6 ms·

I don't have strong feelings about mastodon or this specific app, but the credo of "It's a private company" is just lazy reasoning and thrown around blindly far

I don't have strong feelings about mastodon or this specific app, but the credo of "It's a private company" is just lazy reasoning and thrown around blindly far too often. Being banned by big tech (whether apps, social media accounts, major payment processors for receiving donations) is in some cases almost equivalent to being shut down ; "it's a private company" : if the company has a monopoly and there's not a significant number of healthy alternatives for people to use (be it out of convenience and lack of skill, doesn't matter), then how about we take that into account? It's sad and frustrating we wanted an open internet and companies took over a huge share of it and are not stopping amassing influence and control. I wish this wasn't so, but it is, and we have to open our eyes to it when we're debating such topics. "You can still distribute your app when not being on the Play Store or Apple Store right?" "In theory yes" "Case closed" ; things aren't so simple! In a perfectly 'libertarian' world, I would be more inclined to be on your side. But we don't live in such a world. We live in a world of politics, extreme lobbying, complicated tax codes, one million parties with various interests locked into a power struggle for political / social control and influence.

3np 6y ago
I'd argue that any other stance would acknowledge and justify their position as a utility provider and the Play Store as a public space. I don't want that. Instead, Google should be required to provide equal capabilities to third-party app stores as the Play Store now enjoys on Android. Like Microsoft was forced to accommodate for other browser vendors in Windows way back when. This is in contrast to ISPs, which I whole-heartedly believe should be subject to net neutrality.
- lelanthran 6y ago
  > I'd argue that any other stance would acknowledge and justify their position as a utility provider and the Play Store as a public space. That's a false dichotomy. The options are not: 1. Any company, anywhere and at any time can refuse to do business with anyone, anywhere and for any reason. 2. All companies, everywhere and all the time must allow voices from everyone, everywhere and all the time. There's a good middle ground - antitrust regulations could be modified so that, if the company has a large enough piece of the market they shouldn't have the /choice/ of denying access for any reason.
- Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 6y ago
  I do think that solution has a lot going for it. Probably even best to allow for multiple app stores from the very beginning. For example during setup of the device being prompted: "There are various app stores to install software from. Each comes with their own form of app curation, and policies regarding payments, privacy, updates and more ; please select the app stores you would like to use. If you'd like to learn more, click here." with a list of app stores given and 'Google Play' being pre-selected for example. It's not something I've thought about a lot before, so I'm sure we could do better than that. But in principle that doesn't sound too bad.
rvz 6y ago
> It's sad and frustrating we wanted an open internet and companies took over a huge share of it and are not stopping amassing influence and control. I wish this wasn't so, but it is, and we have to open our eyes to it when we're debating such topics. They took advantage of this 'open internet' and now they have made it partially closed for everyone since they have control of the platforms that most people do for everyday life. Web Browsing, Email, Chat, Calendars, Maps and now Meetings. The startups that have been acquired by them have just made the tech giants even bigger. Developers recommending libraries, frameworks and services created by (you guessed it) the tech giants further locks in their app to depend solely on their servers and it makes the migration out of the app store very difficult. We let them do this for decades and now we complain about it. The only way to fight back is to create free and open source alternatives. > "You can still distribute your app when not being on the Play Store or Apple Store right?" "In theory yes" "Case closed" ; things aren't so simple! Practically yes and it is that simple. Take a look at how Cydia and F-Droid does it. Host a repository on your website, Put a 'Add to Cydia' or 'Add to F-Droid' deep link on your website and the users will freely see all the apps made by you. We need something like this but for the desktop. It may not even be 'Cydia' or called 'F-Droid' that succeeds in being mainstream on this very old idea, but there will be an accessible alternative that will use this idea and it is free and open source and cross-platform. Discord desktop is not on any App Store and you can download it freely without a Google/Apple account. Telegram is on Google Play and also self-hosts the APK and is also on F-Droid. The solution has always been to have a self-hosted backup so that the users always have an accessible way of downloading your app and not just being ONLY available through any centralised App Store.
- Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 6y ago
  I agree with you on some parts. Don't rely on Google, be available via other methods as well. But that does not take away from the fact, that if you lose access to Play Store and Apple Store as a means of distributing your application, at that moment you will have permanently lost access to 98% of potential users. The few that bother to install a .apk manually or use F-Droid aren't significant. How many people do _ever_ even search for an app outside of these stores? I'm guilty most of the time myself. One more factor: Especially with social apps the network effect is everything. Even the few hardcore lovers of your app stop using it, if not enough 'non-technical' users do. Having 100 contacts, 98 of them on WhatsApp, 4 of them on some social media app you have to tell your contacts to download the .apk from somewhere in order to use it? More often than not you can't even get people to install Signal, and it's one click. You don't survive something like this and you won't regain your user count outside of these curated app stores. It's pretty much as simple as that. The dream of "if it happens enough times F-Droid and alternatives will become more prominent" is just naive, it doesn't work like that. There is no level playing field to compete. "The solution has always been to have a self-hosted backup [...]" - the solution to what? The solution to compete from outside of these curated stores where companies dictate course? No, it's not a solution for that, because it won't do much for you.

3np 6y ago

I'd argue that any other stance would acknowledge and justify their position as a utility provider and the Play Store as a public space. I don't want that. Instead, Google should be required to provide equal capabilities to third-party app stores as the Play Store now enjoys on Android. Like Microsoft was forced to accommodate for other browser vendors in Windows way back when. This is in contrast to ISPs, which I whole-heartedly believe should be subject to net neutrality.

lelanthran 6y ago
> I'd argue that any other stance would acknowledge and justify their position as a utility provider and the Play Store as a public space. That's a false dichotomy. The options are not: 1. Any company, anywhere and at any time can refuse to do business with anyone, anywhere and for any reason. 2. All companies, everywhere and all the time must allow voices from everyone, everywhere and all the time. There's a good middle ground - antitrust regulations could be modified so that, if the company has a large enough piece of the market they shouldn't have the /choice/ of denying access for any reason.
Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 6y ago
I do think that solution has a lot going for it. Probably even best to allow for multiple app stores from the very beginning. For example during setup of the device being prompted: "There are various app stores to install software from. Each comes with their own form of app curation, and policies regarding payments, privacy, updates and more ; please select the app stores you would like to use. If you'd like to learn more, click here." with a list of app stores given and 'Google Play' being pre-selected for example. It's not something I've thought about a lot before, so I'm sure we could do better than that. But in principle that doesn't sound too bad.

rvz 6y ago

> It's sad and frustrating we wanted an open internet and companies took over a huge share of it and are not stopping amassing influence and control. I wish this wasn't so, but it is, and we have to open our eyes to it when we're debating such topics. They took advantage of this 'open internet' and now they have made it partially closed for everyone since they have control of the platforms that most people do for everyday life. Web Browsing, Email, Chat, Calendars, Maps and now Meetings. The startups that have been acquired by them have just made the tech giants even bigger. Developers recommending libraries, frameworks and services created by (you guessed it) the tech giants further locks in their app to depend solely on their servers and it makes the migration out of the app store very difficult. We let them do this for decades and now we complain about it. The only way to fight back is to create free and open source alternatives. > "You can still distribute your app when not being on the Play Store or Apple Store right?" "In theory yes" "Case closed" ; things aren't so simple! Practically yes and it is that simple. Take a look at how Cydia and F-Droid does it. Host a repository on your website, Put a 'Add to Cydia' or 'Add to F-Droid' deep link on your website and the users will freely see all the apps made by you. We need something like this but for the desktop. It may not even be 'Cydia' or called 'F-Droid' that succeeds in being mainstream on this very old idea, but there will be an accessible alternative that will use this idea and it is free and open source and cross-platform. Discord desktop is not on any App Store and you can download it freely without a Google/Apple account. Telegram is on Google Play and also self-hosts the APK and is also on F-Droid. The solution has always been to have a self-hosted backup so that the users always have an accessible way of downloading your app and not just being ONLY available through any centralised App Store.

Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 6y ago
I agree with you on some parts. Don't rely on Google, be available via other methods as well. But that does not take away from the fact, that if you lose access to Play Store and Apple Store as a means of distributing your application, at that moment you will have permanently lost access to 98% of potential users. The few that bother to install a .apk manually or use F-Droid aren't significant. How many people do _ever_ even search for an app outside of these stores? I'm guilty most of the time myself. One more factor: Especially with social apps the network effect is everything. Even the few hardcore lovers of your app stop using it, if not enough 'non-technical' users do. Having 100 contacts, 98 of them on WhatsApp, 4 of them on some social media app you have to tell your contacts to download the .apk from somewhere in order to use it? More often than not you can't even get people to install Signal, and it's one click. You don't survive something like this and you won't regain your user count outside of these curated app stores. It's pretty much as simple as that. The dream of "if it happens enough times F-Droid and alternatives will become more prominent" is just naive, it doesn't work like that. There is no level playing field to compete. "The solution has always been to have a self-hosted backup [...]" - the solution to what? The solution to compete from outside of these curated stores where companies dictate course? No, it's not a solution for that, because it won't do much for you.