[ig-88ms]

Apple is way too powerful. Not that Facebook is any better, but Facebook is not the gatekeeper for millions of peoples lives. When Apple boots you as a customer, you most likely will lose everything about your digital life.

If you lose your Facebook account, it's annoying but recoverable.

Apple has control over your phone, your passwords, your photos, your music, your emails, your credit cards/payment methods. And you can backup nothing of it in a usable way. Without a working Apple account any iPhone is as good as a brick.

[shmel]

On the other hand, you can choose to not use Apple and your life won't be affected at all. I don't use Apple at all and don't feel I missing out. Apple doesn't have any network effect.

If FB goes nuclear on me, I will lose the main platform to discover local events (like gigs, festivals, meetups and such), pretty much the only social media for a hobby of mine (photography) and the most popular messenger used by family members (ok, I could probably convince them to move elsewhere) and lots of local group chats (multiple attempts to move those group chats on telegram ultimately failed). Most of it is irreplaceable because FB killed off most of the competition.

Compare it to Apple where you can just use Android and forget Apple exists at all.

[blfr]

I use neither Facebook nor Apple. Let's hope Google doesn't ban my account since it has everything.

Or perhaps we could have a regulatory regime that doesn't press every consumer into becoming an e-peasant of one of five mega corps.

[ryandrake]

All three of you seem to have the same general problem, just the company name is different. No single account should gate access to _everything_ in your digital life. If getting banned from one company's platform would be a major problem for you, that probably means you should take steps to correct that now, no matter what the company is.

If Facebook or Twitter banned me, it would have zero effect, because I don't ever use any of the services. If Apple banned me, it would be annoying, but I'm not heavily dependent on iCloud, so could switch to an Android phone pretty quickly. I certainly don't keep anything critical on iCloud or locked behind Apple services. If Google banned me, I'd lose an old gmail account I no longer use and I guess Google Voice, which I do use. Honestly losing Voice would probably be the most painful. I don't use any other Google service that requires a login so it wouldn't be a huge deal.

We keep seeing these "XYZ banned me and I lost access to all my digital life" posts on HN, and they should be wake-up calls, yet people still think It Won't Happen To Me, and then we get another "ABC banned me..." article next week.

[blfr]

I have backups from Google Takeout, email in my own domain, and I use Linux on my laptop. I'm about as independent as you reasonably can but let's not pretend I could actually easily replace Google Photos, Maps, or Android. That grade of software simply doesn't currently exist outside of the big tech.

More than that: Photos+Maps+Timeline combo doesn't even exist at Apple. Google is strictly far and the best choice for quite a few functionalities I cherish and a move to iCloud would be a downgrade. Not to mention the expense of buying new devices.

I wouldn't really lose access to anything but my digital life would be greatly diminished.

[sbf501]

Yep. There needs to be a policy for data rights that is larger than the companies. Something government level.

[b112]

I recall that scifi from the pre-2000s, had loads of scenarios with a "house computer". All personal stuff was stored there, even if it was net connnected and collated/performed searches for you.

Maybe this will be the blowback reality. An applicance in every home, stored in a black box (fireproof, etc), which stores all your stuff.

Computing at this level, email, notes, personal records, has the capacity to stabilize and change freeze. Which is good, if you want personal records to last 100 years.

And looking at email, mbox formats have been static for decades. Static image formats too.

[justinclift]

> Maybe this will be the blowback reality.

Wonder how that'd play out for home ownership vs renting then. "Whose data is it?", etc. ;)

[rambambram]

Just like your couch in your rental apartment is yours, and just like your raincoat in the trunk of a rental car is yours. ;)

[b112]

I used to rent a place, furniture included, but everything smelled funny.

Later in the year, during rainy season, I bought a used raincoat. It too smelled funny, and I soon discovered, by googling, that apparently people with a rubber fetish may do things to such garments.

Horrible horrible things.

Soon after, I became concerned about my smelly apartment. I started to google, but everything I googled with the word "fetish", returned unspeakable results.

Each worse than the last!

So I bought new furniture, bedding, cutlery(oh god!), plates, everything.

Even toilet brushes are not safe from the horrors, so I bought one of those too.

One night, I woke up in a start. An idea was in my head, and I rushed to google, and horribly found that factory workers making my stuff, have fetishes too.

Nothing safe, I disposed of it all. I got out my chainsaw, and cut down a tree. I made plates, cutlery, even a wooden cup! And ate off of these plates and so on. However, just last week, I noticed a squirrel apparently randy and without a mate, doing something to a tree!!

There is no end of the perversion I tell you, no end!!!

So now I sit in the corner, drool upon my chin, eyes glassy and void of energy.

(Brought to you by bbarnett's house, and the embarricon virus.)

[sbarre]

Hah you just reminded me of something...

In the late 80s as a kid I remember reading a scifi short story from probably the 1950s that speculated that "in the future" the average suburban family would live inside their computer, as it would need to be the size of a house to perform all the support duties for a family.

[int_19h]

There are some attempts:

https://thehelm.com/

The problem is that it's not cheap to keep running, if you want it to integrate with the rest of the Net (i.e. also handle email and such).

[alpaca128]

> you can choose to not use Apple and your life won't be affected at all

You have to choose among Google or Apple though, and both could just randomly ban you over night and make all your data inaccessible. If Google banned me I wouldn't be able to use my bank account without buying an iPhone/Mac or reinstalling Windows. And at this rate Windows will soon also be only usable with an account.

This kind of limitation is bad and will cause a lot of unnecessary, expensive problems before regulations catch up.

[b112]

You have to choose among Google or Apple though

You do?

If you just want a phone with SMS, a web browser and email, an android device can easily be nonGoogle.

And Samsung, for example, has its own app store, as do others.

We aren't quite locked into two options. Not yet.

[lynndotpy]

Huge parts of social life are gated behind smart-phone services and the workarounds are burdens.

> an android device can easily be nonGoogle.

But I don't think "Easily" is true here. I do it, and it's easy for me, and presumably for you, but presumably because we have the time and skills to make it work. And even the most ideal "non-Google" phone takes hefty compromises.

KaiOS used to be the only real alternative someone might have, since it had some apps like WhatsApp, etc. But as of Sept 2021, that's no longer available.

[disiplus]

my bank does not offer the banking app on the Samsung market. my mobile token is there.

[threeseed]

Then use a bank that does have a mobile website or non-Samsung specific app.

Companies will not change behaviour unless you vote with your wallet.

[th3typh00n]

The point is that avoiding Apple and Google, while it may be technically and theoretically possible, is going to make your life extraordinarily complicated and is completely unrealistic for the average person in our modern society.

[smoldesu]

I don't think your "let the markets handle it" solution will work (at least, it hasn't worked for the past 20 years, has it?). America screwed up. We let a duopoly control our technology, and there's no point in defending these powers like Apple, Facebook and Google who repeatedly attempt to undermine our sovereignty and privacy. As much as I'd love for everyone on this earth to use Nextcloud and Linux, we both know that's not a reasonable expectation.

Everyone knows it, there's bipartisan support behind Big Tech regulation right now in America. Regulation is inevitable, the real question is how long we have until the lobbying money runs out...

[TremendousJudge]

> a phone with SMS, a web browser and email

really hasn't been enough for communicating with most people for at least 5 years. the messaging app of choice of your social group (wpp, telegram, signal, or god forbid fb messanger) is needed as well.

[tcfhgj]

Telegram isn't really any better than FB Messenger

[ASalazarMX]

If that's the deal, ¿porqué no los dos? I use an iPhone, but sync my pictures with Google Photos in case any one of them becomes aggro. I also keep my passwords in a password manager, so Apple and Google only have access to the bare essentials. My docs are in Google Drive, SyncThing, Dropbox, and an external hard drive, and so on.

[Schroedingersat]

Open android builds, postmarket os, ubuntu touch and sailfish still exist (if just barely) for now.

Please use them before we lose free communication and access to banking and government services without signing over your life to one of two companies forever.

[prmoustache]

you are kind of forced to use somehow google backed products/services, but you are not forced to own and use a google account.

Bank apps are accessible through the aurora store for example and many work well with microg instead of google play services.

[b112]

Installing a bank app seems like the ultimate horror story to me. The unholy tracking must be insane.

You cannot just log in via a web browser? If so, why not?

[prmoustache]

Well in europe regulations have kind of forced 2FA (which is not bad in itself). At the beginning most banks were relying on sms but most of them are phasing it out.

Problem is instead of choosing a TOTP which would have been compatible with any OS/device they favor their own proprietary app with a push based solution. This suck.

No idea about other continents but my MX girlfriend is locked out of her own MX bank account until she go there to sort this out because she do not have her original mx phone number anymore.

[b112]

Wait you need a smartphone to login?! How bizarre.

Paypal has recently locked me out of my account, because I don't have a mobile phone number. Why would I?

I have a landline phone, and, I have terrestrial high speed internet.

So I have an Android tablet with wifi. It works at home, and worked when I used to goto office. I have voip too.

However, there is no mobile service in my area. I'm very rural, so it's fine a few miles from my home, but not anywhere on my land.

Paypal has my landline number, but recently insists I add a mobile phone for SMS auth.

It is unclear to me how this could possibly help.

Should I decide to spend cash on a mobile phone, just and only just for paypal, I'd have to try to login, drive a few kms to town, get the SMS code, then return.

Surely, a timeout would happen by then. Not to mention the entire idea is absurd and smacks of ineptness on Paypal's part.

Talking to paypal results in support personalle who literally do nothing but search a database and respond with circular, broken logic. I was even told repeatedly to login, to open a ticket, about not being able to login.

And this was not just one support person either.

Any push to speak to a supervisor results in a disconnect on transfer.

I have been with paypal almost 20 years. It appears that will soon end.

Bah.

[buzer]

> Problem is instead of choosing a TOTP which would have been compatible with any OS/device they favor their own proprietary app with a push based solution. This suck.

As far as I understood from the news the reason was that regulators (or the regulation itself) told banks that the 2nd factor could not be easily cloned. Before this regulation most Finnish banks were using one time pads (actual physical paper), but because it was possible to make a copy of it they had to phase out the usage.

[Barrin92]

>I don't use Apple at all and don't feel I missing out. Apple doesn't have any network effect.

there were quite a few stories about kids being ostracized from groups because they started to bully each other over lack of messaging features. Certainly not the worst thing imaginable but Apple's apps do have network effects.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/10/22876067/google-apple-ios...

[Beltalowda]

I was bullied at school for not having Nike shoes; I remember one kid literally telling me "I can't be friends with you until you have Nikes".

I love kids; I used to work with kids and I kinda miss it, but man kids can be petty assholes.

[bombcar]

Sadly the solution isn't banning Nikes or whatever the current "they're being petty about it" thing is - they'll just find something else to latch onto.

[Beltalowda]

That was my point indeed. Although thinking about it again, in some countries (not mine) they got school uniforms for this reason. I don't know if it helps (as in, there will still be bullying no doubt, but is there less bullying without than with school uniforms?)

[bombcar]

I suspect if there are variations on "amount of bullying" it comes down to culture rather than "school uniforms" - at least one Japanese manga is all about bullying in a school uniformed school, so it must happen enough to be a bit of a trope.

It may happen less in places where the private schools can be school uniform or not, but there I suspect it has more to do with expelling the bullies than anything to do with the uniform itself, since it won't usually cover other status symbols that can be obtained (shoes, hair decorations, etc).

That's not to discount that the uniform may be useful for various reasons.

[usrn]

The solution is for mature adults to not behave like children because they understand being petty about brands creates serious problems both for themselves and everyone around them.

Children doing it is just part of the series of learning experiences that comprises maturation.

[Dracophoenix]

With regards to messaging, Apple's "network effect" is an oblong Parrish Blue text field. That says more about how petty children and even women on dating sites are and less about Apple "monopolizing" anything.

[Karunamon]

It’s not quite that petty.

It’s not that the background of the message is the wrong color, it’s that having an SMS user added to an iMessage chat degrades the functionality away from what iMessage supports down to what SMS supports.

[kop316]

From what I understand, one can't even change the title of the chat if it is SMS/MMS versus iMessage. That is a client side issue that Apple chooses not to allow, so I would argue, yes it is that petty.

I know it is a client side issue because in Chatty, I quite literally wrote the functionality to change titles of group chats.

[Dracophoenix]

Degrading to the lowest common denominator is what an interoperable standard is supposed to accomplish. The alternative is for iMessage to entirely decline SMS usage in group chats.

[Karunamon]

Technically that's accurate, but that does nothing for the social stigma of being that one guy who makes the chat suck for everyone else just by being present

[greiskul]

Back when Microsoft used to adopt interoperable standards and make modifications to it to kill the standard, people here rightfully called that behaviour evil. Apple get's a pass for doing the same for SMS.

[indymike]

So having an inferior participant degrades everyone?

[3qz]

It’s not just kids. Adult women don’t want boyfriends with Androids. Having green texts is unacceptable in such a competitive dating market.

[usrn]

My girlfriend is an Apple nut (she even asked for airpods for her birthday, now that I've listened to her use them for a two way conversation I can safely say they're garbage) and she tolerates me not only not having an iPhone but even using cheogram for all my MMS. We just use other protocols for chatting more than the protocols "messages" supports.

She even gave me one of her old iPhones to try to convert me but I wasn't impressed and eventually she dropped it. Would iMessage help if you're single? Maybe the same amount having some fancy shoes would but IMO it's really a surface level thing.

[colinmhayes]

Texting androids from an iPhone is a legitimately bad experience. No clue why iPhone users don't just get whats app, but if they're not willing to it's not surprising that they're uninterested in having text conversations with androids.

[smoldesu]

It's a deliberate choice on Apple's behalf, too. iMessage could adopt RCS anytime without losing features and actually becoming more secure. Apple deliberately leaves iMessage as a terrible SMS fallback device to increase social pressure on competitors.

[colinmhayes]

Obviously it's a deliberate choice, iMessage is somehow one of apple's strongest moats. Strange to me that users accept that though when their are so many great, free alternatives.

[heartbeats]

Competitive ... dating ... market? Have you considered hanging out with more, uh, human people?

I'm not exactly a playboy, but I've really never had this problem at all in my life. For what it's worth, approximately half of the women I speak to (in my subjective experience, eminently normal people) use Android phones.

[howinteresting]

*straight dating market

This is not at all a thing among the queer people I know. Most of my partners have Androids (one has an iPhone) and we all use Signal or Discord.

[3qz]

The gay men I date also bullied me when I still had an Android. If your social circle uses discord then they’re probably not concerned with being normal.

[smoldesu]

Really? I don't think I've ever dated a man who cares more about the phone I use than the job I have or the clothes I'm wearing. I think if anyone pestered me about using a Thinkpad or an Android device, I'd walk out of the venue and foot them the bill.

[howinteresting]

Yes, gay male dating culture is also quite bad with its focus on superficialities and appearing normal, as you put it. Talking mostly about lesbian and non-binary/trans culture here.

[usrn]

I live entirely without a smartphone and centralized social media (unless you count my Pinephone but that's really a small laptop and small forums of which HN is probably the largest.) I recommend this to everyone but even I recognize it's not really a casual decision for most people anymore. I was extremely careful to not let Google/Apple manage much of the things in my life and I still felt pain leaving them behind. Most people are not at all careful and probably don't even know what they would do without the services from these two companies.

[bogwog]

> On the other hand, you can choose to not use Apple and your life won't be affected at all. I don't use Apple at all and don't feel I missing out. Apple doesn't have any network effect.

This doesn't change the reality that Apple has too much power. Just because it's possible to not use Apple doesn't mean we should ignore that one company has nearly complete and unchecked control over the digital lives of more than half of the US population, as well as a massive chunk of the tech industry as a whole.

[turndown]

You could make the exact same arguments about FB being irrelevant, the difference is that your social group doesn't revolve around iMessage group chats and twitter, they revolve around facebook and Facebook Messenger. Using an android over an iPhone basically locks you out of most group chats because Apple refuses to be normal human beings and develop an open API - So please tell me again how I can ignore Apple when it's actually Facebook you can safely ignore? Note that I am a long-term android user.

[corrral]

FB is where basically all local social interaction takes place. Restaurants, schools(!), neighborhoods/HOAs, local governments, kids' sports stuff, et c., all treat it as their main platform for communication. These may (may) provide info through other outlets, but they're usually neglected, outdated, and incomplete—you are expected to use Facebook.

I don't even have an account with them, but I have to visit the site all the time. If my wife didn't have an account, I'd have to get one, for the times when it's needed. FB is the Internet, as far as local real-world stuff goes.

[arbirk]

Exactly. I have a Quest - I guess I could have choosen not to buy it - but I can't not have a fb account because a lot of important events only run through there.

[alexb_]

>On the other hand, you can choose to not use Apple and your life won't be affected at all

Green bubble exclusion absolutely, 100% is a real thing.

[shmel]

I've heard about it, but never experienced IRL. Is it really a big deal?

[bombcar]

It's a tiny minor annoyance to me sometimes, but I don't usually groupchat (and the most annoying thing I've seen with group chats is if there are other iPhoners it is REALLY WAY TOO DAMN EASY to accidentally FaceTime them all).

[Nextgrid]

iMessage doesn't actually require an account. You can be banned from iCloud and still use iMessage.

[alexb_]

but iMessage requires you to use an iPhone...

[Nextgrid]

Which you can buy for cash if necessary. There's no way to ban you from buying an iPhone.

[alexb_]

I think you missed the topic of this thread.

[Miraste]

What are you going to do with an iPhone without an Apple account? Use it as a coffee coaster?

[signal11]

> Facebook is not the gatekeeper for millions of peoples lives

Facebook’s influence over billions of people’s lives is far more insidious. What that platform peddles influences countries’ political futures. It is absolutely a gatekeeper of ideas to an extent AOL or the proprietary MSN of old could never imagine. Less charitable people could even call it a privately owned memetic weapon.

> Without a working Apple account any iPhone is as good as a brick.

Lots of people have iPhones without Apple accounts — they’re corporate “managed” iPhones. I appreciate the desire to decouple from Apple’s services, but it’s a stretch to say that you’re locked in. In fact, most iPhone users don’t use all of Apple’s services can quite easily move to Android with only a little effort.

If there’s enough consensus though that Apple’s policies are harming users, then I’m sure legislators can require Apple to (say) allow users to decouple from Apple services.

I’m not seeing it though. There are places with Apple goes overboard, eg the “must pay via Apple” is being attacked by legislation already (eg in the Netherlands), and better App Store policies will probably help as well, as long as they don’t open the door to malware. But to say that Apple is worse than Facebook feels like a very skewed perspective.

[rvieira]

I honestly think the other way around, that Facebook is way too powerful and in a more insidious way, than Apple.

I'm coming from a Apple HW user perspective. This means that, yes, if Apple locked me out, I would have trouble using my machines. But I'm not an services user (music, TV or iCloud). So nothing would be lost from my digital life and it is elsewhere and well backed up.

On the other hand, I genuinely despair at the amount of public services (at least in Europe), community services and businesses that require me to have a Facebook account to interact with them.

The quickest way to reach a local politician might be leave a message on a local FB group. Some segments of society (and some age groups) just _assume_ _everyone _ is on FB. FB is _not_ a public service.

[rglullis]

> businesses that require me to have a Facebook account to interact with them.

Can you give examples?

> The quickest way to reach a local politician

Doesn't mean that it is the only one. There are still alternatives. If you feel that using Facebook is wrong, the solution is not to use Facebook and complain about it. The solution is to stay away from it and send a clear signal that Facebook is not the proper channel.

[moviewise]

I can give an example. My whole life I had avoided joining Facebook, even when pressured to do so socially. I just had someone from the group email me the FB messages that were important so I could participate in events/be informed. For another group, I persuaded them to post videos on YouTube instead of just on Facebook because the videos would cut off and not play through without a FB account.

But then, Disney's "inclusion and diversity" writing program application materials were only posted on Facebook, not on a website. And that was fine, if annoying, because it was publicly accessible, until the application failed to send, and the ONLY way they had set up to notify them of "technical difficulties" was to message them through Facebook. So now I have a Facebook account, which I otherwise don't use.

[rvieira]

As most people, I guess, during the peak of the pandemic I increased my online shopping a lot. From food take-aways to vinyl records.

These can be examples: the majority of restaurants in my area proudly claim an "online presence" which is really just a basic FB page. And a 2nd hand record shop whose "site" was a minimal FB page with no way of looking at the catalogue.

True, there are other ways, using the phone like a savage (joking), but when local councils force you to subscribe to their page to get important updates like school and road closures, there's this snowball effect where you either cave in and open a FB account or make your life harder.

[rglullis]

I'm pretty sure that there is some kind of legal action to be taken against any public organization requiring the population to access things through Facebook.

How can a city council reconcile this with GDPR?

[Schroedingersat]

Same way the QLD government reconciled requiring an app from either google or apple which additionally logged your location and everywhere you went to microsoft in order to leave your house during the pandemic? Ie. not having any laws respecting privacy.

[Nextgrid]

GDPR has a major enforcement problem so a lot of offenders are allowed to run free and may not even realize they're breaching the regulation.

[rglullis]

Yes, sure. But this is not just random shop that happens to be dealing with European customers, it is an European city council. Is there any other place where people can and should call for enforcement?

[lloeki]

Can't be sure about what GP meant but over here many small biz (restaurants, bars, shops...) online presence is a FB page + booking/inquiry/support via Messenger (which has specific support for that on biz pages)

> If you feel that using Facebook is wrong, the solution is not to use Facebook and complain about it.

Do that and they could care less. The only one you'll impact is you, as the needle will barely move. You could say if enough people do that and talk enough about it things will change, but in practice they don't as it's very far from reaching critical mass. And yes I've tried! But the network effect is stupidly powerful here.

> The solution is to stay away from it and send a clear signal that Facebook is not the proper channel.

To be fair, many are being pragmatic as Facebook tools for business are useful, as in they solve a real use case in an easy enough way. So people use it, which means events, news, communication, end up happening via Facebook for a huge proportion of local life. Displacing that is capital H Hard.

[rglullis]

I present you example #23 of "The law of unintended consequences", or what I prefer to call "Why all bureaucrats deserve to go to hell"...

Do you know who we should thank for all businesses killing their own online presence and migrating to Facebook? I'll give you 4 letters to guess: G.D.P.R

[corrral]

> Do you know who we should thank for all businesses killing their own online presence and migrating to Facebook? I'll give you 4 letters to guess: G.D.P.R

Pure, absolute, grade A bullshit. The trend predates the GDPR and is widespread among US small business and organizations that I guarantee you have never heard of that law. It's not a factor at all. They use Facebook because it's as close to zero set-up and maintenance as it gets, it's free, they already know how to use it, and "everyone" has it anyway.

[rglullis]

> US small business and organizations that I guarantee you have never heard of that law

Please, read the conversation in the proper context before hurling your opinion and creating a strawman. We were talking about businesses in Europe.

The trend started before it, but GDPR accelerated it.

[Kbelicius]

> Do you know who we should thank for all businesses killing their own online presence and migrating to Facebook? I'll give you 4 letters to guess: G.D.P.R

Business started killing their own presence before GDPR. If GDPR did contribute to this, I doubt it, the only reason I could think of would be businesses not understanding GDPR.

In your opinion what, specifically, about GDPR drove businesses to facebook?

[rglullis]

> only reason I could think of would be businesses not understanding GDPR.

Yes, that was reason enough. They were scared of lawyers knocking on their doors and shake them with the threat of lawsuits over "GDPR violations". They had zero interest in spending more money on their websites to ensure they are compliant and Facebook made it convenient for them to outsource all of this unnecessary headache.

I don't want to get into a tangent, but I'm yet to see a better example of how regulatory capture works in favor of Big Corporations, and how I distressingly frustrating it is to see how often people throw around the "Government needs to regulate X" without thinking about the Law of Unintended Consequences.

[Macha]

Except GDPR came into effect in 2018, and local businesses started substituting small websites with Facebook pages since like... 2010. At least here it feels like the rate of that has actually decreased since GDPR, though that's likely largely due to the coincidental timing of Facebook's decline in popularity.

[bombcar]

You can usually weasel your way in to see the basic business page, I even got a way to get the posts, but it is really freaking annoying. I hate it (and learned that my local government posts to FB and not to their own website sometimes).

[CogitoCogito]

> The solution is to stay away from it and send a clear signal that Facebook is not the proper channel.

Collective action through the legal system is another legitimate approach. If enough people are unhappy, legislation can force a change.

[rglullis]

> legislation can force a change.

No, the laws for it already exist. The problem is the difficulty to enforce it.

"Legislation" and "regulation" are not magic words.

[CogitoCogito]

I never said they are magic words. And legislation _can_ for change. Of course it requires regulation and everything else. That goes without saying. The fact that laws already exist doesn't mean that better laws that are more easily enforced can't be passed.

Regardless that is almost getting into a semantic discussion. Collective action through _government_ regulation is a perfectly legitimate approach if enough people are unhappy about the status quo.

[rglullis]

Legitimate? Yes.

Effective? Rarely, if ever.

I think that is the main issue here. Big corporations love to keep the meme around that "Government regulation" is a legitimate action, because they know how ineffective it is.

If it were up to them, we might be spend our whole lives trying to craft the perfect law, constantly re-iterating in a game of cat-and-mouse against $current_malpractice_du_jour, but at the end of the day it is all pointless because people are not going to wait and just use Facebook anyway.

[lowwave]

Any pre icloud service Apple user knows you can just use your computer to backup all the apple devices instead of iCloud. Although apple is pushing their cloud services, you don't need to use it.

Out of the big tech corporations Apple over all is more trust worthy than google, facebook, amazon. Of course getting LineageOS/Debian on Librium type of phone would be preferable.

[jurmous]

In Europe and specifically here in the Netherlands, almost everything is going through WhatsApp. Without whatsapp you are disconnecting yourself from a lot of socialising groups/neighborhood watch and more. Recoverable, but still a main pillar of society here so it comes at a cost of losing social connections.

[zelphirkalt]

I some countries FB is the Internet and provides "the Internet" through FB. That is quite some gate keeping there.

Someone getting into your FB account can ruin your complete social life, if you were relying on FB too much. Could also ruin your job perspectives and thus financial security.

Not merely annoying. Self-inflicted mostly, yes, but definitely serious.

[AnonHP]

> Not that Facebook is any better, but Facebook is not the gatekeeper for millions of peoples lives. When Apple boots you as a customer, you most likely will lose everything about your digital life.

What??? Maybe you're referring to one or two countries. Facebook is the gatekeeper for billions of people's (online) lives around the world. With WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, etc., the influence that Meta has is huge. It's far larger than Apple in terms of number of people who rely on it.

[beachy]

Apple doesn't harm your mental health or facilitate threats to democracy though. They just want your money, and they'll sell you beautiful gadgets to get it.

[rglullis]

"Brave New World" is also a dystopia. The more unchecked power Apple gets and the more Apple zealots think that it is okay, the closer we get to live in it.

[988747]

Apple is not in control of your credit cards - it just allows you to use them more conveniently. And for photos and music, and even passwords there are alternative services, no one forces you to use Apple provided ones.

[moonchrome]

> Apple is not in control of your credit cards

Maybe OP was referring to https://www.apple.com/apple-card/ ?

> And for photos and music, and even passwords there are alternative services, no one forces you to use Apple provided ones.

Apple has a real tight lockdown on what gets published to iOS devices and ships defaults built to the OS so I don't really buy this argument. Microsoft got punished for way less back in the day (eg. IE bundling vs being forced to use webkit for your rendering engine...)

[threeseed]

I really wish people would stop bringing up Microsoft.

They had ~95% market share when they were pulling this IE nonsense. iOS is ~28%.

And they didn't get in trouble just for bundling IE. It was the coercion of OEMs to not bundle Netscape. Many of the companies at the time wanted to offer both but weren't allowed.

[moonchrome]

> iOS is ~28%.

This is a deliberately misleading number.

They own ~50% of US market, they have close to 50% of global mobile revenue, >70% of profit, etc. etc. They are a huge player and abusing their market position - and are big enough to bring regulatory attention in multiple countries.

This is exactly the situation where proper government intervention into markets is a good thing and I've seen multiple proposals to deal with "Apple tax" and walled garden strategy. Hopefully they come sooner rather than later.

[gpspake]

I've solved this problem for good with email - since I think it's arguably the most important thing here (all my financial/important life stuff is ultimately tied back to my email).

I kinda think everyone should do this...

- First I got a custom domain email address that I own and control (like [e-mail]).

- Then I set up what's basically a burner account with a popular email service just so I could take advantage of the web UX (it could be gmail or whatever, I don't really care). This email address never gets used or exposed. The account is merely a forwarding bucket that I can use to check my email in a browser.

- My personal email all gets forwarded to the burner address (at the host level). The burner (gmail or whatever) acct is configured to send from my personal address.

- I have the account set up in outlook so I can access/backup emails locally.

I'm not really worried about losing access to my web mail account but I've read horror stories and the cost of that scenario is just intolerable so, if I did, I would just set up another account with the same or a different service, forward my personal email to the new address, add it to outlook, and drag all my existing emails in to the new account. I don't even need to worry about accessing my existing emails because they're all backed up locally.

Sidenote: as part of this process, I quit filing my emails in folders (search is good enough to find any email these days). I just put all my read emails in a single flat folder called archive. This makes it a lot easier to keep my inbox clean (no more meticulous filing) and easier to migrate if I ever need to (different services have different implementations and restrictions around folders - but a bunch of emails in a single folder is universally deal-with-able.).

[ChrisRR]

> If you lose your Facebook account, it's annoying but recoverable.

I haven't noticed any negative impact since giving facebook the boot

[afr0ck]

How do you find out about events, gigs and stuff happening in your town?

[threeseed]

So if Facebook shut down everyone would just be staying home confused about what to do ?

Anyway in Australia at least we have sites like this: https://www.broadsheet.com.au

Pretty sure every city does too.

[Nextgrid]

If Facebook shuts down people would flock to an alternative.

If Facebook bans people here and there, the rest of the crowd won't give a shit.

That is the problem.

[ChrisRR]

My town has a website for events, music, comedy, etc.

Even when I used facebook I never used it for gigs or anything.

[jurmous]

With Apple, any service you use is a choice. Ok you need an Apple account to download apps but that is the only mandatory one. But you can switch out all Apple apps with other ecosystem variants like those from Google or others.

[NorwegianDude]

That's not true at all.

Apple goes a long way to sabotage and make sure what you're saying is not the case.

You're not even allowed to use a browser that Apple isn't in control of. You're even forced to use Apple for payments. Apple even dictates what content an app is allowed to contain.

[jurmous]

I use Apple Pay as a protocol to pay with either credit card or maestro through my own bank or its competitors. Apple state they don't get any of my payment data as it stays on my devices and with my bank. It is a method of communication and not a payment provider.

Apple dictates the browser engine for security and battery life considerations which I regard as a feature. There are multiple browsers which can implement any feature on top of the browser engine included.

And Apple does not dictate what content is allowed to contain. But they do the opposite, they disallow certain content to keep their devices safe to use for the general audience/children. Anything else can be viewed on the web. They are over time removing restrictions in the browser like adding web push in iOS 16. https://9to5mac.com/2022/06/06/ios-16-web-push-notifications... And it was already possible to add full screen web apps to the Home Screen.

[joe_guy]

> Apple dictates the browser engine for security and battery life considerations which I regard as a feature.

> Anything else can be viewed on the web.

You've reconstructed your statement to be conditional on your preferences.

It's now "You can... Except for the major situations when you can't... But I don't count those because of my personal preferences."

[EugeneOZ]

It's just ridiculous. I use whatever I want for payments. How is Apple forcing you to buy a fish in your shop only using ApplePay?

[threeseed]

a) I use Chrome. Apple doesn't control it except for the engine which is irrelevant to my day to day use.

b) I don't use Apple for payments.

c) If there is content that is highly objectionable I would just visit the website. But then again I am not really into that sort of content in the first place.

[Schroedingersat]

> If you lose your Facebook account, it's annoying but recoverable.

Tell that to the large portion of the world living where government services, clubs, community and social events, second hand markets, contact with family or communication without usurious data charges are unavailable without a facebook or facebook subsidiary account.

At least with apple you can just use a different phone. If all of the social activity in your area operates over facebook you can't get a new social graph that isn't owned by them.

[natly]

I recently got a new phone and forgot my apple password but I considered just creating a new account because I didn't really consider it that big of a deal to just start fresh. I don't cling onto my emails and I only have like 30 contacts that I actually care about, all of which I have their emails stored in gmail rather than in contacts (and don't call them anyway). So I'm not sure I would care if I had to start from scratch.

[madeofpalk]

> Apple is way too powerful. Not that Facebook is any better, but Facebook is not the gatekeeper for millions of peoples lives.

I think Facebook inciting genocide is being more of a literal gatekeeper of lives than Apple allowing porn on their app store. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo... https://about.fb.com/news/2018/11/myanmar-hria/

[fritigern]

> Apple has control over your phone, your passwords, your photos, your music, your emails, your credit cards/payment methods. And you can backup nothing of it in a usable way. Without a working Apple account any iPhone is as good as a brick.

This is why no one could ever convince me to buy an Apple product.

[SllX]

> Apple has control over your phone, your passwords, your photos, your music, your emails, your credit cards/payment methods.

This gets repetitive but: only if you let them. I’m not even sure you need an Apple ID to use an iPhone either, although you will for the App Store. Everything else is extra: iCloud, Apple Music, iCloud email, the Apple Wallet. Your Dropbox, Spotify, email host and credit cards don’t just fall into an abyss when you create an Apple ID.

Apple has what you give them. That’s true for every single one of their customers. Contrast that with Facebook that built shadow profiles before people even had accounts because the websites you visited and apps you used were relaying information back to them.

[drexlspivey]

I am not sure that’s the case, I know a lot of (mainly older) people that if facebook was gone from their iphone they would ditch their iphone for android instead of not using facebook.

[devoutsalsa]

The three primary ways I communicate with friends and family are FB Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Facebook could decide it doesn't like me at any time.

[kmlx]

> you most likely will lose everything about your digital life.

"everything"? why would you lose anything at all?

[EugeneOZ]

Apple only controls my phone and playlists in the Music app (from time to time I export them to have a backup, but only because the Music app is absolutely dumb in syncing).

From my example, you can see that you have a choice about what you want to be controlled by Apple.