Facebook reportedly prepping antitrust lawsuit against Apple on App Store rules
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
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"Amazon, meanwhile, is increasingly where shopping searches start, particularly for Prime customers, and the company’s ad business is exploding. Needless to say, Amazon doesn’t need to request special permission for IDFAs or to share emails with 3rd parties to finely target its ads: everything is self-contained, and to the extent the company advertises on platforms like Google, it can still keep information about customer interests and conversions to itself. That means that in the long run, independent merchants who wish to actually find their customers will have no choice but to be an Amazon third-party merchant instead of setting up an independent shop on a platform like Shopify.
This decision, to be clear, will not be because Amazon was acting anticompetitively; the biggest driver — which, by the way, will also benefit Facebook’s on-platform commerce efforts — will be Apple, which, in the pursuit of privacy, is systematically destroying the ability of platform-driven small businesses to compete with the Internet giants."
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FB has a point here, but I'm still hoping Apple wins - I'd rather the tracking model not be viable.
I think it's possible for two things to be true simultaneously:
a) it's bad and wrong for apple to demand 30%, or whatever it is, as a cut of any payment made inside an app distributed through their app store
b) apple blocking tracking and advertising networks at the operating system level (API calls between the app running on a phone or tablet, and the underlying OS) is a net benefit for the consumer end user. obviously apple has a very different perspective on this since they are not facebook, or google, and not dependent upon advertising revenue.
I agree with Apple’s decision. It’s just going to have negative effects for some businesses, which is a price that must be considered against the gain in privacy.
It is difficult to say that the users being aware of what they are giving away is a bad thing, unless you are a crook whose business model is based on deception.
So I guess I’m saying your comparison is specious.
Highly targeted advertising can produce great results and there was a time where Facebook was basically a money-printing machine for affiliate and ecommerce because it was so good at finding and reaching the perfect customer. This has become saturated and results have dissipated somewhat but it's still very strong.
My personal experience is that it is pretty hard to get consistently good performance running campaigns on FB or Google. It requires a lot of learning and a lot of trial and error. On top of that, they constantly push you to spend more by giving you dubious recommendations on how to “improve” your campaigns. Very hard to believe that the average small business is actually capable of running good campaigns and consistently make money from them.
Keep in mind I'm talking about targeted advertising, not advertising in general.
Putting up a large sign outside convince store is going to target people in the area well enough. Giant companies like Disney can easily produce different ads to target individual slices of the population for similar results. But, how well can a small river rafting company for example leverage demographics data? Meanwhile because some companies find this data useful they suddenly need to pay a premium, which just doesn’t seem likely to pay off on average.
If you want to target river rafters then you can just target people with "river rafting, outdoors, adventurer, travel" interests, or followers of your page, or upload emails of existing customers. Then let Facebook find similar people automatically. It's that easy.
Everything else being equal, targeted ads still do better than non-targeted ads. I don't see how this is so controversial.
That’s the thing, it’s very easy to advertise to existing customers, worse your competitors are likely to bid up any easy associations. So, the most common case ends up in failure. Perhaps you didn’t something that works you can double down on, but that’s in practice extremely rare these days. Far more common is to realize after the fact you just spent a lot of money on a negative return.
Targeting people who have obvious self-selected and data-driven interests in what you're selling is going to do better than generic ads with no specific audience. This is practically science at this point. However nothing is guaranteed and a specific campaign not providing results doesn't have anything to do with the concept of targeted advertising.
It's not impossible that Facebook and Google capture all of the value--or more--that their clients generate by running ads: Bob's Burgers runs $500/mo worth of ads, only generates $400 in (new) profit from them, but is afraid to stop because Paul's Pizza is also running ads and they might lose even more marketshare.
They found that paid (i.e., ads) and unpaid traffic were nearly perfect substitutes for brand names: people will either to get to eBay. For non-brands, clicks go down, but sales don’t; ads are mostly attracting “browsers”, rather than buyers.
The real answer is that it probably depends a lot on the industry, market, and individual business.
If your point is that effective advertising strategies vary by company then I agree, but that is a tangential and meaningless point in the context of the above conversation.
I found the eBay data interesting because AI had assumed that they would have a fairly sophisticated online operation, and yet neither the branded nor non-brand ads really helped (for the latter, removing ads led to -40% on clicks, but -2% on sales).
I can’t imagine that the neighborhood pizza place is really doing a top-notch job on ad attribution; it seems a heck of a lot more likely that they throw a few ads up because everyone else does too.
With respect to eBay, proving someone sucks at running ads isn’t the same as proving ads suck. (also it matters a lot more what % of sales the ads in this case represented, rather than just the absolute change in sales).
I agree with you about the neighborhood businesses fwiw.
Otherwise why continue to run the ads? A smaller but profitable marketshare is better than a larger but negative one.
All competition is a coordination problem.
Prediction and attribution are really hard. I linked a paper below showing that eBay was wasting money on entirely ineffective keyword ads. I can’t imagine that most small businesses (especially brick and mortar ones) are much savvier.
Whether something provides a return or not for your specific situation doesn't have anything to do with whether the product itself is working and valid.
Ebay situation is different because search is as close as you can get to "intent" in advertising. You don't need user-targeting when you have a search query telling you exactly what they're looking for. Targeting is a proxy for that kind of intent when it's not available.
What I'm not yet convinced of is that they're a panacea for all small businesses. Details aside, one moral of the eBay paper is that a $50B business, with a whole dedicated department, still managed to make a dog's breakfast of their online advertising; Uber reported similar problems earlier this winter.
It seems hard and it's not obvious to me that every business has the aptitude, market, or business model to do it well. At the same time, I can easily imagine people deciding "We need to do something about advertising" and then forging ahead with whatever something they land on. This is especially true with the ROI is difficult to calculate--and I do think it's probably harder to calculate for an ad than for something with very standardized cost/performance characteristics like new equipment.
Google, Facebook, and Shopify making money doesn't really answer this question. As an analogy: "Is there gold in them there hills?" "Sure, even the guy selling shovels is making money!"
Advertising can be complicated, but part of the value of these giant networks is helping to run those campaigns effectively. I'm not sure why you think everyone has to put in similar amounts of effort. That's not necessary at all. You have tools from simply setting the budget and targeting lookalikes of people liking your posts (what most small businesses do) to running your own bidder stack (for larger brands that have entire agencies working for them).
While attribution will never be perfect, it's not guessing either. Ecommerce only makes it easier as you can track all the way from exposure to checkout, and in some ways can be more attributable than other businesses expenses.
If the United States feels that Amazon is an anticompetitive company, then that position should be litigated in and of itself.
It's understandable that Facebook feels righteous in filing a proxy lawsuit for its advertisers. They've had their hand in the cookie jar of so many internet transactions for so long that they cannot imagine the horror of not knowing about any of them.
I only quoted a relevant subsection because I know otherwise 99% of people won't click through to read any of it.
Amazon is just a simpler target to explain the small-biz impact than "facebook with its marketplace and shopify integration and existing data sources and abilities and pending future products they've announced"
1. Apple iPhone needs to be an open platform. Users can install apps from wherever and don't have to go through Apple distribution. (But Apple can still provide this for convenience and discovery, and still charge a fee.)
2. Installing apps includes a strong permissions API. The filesystem, sensor access, GPS, etc. can be cordoned off and requires user intervention. Heuristics and isolation can prevent apps from sharing data for tracking/identification.
The reality is that Apple outgrew their platform and it can't continue to exist as a walled garden without being a monopoly. They can't have their cake and eat it too. Otherwise Facebook has a case. Epic has a case. Etc.
I like that Apple has leverage to tell app developers to adhere to their platform rules in ways that benefit Apple's users.
If Apple was wielding this to harm users that'd be one thing, but they're not, they wield it to prevent spammy crap, to make it easy to subscribe and unsubscribe, to prevent spying and tracking, etc.
That's why I value and buy Apple products, if someone wants an open platform they can buy something else. They're not a monopoly and they don't act in a way that harms their users.
walled gardens harm users by definition because they reduce competition. Forcing an open API would immediately create the opportunity for people to offer competing clients for any Apple (or Facebook etc) service, drive down costs, produce new ways to interact with the services of large companies and so on, it would immediately unlock the ability of countless of independent creators to produce new products.
In fact if you were to open up Facebook, Apple's apis and so on and turned them into open protocols you would not even necessarily need invasive privacy regulation, people could just build a privacy respecting Facebook client that lets people interact with the service in a way they want, getting an algorithm free news feed if they want, stripping out baggage they don't need. It would solve a large majority of the exact issues that we have with large tech companies.
Apple does hold a monopoly over all Apple users, which gives them market power the same way a monopolistic company in a larger market exercises power. It's actually straight up depressing for someone to say "well I benefit from the walled garden". It's no different than someone saying "I like the oligarch because he treats me nicely"
Apple has not deceived consumers with regards to their App Store practices. On the contrary, they've been quite boastful about it. There are (and were) plenty of open computing platforms, allowing consumers to experience their benefits and tradeoffs. If consumers prefer to use a more locked down platform, then so be it.
The government should absolutely force it on Facebook and Apple and Google the same way the American government forced it on railroad barons a hundred years ago, when they were forced to make their networks interoperable.
Imagine if Volkswagen owned the streets and you could only drive your car on 30% of all roads. Sure you can go to Toyota, you just have to drive in circles. We'd laugh anyone out of the room who actually defended this. Yet this is literally how the internet is structured right now. We live in little fiefdoms where Android users can't talk to imessage users because feudal lords have decided to draw a line across the territory.
Consumers knew exactly what more open computing was like prior to the App Store. There were no App Store for Windows or OS X back in 2005, and you could largely install whatever applications you like onto the smartphone operating systems of the day. Evidently, a pretty large chunk of users decided the preferred the more restricted operating system with the "curated" store.
Why? The state makes a variety of judgements that corporations cannot leave things up to user choice because that's too dangerous to wider society.
Apple can't sell an iPhone that occasionally electrocutes users and out it down to "user choice." We rightly ban that.
There is nothing wrong with a consumer being allowed to choose to keep their own phone locked down.
Thats not the problem. The problem is when you go to a consumer and tell them that they aren't allowed to open up their own property, in an easy way.
You can keep your phone locked down. Just give other people the choice to also open up their own phone, easily, if they choose to do so.
Starbucks holds a monopoly over all Starbucks customers.
If I want to be a Starbucks customer I have to go to Starbucks. Goddamn them I want to get my overpriced Starbucks coffee from Dairy Queen!
Speaking of Dairy Queen, why are they the only ones that get to sell a Blizzard??!?
*****
Your statement is just as nonsensical to me.
In fact, in the past week alone I've bought coffee at both Starbucks and Dunkin. The product lines are similar and buying one does not preclude buying the other. There's zero lock in.
Once you start using your iPhone, you stop buying Android apps. You also don't use Google Wallet.
It is your choice to shop at either. Just as it is your choice to use either an iPhone using iOS or a phone using Android/Google etc.
Just as it is your choice to choose a car from a particular manufacturer.
I can see the argument, I just don’t think the power is being wielded for consumer harm - if it was that’d be different.
If Apple was blocking some company from their store everyone wanted because they were competing with an Apple product that’d be an issue. As it is they’re making it easy for their users to not be spied on.
In the analogy it’d be Walmart checking that what they stock on shelves doesn’t poison their customers.
Are they wielding power? Sure - is that monopoly abuse? No.
Of course apple holds a “monopoly” over their own users, exactly the same as how Walmart and Target hold a “monopoly” over the space within their own stores.
If you don’t like the business model of Walmart because of how they have ruined local businesses, you can go shop at the farmers market or local organic shops. But you wouldn’t file a lawsuit which would demand that Walmart host the local farmers market in their own parking lot.
The ones who have been killed in Hong Kong by Apple throwing protestors under a bus might disagree with this.
Or a variety of sexual subcultures, or sex workers, who Apple relentlessly attack.
That’s mostly a separate issue though.
You can choose to only download apps from the Apple app store that follow those rules. You will in no way be effected whatsoever by the platform being open. For you, nothing will change.
Why do you feel everyone else in the world must live with in your limits and not limits they choose for themselves?
If it was left to choice the companies are incentivized to be shitty.
Users are unsophisticated so the incentive will be for companies to track, mine, and sell data and most will do it.
> “You can choose to only download apps from the Apple store that follow those rules”
There will be way fewer of them, if it’s even possible to tell them apart at all.
> “Why do you feel everyone else in the world must live in your limits...”
I don’t - they can buy android and side load if they want to.
Why do you feel I must be forced to suffer an open platform as well? Forcing Apple to do this removes consumer choice, it doesn’t add to it.
In an ideal world, governments would step in and tell them straight up to stop invading people's privacy or face punishment. Obviously that's not going to happen: any proposed law would immediately be defanged by the industry's lobbyists on the basis it would hurt their "legitimate" business interests. Not to mention the fact governments would love to keep these global surveillance tools around.
There is a healthy market here. Forcing Apple to do what you suggest is harmful to users and reduces user choice by making the Apple ecosystem like Android. This removes Apple’s ability to do things like block tracking and force store compliance which is the reason I and others choose them.
An option exists for people that don’t want a curated ecosystem. This is about you forcing your preferences on everyone else, specifically users that prefer and chose Apple’s model.
1. Make Apple build a strong permissions API that covers the filesystem, sensors, GPS, isolation, privacy, tracking protection etc.
2. Force Apple to provide this for free to all developers (allowing them to charge for access to list on the App Store)
?
I'm not iOS expert, but the mere fact that there's private API which is forbidden to use by ordinary apps but that's only implemented by some static code checking rather than by OS means that iOS does not have proper security model ready to withstand arbitrary code execution.
And the purpose of these stores will be to skirt Apple requirements on apps in their store - not just payment, but things like network traffic surveillance.
These stores will also not be pitched by companies based on informed user decisions. They will be pitched in order to get users to sign up in whatever way they can drive taps through consent screens.
So unfortunately to remain a user choice, there needs to be a strong disincentive for parties to force a customer into a third party store, but not so strong that it looks like antitrust.
Google Play for instance has tons of "Play Services" which are not available to apps from alt-stores.
The Mac has certain security settings which can only be disabled through a process requiring a reboot and command-line action as a way to limit vendors from driving customers through disabling essential security features without proper education.
Mac applications are also notarized, so whether they are downloaded through the official app store or a third party channel they can be scanned for static issues and revoked after the fact as malware in the case of dynamic issues.
Why not break Amazon through regulatory power instead of total population tracking?
I also don't buy the small local business argument. If a local bakery wants to reach me, they can put a sign or do a promotion like giving a free cookie with the coffee on my way to work. It will also benefit the local community instead of a soulless corporation in SV.
When there's no Facebook, there's no FB for all of these bakeries. I don't die out of hunger because I failed to see targeted ad, instead I look at the maps or walk around and find the shops or ask a friend for a recommendation. The bakeries can excel in quality, have amazing prices etc. to reach me, like the old days.
An optimised version of FB's business is one where all the 3 bakeries in my neighbourhood give all their margin to FB in attempt to sell me cookies. Even better for FB if they optimize their cookies for lowest possible quality, just enough that the ads can drive me to buy one.
Its like arguing: Timmy steals money all day. I also want to steal money but Timmy steals from his rich parents, but since I can't I steal from my neighbors. Big poo poo cops said that stealing is not okay, but that's bad! I want to also steal because Timmy gets to steal from his parents!
Instead of "The cops said stealing is no longer permitted, also take a look at Timmy."
And this scenario where bakeries grind their margins in an endless ad fight is a bit far fetched, all the bakeries need to do is get your attention enough so that you know/remember they’re there. It’s a few cents with online advertising, FB makes billions because there’s a lot of users.
You’re also forgetting that such ads are about telling you about products you didn’t even consider you need. So yeah, you’re not going to die out of hunger due to lack of ads, but you may not learn of more luxurious items that you may want.
(Disclaimer, I work at FB, not on ads, and don’t know anything an outsider wouldn’t know)
Facebook ads work for physical businesses because they’re competitive on price with their other options.
Bakery A feels compelled to buy ads from Facebook because Bakery B does. Bakery B has to because Bakery C does. Bakery C has to because Bakery A does. Facebook isn't providing value here. Facebook is a parasite that specializes in creating prisoner dilemmas used to bleed small businesses dry. Facebook is lower than mosquitoes, who at least provide nourishment to birds.
And your contrived bakery example is unlikely. Ads are about letting you know a business exist, or convince you to give them another chance. Once everyone in town knows of all the bakeries, people will just pick favorites. If you’re the most famous bakery in town, you don’t need advertising. If you just started your cookie business, you do. Choose whatever advertising that works for you: signs, flyers, word of mouth, vitality stunts or just online ads. You will find that online ads are astoundingly cheap.
Again, if you serve the best croissants in town, customers will come back. (Reality is more sophisticated than that due general demand generation ideas such as just reminding you of croissants vs inferior pastries)
FB, their business model and modus operandi is filthy. They really moved the overton window on what is morally normative in terms of advertising... and then applied those norms to everything... content, not just advertising.
Apple do stuff you might disagree on. They normalised demoting applications to "apps," which exist inside a walled garden, pay rent and play by Apple's rules. This might not be a good vibe. But, the app store isn't their product.
Monopoly, by and large, is not Apple's business model. Apple are big enough that they do monopolize markets, like the app store. But the app store isn't the product or business model. Selling phones is. They don't generally pursue dominant market shares, prefering to cream the high end.
A business model that isn't inherently monopoly seeking at its core, isn't mostly about data, advertising or somesuch... that basically makes Apple a shining example. Everything is relative.
That said, despite hoping FB lose generally, I do hope that antitrust builds up to something meaningful. I'll be hoping for a guilty.
Apple's size, platform positioning and the fundamental microeconomics of Apple's markets all drives towards "competition for monopoly," to use the term of art. They're not above customer lock ins, closed ecosystems. They're not above creating little tyrannical kingdoms... Apple may become a Facebook (ar amazon/google) eventually, but atm they are not.. and the opportunities have been many.
Apple still, essentially, makes new products and hopes people like them enough to overpay for it. They actually exposed themselves to risk of failure if new products aren't good/popular enough. Who does that?
One or two Windows Vista level failures could kill Apple. There is no guaranteed income for macs or iphones in 2022. Facebook, Google, MSFT. even amazon... the quality of their work does not pose a risk of failure in the medium term. Google's user base is protected by default. They own android, and pay for iphone defaults. Own youtube, your emails. The search data. On the customer side, they have a (recognised by courts) monopoly. Search advertising is non-optional for many, many businesses. Adwords is the only seller.
For a (old) counterexample, think of rss podcasts. Apple named it, popularized it, dealt with a bullshit one-click-like patent claim on subscription audio as a whole. Meanwhile, Apple never tried to dominate, close, or "own" podcasting. Podcast today is the only free, popular medium.
Currently, Spotify's is literally trying to buy up all the top podcasts just to exclude them from the open protocol. The aim, naturally, is to own podcasting.. at which point they can force all the little guys to give them content for free and on their terms.
Podcasters, they think, are totally disunited, unlike recording artists. That means once spotify has market share, they can dictate terms like youtube does for video. I bet they already have a cute name for podcasters picked out. Vloggers are called "youtubers." Maybe podcasters will be "spotters." Has a nice ring to it.
I'm not calling them angels. Half of it is probably being boomer and being slow to adapt to modern ways. That said, if you compare Apple core business models to the other guys...
Awesome, that's really good news. Now we need to figure out how to destroy the business models of these giants as well so that competing with corrupt global surveillance corporations is no longer necessary.
Facebook: we don’t provide anything of tangible physical value. Other people do, and they make money off of it. Where’s our money?!?!
Anecdotally, i appreciate the efforts towards their moderation and hope to see more in the future. It makes me more likely to use their products. I'm voting "with my attention" (to paraphrase a oft-used quote)
As long as they moderate separately, the businesses have chance to survive.
Black Mirror had an episode with social scoring system that looks like the future, but is already happening on a small scale.
Also if you want to see a movie with moderation turned on by multiple parties, watch the new Mulan and compare to the old one.
Absolutely, although dispositions have shown that they do collaborate.
Also collusion can still happen if companies create separate decisions and have no communication (see petrol prices).
They want to force Apple to open up the restriction on the App Store. Apple has been slowly turning the screws making it more and more difficult to get information out of the phone. I'm not sure Facebook is going to be able to get that, but I suspect they have a plan B which is iMessage.
iMessage is Apple's secret "Social Network". When I quit Facebook, it's what I turned to, and I know a lot of people who rely on it as their primary way of keeping in touch with friends/ family and the increasing functionality of iMessage is becoming more of a threat to FB.
While Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and all the other messaging apps have to beg to get access to Photos, Location, ApplePay, cameras, FaceId, etc, with iMessage everything is permitted out of the box. Apple has a whole mini-App Store for iMessage which isn't really possible with Facebook.
Finally, I'm sure Facebook would absolutely love to open up their own Ad-supported App Store which tracks everyone to their hearts content. Piles of money building an App Store, particularly when someone else is building the whole tool-chain to make it work and you just have to serve up the content.
Anecdotally I have heard of kids and teenagers doing that. Sending a green message marks you out as a scrub.
Facebook appears not to have attempted this yet on Android, where it would be technically possible, though it would likely require sideloading. Perhaps the steps to sideload an app on Android would create too much friction for a Facebook app store to gain traction?
However, Facebook's "internet.org Free Basics" initiative [1], which is available in countries where internet access is generally more costly, has some similarities to an app store. Facebook approves or denies the inclusion of various websites, sets technical and content requirements, and operates the proxy through which these websites are accessed.
[1]: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet-org/gettingsta...
I don't think alternate app stores for other platforms that already have their own "authorized" app stores is an idea with any legs, due to the friction you mention.
Facebook went above and beyond that - they effectively commissioned HTC to build a Facebook phone[1], which thankfully flopped
There's no need to group every interaction into political dichotomies.
There is every reason to believe that this case is being shaped either a shakedown or to shape the market to facebook’s wishes, and not to serve an idealistic public good.
Pretending this is not the case would be willful ignorance that nobody should engage in.
Facebook and a preparing the case and does not care at all about either group, except perhaps to be able to take a slice of the action themselves.
If the Facebook app was also an App Store, we’d be in a much worse situation than we are now.
Some kind of intervention in the market might help those groups.
This has absolutely nothing to do with that. It’s just dressed up in that language to mislead people about what it’s intent is.
If you find yourself unable to contemplate that the thousands of people at company X as something other than a unified blob of evil, it might be a useful exercise to seek other perspectives and practice some empathy. It’ll make the world easier to understand.
Yes one can, and one can make a case for that based on the aggregate of the companies behavior and statements of their executives.
If you don’t look at the actual companies, it’s easy to make a false equivalence like this.
In this case actually looking at Facebook’s behavior, incentive structure, and the statements of its executives support the position I have taken.
Facebook’s business is getting paid by companies to help them sell goods and services to consumers. Facebook is claiming that Apple’s changes make it harder for them to do that. Don’t Facebook’s claims match its incentives here?
Facebook’s business is getting paid by companies to help them sell goods and services to consumers by tracking user behavior without consent so that they. can sell targeted ads, and by keeping users engaged with the ad delivery platform by presenting content algorithmically selected to provoke emotional reactions.
Those are the incentives.
It’s just a description of Facebook’s core business.
If Apple does use ‘sweatshops’, which they clearly do to some extent, that is a marginal part of their business, and not part of their business model at all.
Selling Ads is what Facebook gets paid for. Targetting ads is why they can charge a premium for those ads. Keeping users engaged to content is how they reliably deliver a large volume of ads.
This is their business.
> by tracking user behavior without consent so that they. can sell targeted ads, and by keeping users engaged with the ad delivery platform by presenting content algorithmically selected to provoke emotional reactions.
Some things in here are the core business model, others are implementation choices that don’t have to be true (like the sweatshops). I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that the lawsuit should fail because they didn’t lead it with a list of complaints people have about the company (not would I expect Apple to include the same in their response).
Are you able to identify one of these implementation choices that don’t have to be true?
I’d like to believe you are right and it’s just an implementation choice, but Facebook seems very determined to be able to continue the practice.
Will require opt-in to track:
Facebook ad conversion to buy an item in Wish’s store
Facebook ad conversion to buy an app from App Store
Won’t require opt-in to track:
Amazon ad conversion to buy an item from a store on Amazon
Apple App Store ad conversion to buy an app from the App Store
Facebook’s proposed remedy might be removing the opt-in requirement, or adding the same requirement uniformly to create a level playing field.
Why even bother with a lawsuit over it if it’s not an important part of their business?
Wouldn’t they just let users opt-out if the wanted to?
In any case, I think we have established that my characterization of facebook’s business was accurate. They wouldn’t be seeking remedies for something that wasn’t important to them.
> Wouldn’t they just let users opt-out of the wanted to?
Users already could opt-out. I imagine the lawsuit will be about Apple’s recent changes, which unevenly apply an opt-in requirement that arguably picks winners and losers (see above).
> In any case, I think we have established that my characterization of facebook’s business was accurate. They wouldn’t be seeking remedies for something that wasn’t important to them.
Your claim is that Facebook is trying to mislead people about the lawsuit, and I don’t think you’ve established that at all.
There is no argument that I see that Apple’s changes will pick winners or losers.
All it will do is reduce the information available from users who don’t consent to it.
This is a false statement.
Apple has had opt-ins for all tracking and user data collection for a while now.
Also, it’s not possible to seriously claim that Apple has an advertising platform that competes with Facebook.
It doesn’t.
I find it hard to imagine that you believe either that this competes with Facebook’s ads even for just apps, or is worth billions.
I’m quite surprised you are trying to claim this.
Why is this hard to believe? Digital content like apps have some of the highest margins out there, and conversion ROI is easy to demonstrate, so the dollars flow easily. It’s a nice business to be in, so it’s not surprising Apple is taking it from Facebook.
We don’t know exactly how much revenue Apple currently gets from ads, because it’s folded into the services category of their financial statements. Apple has set investor expectations that the services will be the main driver of revenue growth going forward, and ads are part of that.
Developer here, top mod of /r/iOSProgramming. Making iOS an open platform will _absolutely_ help developers AND consumers for a myriad of reasons. Facebook being able to open their own app store means ANYONE can distribute their own apps, which is GOOD because that's how the web works and how every other general purpose computing platform works (Windows, macOS, even Android). See:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25375711&p=2
I encourage you to read the full lawsuit, as it outlines the harm Apple is actively doing to its users and developers:
“which is GOOD because that's how the web works and how every other general purpose computing platform works”
What’s good is that we have these alternatives.
The web is a shit medium for application delivery and people don’t trust it.
Android is much less trusted for app delivery than iOS because the store is less policed.
Forcing alternative stores on users will erode trust in the platform as well as creating fragmentation, and developers will definitely suffer.
If you don’t like the 30% fee - that can be solved, buy let’s not destroy the only trustworthy app market.
But once you are well known for abusing power your own cries when you are on receiving end of abuse kinda loose their power to get me motivated to defend you.
For me it is rather clear case of wrestling between large corporations to see how much they can push the balance of power.
FB was quite happy to be pre installed on many an Android phone and enjoy preferential treatment. I don't remember them crying for equal treatment then and if not being able to uninstall FB from a phone is not a preferential treatment then I don't know what is.
Apple does deserve a little criticism for the App Store, but their softening fees for most developers helps. Compared to Facebook (a blight on civilization, IMHO) Apple is couth indeed.
I’m not sure that Apple persevering privacy also requires them to also break antitrust laws.
Yet iOS exploits are cheaper than Android exploits because iOS exploits are so plentiful[1][2] in comparison.
There's no reason you'd have to use anything but Apple's App Store if Apple's monopoly on mobile app distribution was broken.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/14/zerodium_ios_flaws/
I would not be surprised if over all android phones where less secure. One of the reasons being the device fragmentation.
Apple has also recently taken decent strides to make one of the main 0 click vectors (Messages) harder to exploit with iOS 14.
I agreed with that and have been an Apple fan for ages, until Apple banned Parler and not Twitter. Now I'm a little jaded on their privacy brand.
There are a very small number of such laws (Sherman Act, Clayton Act, Celler-Kefauver, Hart-Scott-Rodino, Robinson-Patman, plus three or four others). Someone who wants to make a case that this is a "clear" antitrust violation (definitely the attitude of some in this thread!) should point to which law has been violated. Even better: point to similar case law from earlier decisions. Just arguing that this behavior is "bad" is not going to be that persuasive to a court
You can think Apple is right or wrong on this issue, but to say that the antitrust case against Apple is clear is quite different. Why is it a clear case?
If I want a moated ecosystem for my smartphone I am happy to have this option with Apple. If I wanted open I can go with any of the Android options. I have a choice.
I do not need Facebook to remove that choice for me in their efforts to violate my privacy further.
I'm not sure I'd agree it's more popular.
What is Apple's monopoly? It is not in Smartphones, they barely have 50% share. Their monopoly is on access to iOS users.
You cannot claim iOS is a monopoly without saying the same thing about Facebook. Facebook has a monopoly on Facebook users.
As an aside, I’m asking the question very sincerely. I’m always open to more developer platforms - it’s in my professional interest.
If Facebook prevails, at the very least every developer and every user will have to deal with both Apple’s store and Facebook’s store.
We know that Facebook will permit apps which do tracking without consent.
This situation is objectively worse for both consumers and developers than what we have now.
It’s also worth pointing out that Facebook would be unaffected, or indeed May even benefit if the overall app marketplace contracted due to erosion of user trust.
Having to support multiple stores will cost small developers much more than it does large ones.
And having to deal with more scammy apps, and the loss of any tracking prevention will be a pure step backwards for users.
Nobody should support this move by Facebook, even if you believe the app market needs reform.
A Facebook App Store is obviously not the solution.
There is actually no reason why the 30% couldn’t just be regulated directly, e.g. in the way that music performance royalties are regulated.
Why are there not more general app stores for windows?
On desktop media players are largely avoided in favor of Spotify or the like. Traditional instant message desktop software is all but extinct outside of business realm.
Some specialties use more software. Designers use Adobe's stuff. Developers have a lot. Musicians have their own stuff.
But honestly, outside of specialists, gaming is the biggest area, and there you most commonly have Discord, OBS (for streamers), video editing software (for youtubers), the games themselves, and possibly some accessory software for specific specialties (like timer programs for speedrunners). Steam even offers a decent chunk of common paid software gamers might want. The free to download software like Discord often see little point in working with Steam, since the stores offer them little of value. Discoverability is the main thing a store can offer them, but most of them rely on word of mouth instead.
Outside of Games and Development tools/utilities, I honestly can't remember the last piece of desktop software I purchased. Probably Windows, and Office before that. And I have a LOT LOT more software on my PC than the average user.
Apple’s rules relies on both controlling the API and the App Store rules, to prevent tracking and other kinds of misuse.
Facebook’s store simply wouldn’t have rules against fingerprinting etc, and of course the Facebook store app itself could issue and manage tracking identifiers.
No - why would this conversation have anything to do with developers who don’t want to do tracking?
I’m saying that developers who do want to track users across apps (including anyone who used the Facebook api) would be able to do so without getting user consent. If they couldn’t get an identifier from the OS, they would be able to get one from the store app, so OS based permissions would be irrelevant.
> Again, I still say that the device itself will need to grant an app access to things like GPS, etc. If the user says OK to that request, then whatevs, but the OS will still force the app to request permission.
This is irrelevant to preventing tracking of user behavior across apps without consent which is what Facebook is arguing for.
However you raise a good additional point. An app which asks for GPS to provide a local feature would also be able to sell that data behind the scenes without consent, if the app was sold on a store other than Apple’s.
None of this is good.
Because it's FB. Pure and simple. Why would you think for one second that it would be anything different? You want to use/live in the FB environment, you play by their rules. That means using their SDK in all of your things deployed via their environment.
So in this case, it's good for the goose but not the gander when FB slaps terms on their platform, but not when Apple does it on theirs. Yes cart->horse, but you just know it's going that direction.
I guess that is an even worse possible outcome than I was imagining.
They would instantly start selling those apps themselves.
They would also instantly start selling apps that collect user data without consent.
Tell me again how that would be a flop?
The absurdity is compounded by the fact regulators never had the gumption to hunt the tigers themselves.
In other words, this particular case may help elucidate Apple's dominance/influence on the market, but that does not necessarily mean that the privacy changes in and of themselves are the foundational antitrust issue.
If you want to demonstrate market dominance, write a clear definition into the law and enact it.
If you spent illicit funds on a good cause, it can still be used as proof of your control over the funds.
So Apple's position and influence over the market may raise antitrust concerns, but that doesn't mean I don't want privacy protections (I do!).
As an example, a drug dealer can give money to their community and while it's going towards a good cause, that doesn't change who/how they are donating. Companies can have similar conduct in hopes that an enforcement action would be perceived as harming the consumer/retail investors.
If so, I sincerely hope that Facebook loses.
If that story was true about Google+, he’s probably saying something similar about Apple today.
Given what happened in DC a few weeks ago, given what happened in Myanmar since late 2016, given that what FB is suing to prevent is a thing which I read as legally required for operation in the EU (GDPR requires genuine opt-in IIUC), given the monopolistic behaviour FB is demonstrating with Oculus and other purchases?
Facebook delenda est.
Meanwhile, the arc of Google’s Android platform has been steadily bending away from open source, not towards it.
Or altstore https://altstore.io/ which is literally a locally run alternative App Store.
I can (and do) block Facebook and be almost not affected with what they do, but iPhones as part of a duopoly cannot be avoided. I like and use Apple hardware but hope that Facebook and Epic rip them into pieces. It's completely inacceptable that a single company holds the sole power to access such a widespread platform. There needs to be a side-loading choice and alternative app stores.
Why? What about Apple's practice is unacceptable?
What is the difference between Apple's behavior and how Nintendo or Sony run their platforms?
Personally, I do not want another store outside of Apple's because I value the review process. Compare Apple's app store to the Microsoft Windows Store. The relative quality of apps on Apple's store is significantly higher than on Windows Store.
Then feel free to not install apps from different stores?
And let everyone else choose to use those other stores, on their own phone, if they choose to do so.
And you should be free to keep the "don't jailbreak my phone" option on, and other people, who know the risks, should be free to switch that off.
Put a scary warning on it if you like. Problem solved.
Everyone gets what they want.
As for Sony and Nintendo, 3 wrongs don't make a right.
Is this lawsuit going to help me in any way?
Yeah... So?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commissio...
At one point it was as high as 95%. Apple is not remotely close to that.
That majority of phones sold in US are iPhones? That Apple market share became majority last year in US?
> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power.
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
Judge: “Case closed.”
It doesn’t require a ‘source’ to check this.
If you have a source showing that they are doing tracking without consent, that would be relevant, and would indeed favor facebook’s case.
They also demand that our Messenger discloses list of collected data, while apple's iMessage messenger does not disclose the data collected by Apple corporation as part of their iCloud service suite."
Facebook is a scummy company. But Apple is hiding their own tracking under default opt-in switches and using double standards as well. It's funny that their own apps don't disclose all the data that iCloud collects and uses for basic functionality like messaging.
Having BOTH corporations honestly disclose what they collect would be the biggest win for us.
This is, as far as I can tell, completely false.
Apple has been asking for explicit opt-ins for years, and is only now requiring apps to follow suit.
They should all be opt-in.
And it is opt-in.
You may not remember it, and I think that some of the opt-ins persist across device restores, but all the data collection is through explicit opt-ins.
https://www.apple.com/privacy/
Its bundled apps do not track users across the internet, which is the crux of Facebook’s issue.
Just because Apple’s bundled apps aren’t on the App Store and don’t have the same nutrition facts scorecard it doesn’t mean that they aren’t communicating their approach to privacy loudly and in detail elsewhere.
Because there's a difference between a big in-your-face popup and a website far away from the device actually running iMessage.
Apple isn’t really giving themselves a special dispensation here. Giving users additional information about how Facebook messenger (and others) are doing things that most users don’t expect is a service.
"""The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."""
Apple have defined the rules, the rules which Apple have defined mean that Apple apps do not look scary while Facebook’s do.
Are those rules fair?
I happen to think “probably yes”, yet I am prepared to be incorrect.
And their description listed under the Privacy section, "The Apple advertising platform does not track you" couldn't be more clear.
Maybe you can outline exactly how Apple is tracking you ?
So does Facebook. But Apple then demanded that everyone except them shows a big disclosure popup in AppStore which doesn't appear for their apps since they're preinstalled.
> And their description listed under the Privacy section, "The Apple advertising platform does not track you" couldn't be more clear.
Note the weasel phrase "Advertising platform". Remember, Apple keeps all of our private data, messages and even locations stored on their servers. Well, at least from most of us that use iCloud.
Almost every single app on the store doesn't have a comprehensive Privacy section. And so enforcing this on behalf of users is a very positive and important step.
And yes in order to offer backups, have a cloud-based Messages service and offer features like Find My they will need to collect data.
But all of that can be switched off and Location Services for example is opt-in by default.
Well said. However, if you are a business owner today who wants to be able to put out their app to half their customer base, your world does revolve around Apple, which is what those of us who don't agree with the way Apple runs its App Store hegemony don't want to happen.
Isn't all this private data encrypted with the user keys?
That's the impression I have gotten at least and I hope I'm not wrong.
If you have a proof that they behave otherwise, that would be useful, but as things are you cannot just write a sentence like that without any supporting evidence.
Facebook doesn't sell you data of people, they sell you ability to have people interact with your ads. Apple doesn't sell you data of the people, they sell you ability to have people download your apps.
How do you construct that as “selling user data”? Does my local farmers’ market sell my data because I can go there and buy some food every week? This “both sides” argument is just as wrong as when it is used in other contexts.
I don't use any Apple tech.
I don't use Facebook.
I don't use Amazon.
Anything isn't literally correct - if Apple decided and openly "we don't serve Jews" they would rightfully get in big legal trouble from several fronts from Civil Rights to shareholder lawsuits angry about the needless illegal mess they just made. But if there is no law it really is against them.
Responsibility to society is a dangerously vague term and not backed by force of law for reason. Laws may fall under that as a label such as legally defined minimum of taxes but so do any number of potentially mutually exclusive opinions.
I have yet to see a coherent proposal for defining a remotely popular new law to restrict undesired behaviors - let alone one that would be constitutional as well.
If you are a small developer, you can get review bombed and your app download rate can take a drastic hit, while if you are cozy with the big players (wink wink RobbingHood) Google will take down your 100k negative reviews.
They keep reaping the rewards for doing absolutely nothing, except having the app be searchable.
You do your own marketing, you develop your own app, you design your own app, you have nothing from Apple except that you need to ask for their permission to push your product on their walled garden.
Of course I would love not to push it on the App Store, but they do not allow competition on iOS, which is the prime case for anti-trust.
iOS does not make the smartphone experience, the apps make the smartphone experience. The order of priority should not be forgotten.
If Spotify, Facebook, Google, Netflix and Amazon disappeared overnight from the App Store, I would love to see how willing would people be for their "eco-system" (walled garden)??