16 ms·

Sigh. It was to be expected that regulation intended to shield users from big tech harm is twisted to instead have one giant attack another.

nulld3v 3y ago
It's working just as intended. If one big company points out that another big company is breaking the law and is willing to fight to prove it, I'm all for it.
- superduty 3y ago
  Breaking the law?
  - nikanj 3y ago
    ”They’re not allowing our spam on your phones!” I get so much SMS and email spam. I get so little iMessage spam. If getting green texts from Android users is the price I have to pay, so be it.
    - chmod775 3y ago
      SMS spam in Europe? Living in Germany I haven't gotten a single unsolicited SMS in my life - and some of my phone numbers are public on the internet.
      - dontlaugh 3y ago
        Happens to me sometimes in the UK
    - pohuing 3y ago
      I'm a mother for weirdly may children who have new phone numbers, considering I'm a single male at 25yo. That's the primary spam in Germany for me. But Google filters those messages perfectly
    - quitit 3y ago
      The odd thing about all of this - why do they think Apple will make the messages from other platforms blue? Of course they won't, because there won't be feature parity. The point of SMSes remaining green even though that they are largely without cost is because it signals to the user that iMessage's/Facetime's features aren't available. Google who argued that apple's designs aren't worthy of protection are now arguing that the colour of a freaking text bubble has great importance. Which one is it?
bilbo0s 3y ago
is twisted to instead have one giant attack another ..for the purposes of invading user privacy no less. Can't have iMessage out there free from Google Ads can we? And we certainly wouldn't want all those iMessage users to not have the pleasure of having their data sold to info brokers? That's a human right isn't it? /s These tech firms are just wayy too powerful. It's like if you take one down, the others say, "Awesome!!!", and they start selling the data that we've now legally obliged the first tech firm to give them access to.
- room500 3y ago
  I don't understand how opening iMessage would sell existing iMessage data to anyone? Today, if an iPhone user sends a message to an Android user, that message is sent via SMS. If Google wanted, it could already scrape the message. What would change if the protocol was open and the message was sent to the Android device using iMessage? There is no expectation for Apple to give Google read/write access to the iMessage database (not that it exists, but still). What is the downside of users being able to interoperate and use the protocol?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sigmar 3y ago
If Apple stopped using their iMessage-noninteroperability to dissuade consumers (via network effects, degraded quality of images, etc) from trying other mobile OS platforms , wouldn't that also help any third party that wanted to challenge Apple and Google's dominance?
- ericmay 3y ago
  Probably not. It’s better to think of this as Google trying to go after Apple to the sole benefit of Google than it is to think of this as “if Google wins this it will create lots of third party challengers”. Network effects also aren’t really all that bad. Would you want 15 apps that you have to rotate through to communicate to different people with, all with different features and capabilities? Probably not. You’d build some protocol on top to make that easier. But then someone says hey you need to open up your protocol and support my protocol and on and on we go. The crux of this story and most similar stories is that Apple went and made the best product and it’s so good that others can’t compete with it. If the opposite were true we’d just have people battling it out like we used to with video game consoles. Instead we have gigantic multi-hundred billion $ companies attacking Apple’s products and services with big government tools.
  - xigoi 3y ago
    I'd rather have 15 different open protocols that someone could create an universal app for than 7 different proprietary protocols that each require you to have a specific app.
    - repelsteeltje 3y ago
      That's off course the point Mike Masnick (of TechDirt fame) has been making: https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a-technological-approach-to-free-speech https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a...
    - ericmay 3y ago
      I think what you and others are confused by is that you will be required to have many specific apps regardless of whether the protocols are “open” as you do now because the companies building the apps will always build proprietary features to get you to use their specific app, otherwise we would just coalesce around one messaging app and most will lose a lot of the money they are currently making. There is nothing stopping anyone from using open protocols or different messaging apps today. What’s so frustrating about Google’s attempt to leverage lobbyists to handicap Apple is that customers did coalesce around an app: iMessage, and all of this talk about “open protocols” is just marketing. The protocols you want to use are already here and already open!
quitit 3y ago
The EU have a proven history of not being very good at foreseeing obvious, unintended consequences, they also have no history of addressing those short-comings after they arise which is a weakness common to legislative bodies (large, slow, and change requires significant effort to generate support.) So it strikes me as a bit insane that they want to make a lot of very large changes simultaneously. Of the new proposed changes, I can see so few actually rendering any net benefit to the consumer and EU businesses. There is so much wishful thinking going on here. Do EU lawmakers believe that these changes will let EU tech businesses shoehorn themselves into these large, difficult to compete against platforms? It is not clear that it'll just be a land rush lead by large american tech companies. Then for any EU companies that do find a niche, they will simply be bought out - just like how the EU's AI darlings were. It's like they have been baited into this maliciously: why wouldn't the EU introduce changes in a controlled roll out, where they can manage unintended consequences and limit the political fallout for problems that arise. Doing all of this at once is insanely risk-filled, and I feel this will put the journey to consumer protections on the back foot. A politician is not going to have the appetite to delve into this if it turns into toxic soup, meanwhile other countries progress will stall as they gesture warningly at the EU's mistakes.

nulld3v 3y ago

It's working just as intended. If one big company points out that another big company is breaking the law and is willing to fight to prove it, I'm all for it.

superduty 3y ago
Breaking the law?
- nikanj 3y ago
  ”They’re not allowing our spam on your phones!” I get so much SMS and email spam. I get so little iMessage spam. If getting green texts from Android users is the price I have to pay, so be it.
  - chmod775 3y ago
    SMS spam in Europe? Living in Germany I haven't gotten a single unsolicited SMS in my life - and some of my phone numbers are public on the internet.
    - dontlaugh 3y ago
      Happens to me sometimes in the UK
  - pohuing 3y ago
    I'm a mother for weirdly may children who have new phone numbers, considering I'm a single male at 25yo. That's the primary spam in Germany for me. But Google filters those messages perfectly
  - quitit 3y ago
    The odd thing about all of this - why do they think Apple will make the messages from other platforms blue? Of course they won't, because there won't be feature parity. The point of SMSes remaining green even though that they are largely without cost is because it signals to the user that iMessage's/Facetime's features aren't available. Google who argued that apple's designs aren't worthy of protection are now arguing that the colour of a freaking text bubble has great importance. Which one is it?

bilbo0s 3y ago

is twisted to instead have one giant attack another ..for the purposes of invading user privacy no less. Can't have iMessage out there free from Google Ads can we? And we certainly wouldn't want all those iMessage users to not have the pleasure of having their data sold to info brokers? That's a human right isn't it? /s These tech firms are just wayy too powerful. It's like if you take one down, the others say, "Awesome!!!", and they start selling the data that we've now legally obliged the first tech firm to give them access to.

room500 3y ago
I don't understand how opening iMessage would sell existing iMessage data to anyone? Today, if an iPhone user sends a message to an Android user, that message is sent via SMS. If Google wanted, it could already scrape the message. What would change if the protocol was open and the message was sent to the Android device using iMessage? There is no expectation for Apple to give Google read/write access to the iMessage database (not that it exists, but still). What is the downside of users being able to interoperate and use the protocol?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

sigmar 3y ago

If Apple stopped using their iMessage-noninteroperability to dissuade consumers (via network effects, degraded quality of images, etc) from trying other mobile OS platforms , wouldn't that also help any third party that wanted to challenge Apple and Google's dominance?

ericmay 3y ago
Probably not. It’s better to think of this as Google trying to go after Apple to the sole benefit of Google than it is to think of this as “if Google wins this it will create lots of third party challengers”. Network effects also aren’t really all that bad. Would you want 15 apps that you have to rotate through to communicate to different people with, all with different features and capabilities? Probably not. You’d build some protocol on top to make that easier. But then someone says hey you need to open up your protocol and support my protocol and on and on we go. The crux of this story and most similar stories is that Apple went and made the best product and it’s so good that others can’t compete with it. If the opposite were true we’d just have people battling it out like we used to with video game consoles. Instead we have gigantic multi-hundred billion $ companies attacking Apple’s products and services with big government tools.
- xigoi 3y ago
  I'd rather have 15 different open protocols that someone could create an universal app for than 7 different proprietary protocols that each require you to have a specific app.
  - repelsteeltje 3y ago
    That's off course the point Mike Masnick (of TechDirt fame) has been making: https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a-technological-approach-to-free-speech https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-platforms-a...
  - ericmay 3y ago
    I think what you and others are confused by is that you will be required to have many specific apps regardless of whether the protocols are “open” as you do now because the companies building the apps will always build proprietary features to get you to use their specific app, otherwise we would just coalesce around one messaging app and most will lose a lot of the money they are currently making. There is nothing stopping anyone from using open protocols or different messaging apps today. What’s so frustrating about Google’s attempt to leverage lobbyists to handicap Apple is that customers did coalesce around an app: iMessage, and all of this talk about “open protocols” is just marketing. The protocols you want to use are already here and already open!

quitit 3y ago

The EU have a proven history of not being very good at foreseeing obvious, unintended consequences, they also have no history of addressing those short-comings after they arise which is a weakness common to legislative bodies (large, slow, and change requires significant effort to generate support.) So it strikes me as a bit insane that they want to make a lot of very large changes simultaneously. Of the new proposed changes, I can see so few actually rendering any net benefit to the consumer and EU businesses. There is so much wishful thinking going on here. Do EU lawmakers believe that these changes will let EU tech businesses shoehorn themselves into these large, difficult to compete against platforms? It is not clear that it'll just be a land rush lead by large american tech companies. Then for any EU companies that do find a niche, they will simply be bought out - just like how the EU's AI darlings were. It's like they have been baited into this maliciously: why wouldn't the EU introduce changes in a controlled roll out, where they can manage unintended consequences and limit the political fallout for problems that arise. Doing all of this at once is insanely risk-filled, and I feel this will put the journey to consumer protections on the back foot. A politician is not going to have the appetite to delve into this if it turns into toxic soup, meanwhile other countries progress will stall as they gesture warningly at the EU's mistakes.