[zepto]

> It’s unclear why FAANG companies would be uniquely immune to such temptations.

The risk/reward makes it seem absurdly unlikely that Apple actually did this.

1. Approving scam apps hurts Apple.

2. Approving scam apps in order to screw with a competitor hurts Apple, and would need a widespread conspiracy within the company to do it successfully.

3. There is plenty of money to be made in attacking Apple either directly through a settlement, or indirectly.

[stonecraftwolf]

I think RileyJames’ comment provided a clear and realistic hypothesis of how Apple might come to abuse its monopoly power in this way without the sort of reasoning you assume, but it’s also probably relevant to note that Apple got caught conspiring with five major publishers to fix ebook prices largely because they had a private dinner where one of the publishing CEOs took literal notes on their conspiracy to fix prices. (Yes, really.)

Apple has been really dumb about antitrust law before. It’s not unrealistic to think they’d be dumb again. It’s not even dumb if you’ve been doing it routinely for years and only suffered consequences once or twice. Which I don’t think is unique to Apple — I think all the FAANG companies have gotten very accustomed to being able to do essentially whatever they want as long as they pay a minor fine every few years.

[zepto]

> Apple has been really dumb about antitrust law before. It’s not unrealistic to think they’d be dumb again. It’s not even dumb if you’ve been doing it routinely for years and only suffered consequences once or twice.

This logic might have held 5 years ago but doesn’t hold now. All the large tech companies are under heavy scrutiny and there are multiple anti-trust cases in play. The US administration appears to be anti-trust friendly, and there are hostile companies deliberately backing as many anti-trust actions as they can against Apple.

It makes no sense to imagine they would play into this for a minor discount on purchasing a trivial app.

It’s just as likely likely that a lawyer and an angry developer think it’s worth seeking a settlement in the current climate.

I agree there are hypotheses by which they could have done this but it’s bullshit to assume they must have done this.

[stonecraftwolf]

I’m curious about why you talk about Apple as though it’s a monolithic entity making coherent decisions. Tim Cook doesn’t need to have signed off on his himself as part of a grand strategy for it to have happened, and indeed the only evidence we do have available indicates that monopoly abuse of power is a tactic Apple has deliberately used before. Even if this is, as RileyJames posits, just the head of one team asking another for a favor in pursuit of an acquisition, it speaks to the corporate culture at Apple. Regardless, given the balance of actual evidence, it seems more absurd to extend the benefit of the doubt to the corporation that has abused market power in the past.

And while I don’t know if this was deliberate or a mistake, I think the more interesting point is that even if it was a mistake it demonstrates the danger of monopoly. The problem is structural. When a company has the market dominance of the FAANG companies, abuse is inevitable.

[zepto]

> the only evidence we do have available indicates that monopoly abuse of power is a tactic Apple has deliberately used before.

Yes, they fell foul of anti-trust law in Ebook pricing.

> Even if this is, as RileyJames posits, just the head of one team asking another for a favor in pursuit of an acquisition,

That’s just a made up explanation. It’s not ‘evidence’.

> it speaks to the corporate culture at Apple.

There is no evidence for this at all.

Remember, it’s just something a commenter made up. It’s not information about Apple, so it can’t ‘speak to Apple’s culture’.

> Regardless, given the balance of actual evidence, it seems more absurd to extend the benefit of the doubt to the corporation that has abused market power in the past.

At least you are clear about what you are actually saying:

You are going to assume Apple is guilty of this because they violated antitrust law over ebook pricing*, and that is your only evidence.

We have no evidence that they are guilty of this.

Maybe something will show up in court.

[Rule35]

> Approving scam apps hurts Apple.

The point isn't that they wanted scam apps, it's that they were so readily approving apps in the space that they even approved scams.

This suggests that they did so little review as to miss a scam, and therefore that any argument of "his app wasn't ready" isn't right.

[zepto]

> This suggests that they did so little review as to miss a scam, and therefore that any argument of "his app wasn't ready" isn't right.

That doesn’t make sense since it would apply to any review.

It also assumes that checking for scams is equivalent to checking for functionality, which is obviously not true.

Individual reviewers may simply be provided with a set of apps to check and a set of criteria to determine whether they work or not.

Checking for scams may be a completely different process done by completely different people.

There is no logic to the claim that they must be related.