[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.

[bombcar]

As an aside some (most? All?) iPhones and carriers seem to support "WIFI calling" which lets you get calls and texts when you're on WIFI (and even outside of cell signal) - I get Ting calls and texts when I'm deep in my basement where no cell signal is available, as long as I have WIFI on.

I assume something similar exists for other carriers and phones (Republic Wireless is build around it).

There are also some land-lines that can get texts, but I don't know how they do it (I suspect they're actually a cell line disguised as one).

[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

[kop316]

> social stigma of being that one guy who makes the chat suck for everyone else just by being present

I have been trying to parse this. You do understand that for some people (like me), I explicitly DO NOT want an iPhone, right? It isn't I cannot afford it, I do not want it. The reason the chat "sucks for everyone else" is because Apple doesn't open up the protocol. Don't blame me for not wanting an iPhone.

[bombcar]

Even so if you're not on "iPhone" you get a bunch of "Bob laughed at TEXT" kind of things, which can be annoying.

I wonder how much Apple would make (and how much they'd lose) if they had a paid iMessage app for iCloud subscribers.

[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.

[Dracophoenix]

There's nothing inherently evil to EEE. Plenty of software and standards have benefited from it (e.g. Linux, Ethernet, USB, PCIe, Thunderbolt, Bluetooth). The question as whether EEE is "bad" is a matter of motive. Edit: Is it being done solely because there's money to be made in locking down the tech to certain platforms or because there's a superior or more convenient solution?

iMessage has been on phones for 11 years and so far Apple hasn't gone out of its way to pull the plug on SMS. Apple doesn't seem to have an active desire to extinguish it either. Other companies have put a more serious effort in that regard: Google has RCS, Signal has its own unfederated protocol, and various companies have their own messaging platforms (e.g. Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp).

[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?

[Nextgrid]

The only important functionality that requires an Apple account is the App Store. For that you can create an account with no/limited identifying information and pay for it via iTunes gift cards if necessary. A ban is trivial to circumvent.