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Your smartphone, their rules: App stores enable corporate-government censorship
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 11mo agoI wish I had more control over what the app stores show me. I should be able to block or hide apps on the storefront. Stop showing me TikTok Temu or Shein.
- whatsupdog 11mo ago[flagged]
- righthand 11mo agoWhat of the people that have done nothing wrong that were just living their lives now at high risk because of ICE’s ridiculous false agenda?
- mickinyourdouth 11mo ago[dead]
- conception 11mo agoAt high risk, eh?
- ghettoCoder 11mo agoRidiculous take on the situation. You’re either a bot or a maga pos. Not sure which yet.
- whatsupdog 11mo agoButthurt much that your landscaper for deported?
- nancyminusone 11mo agoThey weren't "just doing their job", they were also doing something else. You'll find the something else as legitimate reasoning for ICEBlock.
- NateEag 11mo ago"Befehl ist befehl." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
- coffeefirst 11mo agoIn the United States reporting on the presence of law enforcement on your street is protected by the first amendment. You can even film them and broadcast their activity in public places to the world. You may not like it. Apple may not like it. But there's not much ambiguity here.
- HumblyTossed 11mo agoThere's no difference between ICEBlock and Google/Waze reporting on police activity on I5.
- saubeidl 11mo agoThe Gestapo, too, was "law enforcement officials, who are just doing their job". Sometimes the job is to be an armed thug for a racist authoritarian. In that case, just doing it is not a good excuse.
- whatsupdog 11mo agoOmg... Trump is Hitler, ICE is gestapo. Lay off the CNN for a bit man, go touch some grass.
- saubeidl 11mo agoI studied History in Austria. Those who do not know it are doomed to repeat it.
- whatsupdog 11mo ago[flagged]
- analog8374 11mo agoWhen is censorship ok? We have moderators, here in hn. We also have them in reddit. So sometimes we like censorship and sometimes we don't.
- Retr0id 11mo agoIt's ok when users have choice. Those who don't like HN moderation can hang out somewhere else (and many do). Not using app stores isn't an option for most users, especially on iOS.
- analog8374 11mo ago"If you don't like it you can leave" strikes me as an evasion of my point. The fact is, we sometimes like censorship. Which is funny.
- stronglikedan 11mo agoJust because it's here doesn't mean it's liked. Various factors contribute to whether any given site is moderated, and to what degree. It's almost never just "the will of the users".
- analog8374 11mo agoWhen the subject arises, the consensus seems to be that moderation (and thus censorship) is indispensable. I blame a deep, possible even genetic, authoritarianism.
- fwip 11mo agoIt seems obvious to me that we just don't mind delegating this task some of the time, as long as we largely agree with the results. I don't think you need an appeal to authoritarianism to appreciate a forum that isn't 80% penis-enlargment ads. A few people spending their time to moderate this content saves the whole group a lot of time. In the same way that I'm okay with other people deciding a tomato is too moldy to sell (whether that's the farmer, health inspector, or grocer), I'm also okay with some people having the power to remove the equivalent speech from certain spaces. You just need to be more careful when the jurisdiction becomes larger, because it becomes harder to "vote with your feet" to go to a place whose policies you agree with.
- isodev 11mo agoI’m very happy to see a US organisations picking this up finally. Apple/Google clearly want to fight this on a country by country basis so they can stretch it until forever. Hope the pressure results in meaningful changes for all.
- shagie 11mo agoIf it's not done on the basis of jurisdiction, then laws about what constitutes illegal content in Germany or China or United States applies to everyone. Taking the stance of "we're not going to follow any laws and publish everything" puts the companies in very difficult places in those countries as publishers of the content.
- vorpalhex 11mo agoOr just.. make it easier to not be constrained to app stores. I realize losing that sweet, sweet 30% fee on every transaction hurts their wallet but I think my $1000 phone should be mine to freely install things on.
- dizlexic 11mo ago*and hurts design and development of their products... which you bought... because you're complaining about it. I get in trouble for this a lot, but didn't you as a consumer know what you were getting into? I know I did when I bought into the apple ecosystem. What's the actual argument? Apple doesn't have a monopoly on smartphones, computers or applications. This boils down to. I use their products by choice, but I want the government to force them to change. Their platform their rules. idk why this is controversial.
- saagarjha 11mo agoBecause there’s a lot more of us than there is of them and the government steps in to make things better for most of its citizens.
- dzikimarian 11mo ago
- AlgebraFox 11mo agoWhile censorship is one thing, they forgot another overlooked ability of these app stores: pushing unwanted apps/services to our personal devices without our knowledge.The fact that the majority of people don’t care about this censorship and backdoors makes me think we don’t really appreciate the concept of freedom, and maybe we are okay with being slaves—at least until we cannot take it anymore. Maybe that’s why history repeats itself every few decades to remind us about these values.
- gruez 11mo ago>While censorship is one thing, they forgot another overlooked ability of these app stores: pushing unwanted apps/services to our personal devices without our knowledge When was the last time the play store or app store pushed apps "without our knowledge"? I've only heard of it done by shady third party bloatware that OEMs bundle with the OS. The actual issue is a system that can perform OTA updates, not app stores themselves.
- knollimar 11mo agoThe play store doesn't even update my apps for me anymore often
- pjc50 11mo agoThere was the time Apple dropped a U2 album on everyone, to widespread annoyance, but that's not the same thing.
- AlgebraFox 11mo agoWhat about when Google pushed Android Safety Core to all Android devices out there? And you also realize they can push modified build of any apps, now that they also own the keys to sign the apps?
- gruez 11mo ago>What about when Google pushed Android Safety Core to all Android devices out there? You mean the package that apps have to opt in to use? I guess that's technically counts as "unwanted apps/services", but that's like complaining about firefox "pushing unwanted apps/services", because they added some javascript function to every firefox installation out there. >And you also realize they can push modified build of any apps, now that they also own the keys to sign the apps? If you read my original comment more carefully, you'll notice I'm not denying they have the capability to do so, only that there's no precedence of them doing so.
- tony-john12 11mo ago[dead]
- chaostheory 11mo agoWell, there is the issue of security. While the app stores are also far from perfect on that issue, it’s still better than the Wild West given the sheer number of apps they have to do deal with. Then there’s also the issue of hosting and deploying the client app. Convenience has a cost
- brazukadev 11mo agoThe web is much safer than the App and Play Store while been also absurdly bigger.
- chaostheory 11mo agoBigger yes, but safer is highly doubtful unless you have data to back it up. Content moderation goes both ways, bad and good
- brazukadev 11mo agoIf you think content moderation in app and play store are good and thus there is no scam there, there is no data I can show you to change your opinion, this is pure fate-based.
- rkomorn 11mo agoThey're not saying moderation is good on either store. They're unconvinced that the web is, as you worded it, "much safer." They never suggested the moderation is good and that there are no scams on the stores.
- brazukadev 11mo agoThe web does not have an entry portal like an app store so nobody gets malicious websites pushed to them. If that is not the definition of much safer, I don't know what do you guys expect.
- John-Tony12 11mo ago[dead]
- mark_l_watson 11mo agoI get some push back from a few tech friends because I avoid using apps (except for things like Chess game apps). I can’t say for sure that preferring web versions of services helps with censorship, but it can’t hurt. Using web versions, not apps, is important because companies keep user device statistics and if enough people insist in using web versions, the the web will continue to be at least partially supported by big tech.
- RHSeeger 11mo agoI prefer web versions because I trust the browser sandbox more than I trust the developers at Super Store 01.
- apricot 11mo agoI also prefer web versions for similar reasons, and enjoy them while I still can.
- mark_l_watson 11mo agoYes! I meant to also say that, thanks. Sorry for going off on a tangent, but last week I asked Gemini about security and privacy advantages of running Gmail and Google Calendar using Safari and DuckDuckGo Browser - Gemini made good arguments for using the browser versions: ironic!
- candiddevmike 11mo agoThe recent Facebook scandal of running a service to receive requests for tracking shows the app store sandbox model is far more of a denylist vs an allowlist, it's leaky by design in the name of "developer enablement" or "user experience".
- jerlam 11mo agoIt's even funnier when the desktop app is just the web app with a wrapper, but the desktop app is worse.
- fooqux 11mo agoThere's also PWA, which while not perfect, is supported on iOS.
- viktorcode 11mo agoHow about app creators sue DOJ and/or Apple if the law is on their side?
- gruez 11mo agoIt's possible to criticize something without having the law "on your side". The OP characterizes Apple's action as "unacceptable, censorious overreach", but doesn't claim it was illegal. Once upon a time, slavery was illegal, but it would be daft to oppose emancipation on the basis of "How about slaves sue DOJ and/or slave owners if the law is on their side?".
- aleatorianator 11mo ago[dead]
- pjc50 11mo agoDid you miss the Epic lawsuit?
- mosura 11mo ago[flagged]
- hyperhopper 11mo agoAre you anti handheld radio? Yes, that's the point of freedom. People can carry devices that do things. If they break the law, that's another question, but everyone should be allowed to have computers that communicate that they can control
- Forgeties79 11mo agoI don’t want someone to walk around, I don’t know, forcing all the phones around them in a 10m radius to blow up their batteries and hurt people. Handheld radios, like my wireless tx/rx for lavaliers have to have their spectrums cleared by the FCC. As do most transmitting devices. There are baseline requirements before they can be sold/used. I get often with these things if you give an inch they take a mile, but there have to be some foundational guardrails here IMO. You can’t just have a bunch of laws punishing people for behavior and no attempts at preventing it in the first place. The ability to just transmit anything indiscriminately is just a dicey proposition to me. Like how we used to just allow a free for all with drones.
- stetrain 11mo agoCan you show an example of a phone blowing up its battery with the potential to hurt people because of a harmful radio signal? This seems like something the phone should be able to handle. People already have root access on devices with radio transmitters, they're called laptops. I don't recall many incidents of a malicious actor with a laptop forcing all the laptops around them to blow up and hurt their owners. If that were a reasonable possibility then they certainly wouldn't be allowed on planes.
- Forgeties79 11mo agoMaybe I’m misunderstanding but the prior comment seemed to say “people should be able to transmit whatever they want, however they want, with whatever device they want.” I imagine it’s not insanely difficult to get a phone to crank up voltage or something until the battery starts melting down. Maybe I’m letting sci-fi/thrillers pollute my sense of reality though
- fithisux 11mo agoThe title is correct. The landscape became dangerous because governments withdraw from regulating the space unleashing big corporates on citizen's privacy and options. It is a Corporate-Government dystopia.
- ncr100 11mo agoApple / Google did not but should sue the Gov't for this abuse. Perhaps it could be more popularized, to sway Goo-Apple's mind and take the expensive plunge. Glad the ACLU is starting to talk about it, at the least.
- lenerdenator 11mo agoThis is why a real, committed FLOSS OS is needed for smartphones. Something like how Debian works. You have a non-commercial entity steering the project, it has a governance model, and the goal is to create something that ultimately, no one owns or can take full control over.
- Liquix 11mo agothere are plenty of "real" open source mobile OSes. the issue is third party apps. if Debian couldn't run NGINX, Apache, Docker, Kubernetes, etc, it wouldn't matter how mature or solid the OS is, because 90% of software people want to run on a server doesn't work. if FAANG apps and banking apps don't run on a mobile OS it will never be viable. the government, these big companies, and the device manufacturers all have a vested interest in making sure it never happens.
- lenerdenator 11mo agoHonestly, at least for me, it doesn't have to run those things. It has to run a private browser and Signal, and it needs to run on easy-to-obtain smartphone hardware with no dependency on anyone's app store. I would hope that is at least somewhat doable. I have no delusions about there ever being a year of the GNU/Linux smartphone. Google will make damn sure that never happens, like you say. EDIT: I should say, I see this being a "second" device. Something to use when you don't want someone generating profit off of your data.
- amelius 11mo agoBiggest problem is banking apps.
- immibis 11mo agoLaLiga matches may not be shown on any device that allows alternative app stores or side loading: https://torrentfreak.com/laliga-says-isps-joining-its-piracy-war-is-mandatory-for-broadcasting-rights-251118/ https://torrentfreak.com/laliga-says-isps-joining-its-piracy... Google probably knew about this rule change long in advance and it's what motivated them.
- indianlolcow 11mo ago[flagged]
- 1970-01-01 11mo agoYes. Apps are now just another layer of privacy invasion. 95% of apps could just be a website with zero reduction in function. Literally a bookmark on your home screen to the thing.
- superkuh 11mo agoIt is not your smartphone. The user computer is yours but the phone is owned by the telcom. You do not have a license to operate it. The telco does. They are the owners of your smart phone. Smart phones are terrible computing devices. They are excellent shopping/bank terminals and navigational aids, but they are not allowed to compute. Set it to host a hotspot and use a real computer if you want control. A smartphone will never, can never, allow you to own it. It would be illegal.
- jimangel2001 11mo agoPostmarketOS is calling you.
- superkuh 11mo agoThis only runs on the user computer. It does not allow any control of the baseband modem computer. Alternate operating systems of the user computer do not change the fact that one does not own "their" smartphone.
- hereme888 11mo ago[flagged]
- rangestransform 11mo agoI happened to like when Apple thumbed their nose at the government about the san Bernardino shooter
- shagie 11mo ago(a few months after that incident) - Mr. Fart’s Favorite Colors https://medium.com/@blakeross/mr-fart-s-favorite-colors-3177a406c775 https://medium.com/@blakeross/mr-fart-s-favorite-colors-3177... / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11231631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11231631
- bigyabai 11mo agoThat was 10 years ago. Since then, Apple has admitted to the government forcing them to cover-up backdoors: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-secretly-giving-governments-push-notification-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-... Apple has since confirmed in a statement provided to Ars that the US federal government “prohibited” the company “from sharing any information,” but now that Wyden has outed the feds, Apple has updated its transparency reporting and will “detail these kinds of requests” in a separate section on push notifications in its next report.
- GeekyBear 11mo ago> Apple has admitted to the government forcing them to cover-up backdoors Handing over push notification data stored on a company's server is not any type of "backdoor". That's how the law works in the US when the Federal, State, or local authorities come to you with a warrant. If the Feds come to you with a National Security Letter, then you are forced to hand over the data stored on your servers, and are indeed prohibited from speaking out about it. The only way to defend your customer's privacy is to minimize data collected and stored on your servers, which is what makes the surveillance capitalism business model of companies like Google and Meta so dangerous.
- pbiggar 11mo agoAnother way these app stores enable censorship is by having arcane and inscrutable review processes, where they often ban your app for no reason with no recourse (unless you know a Googler or Apple employee, who can investigate). For example, we work with Aween Rayeh [1], an app that provides real-time traffic information about Israeli checkpoints in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The author's account was banned for no reason at all on Google Play [2]. There was no means to get an appeal or a review. What typically we see happening is that someone internally at these companies issues a ban for what we assume are ideological reasons. Then when someone looks into it there's no actual reason for the ban to have happened, and it sails through. We see similar thing with shadow banning on social media: someone gets hard flagged and their account is completely shut down, and then when someone looks into it, there was never a reason to do it in the first place. [1] https://www.aweenrayeh.com/ https://www.aweenrayeh.com/ [2] https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/thread/382857096 https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/thre...
- metalman 11mo agoandroid 15 has a new volume control limit which prevents full volume from media and calls from bieng used to suposedly save us from ourselves if I get time,I will see if there is way to do something through adb, but I have already deleeted all media and media apps and am prepared to trash the phone also there are impossible to deleet pre loaded phone contacts and my first choices(now changed) for sim settings, come back on each phone restart nasty fashist garbage
- dekoidal 11mo agoApple couldn’t do a thing about a hypothetical iceblock.com
- gumby271 11mo agoAt least on iOS, Apple controls the singular web browser implementation. If they wanted to, they definitely could do a thing about any site. The same arguments for policing their App Store would apply to the open internet too, it's scary and dangerous!
- bigyabai 11mo agoSure they can. Mobile users have no path of recourse if Apple updates WebKit to break or blacklist the site. There is no working alternative on iPhone or iPad. Maybe the people advocating for browser diversity on iOS were onto something...
- erikpukinskis 11mo agoYes, no recourse. But there are still legal consequences. If Apple blocks certain web content they have a harder time arguing that they are not responsible for blocking other we content: copyrighted material, etc. They don’t want that cost/responsibility.
- Svoka 11mo agoLet me get this straight: - You: vote for people makings laws - Companies: comply with legislations they are bound to comply with - you: Censorship! I understand that not everyone gets a chance to vote for laws in the world, but for a company to do business in any country you have to comply with regulations.
- JuniperMesos 11mo agoSome types of censorship are popular and voters in democracies vote for polticians who pass and enforce such laws. A company that is censoring you because they are legally obligated to is still censoring you.
- nofriend 11mo agoDemocracy is a tool we hope makes good decisions. If the democracy voted to have you killed, would you agree with that? If not, stop fetishizing democracy as a process, and instead start supporting outcomes that agree with liberty and justice.
- Fairburn 11mo agoApps have their place. But collecting them like Pokémon isnt wise.
- jason-richar15 11mo ago[flagged]
- Dig1t 11mo agoThe ACLU only writes these articles when the system is being used to take down something they like politically. They never had a problem with the App Store removing Gab, Parler, or Infowars. It’s hard to take institutions like the ACLU seriously when they have such obvious bias. If the ACLU had taken a principled stance when the system was being used to take down things that they didn’t like, they would have been able to keep their legitimacy.
- 827a 11mo agoImagine working on a team in Apple and waking up to the news that the ACLU is now criticizing your work. Talk about being on the wrong side of history. Do Apple employees even care anymore? Or are they just there for the resume prestige? The mental gymnastics you must be doing in this moment to keep yourself from feeling cognitive dissonance.
- JuniperMesos 11mo agoNot everyone views the ACLU's word as sacred and authoritative. I certainly don't, even though I think they're correct on this particular issue - it is in fact bad that Apple can arbitrarily cut off apps from iOS device users by removing them from the app store because the US federal government tells them to. It's also bad if they can do this because the Chinese federal government tells me to, or because Apple decides internally that some app is bad. This is a huge reason why I have never used iOS devices. Nonetheless, people were willing to work at Apple, on iOS devices, going back to the dawn of the system in 2007. If they didn't care about end-user compute sovereignty then, they probably don't care now either.
- 827a 11mo agoObviously not everyone view's the ACLU's word as sacred and authoritative. For example, I imagine Nazis, Slave Owners, and Product Managers on the App Store team at Apple would not.