at all, let
| alone install software on one. Government services in
| particular should never be gated in this way. If no
| compulsion exists, then there is no problem with people
| having the _choice_ to use any appstore they wish.
|
| If by _' have to'_ you mean something along the lines of
| _" My brother keeps badgering me to install WhatsApp"_
| then the answer is to simply say _" No."_ Real example.
| He texts me instead.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| In US I have not seen any government services that are
| available _only_ via mobile devices. Most online
| government services are accessible via a website, and one
| can go to a public library to use a (non-mobile) computer
| there.
| yoavm wrote:
| But this doesn't really happen on Android now. Even
| though I can sideload apps and use different app stores,
| my bank never told me to get their app from Shady Store
| and the public transport company didn't ask me to you
| F-Droid. The official app store is still _the_ place you
| find apps in, you're just _also_ free to wander on your
| on.
| laggyluke wrote:
| Ideally OS should give you a way to feed such evil apps
| some fake / spoofed data.
|
| I believe a rooted Android used to allow something like
| that, not sure if that still works nowadays.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| We can always use Apple's favorite defense on why they
| don't have an app store monopoly: use your browser.
| Facebook, Instagram, TikTok etc. all still work via the
| browser. I don't know a single one that doesn't (though I
| could be wrong)
| derefr wrote:
| Yeah, but for the apps that _are_ on iOS devices, Apple
| is effectively currently standing in the position of
| "the lawyer who writes a 4000 page contract to de-risk
| the wish they're making with the evil wish-granting
| genie", so that we don't have to. Apple forces apps on
| their store to obey certain restrictions that make life
| better (less tracked, especially) for consumers; and
| those restrictions are begrudgingly accepted by the
| developers, because there's no other way for the dev to
| access the iOS user-base.
|
| As soon as those devs can avoid Apple's restrictions and
| deliver their apps directly to users with the "intended"
| experience, they will.
|
| Personally, I like neutered-evil-genie apps, and will be
| sad to lose them (i.e. have them turn into unfettered-
| evil-genie apps, which I won't use.)
| easton wrote:
| Isn't the answer for Apple to provide operating-system
| level restrictions to apps (regardless of source) that
| make it so the only way any application on the system can
| access the identifier is by permission from the user? I
| wouldn't be surprised if this is how it works right now
| anyway, just because an app is deployed by an enterprise
| developer doesn't mean it should be able to bypass the
| app tracking transparency prompt.
|
| Or does the EU law prevent them from having private
| APIs/system components period? It seems like many people
| are making the assumption that this means that every
| single sideloaded app will be able to bypass all of the
| privacy/security features on the device, and I don't see
| why that would be. My understanding is that this is for
| "fairness", which would mean that apps that are
| sideloaded would have the same level of access as those
| on the App Store, meaning they use the same APIs that
| trigger the same prompts.
| derefr wrote:
| No, because this isn't about OS-level identifiers; it's
| about things like e.g. applications working together to
| track you by passing permacookies through Shared
| Containers; or about apps that ask for microphone
| privileges then listening for ultrasound beacons in
| retail stores to determine their location.
|
| These are the sorts of prohibited behaviors that can be
| heuristically _recognized_ by technical means (e.g.
| static analysis), but where any such recognition would
| necessarily result result in tons of false positives; and
| so those issues, when raised, must be passed to a team of
| human auditors for determination.
|
| This is, by-and-large, why App Store submissions -- even
| for updates -- still require that human-auditor step.
| They're always watching for those seemingly-minor "this
| app got sold to someone evil" updates that slip in
| spyware -- the kind you see often with Chrome Extensions.
| easton wrote:
| Your point is valid, but I think those examples are
| fixable. Permacookies could be fixed as simply as "Would
| you like to allow {EvilApp} to access data from
| {EvilPartnerApp}?", as there aren't a lot of reasons that
| apps should be passing data between each other without
| user consent (or the share sheet).
|
| The second example has already been fixed with the
| microphone indicator from 1-2 versions back, where a
| light shows up in the corner whenever the microphone has
| been activated (and swiping down tells you what app
| activated it). A notification could be added if an app
| tried to activate the microphone when it wasn't in the
| foreground (but I don't think the OS lets you do that
| anyway?)
| derefr wrote:
| One other obvious "Turing-hard" spyware side-channel, is
| that it's basically up to the application developer to
| come up with a list of Internet domains it should be able
| to connect to, to put into the app's entitlements; and
| it's up to humans at Apple to determine whether that list
| is sane -- often by starting up the app with syscalls to
| the network stack shimmed/traced, doing packet captures,
| and seeing what the app says to each of the domains it
| lists itself as entitled to talk to.
|
| You'd think that maybe restricting connections to e.g.
| domains that are rooted in a zone the developer has
| proven ownership of, would be fine... but there are
| third-party advertising, analytics, and fingerprinting
| services that allow you to CNAME them as subdomains of
| your domain to evade ad-blocker signature recognition.
|
| And, of course, no user could ever be expected to figure
| any of this out if asked in a prompt. "Example App is
| asking me to allow it to connect to abcdefg.example.com?
| Well, they own that, don't they? Why _wouldn 't_ I allow
| that?"
| TylerE wrote:
| Asking the user sucks. All it does is train users to
| click yes without thinking about it because they just
| want to get on with their life. (See: The ubiquitous GDPR
| cookie prompts).
|
| ANY "solution" that puts more burden on the user isn't.
| nuker wrote:
| > that make it so the only way any application on the
| system can access the identifier is by permission from
| the user?
|
| And let's say the user says No. Today the app will be
| forced to work without it. By Apple Store rules. Tomorrow
| the app will say "this permission is required for app to
| work".
| blub wrote:
| Many of the restrictions that Apple added along the years
| were reactions to abuse by app developers (which in
| reality nowadays are "legal malware developers").
| Everything you can think of has been tried: from reading
| the installed list of apps, spying on the clipboard,
| scraping location data from pictures, fingerprinting
| phones based on camera sensor or motion sensor and many
| others.
|
| Permissions represent one of two pillars of their
| strategy against legal malware developers. The second one
| is the rulebook associated with the AppStore, preventing
| publishing non-compliant apps and banning developers for
| breaking said rules. A classic example is Facebook
| misusing enterprise certificates to install "Facebook
| research" which allowed them almost unrestricted access
| to the data of the users. Apple revoked their enterprise
| certificate, which also affected internal applications
| that Facebook employees were using. Facebook relented.
|
| If Facebook launches their own app store, the second
| pillar is completely circumvented. Additionally they will
| find ways around the technical limitations, be it through
| use of private APIs, tricking users into clicking
| confirmations or bribing them. Technical limitations are
| not enough when dealing with malicious actors.
| nodamage wrote:
| People always make this argument in these kinds of
| threads and I wonder how it isn't blatantly obvious that
| operating-system level restrictions are woefully
| inadequate to deal with unscrupulous developers. Put
| yourself in the mindset of an unscrupulous developer for
| a moment, can't you think of a hundred ways to abuse
| permissions granted by the user or operating system to
| violate privacy?
|
| Take, for example, this: https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/com
| ments/w27x6j/uber_does_not_r...
| Apocryphon wrote:
| If these abuses happen under the aegis of the current App
| Store, doesn't that nullify the argument that App Store
| review is sufficient protection?
|
| This also ignores that it's conceivable that Apple can
| harden iOS's existing permissions system.
| nodamage wrote:
| > If these abuses happen under the aegis of the current
| App Store, doesn't that nullify the argument that App
| Store review is sufficient protection?
|
| Not at all. App Store review is not perfect and no one
| expects it to be. That doesn't mean it has no value or
| that we should get rid of it entirely. Otherwise you
| could make the same argument about any system involving
| unscrupulous actors: "people still kill despite there
| being laws against murder, doesn't that mean the law is
| pointless?"
|
| > This also ignores that it's conceivable that Apple can
| harden iOS's existing permissions system.
|
| Curious how you think this would actually solve the issue
| I linked above.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > App Store review is not perfect and no one expects it
| to be.
|
| But Apple is clearly presenting it as such.
|
| > That doesn't mean it has no value or that we should get
| rid of it entirely.
|
| That is correct, but right now it is the only game in
| town. There's no secondary stores that present it with
| competition. Already we read about top-10 grossing apps
| that are actually scammy. Perhaps Apple will strengthen
| its App Store when presented with alternatives.
|
| > Curious how you think this would actually solve the
| issue I linked above.
|
| It really depends on what mechanism that Uber is using to
| bypass the notifications systems. But off the bat, iOS
| could force even more granular alerts to the user when
| sensitive permissions are required.
|
| Curious too, how you think that App Store review
| currently solves this issue. Uber is already too
| significant to the platform for Apple to do much more
| than give them a slap on the wrist, as seen historically.
|
| https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/apple-tim-cook-
| threatened-...
| nodamage wrote:
| > But off the bat, iOS could force even more granular
| alerts to the user when sensitive permissions are
| required.
|
| How does having more granular alerts actually solve this
| issue?
|
| > Curious too, how you think that App Store review
| currently solves this issue.
|
| Well, obviously it doesn't, _currently_. App Store review
| needs to update their rules to address this type of
| abuse. Uber is big but they 've taken hard line stances
| against bigger apps before (e.g. Facebook).
|
| > https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/apple-tim-cook-
| threatened-...
|
| Sounds like a success story, imagine the alternative
| scenario where there was no review process and Uber could
| get away with this unimpeded.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I don't think it's a rules update thing. It's more like
| review didn't uncover this behavior. (In the past Uber
| had gone all the way to use geofencing to evade reviewers
| and regulators.) Maybe this could've been only uncovered
| through long-term testing by reviewers who actively use
| the app day to day. Maybe they need such a process that
| does that.
|
| > Sounds like a success story, imagine the alternative
| scenario where there was no review process and Uber could
| get away with this entirely.
|
| It'd say 60-40. The 40% downside is that Apple deigned to
| go through with actually pulling Uber from the store,
| even just for a few days. Do you think they'd do anything
| even remotely similar over the notifications permission
| leak you cited?
|
| > How does having more granular alerts actually solve
| this issue?
|
| More restrictive and more transparent handling of
| permissions. Maybe this mechanism was caused by Uber
| bundling some sort of library that led to permissions
| leak. Perhaps the OS could expose that permission being
| triggered.
| nodamage wrote:
| > More restrictive and more transparent handling of
| permissions. Maybe this mechanism was caused by Uber
| bundling some sort of library that led to permissions
| leak. Perhaps the OS could expose that permission being
| triggered.
|
| I don't think you've thought this all the way through.
| Once a user grants me permission to send them push
| notifications because they want to know when their ride
| shows up, you can't really stop me from pushing them ads
| through the same channel.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Then it sounds like we have found ourselves a problem
| that is unsolvable both by OS-level protections and App
| Store review restrictions, and perhaps we should look
| beyond to other ways to rein in Uber.
|
| > Once a user grants me permission to send them push
| notifications because they want to know when their ride
| shows up, you can't really stop me from pushing them ads
| through the same channel.
|
| Wait, can't an improvement upon the OS be to make it more
| granular so that Uber is forced to establish separate
| permissions channels for rides (vital) vs. ads (not-so-
| vital), and that every time a notification of a certain
| type appears, the user is given the option to mute that
| channel entirely?
| nodamage wrote:
| Sure, you can offer me different notification channels
| for rides vs ads. But remember, I am an unscrupulous
| developer. How are you going to stop me from sending you
| ads through the rides channel?
|
| My underlying point, of course, is just because the
| operating system provides certain APIs, does not mean
| they are going to be used in good faith.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| What I mean is if a notification presents itself, allow
| the user to mute it. If that channel was intended for
| rides, then the unscrupulous developer simply disables
| their own app.
| onion2k wrote:
| _if you need to use a particular app, you can only get it
| from a third-party store that you don 't trust_
|
| This will be a problem but the solution is not to
| transfer your freedom to choose to Apple and just let
| them decide which third party apps you are allowed to
| use.
|
| In some cases that will mean making a hard choice between
| accepting the risk of using the third party app store, or
| accepting that you won't be able to use certain apps. The
| benefits are significant though - your device will
| actually be under your control. You will be able to do
| all the things Apple prevent now.
| s3r3nity wrote:
| > In some cases that will mean making a hard choice
| between accepting the risk of using the third party app
| store, or accepting that you won't be able to use certain
| apps.
|
| You already have that choice today: I can buy into the
| walled-garden, or go to Android and side-load to my
| heart's content.
|
| Clearly the market has chosen the preferred route. (I
| personally am also in the camp of preferring the simple,
| locked-down approach for my family that Apple has
| created.)
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Clearly the market has chosen the preferred route
|
| Indeed - iOS trails Android in Europe. With this law in
| effect, perhaps more Europeans will choose to buy iPhones
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > You already have that choice today: I can buy into the
| walled-garden, or go to Android and side-load to my
| heart's content.
|
| So if Google decided to force this policy onto Android
| phones, you would support the EU introducing this
| legislation to bring back the option of side-loading?
|
| Or would you want the legislation to only apply to
| Android phones, and not Apple devices?
| Tozen wrote:
| > ...the solution is not to transfer your freedom to
| choose to Apple and just let them decide...
|
| Very good point. It's almost like people believing it to
| be better for a "benevolent" dictator to make all
| decisions, so that they won't be bothered with having to
| make choices.
|
| Not every user wants to give over their freedom of choice
| to Apple, and many would prefer they can make decisions
| about what is best for their particular situation and
| based on their own preferences.
| _jal wrote:
| > This will be a problem but the solution is not to
| transfer your freedom to choose to Apple
|
| Will the solution involve a method to negotiate degrees-
| of-freedom? Or perhaps a freedom grant method with
| revocation protocol? Do I get a little widget to see how
| free I am at the moment?
|
| I'd love to see a laundry list of changes to industry
| practice, too. But the language employed for these
| compatibility fights is just getting goofy.
|
| The F150 cup holder is enslaving me, somebody pass a law
| quick!
| Krasnol wrote:
| > This however isn't a reason for the rest of the world
| to accept this.
|
| I guess most of "the rest of the world" will still be
| hindered by the price tag.
| bubblethink wrote:
| It's an extremely popular opinion. It's the tech grandma
| phenomenon. A lot of people in tech want to optimise for
| their grandmas. So whenever something like this is
| proposed, the standard response is, 'But what about my
| grandma ?'. It's a variation of the 'But what about the
| kids ?' argument.
| martimarkov wrote:
| But what about me? I'm the one who likes the fact I don't
| need to worry about malware on my phone and I open
| sensitive documents only on my phone without any anxiety
| that they might get leaked.
|
| I feel a lot of ppl in tech actually don't care about the
| end user and care only about the profit they can make
| while completely disrespecting my privacy. How about that
| being the phenomenon?
| quest88 wrote:
| Consider me a grandma. I work in tech but I'm also tired
| of it.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I'd don't think many argue against that. It is just
| something that you should be able to opt out off.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Nothing stops you of staying in the garden though. Just
| don't install anything Apple and you'd be golden.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| At first I thought you had missed a word or two ("don't
| install anything unapproved by Apple"?), but then I
| decided this was deliberate as you're making a reference
| to Adam and Eve.
| gostsamo wrote:
| well, it was honest mistake, but I like your
| interpretation
| throw10920 wrote:
| Now that there's a way out, however, you can be _forced_
| out if e.g. you have to install an app that isn 't
| available in the App Store because its developer saw an
| opportunity to roll their own.
|
| Not saying that the trade isn't worth it, just that,
| well, now that Pandora's box is open, it's coming to get
| you, even if you don't want it to.
| gostsamo wrote:
| This is situation with many conditionals:
|
| 1. Apple won't stay competitive for its major partners in
| the app store.
|
| 2. The app will be really important for you with no
| alternatives.
|
| 3. It will be both important and won't be up to your
| standards established by Apple.
|
| My suspicion is that if it provides really interesting
| functionality, it will have enough competition that you
| will be able to choose from.
|
| The major danger comes from scams targeting uneducated
| users, however, if Apple really wants to protect them, it
| will make everything possible to maintain their app store
| as a viable distribution channel.
| josephg wrote:
| I don't see how your walled garden is threatened by giving
| Melbourne Trams the ability to use the NFC chip in my phone
| to pay for rides. Or threatened by Amazon having the
| ability to add an in-app purchase button to their iPhone
| app which uses my saved Amazon payment options.
|
| I'm sure apple will fight this tooth and nail, but it's my
| phone. I paid for it. I want to be able to do what I want
| with my device.
| chrisfinazzo wrote:
| I'm not thrilled with their having to open up most of
| these areas, but it's doable. If the API's don't already
| exist (read: Private, for Apple's use only) they can be
| written - that's an item on the to-do list, but it's not
| crazy.
|
| However, the Apple Pay & NFC stuff just rubs me the wrong
| way. The only reason they have been begging for this is
| the ability to collect more data about riders, which
| isn't necessary and probably would get sold to third
| parties for the purpose of serving ads and other
| services.
|
| I want none of this and those firms can kindly fuck off
| right into the Sun.
|
| Existing API's do the basics just fine.
|
| Thank $deity the MTA didn't entertain any of this
| bullshit when they rolled out OMNY. Now if we could get
| NJTransit on board, we'd be all set.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| How does "pay for transit with NFC" work without the
| metro having access to the NFC hardware?
| chrisfinazzo wrote:
| I think the complaint was about being able to use NFC
| hardware outside of Apple Pay.
|
| See also, Aussie banks who wanted the same thing.
|
| How anyone would ever think this is a good idea, with
| third parties having unmediated access to hardware has
| not thought this through.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| The whole point of an NFC chip is to allow this sort of
| thing. I don't see how anyone can think it's a good idea
| to make Apple entitled to set arbitrary payment
| processing fees for all NFC payments on an Apple device.
| chrisfinazzo wrote:
| It's their platform. If you don't like it, there's the
| door.
|
| I'm not opposed to regulations, but the EU should be
| careful not to be too permissive or specific, keeping in
| mind the limitations of doing either one.
|
| See also: the EU directive about mandating USB-C ports.
| They claim the standard will be revised in response to
| market conditions on the ground, which is nice to hear,
| but governments are slow - often by design - and they
| will need to prove it before they can be trusted not to
| screw up.
| josephg wrote:
| My phone is nobody's platform. It's my phone. I paid for
| it. I demand the right to use someone else's software on
| my device if that suits me better.
|
| It's not like apple subsidises the devices with income
| from the App Store fees. They're just double dipping, and
| I'm glad the EU is slapping that down.
| chrisfinazzo wrote:
| Again, it's not a huge leap to imagine someone (in this
| case, banks or transit authorities) using that unfiltered
| access to do something gross, like giving your data to an
| entity you've never heard of.
|
| Using the official API prevents most of this misbehavior,
| which is why it doesn't bother me if Apple are jerks
| about enforcing compliance.
|
| If you, or an app you use, feel like access is necessary,
| make your case to them. Repeatedly if neccessary.
| Software is nothing if not malleable and most of these
| areas are slowly opening up, as the company seems to have
| read the room on a few things and would like to get ahead
| before the law requires they do so.
|
| On the other hand, _especially_ with hardware that could
| conceivably track your location, I 'm surprised that
| users - the knowledgable ones anyway at least - aren't up
| in arms about what access to raw data (e.g, not mediated
| by an API) by someone other than the platform vendor
| might mean for them.
|
| I don't think it's necessary to pull an EFF move and
| demand everything be private, but this is one area that I
| suspect would meet the standard where people want the bar
| to be _much_ higher about who gets access to data and
| what they are allowed to use it for.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| In Chicago you can put your metro card in your apple
| wallet and it'll automatically use it on the public
| transit system even if you have a different default set.
| Not sure if apple is charging them fees or what, but it
| works pretty well for me.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I'd welcome a return to transit tokens. They were simple
| and easy to use, and could be easily shared with guests
| visiting town. And they couldn't be used to track
| anybody.
| robertoandred wrote:
| Why can't Melbourne Trams use the standard contactless
| payments that everyone else already uses?
| piker wrote:
| Because it requires the devotion of Apple's resources to
| supporting non-Apple things. It will necessarily degrade
| certain experiences away from those that Apple would
| provide without the regulation.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| [deleted]
| piker wrote:
| I'm a hedge fund lawyer that carries an iPhone 8 and a
| ThinkPad.
| carapace wrote:
| Apple has a bajillion dollars and cheats their own
| engineers.
|
| > Apple is the world's largest technology company by
| revenue, the world's largest technology company by total
| assets,[454] and the world's second-largest mobile phone
| manufacturer after Samsung.[455][456]
|
| > In its fiscal year ending in September 2011, Apple Inc.
| reported a total of $108 billion in annual revenues--a
| significant increase from its 2010 revenues of $65
| billion--and nearly $82 billion in cash reserves.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.#Finance
|
| And then...
|
| > In re: High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation (U.S.
| District Court, Northern District of California
| 11-cv-2509 [10]) is a class-action lawsuit on behalf of
| over 64,000 employees of Adobe, Apple Inc., Google,
| Intel, Intuit, Pixar and Lucasfilm (the last two are
| subsidiaries of Disney) against their employer alleging
| that their wages were repressed due to alleged agreements
| between their employers not to hire employees from their
| competitors.[11][12] The case was filed on May 4, 2011 by
| a former software engineer at Lucasfilm and alleges
| violations of California's antitrust statute, Business
| and Professions Code sections 16720 et seq. (the
| "Cartwright Act"); Business and Professions Code section
| 16600; and California's unfair competition law, Business
| and Professions Code sections 17200, et seq. Focusing on
| the network of connections around former Apple CEO Steve
| Jobs, the Complaint alleges "an interconnected web of
| express agreements, each with the active involvement and
| participation of a company under the control of Steve
| Jobs...and/or a company that shared at least one member
| of Apple's board of directors." The alleged intent of
| this conspiracy was "to reduce employee compensation and
| mobility through eliminating competition for skilled
| labor."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
| webmobdev wrote:
| I kinda get your point that Apple will have to devote
| some more resources, but it will only be slightly more:
| All the API are already there and being used by Apple
| apps privately and they just have to make it open to
| everyone. That's not really a huge overhead for someone
| of Apple's size - they'll just need to publish / update
| documentation and increase their developer support teams
| and that doesn't cost 10's of millions of dollars (which
| is again peanuts for Apple).
| KerrAvon wrote:
| This is really not how it works. Private APIs are usually
| poorly designed for general use -- safeguards for excess
| power consumption, etc, often don't exist.
|
| Many things will need to be rewritten; this legislation
| will result in significant delays in shipping new end-
| user features, if Apple doesn't simply pull out of the
| EU, since the EU is demonstrating with this legislation
| that they don't care about end-user privacy/security.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I see the downvotes, folks; understand that your
| ignorance doesn't change the facts. This will have an
| extremely high cost to Apple if it's implemented.
| webmobdev wrote:
| > _This will have an extremely high cost to Apple if it's
| implemented._
|
| Come on, do you really expect us to be sympathetic to a
| trillion dollar company if its profit margin reduces?
| (Which any way may not happen - realistically, they'll
| just pass on the cost to us consumers).
| hoffs wrote:
| How? If someone installs different app store and it
| breaks, they just don't handle the requests regarding 3rd
| party apps, just like now. What extra resources you're
| talking about
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| >Because it requires the devotion of Apple's resources to
| supporting non-Apple things.
|
| Oh no, one of the richest companies on the planet might
| have to spend a _tiny_ bit more on making things better
| for _everyone_.
|
| The absolute horror!
| pb7 wrote:
| It will be worse for me, a long time customer, at the
| benefit of you, possibly not even a customer?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| We live in a society. People who don't do business with a
| company nevertheless get a say in how that company does
| business.
| [deleted]
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| > It will be worse for me, a long time customer, at the
| benefit of you, possibly not even a customer?
|
| It wouldn't necessarily make things worse for you though.
| pb7 wrote:
| By the time we'll find out it will be too late. I'm not
| interested in finding out.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Or, looking at it another way, it will not cause Apple's
| loyal customers to switch to a competitor, but it might
| attract potential new customers.
| pb7 wrote:
| Why do there need to be new customers? If you didn't like
| the product before, you can look elsewhere (or look
| within). Seems pretty messed up to ruin the experience
| for those who have been enjoying the products as is for
| years.
| josephg wrote:
| How would opening up the API and payment system ruin the
| product? I want to buy audible books from the audible app
| on my phone but I can't do that. I want to subscribe to
| Netflix from my phone but I can't.
|
| Opening this stuff up would make my phone better, not
| worse.
| piker wrote:
| Ah, yes, if only Apple Computer could have borrowed the
| wisdom of the famously prescient and tech literate
| European Union, it might have seen its way to these
| changes and new customers alone.
| piva00 wrote:
| It will be better for me, a long time customer, what now?
| arghwhat wrote:
| Well, as an average iPhone user, no. The reliability is
| mediocre.
|
| Keyboard crashing, UI glitching and having wrong
| dimensions/inoperable sections, occasionally deciding that
| minimum brightness is the only allowed value and being
| entirely unresponsive to the brightness slider, some days
| using waaaay more battery with no battery accounting,
| sometimes requiring a reboot to use a Qi charger,
| occasionally freezing and dropping me back to the home
| screen after what I assume is a crash, sometimes requiring
| hard reboots as the UI is entirely locked up and doesn't
| even want to soft crash, ...
|
| I can keep going. And yes, it's a new model that no it's
| not full of crap and apps. It sees light usage outside
| reading news sites.
|
| The "apple is more reliable" thing is a myth. I _feel_ that
| it used to be the case, but I haven 't felt like that for a
| decade.
|
| And no, having anecdotal _good_ experiences is not very
| useful. I also have those, and so do users of every other
| platform. Reliability is about the bad experiences, and
| just works " implies none or at least very few bad
| experiences.
| pdimitar wrote:
| I hope you recognize that your experiences are anecdotal
| as well.
|
| None of what you mentioned I even heard of, let alone
| experienced. Yet you come here and seem to be claiming
| that your anecdotal evidence weighs heavier than the
| anecdotal evidence of others. Weird.
|
| It's a shame that you drew the short straw but maybe it's
| something in your setup, home network, mobile coverage or
| whatnot.
|
| If we're going to exchange anecdotes, I can write at
| least 20 short horror stories of all 13 Android devices I
| owned over the course of 6 years, belonging to 5
| different brands. They had systemic and repeatable /
| reproducible issues which I eventually concluded their
| custodians weren't interested in fixing.
|
| I can keep going as well. None of what you said is actual
| evidence.
| Joeri wrote:
| UI glitching and being stuck at minimum brightness is
| sometimes a sign of overheating or battery problems, and
| the OS applying draconic power management to compensate.
| Unusually high battery drain and overheating is something
| I once had because of a bad sim card, but YMMV. It is
| definitely not normal to see these problems on an iphone.
| I would take it in for service.
| rizza wrote:
| This sounds like you have a hardware or software issue on
| your phone. make a backup (if you aren't using icloud
| backups already) and then make a genius bar appt. and see
| if they can fix this. I have never seen that level of
| glitchy-ness on an iphone without there being a serious
| issue. either on my own phones or during nearing a decade
| in IT.
| arghwhat wrote:
| Yes, I have a hardware and a software issue: the root
| cause is that it's an iPhone running iOS as normal.
|
| This isn't a hardware defect or a broken install. It's
| just mediocre software, nothing more. This isn't even
| _that_ glitchy. All those things don 't usually happen at
| once, although they are recurring - including for friends
| on different device generations, ruling out unlucky
| hardware and moon rays.
| juve1996 wrote:
| Man, software occasionally erroring out.
|
| That eliminates...nearly all software ever created. Good
| luck out there
| motoxpro wrote:
| I agree with parent. You phone is broken, my friend. In
| the years I've been using iOS, these have happened to me
| less than a handful of times. Definitely not something I
| would ever remember if not prompted.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Take it to an Apple Store and have it replaced.
| Seriously, that isn't a normal experience.
| [deleted]
| somethoughts wrote:
| If I were Apple - the way I would have gone about it was to
| sell an open developer phone that supported changing the
| defaults, etc.
|
| That way when the inevitable "Apple has been hacked and is
| no better than Android" media driven hit pieces come out -
| Apple can highlight that this is happening on the open
| developer phone meant for the fringe consumers, not the
| safe walled garden that most of us normal, non bleeding
| edge consumers have in our pocket.
|
| And us folks who just want a phone that works can sigh in
| relief versus having to read a 1000 word article only to
| find its because some guy went through several hoops to
| install some obvious malware.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Really, Apple could have headed off regulators at the
| pass if they had embraced the (semi-)opening of their
| platform themselves. Allow third party app stores but on
| _their own terms_ , providing SDKs and APIs for creating
| your own iOS App Store with security checks baked in and
| mandating privacy protections built in. Sort of like a
| software services equivalent to Apple Authorized Service
| Providers and Apple Authorized Resellers.
|
| They would have then controlled this debate, and there
| would have been less room for the Epics of the world to
| complain about the platform being locked down. Not to
| mention users would benefit from greater choice. Imagine
| boutique third party app stores springing up devoted to
| specific interests and niches such as F-Droid, or
| promising better curation or quality.
|
| Companies who refuse to use the AppStoreKit that Apple so
| beneficently provided would then be seen as malefactors
| seeking to subject their users to lack of privacy and
| security, rather than Apple trying to uphold their 30%
| cut and restrictive behavior.
|
| Instead, Apple tried to control everything and not only
| did they expose themselves to regulation like this, they
| deal with customers annoyed at scammy apps on their own
| App Store, and third party devs crying foul at
| inconsistent policing.
| cronix wrote:
| And what in the new law would prevent them from continuing
| to make the same "reliable without surprises" iPhone
| experience you seemingly enjoy? I don't see anything that
| prevents them from saying "We can only guarantee an Apple-
| level experience by using apps vetted by Apple and download
| directly from the official Apple App Store." Most companies
| that I'm aware of don't have to warranty issues arising
| from after market/3rd party accessories. I mean, is Apple
| responsible if I download software from x company on my mac
| from x company's website? Why isn't the laptop ecosystem
| "all messed up" if you can install anything from anywhere
| on your macbook and use any payment processor? The only
| thing this really would do to upset Apple is taking away
| some of their walled-garden revenue, like processing fees.
| I'm not sure why a watch or phone or tablet needs to be
| treated opposite of other traditional computing devices.
| Just because it's a different form factor?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Possibly. The other possibility is it will make it impossible
| to buy an iPhone in Europe.
|
| It certainly puts a huge incentive on Apple to figure out
| technical solutions to problems like "How do we get other
| browser engines on this thing without compromising a hundred OS
| assumptions, battery performance, or user security," but it's
| also possible Apple decides that's a no-go and it'll cost more
| than 25% of annual revenue to comply, at which point the
| winning market strategy is opt-out. That's fine; win-win for
| the EU market because it clears the playing field for a
| European-originated competitor to the iPhone.
|
| _ETA_ I forgot the third possibility: Apple decides it will
| cost more than 10% (and later 20%) of revenue to comply, but
| the 5% bump in value is still worth it and they write off non-
| compliance as a tax to do business in Europe. Then if the EU
| tries to impose structural or behavioral changes, we 're back
| to square one on the question of whether those changes cost
| more than (now) 5% of Apple's revenue.
| igorkraw wrote:
| Last I checked the EU was still the largest single market
| block in the world. Maybe that changed since then, but I
| don't think Apple will simply cede that to a competitor -
| especially since it would go heavily against their "we care
| about users" narrative.
| ben_w wrote:
| I think that depends what you mean by "biggest", as the US
| is richer and both India and China have more people. I
| think Apple sales in China and the EU are about equal, and
| that US are significantly higher, but my info may be out of
| date and was merely a summary in any case.
|
| But I would agree, they're not likely to just give up on
| the market. Even ignoring the likelihood of similar laws
| everywhere else, it's too big and too tempting.
| antonymy wrote:
| EU's a very large, very wealthy market, but not the biggest
| for Apple. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
| share/mobile/europe Android owns more than 60% of the EU
| market. Even so, writing off the EU would be further knee-
| capping Apple's global market share, and would for certain
| constitute a more than 10% drop in revenue, and not just
| for this year, for all years going forward until they find
| a way back into it. So no I don't think Apple's going
| anywhere.
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| > Possibly. The other possibility is it will make it
| impossible to buy an iPhone in Europe.
|
| I doubt Apple will be willing to forego sales in the world's
| third largest economy, tbh.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's not about absolute value; it's about relative value.
| if not making the change costs them the whole market (about
| 25% of their revenue) and making the change adds 30% to
| engineering overhead or adds 30% costs due to secondary
| effects (such as market-share loss to Android because
| Apple's performance moat suffers), it might not be worth
| it.
|
| To be clear: I think this is the right kind of hardball for
| EU to play. The stakes are high, but most outcomes are a
| net win for the EU. It seems like strategically good law.
| refurb wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| If 30% of your business wants a change that means a 40%
| drop to all your business the smart move is to drop the
| customer that is 30%.
| tzs wrote:
| > It certainly puts a huge incentive on Apple to figure out
| technical solutions to problems like "How do we get other
| browser engines on this thing without compromising a hundred
| OS assumptions, battery performance, or user security,"
|
| Virtualization? Run a hypervisor on the phone that allows
| running multiple virtual smartphones. Apple can provide two
| virtual smartphone environments, one that works like the
| current native iOS, and one that provides a basic smartphone
| that is wide open and on which you can install anything you
| want (maybe based on Android?). Make this second one open
| source so it can be a basis third parties can use to develop
| more virtual smartphones for iPhone hardware.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > That's fine; win-win for the EU market because it clears
| the playing field for a European-originated competitor to the
| iPhone.
|
| I think that's what the EU is hoping for. Their technology
| industry completely failed in this space, so for them it
| makes perfect sense to simply drive competitors out of the
| market entirely. Worst case for them is that the
| international competitors actually comply.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| I think six months is a pretty unreasonable time frame for
| Apple. While the security concerns around this sort of thing
| are often overblown, Apple will need to rework their security
| model for the iPhone. If there is an API surface between the OS
| and the App Store, they may need to rework it since it's not
| been designed with third party stores in mind.
| metadat wrote:
| What timeline do you think the Gatekeepeers would prefer? Is
| it a reasonable goal to let BigTech drag it's feet making
| these changes they didn't want to do on their own accord in
| the first place?
|
| Amazing things are possible when the incentive is right.
| Given their VAST resources, it's only a matter of focus.
| jerryzh wrote:
| to be fair they have been warned for years
| withinboredom wrote:
| The writing has been on the wall for years. Sounds like a
| problem of their own creation.
| zo1 wrote:
| I think they assumed, like the rest of us to a degree, that
| "it will never happen". If this kind of "ffs, just effing
| solve it with a law already" kind of law comes through, I'm
| seriously considering moving to an EU country.
| bzxcvbn wrote:
| There is no "if this comes through". The law was adopted,
| all that's left is a formal step (getting the law signed)
| and then a standard waiting period (six months to allow
| companies to adapt).
| wmf wrote:
| GDPR came out years ago and almost no one is compliant
| today.
| bzxcvbn wrote:
| Where are you getting your data from?
| drawfloat wrote:
| The noises out of government have been that this will
| happen for a few years now, at least from the perspective
| of an EU citizen. They should have been preparing.
| withinboredom wrote:
| That's why I moved here five years ago from the US. It's
| actually pretty easy, depending on where you go.
| cmckn wrote:
| It's hilariously unreasonable. One example:
|
| > Make core messaging functionality interoperable. They lay
| out concrete examples like file transfer
|
| Google, Apple, and Amazon are supposed to design, ratify,
| implement and ship a universal messaging standard in 6
| months? This won't happen even if they skip the first two
| steps and use an existing standard.
|
| Apple ships a new iOS version in September, when this timer
| is supposed to start. Are they supposed to upend their entire
| release cycle and ship these major changes to their OS by
| March?
|
| I've used iPhones for years, and I'm totally down with these
| bullet points. But I think we can all chuckle at the
| timeline, given the scope of this.
| yardstick wrote:
| > Google, Apple, and Amazon are supposed to design, ratify,
| implement and ship a universal messaging standard in 6
| months?
|
| If they all agree that email or sms is the common messaging
| standard, is that problem solved?
| parasense wrote:
| > Fines are up to 10% of global revenue for the first offense,
| and 20% for repeat offenses.
|
| For Alphabet (Google) the revenue distribution from 2015 to
| 2021 was approximately 33% for all of Europe, Middle-east, and
| Africa. It's unclear to me the actual European numbers since
| they are combined EMEA.
|
| For Apple in 2021 the revenue was approximately 23% for Europe
| (no middle-east or Africa).
|
| For Facebook in 2021 the revenue was also approximately 23% for
| Europe (no middle-east or Africa).
|
| So it's safe to say that a first offense would potential halve
| the revenue for the region, and a second offense would remove
| the financial rationale of doing business in the region.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| What would the money even be used for? Why does the
| government have to profit from enforcing this.
|
| I'd be fine if we take the money and burn it but it's not
| gonna be that is it it's gonna be we take the money and
| funnel it into organizations that politicians children happen
| to be on the boards of.
| randomhodler84 wrote:
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| I understand the negative responses to your comment as I
| prefer the freedom to run whatever I want on my
| computers/devices, but I'd like to mention that I do see your
| point because we do not live in isolation:
|
| If a friend or relative wants a phone, for now I can
| recommend them an iPhone and be free of the drama that would
| ensue if (when!) they installed any of those sketchy things
| you mention, which not only would for instance spy on their
| messages, but also get anything I send them in addition to my
| contact data. And then I'll have to do technical support to
| mitigate the consequences.
|
| Other situation when this freedom will be a problem would be
| peer/boss pressure to install some crap that they like to use
| for messaging for instance.
|
| Unfortunately, others installing garbage in their
| computers/devices affects me too. That's a social problem,
| and there is no simple solution for it.
|
| I'd still choose freedom.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| Then just keep using the Apple store and Apple pay.
| ben_w wrote:
| That's great until someone has an app I need and chooses to
| only make it available on a different store.
|
| I'm not legally trained, so I _hope_ they 've thought of
| this and also have rules for these 3rd party app stores.
| vesinisa wrote:
| Well if the app is on a different store you wouldn't be
| able to currently install it all, right? So you have only
| expanded your options and it's up to you if you choose to
| exercise them or not.
| [deleted]
| ratww wrote:
| Well, the app might be currently available in the
| AppStore but would now be able to move to an AltStore.
| Plenty of apps I bought in the past have been pulled from
| macOS AppStore but are available on websites.
|
| In the past I even had banks and even the public sector
| offices abusing Windows and macOS security and forcing me
| to install the equivalent of a rootkit in my computer.
| Without a sufficiently smart sandbox I bet this problem
| will come back.
|
| On the other hand, that doesn't seem to have happened on
| Android, at least not in a wide scale.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| That's similar to the situation with Android and iOS
| right now. In principle, there could be an app you need
| but can't use because it's only on Android and you have
| an iPhone.
|
| If you like the App Store and want to continue using it,
| you'll be fine unless it becomes less popular and loses
| some important apps. That could happen but seems unlikely
| in the near term.
| ben_w wrote:
| Mm, kinda. The following hypothetical feels fairly likely
| within 12 months of 3rd party app stores being
| mainstream:
|
| (1) App deals with sensitive or linenced content --
| doesn't matter what, DRM, medical info, private chat,
| take your pick.
|
| (2) App integrates 3rd party library to look for other
| apps that might be trying to steal your data and/or
| record the DRMed stream you're playing. This 3rd party
| library injects itself at the lowest level possible in
| order to catch anything injecting itself even lower.
|
| (3) Bug in library (or supply chain attack in the app as
| a whole) means the phone is now less secure than if the
| app had not been installed.
|
| The difference from the status quo is, the iOS app store
| won't let apps root the phone. (IDK if the Android store
| prevents or allows that).
|
| (I know games aren't "must have" apps, but this has
| already happened with anti-cheat rootkits. And "has this
| phone been rooted" software already gets used, but
| doesn't yet need to preemptively root the phone itself,
| at least not so far as I've seen).
| iainmerrick wrote:
| You're envisaging something like a medical or banking app
| that is intentionally not on the App Store, but instead
| requires you to use some other installer?
|
| I guess that's possible, but seems a bit unlikely -- it's
| just a pretty big barrier to entry for your users.
|
| Android technically allows this already, but how many
| major apps are not on the Play Store? (Apart from Samsung
| apps, which is slightly different case as their store is
| preloaded when you buy the phone. But there won't be a
| Samsung iOS phone any time soon.)
| ben_w wrote:
| I think it's likely enough I expect to see it not just
| happening but also going wrong within 12 months of this
| change taking effect, assuming 3rd party app stores are
| not also regulated to actively prevent that (which they
| may well be). There is also this anecdote of basically
| this problem happening on desktops:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32166035
| Kelteseth wrote:
| > That's great until someone has an app I need and
| chooses to only make it available on a different store.
|
| Fair point. The company I work for would 100% now require
| you to do that If you want to use our software, to make
| it easier to comply with Qt LGPLv3.
|
| > I'm not legally trained, so I hope they've thought of
| this and also have rules for these 3rd party app stores.
|
| Isn't the idea here that you do not need an app store to
| require external software?
| nathias wrote:
| just use the deault one?
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| * User any browser and browser engine and choose to make it
| default
|
| You already can on e.g. iOS but you get a _slow_
| implementation if you use your own engine. Does this account
| for that?
| simiones wrote:
| No you can't. iOS doesn't allow apps that compile or
| interpret code at runtime.
| Zealotux wrote:
| Can confirm this, I once installed a package on my Linux
| machine that wasn't approved by a multi-billion dollar
| company, my computer exploded.
| bena wrote:
| Browser toolbars. It's just going to be browser toolbars
| all over again.
|
| Sure, _you_ may not install them. _You_ may be perfectly
| meticulous with what you install on your devices. But not
| everyone is.
| izacus wrote:
| A small cost to pay for a proper free market with
| competition. It's critical for success of our capitalism
| that free market competition exists.
| skywal_l wrote:
| But you still can stick to apple walled garden if you want
| to. I am not sure what you are complaining about.
| PeterisP wrote:
| > Buy another phone if you wanna mess about.
|
| Exactly, I should be able to buy another iPhone and mess
| about on it.
| iamnotarobotman wrote:
| > Install any malware. Install any Trojanized App Store full
| of warez and viruses. Use an unsupported browser full of RCE
| vulns. Use sketchy payment system that steals you card. Use a
| spyware voice assistant.
|
| Correct. Malware and trojans, everywhere will be unleashed on
| the average user and will make the crypto wallet an obvious
| target for scammers and criminals to take payment with and
| steal the users crypto.
|
| Wallets will be drained via modified, cracked apps or hack
| tools connecting to dodgy smart contracts, and payment
| providers will be using anonymous cryptocurrencies like
| Zcash, monero, mobilecoin (used in signal messenger) etc.
|
| I can only see nothing but the same security issues on the
| desktop, but now made worse on phones enabling side-loading
| or alternative app stores.
| vesinisa wrote:
| Lots of the Apple walled garden stuff is certainly not about
| security but about artificially limiting competition. And I
| am sure you can continue to use e.g. Apple Safari browser.
| But people who _want_ to use the device they already paid for
| to its full capability without artificial after-market
| limitations should be able to do so.
| simiones wrote:
| > Use a spyware voice assistant.
|
| You already have Siri for that. All voice assistants are
| spyware.
| Semaphor wrote:
| > All voice assistants are spyware.
|
| If anything, only cloud void assistants.
| simiones wrote:
| Yes, I was thinking of Siri, Alexa, Cortana, Google
| Voice, Bixby - the mainstream ones.
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| You can do all of this on MacOS and most (nearly all?) people
| still manage to stay safe.
| pdpi wrote:
| > Use an unsupported browser full of RCE vulns
|
| While I sympathise with your overall sentiment, I have no
| reason to believe Firefox or Chrome would have any more RCE
| vulns than Safari does, and their respective engines not
| being deeply integrated with the OS potentially means one
| less vector for a hypothetical RCE to escalate privileges.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| It is not the big names like firefox or chrome. It's those
| cute colorful browser that bundles some outdated engine.
| alaric410 wrote:
| The concept of "ecosystem" is anti-consumer and anti-
| progress. Ecosystems exist to protect monopolies like Apple
| from competition.
|
| Also if Apple is so secure, why is there a celebrity iCloud
| hack almost every other day?
| bloppe wrote:
| Even if you choose to stick to only Apple's in-house
| services, you'll benefit from this regulation. Apple will be
| forced to compete on a level playing field with challengers,
| which will force them to lower their App Store fees to a
| reasonable level.
|
| The only people who should be concerned are those over-
| exposed to Apple stock, but they're not getting any sympathy
| from me.
| la64710 wrote:
| - require the most important software (e.g. web browsers) to be
| installed by default when installing an operating system
|
| How is chromebook going to exist without a chrome browser?
| Sometimes I wonder if the people making the laws have any
| knowledge of the technology landscape?
| rpadovani wrote:
| Why is a Chrome browser specifically required?
|
| Let's have a popup that asks which browser you want to use. I
| am certain that Google is more than capable to create
| websites that work with any browser.
| la64710 wrote:
| I am sure the ChromeOS user interface is the Chrome browser
| and the integration is at a much deeper level than just a
| pretty window or pop up. Integrating all other browsers at
| that level to the ChromeOS will be either extremely
| difficult or impossible IMHO.
| 14 wrote:
| This sounds awesome to me and some really good changes. We have
| these powerful devices and they are just shit in terms of what we
| are allowed to do. We live in the future and it has been ruined
| by corporations. Why can't I play a YouTube video in safari and
| then open my snap and have a call with my son while listening to
| my song and have both of us enjoy that same song. That is just
| one example of I am sure hundreds of cool features that have been
| blocked by devices. I hope these new rules show that we deserve
| better devices and that no we are no where near peak technology.
| giantrobot wrote:
| This should have been named the Law of Unintended Consequences.
|
| In the most abstract, opening up mobile and messaging platforms
| is a Good Thing. Unfortunately it is going to cause a mass of
| real world problems and will have significant negative
| consequences.
|
| Requiring alternate App Stores will mean Facebook, Epic
| (Tencent), TikTok, and Scams R Us will all set up their own app
| stores. Their apps will slowly move to those stores where there
| are zero restrictions on the collection of personal data. Even if
| the OS requires user permission to access personal data people
| are just going to smash that accept button like they've been
| conditioned to do with GDPR dialogs.
|
| Forcing alternate browser engines will just see Google use its
| enormous influence on the web to coerce everyone into using
| Chrome. The current "web standards" are ridiculously complicated.
| Google's "standards" are also privacy nightmares as they're
| perfect for fingerprinting. Web standards have gotten so complex
| _Microsoft_ threw in the towel and just uses Blink. This
| legislation is just going to accelerate a Blink (and thus) Google
| monoculture on the web. If Microsoft can 't maintain a viable
| browser engine against the complexity of web standards, driven
| primarily by Google, there's no hope for a plucky upstart to come
| along with a new browser engine. I guess learn to enjoy
| WebIrisScanner and WebAttention APIs when they're rolled out to
| help Google's ad business.
|
| Messaging interoperability is going to be a clusterfuck.
| Messaging protocols and back ends are complex. The law doesn't
| seem to specify what messaging interoperability means at an
| implementation level. It's going to impose a huge cost on all
| messaging platforms to carry (and spool for delivery) traffic
| from third parties. While obviously the EU wants to impose cost
| on US companies, EU mobile carriers will end up subject to these
| laws and need to spend money supporting Facebook and iMessage
| traffic.
|
| If history teaches us anything about sweeping technological
| regulation it's that we're not pessimistic enough about
| unintended consequences.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I really think that setting up an alternative app store is more
| difficult than one can imagine:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31991394
|
| Out of the ones you've listed, I think Epic has the highest
| likelihood to do it, not just because they were the only one to
| take substantiative legal action to try to force it, but
| because theirs is a platform that might actually offer
| compelling content that would give users a good reason to
| switch. (Though then again, plenty of iOS games will remain
| with the Apple Arcade, and I'm not sure what killer apps Epic
| has beyond Fortnite.)
|
| If Facebook or TikTok moves their apps to a new app store
| without offering an additional app library of new content,
| users are going to be irate and it could end up backfiring on
| them. I think TikTok would stand a greater chance of doing that
| given that ByteDance is a Chinese company subject to that
| nation's regulations and policies, but I don't see attempts at
| a Meta, Google/Alphabet, or Amazon app store succeeding for
| long. App stores are hard, and even harder when your competitor
| owns the platform- I'm sure Apple can still exercise leverage
| over iOS beyond the App Store.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Facebook took a huge revenue hit when Apple started enforcing
| permissions on app spying. I see them definitely creating a
| "Metaverse" App Store filled with their spyware. They have
| the leverage to push users to their store between Facebook,
| Instagram, and WhatsApp. Don't forget Facebook used to be a
| huge games platform for Flash games.
|
| Running an App Store is hard but companies like Facebook and
| ByteDance already run the sort of infrastructure needed.
| Since Apple can no longer enforce exclusivity with their
| store, Facebook et al have the incentive to create stores
| accessed from both Android and iOS. Before this law they'd
| only be able to target the lower revenue Android users while
| having to live with Apple's restrictions. Now they can make
| one Facebook (or ByteDance) store able to target higher
| revenue iOS users where they distribute their first party
| apps in addition to third party ones. You can be sure they
| would have no restrictions on data collection. The wording of
| the DMA also seems like it would be difficult for Apple to
| stymie their data collection at the OS level.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > I see them definitely creating a "Metaverse" App Store
| filled with their spyware.
|
| They could do that from a _technical /engineering_ level,
| but I question their _product /business_ capability to woo
| users to such a store. Meta is an old tech dinosaur at this
| point, and their Metaverse initiatives have yet to bear any
| fruit. Users at this point are all juggling nearly a dozen
| of social media, email, e-commerce, streaming
| entertainment, and so on accounts. Dealing with another
| Meta App Store account to manage is going to be inherently
| a source of friction _unless_ Meta presents a lot of
| compelling new content to win them over, which I completely
| question their product ability to execute on.
|
| > They have the leverage to push users to their store
| between Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
|
| Right- I understand that taking their existing offerings
| and moving it to their store is a way to artificially boost
| demand. But it will come with blowback. Users will be
| annoyed at dealing with another account, most will see it
| as a transparent attempt to steal their data, and a non-
| zero amount will not bother to migrate. They'll try to use
| mobile web or stick to only desktop for some apps. Facebook
| DAU has dropped in a prior quarter, their continued level
| of usage is not guaranteed; perhaps Meta will soon find
| more users than they expected can live without their
| product.
|
| And if something as crucial as WhatsApp is moved off of its
| currently largest platform- the App Store- into a scammy
| Meta App Store exclusively, well I doubt the regulators
| will sit still for that either. Not only does it also seem
| like a monopolistic move, that also subjects such a store
| to scrutiny as well. Regulators aren't happy at big tech
| for user data tracking. It's another issue they're
| pursuing, and the idea that they'll let a Meta or Google
| third party app store off scot-free for doing so is pretty
| unrealistic.
|
| > Running an App Store is hard but companies like Facebook
| and ByteDance already run the sort of infrastructure
| needed.
|
| I mean from a business perspective, not purely technical. I
| remember how Microsoft desperately tried to get third party
| developers for the Windows Phone store, and the steady
| demise of Facebook Apps as a platform. (Not to mention how
| their one prior mobile play, Facebook Home for Android, was
| a complete bust.) It's hard to chase after both third party
| devs and consumers, even if they offer lower margins than
| 30%. Most app devs will almost certainly keep their apps
| listed on the App Store and on the Play Store, because
| that's where the overwhelming majority users will be.
|
| > The wording of the DMA also seems like it would be
| difficult for Apple to stymie their data collection at the
| OS level.
|
| We'll see how it goes. I believe regulators can chew gum
| and walk at the same time. App Store monopolies aren't the
| only issue that's on their minds right now. Even Google
| itself is changing Play Store tracking policies:
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/16/google-plans-android-
| privacy...
| IshKebab wrote:
| This goes way further than I think anyone ever expected.
| Hopefully it works out well but some of these seem quite
| impractical. E.g. I'm curious if they're really going to
| implement end-to-end encrypted video calls between iMessage and
| Whatsapp users. Yes this is really required! Possibly even group
| video calls but the wording for that makes no sense so who knows.
| They have 4 years to implement it.
|
| I feel like they could have gone a lot further to ban tivoising /
| locking devices too.
| switch007 wrote:
| Hopefully this goes better than GDPR. The only outcome I've seen
| is all my friends and family clicking "I accept" to explicitly
| allow tracking.
|
| Remember how we were praising GDPR and the level of fines etc...
| dane-pgp wrote:
| If sites actually obeyed the GDPR (i.e. if national governments
| actually devoted enough resources to enforcing it) then all
| those banners would have a "Reject" button that is just as
| clickable as the "Accept" one.
|
| Hopefully your friends and family haven't become so trained to
| look for the word "accept" that they will be unable to find the
| correct button when companies finally start complying. Or
| better yet, companies will realise that 99% of users click
| reject, and the tracking data provided by the remaining 1% is
| not valuable enough to annoy the 99% for.
| tnzk wrote:
| > After being signed by the President of the European Parliament
| and the President of the Council, it will be published in the
| Official Journal of the European Union and will start to apply
| six months later.
|
| So will start by next mid-Jan? I thought this would take a years
| or two to materialize.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| Adoption will occur in September, so my reading is that
| Gatekeepers need to comply by March 2023.
| exabrial wrote:
| These regulations are precisely targeted to harm these
| monopolies, but ultimately they will also harm the small players
| trying to get into the market because of the huge compliance
| risk. So it is a double edged sword as we've seen this play out
| before.
|
| The solution is to prevent monopolies forming in the first place
| and break them up quickly. And God sakes, stop approving mega
| mergers (facebook and Instagram? Lol. Google and YouTube? Double
| lol)
|
| Despite this, I'm happy to see some action, but I'd rather set
| direct action against breaking them up.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| >they will also harm the small players trying to get into the
| market because of the huge compliance risk.
|
| You will be pleased to hear that the legislation has a floor
| defined for "Gatekeepers" as only those with a fair market
| valuation over EUR75 billion.
| exabrial wrote:
| Didn't notice that. Thanks for pointing that out. I can't
| recall a recent piece of regulation that had that provision
| so this will be interesting to see if it works in reality.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| It is arguably unprecedented, so I am also very interested
| to see how this plays out.
| Vespasian wrote:
| You will be extra pleased to learn that the DMA (this law)
| or it's cousin the DSA also has rules to restrict the
| formation of monopoly by limiting the ability of
| gatekeepers to buy out all competition even before the
| market dominance is established.
|
| (As a side effect it'll probably result in fewer companies
| with unsustainable business models which are only funded to
| be bought out)
|
| I'm looking forward to it and hope it'll work out.
| joshsyn wrote:
| Good to hear. Still too much complexity around laws and
| regulations, its easier to live in a cave.
| ilaksh wrote:
| What's the plan for enforcing it? Did the United States sign off
| on it?
|
| In my opinion they need the US buy-in, and there actually need to
| be criminal penalties enforced against top executives (jail time)
| and the other executives need to see it happen. Unless they do
| that stuff it seems like they may really try to ignore and delay
| and do the absolute minimum effort.
| Vespasian wrote:
| If it comes so far (which I really doubt) as them simply
| ignoring it, their European Operations can be fined (directly
| through their bank accounts if need be) or their European
| employees can be jailed.
|
| They can also be disallowed to do business with European
| consumers and companies.
|
| In short: "The fines will continue until compliance improves.
| Get in line or get out of the market".
|
| They don't have much political leverage, given how few people
| they employ and how little taxes they pay over here.
|
| Their standing in the US isn't the best either so it's doubtful
| whether America is willing to invest much political capital
| over something she herself is considering.
| ilaksh wrote:
| They won't simply ignore it, but they will do the minimum
| amount they can possibly get away with, which will amount to
| effectively ignoring it.
| seydor wrote:
| considering the status of both companies as basically a
| duopoly, it will be hard for the US to object about unfair
| trade rules.
| hestefisk wrote:
| It's EU law, not US law. US cannot sign off on EU law.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I'm curious if this will result in fragmentation in the phones
| themselves.
| alex7734 wrote:
| Very good. Even politicians can do a good thing every once in a
| while.
|
| Now, can we get rid of hardware remote attestation and
| impossible-to-unlock bootloaders please?
| perceptronas wrote:
| I am not sure that's a good idea. Now phones are rarely stolen.
| I would not like to come back to time when you get mugged for
| your phone. (1st hand experience)
| alex7734 wrote:
| You can still have FRP with an unlockable bootloader. Just
| place the unlock bootloader button after the forced Google
| login so that even if you factory reset the phone you cannot
| unlock the bootloader without the Google account.
|
| In fact that is how most phones (that still have an
| unlockable bootloader) do it, the button is in the developer
| options which if you reset the phone you cannot get to
| without having access to the linked Google account.
| johnnypangs wrote:
| Does this cover it allowing the ability to develop browsers on
| iOS?
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, but Apple will make sure they run at 50% lower speed. /s
| ysleepy wrote:
| You joke, didn't Apple add custom instructions to their
| silicon to accelerate their safari/js hot paths like they did
| with rosetta 2?
| Gareth321 wrote:
| Yes, they specifically reference browser engines.
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| 8 years is too much time. I feel like a technology gets replaced
| every 15 years so by this logic, rules will only get applied at
| the tail end of its lifespan. Better late than never but maybe
| 3-5 years would be a better number.
| bkfh wrote:
| What I don't understand about messaging is, do only the large
| providers have to be interoperable among each other or can I
| create my own crappy messaging app and integrate with WhatsApp,
| Messenger, Signal et al.?
|
| Edit: typo
| dane-pgp wrote:
| That's a good question, but I assume that anti-trust regulators
| will decide what is "reasonable" partly based on the number of
| users of your messaging app.
|
| Obviously there's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem there, but
| if one of these gatekeepers has 100 million users, then it is
| hard to justify them writing and maintaining a load of extra
| code to interoperate with an app that has less than, say, 1
| million users.
|
| Perhaps in practice, though, the gatekeepers will be able to
| publish a simple API and say that all competitors who want to
| interoperate with them can do so, after signing a contract with
| their lawyers and exchanging public keys in person, and paying
| an administrative fee (to prevent spammers).
| hestefisk wrote:
| European democracy at its best. Proud to be European today.
| tayistay wrote:
| I have a modular synthesizer app for iOS [1]. Will this
| legislation force Apple to let me JIT? (That's a key restriction
| that prevents competing browsers.) Would be great for
| performance.
|
| [1] http://audulus.com
| alkonaut wrote:
| It might force Apple to allow you to distribute a version of
| your app on a different store or sideloaded from a file, which
| doesn't necessarily follow the restrictions on the official App
| Store. That's how I understand it at least.
| from wrote:
| bogwog wrote:
| I'm excited to see how Apple passive aggressively implements
| these changes.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| I do wish iPhones could use alternate browser engines and bypass
| the Apple 30% cut, but the fact I'm having to click through one
| of those stupid cookie dialogs on this page just leaves the bad
| taste in my mouth of how much the EU regulation screwed up the
| internet the last time they made a change like this.
|
| Not saying I want tracking cookies everywhere, but they should
| have just made tracking cookies illegal outright, rather than
| legal if people agree meaning I have to dismiss thousands of
| cookie dialogs a year.
|
| Because they were incompetent in writing their legislation, they
| doomed us to cookie dialogs for the rest of my life.
| 627467 wrote:
| I left Europe before the full enforcement of this cookies
| dialog and everytime I spend time there I'm like: how can
| anyone accept this state of affairs
| antipaul wrote:
| Subject: business models to become huge monopolies.
|
| Apple makes $$$ from selling products people mostly love.
|
| Google, Facebook/Meta make most of their cash from surveillance
| capitalism, I mean, advertising. Microsoft (tracking keystrokes
| in Windows) and Amazon ("we are a 'data' company") also aren't
| really privacy focused (though they do get chunks of income from
| actual products)
|
| So I'm a bit torn with this legislation.
| losvedir wrote:
| I'm sort of surprised at the positive tone here. Sure, it's nice
| for non-technical people to enumerate a lot of nice to haves, but
| just asserting something doesn't make it true or possible.
|
| As one example, making "core messaging functionality
| interoperable". How exactly does that work with end-to-end
| encryption? I suppose we'd need some sort of open system and
| protocol for all the tricky key sharing stuff? That would be nice
| but doesn't seem feasible in 6 months. And how do you know what
| they're using on the other end? If someone is using an app that
| doesn't support encryption, and they try to send a message to,
| say, you on WhatsApp, where you have e2e enabled by default, what
| happens?
|
| Another one is they can't "limit payment possibilities to their
| own method". Presumably this means like iPay and Google Pay.
| Isn't there, again, some hardware security issues in play with
| that? I don't understand those systems well enough to know for
| sure, but I thought they were locked down and proprietary in part
| to protect your financial data.
| iasay wrote:
| The messaging interoperability is actually very worrying with
| the current discourse on scanning messages for certain content
| from the EU. Also various factions in the EU have been
| completely against end to end encryption.
|
| What we can expect is weak protection on request of the
| government which puts people genuinely at risk.
|
| If that happens I cannot possibly support the DMA or the EU on
| this but it'll be too late before it becomes apparent.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| I like Matrix's write-up on it:
| https://matrix.org/blog/2022/03/25/interoperability-without-...
|
| Also there's a line in the final full act:
|
| >The level of security, including the end-to-end encryption,
| where applicable, that the gatekeeper provides to its own end
| users shall be preserved across the interoperable services
| zaarn wrote:
| The "limit payment possibilities" means that, f.e., Apple
| cannot stop a banking app from using the on-device secure
| enclave and the NFC functionality from making payments
| available if Apple also offers a payment service using those
| functions (or to say it differently; If Google or Apple make a
| payments app, they must allow everyone to develop their own
| payment apps for their ecosystems and make all functions
| available that are necessary to have all functionality of
| Google or Apple's own apps).
| seydor wrote:
| it says core messaging, maybe only unencrypted chats can be
| interoperable.
|
| TBH , unlike GDPR, this seems a lot more pragmatic and feasible
| yohannparis wrote:
| You can easily warn a user that messaging a user using a
| different protocol will not be encrypted.
|
| On the iPhone, this is done visually with the blue/green
| bubbles. But other solutions can be implemented.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > How exactly does that work with end-to-end encryption?
|
| One way would be for Apple to offer a web API endpoint for
| companies that have signed an agreement with them (covering
| rate limits, server identification certificates, liability,
| etc.).
|
| In fact, the API could be implemented in iOS itself, so you
| could have something like "Signal support for iMessage" as an
| app in the App Store, which would basically be a headless
| version of the Signal app which delegates all the UI tasks
| (mainly message display and input) to the iMessage app.
| aaomidi wrote:
| If the app doesn't support encryption, then they don't see the
| message.
|
| Client side lock downs aren't security. They're security
| theater.
| capableweb wrote:
| > How exactly does that work with end-to-end encryption?
|
| Exactly how we deal with everything else that works across
| platforms: standardization. We've done it at least once before
| (SSL/TLS), I'm sure these rich and "amazingly smart" companies
| can figure out how to achieve it once again.
|
| > Isn't there, again, some hardware security issues in play
| with that?
|
| Is there hardware security issues with accept CC details on the
| web? Assuming the computer itself isn't compromised, the web
| seems to (again) have figured out how to deal with it across
| platforms, both OSes and browsers, why can't phone OSes do it?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| There's no particular reason preventing us from having
| interoperable E2E; we could already have interoperable E2E
| e-mail today if we wanted. Securely bootstrapping key exchange
| could be done through having one phone take a picture of a QR
| code on the other phone. Though, to be fair, I have no idea if
| any existing E2E services actually let you do this. "In-
| band"/electronic key introduction _does_ require the message
| server operator to act as a trusted bootstrapper, but nobody
| seems to be worrying about that as-is.
|
| The real concern with interoperable messaging is antispam.
| E-mail was an absolute disaster because there was no barrier to
| entry for someone who just wants to send unsolicited garbage to
| everyone. Google killed federated messaging for Google Chat
| back in the day because for every one person running their own
| XMPP server there were _hundreds_ who realized Google was just
| _giving away_ valuable real estate on everyone 's Gmail inbox
| to this chat service. The EU appears to be trying to mandate
| federation to fix the competition problems involved with
| iMessage[0] and I genuinely hope there's a user opt-out for
| this when it inevitably gets abused for spam.
|
| [0] Which, ironically, is more of an American problem than a
| European one
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > E-mail was an absolute disaster because there was no
| barrier to entry for someone who just wants to send
| unsolicited garbage to everyone.
|
| Email spam is possible because of the expectation that you
| can contact someone you've had no prior interaction with.
| (Also, it at least used to be quite easy to spoof the sender
| address because participants couldn't cryptographically prove
| their identities, but we now rely on tech like DKIM to
| mitigate this).
|
| Messaging apps have an easier job because the services can
| refuse to deliver messages to people who haven't already
| received your public key (or some short, per-contact, pre-
| shared secret).
|
| In fact, email encryption could also work this way, if users
| first had to send a standardised introduction message, and
| servers rejected any further messages until the recipient had
| marked the sender as trusted.
| everyone wrote:
| Wow I think that site has the 1st decent GDPR popup thing I've
| seen. Just two buttons, accept cookies, reject cookies, u click
| one and then it goes away.
| alkonaut wrote:
| That's what a compliant one _must_ look like.
|
| If it has e.g "accept" and "manage choices" then it's blatantly
| non-compliant and hopefully such popups will be extinct once a
| few such sites are fined.
| techpression wrote:
| I really hope there will be an open iPhone that people can buy
| and they keep their existing one for those of us who doesn't want
| our phones to become cookie-pop up-ridden data collecting
| nightmares that is guaranteed to to happen.
|
| Anyone want to bet against Spotify requiring you to install the
| Spotify App Store to use the client?
| [deleted]
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| So, not sure if I understand - if Google makes a Google app store
| for IOS does their App store have to comply with all rules or can
| it skip because Google does not own the IOS platform?
| rpadovani wrote:
| Lovely. The EU is a behemoth that takes years to proceed, but I
| really like that they are still trying to fight for consumers'
| digital rights.
| nabla9 wrote:
| EU always starts slowly, often with inadequate policies and
| regulations. But there is constant grind and improvement.
|
| Take for example carbon pricing. It started long time ago, was
| not good enough. There was gradually tightening and now it
| finally starts having some teeth and more is coming.
| InsomniacL wrote:
| In 6 months time am i going to be able to send a whatsapp message
| to someone on facebook messenger?
| dane-pgp wrote:
| The other question is, will you be able to follow a Twitter
| user from Facebook, and send them a DM?
|
| I think the answer is "No", because that counts as social media
| interoperability rather than messenger interoperability, but I
| don't understand how Facebook have managed to convince the EU
| to exempt them from this.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Surprised nobody is talking about what a huge bonanza this is for
| software piracy. Sure, it'll come with Lovecraft-grade eldritch
| horrors in the malware space, but that's the price you pay.
| anonymousab wrote:
| I wonder if this will affect game consoles as well. They have
| software markets but they are extremely specific and targeted. In
| terms of size, I'd think that Microsoft and maybe Sony would
| reach the threshold.
| fariszr wrote:
| Finally, it's time to stop chat monopolies, and apple's empty
| excuses for monopolistic behaviors like only allowing WebKit and
| only apple payment process while also taking 15% and not allowing
| you to increase the price.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| all pretty sound, aside from 'interoperability on instant
| messenger', which would be incompatible with privacy / security
| obligations from the providers.
|
| Wonder how hard US govt will bat for the US tech, leverage is
| there vs the EU post Putin invasion of Ukraine
| igorkraw wrote:
| BS, XMPP federation has been around for decades now. Google
| messenger used to speak it before the removed it , maybe
| Facebook as well.
| zaik wrote:
| Hopefully this will be the re-birth of the XMPP standard.
| WhatsApp is built on it, has a huge market share and, when I
| read this correctly, will start federating in the near
| future.
| ptomato wrote:
| yup. with google messenger it was used almost exclusively to
| spam google messenger users, and that's what'll happen with
| this as well.
| alaric410 wrote:
| Created an account just to comment on this. This is huge.
|
| This is basically forcing Apple to open their ecosystem to
| developers. It's also breaking up a lot of othre monopolies such
| as WhatsApp.
|
| Sweet! Thanks EU!
| pieter_mj wrote:
| You might want to hold on thanking the EU : are you aware of
| the accompanying proposal the Digital Services Act [0]?
|
| [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31132417
| lizardactivist wrote:
| bloppe wrote:
| I accuse tech gatekeepers of many things, but arson is not one.
| Any chance you could provide references to these claims?
| lizardactivist wrote:
| Me neither. But the US government looks after their
| corporations and their markets, and has never been above
| espionage, sabotage, and petty vindictiveness. In particular
| since it believes the EU markets should be theirs to do with
| as they wish, and that the EU government is the enemy
| standing in their way.
|
| And occasionally I see patterns of events where the time,
| place, circumstances and outcome makes me suspect sabotage.
| baal80spam wrote:
| Won't this at least increase the prices of the hardware produced
| by these companies?
| Gareth321 wrote:
| We shall see. One thing to remember is that the price of a good
| is not determined by its costs or profitability, but rather by
| supply and demand. Apple and Google, for example, are
| undoubtedly already charging as much as they can for phones in
| all markets. Given their respective marketing prowess, I expect
| those prices to be very near the optimal price point already.
| If they increase prices, they lose sales to a greater degree,
| and ultimately earn less.
|
| Either way I'm sure they will use this legislation as a
| marketing tactic to justify typical annual price increases.
| avgDev wrote:
| Oh please spare me this crap. This isn't true at all.
|
| I knew this was bs before switching to iphone but I was
| optimistic.
|
| Apple AirPlay is just pure trash, so I have to use chromecast. My
| Apple watch keeps bugging out and notifying me few minutes late
| and requires restart of both devices. The device keeps connecting
| to open networks while my remembered home network is available.
| The camera lens has issues with glare in the sun.
|
| I got it because I plan on keeping the devices for 4-5 years, but
| the "it just works" is the worst kind of pro argument and has 0
| information.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| All my experiences with Apple have been far below the
| expectations set by "it just works".
|
| For example, don't use an Apple smartwatch to keep time (the
| clock will fall behind and stay there, even after interacting
| with the display to "wake" it up.)
|
| The "Pencil 2" stylus they sell for iPads can't be used
| exclusively. (E.g. activating the "Command Center" requires you
| use your finger.)
|
| They build advertisements into the OS (very notable if you
| don't use iCloud) and reset preferences willy-nilly (such as if
| you have iMessage disabled.)
|
| I hope more people talk about these issues, I'd love to see
| Apple pressured to make meaningful improvements.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't call names or post in the flamewar style to HN.
| It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
| You can make your substantive points without that.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32166399.
| [deleted]
| philliphaydon wrote:
| > Apple AirPlay is just pure trash, so I have to use
| chromecast.
|
| What's trash about it? Never had any issues with it, ever.
|
| > My Apple watch keeps bugging out and notifying me few minutes
| late and requires restart of both devices.
|
| Bugging out and notifying you a few minutes late for what? I
| get text messages on my watch at exactly the same time as my
| phone.
|
| > The device keeps connecting to open networks while my
| remembered home network is available.
|
| The device will only connect to networks you've connected to
| before. So this is user error. It's simple, forget that
| network.
|
| > The camera lens has issues with glare in the sun.
|
| This is a problem with any phone, or any camera?
| avgDev wrote:
| AirPlay doesn't connect, disconnects and cannot reconnect.
| This is far from working. Chromecast is MUCH MUCH more
| reliable. Just go look on forums.
|
| The delayed notifications are also pretty common and
| addressed on many forums, even on apples.
| https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7022042
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWatch/comments/jj8wpv/slowdela.
| ..
|
| The lens glare is extremely common on iphone 12/13, and I did
| NOT have glare this bad on my other devices. I believe some
| reviewers even mentioned it. https://www.reddit.com/r/iPhone1
| 3/comments/s0n095/iphon13_ca...
| trasz wrote:
| One time I've seen a similar problem was due to my home
| router screwing up multicast.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| I usually avoid using apple.com discussions as
| 'evidence'...
|
| > The lens glare is extremely common on iphone 12/13, and I
| did NOT have glare this bad on my other devices.
|
| https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253200214
|
| You can go rent a $5000 DSLR Camera and a $10,000 lens and
| /still/ get lens glare, and it can be much worse. That's
| why people sometimes shoot with a polarizing filter.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarizing_filter_(photograph
| y...
|
| I'm unaware of /any/ phone camera that has a polarizer by
| default. But essentially, you will get it on ANY lens. This
| is not something that happens only on iPhone 12/13.
|
| -------------
|
| > AirPlay doesn't connect, disconnects and cannot
| reconnect.
|
| I haven't seen AirPlay on non-apple devices but between my
| iPhone and Apple TV it works amazingly.
| avgDev wrote:
| Chromecast works ON ALL my devices TVs included, again
| unlike AirPlay.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| Sure, but Android TV sucks. I mean its 2022 and it's
| still laggy and slow compared to Apple TV. And slowly
| getting more and more adverts. Even on the fastest TVs
| its still slow compared to AppleTV. So it could be
| supported on every single device in the world, it's still
| a turd.
|
| What I've never understood is a high end Android decide
| is quite fast and responsive. Yet no matter how much
| hardware you throw at Android TV, its slow.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Surely there's a better way to criticize somebody's take on a
| topic?
|
| iDevices aren't perfect but they cover 95% of what I need from
| them.
|
| Can it be better, much better even? Absolutely, yes. But your
| comment is painting a doom picture that is just not there for
| many people.
| avgDev wrote:
| I'm responding to "it just works" comment. It's not perfect
| even though apple has complete control over the ecosystem.
|
| The hardware is great but let's not pretend its perfect.
| pdimitar wrote:
| I don't think anyone here is pretending that it's perfect.
| It's just that your hyperbolic language in the other
| direction of the argument is giving off the wrong
| impression IMO.
|
| I also don't think "it just works" implies perfect
| operation 100% of the time either. Usually it means "it
| doesn't work rarely enough that I don't notice".
| sbuk wrote:
| > Oh please spare me this crap
|
| Someone else's opinion isn't 'crap'. Like what you have
| proffered, is as much an opinion as the OP.
| diffeomorphism wrote:
| > Someone else's opinion isn't crap.
|
| Correct, but what has that to do with anything? They did not
| give an opinion but claimed several points as fact. These
| claims were crap.
| avgDev wrote:
| I actually provided some cons, unlike OP.
| izolate wrote:
| dang wrote:
| Personal attacks will get you banned here, so please
| don't post like this.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| avgDev wrote:
| I ignored the first part of your comment. As some
| opinions in fact are just "crap".
|
| Python is the best.
|
| C# is so much better than Java.
|
| etc.
|
| Those opinions provide no value and are "CRAP", similarly
| like OPs comments that "it just WORKS".
|
| Do you also say your code is "just bad" during code
| reviews? That is quite constructive.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| This is very good news. Finally iPhone users will be able to
| truly own their devices, not begging Apple's permission to
| install the app they need.
|
| Now, I wonder, how would Apple try to spoil this? When they were
| ordered to allow third party payment services, they started
| insisting on racketeering their additional 30% Apple Tax directly
| from developers. Any ideas?
| hereme888 wrote:
| So, if tech companies don't extend these changes to customers in
| the USA, could I buy an unlocked smartphone in Europe and for use
| in the USA?
| yohannparis wrote:
| Not necessarily, most software uses is based on where you are
| based. On iOS your account is tied to your billing address
| (which is soooo annoying). This is done to follow local laws,
| and where an app publisher wants to sell.
| warp wrote:
| I would expect this would also go in effect on existing
| iPhones, so it seems more likely that you'd need a European
| Apple ID/account.
| bushbaba wrote:
| So will google be forced to upgrade all older android sales
| to be upgraded to the latest release?
|
| If so, they'll be fined
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The rules described there make sense. What nasty rules enabling
| government surveillance or censorship/copyright enforcements did
| they also include that they not mention in this press release?
| sbenji wrote:
| I think this is aimed as much at Microsoft as any of the
| companies listed.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| It certainly qualifies as a Gatekeeper, and perhaps I should
| have included Microsoft in the title. I'm just not sure how
| this impacts them. The most obvious candidate here is the Xbox,
| but I've not done any analysis with regards to this legislation
| and game consoles.
| spicysugar wrote:
| Does it include full ide support for ipads?
| ben_w wrote:
| I'm conflicted about the app stores. On the one hand, a non-
| modifiable single point of sale tied to the OS, with rules to
| prevent private data (and private API) access, is good and
| reduces data risks to me personally and society as a whole.
|
| On the other hand, I'm not an American, I don't live or work in
| America, and the users of my five most recent published apps have
| not been in the USA, so I've never been happy about the US
| federal government having any say at all about my use of
| encryption.
|
| Plus my cultural norms are not those of the USA, so I'm
| comfortable with content Apple block outright and uncomfortable
| with stuff Apple lets though without any (apparent to me)
| concern.
|
| The other stuff all appears straightforwardly good.
|
| I wonder what this will mean for licensing/fees for future
| releases of Xcode, Swift, iOS etc.?
| thefz wrote:
| History is full of examples of malware slipping through and app
| review processes leaking everywhere, the non modifiable single
| point of sale is not there to benefit you.
| ben_w wrote:
| > malware slipping through and app review processes leaking
| everywhere,
|
| "It's not perfect" != "It doesn't benefit me"
|
| (For other examples from my life: clothes, driving licenses,
| voting, spam filters, and the Medicines & Healthcare products
| Regulatory Agency).
|
| > the non modifiable single point of sale is not there to
| benefit you.
|
| That probably wasn't the original point of it, but it does
| have the effect of protecting me.
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