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Your last para is the key - unfortunately, the legislative process is so slow in most democracies that it might take a decade or more for most countries to setu

Your last para is the key - unfortunately, the legislative process is so slow in most democracies that it might take a decade or more for most countries to setup such regulators.

dmitriid 5y ago
And even when the laws do get passed, every big and small corp and business blatantly ignores them. See the many dark patterns around GDPR consent banners.
simondotau 5y ago
This assumes Apple's pro-consumer store policies are nominally finished or complete. In reality, Apple has been slowly "boiling the frog" year after year, progressively adding new privacy protections. It's one thing to codify current policies into law—good luck with that—but it's another thing entirely for the law to keep pace. The most recent privacy win is their much-lauded "App Tracking Transparency" policy. This policy does have a technical component (it blocks the app from reading the IDFA) but it would be trivial for developers to find other ways to match up users if they wanted. Ultimately the policy is enforced by threat of penalty by Apple. This could be (theoretically) replaced with a threat of penalty by Government, but entities like Facebook wouldn't treat this nearly as seriously as they do the threat of being kicked out of the only means of app distribution on iOS. I am personally conscious and wary of the fact that Apple has extensive control over a platform which is increasingly defining the way many people interact with the Internet. But for now I'm fine with it—and I will be so long as there is strong competition from a more open platform.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  > This could be (theoretically) replaced with a threat of penalty by Government, but entities like Facebook wouldn't treat this nearly as seriously as they do the threat of being kicked out of the only means of app distribution on iOS. It's not as if laws and regulations don't already exist for other industries, and governments haven't enforced them. I'd trust my democratically elected government over a corporate that only cares about its self-interest than mine. (And no, I do not believe that Apple's self-interest are aligned with their consumers, and will never be under the current form of capitalism we have, however much they like to sell that idea).
  - simondotau 5y ago
    Governments are usually too good at regulating industries they understand—and abysmal at regulating industries they don't. You don't need to believe that Apple's self-interest is aligned with their customers; that's an entirely valid view which you can exercise in the free market. Eliding the inferred red herring of perfect alignment, there are many people who would consider Apple's corporate interests to be more in line with their own when compared with their government's, or with Apple's closest competitors. One of my favourite quotes is by P. J. O'Rourke who said: "There is a simple rule here, a rule of legislation, a rule of business, a rule of life: beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud. You can apply that rule to left-wing social programs, but you can also apply that rule to credit derivatives, hedge funds, all the rest of it." Beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud. Nothing captures the dirty truth of modern life more succinctly than that, in my opinion. I think that Government has too much complexity to assertively claim that it is more aligned with my interests than, say, Apple is. For all of its (many) faults, one redeeming quality of Apple is that their corporate interest is brutally simple—almost nostalgically simple. They make a useful product, they convince me that it's worth a certain price, they sell it to me for that price.

Your last para is the key - unfortunately, the legislative process is so slow in most democracies that it might take a decade or more for most countries to setup such regulators.

dmitriid 5y ago

And even when the laws do get passed, every big and small corp and business blatantly ignores them. See the many dark patterns around GDPR consent banners.

simondotau 5y ago

This assumes Apple's pro-consumer store policies are nominally finished or complete. In reality, Apple has been slowly "boiling the frog" year after year, progressively adding new privacy protections. It's one thing to codify current policies into law—good luck with that—but it's another thing entirely for the law to keep pace. The most recent privacy win is their much-lauded "App Tracking Transparency" policy. This policy does have a technical component (it blocks the app from reading the IDFA) but it would be trivial for developers to find other ways to match up users if they wanted. Ultimately the policy is enforced by threat of penalty by Apple. This could be (theoretically) replaced with a threat of penalty by Government, but entities like Facebook wouldn't treat this nearly as seriously as they do the threat of being kicked out of the only means of app distribution on iOS. I am personally conscious and wary of the fact that Apple has extensive control over a platform which is increasingly defining the way many people interact with the Internet. But for now I'm fine with it—and I will be so long as there is strong competition from a more open platform.

webmobdev 5y ago
> This could be (theoretically) replaced with a threat of penalty by Government, but entities like Facebook wouldn't treat this nearly as seriously as they do the threat of being kicked out of the only means of app distribution on iOS. It's not as if laws and regulations don't already exist for other industries, and governments haven't enforced them. I'd trust my democratically elected government over a corporate that only cares about its self-interest than mine. (And no, I do not believe that Apple's self-interest are aligned with their consumers, and will never be under the current form of capitalism we have, however much they like to sell that idea).
- simondotau 5y ago
  Governments are usually too good at regulating industries they understand—and abysmal at regulating industries they don't. You don't need to believe that Apple's self-interest is aligned with their customers; that's an entirely valid view which you can exercise in the free market. Eliding the inferred red herring of perfect alignment, there are many people who would consider Apple's corporate interests to be more in line with their own when compared with their government's, or with Apple's closest competitors. One of my favourite quotes is by P. J. O'Rourke who said: "There is a simple rule here, a rule of legislation, a rule of business, a rule of life: beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud. You can apply that rule to left-wing social programs, but you can also apply that rule to credit derivatives, hedge funds, all the rest of it." Beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud. Nothing captures the dirty truth of modern life more succinctly than that, in my opinion. I think that Government has too much complexity to assertively claim that it is more aligned with my interests than, say, Apple is. For all of its (many) faults, one redeeming quality of Apple is that their corporate interest is brutally simple—almost nostalgically simple. They make a useful product, they convince me that it's worth a certain price, they sell it to me for that price.