[funkyfourier]

> But the App Store isn’t just a store, it’s also the only way of installing software on the most popular smartphone in the world, and the company’s decisions about what businesses it wants to support have a way of warping the entire culture.

In the case of porn this is not much of an issue, but the fact that these companies have that kind if power I find really scary. As stated in the article Apple (and Google too one would think) have the power to shut down many businesses for whatever reason they see fit.

[wongarsu]

> and Google too one would think

Google allows sideloading of apps. Of course if you start on the play store and get kicked off that can kill your business, but if you build your audience elsewhere it can work out just fine. There's a pornhub Android app, and an ecosystem of dating sims, visual novels containing erotic content, etc. Patreon is probably responsible for a couple of million dollars a month in Android app "subscriptions".

[Zak]

This is probably only viable when your entire category of business is forbidden by the two big app stores. That is to say, it's possible to survive as "the big porn service", but not as "the mainstream social network that doesn't ban porn" (unless you're Twitter/Reddit and you're too big to ban).

[kyrra]

> most popular smartphone in the world

While this is a technically correct statement, it is also hiding the truth. Android makes up 70% of the smartphone market still, but the phones are made by different companies (hence why the iphone is the post popular smartphone, just not the most popular OS). So 70% of phones can still sideload.

[StanislavPetrov]

>As stated in the article Apple (and Google too one would think) have the power to shut down many businesses for whatever reason they see fit.

And the situation is even worse when you factor in AWS and Cloudflare. When "free markets" are controlled by a few powerful gatekeepers they cease to be free markets.

[nottorp]

> In the case of porn this is not much of an issue,

It is.

> but the fact that these companies have that kind if power I find really scary.

And you just said why it is :)

Infrastructure providers (Visa, MC, Google, Apple, $RANDOM_ISP) shouldn't be allowed a say on what they're used for.

[cykros]

OR, they should be on the hook more if they're going to exercise this degree of control; ie, a common carrier rule (though its inability to actually get applied to social media leaves me less than hopeful). IF they want editorial capacity on what gets allowed, and what doesn't, then they should be taking on liability for harms caused by businesses they support (ie, going after Visa for lung cancer because they support purchasing cigarettes). On the other hand, if that sounds draconian (it should!) then they should have the option to avoid this by acting as dumb pipes.

If they're saying they want to pick winners, they should be responsible for the harms those winners they pick create. Otherwise, let the police do the policing.

[nottorp]

> they should be taking on liability for harms caused by businesses they support

Who decides what causes harm? The pressure group with the most donors for the lawsuit expenses?

[tomjen3]

Any acceptable phone has to have a webbrowser, and that one will always have to work with everything, especially porn sites.

We should be damm glad that the web got invented when it did, because nobody would accept the web if it was invented today.

[cm2187]

And they are not shy about doing it. App stored and payment processors also. The rest has a decent enough amount of competition.

[adhesive_wombat]

Banning alternative browsers in particular was a huge lead weight around open source on mobile.

[danielheath]

What's banned is marking a data page as executable (which happens to be required if you want to build a competitive javascript engine).

The practical upshot of this is that nobody has bothered porting a browser engine to iOS, since it's javascript performance would be unacceptably slow.