[ridewinter]

The whole reason for Apple-Google getting involved in the first place was a technical issue that prevents Android from seeing iOS. Instead of solving that issue to allow a variety of solutions to be developed, they forced the entire world to create the apps in a certain way.

It's not that their privacy-centric approach was wrong (although this article details its major shortcomings), but the suppression of trial & error definitely was wrong.

Compounding this was Google-Apple's insistence that only government bodies can release exposure notification apps and you have a total absence of real innovation. It's no surprise that nothing has succeeded.

The whole debacle is a case study in the effect of gatekeepers on innovation. As manual contract tracing teams here in the US become overwhelmed, how many lives could have been saved by a successful exposure notification app?

[zepto]

If there were no gatekeepers on this, how much contact tracing fraud and malware would there be?

[ridewinter]

These would be good problems to have because they'd mean the apps were successful in the first place! Problems are solvable if we have the chance to solve them.

[zepto]

How would they mean the apps were successful?

Why wouldn’t the outcome be that people didn’t use contact tracing apps because a bunch of them were scans and malware?