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I disagree with you, though you have my upvote for articulating that argument well. I don’t want Apple to act like a government. I want the government to act l
by zenexer 6y ago
I disagree with you, though you have my upvote for articulating that argument well.
I don’t want Apple to act like a government. I want the government to act like a government. Why isn’t the government doing more to stop companies from employing shady sales practices? Why doesn’t the government do more to protect my 92-year-old grandmother? Why is it so hard to cancel a gym membership? We should be able to get together and say, “as a society, we want to forbid predatory sales practices.”
The Apple approach has limited efficacy anyway. Sure, my grandmother can cancel subscriptions purchased through Apple—or she could, if she knew how to make them in the first place. But no, that requires a password.
So she has free apps like Duolingo. Those apps have ads. She taps the ads. They bring her to websites. She enters her credit card number. Bam, new scam subscription that she can’t cancel.
But Duolingo carries on, displaying the same scam ads, unimpeded by Apple or any government. Duolingo probably doesn’t even know about those ads. And if they did, “that’s the ad network’s problem.”
Some people will argue that it’s difficult to write legislation that covers all the bases. Of course it is. But a private company’s contracts and guidelines are no different in that regard.
- maxgashkov 6y ago> I want the government to act like a government. That's a valid point, but: the US will probably require membership cancellations to not suck eventually. EU will too, maybe even earlier then US. Japan? Not likely. Here the enterprise is king and individual is not a priority. Russia? I don't even want to begin with this one. And that's only 2 localities I had experiences living in, Apple & App Store probably operates in dozens of completely different jurisdictions, brining more or less the same rules everywhere.