[ericmay]

> Apple has completely forgotten their privacy bargains in China when their profits were threatened.

Couple of things here. First, I live in America so I don't really care and apparently the Chinese people for whatever reason want to live in that privacy hellscape. Second, Apple unfortunately (like many corporations) is not in a position to dictate privacy regulations to the Chinese government. The interactions here, frankly, are complicated so I'm not really buying this as a valid criticism w.r.t the App Store. If you really want to try and take a moral high ground here, well, let me know when the EU stops supporting genocide in Xinjiang. I'll wait.

(but it's complicated, so let's not sling mud here alright?)

> They've also special-cased their own Ad data collection (a business that's growing in revenue) to be opt-out.

Yes, and I don't like this. It's something I agree with criticizing Apple for.

Similarly: "They're an unaccountable and unelected corporation, not a government"

Yes. And? They're ahead of government regulation here (in many instances and in many countries). You're framing this as if my choices are an unelected corporation and a government, but we're just switching between one unelected corporation (Apple) and others (Facebook, et al).

> I honestly don't understand your penchant to cross your fingers and hope a for-profit corporation will protect you over actually ensuring they do via privacy legislation.

We are not talking about GDPR or "socialism" or whatever. We're talking about regulating Apple so that other mega corporations can create their own app stores on iOS and then do whatever they want. You're just wrestling control away from one mega corporation that ostensibly has some sort of values that align with the interest of the public and giving it to other mega corporations that, as far as I can tell, don't.

[ginko]

>We are not talking about GDPR or "socialism" or whatever. We're talking about regulating Apple so that other mega corporations can create their own app stores on iOS and then do whatever they want.

So don't use those. Personally I'll mostly stick to Apple's app store along with some Free Software one where I download Firefox and some other open source apps.

[ericmay]

> So don't use those.

The problem is that it lessens Apple's collective bargaining power. They can't make Facebook (again just as an example) comply with privacy rules on the iOS App Store because Facebook can and will offer its product exclusively on its own store or on a third-party store where they don't have to use these rules.

The feedback loop for privacy rights is such that people will say screw the privacy rights and go download Facebook anyway - so now customers that previously had the best of both worlds (privacy rules and Facebook) will be forced to choose, and they'll definitely choose Facebook.

So what was gained? Well, it's good for mega corporations like Facebook. Bad for single megacorporation Apple, and bad for me as a customer. It's good for payday loan type crypto companies or other scam artists, and bad for my grandma. Etc.

That's the problem here. Saying "don't use those" doesn't make sense. But if you wanted to say that then I just say don't use the iPhone if you want third-party app stores.

[kuratkull]

I think it's more likely that this would technically mean suicide for Facebook (or whoever would try this). And if users actually follow then the bet paid off and the users deserve what's coming to them. I don't see this happening in the real world though.

[Apocryphon]

It also makes assumptions that consumers are dying for Facebook, when engagement in the product has been mixed, especially with the reputation of the company dropping precipitously over the past six years.

Heck, even Instagram is beginning to show signs of trouble:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/16/technology/instagram-teen...

[ericmay]

Facebook owns a few properties, including WhatsApp. But I think you are envisioning a high switching cost, whereas I think it would just be a simple download and install of the Meta store. You'll probably purchase products using a Libra derivative too. There wouldn't be very high switching cost for customers, and they'll rapidly click through privacy prompts (if they happen at all) with no Apple ostensibly looking out at all for this. At that point it'll just be up to government regulation.

[Apocryphon]

It’s still having to sign up for another account- probably using Facebook login- but once you have the dang thing you have to manage payment options, privacy settings, email and push notifications, having the damn app store icon sit on your Home Screen, non-zero friction that comes with the current era where consumers already juggle multiple social networks, streaming services, e-commerce memberships, music or gaming stores, and so on. It’s an annoyance and a hassle and unless Meta brings out sufficient new incentives as part of it, users are gonna balk. Most users do not want to deal with yet another payment system like Libra. Finally, government regulators would probably probe Meta for antitrust violations if they withhold a critical communication app like WhatsApp from the official iOS App Store, without opening the protocol up for federation. What applies to Apple still applies to other companies.