EU opens non-compliance investigations on Apple, Alphabet, Meta, etc...

March 26, 2024 8:15 AM

The European Commission opened non-compliance investigations under the Digital Markets Act into Alphabet's rules on steering in Google Play and self-preferencing on Google Search, Apple's rules on steering in the App Store and the choice screen for Safari and Meta's 'pay or consent model, as well as Amazon self-preferencing own branded products in searches -- all in violation of the requirements of the DMA.

The Commission also ordered the companies to retain data related to compliance, natch. The EU's DMA has some serious fangs to it, with fines up to 20% of annual turnover. This seems like a big deal and could be quite interesting.

posted by seanmpuckett (62 comments total)

fines up to 20% of annual turnover
What a pleasant surprise! I hope they throw the book and then the whole shelf at these shady, greedy, jerks.
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:22 AM on March 26 [12 favorites]

Give 'em hell, EU.
posted by humbug at 8:38 AM on March 26 [7 favorites]

Attacks on the EU from everywhere, by everything, will soon escalate to a fever pitch, until it is shattered into pieces. The fiefdoms that are conquering the world will demand it.
posted by CynicalKnight at 8:52 AM on March 26 [1 favorite]

At least the EU has rules that acknowledge the reality of today, which is that the internet is not optional for daily life for most people.
posted by azpenguin at 9:00 AM on March 26 [27 favorites]

Facing reality, whether it’s about Apple or the EU, is a core requirement for good management:

There are a few examples of this trend towards denying reality. The starkest one being Elon Musk behaving as if European labour unions don’t exist and that labour is entirely powerless, leading his companies to lose money on strikes and other collective actions.

But Elon Musk isn’t alone. It’s very common for US punditry to completely misunderstand the EU and analyse it as if it were a US political entity – imagining that its actions are driven by the same political and social dynamics as a protectionist industry within the US. They treat the EU’s actions as analogous to a coalition of traditional media companies, such as The New York Times and Washington Post, trying to bolster their industry against tech. They cover EU statements as if they were the comments of the taxi industry trying to stave off Uber and Lyft.

But that’s just not the reality of the situation and to understand what’s going on – to be able to make sound management decisions and form executive strategy – you need to understand what the EU is. More specifically, you need to understand the European Single Market.

posted by kmt at 9:29 AM on March 26 [31 favorites]

The only positive outcome I want from this is forced separation of Google the search company from Google the advertising company.
posted by caution live frogs at 9:32 AM on March 26 [21 favorites]

Compare and contrast with the clownshow Tik-Tok ban.
posted by Artw at 9:37 AM on March 26 [14 favorites]

forced separation of Google the search company from Google the advertising company.

After which search will no doubt immediately become even worse, somehow.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:24 AM on March 26 [3 favorites]

Interested in other's opinions about the Meta 'pay or consent' model of pricing.

Meta (Facebook) makes bank from targeted advertising, which lets them charge a great premium. If I'm selling tweed curtains, I can target a pretty narrow demographic to target users that best match my branding/campaign setup.

Facebooks saying, "We go from making $150/yr/Facebook user with targeted ads to $10/yr with generic ads. To cover that shortfall, we want to charge.. ~$100/yr if they wish to opt out" with I guess the unspoken option being, if the user doesn't want targeted, and doesn't want to pay-- they don't have to use the site.

Is the EU saying, essentially-- find a business model that allows you to provide a free service without leveraging user data/demographics for advertising?
posted by Static Vagabond at 10:37 AM on March 26 [2 favorites]

Static Vagabond: "Interested in other's opinions about the Meta 'pay or consent' model of pricing."

I don't mind so much Meta using targeted advertising based on data harvested from their own sites. I certainly have a significant problem with Meta harvesting user-specific data from EVERYWHERE to better target their ads. I do not use Facebook or Instagram but I am certainly being individually tracked by the company (to the point where I don't browse the web without the Facebook Container add-on installed to prevent this tracking!)

If Metafilter wants to use the content I posted here to build a profile of me, fine. But Metafilter should not be allowed to monitor whatever I read on Reddit or Slashdot or wherever. This is what Meta does and why they are being targeted. Even if you don't use them, you're a data point. And it's a nice Catch-22, because if you don't use their sites you are never given the opportunity to opt out of being one of their data points, are you?
posted by caution live frogs at 10:43 AM on March 26 [13 favorites]

Also note: Targeted ads are why so many companies (Google included) deliberately build crappy mobile sites or unnecessarily cripple usability of the mobile sites. An app provides so much more data harvesting opportunity than a website does, and you can't run an adblocker in an app.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:48 AM on March 26 [11 favorites]

all business models built on targeted advertising must be destroyed, through state action, through propagandizing the public, and through all other effective means, whatsoever those means may be. whatever benefits to the public that companies using those models may provide, even if those benefits actually exist, are automatically outweighed by the damage that targeted advertising does to the Internet.

we all must strive in whatever ways available to us to once again make the Internet a place where it's completely impossible for anyone to make money.

bombastic lowercase pronouncement for the day complete
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 10:54 AM on March 26 [18 favorites]

we all must strive in whatever ways available to us to once again make the Internet a place where it's completely impossible for anyone to make money.

I mean, fuck all those people who make a living via the internet, right?
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:31 AM on March 26 [1 favorite]

> I mean, fuck all those people who make a living via the internet, right?

i'd get tired out pretty quickly if i tried.

nevertheless, the total separation of Internet and commerce is an absolute necessity should we want to make the Internet something marginally useful. i'm not a zealot or otherwise unreasonable, though: i am, for example, totally on-board with mitigation measures to help former Internet workers, maybe something like the programs that help former coal miners pivot to the solar sector.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:44 AM on March 26 [8 favorites]

At some point it'd be less hassle to just abandon the EU market. If they want to be so protectionist for EU based companies, I guess they are welcome to experience what's like to not have any non-EU companies participate.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 11:50 AM on March 26

> At some point it'd be less hassle to just abandon the EU market. If they want to be so protectionist for EU based companies

see this article, linked above by kmt.

i'm super amused by the, i dunno, weird perspective displayed in the quote i quoted, largely because despite its weirdness it is absolutely pervasive. like, okay, here are some measures enacted by a nominally democratic organization — at least, much more democratic than the market itself is — which protect consumers and also business in general, and yet so many people, a metric ton of people, a metric ton of people who are not themselves apple or google or facebook, reflexively see these measures from the perspective of the monopolists instead of from their own perspectives, or even from the perspectives of the businesses those monopolists are squeezing out. it is a remarkably generous point of view, but the generosity is unmerited.

and then also there's that implication that having those monopolists around is somehow a good thing, and that them not being around would be a bad thing.

anyway. the article above really helped me understand why "it's eu protectionism!" is an unserious take. i highly recommend it.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 12:08 PM on March 26 [31 favorites]

nevertheless, the total separation of Internet and commerce is an absolute necessity should we want to make the Internet something marginally useful.

So, death to Etsy, RedBubble, et.al?
posted by Thorzdad at 12:09 PM on March 26

> So, death to Etsy, RedBubble, et.al?

and all else that canter and siegel hath wrought.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 12:11 PM on March 26

brilliant link by kmt.

as someone on the other side of the GDPR who also gets to see the way internets work in 'the global South' (eg. kenya, india) I am so very thankful for the EU
posted by infini at 12:20 PM on March 26 [7 favorites]

it is a remarkably generous point of view, but the generosity is unmerited

Agreed, and it’s because what most people actually want at the end of the day is a monopoly that behaves as if it isn’t.

I want to go one website to buy things that I don’t need to inspect in person (fresh fruit, cuts of raw meat), one store where I do. I want one streaming service with everything ever filmed at a very reasonable price, not 12.

Which is to say: people do not want to be abused, they do not want competition to stagnate, they do not even particularly want trillions of dollars to be accumulated by any person or small group of people.

But we are all fucking exhausted. Capitalism is exhausting. Bureacracy is exhausting (he said, having just yesterday received the title for his car after 14 months, 33 phone calls and $420 worth of FedEx-ing documents to the Texas RMV). Our systems have grown beyond what a bunch of pretentious apes can comfortably handle, and we are desperately seeking shortcuts and just having less to think about in general.

Or maybe I shouldn’t speak for anybody else, so: I do not actually want choice. I want an Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, etc that don’t ratchet up prices and don’t treat me like shit so that I can spend my time and energy elsewhere. Pretty sure I’m not alone in that.
posted by Ryvar at 12:29 PM on March 26 [11 favorites]

nevertheless, the total separation of Internet and commerce is an absolute necessity should we want to make the Internet something marginally useful.

For who, exactly? Because I'd wager that the people who use the internet to make a living find that useful. The reality is that what you want is to go back to the "cottage" internet where we're all obliged to provide "content" for one another - but the reasons why that model failed haven't changed at all. So now you're arguing that people should now give up their living for "the greater good", which seems to benefit you, but not them so much.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:30 PM on March 26 [1 favorite]

Or maybe I shouldn’t speak for anybody else, so: I do not actually want choice. I want an Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, etc that don’t ratchet up prices and don’t treat me like shit so that I can spend my time and energy elsewhere. Pretty sure I’m not alone in that.

The internet by its very nature trends towards monopoly (which is why frontier myth notions wind up ultimately failing.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:32 PM on March 26 [1 favorite]

i absolutely do not want to go back to the "cottage Internet", and moreover no one is obligated to provide content for anyone else. unless they're being paid to produce it.

it is possible to intuit from my comments the shape of the Internet that i am taking a weird stand that i absolutely will not back down from in favor of. i wasn't going to come out and say it explicitly, but against my better judgment i will. though i'm not going to make any sort of defense of it:

the Internet that is valuable is fundamentally academic in nature, and parts of the Internet that don't serve education and research, or that subordinate education and research to commercial ends, are fat that can and must be cut. frothy chatter and individual sites — i think this is what you mean by "cottage Internet"? — is part of a good Internet, though, because a properly academic Internet useful for research and education needs to provide spaces for individual expression, argumentation, and independent scholarly work. but profit, particularly the type of profit that gets plowed back into businesses for use in expanding those businesses instead of getting spent by individuals for non-money commodities, has no place on a good Internet.

i will not defend this weird stand here, i will not elaborate on this weird stand here, and i will not back down from this weird stand ever. if anyone else wants to defend it i wish you the best of luck, though be warned that you've got a real tough row to hoe. i also wish the best of luck to anyone who wants to say it's bonkers and wrong — you don't need it as much, of course, since you've got far and away the easier side to argue. it's all a big derail, though, so probably it's best to focus on reasonable peoples' reasonable ideas instead.

when i get a chance i might write more on my blog.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 12:53 PM on March 26 [14 favorites]

You’re not wrong but it’s not going to happen outside of some exotic VPN-like system piggybacking on the existing framework. Which would be cool, and is arguably just one manifestation of the fediverse or a kind of fediverse.
posted by Ryvar at 12:58 PM on March 26

Targeted ads are why so many companies (Google included) deliberately build crappy mobile sites or unnecessarily cripple usability of the mobile sites. An app provides so much more data harvesting opportunity than a website does, and you can't run an adblocker in an app.

Well, that's one of the reasons. The other big reason is that Apple doesn't allow browsers on iOS to use any browser engine but WebKit (the one Safari uses), which is one of the least featureful for building web apps. It's generally understood that they do this on purpose to cripple web apps so that people will make apps instead.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:53 PM on March 26 [2 favorites]

Or maybe I shouldn’t speak for anybody else, so: I do not actually want choice. I want an Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, etc that don’t ratchet up prices and don’t treat me like shit so that I can spend my time and energy elsewhere. Pretty sure I’m not alone in that.

Well, comrade, I have an economic system you might be interested in looking at.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:54 PM on March 26 [6 favorites]

I honestly don't think I understand how the EU single market thing applies to an app store, or how having more different app stores would fix it or change it. The single market is the EU. If the EU said that Apple can't make restrictions on which apps are available in specific EU countries, then I guess that would be comparable to the example of not being able to charge roaming fees from country to country. Single market doesn't mean every marketplace must sell everything or be open to all sellers. A grocery store doesn't have to sell tomatoes from every single country in Europe. Should the iOS app store be forced to sell Windows apps? Should the iPhone be forced to switch to Android because that is the more common OS, a la requiring USB-C?
posted by snofoam at 2:33 PM on March 26

what most people actually want at the end of the day is a monopoly that behaves as if it isn’t

Almost as much as we want to use more energy without ecological collapse, and slightly less impossible.
posted by clew at 3:06 PM on March 26 [1 favorite]

It applies to the App Store, and to google and metas operations, because the DMA is a tool to get American megacorps to act like decent citizens rather than robber barons. Now, the DMA is shaped by a bunch of technocratic old white men who have pretty wonky ideas about capitalism, freedom, and fair trade compared to your average guy on the street. But they’re not entirely wrong; there’s a lot of inherent weirdness about smartphones that we’ve accepted.

(If this actually fixes the problem that my phone, computer, and operating system are made by capitalist bootlickers who want to sell every part of my information to absolutely everyone I will be surprised, but not unhappy)
posted by The River Ivel at 3:16 PM on March 26 [5 favorites]

you can't run an adblocker in an app.


But you can switch your DNS to dns.adguard.com pretty darn easily, at least on Android.
posted by signal at 3:27 PM on March 26 [4 favorites]

>A grocery store doesn't have to sell tomatoes from every single country in Europe.

It's not the marketplace itself that's a problem so much as the vertical integration.

A better analogy would be a kitchen appliance manufacturer requiring you to only use produce from their grocery store in your kitchen so they can "curate your culinary experience."
posted by Zalzidrax at 3:34 PM on March 26 [7 favorites]

the reality is that what you want is to go back to the "cottage" internet where we're all obliged to provide "content" for one another - but the reasons why that model failed haven't changed at all.

Can you explain more here?
posted by corb at 3:37 PM on March 26 [2 favorites]

It's not the marketplace itself that's a problem so much as the vertical integration.

I definitely agree that the integration aspect seems more relevant. I was kind of responding to the article linked in comments above that claims the EU single market is the actual rationale for this, but that article doesn't really explain why that would be and uses examples that don't seem analogous to the issues that the EU has with app store and other aspects of iOS.
posted by snofoam at 3:39 PM on March 26

Is the EU saying, essentially-- find a business model that allows you to provide a free service without leveraging user data/demographics for advertising?

No, they're saying that you can't use free vs paid to coerce people into allowing targeted advertising they don't actually want. I suspect if they charged everyone, turn a discount for taking the ads, that'd go further towards appeasing the regulators. And they aren't banned from using targeted advertising, just from coercing consent for it.
posted by Dysk at 3:57 PM on March 26 [3 favorites]

But you can switch your DNS to dns.adguard.com pretty darn easily, at least on Android.
posted by signal

Adguard is a $1/month subscription for iOS. Routes DNS through their VPN. Can block youtube ads on iOS Safari but you have to manually “share” the youtube link with Adguard so they can reroute your request through their proxy, the rest of your youtube session after that is ad free. Singlehandedly responsible for saving my remaining scraps of sanity.
posted by Ryvar at 4:13 PM on March 26 [2 favorites]

I use Firefox + uBlock for youtube on android. Works like a charm.
posted by signal at 4:49 PM on March 26 [3 favorites]

Grayjay is another excellent YouTube app alternative for Android, and is distributed independently of the Play Store so you don't need to log into a Google account either to install it or to use it.
posted by flabdablet at 5:10 PM on March 26 [2 favorites]

Or maybe I shouldn’t speak for anybody else, so: I do not actually want choice. I want an Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, etc that don’t ratchet up prices and don’t treat me like shit so that I can spend my time and energy elsewhere. Pretty sure I’m not alone in that.
You're definitely not alone. I'm fucking exhausted just trying to navigate all this 'choice' that is no choice at all in the end.
posted by dg at 5:43 PM on March 26 [3 favorites]

Freedom of choice
Hello old friend!!!
$5/month for all the video you can eat
posted by flabdablet at 7:25 PM on March 26 [3 favorites]

so apparently the EU makes up about 7% of Apple's worldwide revenues, which leads to questions like "what happens if, in response to the EU's new laws to encourage greater competition, Apple simply leaves the EU market because 7% of total worldwide revenues is less than fines of 10%, giving Google an actual monopoly"

this is not to suggest that I think that would be a good or even reasonable thing to do, but if a 10% fine becomes a realistic threat, "do they even bother to stay in the EU market at all" becomes a hypothetical worth mulling over
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:34 PM on March 26 [5 favorites]

This isn't really about competition per se, it's about self-preferencing, walled gardens, and consumer choice. One provider not engaging in those activities and providing a fairly open platform where third parties can compete on equal terms is way preferable to two platforms without any of that. A choice between two anti-consumer options that lock third parties out is not a real choice.

A controlled monopoly is much better than an uncontrolled duopoly.
posted by Dysk at 11:04 PM on March 26 [4 favorites]

yeah that's fair — there's plenty to complain about too with the American duopoly standard of two companies with anticompetitive tendencies that both use the other as a legal fig leaf to indicate the existence of "competition"
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:35 PM on March 26 [1 favorite]

I'm hopeful about this news but read it in the context of Rana Foroohar's critique in the FT:

Americans are undertaking a much broader examination of how corporate power is amassed and wielded, and what the consequences of undue power might be — not just for consumers but also industry competitors, workers and society at large... These included not just traditional antitrust cases, but attempts to ban non-compete clauses that limit workers from moving jobs, and pre-emptive investigations into nascent industries such as AI...

As Imperial College professor of economics and antitrust advocate Tommaso Valletti put it, “Europe imported a more economic approach to antitrust from the US 30 years ago.” By this he means the consumer welfare approach and its technocratic focus on price. “Since then, professional economists [working in the field] have become very successful — they get around €1bn in annual consulting fees . . . to support a business model that protects corporate rents.” But price is usually irrelevant in a digital economy.

Via antitrust journalist Matt Stoller ("The Europeans are feeble technocrats, Americans are actually trying to address concentrated power."). Is this Europe dispelling that characterization, or embodying it? On the one hand the fines seem to have teeth and I've wanted Apple's hand to get slapped for the brazen app store shenanigans they're pulling. On the other hand quibbling over app store minutiae is precisely the kind of technocratic approach that might be fundamentally flawed as a strategy.
posted by daveliepmann at 12:21 AM on March 27

If the US is doing so much better a job on curbing corporate power, where is their action on any of the big tech monopolies/oligopolies?
posted by Dysk at 12:28 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]

the US Department of Justice recently brought a Sherman Antitrust Act case against Apple last week, but the filing is also "series of tubes, not like a truck" levels of "oh god they genuinely don't even know what they're talking about" in nearly its entirety, to the point where I find myself half-wondering if they're deliberately sandbagging for some reason, because it's less depressing to consider than "the DOJ isn't even capable of rising to the level of 'merely wrong' when it comes to tech industry stuff"

which is to say, well, not much of note
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:52 AM on March 27 [4 favorites]

If the US is doing so much better a job on curbing corporate power, where is their action on any of the big tech monopolies/oligopolies?

Well, how do you feel about Lina Khan's efforts? E.g. FTC Sues Amazon for Illegally Maintaining Monopoly Power.

Curious if you agree with the proposed distinction in approach.
posted by daveliepmann at 1:57 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]

>>the reality is that what you want is to go back to the "cottage" internet where we're all obliged to provide "content" for one another - but the reasons why that model failed haven't changed at all.

Can you explain more here?

I'm with corb here, this statement is wildly dismissive but doesn't really define what it means. The current non-cottage internet which is powered by almighty profit motive doesn't really seem any better to me, actually it feels worse.

But when I think about it, I don't really know what you're getting at! Lots of people have tried making money on the internet, we had a whole boom and crash about that as early as the late 90s/early 2000s. I don't remember a cottage age... maybe you mean the era of personal home pages? But no one was ever obliged to make pages for other people then, they just wanted to share what they were interested in. That was the principle on which the World Wide Web was founded: "Let's Share What We Know." I liked that hopeful idealism, a lot better than the current age of "Let's come up with sneaky ways to nag at people to show them ads/pay a fee/subscribe to a newsletter."
posted by JHarris at 4:16 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]

Curious if you agree with the proposed distinction in approach.

If it goes anywhere, great! This does seem to be about Amazon the retailer though, not Amazon the omnipresent AWS overlord.
posted by Dysk at 4:52 AM on March 27

Nationalize all communication networks and make them free for all to use. Tax those who got rich off them to support the infrastructure. Ban server farms and make everyone host their own content on their own devices. That's the internet I want.
posted by rikschell at 5:21 AM on March 27 [2 favorites]

I follow information security news pretty closely, and there seems to be a genuine difference in the problems that afflict iOS users and those that affect Android users.

Rival: ...people do not want to be abused, they do not want competition to stagnate... But we are all fucking exhausted.

Exactly! While the Apple App Store is by no means perfect, they really do admit far lower proportion of apps with serious security flaws. I like this! This is good for people who don't devote attention to infosec!

Allowing side-loading of apps on iOS and alternative apps stores is going to results in an erosion of that higher level of user safety, and that sucks. More people will get ripped off, developers of good apps will get swamped by scammers, and their income will drop. And whether income of "100% from fewer customers" is greater than "70% from more customers" is hard to predict, but it's no guarantee.
posted by wenestvedt at 5:43 AM on March 27

rikschell: "Nationalize all communication networks and...Ban server farms..."

*squints* Hang on, I think I see a problem...
posted by wenestvedt at 5:44 AM on March 27 [4 favorites]

> leaves the EU market because 7% of total worldwide revenues is less than fines of 10%, giving Google an actual monopoly"

one down, one to go
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:08 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]

I mean, give everyone free broadband, a static ip, and a box they can host on. Everyone is responsible for their own content. That probably means the end of streaming video mass media, so we can go back to the old Netflix with discs by mail.
posted by rikschell at 8:18 AM on March 27 [4 favorites]

free broadband, a static ip, and a box to host on cannot be given. it must be taken.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:39 AM on March 27 [5 favorites]

I do hope the EU throws the book at all of them.

We should really end closed source software too. In theory, copyright should've only ever covered human created works, so courts/legislation could've easily & natrually said only open source benefits from copyright:

Copyright cannot be derived for outputs from compilers, obfuscartors, frameworks, etc. unless you provide the human usable sorce code.

Ironically the game industry would've no trouble since all the artwork would be copyrighted as arkworks anyways.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:41 AM on March 27

> leaves the EU market because 7% of total worldwide revenues is less than fines of 10%, giving Google an actual monopoly"

I'm now curious where their market is. Almost all US?

It's extremely dangerous to abandon a market of 448 million people, especially since EU consumers' purchasing power should come second after Americans. It says bye bye growth. Investors would lose more from the stock drop than the fine. And executives are paid in stock. Afaik we've "only" seen fines of $2 billion discussed so far, much less than 10%.

It'd also prompt EU funding towards some competing platform, in which many EU tech companies make efforts, maybe something fresh-ish form Finalnd, maybe an alliance for HarmonyOS with China, maybe some home grown Android forks. It'd anyways push the global phone market away from iOS, which then drives further stock price drops.

Apple was libertarian stupid here, but they're not that libertarian or stupid. They'll fight this in court until they loose, but doing so shall reduce their fines. We'll be lucky if they pay the $2 billion or at least enough that they then do change policies. We're unlucky if they get off with "minor fines" and "promises" which they then creatively break.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:45 AM on March 27

All internet content served off people’s static IPs seems to make stable pseudonyms difficult, can we have a patch there?

(I’d like verified physical/digital identity interface to happen at our post offices, while we’re daydreaming.)
posted by clew at 9:07 AM on March 27

Ironically the game industry would've no trouble since all the artwork would be copyrighted as arkworks anyways

Speaking for the games industry (which I should not do, but this one isn’t at all controversial): patenting or otherwise attempting to lay exclusive claim to design ideas (eg Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis system, which was likely more at WB’s insistence or possibly Monolith’s publishing arm) is generally viewed as morally equivalent to cannibalizing babies. The actual reason for this is that none of us ever expects to stay with any one company for longer than three years, so attempting any kind of claim is just hurting yourself along with everyone else. Nobody wants to not be able to use their own damn idea next year, so there’s extremely intense collective peer pressure to never do that sort of thing.

This is good for people who don't devote attention to infosec!

Slightly different emphasis, but (storytime): I was once driving to meet up with the extended family the night before Thanksgiving, in the middle of a blizzard, in western Massachusetts, roughly around midnight give or take.

My car had just gotten a major engine overhaul, supposedly all fixed and tested but… sure enough, broke down right between exits which meant it was a thirteen mile hike in either direction. I hadn’t seen another car in 20, 30 minutes at that point and given the visibility I wouldn’t have fancied my prospects at flagging someone down or hitchhiking.

And this was totally not a problem because I had an iPhone (3G or 4) and just called AAA. There was only one tow truck active within 50 miles but he called and let me know he was headed over and I should bundle up because it would be over an hour.

This was right in the kickoff of the iOS / Android app store dustup and walled garden complaints. And all I could think of, sitting there in the cold and dark waiting for AAA, was: how fucked would I be right now if my phone didn’t work as a phone?

So it’s less not paying attention to infosec - I used to do a bit of freelance network penetration, but got out when I felt the paranoia creeping in - and more to do with: I want my phone to always be an appliance, period. If I want to do something custom the Apple developer accounts are cheap (like $100 a year?) so it’s workable. But I never have and I don’t expect I ever will. My phone can be other things if it wants - and I am extremely serious about supporting open source software and open source AI on the PC - but those other things can never come at the expense of being a phone first and foremost. That’s pretty much the only reason I put up with Apple’s dickery like forcing all browsers to just be reskins of Safari. Survival > Principles > Comfort.
posted by Ryvar at 9:16 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I know everyone leases game engines these days, so the actual game designers enforce their copyright through the specific artwork anyways.

If we changed copyright only apply to open source code, then Apple and Microsoft would figure out some path forward, but also find specific programs which they'd ship as uncopyrighted closed source. We'd have a spurt of more exploits being found by honest researchers, who'd report the bugs, instead of intelegence agencies, who'd exploit the bugs. We'd have better second tier hackintoshes, etc from Asia, but buisnesses would ban them fearing supply chain attacks, so Americans would mostly keep buying from Apple. We'd have slightly more resiliant tech stacks, and some interesting small companies would do interesting things, but otherwise everything would continue as before. It's possible the game engine devs would've kickbacks from the video card & console makers, perhaps in the form of external developer time, but likely they'd just sell services.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:39 AM on March 27

I'm with corb here, this statement is wildly dismissive but doesn't really define what it means. The current non-cottage internet which is powered by almighty profit motive doesn't really seem any better to me, actually it feels worse.

I think one can make a fair point that the “old Internet” appealed to and was accessed by a much narrower swath of people. At the same time saying it “failed” feels like a bit of an obfuscation because it’s not like it just died out on its own. People built a bunch of other stuff on the same platform that brought in more money which gave them more influence over the future of the platform and this ended up marginalizing the noncommercial internet. This wouldn’t have worked had that stuff not been popular, but some of that popularity was on the back of models that were not necessarily sustainable, or that have hidden costs.
posted by atoxyl at 10:24 AM on March 27 [2 favorites]

I don’t particularly have anything against people just… running a normal business that happens to sell things online, though.
posted by atoxyl at 10:28 AM on March 27 [1 favorite]

Anything that’s effectively infrastructure being in the hands of hyper-extractive capitalism, that’s when there’s an issue.
posted by Artw at 1:48 PM on March 27 [6 favorites]