9 ms·

I understand your concern and share some of them. However the solution to overreaching unaccountable private cooperations cannot be to hand all the power to an

I understand your concern and share some of them. However the solution to overreaching unaccountable private cooperations cannot be to hand all the power to another private unaccountable company. Apple is venturing into advertising and that'll tempt them to weaken privacy protections sooner or later. Additionally their app store rules went far beyond enforcing security and privacy. They gave themselves an advantage and removed competitors for commercial reasons. Given that the mobile market is pretty much a duopoly in Europe there were two (political) realistic alternatives: - Regulate tightly what apple/google are allowed to do with their stores (e.g. like a common carrier) - force them to give customers a choice by allowing side loading. The elected EU legislative took some points from both approaches AFTER the free market failed to implement a meaningful competition for central app stores.

legutierr 3y ago
> Apple is venturing into advertising and that'll tempt them to weaken privacy protections sooner or later. I hope they never become this short-sighted. I buy Apple primarily because I believe that they protect my privacy—or at least that they do a better job of it than everyone else.
- toxik 3y ago
  The problem is that once the apple turns sour, and it will, you’ll turn around to see that all the fruit is spoiled. Some moldy, some maggot-ridden, but none made for you.
- rickdeckard 3y ago
  The thing is, yes Meta/Google did make mistakes in the past and malicious players were able to gather individual information from them. But the current business of Meta/Google Ads is actually based on protecting your private information and curating it into anonymous Personas. They protect your privacy for the very same reason as Apple: To be the sole gatekeeper for effectively reaching you with Ads. There also won't be any "weakened privacy protections". The goal of Meta/Google/Apple is to reach maximum precision for those Personas they create from their users, and protect the underlying data for competitive advantage. Personas are legally not personal data, they are abstractions. Advertising to you via a cluster with other people who recently purchased a new car is not a legal violation of privacy. This is how Meta/Google advertising works and how Apple Ads works as well, their T&C already state this clearly ("your information will be used to show ads relevant to you").
scarface74 3y ago
> They gave themselves an advantage and removed competitors for commercial reasons. Which competitor has been “removed”? > Regulate tightly what apple/google are allowed to do with their stores (e.g. like a common carrier) So there shouldn’t be any rules are quality controls on what should be allowed? > The elected EU legislative took some points from both approaches AFTER the free market failed to implement a meaningful competition for central app stores. Yes, the EU is the model of smart regulations when it comes to tech. That’s the reason that it has such a thriving tech ecosystem.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  >Yes, the EU is the model of smart regulations when it comes to tech. That’s the reason that it has such a thriving tech ecosystem. I don't think the (perhaps perceived) lack of entrepreneurship in the EU should be taken as a sign of regulation overreach to protect privacy. Seems liked a red herring in this conversation
- VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
  The reality is simply that the EU is just not competitive in pretty much any of these industries. I'm actually struggling to think of any industry at all where EU has produced the market leaders.
  - illiarian 3y ago
    > That’s the reason that it has such a thriving tech ecosystem. By "market leaders" you mean the very many American companies fuelled by unlimited investor money that lose billions of dollars a year with no chance of ever turning a profit?
    - scarface74 3y ago
      Or maybe the top five most valuable tech companies - Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google. Even if that’s the case, why aren’t investors willing to invest in EU tech companies at the same level?
FredPret 3y ago
I have a tiny measure of power over Apple. I can decide not to buy their products or their stock. But I have zero power over the EU. And yet they're legislating what my iPhone is going to work like. Talk about unaccountable. The free market did not deliver competing app stores because that is not a problem for the majority of users and is in fact a huge boon for most.
- nightski 3y ago
  They are doing no such thing. You don't have to use side loaded apps. If a company decides to only distribute from side loading, you can just not use their app. This is effectively what you are forcing on people who would prefer side loading, so it shouldn't be a problem for you.
  - mrcode007 3y ago
    This will be the biggest future exploit vector. “Your phone is infected. Click here to load our antivirus”
    - frumper 3y ago
      Good thing even my mom learned to ignore that one a decade ago in windows.
    - JustSomeNobody 3y ago
      There is absolutely zero chance Apple will allow it to be this simple.
    - kaba0 3y ago
      If they make it like android’s dev mode, no one on Earth who shouldn’t will enable it. The people whom for such exploits would be dangerous won’t be able to follow the 6 steps to enable them.
  - FredPret 3y ago
    I want a locked down phone. So does every old person in my life. I'll literally pay extra for a locked-down phone. If you want to side load, buy a phone that allows it, don't force Apple to make one.
ericmay 3y ago
> However the solution to overreaching unaccountable private cooperations cannot be to hand all the power to another private unaccountable company. Another way of thinking about this is what we're taking this so-called overreaching, unaccountable private corporate power from one company and giving many companies that same power. > The elected EU legislative took some points from both approaches AFTER the free market failed to implement a meaningful competition for central app stores. You are presenting both Android and iOS, and default app stores for each platform as a duopoly, which is a mistake, because on Android you can already install third-party app stores. The mobile OS landscape is a duopoly, but there are many app stores across both platforms so is is not really a duopoly, it's just that the Google Play Store and App Store on iOS are superior products (particularly the iOS App Store). On the OS side I think instead of premature legislation and stagnation we should let things just play out. It's a mistake to assume that because the state of the world is X today that it'll always be X. You can't have instantaneous change. It also might just be the economic reality that having just a couple of operating systems is the best for consumers and the market.
evilduck 3y ago
> Apple is venturing into advertising Why is this a worry right now and not 12-13 years ago when they started venturing into advertising with iAd?
- eitland 3y ago
  If I am not mistaken, HN pointed it out back then too.
- GeekyBear 3y ago
  Because iAd was designed to preserve user privacy? >A new report on Advertising Age has revealed what advertisers think of Apple's arrogance when it comes to its mobile advertising platform and its tight grip on user data. This attitude towards its ad business turns off advertisers and makes them turn elsewhere, perhaps other avenues such as Google, Yahoo, or Facebook that make life a lot easier for them. "One person familiar with the situation exec said Apple's refusal to share data makes it the best-looking girl at the party, forced to wear a bag over her head," the AdAge report read. https://www.techtimes.com/articles/3568/20140222/apple-cares-about-your-privacy-more-than-advertising-dollars-via-iad-really.htm https://www.techtimes.com/articles/3568/20140222/apple-cares...
  - HeckFeck 3y ago
    This is the most beautiful thing I've read today. We need many more sulking advertising execs.
  - rickdeckard 3y ago
    Exactly this. When Apple tried "Premium Advertising" without sharing any Personas 10 years ago, it failed as it was expensive and didn't allow targeted marketing. In the meantime Meta learnt that they can't allow others to extract their precious userdata and need to protect their position by clustering data into Personas for advertisers to select from. Now Apple reenters the ad-business, using the very same scheme as Google/Meta (maintaining Personas based on userdata they safeguard) but with an unprecedented set of profiling data of its users, as they collect data on the Apple-ID level, spanning from positioning data over types of apps used and stocks you're watching to actual purchases in the physical world. If people consider Meta/Google's practice as spying, I don't know what they expect Apple's Ads to be. Their T&C already describe that they create a persona from your data to display "Ads relevant to you", just like Meta/Google does...
GeekyBear 3y ago
> Apple is venturing into advertising It's not the advertising part that is problematic. It's the part where you relentlessly spy on everyone to make selling ads more profitable.
- rickdeckard 3y ago
  Meta is collecting data from people using its products to create targeting-models for advertisement. An Advertiser can then buy ads targeting a specific audience. Companies really want the individual user-information to cut out Meta, but Meta is not sharing it to the advertiser, they have to go through Meta to reach their audience based on Personas they curate. Now Apple owns the underlying Hardware and tracks usage of every single application and service on top. How exactly is Apple expected to operate their advertising business if NOT with the very same method as Meta/Google (creating personas, selling them for ads)?
  - GeekyBear 3y ago
    > Meta is collecting data from people using its products to create targeting-models for advertisement. Meta has been creating shadow profiles of people who don't even use their products for over a decade now. https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/11/17225482/facebook-shadow-profiles-zuckerberg-congress-data-privacy https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/11/17225482/facebook-shadow-... Google, literally, buys a copy of everyone's credit/debit card transaction data so they can spy on your bank account and not just your online activities. https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/25/242717/google-now-tracks-your-credit-card-purchases-and-connects-them-to-its-online-profile-of-you/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/25/242717/google-no... You can sell ads without constantly spying on everyone. Glossy Magazines, Newspapers, Radio, and Television managed to do so for many decades.
    - rickdeckard 3y ago
      Glossy Magazines sell Ads to people interested in those glossy magazines. The Magazine-content defines its target-group. This doesn't work for platform-based advertising, the platform needs to offer ways to select the target-group to address. Google purchased transaction data to connect online behavior to the real world and refine their Persona profile. Apple doesn't need to do this, because they already collect data from their users' behavior in the real world via their Apple Pay / Apple Card purchases. In 2017 Google didn't know whether you actually have money to buy a new TV, they only saw that you kept looking at TVs online. So they thought it's a good idea to buy this data to refine their Ad Personas. In 2023, Apple already owns sufficient data to know if you can afford a TV or not. They curate your persona from your Apple ID and your Apple Pay transactions and even know whether you went to BestBuy recently. Putting you in a matching advertising cluster for that isn't a legal privacy violation, your private data will never be shared with anyone. Just like Google and Meta don't share your private data with anyone. I don't like any of those practices, but let's not buy into the illusion that Apple is doing anything different to Meta/Google. They all create and refine Personas to allow targeted marketing, and protect the underlying data to be the gatekeeper.
HeckFeck 3y ago
> the free market failed to implement a meaningful competition for central app stores. I don't want every component of my phone OS broken apart and subject to what some legislator or lobbyist thinks is 'competition'. The competition is between Apple and Google making mobile platforms and we already had a choice. I chose Apple's approach after a few years with Google. I miss the headphone jack, but having no tacky tracky shit shovelled throughout the OS is nice.
- kaba0 3y ago
  2 is no choice, that’s just ridiculous.
  - airstrike 3y ago
    Network effects. Or do we really expect devs to write proper code for 3+ entirely different native mobile platforms?
    - phpisthebest 3y ago
      If only there was a way of delivery applications using a uniform set of rules independent of any manufacturer or vendor.. hmm what would I call that.... A standard perhaps.. Then maybe we could make that same application work on several types of devices and form factors that simply run that standard via a web of devices We could call them Web Apps... A Web App Standard....
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - kaba0 3y ago
      No, that’s why we need market regulations so that the two lucky platforms that won the game serves the people, and not only their wallets.
  - HeckFeck 3y ago
    More platforms would be better but the answer is for someone - commercial or some free software initiative - to get a usable and supported device to market, not making impositions on an already established platform with its own strengths and legions of customers who are willing to pay slightly more because of them.

legutierr 3y ago

> Apple is venturing into advertising and that'll tempt them to weaken privacy protections sooner or later. I hope they never become this short-sighted. I buy Apple primarily because I believe that they protect my privacy—or at least that they do a better job of it than everyone else.

toxik 3y ago
The problem is that once the apple turns sour, and it will, you’ll turn around to see that all the fruit is spoiled. Some moldy, some maggot-ridden, but none made for you.
rickdeckard 3y ago
The thing is, yes Meta/Google did make mistakes in the past and malicious players were able to gather individual information from them. But the current business of Meta/Google Ads is actually based on protecting your private information and curating it into anonymous Personas. They protect your privacy for the very same reason as Apple: To be the sole gatekeeper for effectively reaching you with Ads. There also won't be any "weakened privacy protections". The goal of Meta/Google/Apple is to reach maximum precision for those Personas they create from their users, and protect the underlying data for competitive advantage. Personas are legally not personal data, they are abstractions. Advertising to you via a cluster with other people who recently purchased a new car is not a legal violation of privacy. This is how Meta/Google advertising works and how Apple Ads works as well, their T&C already state this clearly ("your information will be used to show ads relevant to you").

scarface74 3y ago

> They gave themselves an advantage and removed competitors for commercial reasons. Which competitor has been “removed”? > Regulate tightly what apple/google are allowed to do with their stores (e.g. like a common carrier) So there shouldn’t be any rules are quality controls on what should be allowed? > The elected EU legislative took some points from both approaches AFTER the free market failed to implement a meaningful competition for central app stores. Yes, the EU is the model of smart regulations when it comes to tech. That’s the reason that it has such a thriving tech ecosystem.

no_wizard 3y ago
>Yes, the EU is the model of smart regulations when it comes to tech. That’s the reason that it has such a thriving tech ecosystem. I don't think the (perhaps perceived) lack of entrepreneurship in the EU should be taken as a sign of regulation overreach to protect privacy. Seems liked a red herring in this conversation
VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
The reality is simply that the EU is just not competitive in pretty much any of these industries. I'm actually struggling to think of any industry at all where EU has produced the market leaders.
- illiarian 3y ago
  > That’s the reason that it has such a thriving tech ecosystem. By "market leaders" you mean the very many American companies fuelled by unlimited investor money that lose billions of dollars a year with no chance of ever turning a profit?
  - scarface74 3y ago
    Or maybe the top five most valuable tech companies - Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google. Even if that’s the case, why aren’t investors willing to invest in EU tech companies at the same level?

FredPret 3y ago

I have a tiny measure of power over Apple. I can decide not to buy their products or their stock. But I have zero power over the EU. And yet they're legislating what my iPhone is going to work like. Talk about unaccountable. The free market did not deliver competing app stores because that is not a problem for the majority of users and is in fact a huge boon for most.

nightski 3y ago
They are doing no such thing. You don't have to use side loaded apps. If a company decides to only distribute from side loading, you can just not use their app. This is effectively what you are forcing on people who would prefer side loading, so it shouldn't be a problem for you.
- mrcode007 3y ago
  This will be the biggest future exploit vector. “Your phone is infected. Click here to load our antivirus”
  - frumper 3y ago
    Good thing even my mom learned to ignore that one a decade ago in windows.
  - JustSomeNobody 3y ago
    There is absolutely zero chance Apple will allow it to be this simple.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    If they make it like android’s dev mode, no one on Earth who shouldn’t will enable it. The people whom for such exploits would be dangerous won’t be able to follow the 6 steps to enable them.
- FredPret 3y ago
  I want a locked down phone. So does every old person in my life. I'll literally pay extra for a locked-down phone. If you want to side load, buy a phone that allows it, don't force Apple to make one.

ericmay 3y ago

> However the solution to overreaching unaccountable private cooperations cannot be to hand all the power to another private unaccountable company. Another way of thinking about this is what we're taking this so-called overreaching, unaccountable private corporate power from one company and giving many companies that same power. > The elected EU legislative took some points from both approaches AFTER the free market failed to implement a meaningful competition for central app stores. You are presenting both Android and iOS, and default app stores for each platform as a duopoly, which is a mistake, because on Android you can already install third-party app stores. The mobile OS landscape is a duopoly, but there are many app stores across both platforms so is is not really a duopoly, it's just that the Google Play Store and App Store on iOS are superior products (particularly the iOS App Store). On the OS side I think instead of premature legislation and stagnation we should let things just play out. It's a mistake to assume that because the state of the world is X today that it'll always be X. You can't have instantaneous change. It also might just be the economic reality that having just a couple of operating systems is the best for consumers and the market.

evilduck 3y ago

> Apple is venturing into advertising Why is this a worry right now and not 12-13 years ago when they started venturing into advertising with iAd?

eitland 3y ago
If I am not mistaken, HN pointed it out back then too.
GeekyBear 3y ago
Because iAd was designed to preserve user privacy? >A new report on Advertising Age has revealed what advertisers think of Apple's arrogance when it comes to its mobile advertising platform and its tight grip on user data. This attitude towards its ad business turns off advertisers and makes them turn elsewhere, perhaps other avenues such as Google, Yahoo, or Facebook that make life a lot easier for them. "One person familiar with the situation exec said Apple's refusal to share data makes it the best-looking girl at the party, forced to wear a bag over her head," the AdAge report read. https://www.techtimes.com/articles/3568/20140222/apple-cares-about-your-privacy-more-than-advertising-dollars-via-iad-really.htm https://www.techtimes.com/articles/3568/20140222/apple-cares...
- HeckFeck 3y ago
  This is the most beautiful thing I've read today. We need many more sulking advertising execs.
- rickdeckard 3y ago
  Exactly this. When Apple tried "Premium Advertising" without sharing any Personas 10 years ago, it failed as it was expensive and didn't allow targeted marketing. In the meantime Meta learnt that they can't allow others to extract their precious userdata and need to protect their position by clustering data into Personas for advertisers to select from. Now Apple reenters the ad-business, using the very same scheme as Google/Meta (maintaining Personas based on userdata they safeguard) but with an unprecedented set of profiling data of its users, as they collect data on the Apple-ID level, spanning from positioning data over types of apps used and stocks you're watching to actual purchases in the physical world. If people consider Meta/Google's practice as spying, I don't know what they expect Apple's Ads to be. Their T&C already describe that they create a persona from your data to display "Ads relevant to you", just like Meta/Google does...

GeekyBear 3y ago

> Apple is venturing into advertising It's not the advertising part that is problematic. It's the part where you relentlessly spy on everyone to make selling ads more profitable.

rickdeckard 3y ago
Meta is collecting data from people using its products to create targeting-models for advertisement. An Advertiser can then buy ads targeting a specific audience. Companies really want the individual user-information to cut out Meta, but Meta is not sharing it to the advertiser, they have to go through Meta to reach their audience based on Personas they curate. Now Apple owns the underlying Hardware and tracks usage of every single application and service on top. How exactly is Apple expected to operate their advertising business if NOT with the very same method as Meta/Google (creating personas, selling them for ads)?
- GeekyBear 3y ago
  > Meta is collecting data from people using its products to create targeting-models for advertisement. Meta has been creating shadow profiles of people who don't even use their products for over a decade now. https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/11/17225482/facebook-shadow-profiles-zuckerberg-congress-data-privacy https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/11/17225482/facebook-shadow-... Google, literally, buys a copy of everyone's credit/debit card transaction data so they can spy on your bank account and not just your online activities. https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/25/242717/google-now-tracks-your-credit-card-purchases-and-connects-them-to-its-online-profile-of-you/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/25/242717/google-no... You can sell ads without constantly spying on everyone. Glossy Magazines, Newspapers, Radio, and Television managed to do so for many decades.
  - rickdeckard 3y ago
    Glossy Magazines sell Ads to people interested in those glossy magazines. The Magazine-content defines its target-group. This doesn't work for platform-based advertising, the platform needs to offer ways to select the target-group to address. Google purchased transaction data to connect online behavior to the real world and refine their Persona profile. Apple doesn't need to do this, because they already collect data from their users' behavior in the real world via their Apple Pay / Apple Card purchases. In 2017 Google didn't know whether you actually have money to buy a new TV, they only saw that you kept looking at TVs online. So they thought it's a good idea to buy this data to refine their Ad Personas. In 2023, Apple already owns sufficient data to know if you can afford a TV or not. They curate your persona from your Apple ID and your Apple Pay transactions and even know whether you went to BestBuy recently. Putting you in a matching advertising cluster for that isn't a legal privacy violation, your private data will never be shared with anyone. Just like Google and Meta don't share your private data with anyone. I don't like any of those practices, but let's not buy into the illusion that Apple is doing anything different to Meta/Google. They all create and refine Personas to allow targeted marketing, and protect the underlying data to be the gatekeeper.

HeckFeck 3y ago

> the free market failed to implement a meaningful competition for central app stores. I don't want every component of my phone OS broken apart and subject to what some legislator or lobbyist thinks is 'competition'. The competition is between Apple and Google making mobile platforms and we already had a choice. I chose Apple's approach after a few years with Google. I miss the headphone jack, but having no tacky tracky shit shovelled throughout the OS is nice.

kaba0 3y ago
2 is no choice, that’s just ridiculous.
- airstrike 3y ago
  Network effects. Or do we really expect devs to write proper code for 3+ entirely different native mobile platforms?
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    If only there was a way of delivery applications using a uniform set of rules independent of any manufacturer or vendor.. hmm what would I call that.... A standard perhaps.. Then maybe we could make that same application work on several types of devices and form factors that simply run that standard via a web of devices We could call them Web Apps... A Web App Standard....
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - kaba0 3y ago
    No, that’s why we need market regulations so that the two lucky platforms that won the game serves the people, and not only their wallets.
- HeckFeck 3y ago
  More platforms would be better but the answer is for someone - commercial or some free software initiative - to get a usable and supported device to market, not making impositions on an already established platform with its own strengths and legions of customers who are willing to pay slightly more because of them.