4 ms·

Court order. You cant remove app just because you dont like it. App should violate laws to be removed.

Robotbeat 6y ago
I disagree with that. Private companies should be able to remove apps from their store. However, we should make it more possible for alternative stores to be available. Side-loading (including on iPhones) should be a protected ability, not government officials deciding that Apple can’t ban white supremacists from publishing hate speech apps on Apple’s App Store.
- pmichaud 6y ago
  > Private companies should be able to remove apps from their store. I don't know about that. It feels a little too close to Verizon cutting off a phone call to my friend because an employment or sentiment detection algo didn't appreciate my tone.
- tester34 6y ago
  >Private companies should be able to remove apps from their store. Why should they unless the app violates the law? And please take into consideration the fact that we aren't talking about small / mid size businesses, but giant behemoths and we're trying to apply some rules to the biggest ones.
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    And why should those huge companies be able to collect rents from their App stores? Protecting side-loading (legally and technically) solves both problems. And limits the ability of the government to do the same kind of moderating as they’d first have to somehow disable sideloading. (Imagine the government trying to disable ability to run arbitrary code on all laptops or PCs. Possible with enough manpower, sure, but way harder than just moderating an App Store.)
    - skohan 6y ago
      I think protecting side-loading would be a sensible regulation to fix the situation of app-store gatekeeping. On the hosting side I think it's a bit different. For instance if AWS wants to kick an app off of their platform, there should be a legally mandated warning escalation process, and cloud providers should be required to give clients a reasonable amount of time to migrate their product to a different provider before kicking them off (maybe even 6 months to a couple years). I also think there should be some limits to which reason a hosting provider can use to evict a client from their platform, at least when they reach a certain size. It's very difficult to be competitive in the current market without access to cloud hosting, and there are only a few serious options available in this space, so it should be a very high standard required to remove someone from this type of service. And then for services like DNS providers, I think they should have to act as unbiased infrastructure, and should not be allowed to deny service for any reason short of a court order.
MCage 6y ago
Unfortunately, they can. The publishers/developers agreed to the "terms and conditions" when signing up. The policy strikes that get you kicked out are not enforced consistently, but I'm sure from a legal point of view there's little you can do when your app is banned.
UncleMeat 6y ago
Most adware and other data abusing apps aren't breaking the law.
- vincnetas 6y ago
  They are. At least in EU. And we need to remember, that we live in free sociaty in a sense that you can do everything what is not forbiden, in contrast to doing only what is allowed. So if in US these apps are not forbiden then US should change that.
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    I don't believe anything about GDPR makes adware illegal.

I disagree with that. Private companies should be able to remove apps from their store. However, we should make it more possible for alternative stores to be available. Side-loading (including on iPhones) should be a protected ability, not government officials deciding that Apple can’t ban white supremacists from publishing hate speech apps on Apple’s App Store.

pmichaud 6y ago
> Private companies should be able to remove apps from their store. I don't know about that. It feels a little too close to Verizon cutting off a phone call to my friend because an employment or sentiment detection algo didn't appreciate my tone.
tester34 6y ago
>Private companies should be able to remove apps from their store. Why should they unless the app violates the law? And please take into consideration the fact that we aren't talking about small / mid size businesses, but giant behemoths and we're trying to apply some rules to the biggest ones.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  And why should those huge companies be able to collect rents from their App stores? Protecting side-loading (legally and technically) solves both problems. And limits the ability of the government to do the same kind of moderating as they’d first have to somehow disable sideloading. (Imagine the government trying to disable ability to run arbitrary code on all laptops or PCs. Possible with enough manpower, sure, but way harder than just moderating an App Store.)
  - skohan 6y ago
    I think protecting side-loading would be a sensible regulation to fix the situation of app-store gatekeeping. On the hosting side I think it's a bit different. For instance if AWS wants to kick an app off of their platform, there should be a legally mandated warning escalation process, and cloud providers should be required to give clients a reasonable amount of time to migrate their product to a different provider before kicking them off (maybe even 6 months to a couple years). I also think there should be some limits to which reason a hosting provider can use to evict a client from their platform, at least when they reach a certain size. It's very difficult to be competitive in the current market without access to cloud hosting, and there are only a few serious options available in this space, so it should be a very high standard required to remove someone from this type of service. And then for services like DNS providers, I think they should have to act as unbiased infrastructure, and should not be allowed to deny service for any reason short of a court order.

MCage 6y ago

Unfortunately, they can. The publishers/developers agreed to the "terms and conditions" when signing up. The policy strikes that get you kicked out are not enforced consistently, but I'm sure from a legal point of view there's little you can do when your app is banned.

UncleMeat 6y ago

Most adware and other data abusing apps aren't breaking the law.

vincnetas 6y ago
They are. At least in EU. And we need to remember, that we live in free sociaty in a sense that you can do everything what is not forbiden, in contrast to doing only what is allowed. So if in US these apps are not forbiden then US should change that.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  I don't believe anything about GDPR makes adware illegal.