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.
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.
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.