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Comment by whatever1 | Hacker News Reader

The US mobile app market is now an effective monopoly that can charge as much commission as Cupertino wants and enforce whatever policy Cupertino prefers.

Google has its playstore to sell freely its services.

Facebook needs a way out. TikTok needs a way out.

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"Whatever policy Cupertino prefers"

The only policy that was detrimental to Facebook was to have the shocking audacity to, gasp, ask for a user's permission before tracking them on every other app and website. And, shockingly, nearly everybody said "No, I don't want to be tracked everywhere."

Facebook's business model deserves to die if that's the policy that kills it.

also the 30 percent cut apple gets

And even more shockingly Cupertino started running casino ads in the app store that everyone has to have installed in their phones.

Apple calls this "personalized ads" when they do it, and "tracking" when FB does. They're the good guys(TM), so it must be true. It is no wonder why Zuck wants to own a platform.

Apple is not protecting anyone's data - they are using data for themselves. They are exempted from their own terms and they are expanding selling ads. U r just changing the different overlords. I wish more people could understand this and I would rather choose Google in this regard

As long as Apple can make more money selling devices and subscriptions than from ads I'd trust them 10x more than Google or FB. If there is credible competition and Apple continues to position itself as the 'privacy' option I don't think it really makes sense for them to shift towards Ads too much, they'd just lose customers and there is more $ in iPhones anyway.

Now if Apple actually becomes a virtual monopoly or it's the opposite and they have to cut their margins it's a quite different picture.

But they are doing exact what android is doing. U can't op out of apple's collection, u can only choose to not do personalized ads - just like google. And when android is conversation, we already know how it works but why do we have to sugar coat this when dealing with apple?

Apple's $30bn practically guarantees they never cared about your privacy - they simply wanted to supplant Meta in the adtech space and get a chunk of that sweet, sweet revenue.

Seems like a very shortsighted path to take. They'd be basically trading their high hardware margins for ad money, not a great deal...

Also a move like this would be almost certain to invite government intervention.

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