Comment by ulrikrasmussen
6 hours ago
With freedom also comes responsibility, and some innocent people will inevitably shoot themselves in the foot. This is not a strong enough argument for putting everybody else in a cage and letting a duopoly take over virtually all of the distribution of consumer software.
It might be a strong argument depending on the negative effects - I don't think it's very clear cut. Also no, neither Apple nor Google have a duopoly on the distribution of all consumer software. Microsoft exists, for example.
The other problem consideration here is negotiating power.
Today consumers don't have negotiating power over individual developers, but both Apple and Google do. If you complain to Meta about their unwanted tracking, you don't really have many options besides deleting the app (which you should do anyway). But if enough people complain to Apple or Google, they are more inclined to do something and have the power.
While it may be a marriage of convenience, it's undeniable that both companies through their app distribution models have also provided benefits to consumers that developers otherwise would have abused - privacy, screen recording, malicious advertising, &c.
If you want to argue from the standpoint of pro-consumer action, you have to remember that "developers" are usually pretty awful too and will get away with anything they can, even if it harms their customers. A good balance, instead of ideological purity about one "side" or the other is the smarter move. I tend to come down on the side of the mainstream app stores precisely because those asking for more "freedom" to do as they wish are a tiny minority and are usually more technical. I.e. they can jump through the hoops to install 3rd party app stores and jailbreak their phones today, and since you already can do what you want, maybe it's best to just leave the masses alone since they're very obviously happy with the duopoly.
I run GrapheneOS, but I can't use the national digital identity app because it requires Google Play Integrity. I very much cannot do what I want without it having severe consequences because the duopoly is starting to shape the basic digital infrastructure, and critical services start requiring that I use one of the two ecosystems.
I think the principle of digital autonomy should be front and center. Surely we can figure out security models that don't imply that two American tech companies get to call the shots on what people can or cannot do on hardware that they supposedly own.
Working adjacent to such digital identity app development, they are unfortunately regulated to require such device integrity approaches.
If Google Play Integrity didn't exist, the app would only be certified to run on e.g. unrooted Samsung Knox devices.
Apple and Google each respectively have a monopoly in their markets. Only apple approved apps may be installed on an iPhone.
Digital goods DO NOT work like physical goods. I can just buy another washing machine. I CANNOT just choose to opt out of using a smartphone. My choices are apple or Google, and even within those choices it's limited by network effects.
Well, you have to balance it with how much you want to line the coffers of malicious actors.
If you go all the way to "everyone should have the freedom to get pwned", then you are also funneling the money of innocents into the pockets of some of the worst people in the world, and that's not a great outcome just to make life more convient for some HNers.
The question is about what trade-off makes sense for most people. That probably is some sort of escape hatch nontech people just won't do.
Maybe it's a hard thing to appreciate until you've watched aging family members get tricked by absolute scum, mostly enabled by how loosey-goosey modern computing can still be.
The thing is, apple decides this for themselves, on a product that you fully bought and privately own. It bundles the most brilliant and most incompetent clueless people into 1 group and goes for lowest denominator. No freedom of choice.
Of course thats PR argument, in reality its about distorting and manipulating the market to get the most money out of its users and bind them to their ecosystem as hard as possible to extract even more. And the amount of those same people who uncritically defend them here is still staggering. But maybe its just employees ignoring their ndas, some investors and similar folks.