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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

You really trust the US court system to be impartial?

Should Apple/Google be forced to carry pornographic apps? White supremacists apps? Apps that invade people’s privacy? Which government should hold this responsibility? Should we have an international committee deciding this?

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Please stop. The more we play this tit-for-tat game of political point scoring, the more it causes the whole system to degenerate. It is corrupting every facet of our society, to the point at which we're no longer able to be objective about life and death matters like the current pandemic.

You stop. Stop using $current_panic to justify trampling the parts of the constitution and the parts of the system you don't like. These are legitimate questions that need to be answered or we'll just be in a worse place in the future.

It's so transparent; any time there's some crisis, whether it's terrorism or guns or drugs or a pandemic, there are always people calling for us to ignore the actual issues of our system and ram some "fix" through because this time, no seriously, this time it's life or death and we have to act.

I'm largely agreeing with you. My only point is that we shouldn't allow courts and corporations to become politicized.

Isn’t it a little - like 200+ years - late for that?

We're approaching levels of hyperpartisanship not seen since the civil war. I don't think this is a healthy state of being for our country.

You think we all got together and sung Kum Bah Yah after the Civil War? Are you forgetting about the segregation? The Civil Rights Movement? Vietnam?

Are you arguing that there haven't been varying levels of unity and partisanship within American history?

As long as you ignore minorities and/or non-straight people.

No I’m just amazed that people are willing to give government more power - the same government who would like nothing more than to have more power to intrude on people’s life.

We're advocating moving this power from massive corporations to the government, because at least the government has some accountability, whereas Google has NONE.

Where is this accountability? The Senate by design has two senators regardless of the population of the state, meaning that if you live in a more populous state, you have less voting power than people living in the flyover states. The electoral college also biases the Presidential election to less populous states. Not to mention even in the House of Representatives the ratio between the parties doesn’t match the popular vote because of gerrymandering.

How “accountable” are judges with lifetime appointments?

Google is accountable. If they don’t give people what they want, people don’t give them money directly or indirectly.

In the US, bills (new laws) have to pass both the Senate and the House, and the House is population based. It's a system of checks and balances to ensure that large states and small states don't control each other. In theory, if a particular change is favored by one set and not the other, then it doesn't pass.

In practice it's a little murkier than that, but the way you presented it makes it sound like the system is just stacked to the benefit of the smaller states over the larger, when that is not the case.

Most regulations that are passed are not by law. They are passed by agencies like the FCC, FTC, FDA etc.

So let’s say this mythical law is passed where you give the government more power over private business. The actual execution of the law is going to be carried out by unelected regulatory agencies where your main recourse is unelected judges.

You are constructing a false choice.

We have a general principle of due process and contract law that can be applied here in insisting that "massive corporations" play nice. Reigning in "massive corporations" doesn't require any new governmental powers.

I'm saying this as someone who leans libertarian but I don't think that is in conflict with the concepts of due process and reasonable contracts. The Devil is always in the details but it isn't an either/or choice.

There is no law that says “play nice”. What laws are they in breach of by only allowing certain products to be sold in their store? Every retailer has the right to decide what is sold in their store. Especially since Android is supposedly “open” and you can sideload.

At various times, HN users want the government to decide what gets sold in Apple and Google’s stores and decide what Amazon can and can’t sell. I’ve even seen that they want the government to intervene when it comes to how the game console makers operate. I guess if it were up to them Nintendo should be forced to sell “Debbie Does Dallas” next to “Animal Crossing” in their online store.

IANAL but I think a major component of contract law involves ensuring that the contract is "reasonable". This is what I meant by "play nice". I realize that the definition of "reasonable" is complicated (thus "law school"). But for the purposes of an HN discussion, I think it suffices.

Maybe you're advocating that, but -- even as someone who is generally skeptical of corporate power and the presumed wonders of the marketplace, and more amenable to reasonable government regulation (as subjective as that clearly is) -- this sounds like a pretty dubious idea.

The government regulation that might be called for in situations like this is regulation that puts a few limits on corporate control of massive platforms, not regulation that just transfers that control to other entities. Make locking down platforms too tightly illegal: relax laws about reverse engineering, mandate side-loading. I don't think we need to take away Google or Apple's rights to say what they will and won't sell in their own digital storefronts, but I don't think those rights should necessarily extend to control over what users install on their own devices. The problem is when those are the only legal storefront (e.g., Apple's iOS App Store), or other storefronts are highly undiscoverable.

So now, in the case of Android, the complaint is that the alternatives don’t know how to market. Should we also break up the record labels and the book publishers because you can’t easily discover independent authors and musicians?

I argue that the government has essentially zero accountability, while the private sector has a huge degree.

Our bandwidth for holding government accountable is so limited as to be useless. Consider the federal gov't, since I think it's what you're mostly talking about anyway. We get to vote for

* 1x Presidential primary every 4 years, from a field of, let's say, 8 to be generous: 3 bits

* 1x President every 4 years, from a field of 4 at best: 2 bits

* 2x Senator primary every 6 years. Let's again say a field of 8: 3 bits

* 2x Senator every 6 years. Let's again say a field of 4: 2 bits

* 1x Representative primary every 2 years. Again, very generous field of 8: 3 bits

* 1x Representative every 2 years, field of 4: 2 bits

That gives us 5.4 bits/year of bandwidth to actually hold our elected officials accountable. Yes, we can write letters and stuff, but that doesn't really allow us to hold them accountable. 5.4 bits in a year is nowhere near enough to express our feelings on the myriad of topics that the government is fiddling with, so we have effectively zero control over those things.

Compare that with private sector. Even for entities like Google, we've got huge latitude to vote with our feet. We can use DuckDuckGo, etc. Our choices as consumers provides a comparatively enormous bandwidth.

> Even for entities like Google, we've got huge latitude to vote with our feet. We can use DuckDuckGo, etc.

Great, that's two options. Maybe there's half of another.

There is also Bing.

Really, I think we should call Google and Bing the real two and lump all the alternatives that reuse it into the "half".

>Yes, we can write letters and stuff, but that doesn't really allow us to hold them accountable

Public protests/rallies/marches do bring about change in government/government policies. Many politicians do care about their public image, and are susceptible to manipulation based on public pressure.

>Compare that with private sector. Even for entities like Google, we've got huge latitude to vote with our feet. We can use DuckDuckGo, etc. Our choices as consumers provides a comparatively enormous bandwidth.

Okay, so agreeing with you for the sake of argument - they provide a bandwidth, in theory, but what is the pointif nobody actually uses it? It is "effectively" zero accountability. No mass exodus from Google/Apple/Microsoft/Facebook/Twitter/Whatsapp/TikTok/insert bad company/...

So now we need the government to intervene for people's own good because people willingly give their money to Big Tech?

The government is a made-up construct we created to serve us. What the government should or shouldn't do is up to us.

In the political arena, the status quo is that each voter must choose one of:

A) I must vote for the Democrat candidate because the Republicans are evil and they'll subjugate women and minorities.

B) I must vote for the Republicans because the Democrats are evil and they'll turn us into a bunch of commies.

There is no room in today's political debate for even mention of finer points of free speech philosophy, when all we can do is scare people into voting for the lesser evil.

Many politicians do care about their public image, and are susceptible to manipulation based on public pressure.

And this is no less true in the private sector.

>And this is no less true in the private sector.

Well, of course there are nuances to anything, but CEOs are not elected by the public. They don't have "opponent" CEOs trying to milk their scandals in public ads for getting a job. Its different. Anyway, this conversation has totally gone off topic ! We'll just have to agree to disagree on some things, although I suspect we have more points that we agree on than not.

(Trying to act devil's advocate)

Google is a publicly listed company. Members of the public, either directly or indirectly partially own Google. Google has a duty towards its shareholders. Isn't that some accountability?

I know that not everyone owns Google stock. But I'm guessing hundreds of thousands of people do.

Google's shareholders generally have very different interests than its users do.

There is the solution of taking away power from the government to fix this. You would need to limit the punishment of people to be the same as corporations. For example, if a corporation commits negligence that kills people and gets fined 2% of its income, then the penalty for negligent homicide becomes a 2% yearly income with no jail time.

The problem is that right now the government will jail an individual and fine them many years worth of income but will not punish a corporation even a 1/100th of the penalty. Equalize that can be done by either granting or removing power from the government.

I don't see how that would work, because fining a corporation indirectly fines every employee they need to lay off and can no longer find a job. Of course, we should fine corporations more, but trying to treat a company like a person is just a stupid metaphor in general and extending that will lead you nowhere sane.

>I don't see how that would work, because fining a corporation indirectly fines every employee they need to lay off and can no longer find a job.

Do we stop putting people in prison if they have a child? Either we have to punish children by depriving them of a parent (potentially putting them into foster care) or we have to allow family status to be a factor in sentencing individuals (institutionalize discrimination on a protected class)?

Currently when we punish someone, little thought is given to secondary victims. I don't see why we would make an exclusion for corporations.

> Should Apple/Google be forced to carry pornographic apps? White supremacists apps? Apps that invade people’s privacy? Which government should hold this responsibility? Should we have an international committee deciding this?

We already have a situation in which two companies effectively decide what can go on anyone's cellphone (sideloading is not and will not be a meaningful solution for any more than a fraction of a percent of users).

Why isn’t side loading viable for Android users?

I expect them to be more impartial than a multinational for-profit company whose stakeholders care about little other than their bottom line.

Pornography and hate speech have plenty of legal precedent. And if I'm honest, if it's legal in a given country, why shouldn't it be available?

Are you paying attention to the actions of the modern judicial system in the US that votes along party lines?

You really think that judges with their own religious and political biases and with lifetime appointments “care about you”?

By that same token, are you paying attention to the actions being taken by Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon?

There are no clean actors here, but the difference between the judicial system and the big companies is that the judicial system has people who care about more than just profits.

It’s even worse. They care about their own ideologies that are often at odds with mine.

The difference is that it is much easier to not be beholden to the private corporations you mentioned than the government. Private corporations don’t have the power of the state to take away my liberty, property or life.

You do realize the context of this conversation, correct? We're not talking about your liberty, property, or life. We're talking about apps on a smartphone or tablet.

> Private corporations don’t have the power [] to take away my liberty, property or life.

No, they can only demand you come in for overtime, require you to move where they want you to, or force you to come in while sick, at the risk of taking away your job. A risk which is minor for some of us, but which is the equivalent of a threat of homelessness for others.

Yes and do you really think morality will never come into play if those decisions are made by the government? What are the chances that this government would go to bat for an app by Black Lives Matter as opposed to Focus on the Family?

Yes, yes, provided they're labeled properly, all of them, and no, respectively.

Edit: I guess the first two could use some labels as well, provided the labels aren't legible to parental controls or other nannyware.

Yes, as per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221497

They are all considered “natural monopolies”. They are also regulated on the municipal level. Do you now want each city to regulate apps? Why stop there? Why not regulate what console makers can sell? every physical store can sell?

In my country >90% of smartphone users have Android. Yes I would call that a monopoly. Yes I think monopolies should be regulated. Not at the city level since that's ridiculous and sounds like a strawman. That comment was just an example of monopolies that need to be regulated.

Isn’t the whole beauty of Android that it is “open” and that you can sideload apps and you are not beholden to a “walled garden”?

As Epic found out, not if you want to remain on Google's good side. They were facing sanctions from Google due to their sideloading of Fortnight onto Android phones and tablets.

What “sanctions” were they facing? They were called out because their app was a security nightmare.

https://www.cnet.com/news/fortnites-battle-royale-with-andro...

My understanding is that the "vulnerability" here also exists on every computer or other device on which you download an installer to a public folder--any application can watch that folder and silently replace the file with another when the download completes. There's nothing special about that. Android has a secure internal storage area--but internal storage is often limited. It's gotten better, but my previous phone only had 8gb for both the OS and data to share.

> Should Apple/Google be forced to carry pornographic apps? White supremacists apps? Apps that invade people’s privacy?

My computer allows racist pornography and its the greatest invention in the history of mankind. As far as I can tell, iPhones have not lived up to that legacy.

Yes, but should Apple be forced to sell it? You can buy a DVD player and a TV from Walmart that allows you to view pornographic and racist content but aren’t forced to sell it.

Apple preventing the sale of a product != Apple not selling a product.

I don't ask Apple for permission to visit a website on my iPhone. Why should I ask their permission to install applications? Would it be so awful if I were allowed to run my own software?

But you don’t have to ask Google permission to install software. So why are people asking for intervention in this case?

Choice is amazing. You had a choice to buy into Apple’s “walled garden” or buy an Android. You didn’t need the nanny state to make that choice for you.

You sort of do: before you sideload an app, you have to toggle a switch, agreeing that you are going to do something potentially unsafe. In the similar arrogant manner, they care about your safety purging Podcast Addict app, like parenting you.

The best solution would be an emergence of an Android fork and the corresponding platform, but this seems unlikely due to enormous (as in 100bn perhaps) startup capital required.

Do you propose any other constructive solutions?

Yes, so would you rather Google not warn users of the possible danger?

I would rather change some obsure the settings once (like tapping 5 times on phone info) than being pestered every time

Do you also log into your computer as root or administrator so you don't have to be bothered with pesky warnings?

There's a common standard for DVDs and a competitive market in them; if one maker won't sell what you want, another will. Apple should be either nationalised or broken up like Ma Bell, and the threat of the same should hang over any market where a handful of players capture enough marketshare to become a de facto cartel.

And since in this case we are talking about Google - you can already side load apps...

Apple has less than 50% of the market in the US and 15% of the market worldwide. People chose to use Apple without any coercion from the government.

But back to this case, people can choose to sideload apps on Android. So what’s the problem?

I am not talking the US in particular here. I am saying these decisions should be made by courts not by private institutions, that have stakes in that game.

So instead of being made by private companies, they should be made by unelected partisan judges....

No?

That’s exactly the choice you make in the US.

I am not talking about any particular existing nation state. I am saying that the problems we are experiencing could be solved by having some form of "constituted digital public spaces and platforms". I am well aware of the practical difficulties in establishing these. But it's our inability to create those spaces that is hurting us here.

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