Apple connect to our messaging platform voice, i mean messages i mean allo i mean duo i mean hangouts i mean...
I can't really blame Apple for not being interested in adopting a "standard" that's mostly Google pretending to be a standard.
They call it “the modern industry standard” half a dozen times on the page. Zero mention of their affiliation.
Google, however, added their own extension for E2EE and started roll out with their self-hosted RCS rather than carrier hosted.
Given that RCS is mandatory in 5G networks and supported by world's largest carriers - Yes, it's an industry standard. Given that version used today is published in 2016 - Yes, it's modern. So, what's the problem?
One-on-one E2EE is a big deal and I would to see Apple on-board with it too, including without iCloud exceptions.
Speedy and WebP were two examples. RCS already existed (I believe) but basically every single carrier has dragged their feet on it to the point of doing almost nothing (at least in the US) so now Google is basically running the entire thing through their network just to get it to work for their customers because carriers are incompetent/indifferent/directly opposed.
But I doubt that last part was listed in the article.
And then you have Cloudflare doing crap like automatically reconverting JPEGs to WebPs so when you try to download a JPEG you can use anywhere you end up with a WebP you can pretty much only use in a browser.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, but with better PR
(Actually, in hindsight it isn't that surprising. Tech companies only make the money they do because of the lack of consumer protections... so definitely in most HN'ers interest to keep the status quo.
FWIW, the only reason cookie banners are annoying is because the sites intentionally made it that way to bully you into allowing 3rd party cookies. EU regulations allow a site to not have banners if 3rd party tracking is opt-in. They could easily do it via a separate settings page. They only chose the banner because they want you to keep tracking cookies on and the annoying banner results in a higher rate of people agreeing to be tracked at the cost of annoyance (which is somehow respun to be directed to the policy not the site owners). Imagine if every time you enter a business you were asked to sign a liability waiver. That's what cookie banners are.
(You do not have to have a banner if all the cookies you use are first party "essential for functionality" cookies)
It should be a consistent browser-based preference that makes it impossible for a website to do something that I told it not to do. The problem with that is it requires innovation because cookies have inherent privacy design flaws. When you can't innovate, legislate.
As a regulatory body, what else can they do...? In fact, I actually see this as a good thing.
You should think of regulation as an abstraction, an interface, a contract, that defines only a desired outcome (in this case the idea that 3rd party tracking should be opt-in rather than opt-out or non-opt). The details are then left to private entities to implement.
In fact, had they defined it to be say a browser feature or any other specific implementation, it would be strictly worse. By legislating the abstract concept of 3rd party tracking consent, they are leaving open the door to innovation. The idea is that if someone can come up with a better way of collecting consent in terms of UX, while still guaranteeing the same level of consumer protection, then they should be able to outcompete worse implementations.
The law does not require banners per-se (instead requiring affirmative consent before tracking can commence), nor does it require any button size (instead requiring that features not requiring tracking not be gated behind the consent wall and that certain consent outcomes shouldn't be favoured as a part of the UI). What we have is only that way because innovation is not that fast and the motivation to innovate here isn't that high (yet) --- banners are easy enough to implement and not so egregiously bad as to turn away users.
I don't know why they didn't use it in the law. Probably advertiser lobby because it's much easier to coerce the user into agreeing when they control the process (dark patterns)
In most other cases it's government overreach, but ruining iOS would make the tech ecosystem better.
It's not as black and white of course but this seems to be a recurring theme.
Of course, this is painting with a very broad brush, and people in both places believe in all sorts of different political ideologies, but I think it generally tends to be true. Europeans are more likely to reason along direct lines like "this is a good policy, therefore it should be enacted" whereas Americans will think in more abstract terms like "this may be a good policy, but do we really want the state to have the power to enact such a policy? How may this power be abused in the future?"
I don't have a good explanation for _why_ this is the case; intuitively, you'd expect the opposite, since the US has never had a totalitarian regime, and most of Europe has within the last 100 years. My only guess is that nowadays the US is way more corrupt, undemocratic, poorly run, etc. than most countries in Western and Northern Europe which leaves a bad taste in people's mouths.