I personally don’t care about alternative app stores, but I know many do, especially here.
I really want two things:
* companies cannot engage in any activity a common person would consider “spying”, cannot take the data collected by users of that service and transfer it to another entity, and third parties may not aggregate data collected about persons for any reason. There are a million and one useful reasons to do each of these things, but companies have proven themselves morally bankrupt and should lose that ability. This would go beyond “opt-in”, just make it illegal or the impractical (e.g. it would require a notary, licensed broker, or lawyers on both sides to engage in the practice)
* digital “purchases” are transferrable and have all of the rights and privileges afforded to physical goods. The producer/consumer balance shifted completely in favor of the producer with digital goods. Terms need to be more favorable to the purchaser as well as protections following the dissolution of a digital marketplace.
BrenBarn 4 hours ago [-]
I'd go further and apply something like the notary/broker approach to the collection of data. Types of data should be defined in law. Some (say, email address) would be "free" to collect, but subject to strict sharing requirements like you describe (e.g., you can ask anyone for their email address, but you can't do anything with it except use it yourself to contact them). Others (mailing address) would be allowed for certain purposes (e.g., you need to mail the person a package). Companies should expect regular audits and stiff financial penalties if they collect such data but cannot objectively demonstrate that they actually need it to perform a service they are providing to the person who provides it. (This means you can't collect someone's mailing address unless you actually need it to do a specific thing for that person; simply using it as input to your internal analytics isn't good enough.) Others (e.g., location tracking) would require an approval process akin to being licensed to transport hazardous waste or something, so that it would be straight-up illegal to collect such data without prior approval. That approval process would involve full public disclosure of all intended uses of the data. You can't collect sensitive data without telling everyone exactly what you're going to do with it.
A large portion of the data that is illegally shared should never have been collected in the first place.
lodovic 4 hours ago [-]
Some of this is already achieved by the EU's GDPR, not the DMA
scyzoryk_xyz 1 hours ago [-]
I was about to say - GDPR has been pretty effective at warding off any kind of such non-sense here in the EU. Having been on the other end, it makes entire teams not indulge in certain methods. I never had to argue with marketing department why we want our users not be bombarded with spam.
What I would like to see regulated are all those dark-pattern surveillance techniques that are slapped on absolutely everything these days. I’m just looking at a toaster, I don’t want the toaster company looking back at me just because I looked at a fucking toaster once. Makes me weary of looking at stuff. This wasn’t even that freaky pre-AI, but now it’s a whole other ballgame. Stasi would love this stuff.
rawbot 26 minutes ago [-]
I also don't really care about alternative app stores, I just want to be able to develop apps without paying a license or abusing a testing system (Apple, Testflight), and be able to install them without "jailbreaking" my device.
That's the reason why even with its warts, I have been a very happy Android user. It's my device, and I can modify it to become whatever I want it to be (with some constrains that don't really affect me atm).
josephg 4 minutes ago [-]
Yeah I’m an Apple user and this is one reason I’d consider switching. I don’t mind consoles like the switch or PS2 being sold at a loss, and making it up via expensive games. But Apple double dips here. They make a profit on my phone. Then they charge a crazy marketplace fee for the App Store. Then they have the gall to charge 3rd party companies for access to the NFC chips in our devices. It’s outrageous.
Is it my device or not, Apple?
bloppe 4 hours ago [-]
> I personally don’t care about alternative app stores
That's because it's difficult to imagine how alternative app stores would force first party app stores to be better, or risk losing business. For a start, everything would become much cheaper for you. They would also have a real incentive to provide new features and innovations. You don't have to switch to a third party app store to realize the benefits that follow from allowing them to exist.
Someone 3 hours ago [-]
> For a start, everything would become much cheaper for you
That, I doubt. Most stuff already is dirt-cheap on the App Store (and riddled with ads). It’s not like, for example, getting into Apple’s App Store is so expensive that it adds dollars to the price of apps.
pjc50 2 hours ago [-]
Merely being in the app store makes everything 30% more expensive! Including any subscriptions through the app, which is just ridiculous. This was the whole basis of the Epic lawsuit. And you can't tell people to sidestep the Apple cut by not putting the payment through them, that will get you banned from the app store.
ben_w 1 hours ago [-]
I think that profit margin would often, though perhaps not always, go to the developers rather to the consumers. That some already offer same thing at 30% discount on their website may be a sign of cheaper future, or may be a way to get price sensitive people to buy more.
Subs, kinda agree.
Also it's only 30% for the top of the market (15% for a lot of apps), and only for digital goods (so not my banking apps or Amazon), and it has to be stuff bought in app (so not two of my last three employers).
And even 30% was good when it was new. Only looks bad now because the market grew so much — but the market did grow, and I was expecting monopoly action around when they first passed one trillion dollar valuation.
With Epic especially, that felt like one arrogant giant swiping at another giant. Especially due to concerns that Fortnite was designed to be addictive, that loot boxes are gambling.
rahkiin 1 hours ago [-]
You’re saying if they drop the 30%, those cheap apps would cost 66 cents instead of 99?
Or would they stay 99 and thus no change for the consumer?
The DMA is about developer choice, not consumers
briandear 1 hours ago [-]
Devs under $1 million pay only 15%.. that’s far less than the retail markup of items in your local grocery store.
I think many, especially smaller, developers don’t realize the value they get for that commission: distribution, payment processing, billing, tax processing/collection, dispute handling, marketing (i.e. a storefront,) management of versions/updates for users, not to mention security benefits (for users.)
If people don’t like that, nothing is stopping them from choosing not to sell to Apple device owners. If Apple device owners don’t like it, they can switch to a competitor.
pjc50 24 minutes ago [-]
> If people don’t like that, nothing is stopping them from choosing not to sell to Apple device owners. If Apple device owners don’t like it, they can switch to a competitor.
The whole point of this regulation is to enable both sides to make that choice without having to give up on the iPhone and the rest of their app purchases etc. in that ecosystem.
oblio 26 minutes ago [-]
> Devs under $1 million pay only 15%.. that’s far less than the retail markup of items in your local grocery store.
So now we're competing with the "local grocery store", even on the "information superhighway"?
kevingadd 52 minutes ago [-]
Apple is on record that the 15% cut applies to a vanishingly small amount of App Store purchases. So it's not particularly meaningful.
Nursie 2 hours ago [-]
> For a start, everything would become much cheaper for you.
People say this, but of all the apps I have on my phone, I'm not sure I actually paid for any. Browser, smart-device controllers, a few games, streaming services (that I pay for direct), messengers of various sorts, banking, transport, ticketing, government apps.
I know people must pay for apps as Apple make a lot of money off it, but it's not really something I do.
oblio 22 minutes ago [-]
We can add this comment as a data point of 1 and compare this to the tens of billions Apple makes from the AppStore, then we can try to figure out which side is more relevant for lawmakers (who inherently have to lean towards statistics).
dylan604 2 hours ago [-]
> For a start, everything would become much cheaper for you.
That's such a fallacy that pro alt-app store people like to trot out. What evidence do you have that will happen? Are you basing it one the assumption that if devs no longer pay Apple a cut that the devs would lower their prices? Why do you think that would happen and the devs wouldn't just leave prices where they are and keep this cut no longer going to Apple? Why would devs leave that money on the table? Why do you think the alt-store would also not take the same cut or only slightly lower? Why would they leave money on the table?
At the end of the day, the biggest alt-store push is by devs wanting more money in their pockets, not the end users.
jakubmazanec 2 hours ago [-]
Are you questioning the basic function of competition in a free market? Why would devs lower prices? Because other devs would release better apps cheaper.
pjc50 2 hours ago [-]
The same dev will often literally sell you the same IAP/subscription off their own website for 30% less. Under the current system.
exac 4 hours ago [-]
To play devil's advocate, the common person accepts credit scores, and has no idea how they work. Should credit bureaus also be illegal? Or some medium whereby the credit companies _can_ collect the information, but can't sell it, or share analytics or even anonymized data?
MegaButts 4 hours ago [-]
> Should credit bureaus also be illegal?
I didn't realize there were many people defending credit scores. I mean yeah, I would just assume they should be illegal. At least in their current opaque form where it's impossible to contest or even get someone to explain your score to you.
scarab92 2 hours ago [-]
A large component of interest rates is a risk premium that depends on the likelihood of a borrower defaulting.
Credit scoring significantly outperforms any other methodology for assessing default risk, including credit matricies and especially human assessments (humans are shockingly bad at assessing default risk, rarely much better than a biased coin flip).
It's all well and good to say we should get rid of credit scores, but because they are so much more effective at assessing default risk than other methods, the consequence will be significantly higher rates of default, which means more people in financial hardship, and higher interest rates generally (though especially to low risk borrowers who will now be assessed as having closer-to-average default risk)
It's also not often appreciated, but credit scoring is also the single best technique we have to stop people borrowing beyond their means and entering into financial hardship and debt spirals. There are other techniques that exist to identify at-risk borrowers but these alone aren't as good as an approach which also incorporates credit scores.
As for explainability, unfortunately the best credit models are trained using AI techniques, which results in low explainability (since the risk signals are complex and multivariate). Older GLM approaches can be used, but aren't as good, so if we want high explainability, the trade off is worse performing credit models, and thus higher borrowing costs.
immibis 17 minutes ago [-]
Can this function only be performed in secret or is it possible for this to be transparent and still work?
bloppe 4 hours ago [-]
Without credit scores, it would be impossible to get loans or a mortgage. I think a lot of people would be pretty bummed about that.
gmueckl 4 hours ago [-]
Well, I come from a country without credit scores and I was able to get loans there. It was much easier than getting a loan in the US. Credit scores are a pretty bad system, all things considered.
bloppe 4 hours ago [-]
I'd love to learn more about this loan system. Do you mind if I ask which country that is?
afloatboat 3 hours ago [-]
I got a loan for a house 2 years ago. The process included showing our 3 last pay slips, the expected cost of the house (new build) and showing the bank how much money we had in our accounts (I loaned at a different bank that gave me better rates). There was a base percentage that lowered based on your level of income and the ratio of own contribution/loaned amount.
I live in a Central European country.
buildfocus 2 hours ago [-]
Spain - the bank asks for evidence of income (payslips or tax returns), existing funds (bank/broker statements) and checks outstanding debts (via a public register: https://www.bde.es/wbe/en/para-ciudadano/gestiones/informaci...). Risk analysis runs on that data directly. There's no credit history where you need to have ever borrowed money before.
Average interest rate on mortgages in Spain with this system appears to be _half_ that of the US, so it seems this isn't so ineffective that premiums have to spike to match. (is that right? https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/mortgage-rates/ suggests 6% interest mortgages is a current average in the USA while Spain is below 3% now - personal anecdotes plus gov stats shows 3.25% average on all issued mortgages in 2024: https://ine.es/dyngs/INEbase/en/operacion.htm?c=Estadistica_...)
briandear 45 minutes ago [-]
They are creating a credit score for you. They’re asking for the essentially the same data a credit scoring agency would use. The difference is that they manually underwrite everything.
Spain also enforces a much stricter debt to income ratio, which means it’s much harder to get loans for people that already have debt, which means the risk profile is reduced for those that do get approved.
Also Spain’s unemployment is among the highest in the EU — and almost three times higher than the U.S., so the central bank’s lower interest rates reflect less of a concern over inflation and more of a concern towards encouraging growth. The low interest rates in Spain aren’t a reflection of reduced risk but of lower central bank rates. You could get 30 year mortgages in the U.S. just a few years ago approaching 2%.
Comparing mortgage rates across countries is a pointless endeavor because the macroeconomic circumstances are vastly different. For example, one would think that lower interest rates would result in a increase of housing supply in Spain as investors build more housing because the loans would be cheaper — however that isn’t the case because of the post-tax return on investment (and regulatory risk) for real estate is far worse than an equivalent investment in the United States despite higher lending costs. A €10 million housing project in Spain has a lower ROI than the same project would in North Carolina. Interest rates could be zero in Spain and it wouldn’t change the housing market much because of the myriad of other factors that go into the spreadsheet.
oblio 25 minutes ago [-]
I'd rather each bank do the due diligence themselves than some centralized entity removed from anything.
Also almost all the things GP listed apply all across Europe. So the "Spain character assassination" exercise is pointless.
immibis 16 minutes ago [-]
In the credit score system, you get no visibility into the data that is used for your decision. I think in GDPR there's actually a right that any algorithmic decision has to be able to be appealed to a real human. With credit scores, all you'd get is "your magic number is below our magic threshold"
lrem 3 hours ago [-]
Switzerland - a public service collects a number of Boolean flags in the vein of “has ever refinanced a loan”, serves the raw set to the person or institutions that can request it according to the regulations.
Any EU country - regulations tend to be strict and vary from country to country. There is usually a central registry with either history of violated agreements and/or currently active loans. In pre-approval for a loan the borrower typically self-declares their credit capacity and the lender checks the registry for red flags. Before concluding the approval the lender will require supporting documentation (typically salary certificate, bank statement and/or tax returns).
lentil_soup 3 hours ago [-]
In Germany you just get a mortgage amount calculated as your yearly income multiplied by some factor (iirc depending on the city)
In Spain they look at your last few months of bank movements and calculate how much to loan you (usually something like max a third of your income can go to mortgage payments)
speleding 2 hours ago [-]
A loan for a house typically isn't really "credit", because the value of the house covers the loan. The small print in your mortgage will say that if you default the bank will get the house.
There is some risk to the bank because the house may have declined in value and it may be tricky to sell it when you default. That's why they do a risk assessment, but it can be a lot less invasive than for providing a personal loan for an education.
dsnr 3 hours ago [-]
In Germany people are asked to provide their Schufa score at their own expense when looking for an apartment to rent.
alphager 3 hours ago [-]
We have credit scoring in Germany (with the biggest scoring agency being Schufa).
delusional 2 hours ago [-]
I'm from denmark, and happen to work at one of the larger regional banks here. We similarly don't have "credit scores" in the American sense. We have scores that are calculated internally at our institution, but they're based on whatever we deem to fit our "risk appetite" we do not make use of any external centralized/opaque 3rd party rating agencies. We also have one of the highest household debt rates of any 1st world country, so getting a loan still seems possible.
We do have a centralized registry of "bad debtors" and that has a highly negative effect on your ability to get a loan.
Nursie 2 hours ago [-]
Australia doesn't have credit scores.
There are still credit bureaus, and things like defaults, judgements, etc are recorded, and when you apply for credit this is checked.
However there are crucial differences to a score system like the UK and (I assume) the US - there is no 'building good credit', you don't get any benefit from having existing credit products and using them well. In fact the opposite - having other forms of credit like a credit card available is seen as a negative when you apply for a mortgage and will impact the amount you can get loaned. They'll literally knock the credit card limit off the top of the mortgage offer.
scarab92 3 hours ago [-]
Credit scores are a good system actually.
They significantly improve the ability of a lender to model the default risk associated with a borrower, which results in lower borrowing costs for higher quality customers, as well as stopping debt spirals for people struggling.
In the absence of credit scores, higher quality borrowers will be charged higher interest rates or require higher collateral, since they are less differentiated from average quality borrowers, and/or access to credit will be restricted to a narrower proportion of the population.
lodovic 3 hours ago [-]
Credit scores often oversimplify risk, ignore nuanced factors, and can worsen financial struggles for those with low scores by pushing them toward higher costs. Countries without credit scores don't have higher interest rates or higher rates of defaulting. If we really want to, creditworthiness can be predicted more accurately and fairly with AI models, although that brings another level of bias.
briandear 18 minutes ago [-]
> and can worsen financial struggles for those with low scores by pushing them toward higher costs.
Shouldn’t those costs be higher because of the increased risks they represent? If someone has a habit of not paying their debts, why would a lender take on the higher risk without getting paid more? They wouldn’t, so they simply won’t loan the money.
However on the other side of this, nobody has to borrow money. If you don’t borrow, credit scores are irrelevant.
2 hours ago [-]
dwattttt 3 hours ago [-]
> In the absence of credit scores, higher quality borrowers will be charged higher interest rates or require higher collateral, since they are less differentiated from average quality borrowers, and/or access to credit will be restricted to a narrower proportion of the population.
Given we're talking about alternatives here, I think this should be: "In the absence of credit scores, or some other mechanism for comparing potential borrowers". There's lots of ways to compare borrowers, and if you assume credit scores are the only way to do it, all your solutions are going to involve them.
darawk 3 hours ago [-]
The term 'credit score' is sufficiently general to encompass literally all methods of comparing borrowers. You could certainly take issue with some specifics of how particular agencies calculate it, but the idea that there is some "alternative way of comparing borrowers" then I'd invite you to invent another formula for determining loan parameters, that does not boil down to a scalar value.
Loans involve the calculation of parameters. You can either choose those implicitly through personal knowledge, or explicitly through a scalar metric (credit score). There is no viable third option, and the first option is just a bad version of the second, in the end.
scarab92 2 hours ago [-]
Yep.
It's worth pointing out that credit scores actually are actually just the P(^default) expressed on an integer rather than fractional scale.
There's also multiple credit scores, there are the scores computed by credit bureaus which look at your P(default) against all lenders, but many lenders also compute their own internal credit scores using models trained against their own customer base (and possibly also taking into account additional data that they hold about you).
oblio 20 minutes ago [-]
Wasn't the current system used in the US developed as a hack for a particular situation that then got extended for things it wasn't actually meant to do? I remember reading something about it in the Big Short.
bee_rider 4 hours ago [-]
The scores were only invented in the 80’s.
But anyway, I wonder what the housing market would do if mortgages weren’t possible to get. I bet the prices would go down.
pmontra 3 hours ago [-]
It is possible that prices would go down but that will be an incentive to rent instead of selling. So less houses on the market. That could keep the prices up. And no matter how low the price is, if people have no savings and no credit even one year worth of salary would be too much of a price.
The combination of all those factors could lead to a final state of a lot of houses owned by companies and a few extremely wealth people. Everybody else would be paying a rent.
"Following the Panic of 1837, the first commercial credit reporting organizations formed."
It only took a financial crisis and 3-year-long depression for people to realize that credit is important.
easywood 4 hours ago [-]
I can assure you there are countries where a credit score does not exists, and people absolutely get loans and mortgages.
MegaButts 4 hours ago [-]
You could have credit scores that are designed to help people instead of the current mess where nobody can even tell you how it's calculated. The concept of a credit score is very different from what we have implemented in the United States. There's effectively zero transparency into how it works.
bloppe 4 hours ago [-]
That's fair. I just think saying "credit reporting should be illegal" is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
plufz 3 hours ago [-]
Which countries use credit scores? I didn’t know it was a widespread thing, I always thought it was an American deviation.
Here in Sweden we don’t have it. When you apply for a new loan the bank can request information of other debts you have. And you have to send info about your income and answer questions about your expenses (living costs, number of children living at home, etc).
briandear 13 minutes ago [-]
Doesn’t that create a de facto credit score?
zyberzero 3 hours ago [-]
We do have credit scoring, but I don’t think it is in the same sense as in the US though. If you look at ”your” UC (for example using the app Kreddy) you will get a credit score back.
CalRobert 3 hours ago [-]
I just got a mortgage here in the Netherlands. No credit score.
padjo 3 hours ago [-]
This is great example of how people struggle to see possibilities beyond the environment they’re raised in. The credit score system is not necessary to have loans and mortgages, as evidenced by all the countries that don’t have such a system. The notion that you have to take on debt to “build up your score” is particularly absurd nonsense to most non Americans
fmbb 3 hours ago [-]
Do you really believe creditors would just leave all that interest money on the table?
BrenBarn 4 hours ago [-]
It's only "impossible" because of assumptions built into the current system.
pineaux 4 hours ago [-]
As a counterpoint: Most countries in Europe don't really have credit scores, but mortgages still exist. We even balk at the idea of needing to take on debt to show you are good for it.
szundi 3 hours ago [-]
By, in my European country banks just check you up and you get your loan.
noirscape 1 hours ago [-]
I mean, yes? Credit scores are forbidden in many countries because of how opaque they are and because of the data collection aspect.
In a lot of countries, the only external thing the bank is allowed to use when you apply for a loan is whether or not you have existing loans (which is just to prevent you from borrowing money to pay off other borrowed money), the amount of money you make annually and what you currently have saved up.
eptcyka 2 hours ago [-]
And?
The common person accepted cigarettes as part of their daily life, and leaded fuel, and many other things which should’ve been changed and ended up being changed. Do you think hackers like to leave the world as is?
ankit219 1 hours ago [-]
Supporting a policy or a regulation which looks at just competition with zero incentives to care for users because it may help the portfolio is not a good look. People may argue otherwise, but DMA exists to make sure the gatekeepers lose market share to their rivals, even if it comes at the expense of consumers.
Eg: Google asked to remove maps from their search page, which means a user has to do extra clicks to get to the info they want. Bad experience yes. And now, they still did not lose market share so EU is asking google to do more.
I am not against the spirit of the act, but their goal is to listen to competition and ask for changes accordingly. If it screws up users, so be it. There would be no winning. Yes, google search is a monopoly, and should not be so big. The act is unbalanced.
A lot of proponents of iMessage example miss out that WhatsApp won outside of USA. By just building a better product and utilizing network effects.
nolist_policy 39 seconds ago [-]
> And now, they still did not lose market share so EU is asking google to do more.
Can you elaborate on that?
bad_user 42 minutes ago [-]
Google started as a search engine, driving traffic to websites. Then they started integrating the crawled content into their pages, driving traffic away from the websites that provide that content.
You gave a convenient example, Google Maps, which is also their property. Although, I'd argue that by integrating Google Maps into Search, due to Search's monopoly it means that no alternative to Google Maps can ever gain a foothold for search.
This is not about losing market share, it's about preventing a monopoly from abusing its power to gain another monopoly in another market.
WhatsApp won outside the US on its merits, yes. If it won, however, due to Meta distributing it with Facebook, we'd have another discussion. And you're conveniently omitting the US market because it's been taken over by Apple, with the lock-in of iMessage being one of the reasons for why switching off Apple's platform is hard.
h1fra 10 minutes ago [-]
Next time your startup is saying "no politics allowed in our company" remember this kind of announcement.
callc 7 hours ago [-]
> The DMA designates six tech companies as “gatekeepers” to the internet — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft — and limits these technology kingpins from engaging in anticompetitive tactics on their platforms, in favor of interoperability.
DMA seems like a no-brainer for those that support users’ freedom. Since DMA came into effect almost two years ago, can anyone comment on its effectiveness?
Side note, I’m glad the EU takes normal people’s rights seriously. Wish the US was a leader on this too.
fundatus 2 hours ago [-]
Apple has been really against this one, but you can now have p*rn apps on your iPhone in the EU. Which I think is great, because why should I be restricted in the use of my own device by the moral code of an American corporation?
briandear 2 minutes ago [-]
As long as you don’t post offensive memes or pray in the wrong places in Europe, you can do what you want. Freedom of porn but not freedom of speech is some twisted priorities. (Not opposed to porn in theory, but its connection with sex trafficking and exploitation is undeniable so the quantifiable harm it causes is much greater than the hypothetical harm of being offended by a meme or so-called hate speech.)
> why should I be restricted in the use of my own device by the moral code of an American corporation?
I would argue that, while it's true that some of your rights are restricted by corporations, others are just there waiting for you to exercise them.
Use your freedom, take chances, write the word "porn" in HN without fear. Otherwise there's no point in demanding freedoms that we're too afraid to use.
fundatus 1 hours ago [-]
Good point, I wasn't sure if writing "porn" would be flagged by some kind of badwords filter, so I didn't bother, but apparently it's no problem over here :-)
pjc50 38 minutes ago [-]
No badwords filter here, just good old fashioned handcrafted moderation by dang and artisinal flagging by individual users. You don't have to resort to weird euphemisms like "unalive".
yupyupyups 4 hours ago [-]
Apple still indirectly controls what is distributed and charges developers outside their app store money[1]. So it hasn't been effective enough to actually open up the platform for arbitrary apps to be installed.
I don't like they are designated as "gatekeepers".
margalabargala 5 hours ago [-]
As far as I can tell, it's a descriptor used negatively, not a crowning designation.
arlort 3 hours ago [-]
They are the ones who allow getting into a walled garden. Short of calling them "gates" gatekeeper seems pretty apt
walterbell 6 hours ago [-]
Do you ________ take this immortal corporation ________ to be your lawful internet Gatekeeper?
nativeit 6 hours ago [-]
I object to this foul, tainted union. The children will have crossed toes and webbed eyes. God expressly forbids this in Romans: “Yea, unto thee I say, no man shall lay with an algorithmically-endowed data sucking Beast With A Billion Bucks as they would with a woman…shit, or with a guy, it’s 2025–evangelicals are off the rails, political leaders are depriving a suffering majority of life saving services while propping up a gilded minority, all manner of unsavory acts are being committed in My name, frankly I think it’s well past time I gave Adam and Steve my official blessing. You do you, as long as it’s all love, go with Me, God” (paraphrasing a bit at the end there)
Anyway, what was this originally about? Armageddon?
riffraff 4 hours ago [-]
The key is to imagine them as Zuul the Gatekeeper from Ghostbusters.
s1artibartfast 5 hours ago [-]
Why? the designation comes with obligations, but Im not aware that it confers any benefits.
14 4 hours ago [-]
I have honestly slowly over the years lost my love for the iPhone. Back in the early days they were exciting and you could jailbreak and do lots of fun things not typically possible on a non jailbroken phone. Some of those fun things eventually became features of the stock iPhones but in the end the phone is very locked down and can only do a very small portion of the things it actually could do if not so locked down.
oersted 2 hours ago [-]
Good. They keep making laws intended to control some of the negative impacts of these companies, but they usually have the resources to mostly get around these laws, and they end-up affecting smaller companies in ways that the government didn't intend or consider.
I can indirectly say that, as someone that understands the opposition to sideloading, we are one year in since the DMA took effect and I've seen no incredible massive threat has imperiled the digital lives of iPhone users like Apple claimed it would.
Apple would probably say that's because of the measures they've take in implementing the sideloading mandate, but I would rather assume that there are generally less risks that they say there are.
Macs are pretty popular with a lot of non-tech-savvy people nowadays, and despite being able to install all you want, there is absolutely no major incredible threat coming from it.
I believe it's time for Apple to stop the madness and re-unify iOS globally under a system that works more like macOS.
filleokus 1 hours ago [-]
My "fear" has always been that Meta/Alphabet would slowly but surely migrate their apps over to their own third-party App Store to get past the pesky IDFA limitations[0] and other tracking hurdles.
So far nothing seems to indicate that it's happening. The question is if it's due to Apple's "measures" or just because it is not worthwhile for Meta/Alphabet. I think it's a combination of. But if it was as easy to "side-load" an app on iOS as on macOS - per your suggestion, I'm confident Meta would have done the switch in a heartbeat.
Just imagine if Apple provided nice API's for auto-updating, essentially no limitations on what binaries can be attested, API's/mechanisms for easy migration between AppStore apps and side loaded ones, no scary screens etc. Essentially implementing the DMA to the fullest extent, really honouring the intent of the law. Why wouldn't all the mega apps just move over? And what consequences would it have?
I think it would be awesome to e.g lift the JIT blocking and allow more strange niche things in alternative app stores. But getting all regular people on a wild-west third party app stores for the (ad financed) apps the use every day is just begging for a huge _actual_ loss in privacy.
I think it's just not worth it for them; look at Android, where sideloading was always available as an option.
Facebook does offer separate APKs on their website (so do, in fact, most major services - Netflix and Spotify also offer APKs from their website), but practically the only reason people end up using them is if they're on a device that doesn't support the Play Store (for whatever reason).
The only serious Play Store competitors on Android are either vendor specific (like Amazon's store) or wouldn't host Facebook apps to begin with and are unambiguously a positive force for users due to their standards (F-Droid, whose policies are designed to protect users from the typical mobile app rugpull of filling it with ads down the line). Anything outside of this tends to be independent hobby projects or corporate business apps.
The inertia of being the default is still really strong (for a slight alternative, much of Google's strength comes from the fact they paid millions to browsers to be the default search engine for them, a practice that's been found to have violated antitrust laws - it's telling that Google really wanted to keep doing this), which is still enough to keep Facebook attached to the Play Store and is probably why they won't try to leave the App Store either.
gunian 5 hours ago [-]
just other corporations trynna make money no one ever does anything to be good but to make money :)
Nextgrid 6 hours ago [-]
It's about as effective as the GDPR - which means very strong regulation and penalties on paper, but no actual enforcement of said penalties once you breach it - all bark and no bite.
(please, don't reply with that "enforcement tracker" link - a billion is nothing for Facebook and especially not when it's in exchange of 7 years of continuous and blatant breach of the regulation)
kristiandupont 5 hours ago [-]
I have no data on enforcement but since it went into effect, every place I've worked has taken it very seriously so it has definitely had consequences, very positive ones in my opinion.
matsemann 4 hours ago [-]
Same. Used to work for a government agency, and our test data was just replicas of the prod database. Little access control, and PII was floating everywhere. It got really tightened up to be ready for GDPR.
And then every company since have also been very stringent and conscious about privacy. It's just part of being a good engineer in Europe. The same way you think of how a feature will be performant or maintainable or secure, you also automatically think about privacy implications and raise any issues.
campl3r 4 hours ago [-]
GDPR has allowed me access to my data from multiple companies, where before I would have had no way or a long and expensive way of getting my data. More than a dozen other countries have implemented some versions of it.
Could enforcement be better? Sure
Could some of the rules be better? Sure
Is it being updated to be better? Yes, it has happened and will continue to happen.
What do you mean not effective? I worked in a digital marketing/advertising company and we needed to re-architect our whole system to comply with GDPR, it was a pain in the ass for both backend team and analytics team.
bad_user 6 hours ago [-]
That the GDPR is “all bark and no bite” is factually untrue.
As an example of a service that was forced to change to get in line with GDPR: Facebook.
For user profiling, they first tried to use their Terms of Service, then they tried claiming a legitimate interest, then they tried offering paid subscriptions, and now they are at the point where they somewhat degrade the experience of those refusing to be profiled. I'm not talking about the fines, I'm talking about EU citizens being able to use Facebook while refusing to give their consent for profiling. I'm also talking about the ability to download your data or to delete your data from their servers, which was also the outcome of GDPR.
Facebook has also received multiple GDPR-related fines, maybe it's not enough, but it's only going to get worse, as EU regulators are also eyeing them for the spread of election misinformation. Actually, Zuckerberg has been kissing Trump's ring because he's hoping for some protectionism from the US. He said so in his now infamous Joe Rogan podcast episode.
And for the DMA — well, Apple now allows alternative browser engines within the EU, as just one example.
So I just don't understand why people make this claim. The DPAs may be slow, but that's not a good argument. Law enforcement in general is slow. And the fact is that the GDPR is changing the Internet, which is undeniable.
fumufumu 6 hours ago [-]
> Apple now allows alternative browser engines within the EU, as just one example.
Have any shipped?
jchw 5 hours ago [-]
Not in the EU myself but I don't think so. There's a specific entitlement that has to be granted and last time I looked nobody has ever done it.
I learned one interesting tidbit from the latest Ladybird progress report: apparently, in order for an engine to actually be eligible to get this entitlement, it actually has to have a higher than 90% WPT pass rate. I think it is absolutely fascinating that this is part of the criteria. The differences between the era of more-or-less free distribution on desktop platforms couldn't be more different than the totalitarian control of iOS and the slightly less restrictive control of Android. It almost feels like what happened with home computers was an accident, a circumstance that was only temporary and that once it is finally taken away we'll never get it back.
It's weird to think about. The evolving nature of computer security has definitely created some serious challenges for having a more open distribution model, but by and large nobody wants to try to solve that, and there's not much of an incentive to. The problem is, though, that closing down distribution doesn't just magically solve the problem of trust, it centralizes it to a single entity, with all of the many problems that comes with.
People, of course, seem to defend this practice tooth and nail. Like, it's not enough to just have the option of curated walled gardens: it's important to be forced to use them, because your agency could be used against you by other massive corporations, by coercing you to sidestep security measures. (Nevermind the fact that the existence of said abusive mega corporations is, in and of itself, a problem that should be dealt with directly...)
Meanwhile, I'm just blown away. I have an iPad with an M1 processor. It has virtualization capabilities. It could run VMs, if Apple would let it. Volunteers have gone great lengths despite JIT restrictions and sandboxing to make decent virtualization software for iOS, entirely free of charge. But instead, they updated iPadOS to explicitly remove the hypervisor framework in a major OS upgrade, and of course, it being an iPad, you can't even choose to downgrade it. Now I'm not saying running a desktop OS in a VM is an ideal experience for a tablet, but the damn thing has a keyboard cover and all manner of connectivity, it would be extremely useful to allow this, especially given how relatively powerful the device is. Yet, you can't.
And sure. If you don't like it, don't buy it. I largely don't buy Apple products anymore, but I have a few for various reasons. They're very nice pieces of hardware. But the thing is, the market isn't incentivized to offer alternatives to Apple. What Apple has accomplished with the App Store is absolutely unparalleled: 30% of all revenue. Everywhere, in every app. Perpetually. Forever. Holy Shit. And sure, there are technically exceptions, but let's face it: they play fast and loose with their own rules. When even Patreon is forced to pay 30% you know they are just going to push anyone with enough revenue into it with some rationale. So I personally struggle to believe that there will be alternatives if nothing is done. It's not a matter of people not being willing to buy viable alternatives, it's more a matter of nobody being able to sell them, because doing the arguably unfair thing profits hand-over-fist and nobody can fucking compete with that.
So we're here, bargaining with the richest company in the world, for the ability to be able to download a web browser that isn't Safari in a trenchcoat.
I don't like all EU regulation, but it's kind of unreal to watch this unfold and see how people actually defend this status quo. I still struggle to reconcile how people who consider themselves hackers or at least adjacent to hacker culture can see all of this and not feel dead inside.
SoftTalker 5 hours ago [-]
> It almost feels like what happened with home computers was an accident, a circumstance that was only temporary and that once it is finally taken away we'll never get it back.
Home computers gave full control to the owners because there was no other choice. There was no internet, no way to push updates or hoover up data. Anything that happened on those machines had to be initiated by the user. They have been working on pulling all that back ever since always-on internet has become something that can basically be taken for granted.
jdiez17 54 minutes ago [-]
And thankfully a lot of people realize that’s utter bullshit and are taking measures to fight off further enshittification. I’m not a nationalist but things like the GDPR and DMA make me proud to be European.
Hamuko 5 hours ago [-]
No but Google has reportedly been testing Blink on iOS.
Nextgrid 6 hours ago [-]
The GDPR is very clear (despite those who profit from breaching it would like you to believe): consent for non-essential data collection/processing should be strictly opt-in. You can't opt-in by default, you can't use dark patterns to trick people to opt-in, and you can't degrade the experience to coerce people to opt in.
Yet by your own comment's admission, Facebook has tried multiple blatant breaches of the regulation, and is still in business and trying their latest iteration of pseudo-compliance, which means whatever enforcement there is, it's clearly not enough.
When it comes to the DMA, Apple is currently on track to receive a (very low) fine for not actually complying by still preventing developer from letting users know they can pay for apps/services outside the App Store for cheaper. So clearly the potential penalties and actual enforcement is low enough that Apple is (rightly) calling their bluff.
bad_user 5 hours ago [-]
I can now use Facebook without being profiled for ads. I can also delete my account.
It took longer than expected, but it happened. The GDPR has forced Facebook and others to change.
People may want huge fines, but then the EU is accused of targeting US companies or suffocating innovation. I don't want fines necessarily, I want results.
econ 6 hours ago [-]
What worries me is the way big tech is forced to build some kind of law book (they call their TOS) some kind of detective apparatus, some kind of kangaroo court and a model for punishing the citizen (user) which is not something anyone should want them to do including them. It is like the old time court where every decision is made though the lens of profit. It gets even more dystopian in a closed ecosystem.
mcny 5 hours ago [-]
This is really our (US) fault. Terms of service is not the law. It should never be the law. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is a terrible piece of legislation that is completely out of touch with reality. It should have been abolished a long time ago and yet we have taken no steps to abolish it here in the US.
This is all our (US) doing. We blazed the trail like this and have done nothing to correct our mistakes.
seydor 2 hours ago [-]
The outcome of the dma is better served by breaking up the companies so that google cannot share data with YouTube or facebook with Whatsapp.
The EU regulations so far did not achieve much (other than eradicating EU ads market) , and the YC knows that.
They want to distract the government away from breaking up bigtech and towards an anodyne (but annoying) regulation.
patrickmcnamara 21 minutes ago [-]
The DMA does make it so you can unlink your Google account from your YouTube account, or your Facebook account from your Instagram account, and that they can't share data. Or what are you meaning?
raverbashing 1 hours ago [-]
So, when was the last time a company was split by the SEC or such? I can only think of older examples (Boeing, AT&T, etc)
What I think regulators are seeing is that they split, wait a bit then merge all over again, negating that effect
And I agree about the GDPR, though the DMA seems to have had bigger effects (including preventing EU from getting the wet dud known as Apple Intelligence - I guess we can recognize this was a cop-out from Apple for a poor product instead of an actual hurdle)
hnlurker22 6 hours ago [-]
YC can't even urge it's own startups to do anything
BrenBarn 3 hours ago [-]
Couching your stance towards a policy in terms of its effect on "innovation" is a surefire way to lose me.
darthrupert 5 hours ago [-]
The current admin is not going to support anything sane or european. But nice sentiment.
blitzar 1 hours ago [-]
This forum is not going to support anything sane or european. But nice sentiment.
ProAm 6 hours ago [-]
Y Combinator "Urges the Whitehouse" is nothing but a fiduciary tight rope walking bribe to receive governance in your favor.
personomas 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I'm sure Y Combinator is not biased hahahaha (sarcasm of course)
nbzso 6 hours ago [-]
We all are trapped by TOS into data mining operation. There is no denying this fact. You don't own your computer or smartphone. You don't own your data. Practically speaking, we don't have an accessible and user-friendly tool to protect ourselves.
The humanity collective data output is weaponized, and the surveillance state is transforming itself to an AI governance.
Publicly announced by the WEF. And embraced by the masses, which have nothing to hide.
Moreover, this thing is labeled as inevitable progress and the only option is transhumanism and post human ethos.
Add to this incoming digital dollar/euro plus social scoring systems, and we are cooked.
So, welcome China apparatus. :)
gunian 4 hours ago [-]
lmao you had me until china you probably believed ministry of information saying free world :)
blitzar 1 hours ago [-]
Remember lesson #1 - China doesn't innovate they copy us from 10-20 years ago.
Lesson #2 - China spys on all its citizens.
nbzso 4 hours ago [-]
Question: Do you believe that Google and Palantir will not develop tech and work for Chinese Government(market)? Or Apple? Or Oracle?
9283409232 11 hours ago [-]
I don't see this happening although I would have a beer belly laugh if all of these tech oligarchs got on their knees just for Trump to piss on their heads.
drivingmenuts 6 hours ago [-]
Supposedly, he's not into watersports. Given his temperament, his attitude toward SiliValley CEOs could change in the next 5 minutes, then go another direction 5 minutes later.
We are not dealing with a stable individual here. The only predictable trait he has is vindictiveness.
7 hours ago [-]
yapyap 11 hours ago [-]
That would be pretty sweet
Calvin02 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
DecentShoes 7 hours ago [-]
How does this make sense? Cherry picking things you agree with is exactly what you should do. Based on reason and evidence.
chmod775 10 hours ago [-]
What's wrong with "cherry-picking" things you like, and supporting those?
Honestly the more I think about your comment, the less I can make sense of it. You are talking about their support of the DMA as "cherry-picking", right?
crowbahr 7 hours ago [-]
It's a lot easier cognitively to just choose a side than it is to have nuanced opinions
compootr 6 hours ago [-]
everything's so partisan and not nuanced today - tons of people go with the idea "the [political party] are 10,000% correct, and nothing you say can make me think otherwise!!
i don't like any one party or group unconditionally. while I have a leaning, nuanced opinions on issues can be a good thing :)
dmitrygr 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
12 hours ago [-]
willmadden 6 hours ago [-]
1) that will never happen.
2) that should never happen.
Rendered at 10:35:18 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I really want two things:
* companies cannot engage in any activity a common person would consider “spying”, cannot take the data collected by users of that service and transfer it to another entity, and third parties may not aggregate data collected about persons for any reason. There are a million and one useful reasons to do each of these things, but companies have proven themselves morally bankrupt and should lose that ability. This would go beyond “opt-in”, just make it illegal or the impractical (e.g. it would require a notary, licensed broker, or lawyers on both sides to engage in the practice)
* digital “purchases” are transferrable and have all of the rights and privileges afforded to physical goods. The producer/consumer balance shifted completely in favor of the producer with digital goods. Terms need to be more favorable to the purchaser as well as protections following the dissolution of a digital marketplace.
A large portion of the data that is illegally shared should never have been collected in the first place.
What I would like to see regulated are all those dark-pattern surveillance techniques that are slapped on absolutely everything these days. I’m just looking at a toaster, I don’t want the toaster company looking back at me just because I looked at a fucking toaster once. Makes me weary of looking at stuff. This wasn’t even that freaky pre-AI, but now it’s a whole other ballgame. Stasi would love this stuff.
That's the reason why even with its warts, I have been a very happy Android user. It's my device, and I can modify it to become whatever I want it to be (with some constrains that don't really affect me atm).
Is it my device or not, Apple?
That's because it's difficult to imagine how alternative app stores would force first party app stores to be better, or risk losing business. For a start, everything would become much cheaper for you. They would also have a real incentive to provide new features and innovations. You don't have to switch to a third party app store to realize the benefits that follow from allowing them to exist.
That, I doubt. Most stuff already is dirt-cheap on the App Store (and riddled with ads). It’s not like, for example, getting into Apple’s App Store is so expensive that it adds dollars to the price of apps.
Subs, kinda agree.
Also it's only 30% for the top of the market (15% for a lot of apps), and only for digital goods (so not my banking apps or Amazon), and it has to be stuff bought in app (so not two of my last three employers).
And even 30% was good when it was new. Only looks bad now because the market grew so much — but the market did grow, and I was expecting monopoly action around when they first passed one trillion dollar valuation.
With Epic especially, that felt like one arrogant giant swiping at another giant. Especially due to concerns that Fortnite was designed to be addictive, that loot boxes are gambling.
Or would they stay 99 and thus no change for the consumer?
The DMA is about developer choice, not consumers
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/small-business-program...
I think many, especially smaller, developers don’t realize the value they get for that commission: distribution, payment processing, billing, tax processing/collection, dispute handling, marketing (i.e. a storefront,) management of versions/updates for users, not to mention security benefits (for users.)
If people don’t like that, nothing is stopping them from choosing not to sell to Apple device owners. If Apple device owners don’t like it, they can switch to a competitor.
The whole point of this regulation is to enable both sides to make that choice without having to give up on the iPhone and the rest of their app purchases etc. in that ecosystem.
So now we're competing with the "local grocery store", even on the "information superhighway"?
People say this, but of all the apps I have on my phone, I'm not sure I actually paid for any. Browser, smart-device controllers, a few games, streaming services (that I pay for direct), messengers of various sorts, banking, transport, ticketing, government apps.
I know people must pay for apps as Apple make a lot of money off it, but it's not really something I do.
That's such a fallacy that pro alt-app store people like to trot out. What evidence do you have that will happen? Are you basing it one the assumption that if devs no longer pay Apple a cut that the devs would lower their prices? Why do you think that would happen and the devs wouldn't just leave prices where they are and keep this cut no longer going to Apple? Why would devs leave that money on the table? Why do you think the alt-store would also not take the same cut or only slightly lower? Why would they leave money on the table?
At the end of the day, the biggest alt-store push is by devs wanting more money in their pockets, not the end users.
I didn't realize there were many people defending credit scores. I mean yeah, I would just assume they should be illegal. At least in their current opaque form where it's impossible to contest or even get someone to explain your score to you.
Credit scoring significantly outperforms any other methodology for assessing default risk, including credit matricies and especially human assessments (humans are shockingly bad at assessing default risk, rarely much better than a biased coin flip).
It's all well and good to say we should get rid of credit scores, but because they are so much more effective at assessing default risk than other methods, the consequence will be significantly higher rates of default, which means more people in financial hardship, and higher interest rates generally (though especially to low risk borrowers who will now be assessed as having closer-to-average default risk)
It's also not often appreciated, but credit scoring is also the single best technique we have to stop people borrowing beyond their means and entering into financial hardship and debt spirals. There are other techniques that exist to identify at-risk borrowers but these alone aren't as good as an approach which also incorporates credit scores.
As for explainability, unfortunately the best credit models are trained using AI techniques, which results in low explainability (since the risk signals are complex and multivariate). Older GLM approaches can be used, but aren't as good, so if we want high explainability, the trade off is worse performing credit models, and thus higher borrowing costs.
I live in a Central European country.
Average interest rate on mortgages in Spain with this system appears to be _half_ that of the US, so it seems this isn't so ineffective that premiums have to spike to match. (is that right? https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/mortgage-rates/ suggests 6% interest mortgages is a current average in the USA while Spain is below 3% now - personal anecdotes plus gov stats shows 3.25% average on all issued mortgages in 2024: https://ine.es/dyngs/INEbase/en/operacion.htm?c=Estadistica_...)
Spain also enforces a much stricter debt to income ratio, which means it’s much harder to get loans for people that already have debt, which means the risk profile is reduced for those that do get approved.
Also Spain’s unemployment is among the highest in the EU — and almost three times higher than the U.S., so the central bank’s lower interest rates reflect less of a concern over inflation and more of a concern towards encouraging growth. The low interest rates in Spain aren’t a reflection of reduced risk but of lower central bank rates. You could get 30 year mortgages in the U.S. just a few years ago approaching 2%.
Comparing mortgage rates across countries is a pointless endeavor because the macroeconomic circumstances are vastly different. For example, one would think that lower interest rates would result in a increase of housing supply in Spain as investors build more housing because the loans would be cheaper — however that isn’t the case because of the post-tax return on investment (and regulatory risk) for real estate is far worse than an equivalent investment in the United States despite higher lending costs. A €10 million housing project in Spain has a lower ROI than the same project would in North Carolina. Interest rates could be zero in Spain and it wouldn’t change the housing market much because of the myriad of other factors that go into the spreadsheet.
Also almost all the things GP listed apply all across Europe. So the "Spain character assassination" exercise is pointless.
Any EU country - regulations tend to be strict and vary from country to country. There is usually a central registry with either history of violated agreements and/or currently active loans. In pre-approval for a loan the borrower typically self-declares their credit capacity and the lender checks the registry for red flags. Before concluding the approval the lender will require supporting documentation (typically salary certificate, bank statement and/or tax returns).
In Spain they look at your last few months of bank movements and calculate how much to loan you (usually something like max a third of your income can go to mortgage payments)
There is some risk to the bank because the house may have declined in value and it may be tricky to sell it when you default. That's why they do a risk assessment, but it can be a lot less invasive than for providing a personal loan for an education.
We do have a centralized registry of "bad debtors" and that has a highly negative effect on your ability to get a loan.
There are still credit bureaus, and things like defaults, judgements, etc are recorded, and when you apply for credit this is checked.
However there are crucial differences to a score system like the UK and (I assume) the US - there is no 'building good credit', you don't get any benefit from having existing credit products and using them well. In fact the opposite - having other forms of credit like a credit card available is seen as a negative when you apply for a mortgage and will impact the amount you can get loaned. They'll literally knock the credit card limit off the top of the mortgage offer.
They significantly improve the ability of a lender to model the default risk associated with a borrower, which results in lower borrowing costs for higher quality customers, as well as stopping debt spirals for people struggling.
In the absence of credit scores, higher quality borrowers will be charged higher interest rates or require higher collateral, since they are less differentiated from average quality borrowers, and/or access to credit will be restricted to a narrower proportion of the population.
Shouldn’t those costs be higher because of the increased risks they represent? If someone has a habit of not paying their debts, why would a lender take on the higher risk without getting paid more? They wouldn’t, so they simply won’t loan the money.
However on the other side of this, nobody has to borrow money. If you don’t borrow, credit scores are irrelevant.
Given we're talking about alternatives here, I think this should be: "In the absence of credit scores, or some other mechanism for comparing potential borrowers". There's lots of ways to compare borrowers, and if you assume credit scores are the only way to do it, all your solutions are going to involve them.
Loans involve the calculation of parameters. You can either choose those implicitly through personal knowledge, or explicitly through a scalar metric (credit score). There is no viable third option, and the first option is just a bad version of the second, in the end.
It's worth pointing out that credit scores actually are actually just the P(^default) expressed on an integer rather than fractional scale.
There's also multiple credit scores, there are the scores computed by credit bureaus which look at your P(default) against all lenders, but many lenders also compute their own internal credit scores using models trained against their own customer base (and possibly also taking into account additional data that they hold about you).
But anyway, I wonder what the housing market would do if mortgages weren’t possible to get. I bet the prices would go down.
The combination of all those factors could lead to a final state of a lot of houses owned by companies and a few extremely wealth people. Everybody else would be paying a rent.
"Following the Panic of 1837, the first commercial credit reporting organizations formed."
It only took a financial crisis and 3-year-long depression for people to realize that credit is important.
Here in Sweden we don’t have it. When you apply for a new loan the bank can request information of other debts you have. And you have to send info about your income and answer questions about your expenses (living costs, number of children living at home, etc).
In a lot of countries, the only external thing the bank is allowed to use when you apply for a loan is whether or not you have existing loans (which is just to prevent you from borrowing money to pay off other borrowed money), the amount of money you make annually and what you currently have saved up.
I am not against the spirit of the act, but their goal is to listen to competition and ask for changes accordingly. If it screws up users, so be it. There would be no winning. Yes, google search is a monopoly, and should not be so big. The act is unbalanced.
A lot of proponents of iMessage example miss out that WhatsApp won outside of USA. By just building a better product and utilizing network effects.
Can you elaborate on that?
You gave a convenient example, Google Maps, which is also their property. Although, I'd argue that by integrating Google Maps into Search, due to Search's monopoly it means that no alternative to Google Maps can ever gain a foothold for search.
This is not about losing market share, it's about preventing a monopoly from abusing its power to gain another monopoly in another market.
WhatsApp won outside the US on its merits, yes. If it won, however, due to Meta distributing it with Facebook, we'd have another discussion. And you're conveniently omitting the US market because it's been taken over by Apple, with the lock-in of iMessage being one of the reasons for why switching off Apple's platform is hard.
DMA seems like a no-brainer for those that support users’ freedom. Since DMA came into effect almost two years ago, can anyone comment on its effectiveness?
Side note, I’m glad the EU takes normal people’s rights seriously. Wish the US was a leader on this too.
https://www.thefire.org/news/60-minutes-and-vice-president-v...
https://reason.com/2025/03/06/74-year-old-scottish-woman-arr...
I would argue that, while it's true that some of your rights are restricted by corporations, others are just there waiting for you to exercise them.
Use your freedom, take chances, write the word "porn" in HN without fear. Otherwise there's no point in demanding freedoms that we're too afraid to use.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...
Torrent clients. QEMU. YouTube Apps with Sponsorblock and Adblock.
Isn’t it still crippled and unusable for any non ancient platform unless you have a jailbreak?
Seems like you still need to side load AltStore Classic to get the full version.
Obviously AltStore did the best they could..
> APPL's attitude
Everybody knew from the beginning that they’ll do the minimum they can get away with so blaming Apple is somewhat pointless.
Whether Apple is in compliance or not is up for debate.
Anyway, what was this originally about? Armageddon?
So far nothing seems to indicate that it's happening. The question is if it's due to Apple's "measures" or just because it is not worthwhile for Meta/Alphabet. I think it's a combination of. But if it was as easy to "side-load" an app on iOS as on macOS - per your suggestion, I'm confident Meta would have done the switch in a heartbeat.
Just imagine if Apple provided nice API's for auto-updating, essentially no limitations on what binaries can be attested, API's/mechanisms for easy migration between AppStore apps and side loaded ones, no scary screens etc. Essentially implementing the DMA to the fullest extent, really honouring the intent of the law. Why wouldn't all the mega apps just move over? And what consequences would it have?
I think it would be awesome to e.g lift the JIT blocking and allow more strange niche things in alternative app stores. But getting all regular people on a wild-west third party app stores for the (ad financed) apps the use every day is just begging for a huge _actual_ loss in privacy.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifier_for_Advertisers#App...
Facebook does offer separate APKs on their website (so do, in fact, most major services - Netflix and Spotify also offer APKs from their website), but practically the only reason people end up using them is if they're on a device that doesn't support the Play Store (for whatever reason).
The only serious Play Store competitors on Android are either vendor specific (like Amazon's store) or wouldn't host Facebook apps to begin with and are unambiguously a positive force for users due to their standards (F-Droid, whose policies are designed to protect users from the typical mobile app rugpull of filling it with ads down the line). Anything outside of this tends to be independent hobby projects or corporate business apps.
The inertia of being the default is still really strong (for a slight alternative, much of Google's strength comes from the fact they paid millions to browsers to be the default search engine for them, a practice that's been found to have violated antitrust laws - it's telling that Google really wanted to keep doing this), which is still enough to keep Facebook attached to the Play Store and is probably why they won't try to leave the App Store either.
(please, don't reply with that "enforcement tracker" link - a billion is nothing for Facebook and especially not when it's in exchange of 7 years of continuous and blatant breach of the regulation)
And then every company since have also been very stringent and conscious about privacy. It's just part of being a good engineer in Europe. The same way you think of how a feature will be performant or maintainable or secure, you also automatically think about privacy implications and raise any issues.
Could enforcement be better? Sure Could some of the rules be better? Sure Is it being updated to be better? Yes, it has happened and will continue to happen.
To read on the current state I recommend https://commission.europa.eu/publications/reports-applicatio...
As an example of a service that was forced to change to get in line with GDPR: Facebook.
For user profiling, they first tried to use their Terms of Service, then they tried claiming a legitimate interest, then they tried offering paid subscriptions, and now they are at the point where they somewhat degrade the experience of those refusing to be profiled. I'm not talking about the fines, I'm talking about EU citizens being able to use Facebook while refusing to give their consent for profiling. I'm also talking about the ability to download your data or to delete your data from their servers, which was also the outcome of GDPR.
Facebook has also received multiple GDPR-related fines, maybe it's not enough, but it's only going to get worse, as EU regulators are also eyeing them for the spread of election misinformation. Actually, Zuckerberg has been kissing Trump's ring because he's hoping for some protectionism from the US. He said so in his now infamous Joe Rogan podcast episode.
And for the DMA — well, Apple now allows alternative browser engines within the EU, as just one example.
So I just don't understand why people make this claim. The DPAs may be slow, but that's not a good argument. Law enforcement in general is slow. And the fact is that the GDPR is changing the Internet, which is undeniable.
Have any shipped?
I learned one interesting tidbit from the latest Ladybird progress report: apparently, in order for an engine to actually be eligible to get this entitlement, it actually has to have a higher than 90% WPT pass rate. I think it is absolutely fascinating that this is part of the criteria. The differences between the era of more-or-less free distribution on desktop platforms couldn't be more different than the totalitarian control of iOS and the slightly less restrictive control of Android. It almost feels like what happened with home computers was an accident, a circumstance that was only temporary and that once it is finally taken away we'll never get it back.
It's weird to think about. The evolving nature of computer security has definitely created some serious challenges for having a more open distribution model, but by and large nobody wants to try to solve that, and there's not much of an incentive to. The problem is, though, that closing down distribution doesn't just magically solve the problem of trust, it centralizes it to a single entity, with all of the many problems that comes with.
People, of course, seem to defend this practice tooth and nail. Like, it's not enough to just have the option of curated walled gardens: it's important to be forced to use them, because your agency could be used against you by other massive corporations, by coercing you to sidestep security measures. (Nevermind the fact that the existence of said abusive mega corporations is, in and of itself, a problem that should be dealt with directly...)
Meanwhile, I'm just blown away. I have an iPad with an M1 processor. It has virtualization capabilities. It could run VMs, if Apple would let it. Volunteers have gone great lengths despite JIT restrictions and sandboxing to make decent virtualization software for iOS, entirely free of charge. But instead, they updated iPadOS to explicitly remove the hypervisor framework in a major OS upgrade, and of course, it being an iPad, you can't even choose to downgrade it. Now I'm not saying running a desktop OS in a VM is an ideal experience for a tablet, but the damn thing has a keyboard cover and all manner of connectivity, it would be extremely useful to allow this, especially given how relatively powerful the device is. Yet, you can't.
And sure. If you don't like it, don't buy it. I largely don't buy Apple products anymore, but I have a few for various reasons. They're very nice pieces of hardware. But the thing is, the market isn't incentivized to offer alternatives to Apple. What Apple has accomplished with the App Store is absolutely unparalleled: 30% of all revenue. Everywhere, in every app. Perpetually. Forever. Holy Shit. And sure, there are technically exceptions, but let's face it: they play fast and loose with their own rules. When even Patreon is forced to pay 30% you know they are just going to push anyone with enough revenue into it with some rationale. So I personally struggle to believe that there will be alternatives if nothing is done. It's not a matter of people not being willing to buy viable alternatives, it's more a matter of nobody being able to sell them, because doing the arguably unfair thing profits hand-over-fist and nobody can fucking compete with that.
So we're here, bargaining with the richest company in the world, for the ability to be able to download a web browser that isn't Safari in a trenchcoat.
I don't like all EU regulation, but it's kind of unreal to watch this unfold and see how people actually defend this status quo. I still struggle to reconcile how people who consider themselves hackers or at least adjacent to hacker culture can see all of this and not feel dead inside.
Home computers gave full control to the owners because there was no other choice. There was no internet, no way to push updates or hoover up data. Anything that happened on those machines had to be initiated by the user. They have been working on pulling all that back ever since always-on internet has become something that can basically be taken for granted.
Yet by your own comment's admission, Facebook has tried multiple blatant breaches of the regulation, and is still in business and trying their latest iteration of pseudo-compliance, which means whatever enforcement there is, it's clearly not enough.
When it comes to the DMA, Apple is currently on track to receive a (very low) fine for not actually complying by still preventing developer from letting users know they can pay for apps/services outside the App Store for cheaper. So clearly the potential penalties and actual enforcement is low enough that Apple is (rightly) calling their bluff.
It took longer than expected, but it happened. The GDPR has forced Facebook and others to change.
People may want huge fines, but then the EU is accused of targeting US companies or suffocating innovation. I don't want fines necessarily, I want results.
This is all our (US) doing. We blazed the trail like this and have done nothing to correct our mistakes.
The EU regulations so far did not achieve much (other than eradicating EU ads market) , and the YC knows that.
They want to distract the government away from breaking up bigtech and towards an anodyne (but annoying) regulation.
What I think regulators are seeing is that they split, wait a bit then merge all over again, negating that effect
And I agree about the GDPR, though the DMA seems to have had bigger effects (including preventing EU from getting the wet dud known as Apple Intelligence - I guess we can recognize this was a cop-out from Apple for a poor product instead of an actual hurdle)
The humanity collective data output is weaponized, and the surveillance state is transforming itself to an AI governance.
Publicly announced by the WEF. And embraced by the masses, which have nothing to hide.
Moreover, this thing is labeled as inevitable progress and the only option is transhumanism and post human ethos.
Add to this incoming digital dollar/euro plus social scoring systems, and we are cooked.
So, welcome China apparatus. :)
Lesson #2 - China spys on all its citizens.
We are not dealing with a stable individual here. The only predictable trait he has is vindictiveness.
Honestly the more I think about your comment, the less I can make sense of it. You are talking about their support of the DMA as "cherry-picking", right?
i don't like any one party or group unconditionally. while I have a leaning, nuanced opinions on issues can be a good thing :)