Do you ________ take this immortal corporation ________ to be your lawful internet Gatekeeper?

Anyway, what was this originally about? Armageddon?

iOS has since stagnated without the field laboratory of jailbreak innovations.

When VMs return to iOS to compete with Android Linux VMs, a new innovation cycle can begin. Concepts proven within the freedom of Linux or macOS VMs can be reimplemented in stock iOS or native iOS apps, for integration with native workflows.

(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.

I’ll admit that I did this years ago so it may be different now. Facebook just gave me a copy of the data that I explicitly uploaded to Facebook: text posts and images. There was no other data about my login history or request history or anything else that (I believe, perhaps mistakenly) the GDPR considers as my personal data (cross-site tracking is the big one). There’s also no way to verify that my deletion request was honored, even for those text posts and images, but that will probably never be false so that’s kind of a weak point, IMO.

Not that I disagree with your overall point, just wanted to offer some words of concern on this particular point.

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.

> ... Everybody knew that Apple would be uncongenial, borderline malicious ...

> Therefore its pointless to blame Apple

The entire fault is on Apple. The EU that is notoriously depicted as overly bureaucratic and slow-moving managed to make the largest consumer walled garden to relax its gates and give some form of authority to people who own the damn device.

Remember, no form of official sideloading existed before the DMA.

MDM has long existed. In fact that was Apple's counterpoint to alternative alt-stores.

Certainly it didn't allow you to bypass any execution restrictions any further than the regular app store.

Random link: https://it-training.apple.com/tutorials/support/sup530/

Whether Apple is in compliance or not is up for debate.

I'd also love to hear your suggestions on those couple of apps. Last time i checked, proper apps either charge whatever they want to because of their monopolistic position(+ the cost of an Apple Developer Program to a hobbyist) , and free apps unclear if they even solve the problem are designed to harvest and sell almost everything you have.

Orion is a very rare exception in both of these cases but they weren't able to make uBO work

Yeah, that's an important point. Delta on the App Store is most likely a direct result of the Digital Markets Act: https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/5/24122341/apple-app-store-g...

Europeans living in the US (such as myself) cannot.

I’m not commenting on whether this is good or not, merely that the last statement in your comment is incorrect.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...

If so, that is not a torrent client, but only an app to control torrents on a different computer. Or did i not understand the app correctly?

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.

https://www.thefire.org/news/60-minutes-and-vice-president-v...

https://reason.com/2025/03/06/74-year-old-scottish-woman-arr...

Interesting take. Why would porn be less deserving of freedom of speech than other forms of speech? Sounds to me you only believe in freedom of speech you like.

Yours is a political standpoint, not an ideological one. Which is fair, but don't pretend it's not.

America absolutely has the upper hand in free speech. In Europe you will get sentenced for blaspheming against the Quran.

Edit: That's why the Quran burnings in Sweden was such a big deal. It was one of the countries who hadn't outlawed blasphemy against Islam. Of course any blasphemy against Christianity is perfectly legal in Europe and strongly encouraged.

And, yeah, I agree. Finlands blasphemy laws are bad and need to be abolished. But the way you’re representing them as specifically about islam and as being representative for most of Europe comes across as disingenuous to me.

And, yeah, there’s more European countries classified as red (worst category) on https://end-blasphemy-laws.org/countries/ but definitely not a majority. Israel is on there too by the way.

The police, the prosecutors and the courts only care about this law when it applies to Islam. Yes, it is very curios indeed!

> You get into the same amount of trouble there whether the book you’re burning is a bible or a quran.

That's absolutely not true. You in fact get into no trouble at all.

I wasn't familiar with the Finnish politician, but it's easy to find coverage of the case and related news on Finland's national broadcaster: https://yle.fi/a/74-20015426

Everyday people are killing each other in trenches in the Ukraine as we speak.

The cases I know where "everyday people" have been sentenced for blasphemy against Islam is when people have emotionally lashed out. One case where a gay man live streamed himself spitting at the Quran and cursing it after the Orlando nightclub massacre in the name of the Quran. It wasn't a real Quran, but the court said that it didn't matter. He might not be an "everyday person" to you. You might have acted more cool in such a situation.

And there are a plethora of other cases where Europeans have been sentenced for publicly criticizing Islam, where no Quran burning has been involved.

The situation in reality, beyond hacker ideology, is that European countries are prosecuting and sentencing people for blaspheming or criticizing Islam. And it usually is not activists who are targeted.

But the US right definitely has no high ground to go around complaining about freedom of speech in the one country that has exceptionally weird and dumb blasphemy laws, seeing as we now live in a USA where the Whitehouse is explicitly saying only they can choose what information journalists have access to. The evangelical right were explicitly calling to deport US citizens for expressing their opinions on college campuses. IMO, reacting at college kids saying the country sucks is one of the most unamerican and pathetic things you could possibly do, but we did once shoot a bunch of college students who dared to stand in a crowd because we shouldn't have been bombing Cambodia, and 58% of the country, when surveyed by Gallup, blamed the students for the incident, so hey, maybe we have made progress, since we only deport them now, instead of murdering them.

  > Khalil called his lawyer, Amy Greer, from the building's lobby. She spoke over the phone with one of the ICE agents, who told her they were acting on State Department orders to revoke Khalil’s student visa. Greer said when she informed the agent that Khalil was a permanent resident of the U.S. in possession of a green card, the agent responded they would revoke the green card instead. When Greer said she needed to see a warrant before Khalil could be detained, the agent hung up. Abdalla said they were not shown a warrant and that "within minutes, they had handcuffed Mahmoud, took him out into the street and forced him into an unmarked car". A Columbia spokesperson declined to say whether, before the arrest, the university had received a warrant for the ICE agents to access property the university owned. The spokesperson also declined to comment on the arrest.

  > On March 9, Greer said she was uncertain of Khalil's whereabouts, noting the possibility that he could be as far away as Louisiana. Abdalla, who sought to visit him at a detention center in New Jersey, was informed that he was not there. Khalil is detained at the LaSalle Detention Center in Jena, Louisiana. [0]

Let's ignore political affiliations, who's on what team, and who you're rooting for. Applying abstraction, replace America with "Country X" and you see, plain as day, this as an attempt at silencing unfavorable speech. As a Ukrainian, sharing a language, geography, and personal connections across the border with Russia, I can tell you with certainty: this is how "disappearing" someone looks like. The target does not matter; the "enemies of people" set has a funny tendency to expand, starting from those for whom the least will stand up.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil

Of course it is. But there's a huge difference between making a foreigner leave, and sentencing a citizen. Any foreigner can be denied entry to a country for any and no reason whatsoever, without any due process. So a foreigner's "right" to stay in a country sits very loosely.

That's a completely different thing than what happened here. Those are the rules, everyone knows that, and acts accordingly. The biggest problem in the US right now, is that the government isn't being ruled by it's own laws (sort-of). That's what's meant by a "constitutional crisis".

If the US government changed the rules to allow non-citizens to be arrested & held without warrants, then that would a different kind of thing. It would be a little totalitarian, but not a breakdown of the rule of law.

Note, I said sort-of above because the laws are written in such away as to be somewhat vague so that some people claim the government is acting legally.

Not nearly as huge as one wants it to be, especially when the current executive is experimenting legally with citizenship revocation.

You divide human beings under your jurisdiction into wide categories with hugely unequal rights and the incentives are heavy for rulers to remove the inconvenient in their society by reclassifying them. It's much safer for citizen and non-citizen alike to strongly protect the non-citizen in your borders.

The White House has shown open contempt for the judicial and legislative branches. Why do you think they'd stop, simply because the person they've chosen to make an example of is a citizen?

But fine, he's a foreigner. What's so hard about the human right of due process, here? Serve the warrant. Appear in court. Argue the case that is, according to those in favor of yeeting this guy out the country, so blindingly obvious.

The ink was barely dry on my own comment:

> President Donald Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court in a series of emergency appeals Thursday to allow him to move forward with plans to end birthright citizenship

Due process must be enforced.

Italy is a traditional religious country and blaspheming gets you <checks notes> a 50€ fine. Also, not a big deal if your blasphemies ara against Mary, that's ok.

Edit: I'll give you an easily digestible link in English from the government television channel:

https://yle.fi/a/74-20015426

"The UN Human Rights Committee has urged Finland to change the criminal provision, arguing that it restricts freedom of expression."

You can easily find the law in matter, the prime minister on video saying that burning the Quran is outlawed, and many other media links from government channels talking about this. And there are court cases where people have been sentenced in Finland for burning the Quran – not in public as has been the case in Sweden.

Before you write that the law applies to the Bible and Christians as well – it is not the case. Police, prosecutors and judges will not use the law against any other blasphemy than against Islam.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentenced

might be a difference in meaning among jurisdictions.

EDIT: yeah it's odd that blasphemy against Mary is not illegal, but well, technical not a deity

Edit: Blaspheming against Islam is a criminal offense in many European jurisdictions.

We don't know for sure cause there is no case law, while blaspheming Mary has been argued in court.

Nowhere in Europe is it illegal to sit at home and eat pork. It is illegal to harass other people. I gather that's not illegal in the US (unless the people you harass happen to be powerful) and the general mindset in the US is so far in that direction that a lot of Americans can't even conceptualize what harassment is.

Germany claims to have "freedom of opinion" (Meinungsfreiheit) though, which it clearly does not.

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.

I'm so glad you asked, because I wrote an entire website about it: https://doesioshavesideloadingyet.com/

Executive summary: Epic Games benefits greatly from the DMA, but powerusers and developers don't get much benefit. This is due to Apple's lackluster compliance measures that are currently being investigated and may be deemed illegal.

We might hear another update from the EU rather soon though: https://9to5mac.com/2025/03/10/report-apple-will-be-fined-by...

I really hope that the DMA does not go down in history as a failed experiment, because that will be a huge loss for open platforms as a whole.

The Apple Developer program is not intended as an option for end users to enable sideloading on their device, even if that is a side effect of joining it. It is only intended to allow developers to briefly test new builds of their own apps in a limited capacity before uploading them to the App Store (or third party stores in the EU). Apps "installed" this way expire after a certain length of time and you must ask Apple's cloud service for a new certificate each time that happens in order to keep using them. You're still tied to Apple indefinitely this way. If your developer account is terminated for whatever reason, or Apple decides to increase the price such that you can no longer afford your account, then suddenly you no longer have sideloading, and you no longer have access to any of the apps you previously sideloaded.

Therefore, I lump it into the same category as jailbreaking -- yes, you can argue that the existence of that means iOS already has sideloading, but it's not officially supported.

Sidenote: You don't need to spend $100/yr if you want to go the "unofficial sideloading" route; AltStore (Classic) is available for free: https://altstore.io/

One suggestion for an addition to the section on FOSS: Related to the issue of not being able to modify the source of apps we use, we also can't verify that an "open source" app on iOS is built from its claimed source code. We just have to trust the developer. This blocks true auditing of iOS apps for data privacy practices, something we know is needed given that the "privacy labels" are often deceptive https://archive.ph/Ak6qU. As such, this is a data security issue as much as a user freedom issue.

I'll probably end up adding it myself if you don't want to, because it's actually something I wanted to include originally but forgot to.

This is definitely a huge issue with the current implementation of DMA compliance. Apple's mandatory DRM encryption scheme as part of the notarization process doesn't just block reproducible builds and the improved security that those offer, but also means that third party app stores aren't capable of auditing the apps they offer in any way. If Apple lets something slip through their notarization review (which is not an impossibility, since it's happened on the App Store before), then the third party store carrying that app will be unfairly blamed for the incident.

lmao you notice something was up right??? because most of this company are US based companies

you are crazy to think US would do the same because it is would hampering their economy directly, EU doing this because they want EU counterpart gain benefit

Maybe that’s naive, but I’d rather be hopeful than cynical