Do you support any regulations for corporations? If so, what's the difference?

Why should trillion-dollar megacorps that run our lives with little competition or escape be allowed such freedom?

Why shouldn't they? The burden to demonstrate a compelling argument should always be on those who want to restrict freedom, not on those who want to enjoy (or retain) freedom.

We're talking about restricting the freedom of a corporation to increase the freedom of people. So, as you stated, why should the status quo exist and restrict the freedom of consumers?

The people's freedom is not restricted by Apple deciding to include or exclude certain features from their phones.

If people don't like the phones, they don't have to engage with the ecosystem at all. Many diehard anti-Apple (or anti-smartphone-in-general) people do just this today.

You also have this freedom if you don't like Apple products.

I, for example, have just purchased my last iPhone.

It's not certain features. It's an app store that determines what software you can run on the hardware you already purchased, even retroactively disabling it. This is on top of their continued intensive efforts to thwart repairs of the hardware itself outside of Apple.

Plenty of corporations and corporate actions are regulated even when the consumer has choice. Because choice alone is not the issue, and that's usually with options that have far more than 2 ecosystems.

Because it has become a democrat vs republican kind of choice in all practicality.

I think there's a difference between regulations controlling externalities, or protecting the dispossessed, and protecting people from phones that don't have certain games. Do you not?

No, because the regulation isn't protecting people from phones that don't have certain games. That would be silly.

Allowing over a billion users the freedom to install and use software on their smartphone (a critical computing device and the only one for many) without corporate approval can indeed control externalities, protect the dispossessed and even save lives.

I do willingly opt-out of the Apple platform. However, if I lived in the US, I would be forced to buy an iPhone, because of the (you guessed it) propietary lock-in that is iMessage.

Regulation is necessary.

What are you talking about?

How is it that people successfully move from iPhone to Android if iMessage is locking them in?

I don't think that's correct, there is nothing forcing you to use iMessage. Lock-in is not compulsion, you can simply stop using the product.

"Stop using the product" works for coffee, where if you don't like it you can try an alternative. But with the cash cows of mega corps you often have few alternatives and it's intentionally difficult to switch.

I don't understand why some are wary of government regulations, but have no qualms about being controlled by major corporations where you don't even have a vote.

I used to use iMessage every day. It was my primary mode of communication for 10-ish years. I bought iPhones as gifts for others who didn't have them, just so we could iMessage.

Today, I never use iMessage. I'm not logged in to it on any devices. A big part of this was Apple backdooring the end-to-end cryptography (with full plaintext message history and key escrow via iCloud Backup, which is not e2e encrypted, and on by default for all users) which makes it way less secure.

Turns out that iMessage is optional. All of the other forms of communication that existed before and after it are still available to you as options. There's no law or any requirement anywhere that you use it.

"Lock-in" is colloquial: you're free to leave at any time. I was, and I did. Anyone can.