[bonoboTP]

Another recent news about mandated app use: Ryanair now (from November) requires using their app for the boarding pass, no more printouts from the desktop. Also, they refuse to show the QR code for the boarding pass in a mobile browser via the website, you must use their app.

https://www.msn.com/en-ie/travel/news/ryanair-s-new-check-in...

[wkat4242]

A BIG reason these companies like Ryanair want you to use their app its that it's much easier to collect data about you than through a website :(

[XorNot]

No, it's a cost cutting measure. App-only reduces support and development costs with whoever they're outsourcing this too.

There's a line item which basically said "mobile web" and they wanted it gone to save some number of dollars per year.

[bonoboTP]

No, sending a pdf by email is no extra cost. They already have an email output interface for tickets and recipts and confirmations.

It's all about better tracking. I'm not quite sure what additional info they get exactly, but tons and tons of mobile websites (that work and don't get deleted) are close to unusable due to a barrage of popups telling you to use the app (e.g. Reddit and other socials).

Also there is no indication they will stop the mobile web version. Already today the mobile web version is there but it explicitly refuses to show the boarding pass QR code: https://i.redd.it/lj3wdnfp9mq91.jpg

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

Not just tracking - also a chance to spam you with notifications until you figure out how to block them, and free ad space on your home screen in the form of the app icon.

[XorNot]

As an SRE I can assure you that "sending a PDF by email" is far from free to support, and anything email is pretty much top of the list to eliminate.

[wkat4242]

It doesn't need to be by email. They can simply show it in the mobile website.

But they refuse to do so in order to get all that data which they can sell. In a mobile app it's way harder to run ad blockers and much easier to sneakily collect information on the user. Especially on android which is by far the biggest OS in the countries where Ryanair operates.

[throwaway287391]

I really doubt it's that, as opposed to the maintenance cost of an extra flow to a boarding pass. Or perhaps just a perceived complexity/annoyance cost when something breaks in the desktop flow here and there.

I'd think it's only maybe 5-10% of customers at most who both use desktop over mobile to get their boarding pass and use an ad-blocker on desktop. And honestly I don't remember ever seeing an ad (even on Ryanair) when getting my boarding pass on mobile. OTOH I distinctly remember seeing many giant ads on printed boarding passes, most often on printed boarding passes brandished by other customers (usually printed in full color!). I'd think that's hugely more valuable as advertising real estate than the iota of additional data they get to collect on a few adblock users who have been forced to use mobile.

[bryanrasmussen]

>I'm not quite sure what additional info they get exactly

probably more guaranteed location tracking - hey this guy is buying tickets from the expensive part of town on the newest model iPhone! Chance we can jack up the price, 99% good!

[Zenbit_UX]

I don’t often log in to HN to comment, but when I do it’s usually when I see this type of comment.

You can always spot them by the first word being “No” or “False” followed by a confidently asserted yet hilariously incorrect statement.

I suggest reading this [0] and approaching these discussions with more humility in the future. As you yourself stated, you’re an SRE, not a security expert, yet this forum is full of them.

0: https://peabee.substack.com/p/everyone-knows-what-apps-you-u...

[frm88]

Wow! The linked article is downright terrifying. It convinced me that spying is the real purpose of forcing apps on users. How do we look in terms of regulations on this issue? I assume the EU data act covers part of that, right? What do we have for the rest of the world?

[lenkite]

Yeah, this is the reason why Swiggy offers discounts for their phone app and not their web app. The discount is effectively paid for by your personal data.

[sally_glance]

We (software agency) recently encountered this line of argument for the first time here in Germany.

It definitely reduces costs to swap 3 platform support to 2, but it still came as a kind of surprise to me. They (customer) poured years and seven digit figures into the web-based version which is now effectively going to be trashed. The current prod metrics are not supporting the 90% mobile thesis... I guess they just have high confidence that it will become true soon.

I'm wondering if these are the first signs of an age-based bias I have and the next generation just can't really imagine a majority of users using desktop PCs.

[johnnyanmac]

Ther's a line between "we don't support this platform" and actively making it hostile to try and use a platform. It may have even taken extra development time to make sure they can reject showing the QR code on a webpage, if their app is just serving that same web page.

[XorNot]

If corporate no longer wants to support mobile web, then it means I don't have budget to host it. It means developers can't put time against fixing it, QA aren't tasked to test it before releases, and support staff are not being trained in supporting it. The last one is pretty key because it's a huge metric for cost center: how many support calls is a thing generating? And if the thing is not supposed to exist anymore, then I would have to answer questions like "why is it still accessible?"

Internal job tracking metrics would have to answer why any time is going to running this thing, and god help us if there's a security breach via this endpoint we were supposed to have eliminated N time ago.

An unsupported internal API is one thing - and they're generally a huge timesink anyway. An unsupported external user interface is a cost center which I can't justify, and impacts numerous other parts of the business.

[hulitu]

> No, it's a cost cutting measure

Only marketed as such. Selling user data generates revenue. Win-win

[wkat4242]

lose-lose for the customer :(

[EvanAnderson]

Ticketmaster and their stupid app is another good example. As if I couldn't hate Ticketmaster any more I recently bought some tickets and learned about this idiocy.

[SketchySeaBeast]

I throw the tickets into my (digital) wallet and then don't think about the app until the next time I need to buy tickets. But that's not helpful if you don't have a phone.

[EvanAnderson]

I used to print paper tickets so I could get into a show if my phone died / got broken / etc. That doesn't happen often, to be sure, but I also don't want phone bullshit to keep me out of a show that, in the case of this recent one, I have >$500 in tickets for. One less dependency is a good thing.

More to the point, the app isn't for my convenience. It doesn't do anything to make my experience better.

[smcg]

And most wallet apps don't work if you install your own phone OS.

[lmm]

Most e-tickets designed for wallet apps follow a well understood standard which has multiple implementations available for different OSes, e.g. https://linuxphoneapps.org/services/pkpass/

[1over137]

With Ticketmaster you can at least still show the ticket via logging into their website, no app needed.

[llimos]

Big difference between a private company mandating app use, and a government

[bonoboTP]

I disagree. It's a tandem, and corporations and the government are increasingly welded together.

Also, I'm not too worried about the airport usecase as we're already being tracked and surveilled and inspected there as much as possible.

But it's another step to normalize and mandate phone and app use. The puzzle pieces are falling in place. Soon, AI could screen-capture your phone screen to detect suspicious activity, and track every tap you do, also taking pictures with the front-facing camera without you knowing, listening on the mic, etc. etc., connecting it all to your real identity. Because why not? If it's done step by step, nobody will care at all. Maybe that sounds pessimistic, but it looks like the end game and I see no principled political stance against it, nor any insurmountable technical hurdles.

[card_zero]

> increasingly welded together

That's an insinuation with some vague truth to it, but not much. Budget airlines are not government departments, and competition between them isn't phony.

"The sky is blue" "I feel that it is increasingly yellow"

[bonoboTP]

There's little competition pressure because consumers don't care. I guess the standard theory says that the buck ends there. If people are fine with it, it's fine.

[XorNot]

You are arguing there's little competition pressure between budget airlines, a business with notoriously razor thin margins which people shop almost exclusively on price to the exclusion of all other parameters?

This isn't a serious argument.

[bonoboTP]

Only price pressure. No measurable number of consumers will choose a different airline due to their boarding pass app policy.

[card_zero]

Now you're talking! People suck, it's their fault.

[bonoboTP]

We'd do well with taking an honest stock of what allowed the formation of democracies and civil liberties, because likely it wasn't that average people longed for it so much that it happened. It's out of my weight class to pitch a grand narrative for this, but we've seen many forms of societies and governances and the current one (or from 20 years ago) won't be the last.

[johnnyanmac]

There have been very few policies truly passed because "everyone wanted it". It always starts with some "radical" minority bringing the idea to light and then campaigning for it. Even if the thing is obvious.

The former happening would make so many things easier.

[horsawlarway]

Functionally, I'm not sure I agree.

Ex - we already have plenty of cases where the government outsources payment processing to 3rd parties. What happens when that private 3rd party declares it's not accepting payments through anything except a mobile app?

[sunshine-o]

What do you expect?

Ryanair has always been an horrible corporation in the business of shipping drunk and old people for £5 with the help of public subsidies. They also largely abused their staff to enable that business model.

They are like many other corporations creating more and more fragile systems and I bet one of those days something is gonna go wrong and nobody will board their plane for a day or two.

Just stop feeding the beast...

[anonym29]

Wow, rendering their entire core business operation vulnerable to extortion from a DDoS attack that's capable of taking down a single API endpoint? Even if they have a major commercial WAF/CDN, the cost to take down Cloudflare is a lot lower than the revenue lost by an entire airline being unable to process boarding at all.

Fingers crossed the Russians figure this out and help remind these businesses why lacking paper alternatives is NOT a cost-saving measure. The group that can take down that API endpoint can pretty much name their price to Ryanair and the C-suite will effectively have a fiduciary duty to shareholders to pay it if there's truly zero alternative and that starts disrupting revenue indefinitely.

[alexchamberlain]

But what if my battery runs out?

[bonoboTP]

They are verbose and vague about it: "Some passengers may be concerned about what they can do if they lose their phone or of their devices run out of battery before the pass board the aircraft. Ryanair has said they will assist people experiencing difficulties free of charge at the gate gathering their information and flight details which will be cross-checked and validated against the flight manifest so that they can board as normal."

[jacobgkau]

Of course-- there will be accommodations to start out with. Then, after the new system has become "just the way things work," the accommodations will be removed for security or efficiency or some other reason.

Or maybe not. I've never lost a boarding pass, but if you lose one, you can get it re-issued somewhere, right?

[bonoboTP]

Without endorsement of the behavior, here's a guy getting arrested for being argumentative about not having a boarding pass in the app, and being told he can't pay their 5 dollar boarding pass print fee with cash.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QwwPmHyuEA

Again, being argumentative like this never helps, but it will be you either go along with it, get escorted out or not fly in the first place.

[john01dav]

Morally, this guy did nothing wrong. These abusive practices need to be stood up to. I'd rather live in a world where this sort of vehement NO when someone with power tries to pull something unreasonable, like demanding an app or fee, is common and effective, than this world where companies and governments can just steamroll people. Ideally, other passengers would see what's going on, see the systemic problem (even if minor in this case), and also join in in the NO. Make the terminal unusable with an angry growing mass until they decide to be reasonable. The comments on that youtube video mocking the guy and not even addressing the airline's unreasonable policy are also an absurd lack of solidarity against these companies. When someone is mad they probably have a reason to be mad and we ought to listen to them and then get mad too if we agree, other than just dismissing someone for feeling an emotion, lest we'll just have more and more rights, privileges, and respect eroded. We need a culture of standing up for each other against injustice, no matter how small.

I know that his behavior was not a rational pursuit, since in practice humans are too skittish about standing up for themselves and too skittish against anyone whom they see as abnormal/not complying with social norms. But, this does not change the fact that he's completely in the right. I'd love to know a more effective strategy to deal with this shit from companies, if anyone knows one. What should he do instead in this situation where it is simply too unjust to him to be acceptable to give in?

Also, I'm offended at this cop for telling the guy to "be cordial". NO. The airline's behavior is not cordial! They do NOT deserve it back! Freedom of speech means freedom to get mad at someone, possibly REALLY mad, when they try to be unreasonable. Being angry is different from being violent, and the government shouldn't shield people and companies from this consequence (angry people) of their actions.

[brokenmachine]

>The comments on that youtube video mocking the guy and not even addressing the airline's unreasonable policy are also an absurd lack of solidarity against these companies.

I see this a lot on reddit and youtube. I tend to think that it's bots paid for by the company.

There's always just too much unanimous agreement in favor of the corporation.

Maybe I just don't want to believe that people are that homogenized.

[hulitu]

This really looks dystopian. But, this is the future.

No TLS certificate (which will expire soon), no boarding. /s

[bonoboTP]

The likely future is where you'll be given a USB-C charger to charge your phone. If you have no phone or is broken, it will be the equivalent to having a strongly damaged passport. No fly that day, get a new phone, fly on another date, just like if you needed a new passport. The phone will be your ID, passport, credit card and everything. But since it will be all backed up in Google/Apple/Microsoft cloud, maybe you'll be able to buy a new simple phone near the gate, log in via fingerprint and facial recognition and go on your merry way. But also, once all this stuff is connected up in the cloud, maybe facial and fingerprint recognition will be enough to fly. NFC chips under the skin are probably too bad optics for the near future, but in one or two generations, attitudes will shift.

> I've never lost a boarding pass, but if you lose one, you can get it re-issued somewhere, right?

Yes, typically there's a fee for getting it printed at the check-in counter.

[qingcharles]

I had a very worn passport. I got to check-in one time and as I handed my passport to the agent my photo fell out of the back page.

They still let me fly from UK to USA and back.

This was 1997. Wild times.

[caztanj]

How are you going to buy a new phone when you have to pay with your broken phone?

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

With a normal airline? You walk up to the gate, say you lost your paperwork (boarding pass, ticket, doesn't matter), show your ID, and get a new boarding pass issued within about a minute of managing to get someone's attention. At least that was my experience. No hassle, no fee.

Ryanair? I would expect them to offer you their boarding pass printing service for only $99.99 (you missed the $49.99 special that was only available until 4 hours before boarding, silly you).

[koyote]

Maybe we need to collectively all 'lose' our phone just before boarding at the gate, resulting in some flight delays, so that this nonsense gets reverted.

[john01dav]

This is the sort of solidarity that we need against this insanity.

[sjw987]

And the sort of solidarity that unfortunately will never happen. Most people will just download the app and carry on. Very few people hold the very real concern about things moving in this direction.

Your average phone user is already hostage to 7 hours of screentime daily. They don't mind installing more apps. The average person has hundreds of apps on their phone, many of which are never even used.

[bonoboTP]

And they have a constant barrage of notifications, and they tap "Allow" on everything. It can be mind boggling if you spend your life in a developer-minded bubble. They watch ads. They sometimes like the ads and smile at them and don't skip them immediately.

Nothing much has changed since the times when you had to "fix" your aunt's computer in 2003 because it's "slow" and found a zillion toolbars and cleanup/speedup utilities.

[Asooka]

Oh so I can just carry a phone with a dead battery and don't have to go through their idiotic app.

[interloxia]

https://corporate.ryanair.com/news/ryanair-confirms-wed-nov-...

[WaitWaitWha]

This has been the same for most low cost airlines (e.g., Frontier, Spirit). To get a boarding pass without a mobile, customer must go to the counter, pay an additional fee and get the printed version.

[CraigRood]

I'm confused by your statement as the article suggests you can get a boarding pass via email.

[oblio]

What about Google Wallet? Or just a PDF from your email?

[bonoboTP]

To me, that's getting bogged down in details. What matters is the intent and direction. Maybe you will have some workarounds for some time. But just as more and more places go cashless, it will also be paperless and mandatory app-based.