[trebbble]

I find myself in the utterly bizarre position (to me, anyway) of defending a megacorp against government interference because government has failed to reign in the bad behavior of the entire rest of the software market. Granted the EU's headed the right direction, but they've still not gone far enough, and the US is way behind. I hope EU citizens get what they want, but am also hoping we don't see those effects bleed over into the US market—yet, with the legal protections we have in place right now.

My preference would be that spying and hoarding data about users simply be outlawed (plus a bunch of other things, some of which Apple does, unfortunately, allow) and those laws be well-enforced—and also the walled gardens opened up, by law if necessary, but I'd much rather not see the latter without the former happening first, since the current state of things in-fact lets me choose to have some protection against that bad behavior, without significant time investment on my part. If that private regulatory service breaks down for any reason, I'll simply be worse off, as things stand.

[Apocryphon]

The "if iOS is opened up, Meta will put Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp on their own app store and steal user data" doomsday scenario has always seemed a little half-baked to me. Regulators on both sides of the pond are scrutinizing tech companies for all sorts of issues now. I doubt the EU will just be asleep at the wheel if Meta sets up a massive data collection op on European citizens. User data and privacy is just as important to them. Perhaps governments can walk and chew gum at the same time.

[JimDabell]

> The "if iOS is opened up, Meta will put Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp on their own app store and steal user data" doomsday scenario has always seemed a little half-baked to me.

Meta was literally already caught doing this by abusing enterprise certificates to bypass the App Store to spy on people, including children, until Apple stopped them.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/31/apple-fac...