Exactly. The US needs strong, sensible, strict privacy laws before they pass legislation that would be detrimental to millions of Apple consumers who bought the iPhone for Apple’s monopoly.

Yep. Buying iDevices is the libertarian dream of buying into private regulatory environments.

I hate it, but it's the best we have until/unless government improves our terribly weak consumer protection & privacy laws. I really hope the option's not taken away, nor Apple's position as a regulator significantly weakened, until/unless government steps in and solves the problems Apple's currently solving. At that point, sure, break them up, ban app store platform monopolies, whatever, fine, go for it. But please not yet.

> Buying iDevices is the libertarian dream of buying into private regulatory environments.

I bet Libertarians would love to hear that, but even they probably wouldn't put their money into a company that has time-and-time-again been proven to be in the Governments pocket via PRISM, iCloud data requests and Greykey Bruteforcing. Sounds like a libertarian nightmare to me: you give your data to a private company, but they immediately betray you and share that information with the government.

...that of course doesn't mean that Apple shouldn't be regulated into the ground. It does imply that they won't be regulated though, as long as egregious data collection continues to appease our private and national interests.

The GP didn't claim this was a perfect or even good solution though: just the best currently available. That your vendor will sell you out to law enforcement/intelligence agencies is a given for ALL large tech companies. None has a clean record in this regard. I also wouldn't be super confident that an EFF approved stack would actually keep you safe from a nation state interested in your stuff.

What you _can_ buy from apple though is i) services where your data are not monetised to the highest bidder and ii) being part of a non-ad-supported culture which seems like a prerequisite for a functioning public discourse and political economy.

A libertarian dream would have free markets, and the article above shows that whatever market that Apple operates in is nothing like a free market

Apple’s monopolies and monopolies are the natural “be careful of what you wish for” of libertarianism. Without regulation and government action monopolies are a guarantee. (And yes with regulation they are possible but can be broken up with enough pressure)

A field so monopolized that every publisher of moderate size is attempting to replicate it? The assumptions for monopolies of the past was that there was a size of investment which meant nobody would throw money at trying to compete at a loss. For better or worse we are beyond that with venture capital, demonstrated by the plagues of foo-sharing and atreaming services. Frankly it seems that people think that tantruming over not being able to have it both ways and throwing the "M" word meaninglessly is how you get what you want, with sense and fact not parties to the conversation.

It still is a free market, you can buy an android if you don't want apple's privacy "guarantees"

“The USSR is a free market, you can just move to America if you want to buy something that isn’t for sale there”

I don't get the analogy. Can you break it down for me?

The cost of switching matters (and is talked about in the article as well). If there is a significant cost, then that means less competition, and it makes it hard to categorize them as the same market. Compare the friction of switching between a Samsung TV and a Sony one, vs the friction of switching between an iPhone and an Android. Most people wouldn't mind the former, but would mind the latter

I can only assume they mean Apple will send you and your family to a gulag if they catch you leaving or your neighbors says you don’t have a picture of Steve over your mantle. Otherwise if that is not what literally is happening, that comment is really trivializing the tragedy of what happened to millions.

If an iPhone owner wants to use an app that Apple has banned from the App Store, they cannot simply purchase it. Instead they must make the widely disproportionate move of spending many hundreds of dollars on an android phone. In practice almost no one will switch phones just for a single app.

Similarly, a resident of a communist country could theoretically leave and buy things elsewhere, but in practice almost no one will because of the high overhead of moving countries.

“Using an iPhone is basically like the Gulag” - HackerNews

What a terrible analogy. You are saying it’s as easy to move to the US from other countries as changing your phone?

They are just pointing out that friction to change matters, and if the friction is high enough, it's not really a free market

We ALREADY know how EFF / the govt protects privacy outside of Apple - they don't period. You are scammed and ripped off everywhere online with no consequence.

Ironically, it's because Apple have kept EFF / Govt OUT and enforced their own rules in this walled garden that we all are rushing into it. We wouldn't need to if EFF / govt / developers did a fairer job outside of Appleworld.

Why do you keep writing "EFF / govt" as if they are somehow equivalent or related?

The EFF are a non-profit that has nothing to do with the US or any other government.

They have no power to do a "fairer job", they're an advocacy group, not a regulator. That's like complaining that Greenpeace haven't set decent climate change policy.

Because the EFF reliably argues that what apple is doing is "bad" and we should open things up so default (govt) laws apply instead of the apple walled garden rules.

What has happened is apple has taken on things that EFF / govt have failed to succeed at in the broader internet / app / tech space. They are leveraging their market power to demand concessions that users would NEVER get negotiating individually, and that govt has completely ignored in the online marketplace world.

These are things as simple as crystal clear trial terms where ongoing monthly cost is in EXACT same font as promo rates and much more. Why isn't that the rule everywhere? Even if it was the rule, where is the enforcement? We see overseas call center scammers ripping off folks blatantly day and night - crickets.

So the moralizing from these folks who seem to do nothing to solve real programs is tiresome. The market is speaking, and it's away from trust in govt and eff and into trust in Apple with correspondingly insane profit margins to apple as trust is substituted.

I'm not saying this is a good thing, but I'd like to see a LOT more done by govt against MANY MANY pure online scams and bad behavior. Instead, EFF and the govt are fixated on folks like apple that frankly are showing the EFF up horribly by creating spaces online that users like.

And yes, that includes the CSAM content stuff that EFF freaked out about. Average users will WANT these controls for their kids etc.

> The market is speaking, and it's away from trust in govt and eff and into trust in Apple with correspondingly insane profit margins to apple as trust is substituted.

That's not how the market works. Consumers don't like, choose to funnel donations away from the EFF/taxes away from the government to Apple on the basis of "trust" in terms of all of this specific debate on privacy and the walled garden.

But that is what they are doing. They don't feel safe in the EFF / govt controlled internet at large.

They are constantly ripped off, scam called, misled and hassled elsewhere. Everything from lying promo offers that jump hugely after X days, hard to cancel subscriptions and endless bad behavior such as spam calls / texts and emails and mail with misleading headlines (urgent: last chance).

Our representatives are no better. I donated to the "defenders of rights" the democrats last cycle. You are SCREWED if you do this, you CANNOT get off their mailing list, because they resell your name 100x - your rights, in practice, are FAR secondary to their need for power and your money. They epitomize horrible behavior as they preach about tech CEO's, it's totally pathetic.

More on the dems good behavior here: https://medium.com/@jjdanek/ngp-van-and-the-endless-deluge-o...

I'm sure republicans are no better, but I don't donate to them so have no clue.

So yes, when it comes to user trust, folks are picking a corporation (Apple) vs their govt reps (dems and republicans).

What you learn in business is TRUST is literally the highest margin product you can have. You can sell the EXACT same product, but if you are trusted, you can charge more, the value of a trusted brand is huge. And apple has a trusted brand on metrics that matter to most users (and hated by scammers trying to exploit them). Folks like match.com are exploiters with a TON of scam / dark behavior in their playbook, even as they fight apple for "users".

And apple knows this.

Here is something interesting - when Apple sponsors something, because their brand is so strong, they often don't have a nonprofit announce their sponsorship AT ALL. They don't need the brand buff. So you won't (normally) see titles like "The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, powered by ExxonMobil" with Apple as a sponsor.

I don't know if you're the author of that medium post, but instead of privacy@ and support@, the author/you really need(s) to be emailing legal@. They're the ones who can 'softly nudge' the rest of the organization into compliance.

Most users don't care about any of that stuff, they just like how Apple products look and feel, they are not thinking about all of these issues.

I just feel like the previous comment was setting up a false dichotomy to argue for popular support for a position most people aren't even aware of.

That's the power of trust actually. You don't need to analyze every corner case.

It happens in bits. You buy the phone that isn't locked up by apple from your carrier. It comes with a ton of crapware and bloatware on it, maybe some backdoors built in. All totally legal per the FTC because buried in some fine print on a 50 page clickthrough license on some setup screen they say they are allowed to do this.

Or, you buy the apple phone. Totally locked up, your phone company can't install their "user experience" enhancers (ie, to track and sell your data to marketers). And yes, before you tell me how regulated comcast and the TV companies are and how they would NEVER do this, I've got a bridge to sell you.

And yes, surveys DO show that people don't actually trust their politicians. You might think they are amazing, more power to you. But this is data backed to a large degree these days, more trust / brand value in Apple then Dem party or republican party for example. 98% of folks don't think politicians will do what's right almost always. NPR did a piece on this, trust in govt is at historic lows.

So we are seeing some substitution effects and for good reason. The policing of the internet at large is pretty horrible, so walled gardens start looking more appealing.

Again, you are arguing that people's opinions on the totality of things have anything to do with the specific issue mentioned. That's a very flawed generalization to make, as the things we are talking about have many facets and most people are not thinking about this niche one.

The specific issue is facebook complaining about apple. That's a no brainer for most users - put Apple in charge, not the idiots at the EFF (supporters of spam for years) or facebook (wouldn't trust them further than I can throw them).

What you and others fail to realize is that I PAY apple money. That at least loosely aligns their interests with mine. I've been very happy with what they've done as a result, showing up the EFF and the govt (with their stupid and toothless cookie popups and unders and privacy policies flooding my mailbox). Apple gives me actual control, and backs it with market power that makes it very dangerous to cross them to try and exploit users.

Facebook is paid by business, corporations, but NOT by their users. Just think about that for a minute. The specific issue here, facebook and eff vs apple, is easy for most users. We've already voted, instead of forcing tracking off the way they used to, apple let's users indicate what they want. They have agreed with apple, don't track. I personally wish apple would go further, and just force it and let users go into some setting to turn on the allow app to track me setting.

Same with the EFF issues about warning on bogus batteries being put into phones. Just ignore these guys.

My trust of Apple is derived from observing how they make money.

Applying the same analysis, I can't say the same for the US Government or my own country's government. Or even the EFF, which (and I realise this is a controversial thing to say) does NOT have any economic incentive to protect my privacy.

As an "advocacy group" Greenpeace actively and aggressively campaign against nuclear power with a fervour that they don't even apply to campaigns against fossil fuel power, despite it (coal in particular) being many orders of magnitude worse than nuclear on every environmental metric.

I'm not usually prone to conspiracy theorising, but if I were Russia in the 2000s and 2010s, I'd be throwing lots of money at Greenpeace to get France, Germany etc to shut down their nuclear energy programs.

Actually, they also go against apple pretty hard, but if you look at Apple phones for example relative to the markeplace at large, the mfg's from other companies have much worse records on almost every measure (social, child labor, privacy, enviro) and greenpeace doesn't say a peep. So it's clearly at times a weird attention / marketing thing more than any real analysis of the relative strength of phone brands in various dimensions.

The irony of the Greenpeace anti-apple stuff is in terms of secondary markets and device support, apple historically has crushed competitors. This has pretty significant impacts on things like waste - the folks Greenpeace say nothing on basically drop support when device ships, and sometimes ships with outdated software to start. Apple is on the relative other end of spectrum there. So it's seriously kind of weird.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the point at hand.

Whether you agree or disagree with this stance is completely irrelevant.

My point was that Greenpeace don't make environmental policy, the same way the EFF does not write privacy legislation.

I think the line between making and influencing policy is blurrier than you are inferring. Furthermore, it's important to appreciate that reality on the ground isn't just defined by legislation, it's also defined by a desire by private entities to avoid visible, distracting clashes with entities like Greenpeace.

That argument could be made in the case of massive monied lobbying, like the NRA, the fossil fuel industry, medical insurance, etc, but neither Greenpeace nor the EFF have anything like that kind of clout.

The government (especially in the US) are perfectly happy to go against Greenpeace or the EFF. In fact, it’s a badge of honour for a subset of idiot on the right (“drill baby drill”, etc)

EFF can't protect the user. They have no power.

Government have the power. But giving government so much power is not something I feel comfortable.

Having one monopoly in each field is, sometimes, better than having a single entity(the government) own limitless power.

Besides laws regulating tracking (good or bad).

There could still be a net benefit while also increasing choice and competition. By allowing 3p app stores.

each app store competitor could create their own privacy policies, quality requirements, or maybe manual curation. whatever differentiation.

Apple would still surely capture a large % of average consumers whose privacy would be protected. But those who care could seek out and customize their experience and chose a different privacy policy.

The immediate result of this is that publishers who don't want to play by Apple's privacy laws will only host their apps on alternative app stores. Want Facebook on your iphone? It'll only be available on the app store that has less strict privacy protections.

It's not seeking out and customizing my experience if the only choice is "have my privacy violated, or don't use the service. That's the experience that already exists on platforms with less strict privacy protections.

And this isn't going to be like alt stores on Android today. If the requirement for alternative stores is enshrined by laws written by Apple's competitors, you'd better believe it's going to be a lot more seamless than that.

If this dystopia of Government control over my phone comes to pass, I personally predict that we'll see companies like Google, Meta and Adobe run company stores as the exclusive way to load their apps.

Yeah, I was just thinking about this before reading what you said. Thinking about the possibility of Meta running their own store is a horrifying idea.

Yeah, because it totally works out like that on other platforms if epic didn’t have massive success of Fortnite to subsidize their store on pc no one would use it. Ea, Ubisoft, Bethesda, rockstar everyone of them came back to steam.

So why hasn’t this happened on Android? The App Store that protects users but also is where all the people go so they have the power to force Fortnite, TikTok, Facebook, etc to all do the right thing?

As others have pointed out, this only works as well as it does for Apple because there isn’t a reasonable way to side load apps. As soon as there is, Facebook will just jingle their large carrot on their own distribution system that lets them do whatever they want.

You're being optimistic. The realistic scenario is that stores could compete on price. (Even though they would still be required—per Apple's developer agreement and the recent court ruling—to withhold a percentage of each purchase/IAP as a license fee for use of Apple's intellectual property.)

The only thing other than price is the opportunity to attract less scrupulous developers in a race to the bottom with respect to policy enforcement.

This! SO much, this!

This is precisely how I feel about the situation.

The EFF article doesn't seem to provide a solution that keeps the privacy control still in favor of the user while breaking down Apple's monopoly of an app store. Until there's a proposal that includes incentive for companies to protect their customer's privacy (as you pointed out, this is not something you can just control with code, this is something the company has to actively pursue and enforce) while enforcing the freedom of choice and inability for Apple to force high commissions to make apps available or sell anything, really... then what we have is still going to serve a large part of the market in a net positive way.

> The important thing to appreciate is that App Tracking Transparency isn't something Apple can enforce with code

Wait - why not? Apple controls iOS, they control the sandbox apps run in. Of all protections, app tracking seems like they aren't really fixing the problem by using monopoly power and threatening to pull apps.

It is pretty difficult to ensure that tracking IDs are not passed between apps with a sandbox. The legal enforcement is a much bigger deal on these things.

The entitlement cannot be enforced by the kernel. There is literally no API call associated with it. If the user requests no third-party tracking, there's literally no API for the sandbox to lock out.

The entitlement is enforced by legal contract. The only thing stopping Meta from blatantly ignoring this policy is the fear of consequences by Apple.

Then the corollary is that viruses can't be stopped, because there's no "don't install viruses" API call?

Apple can absolutely make API changes to prevent tracking. They could implement DNS blocking as part of the DNS lookup API. They could add a toggle that requires the user to whitelist any network connections. They could do analysis and provide users reports of which apps they think are doing tracking, with options to disable whichever feature they think is accomplishing the tracking. They could add temporary grants (i.e. "allow network access for the next 15 seconds").

Hell, Apple doesn't even need it's own app store to threaten Meta. They can blacklist binaries and network connections at the OS layer.

Apple likes this setup because they remain the gatekeepers of users, which is extremely profitable.

It's because "tracking" isn't a well defined thing to begin with, so it can't be enforced in code because. Doing so would require privacy advocates to figure out precisely what it is they are getting upset about.

How do you keep an application from taking an entitlement it shouldn't have (such as location or bluetooth access for fingerprinting) via code? Sandboxes can be enforced via entitlement checks in code, but the act of holding an entitlement is policy.

Surely the entitlements are enforced via code on iOS, right? It cannot be on the honor system.

Using the entitlements are enforced at runtime yes, but granting them in the first place is enforced at app review time. If an app asserts an entitlement the developer can't justify it will fail review.

The usual way - entitlements are held in a kernel data structure, and the kernel and associated system services won't allow access to APIs when the entitlement isn't there.

Try it on iOS, if you don't have the right entitlements system API calls will fail.

You're basically describing GDPR right? By having state regulations, there's an agreed upon standard which is not up to the discretion of any one corporation, but rather subject to the democratic process.

Apple has implemented policy at scale, with a threat of enforcement which has been effective against the largest companies.

On the other hand, the GDPR gives end users the privilege to engage in a legal fight with a multi-billion dollar app developer, assuming that they can even prove the existence of such tracking in the first place.

I work in Europe and can assure you people take GDPR very seriously.

I'm sure they're all very animated about any instances of tracking that they're aware of.

No I am saying from the inside of a tech company, it's taken very seriously, audits are strict, and non-compliance comes with a very harsh punishment which can kill companies

Nowhere near seriously enough, considering Facebook is bitching about Apple forcing them to do what the GDPR already required them to do anyway (so they're basically admitting they would like to breach it if it wasn't for Apple getting in the way).