> ...that works right up until Apple bans you, or one of your favorite services, or just demands you pony up 30% of all the money you spend online. Another com

> ...that works right up until Apple bans you, or one of your favorite services, or just demands you pony up 30% of all the money you spend online. Another commenter framed it well: that Apple behaves both as a consumer union as well as a protection racket, sometimes hiding behind the former in pursuit of the latter. It's definitely worth questioning if 30% is a fair transaction fee, but OTOH that's how much every app store charges in the market today, including Epic's very own. > You think that's unlikely? In the 80s, Microsoft was the hero and IBM was the villain. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Google was everyone's favorite. During the Arab Spring, Facebook was a popular tool for liberation. Yes, and IBM eventually withered away into irrelevance and Microsoft hasn't created a business with dominant market share since Office. Facebook still is a tool for liberation, just for the "wrong" people, and Google still provides a robust Search and Maps product. One day, both of those companies might find themselves no longer the dominant player — just like DEC, IBM, and Microsoft. > The only long-term defense we have is decentralizataion, and you're fighting that. Why? So you won't get spam that you never see? I understand that, decentralization has a lot of merit — it's what affords us the option to not use Apple at all and have nothing to do with its walled garden. We still have the option to not use Apple today. The day this stops being true is the day that we all have to worry.