They've literally raided someone's home because he called a politician a dick. Raided his home, took all his devices and whatnot. It's completely out of control.
Once you create a list of things that can and cannot be said you have that list on hand. You might have the best intentions about what's on that list but it's better to not have that list at all because it's completely subjective what should and should not be on that list.
There are court decisions defining the scope of the 1st Amendment. There are no valid laws restricting it, since the 1st Amendment is in the Constitution and no law can supersede the constitution. Such laws that are written and passed are unconstitutional.
Edit: The above is mistaken. A law can restrict the 1st Amendment, or any other, if it survives "strict scrutiny":
Although "strict scrutiny leaves few survivors" and will usually strike down such laws when strict scrutiny is found to apply, "the government must show that there is a compelling, or very strong, interest in law, and that the law is either narrowly tailored or is the least restrictive means available to the government."
They do. I have seen news in Europe where they cannot reproduce the original excerpt (reading aloud instead) of some communication because of copyright laws and the original excerpt belonged to a competing media corporation that had won previous such cases in court.
There you have a bunch of examples. Free speech in the US is restricted. That's the point I was making. You can be okay with the restrictions in place but you cannot ignore that they're there. That's just factually wrong.
In a roundabout way libel and slander laws are a violation of the first amendment.
They're civil actions but it's the government through the courts that finds you guilty and imposes punishments, seizing assets, etc. It's very hard to win cases on those things as the judiciary does its best to still make it work within the structure of the constitution but it does nonetheless restrict my ability to say "viro eats kittens" without possible penalty imposed by the government.
I'm sorry, but this sounds like someone who has never been to another country or seen how police works in other countries. I'm of course talking about comparable western countries (which are all way safer than the US, I believe). Instead of looking how the police could be improved you really think it's the people who interact with police?
It doesn't have anything to do with the lousy few weeks of training police get? The fact that they're often uneducated, the fact that bad behavior goes unpunished and everything else that is wrong with the US' system? It's the people?
I've been to Germany, Austria, England, Mexico, most of the Caribbean. What I've observed in other countries is a general higher level of civility and respect for police. People don't curse at them, generally. And police typically don't put up with what US police often do. You want the police to improve. I want society to improve. That includes the police. And improvement doesn't mean teaching everybody to whip out a cellphone to try and catch an officer not being perfect.
I'm probably in the minority here but I'm at a point where I'll simply not purchase any service if I cannot use the in app form of payment. I'm just done with everything else. If I miss out on something then so be it.
Have you ever bought an Adobe subscription, ever tried to cancel a New York Times subscription? Or Audible where they say "Well, you can cancel but then we'll also take the tokens you've already paid for"? It's completely ridiculous.
I'm so sick of 14,000 variations on cancelling things, having to click through menus, five hundred different things I have to take care of and all that crap. On iOS I can cancel anything and everything - without exception - the same way and in a few clicks. I like that and it's just something I got used to.
I 100% agree that I am not interested in establishing new relationships with payment systems other than Apple's. Absolutely true.
BUT two things:
1. I already have relationships with some payment systems other than Apple's which I trust. Not many, but some. I mean, Amazon happens to be big enough that they are immune from this requirement, even for digital purchases, but there are plenty of other companies I would happily pay directly and trust as much as Apple.
2. This messaging requirement is just petty. It makes Apple look small and childish. It should embarrass them that this ever saw the light of day.
Fine, but apps should be allowed to let you pay via alternative methods and also allow you to pay via Apple and charge you the 30% extra costs which Apple wants.
I highly doubt you would pay 30% more just so you can pay via Apple.
If an IAP is $15, then $4.5 of that goes to Apple. If you priced the direct payment option at $10.50, then $15 is 43% more expensive.
And this is the whole reason Apple doesn't want developers to be able to offer both IAPs and direct payment at the same time... it would make Apple look like the bad guy (a horrifying thought!), and they might feel pressured to lower their percentage to something more reasonable.
If Apple would switch to a usage based model more like AWS's where they charge for actual resource consumption (review requests, app store bandwidth, etc., maybe even with some kind of "free tier" to help very small developers who are still paying $99/year) then that would make more sense... but a 30% surcharge for every transaction is just absurd.
If credit card companies tried to charge 30%, the uproar would be so loud that no would be able to sleep for days, and you know businesses would instantly be offering steep discounts for people paying in cash. Apple has demonstrated that they want to eventually charge a 30% tax on all economic activity[0]... the App Store is more than just a place to download Angry Birds these days. Apple's 30% transaction fee is unsustainable. (I feel the same about Google's Play Store fees too, but at least Android allows sideloading and PWAs support push notifications there, giving developers and consumers some options.)
Apple's 30% charge isn't for payment methods. I hate that this meme has persisted through the Epic case and the Netherlands regulations.
Apple charges the seller 30% (well 27% but w/e) as a sales commission for being able to sell digital goods through any means on their platform. Harping for allowing alternative payment methods is the wrong angle if you don't want to pay 30%.
It's not about the payment methods! If you can force Apple to drop their commission then IAP would be a 3% charge and nobody would really care.
That's Apple's spin on this and it's as greedy and unreasonable now as it was when they just started.
The fair setup - as far as the owners of expensive devices are concerned - is to:
1. Be able to install arbitrary software capable of running on the device.
2. Be able to pay for it in whatever way that is supported by the software vendor.
This are reasonable expectations.
If Apple provides a way to install pre-approved software through their Store - excellent. As an option.
If Apple provides a way to pay using their super pro-consumer payment system - ditto, as an option. Possibly as a required option (option!) for programs distributed through the Store.
You want convenience for either aspect - you go through Apple, pay them extra, be happy. You don't want to pay them - install yourself and pay directly.
Voila. It's not very complicated.
All the arguments against this is not a "meme", it's Apple guarding its profits in ways that are explicitly and aggressively anti-consumer.
Cancellation pain is a big driver for me too. I've heard lots of people say something like "streaming services are no better than cable was, once I get Service A, Service B, Service C ... I'm paying as much as I was for cable". And that may be true for some people, sometimes. But if the streaming services are easy to cancel, then I often only keep a subscription active for a couple of months at a time. Ok, I saw the HBO-exclusive stuff I wanted, now I'll disable it and maybe check it out again in a year. And that's easy to do now! I guess HBO doesn't love hearing that part, but easy cancellation makes me much more willing to sign up for it in the first place, which they ought to be happy about.
And the inevitable cancellation dark patterns! I cancelled my prime membership the other day, and holy cow, I had to confirm my intent at least 5 times. Offers to “pause”, a page telling me what I’ll miss out on, plus more pages that boil down to “actually?!?!”
Seems like subscriptions have gotten out of hand. Since the goverment can’t regulate meaningfully, I’m at least glad that Apple has some solution to this, even if it feels a bit monopolistic.
I also learned recently that if you cancel a trial Prime membership early, the benefits end immediately instead of ending at the end of the trial period.
I generally like to cancel trial memberships immediately after signing up to ensure that I don’t forget about it and accidentally get charged for something I don’t want. If I end up liking the service then I’ll happily enter my payment info again at the end of the trial. Most online services (including all App Store subscriptions) are fine with this approach. But Amazon seems to want to take advantage of people forgetting to cancel their unused subscriptions.
It’s really surprising that a company as large and successful as Amazon would feel the need stoop to such levels.
> I generally like to cancel trial memberships immediately after signing up to ensure that I don’t forget about it and accidentally get charged for something I don’t want. [...] Most online services (including all App Store subscriptions) are fine with this approach.
Except for Apple's own services, which includes Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and Apple Fitness+. All of these will instantly terminate your trial if you cancel during the trial period, rather than terminating at the end of the trial period.
This goes against the way App Store subscription trials work for everyone else. Why? Because Apple isn't bound by their own rules, and I guess Apple wants people to forget and let the trial lapse into actual payment. It is certainly a proven (if unsavory) technique for making money.
Ah yes I had forgotten that Apple does the same thing with their own services. To make matters worse, they used to annoy me to no end with full-screen popups for Apple Music trials when I was just trying to listen to my local music library. And if you're not careful and choose the option to merge your local library with your apple music library, you can accidentally end up losing all of your local music. Very annoying.
Ah, that reminds me -- cancelling your (pre-paid year) subscription also very much makes it sound like you're going to lose your benefits immediately. Another scummy scare tactic to spook you into forgetting to cancel until it rolls over for another year...
But that's one of the things Apple is selling - peace of mind. The customer knows they will be able to cancel subscriptions, get refunds, security, etc...
And if those are conditions the customer and developer are okay with, then everyone wins.
I agree -- easy has a price. But it's one of the benefits of the walled garden. And it's one that a lot of customers are willing to pay, just to avoid the hassles involved with other systems.
(There are other benefits and downsides, but that's another thread).
Yeah, but Apple is already charging twice the price for the hardware, let me charge twice the price for the software instead of insisting that I charge the same in every platform.
> why I see a cookie pop up on every damn web page I visit
There is no regulation that requires every website to give you cookie pop-ups. If you are seeing that, it is because the websites you visit are trying to stalk you online and making the popups as painful as possible so you will dislike the regulations instead of asking them not to stalk you.
So now every website is doing some type of protest against regulation? It couldn’t possibly be that government is inept when it comes to understanding consequences of their legislation?
In reality fines are already being written, Facebook is seeing the writing on the wall and is already now (this surprised me a bit) pulling the desperate "we'll take our toys and go home" card, hoping EU won't call their bluff.
Let's be clear here: most of these informed consent banners are invalid.
The rules are something like:
- default is opt out
- if a choice must be presented opting out should be the easiest choice
Besides they almost all are trying to hide sneaky stuff behind the "legitimate interest” clause, but in that case you don’t need to ask and an opt out would be meaningless.
Do you really think it is easy to be much smarter than law makers and lawyers when it comes to laws?
There is an intersection here, but basically this - in my mind - isn't about bad laws but about big businesses fighting for their lives (or at least the lives of whole branches in their organizations) against these laws.
They'll do most things they'll come up with and think they can get away with: misrepresent, plead, beg, threaten to leave, willfully misunderstand even very clear laws etc as long as their lawyers and business people think the risk/reward ratio is favorable.
GDPR isn't that hard, technically.
It just gets extremely hard to comply with without letting go of abusive but highly lucrative business practices.
From what I have seen, when the government gets away with stuff - imminent domain, police corruption, etc., it’s a lot more detrimental than my not being able to side load.
As far as the GDPR not being “hard”. It’s 11 chapters with 99 sections.
> As far as the GDPR not being “hard”. It’s 11 chapters with 99 sections.
Yet, the guiding principles are clear as day, just like the ten commandments. (Don't collect personal data without consent, store it responsibly, allow users to introspect data about themselves and remove it and you shouldn't need to worry.[1])
And it also only becomes a real problem when someone wants to get away with breaking both the spirit and the wording of the law.
[1]: And yes, I'm aware that this is mostly incompatible with the practice of hoovering up all you can get, selling it to everyone who wants to buy and generally abusing it for fun and profit in every conceivable way, but that isn't the fault of the law but a problem that companies who habe grown addicted to now antiquated business models have to brought on themselves, isn't it?
I don't know where you're getting "every website" from your previous reply and this one, but you can be certain that not every website is throwing cookie popups on their visitors.
The consequences of recent privacy laws is privacy-friendly services being able to compete easier because they're not subsidizing their costs by stalking their users and selling their data. If the government got such good results without even understanding the consequences, they must be very lucky.
You can get similar functionality to what Apple is offering through a disposable credit card (privacy.com and alike). Worst case you can take the matter up with your credit card company.
If you do this, your account will be sent to collections (because yes, you still have a payment obligation if you do not cancel). Those are people whose job it is to be so unpleasant to you you'd rather pay them and not eat, so this is terrible advice.
Seconding this. Apple is also the only provider that lets me consistently pay with those Visa gift cards that almost never work when charging a credit card online.
The _average_ life expectancy was 30 but that's because loads of children died at a young age. If you made it past your teens your life expectancy was that way higher.
The headline is not correct. Using CDNs is absolutely ok if there's a legitimate reason to do so. Hosting a font was detemined to not be a good enough reason to send the IP to Google.
> Presumably it would be a way to steal company information such as designs, accounts, and so on.
Does it collect user metrics like a lot of software does or does it actually steal designs? The report is absolutely not clear about this. I have not read many reports like this but are they all like the one they link to? Is that what a malware analysis looks like?
I'm completely behind the idea of calling every single software that collects user data and sends it off to a server malware but this is just not the case. We don't say Windows comes with malware, we in the West call it telemetry data to improve the user experience.
I'm going to broaden your definition to "malware is any software that hides its existence or its behaviour from the user". There's little value in knowing that a certain piece of software exists on your machine if you don't know what it's for.
Work for a European company and we have the same rules for Russia, the US and China. I don't know the full list of countries but those are the only two relevant for my travels.
Once you create a list of things that can and cannot be said you have that list on hand. You might have the best intentions about what's on that list but it's better to not have that list at all because it's completely subjective what should and should not be on that list.