Hacker News Reader

Governments ought to be the place for this level of regulation, absolutely - But right now, governments aren't regulating.

In the mean time, I'm glad Apple is. If Apple wasn't doing this, no one would be.

Never heard of regulatory capture?

If the government regulates something, that very often means that the incumbents will donate/bribe officials to pass regulations that favor the mega corps.

Getting government regulations that actually favors the consumers is somewhere between difficult and impossible.

> But I think this is something which needs to be handled by governments (laws/regulations) not by apple forcing their opinion about what is right onto everyone else by abusing their marked positions.

Why should governments force their opinion about what is right onto everyone else? Why not allow freedom in the market so that users can choose what matters most to them? Right now, Apple is serving the market of those opposed to tracking and in favor of greater privacy. If it turns out this is what consumers want and are willing to pay for, competitors will feel pressure to follow suit. No heavy handed government regulation needed.

Freedom in the market got us a massive surveillance apparatus selling data to analytics companies selling data to foreign governments to help them most effectively influence elections and society, widening divides and contributing to massive unrest, and not to the benefit of any of us.

In isolation it doesn’t matter if you want to sell your privacy (and all your friends’ privacy!) for access to a Facebook quiz on what breed of dog you are. As a collective whole on a societal or global scale it makes a difference.

The NSA doesn’t become less scary because it’s “free market” instead of a government agency. If anything the lack of accountability to the public makes it more scary.

This is exactly where government should be involved—when the desirable individual action results in negative outcomes for the group.

I completely disagree. I want Apple to have complete control over my device because the alternatives are absolutely horrifying - ransomeware attacks, blackmailing to get my photos back, contact list sold off in an auction, etc.

This is not a linux PC. Average joes and jills are not avid users with understanding of security. Think billions of users, not just HN community of 30k developers.

How did you jump from advertisement related stuff to ransomware, blackmail and similar?

Android allows many things Apple doesn't, including alternative app stores and there is no massive problem with ransomware, blackmailing and similar.

On the other hand do you really think you contacts are not sold of if you sync them with e.g. WhatsApp on a apple device?

No one ever said that phones should not run apps in a sandbox or not have a permissions system or not have opinionated app store(s!) or not throw warnings at users when side-loading apps or similar.

It's about apple being a quasi monopoly for millions of phones which today are the most commonly spread and used general purpose computers. And it's about Apple abusing that power for their own benefit sometimes also in ways which happen to profit the end-user.

Allows third party app stores and apple can do whatever they want in their App store. And yes most people still would mainly use the Apple app stores. (And yes you might still allow Apple to "ban"/"reject" third party app stores which act malicious/abusiveness. But on legal basis. I.e. if they ban a third party Appstore the banned company must be able to sue for damages if the ban is found to be baseless. And no absurd arbitrary max damages TOS clause like there currently is).

Government regulation would be at the mercy of Google and Facebook and their hoard of regulators, so I’m not convinced this would protect iOS end users better than the status quo. Facebook and similar developers might be happy about it though

Yes of course, because we saw how governments (around the world) are capable of enforcing such laws when it comes to user privacy and tracking.

An opinion about what is right is a lot less dangerous as one option in a competitive marketplace vs. the law of the land.