5 ms·

Except in this case there are no lives being saved, it’s turning green bubbles blue. That’s all this regulation is really about.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
JoeNr76 4y ago
Not just that, it's removing barriers for competition. Which is what good regulations is all about. (and, technically it more than just bubble color, it's also including everyone in group chats)
- hwbehrens 4y ago
  I think what the (grand)parent would argue is that this isn't removing barriers to competition, it's removing competition itself. That is, iMessage is a feature provided by Apple that makes their products more compelling as compared to their competitors. By requiring Apple to provide this feature to their competitors, they lose one of the key differentiators that make their products "better" than their competitors. > [...] want to implement something "different" [...] The slippery-slope argument we're seeing here is that eventually, regulations would require all products and services to be exactly the same for inter-compatibility, which in turn induces a cooling effect on any innovation or novel developments (at least for existing product verticals under regulatory capture).
  - JoeNr76 4y ago
    In the case of iMessage, Apple has a competitive advantage that stifles competition, not enhances it. Setting a baseline for interoperability is not the same as requiring them all to be the same.
    - hellojesus 4y ago
      People vote with their dollars. If people don't like the dumb messaging, they can move to a different platform. With infinite amounts of other free apps, why are regulations necessary? Let people decide for themselves.
      - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        So people who have no dollars get no vote and deserve nothing? Should we take the same approach with clean air and see what happens?
        JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > people who have no dollars get no vote and deserve nothing? On how messaging works on thousand-dollar phones? Yes.
        ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        Nice If your were in charge when the telephone network was designed, poor people would not even be able to make a phonecall to their middleclass neighbour or senator, they'd have to buy a special Rich People phone
        jaywalk 4y ago
        Your hypothetical would make sense if iPhones didn't support regular phone calls, SMS, and every other messaging app out there. All people without iPhones can't do is send blue bubble messages to iPhone users. That's literally it.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        The same could be said for Disneyland, but it's not an excuse to let Disney engage in lawless conduct as long as it's within the park.
        hellojesus 4y ago
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    > it's removing competition itself. That's pretty funny considering the European Commission's original complaint against Apple was for anti-competitive behavior. Maybe things would have turned out differently if Apple hadn't embraced, extended and extinguished SMS. Maybe regulators would be a little more lenient if the App Store was ruled with anything other than an iron fist. But now they have to take action, not because Apple is unique, but because their business practices are interfering with the progress of the rest of the industry. Competitive agency is a weak excuse when they're a noted tyrant on their own platform.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - fennecfoxy 4y ago
    You're saying Apple's iMessage is a response to competition as a feature to compete. It is, in actuality, anti-competitive as there is no way to a competitor to participate other than creating a separate platform or App for messaging. Because iMessage comes with and is supported by both all iPhones and Apple it is an uneven playing field; it is impossible to compete & is therefore anti-competitive. The same thing would happen with TMSC, at the moment Apple buys out a large chunk if not all of their production capacity for a node - this is fine, it's just business. If Apple said to TMSC, "we'll buy out all your capacity for this node but only if you contractually refuse to sell this node to any other company while we're using it" this is anti-competitive behaviour.
smoldesu 4y ago
The regulation was originally an antitrust case leveled against Apple by the European Commission. It contained many things that are unrelated to saving human lives, but will make developers and users lives better in the long run. We do this because the status quo (Apple having unfettered control over their ecosystem) hasn't worked out for people outside of the ecosystem. In lieu of trusting the world's largest company to build a text-messaging replacement that works on other phones, we do have to drop the life-saving legislation to focus on nannying the next iPhone.
- salad-tycoon 4y ago
  Some in the United States would be grateful that a large multinational regulatory agency would focus on an issue whereupon green bubble people identify as blue bubble people versus matters of more import. They would call this a win. Not arguing against your comment. Just adding a viewpoint that some have. I.e Big government should spend more time on these kind of things instead of “life saving” things.
- sbuk 4y ago
  Developers lives, not necessarily users. It was also a huge waste of time and money for all parties as it achieves nothing - Facebook are the market leader with WhatsApp both globally an in Europe - iMessage barely registers in the top 5.
  - jorams 4y ago
    The law isn't specific to Apple, it also affects WhatsApp. Indeed in the EU that's probably much more important. Personally I don't know anybody who consciously uses iMessage, but the extreme network effects of WhatsApp make it socially impossible to move away from.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Why wouldn't it improve? Currently none of these services offer interop; in the future they might. That's a static upgrade to me, and I'd imagine most other people too.
dlivingston 4y ago
That's a bit reductionist. Encryption, variable-sized payload attachments, reactions, dynamic group membership are some potential featurs. And - critically - integration with systems NOT tied to outdated mobile cell infrastructure (you need to procure a phone number and special systems to send an SMS). Apple is the last real holdout here, keeping SMS and MMS alive.
Telemakhos 4y ago
Is it really only about bubble color, or also about encryption? Apple goes to great lengths to secure those blue bubbles, even as group texts. Green bubbles are not secure, and Google is pushing an interoperability standard that does not secure group chats because Google likes reading your comms for its advertising business.
- klodolph 4y ago
  I don’t think we need to identify Google’s motives as malicious. Google has been trying to get people to use its own messaging apps, but Google missed the boat, bungled the user experience, and kept confusing people with new apps. Google would probably love it if Android shipped with a Google-branded, end-to-end encrypted messaging app that people liked to use. I think that there is a combination of internal Google problems and problems in Google’s relationships with Android vendors that makes this difficult. And then, any such app would be probably be in, what, 6th place at this point? Meanwhile, Meta has apps #1 and #2.
  - dpratt 4y ago
    > I don’t think we need to identify Google’s motives as malicious I would argue that the evidence over the past several years has shown that the default position w.r.t. to Google's motivations should not default to 'benign' under any circumstance. With all other things being equal, and without evidence to the contrary, it makes sense to operate under the assumption that Google will enthusiastically and universally do everything they can to violate your privacy in any manner available to them, no matter how subtle.
    - klodolph 4y ago
      > I would argue that the evidence over the past several years has shown that the default position w.r.t. to Google's motivations should not default to 'benign' under any circumstance. “Not benign” and “not malicious” can both be true. Google is motivated by self-interest, is staffed by engineers which have various conflicting self-interest and ideologies, and has a culture with various competencies and dysfunctions. Sometimes Google will do things that benefit consumers and sometimes Google will do things that harm consumers, but it’s not out of altruism nor is it out of malice. Same as other large companies.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

JoeNr76 4y ago

Not just that, it's removing barriers for competition. Which is what good regulations is all about. (and, technically it more than just bubble color, it's also including everyone in group chats)

hwbehrens 4y ago
I think what the (grand)parent would argue is that this isn't removing barriers to competition, it's removing competition itself. That is, iMessage is a feature provided by Apple that makes their products more compelling as compared to their competitors. By requiring Apple to provide this feature to their competitors, they lose one of the key differentiators that make their products "better" than their competitors. > [...] want to implement something "different" [...] The slippery-slope argument we're seeing here is that eventually, regulations would require all products and services to be exactly the same for inter-compatibility, which in turn induces a cooling effect on any innovation or novel developments (at least for existing product verticals under regulatory capture).
- JoeNr76 4y ago
  In the case of iMessage, Apple has a competitive advantage that stifles competition, not enhances it. Setting a baseline for interoperability is not the same as requiring them all to be the same.
  - hellojesus 4y ago
    People vote with their dollars. If people don't like the dumb messaging, they can move to a different platform. With infinite amounts of other free apps, why are regulations necessary? Let people decide for themselves.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      So people who have no dollars get no vote and deserve nothing? Should we take the same approach with clean air and see what happens?
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > people who have no dollars get no vote and deserve nothing? On how messaging works on thousand-dollar phones? Yes.
        ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        Nice If your were in charge when the telephone network was designed, poor people would not even be able to make a phonecall to their middleclass neighbour or senator, they'd have to buy a special Rich People phone
        jaywalk 4y ago
        Your hypothetical would make sense if iPhones didn't support regular phone calls, SMS, and every other messaging app out there. All people without iPhones can't do is send blue bubble messages to iPhone users. That's literally it.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      The same could be said for Disneyland, but it's not an excuse to let Disney engage in lawless conduct as long as it's within the park.
      - hellojesus 4y ago
- smoldesu 4y ago
  > it's removing competition itself. That's pretty funny considering the European Commission's original complaint against Apple was for anti-competitive behavior. Maybe things would have turned out differently if Apple hadn't embraced, extended and extinguished SMS. Maybe regulators would be a little more lenient if the App Store was ruled with anything other than an iron fist. But now they have to take action, not because Apple is unique, but because their business practices are interfering with the progress of the rest of the industry. Competitive agency is a weak excuse when they're a noted tyrant on their own platform.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- fennecfoxy 4y ago
  You're saying Apple's iMessage is a response to competition as a feature to compete. It is, in actuality, anti-competitive as there is no way to a competitor to participate other than creating a separate platform or App for messaging. Because iMessage comes with and is supported by both all iPhones and Apple it is an uneven playing field; it is impossible to compete & is therefore anti-competitive. The same thing would happen with TMSC, at the moment Apple buys out a large chunk if not all of their production capacity for a node - this is fine, it's just business. If Apple said to TMSC, "we'll buy out all your capacity for this node but only if you contractually refuse to sell this node to any other company while we're using it" this is anti-competitive behaviour.

smoldesu 4y ago

The regulation was originally an antitrust case leveled against Apple by the European Commission. It contained many things that are unrelated to saving human lives, but will make developers and users lives better in the long run. We do this because the status quo (Apple having unfettered control over their ecosystem) hasn't worked out for people outside of the ecosystem. In lieu of trusting the world's largest company to build a text-messaging replacement that works on other phones, we do have to drop the life-saving legislation to focus on nannying the next iPhone.

salad-tycoon 4y ago
Some in the United States would be grateful that a large multinational regulatory agency would focus on an issue whereupon green bubble people identify as blue bubble people versus matters of more import. They would call this a win. Not arguing against your comment. Just adding a viewpoint that some have. I.e Big government should spend more time on these kind of things instead of “life saving” things.
sbuk 4y ago
Developers lives, not necessarily users. It was also a huge waste of time and money for all parties as it achieves nothing - Facebook are the market leader with WhatsApp both globally an in Europe - iMessage barely registers in the top 5.
- jorams 4y ago
  The law isn't specific to Apple, it also affects WhatsApp. Indeed in the EU that's probably much more important. Personally I don't know anybody who consciously uses iMessage, but the extreme network effects of WhatsApp make it socially impossible to move away from.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Why wouldn't it improve? Currently none of these services offer interop; in the future they might. That's a static upgrade to me, and I'd imagine most other people too.

dlivingston 4y ago

That's a bit reductionist. Encryption, variable-sized payload attachments, reactions, dynamic group membership are some potential featurs. And - critically - integration with systems NOT tied to outdated mobile cell infrastructure (you need to procure a phone number and special systems to send an SMS). Apple is the last real holdout here, keeping SMS and MMS alive.

Telemakhos 4y ago

Is it really only about bubble color, or also about encryption? Apple goes to great lengths to secure those blue bubbles, even as group texts. Green bubbles are not secure, and Google is pushing an interoperability standard that does not secure group chats because Google likes reading your comms for its advertising business.

klodolph 4y ago
I don’t think we need to identify Google’s motives as malicious. Google has been trying to get people to use its own messaging apps, but Google missed the boat, bungled the user experience, and kept confusing people with new apps. Google would probably love it if Android shipped with a Google-branded, end-to-end encrypted messaging app that people liked to use. I think that there is a combination of internal Google problems and problems in Google’s relationships with Android vendors that makes this difficult. And then, any such app would be probably be in, what, 6th place at this point? Meanwhile, Meta has apps #1 and #2.
- dpratt 4y ago
  > I don’t think we need to identify Google’s motives as malicious I would argue that the evidence over the past several years has shown that the default position w.r.t. to Google's motivations should not default to 'benign' under any circumstance. With all other things being equal, and without evidence to the contrary, it makes sense to operate under the assumption that Google will enthusiastically and universally do everything they can to violate your privacy in any manner available to them, no matter how subtle.
  - klodolph 4y ago
    > I would argue that the evidence over the past several years has shown that the default position w.r.t. to Google's motivations should not default to 'benign' under any circumstance. “Not benign” and “not malicious” can both be true. Google is motivated by self-interest, is staffed by engineers which have various conflicting self-interest and ideologies, and has a culture with various competencies and dysfunctions. Sometimes Google will do things that benefit consumers and sometimes Google will do things that harm consumers, but it’s not out of altruism nor is it out of malice. Same as other large companies.