4 ms·

The inability to unsubscribe should be fixed in the law, not by granting a payments monopoly for all users of a specific operating system or phone model.

merrywhether 3y ago
It should be, but I’m not holding my breathe for the US to suddenly start ancting like a functional government (and there are probably other countries where a legal fix is less likely as well). Until then companies are free to offer private alternatives to users who find that to be a valuable service.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  > Until then companies are free to offer private alternatives to users who find that to be a valuable service. The question with the App Store is, are customers allowed to choose?
xoa 3y ago
>The inability to unsubscribe should be fixed in the law Even taking your second part as given without addressing the actual complexity here: then how about you accomplish that FIRST? Because I've heard a lot of "we'll break this hack that makes things work suboptimally but better than nothing and then fix it properly in law later" over the decades and 99% of the time it breaks the hack and then surprise surprise never ever gets the "fixed in law" part, leaving us worse off without the gain. I'm all in favor of passing some laws in this area that'd accomplish stuff more efficient with fewer perverse incentives on all sides. I'd like to see users have the option by law to control their root key stores, to require standard secure APIs for subscriptions so that multiple 3rd parties can offer central management and users can cancel without any interaction with what they're subscribing to, for long basic price linked warranties required by law, local use and ad free data control options by law, but also for manufacturers/devs to be protected by default from liability etc. It'd be great to fix a whole lot of stuff. But until that happy day happens I'm less inclined to just mindlessly bash down what we have and a lot of people are pretty happy with and seems to have struck an ok if far from ideal compromise. I mean, killing upgrades alone makes me hate the app store, but still fix first.

merrywhether 3y ago

It should be, but I’m not holding my breathe for the US to suddenly start ancting like a functional government (and there are probably other countries where a legal fix is less likely as well). Until then companies are free to offer private alternatives to users who find that to be a valuable service.

smoldesu 3y ago
> Until then companies are free to offer private alternatives to users who find that to be a valuable service. The question with the App Store is, are customers allowed to choose?

xoa 3y ago

>The inability to unsubscribe should be fixed in the law Even taking your second part as given without addressing the actual complexity here: then how about you accomplish that FIRST? Because I've heard a lot of "we'll break this hack that makes things work suboptimally but better than nothing and then fix it properly in law later" over the decades and 99% of the time it breaks the hack and then surprise surprise never ever gets the "fixed in law" part, leaving us worse off without the gain. I'm all in favor of passing some laws in this area that'd accomplish stuff more efficient with fewer perverse incentives on all sides. I'd like to see users have the option by law to control their root key stores, to require standard secure APIs for subscriptions so that multiple 3rd parties can offer central management and users can cancel without any interaction with what they're subscribing to, for long basic price linked warranties required by law, local use and ad free data control options by law, but also for manufacturers/devs to be protected by default from liability etc. It'd be great to fix a whole lot of stuff. But until that happy day happens I'm less inclined to just mindlessly bash down what we have and a lot of people are pretty happy with and seems to have struck an ok if far from ideal compromise. I mean, killing upgrades alone makes me hate the app store, but still fix first.