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Comment by Zak | Hacker News Reader

There's an important distinction here in that Apple is a for-profit company, not a government. It responds to market forces, not democratic ones. Its motivation is profit and shareholder value, not some semblance of fairness or a good society.

> most people just want a safe app store

We already have an example of how users behave when there's a platform that has a default app store and the ability to install others: only a tiny fraction of Android users sideload apps at all, much less install other stores. Users who don't want to think about which app stores are safe simply won't; they'll use the default one.

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> Its motivation is profit and shareholder value, not some semblance of fairness or a good society.

It derrives profit from iphones being relatively secure, which in practise means making it difficult for average users to install stupid things like malware.

Just because corporate overlords have a profit motive, doesn't mean it can't overlap with more alturustic motives. Being an evil villian typically pays well in the short term but not the long term (plenty of exceptions)

Right, but I would argue that the Android Play Store is terrible. I've switched to Android multiple times and I cannot stand the poor quality of the Android store.

I would argue that the US government is also a for-profit government, don't give up your rights so quickly to them. At least with Apple you know what they want: money. With government it could be money, a power play, government official looking to get on the map (ambition), a policy lobbied for by a bought off politician, etc

Agreed, but only one party there is supposed to be working in your interest.

It's why i'm pro-big-government, but also very heavy handed about what i want to see with government transparency and power dynamics.

You can argue that all you like, but it is a ridiculous point. It's not perfect, but most of the time democracy works. This much is self evident.

If you are comparing the difference between having a company in charge of public health and a democratic government, you might as well compare the difference between a dictatorship and a democracy. Customers are not stakeholders in the same way that citizens are stakeholders.

When the public is angry at the government, heads will roll. When the public is angry at corporations, heads will glide down in golden parachutes.

> When the public is angry at the government, heads will roll. When the public is angry at corporations, heads will glide down in golden parachutes.

That's hardly true. People are rarely angry enough for heads to roll, and almost never that angry at corporations. But if they are that angry, heads have certainly rolled at corporations. Most of the time, nothing happens when people are angry at govs, and if they are angry enough for heads to roll, its more likely to be the people's heads than the government's.

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