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Comment by vlozko | Hacker News Reader

This is a very myopic view of what it’s like for the elderly and less tech savvy. Most aren’t capable of telling the difference and yet they constantly find themselves unknowingly getting scammed. I take it you’ve never had to clean out a horribly malware infested computer for a mother-in-law before?

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While this is certainly a problem, I don't accept it as an argument for why we all have to be locked in the walled garden. Just add a system setting that controls the walls. Let people disable it if they want, and tell your mother-and-law to never ever disable it no matter what. If you're worried that they'll be tricked into disabling it, then they probably should not be in control of a bank account or anything else serious anyway.

Anyway, this isn't really relevant to this regulation. People already get scammed on iPhones all the time. It's silly to think that anybody would be more vulnerable as a result of the DMA.

What happens when installing Facebook requires this setting to be disabled because it's only installable with their own App Store and rampant with privacy intrusions?

> People already get scammed on iPhones all the time.

I disagree with this assertion. It's certainly far less than those getting scammed on Mac/PC.

> It's silly to think that anybody would be more vulnerable as a result of the DMA.

There's a failure in imagination here in all the ways that companies will take advantage of this to the severe detriment of users, often with the user being clueless on how much they're compromised. What's undeniable is that this regulation dramatically increases the surface area of ways to scam people.

There are so many other ways to deal with this danger that don't involve relinquishing everybody's freedom to a monopoly. You could just make the setting unchangeable except by an administrator account, then don't give your vulnerable relative the admin password. Boom, they're in the exact same position as they were before this regulation, but I don't have to deal with Apple's extortion if I don't want to. Win win!

The thing that’s missing is that Facebook can now exploit people whereas previously Apple was forcing Facebook to act just slightly less shitty. If Facebook can bypass Apple then there is no leverage.

Apple was enforcing some baseline of good behavior that developers no longer need to abide by. Apples subscription management is actually pretty consumer friendly, for example and I have to imagine plenty of companies are chomping at the bit to extract more money from shady tactics once they are no longer forced into decent behavior

Facebook in the EU should be regulated by the EU, not Apple. The EU should not be delegating this regulation to an American corporation.

Then why was it up to Apple? The EU failed to regulate the pervasive tracking of Facebook on devices, Apple did what they could to protect their users.

> setting unchangeable except by an administrator account

Part of the regulation appears to require third-party apps to have the ability to use any APIs. Therefore, any malicious app will be able to present system dialogs that are (possibly) indistinguishable from official OS dialogs. This seems bad.

> relinquishing everybody's freedom to a monopoly.

And yet we're consistently reminded that iOS's marketshare is globally small and that the macOS share is vanishingly small. Which is it?

umm what? go watch those scam calls on youtube they target iphone users all the time

> What happens when installing Facebook requires this setting to be disabled because it's only installable with their own App Store and rampant with privacy intrusions?

You can then add a regulation that all popular social apps need a web version that is fully functional. If the OS should support the necessary web APIs for a good app experience, people can choose that instead.

Considering the app permissions are still controllable via the OS, I don’t see how the app can become “intrusive” anyway. Just deny it the unnecessary permissions.

> tell your mother-and-law to never ever disable it no matter what

Just like banks telling people they would never ask for their password/social security number. Works very well! /s

> I don't accept it as an argument for why we all have to be locked in the walled garden.

You’re not, even today. You can of course choose not to use an iPhone

You don’t have to be locked into a walled garden! You don’t have to buy an iPhone.

Yep. They can just buy Android and get locked into another walled garden.

The argument betrays itself:

How will that elderly and less tech savvy find and install another app store into their iPhone.

If they are not tech savvy enough to be able to decide something is scammy, they are not tech savvy enough to install a freaking app store in their phone.

To get this great new shiny "game" just follow these steps to install it on your iPhone: ..

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