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I personally don’t care about alternative app stores, but I know many do, especially here.

I really want two things:

* companies cannot engage in any activity a common person would consider “spying”, cannot take the data collected by users of that service and transfer it to another entity, and third parties may not aggregate data collected about persons for any reason. There are a million and one useful reasons to do each of these things, but companies have proven themselves morally bankrupt and should lose that ability. This would go beyond “opt-in”, just make it illegal or the impractical (e.g. it would require a notary, licensed broker, or lawyers on both sides to engage in the practice)

* digital “purchases” are transferrable and have all of the rights and privileges afforded to physical goods. The producer/consumer balance shifted completely in favor of the producer with digital goods. Terms need to be more favorable to the purchaser as well as protections following the dissolution of a digital marketplace.

> digital “purchases” are transferrable and have all of the rights and privileges afforded to physical goods.

I concur. We need to establish a "secondary markets act", which would allow individuals to transact accounts and digital items worth under a certain amount (let's say $10k, as a non-waivable right, so it wouldn't apply to larger B2B contracts). Essentially, these things should be viewed as property of the consumer and be freely sold. Without the freedom to transact, there can't be a free market.

The problem with enforcing resellability on digital goods is the technical ability to copy them.

If I have full ownership of a digital good, then I have the ability to copy it.

Any limitation of my ability to copy requiring removing some control from the owner and escrowing it with another party (e.g. DRM).

As much as I hate to say it, allowing digital good resale is a good use for a blockchain: uniquely identifying an instance and then keeping a decentralized ledger of who owns it at any time.

However, there would still need to be a carrot to make this system attractive.

If there isn't, then why wouldn't people just create infinite copies off-ledger and ignore it?

And without any viable digital goods ownership system, who wouldn't companies default to the current model of only offering licenses / subscriptions?

I hate that crypto ever had this big money swell associated with it. If we could divorce the technical protocols from the scams and shilling people associate with it, it actually has some interesting uses that barely anyone is willing to talk about it a non-shill or non-disgust way.

That secondary markets thing has been an earlier subject (but not really covering app stores etc at that time), there were issues where larger companies didn't want you selling CD Keys or Windows license keys you weren't using, and they didn't want the ones that were bought in one market to be used in another (i.e. grey market import etc). I think they (the EU) ended up telling the corporations to suck it up since whoever owns the thing is free to sell it when they don't want it anymore.

This is of course also a factor in the move to subscriptions since you'd no longer own a persistent license or product and as such there's nothing to sell. Ironically this should also mean the 'product' (subscription) has far less value than the actual product, even if it's technically the same system/software. Yet subscriptions are more costly than a one-off you repeat every couple of years. Sigh.

Why shouldn't it apply to larger contracts?

There is a very easy way to get around such a requirement from legislation: Just call it licensing instead of a purchase.

The need for such a legislation is corporations reckless use of the words "purchase" and "buy" for goods that have been licensed.

> very easy way to get around such a requirement from legislation: Just call it licensing instead of a purchase.

Licensing should come with enhanced consumer rights e.g. an explicit license duration and allow the consumer to return the license for pro-rata refund within that duration. The license should be for the IP and honoured for all formats and platforms that meet some regularity threshold. The absurdity of having to rebuy things you "own" because you switch device or format has to end.

Along similar lines, hardware should be called "hire" not "sell" when the manufacturer maintains control over the device e.g. locked bootloaders, encryption keys, online service dependencies, forced updates with no downgrade, remote-access privileges, telemetry, not meeting "right-to-repair", hardware locking preventing component replacement or choice of consumable (e.g. ink) etc.

Similar return rights should apply if hardware is leased. Seller would need to be insured/escrow to meet consumer refunds if they break their side of the lease (e.g. going bust and shutting down required online services).

I'd go further and apply something like the notary/broker approach to the collection of data. Types of data should be defined in law. Some (say, email address) would be "free" to collect, but subject to strict sharing requirements like you describe (e.g., you can ask anyone for their email address, but you can't do anything with it except use it yourself to contact them). Others (mailing address) would be allowed for certain purposes (e.g., you need to mail the person a package). Companies should expect regular audits and stiff financial penalties if they collect such data but cannot objectively demonstrate that they actually need it to perform a service they are providing to the person who provides it. (This means you can't collect someone's mailing address unless you actually need it to do a specific thing for that person; simply using it as input to your internal analytics isn't good enough.) Others (e.g., location tracking) would require an approval process akin to being licensed to transport hazardous waste or something, so that it would be straight-up illegal to collect such data without prior approval. That approval process would involve full public disclosure of all intended uses of the data. You can't collect sensitive data without telling everyone exactly what you're going to do with it.

A large portion of the data that is illegally shared should never have been collected in the first place.

Some of this is already achieved by the EU's GDPR, not the DMA

I was about to say - GDPR has been pretty effective at warding off any kind of such non-sense here in the EU. Having been on the other end, it makes entire teams not indulge in certain methods. I never had to argue with marketing department why we want our users not be bombarded with spam.

What I would like to see regulated are all those dark-pattern surveillance techniques that are slapped on absolutely everything these days. I’m just looking at a toaster, I don’t want the toaster company looking back at me just because I looked at a fucking toaster once. Makes me weary of looking at stuff. This wasn’t even that freaky pre-AI, but now it’s a whole other ballgame. Stasi would love this stuff.

> I personally don’t care about alternative app stores

That's because it's difficult to imagine how alternative app stores would force first party app stores to be better, or risk losing business. For a start, everything would become much cheaper for you. They would also have a real incentive to provide new features and innovations. You don't have to switch to a third party app store to realize the benefits that follow from allowing them to exist.

> For a start, everything would become much cheaper for you

That, I doubt. Most stuff already is dirt-cheap on the App Store (and riddled with ads). It’s not like, for example, getting into Apple’s App Store is so expensive that it adds dollars to the price of apps.

> Most stuff already is dirt-cheap on the App Store (and riddled with ads).

Are we using the same App Store? Anything of worth is behind a $10 monthly subscription. Apple has intentionally made subscriptions the only viable commercial model on the App Store. Then they take 30% (with some exceptions). They forbid competition, so developers aren't free to distribute to iOS customers in any other way.

Your missing the $100 developer fee. Just Apple nickel and diming in every way possible.

It's riddled with adverts because it's the only way to get revenue out of such a terrible system.

Merely being in the app store makes everything 30% more expensive! Including any subscriptions through the app, which is just ridiculous. This was the whole basis of the Epic lawsuit. And you can't tell people to sidestep the Apple cut by not putting the payment through them, that will get you banned from the app store.

I think that profit margin would often, though perhaps not always, go to the developers rather to the consumers. That some already offer same thing at 30% discount on their website may be a sign of cheaper future, or may be a way to get price sensitive people to buy more.

Subs, kinda agree.

Also it's only 30% for the top of the market (15% for a lot of apps), and only for digital goods (so not my banking apps or Amazon), and it has to be stuff bought in app (so not two of my last three employers).

And even 30% was good when it was new. Only looks bad now because the market grew so much — but the market did grow, and I was expecting monopoly action around when they first passed one trillion dollar valuation.

With Epic especially, that felt like one arrogant giant swiping at another giant. Especially due to concerns that Fortnite was designed to be addictive, that loot boxes are gambling.

Things are more than 30% more expensive. For a developer to get the same profit on the apple app store with Apple taking 30% of revenue they have to charge 43% more.

You’re saying if they drop the 30%, those cheap apps would cost 66 cents instead of 99?

Or would they stay 99 and thus no change for the consumer?

The DMA is about developer choice, not consumers

There will always be beneficial change for consumers if input costs drop in competitive markets. Markets are dynamic systems. Even if the costs don't drop, the person that is actually providing you value via the app will get the money where they can use it to hire more people to improve the product you use.

> The DMA is about developer choice, not consumers

Ultimately it is about both. The idea behind that is pretty much the idea of capitalism: competition drives innovation.

While I personally do not care about the alternative stores, I care very much about stuff like the in app purchases. I am not using Apples subscriptions and all the rules and steps to circumvent the rules make it horribly inconvenient to deal with subscriptions.

I also hate the fact that I cannot buy an ebook in app because of Apple‘s 30% cut

Devs under $1 million pay only 15%.. that’s far less than the retail markup of items in your local grocery store.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/small-business-program...

I think many, especially smaller, developers don’t realize the value they get for that commission: distribution, payment processing, billing, tax processing/collection, dispute handling, marketing (i.e. a storefront,) management of versions/updates for users, not to mention security benefits (for users.)

If people don’t like that, nothing is stopping them from choosing not to sell to Apple device owners. If Apple device owners don’t like it, they can switch to a competitor.

> If people don’t like that, nothing is stopping them from choosing not to sell to Apple device owners. If Apple device owners don’t like it, they can switch to a competitor.

The whole point of this regulation is to enable both sides to make that choice without having to give up on the iPhone and the rest of their app purchases etc. in that ecosystem.

But we’re not talking about a grocery store as a comparison, we’re dealing primarily with transaction processing.

And for that Apples IAP fee of 30% is about ten times higher than elsewhere.

> Devs under $1 million pay only 15%.. that’s far less than the retail markup of items in your local grocery store.

So now we're competing with the "local grocery store", even on the "information superhighway"?

Apple is on record that the 15% cut applies to a vanishingly small amount of App Store purchases. So it's not particularly meaningful.

> For a start, everything would become much cheaper for you.

People say this, but of all the apps I have on my phone, I'm not sure I actually paid for any. Browser, smart-device controllers, a few games, streaming services (that I pay for direct), messengers of various sorts, banking, transport, ticketing, government apps.

I know people must pay for apps as Apple make a lot of money off it, but it's not really something I do.

We can add this comment as a data point of 1 and compare this to the tens of billions Apple makes from the AppStore, then we can try to figure out which side is more relevant for lawmakers (who inherently have to lean towards statistics).

> For a start, everything would become much cheaper for you.

That's such a fallacy that pro alt-app store people like to trot out. What evidence do you have that will happen? Are you basing it one the assumption that if devs no longer pay Apple a cut that the devs would lower their prices? Why do you think that would happen and the devs wouldn't just leave prices where they are and keep this cut no longer going to Apple? Why would devs leave that money on the table? Why do you think the alt-store would also not take the same cut or only slightly lower? Why would they leave money on the table?

At the end of the day, the biggest alt-store push is by devs wanting more money in their pockets, not the end users.

Are you questioning the basic function of competition in a free market? Why would devs lower prices? Because other devs would release better apps cheaper.

The same dev will often literally sell you the same IAP/subscription off their own website for 30% less. Under the current system.

To play devil's advocate, the common person accepts credit scores, and has no idea how they work. Should credit bureaus also be illegal? Or some medium whereby the credit companies _can_ collect the information, but can't sell it, or share analytics or even anonymized data?

> Should credit bureaus also be illegal?

I didn't realize there were many people defending credit scores. I mean yeah, I would just assume they should be illegal. At least in their current opaque form where it's impossible to contest or even get someone to explain your score to you.

A large component of interest rates is a risk premium that depends on the likelihood of a borrower defaulting.

Credit scoring significantly outperforms any other methodology for assessing default risk, including credit matricies and especially human assessments (humans are shockingly bad at assessing default risk, rarely much better than a biased coin flip).

It's all well and good to say we should get rid of credit scores, but because they are so much more effective at assessing default risk than other methods, the consequence will be significantly higher rates of default, which means more people in financial hardship, and higher interest rates generally (though especially to low risk borrowers who will now be assessed as having closer-to-average default risk)

It's also not often appreciated, but credit scoring is also the single best technique we have to stop people borrowing beyond their means and entering into financial hardship and debt spirals. There are other techniques that exist to identify at-risk borrowers but these alone aren't as good as an approach which also incorporates credit scores.

As for explainability, unfortunately the best credit models are trained using AI techniques, which results in low explainability (since the risk signals are complex and multivariate). Older GLM approaches can be used, but aren't as good, so if we want high explainability, the trade off is worse performing credit models, and thus higher borrowing costs.

Can this function only be performed in secret or is it possible for this to be transparent and still work?

The challenge would be that there isn't just one "credit score". The scores published by bureau's exist more for marketing and as a stick to improve consumer behaviour.

A credit bureau's real product is the credit file, which contains your history of inquiries, defaults, collections, court judgements etc. In some countries it also includes granular payment history information.

From this file, many lenders compute their own internal credit scores. They do this because the credit scores published by the bureaus are the likelihood to default on any loan, however in practice consumers are often more likely to default on certain types of debt than others. Also, many lenders have additional data points that can be considered which the bureau's don't capture, such as the structure of the loan.

If there's anything questionable going on (e.g. using variables which act as proxies for factors prohibited by ECOA or FHA) it will be occuring in these proprietary lender-specific models, however the parameters used in these models also embed commercial sensitive information about the behaviour of their customer base, so I doubt many lenders will be keen to release them.

Without credit scores, it would be impossible to get loans or a mortgage. I think a lot of people would be pretty bummed about that.

Well, I come from a country without credit scores and I was able to get loans there. It was much easier than getting a loan in the US. Credit scores are a pretty bad system, all things considered.

I'd love to learn more about this loan system. Do you mind if I ask which country that is?

I got a loan for a house 2 years ago. The process included showing our 3 last pay slips, the expected cost of the house (new build) and showing the bank how much money we had in our accounts (I loaned at a different bank that gave me better rates). There was a base percentage that lowered based on your level of income and the ratio of own contribution/loaned amount.

I live in a Central European country.

Eastern Europe: I must consent and they do check whether there are any other loans and how good I have paid them. So they do evaluate credit rating at least here.

So, credit score with extra steps, and no rewards (lower interests) for people who could prove that they are solvent and responsible with money.

Having bought a house a couple times and having a 800+ credit score each time it doesn't sound like extra steps at all. I also had to provide all that information and more to get a mortgage

> and no rewards (lower interests) for people who could prove that they are solvent and responsible with money.

That's really what's driving support for credit scores, isn't it? That they provide some some people the (perception of an) ability to prove their character, their moral superiority, and to feel rewarded for all their hard sacrifices.

Similar, I believe, to credit cards and all those rewards and air miles shenanigans - everyone feels they're gonna be winners, so they support a private tax on everyone.

Those seem totally distinct?

For example, credit card points are a zero sum game. Credit scores are not. Everyone could be creditworthy, but many are not, and it’s highly beneficial to the entire system to be able to identify which group a person fits into (including for the person who isn’t creditworthy!)

Maybe?

My mind isn't made on credit scores, though I do feel it might be a case similar to insurance - it's not strictly a zero-sum game, but it's also socially harmful to have such a system be 100% efficient. I.e. with insurance, if everyone was correctly pooled into small bucket that near-perfectly reflects their actual risk profile, insurance would stop making sense - those who need it most wouldn't be able to afford it, and those who could afford it need it the least and would be better off putting that money into savings accounts.

There's a lot of areas in the economy where increasing efficiency past some point just makes systems inhumane and exacerbates social problems.

I feel default risk estimation may just be like that - the more reliable you want your credit score, the more invasive you need to be wrt. what information you collect and how you do it; meanwhile, the system becomes less and less tolerant of mistakes and unfortunate circumstances, while also exerting more control over how people live their lives.

Already the US credit score makes people obsessed about credit, and getting credit cards and loans to improve/game their credit scores with their future mortgage in mind. That very much affects people's life choices at scale. I don't think having everyone leading their lives to optimize their credit score is a way to have a healthy society; conversely, maybe letting the lenders eat a little more risk, and the wealthiest (and most responsible with money, and most morally superior) have a little smaller line, actually improves overall well-being.

I agree with your concerns but don't feel like we're at that tipping point to be honest, relative to the value of credit being generally easy to get for the legitimately creditworthy.

> Already the US credit score makes people obsessed about credit, and getting credit cards and loans to improve/game their credit scores with their future mortgage in mind

I've encountered very, very few people doing this to an inappropriate degree (obviously yes you should consistently demonstrate creditworthiness, that's not gaming though). Anecdotally, the people I see doing this are actually seriously not creditworthy. A whole lot of "you bought 3 cars and fucked your score, here's how to dig your way out." But like... the evidence actually shows you can't be trusted with credit!

I don't disagree with any of your big picture concerns about the system and the possible edge cases or distortions of priorities. I just haven't seen evidence those are huge problems relative to the value of the system.

Well interest rates are lower in Europe than the US.

The other advantage over credit scores is that people willingly give their information out and are able to understand the banks decision.

Switzerland - a public service collects a number of Boolean flags in the vein of “has ever refinanced a loan”, serves the raw set to the person or institutions that can request it according to the regulations.

Any EU country - regulations tend to be strict and vary from country to country. There is usually a central registry with either history of violated agreements and/or currently active loans. In pre-approval for a loan the borrower typically self-declares their credit capacity and the lender checks the registry for red flags. Before concluding the approval the lender will require supporting documentation (typically salary certificate, bank statement and/or tax returns).

Spain - the bank asks for evidence of income (payslips or tax returns), existing funds (bank/broker statements) and checks outstanding debts (via a public register: https://www.bde.es/wbe/en/para-ciudadano/gestiones/informaci...). Risk analysis runs on that data directly. There's no credit history where you need to have ever borrowed money before.

Average interest rate on mortgages in Spain with this system appears to be _half_ that of the US, so it seems this isn't so ineffective that premiums have to spike to match. (is that right? https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/mortgage-rates/ suggests 6% interest mortgages is a current average in the USA while Spain is below 3% now - personal anecdotes plus gov stats shows 3.25% average on all issued mortgages in 2024: https://ine.es/dyngs/INEbase/en/operacion.htm?c=Estadistica_...)

They are creating a credit score for you. They’re asking for the essentially the same data a credit scoring agency would use. The difference is that they manually underwrite everything.

Spain also enforces a much stricter debt to income ratio, which means it’s much harder to get loans for people that already have debt, which means the risk profile is reduced for those that do get approved.

Also Spain’s unemployment is among the highest in the EU — and almost three times higher than the U.S., so the central bank’s lower interest rates reflect less of a concern over inflation and more of a concern towards encouraging growth. The low interest rates in Spain aren’t a reflection of reduced risk but of lower central bank rates. You could get 30 year mortgages in the U.S. just a few years ago approaching 2%.

Comparing mortgage rates across countries is a pointless endeavor because the macroeconomic circumstances are vastly different. For example, one would think that lower interest rates would result in a increase of housing supply in Spain as investors build more housing because the loans would be cheaper — however that isn’t the case because of the post-tax return on investment (and regulatory risk) for real estate is far worse than an equivalent investment in the United States despite higher lending costs. A €10 million housing project in Spain has a lower ROI than the same project would in North Carolina. Interest rates could be zero in Spain and it wouldn’t change the housing market much because of the myriad of other factors that go into the spreadsheet.

I'd rather each bank do the due diligence themselves than some centralized entity removed from anything.

Also almost all the things GP listed apply all across Europe. So the "Spain character assassination" exercise is pointless.

In the credit score system, you get no visibility into the data that is used for your decision. I think in GDPR there's actually a right that any algorithmic decision has to be able to be appealed to a real human. With credit scores, all you'd get is "your magic number is below our magic threshold"

"Magic 8 Ball says no"

In Germany you just get a mortgage amount calculated as your yearly income multiplied by some factor (iirc depending on the city)

In Spain they look at your last few months of bank movements and calculate how much to loan you (usually something like max a third of your income can go to mortgage payments)

A loan for a house typically isn't really "credit", because the value of the house covers the loan. The small print in your mortgage will say that if you default the bank will get the house.

There is some risk to the bank because the house may have declined in value and it may be tricky to sell it when you default. That's why they do a risk assessment, but it can be a lot less invasive than for providing a personal loan for an education.

> a personal loan for an education

Which is another thing we don't do over here in the EU.

Perhaps what's left doesn't necessitate a full-blown credit score system?

In Germany people are asked to provide their Schufa score at their own expense when looking for an apartment to rent.

We have credit scoring in Germany (with the biggest scoring agency being Schufa).

I'm from denmark, and happen to work at one of the larger regional banks here. We similarly don't have "credit scores" in the American sense. We have scores that are calculated internally at our institution, but they're based on whatever we deem to fit our "risk appetite" we do not make use of any external centralized/opaque 3rd party rating agencies. We also have one of the highest household debt rates of any 1st world country, so getting a loan still seems possible.

We do have a centralized registry of "bad debtors" and that has a highly negative effect on your ability to get a loan.

Australia doesn't have credit scores.

There are still credit bureaus, and things like defaults, judgements, etc are recorded, and when you apply for credit this is checked.

However there are crucial differences to a score system like the UK and (I assume) the US - there is no 'building good credit', you don't get any benefit from having existing credit products and using them well. In fact the opposite - having other forms of credit like a credit card available is seen as a negative when you apply for a mortgage and will impact the amount you can get loaned. They'll literally knock the credit card limit off the top of the mortgage offer.

Credit scores are a good system actually.

They significantly improve the ability of a lender to model the default risk associated with a borrower, which results in lower borrowing costs for higher quality customers, as well as stopping debt spirals for people struggling.

In the absence of credit scores, higher quality borrowers will be charged higher interest rates or require higher collateral, since they are less differentiated from average quality borrowers, and/or access to credit will be restricted to a narrower proportion of the population.

Credit scores often oversimplify risk, ignore nuanced factors, and can worsen financial struggles for those with low scores by pushing them toward higher costs. Countries without credit scores don't have higher interest rates or higher rates of defaulting. If we really want to, creditworthiness can be predicted more accurately and fairly with AI models, although that brings another level of bias.

> and can worsen financial struggles for those with low scores by pushing them toward higher costs.

Shouldn’t those costs be higher because of the increased risks they represent? If someone has a habit of not paying their debts, why would a lender take on the higher risk without getting paid more? They wouldn’t, so they simply won’t loan the money.

However on the other side of this, nobody has to borrow money. If you don’t borrow, credit scores are irrelevant.

> nobody has to borrow money. If you don’t borrow, credit scores are irrelevant.

Except if they want their own place to live.

And for the period of about a decade or two, if they want to buy anything over the Internet. For some reason, e-commerce in its early years would only accept credit cards. Took quite a while before debit cards started working for on-line shopping, and by that time, the damage was already done - credit cards got a boost in popularity both in the US and worldwide.

> In the absence of credit scores, higher quality borrowers will be charged higher interest rates or require higher collateral, since they are less differentiated from average quality borrowers, and/or access to credit will be restricted to a narrower proportion of the population.

Given we're talking about alternatives here, I think this should be: "In the absence of credit scores, or some other mechanism for comparing potential borrowers". There's lots of ways to compare borrowers, and if you assume credit scores are the only way to do it, all your solutions are going to involve them.

The term 'credit score' is sufficiently general to encompass literally all methods of comparing borrowers. You could certainly take issue with some specifics of how particular agencies calculate it, but the idea that there is some "alternative way of comparing borrowers" then I'd invite you to invent another formula for determining loan parameters, that does not boil down to a scalar value.

Loans involve the calculation of parameters. You can either choose those implicitly through personal knowledge, or explicitly through a scalar metric (credit score). There is no viable third option, and the first option is just a bad version of the second, in the end.

Yep.

It's worth pointing out that credit scores actually are actually just the P(^default) expressed on an integer rather than fractional scale.

There's also multiple credit scores, there are the scores computed by credit bureaus which look at your P(default) against all lenders, but many lenders also compute their own internal credit scores using models trained against their own customer base (and possibly also taking into account additional data that they hold about you).

Wasn't the current system used in the US developed as a hack for a particular situation that then got extended for things it wasn't actually meant to do? I remember reading something about it in the Big Short.

The scores were only invented in the 80’s.

But anyway, I wonder what the housing market would do if mortgages weren’t possible to get. I bet the prices would go down.

It is possible that prices would go down but that will be an incentive to rent instead of selling. So less houses on the market. That could keep the prices up. And no matter how low the price is, if people have no savings and no credit even one year worth of salary would be too much of a price.

The combination of all those factors could lead to a final state of a lot of houses owned by companies and a few extremely wealth people. Everybody else would be paying a rent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_bureau#History

"Following the Panic of 1837, the first commercial credit reporting organizations formed."

It only took a financial crisis and 3-year-long depression for people to realize that credit is important.

You could have credit scores that are designed to help people instead of the current mess where nobody can even tell you how it's calculated. The concept of a credit score is very different from what we have implemented in the United States. There's effectively zero transparency into how it works.

That's fair. I just think saying "credit reporting should be illegal" is throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Which countries use credit scores? I didn’t know it was a widespread thing, I always thought it was an American deviation.

Here in Sweden we don’t have it. When you apply for a new loan the bank can request information of other debts you have. And you have to send info about your income and answer questions about your expenses (living costs, number of children living at home, etc).

We do have credit scoring, but I don’t think it is in the same sense as in the US though. If you look at ”your” UC (for example using the app Kreddy) you will get a credit score back.

Doesn’t that create a de facto credit score?

I can assure you there are countries where a credit score does not exists, and people absolutely get loans and mortgages.

I just got a mortgage here in the Netherlands. No credit score.

This is great example of how people struggle to see possibilities beyond the environment they’re raised in. The credit score system is not necessary to have loans and mortgages, as evidenced by all the countries that don’t have such a system. The notion that you have to take on debt to “build up your score” is particularly absurd nonsense to most non Americans

Do you really believe creditors would just leave all that interest money on the table?

It's only "impossible" because of assumptions built into the current system.

As a counterpoint: Most countries in Europe don't really have credit scores, but mortgages still exist. We even balk at the idea of needing to take on debt to show you are good for it.

By, in my European country banks just check you up and you get your loan.

I mean, yes? Credit scores are forbidden in many countries because of how opaque they are and because of the data collection aspect.

In a lot of countries, the only external thing the bank is allowed to use when you apply for a loan is whether or not you have existing loans (which is just to prevent you from borrowing money to pay off other borrowed money), the amount of money you make annually and what you currently have saved up.

And? The common person accepted cigarettes as part of their daily life, and leaded fuel, and many other things which should’ve been changed and ended up being changed. Do you think hackers like to leave the world as is?

the issue with transferrable digital goods is that they are also much more easier to steal. see robux, giftcards, bitcoins…

I also don't really care about alternative app stores, I just want to be able to develop apps without paying a license or abusing a testing system (Apple, Testflight), and be able to install them without "jailbreaking" my device.

That's the reason why even with its warts, I have been a very happy Android user. It's my device, and I can modify it to become whatever I want it to be (with some constrains that don't really affect me atm).

Yeah I’m an Apple user and this is one reason I’d consider switching. I don’t mind consoles like the switch or PS2 being sold at a loss, and making it up via expensive games. But Apple double dips here. They make a profit on my phone. Then they charge a crazy marketplace fee for the App Store. Then they have the gall to charge 3rd party companies for access to the NFC chips in our devices. It’s outrageous.

Is it my device or not, Apple?

> I personally don’t care about alternative app stores

I've seen this sentiment a couple of times here and I think it's the wrong framing on what the EU is trying to do. Third party app stores aren't the point; they're just a vehicle enabling users to choose which software they want to use without interference from Apple. The indie devs using AltStore PAL don't all necessarily want to use it, but they're forced to because of the way Apple chose to implement DMA compliance.

In fact, the DMA doesn't even explicitly require that gatekeepers allow third party app stores; they can only allow direct distribution (e.g. via web sites) instead, if they want (this is to the best of my understanding of the text, but IANAL).

When you say you don't care about alternative app stores, what you're really saying is that you don't care about the end user's ability to use apps that aren't approved by Apple. That is certainly an opinion that many folks have, but I'd prefer that they refrain from hiding behind the shield of "third party app stores are weird and who even cares", whether deliberately or not.

> In fact, the DMA doesn't even explicitly require that gatekeepers allow third party app stores; they can only allow direct distribution (e.g. via web sites) instead, if they want.

Is Apple actually complying with the DMA then? They are still requiring notarization, which means apps still have to be approved by them.

The DMA allows Apple to take "strictly necessary and proportionate" measures to ensure that alternative apps do not "endanger the integrity of the hardware or operating system". IMO iOS notarization (which is a different and more involved process with many more rules than notarization on macOS) goes well beyond that, but it's up to the EU to decide.

> The DMA designates six tech companies as “gatekeepers” to the internet — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft — and limits these technology kingpins from engaging in anticompetitive tactics on their platforms, in favor of interoperability.

DMA seems like a no-brainer for those that support users’ freedom. Since DMA came into effect almost two years ago, can anyone comment on its effectiveness?

Side note, I’m glad the EU takes normal people’s rights seriously. Wish the US was a leader on this too.

> Since DMA came into effect almost two years ago, can anyone comment on its effectiveness?

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 smaller 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.

Apple has been really against this one, but you can now have p*rn apps on your iPhone in the EU. Which I think is great, because why should I be restricted in the use of my own device by the moral code of an American corporation?

> why should I be restricted in the use of my own device by the moral code of an American corporation?

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.

Good point, I wasn't sure if writing "porn" would be flagged by some kind of badwords filter, so I didn't bother, but apparently it's no problem over here :-)

No badwords filter here, just good old fashioned handcrafted moderation by dang and artisinal flagging by individual users. You don't have to resort to weird euphemisms like "unalive".

As long as you don’t post offensive memes or pray in the wrong places in Europe, you can do what you want. Freedom of porn but not freedom of speech is some twisted priorities. (Not opposed to porn in theory, but its connection with sex trafficking and exploitation is undeniable so the quantifiable harm it causes is much greater than the hypothetical harm of being offended by a meme or so-called hate speech.)

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

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

Right, porn causes trafficking while hate speech is so-called and the worst that can happen is that some people get offended.

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

Except in the cases where hate speech calls for violence. (See Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines)

> Freedom of porn but not freedom of speech

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.

Such bad faith. Videos of people fucking are bad and moral to censor but neonazi memes must be protected? That's the twisted logic that is currently leading your venerable democracy to its death.

I mean, if protesting for the Palestinian cause can get your green card revoked, I don't think America has any moral high ground on the topic of free speech anymore.

There's an enormous difference between expelling a foreigner and imprisoning a citizen.

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.

You are facing a constitutional crisis right now, something most EU members can say they do not.

  > 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

> you see, plain as day, this as an attempt at silencing unfavorable speech.

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.

where do you get sentenced for blaspheming the Quran in the EU?

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.

A fine is a sentence, and I think it's a big deal that the law is applied inconsistently between e.g. Mary and Mohammed.

In Finland. Do you want the court case number?

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.

It's just punishment differences based on paperwork available, that doesn't mean there's difference in the designation of the action as "crime".

I don’t know where you’re getting your news but this simply isn’t true

Directly from the courts of law. When European governments and courts do unflattering things, the media makes sure to shuffle it under the carpet. There's a very different culture around free speech and public debate in Europe vs America.

I have downvoted your comment because of "the media makes sure to shuffle it under the carpet". These cases are widely reported in national media.

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

Well I'm not talking about any Finnish politician. I'm talking about everyday people who get sentenced by the courts for blasphemy against Islam. These cases get local media coverage at most.

As a direct consequence I have two alternative app stores on my iPhone. Something Americans cannot have.

What are the worthwhile apps apps on the alternative stores?

Fortnite, Fall Guys, Delta (Emulator for Nintendo DS, Gameboy, N64, NES and much more).

Torrent clients. QEMU. YouTube Apps with Sponsorblock and Adblock.

> QEMU

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.

You need to be tethered to enable the JIT, without it UTM is very slow. Even TinyCoreLinux was extremely slow.

Yeah, so the EU App Store don’t really solve that since there is still not way(?) to get JIT legitimately.

that's problem with APPL's attitude, not the "EU App Store".

It’s a problem with EU’s regulations if they allow such outcome (i.e. Apple being allowed to artificially cripple third party apps).

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.

The problem has always been Apple's attitude, which the DMA sort to fix.

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

https://hottubapp.io/ too

or Australians :(

Apple still indirectly controls what is distributed and charges developers outside their app store money[1]. So it hasn't been effective enough to actually open up the platform for arbitrary apps to be installed.

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

That is under investigation, and believed to be non compliant with the act:

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

I don't like they are designated as "gatekeepers".

As far as I can tell, it's a descriptor used negatively, not a crowning designation.

They are the ones who allow getting into a walled garden. Short of calling them "gates" gatekeeper seems pretty apt

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

I object to this foul, tainted union. The children will have crossed toes and webbed eyes. God expressly forbids this in Romans: “Yea, unto thee I say, no man shall lay with an algorithmically-endowed data sucking Beast With A Billion Bucks as they would with a woman…shit, or with a guy, it’s 2025–evangelicals are off the rails, political leaders are depriving a suffering majority of life saving services while propping up a gilded minority, all manner of unsavory acts are being committed in My name, frankly I think it’s well past time I gave Adam and Steve my official blessing. You do you, as long as it’s all love, go with Me, God” (paraphrasing a bit at the end there)

Anyway, what was this originally about? Armageddon?

The key is to imagine them as Zuul the Gatekeeper from Ghostbusters.

Why? the designation comes with obligations, but Im not aware that it confers any benefits.

I have honestly slowly over the years lost my love for the iPhone. Back in the early days they were exciting and you could jailbreak and do lots of fun things not typically possible on a non jailbroken phone. Some of those fun things eventually became features of the stock iPhones but in the end the phone is very locked down and can only do a very small portion of the things it actually could do if not so locked down.

I now have a torrent client on my iPhone.

I might be wrong, but are you talking about the qBitControl from Altstore Pal?

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?

Good. They keep making laws intended to control some of the negative impacts of these companies, but they usually have the resources to mostly get around these laws, and they end-up affecting smaller companies in ways that the government didn't intend or consider.

https://www.techpolicy.press/assessing-europes-digital-marke...

I can indirectly say that, as someone that understands the opposition to sideloading, we are one year in since the DMA took effect and I've seen no incredible massive threat has imperiled the digital lives of iPhone users like Apple claimed it would. Apple would probably say that's because of the measures they've take in implementing the sideloading mandate, but I would rather assume that there are generally less risks that they say there are. Macs are pretty popular with a lot of non-tech-savvy people nowadays, and despite being able to install all you want, there is absolutely no major incredible threat coming from it. I believe it's time for Apple to stop the madness and re-unify iOS globally under a system that works more like macOS.

My "fear" has always been that Meta/Alphabet would slowly but surely migrate their apps over to their own third-party App Store to get past the pesky IDFA limitations[0] and other tracking hurdles.

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...

I think it's just not worth it for them; look at Android, where sideloading was always available as an option.

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.

Current US leadership only works for the few guys at the very top.

just other corporations trynna make money no one ever does anything to be good but to make money :)

It's about as effective as the GDPR - which means very strong regulation and penalties on paper, but no actual enforcement of said penalties once you breach it - all bark and no bite.

(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)

I have no data on enforcement but since it went into effect, every place I've worked has taken it very seriously so it has definitely had consequences, very positive ones in my opinion.

Same. Used to work for a government agency, and our test data was just replicas of the prod database. Little access control, and PII was floating everywhere. It got really tightened up to be ready for GDPR.

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.

GDPR has allowed me access to my data from multiple companies, where before I would have had no way or a long and expensive way of getting my data. More than a dozen other countries have implemented some versions of it.

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...

What do you mean not effective? I worked in a digital marketing/advertising company and we needed to re-architect our whole system to comply with GDPR, it was a pain in the ass for both backend team and analytics team.

That the GDPR is “all bark and no bite” is factually untrue.

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.

> 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.

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.

> Apple now allows alternative browser engines within the EU, as just one example.

Have any shipped?

Not in the EU myself but I don't think so. There's a specific entitlement that has to be granted and last time I looked nobody has ever done it.

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.

> 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.

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.

And thankfully a lot of people realize that’s utter bullshit and are taking measures to fight off further enshittification. I’m not a nationalist but things like the GDPR and DMA make me proud to be European.

No but Google has reportedly been testing Blink on iOS.

The GDPR is very clear (despite those who profit from breaching it would like you to believe): consent for non-essential data collection/processing should be strictly opt-in. You can't opt-in by default, you can't use dark patterns to trick people to opt-in, and you can't degrade the experience to coerce people to opt in.

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.

I can now use Facebook without being profiled for ads. I can also delete my account.

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.

Sex workers in Bangkok pay around 10% of their salaries to the bars where people can find the workers.

Apple and other companies take around 30% as a fee for using their marketplace.

I don't see a reason why big tech should get a higher cut.

I don't see why they should get any cut, do you pay Dell whenever you install a game on your laptop?

Supporting a policy or a regulation which looks at just competition with zero incentives to care for users because it may help the portfolio is not a good look. People may argue otherwise, but DMA exists to make sure the gatekeepers lose market share to their rivals, even if it comes at the expense of consumers. Eg: Google asked to remove maps from their search page, which means a user has to do extra clicks to get to the info they want. Bad experience yes. And now, they still did not lose market share so EU is asking google to do more.

I am not against the spirit of the act, but their goal is to listen to competition and ask for changes accordingly. If it screws up users, so be it. There would be no winning. Yes, google search is a monopoly, and should not be so big. The act is unbalanced.

A lot of proponents of iMessage example miss out that WhatsApp won outside of USA. By just building a better product and utilizing network effects.

> DMA exists to make sure the gatekeepers lose market share to their rivals, even if it comes at the expense of consumers.

It sounds like you're not very familiar with the DMA. Most of the regulations have direct benefits to both consumers and developers. From the consumer side, it permits me to:

* Install any software I like, including software Apple doesn't like. For the longest time Apple wouldn't let me install Microsoft xCloud. It was only after the DMA that the loosened this restriction. Ditto for emulators. They still forbid many apps focused on gambling, porn, and cryptocurrencies.

* Install any App Store and choose to make it default. I can choose a default browser now. Soon I will be allowed to choose a default navigation software. It's INSANE that this was locked down until the DMA.

* Use third party payment providers and choose to make them default. Why should I be forced to use Apple Pay?

* Use any voice assistant and choose to make it default. Siri is the worst of all personal assistants. Why can't I use another one?

* User any browser and browser engine and choose to make it default. The fact that Apple forces everyone to use WebKit in 2025 is nothing other than a farce.

* Use any messaging app and choose to make it default. I am currently forced to use Apple's SMS app.

* Make core messaging functionality interoperable. They lay out concrete examples like file transfer.

* Use existing hardware and software features without competitive prejudice. E.g. NFC. A focus area for the Commission is cloud backup. Apple currently doesn't permit the use of competing cloud backup provides, or one's own, for that matter. iOS can only be backed up to Apple servers, and other apps on a per-app basis.

* Not preference their services. This includes CTAs in settings to encourage users to subscribe to Gatekeeper services, and ranking their own services above others in selection and advertising portals

* Much, much, more.

This is before we have explored the various ways the DMA improves the competitive landscape. Apple is clearly abusing their dominant market position to block competition. This is always bad for everyone except the one company in the dominant position.

I did not mention apple in my comment. And what you wrote does not contradict what i wrote.

If they truly started with customers, perhaps we can agree that having to click another site to get to a simple one line answer is wrong. Thats why people prefer LLMs, they get the answer without having to click to multiple sites. But it's good for competition. In cases where customers and competition is at odds, ideally the law should favor customers. Except in EU, it favors competition. Customers dont have a seat at the table, competition does.

> I did not mention apple in my comment. And what you wrote does not contradict what i wrote.

I believe it does. You wrote that the DMA is intended to make gatekeepers lose market share, "even if it comes at the expense of consumers." Clearly this is coming at the expense of no consumers. On the contrary. This is a major improvement to way we use these essential products. I provided concrete examples of the iPhone that I use. This is a major win for consumers across the EU. It's also a major win for competitors. The only company it hurts (ever so slightly) is Apple and a handful of other trillion dollar companies, and I think they'll be just fine.

As for "intending" to make gatekeepers lose market share, one could argue that all anti-competitive laws "intend" to make market abusers lose market share. We still consider anti-competitive laws a net good for the market and society.

Strange to use WhatsApp and "utilizing network effects" as part of your rhetoric. Haven't they been commonly used to harm users?

And to address your general argument, I don't think bad UX can be put in the same category of harm as monopolistic market manipulation. Of course you can have the most integrated, slickest, most clairvoyant apps if you're Google. They have the money, data and access for it. And you could justify walled gardens for this but not abuse of monopoly. It's unbelievably shortsighted to do so.

> And now, they still did not lose market share so EU is asking google to do more.

Can you elaborate on that?

So, after the first round of compliances, they did a review of the changes and did meetings with the likes of Yelp etc. This led to the next round of changes.[1] I am for the changes, just that I think you should also look at it from user perspective too, especially when what the user wants vs the competitor wants is conflicting.

[1]: https://www.wsj.com/tech/google-proposes-further-changes-to-...

We should not pay more to Google/Apple to do less clicks, they use the same logic to make it difficult to cancel or stop paying for things. You seem to be confused about what screwing up users mean.

What worries me is the way big tech is forced to build some kind of law book (they call their TOS) some kind of detective apparatus, some kind of kangaroo court and a model for punishing the citizen (user) which is not something anyone should want them to do including them. It is like the old time court where every decision is made though the lens of profit. It gets even more dystopian in a closed ecosystem.

This is really our (US) fault. Terms of service is not the law. It should never be the law. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is a terrible piece of legislation that is completely out of touch with reality. It should have been abolished a long time ago and yet we have taken no steps to abolish it here in the US.

This is all our (US) doing. We blazed the trail like this and have done nothing to correct our mistakes.

Well, the American credit scrore is made of ketamine ... EU do not need, nor have to respect any deal with a country under addictive substance.

I think where this will fall on deaf ears is due to its branding.

~Europe's~ America's Digital Markets Act might work better with this administration, irrespective of how good or bad the content contained within it is.

In terms of what to focus your efforts on, this can be re-evaluated in a few years time when staff will actually dig in, beyond the optics.

The outcome of the dma is better served by breaking up the companies so that google cannot share data with YouTube or facebook with Whatsapp.

The EU regulations so far did not achieve much (other than eradicating EU ads market) , and the YC knows that.

They want to distract the government away from breaking up bigtech and towards an anodyne (but annoying) regulation.

The DMA does make it so you can unlink your Google account from your YouTube account, or your Facebook account from your Instagram account, and that they can't share data. Or what are you meaning?

So, when was the last time a company was split by the SEC or such? I can only think of older examples (Boeing, AT&T, etc)

What I think regulators are seeing is that they split, wait a bit then merge all over again, negating that effect

And I agree about the GDPR, though the DMA seems to have had bigger effects (including preventing EU from getting the wet dud known as Apple Intelligence - I guess we can recognize this was a cop-out from Apple for a poor product instead of an actual hurdle)

Next time your startup is saying "no politics allowed in our company" remember this kind of announcement.

It's hard to believe that so many Americans, including prominent industry leaders like YC, are so delusional about the political situation in America today. You are not getting such regulation. You aren't getting any regulation.

This is absolutely not what I would have expected.

I love Paul Graham but he's always criticised the EU for having too much of a heavy hand regulating things and 'stifling innovation' while there is plenty of room for nuance here -- the EU can be doing both. I think this suggests many in YCombinator are not as 'Libertarian' as they originally thought and there small mindset change happening.

YC can't even urge it's own startups to do anything

Worker 17 needs to get access to their app to complete their work!

Couching your stance towards a policy in terms of its effect on "innovation" is a surefire way to lose me.

The current admin is not going to support anything sane or european. But nice sentiment.

This forum is not going to support anything sane or european. But nice sentiment.

Y Combinator "Urges the Whitehouse" is nothing but a fiduciary tight rope walking bribe to receive governance in your favor.

Can't blame them, bribery is the only way to get heard by this administration.

Yeah, I'm sure Y Combinator is not biased hahahaha (sarcasm of course)

We all are trapped by TOS into data mining operation. There is no denying this fact. You don't own your computer or smartphone. You don't own your data. Practically speaking, we don't have an accessible and user-friendly tool to protect ourselves.

The humanity collective data output is weaponized, and the surveillance state is transforming itself to an AI governance.

Publicly announced by the WEF. And embraced by the masses, which have nothing to hide.

Moreover, this thing is labeled as inevitable progress and the only option is transhumanism and post human ethos.

Add to this incoming digital dollar/euro plus social scoring systems, and we are cooked.

So, welcome China apparatus. :)

lmao you had me until china you probably believed ministry of information saying free world :)

Remember lesson #1 - China doesn't innovate they copy us from 10-20 years ago.

Lesson #2 - China spys on all its citizens.

Question: Do you believe that Google and Palantir will not develop tech and work for Chinese Government(market)? Or Apple? Or Oracle?

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I don't see this happening although I would have a beer belly laugh if all of these tech oligarchs got on their knees just for Trump to piss on their heads.

Supposedly, he's not into watersports. Given his temperament, his attitude toward SiliValley CEOs could change in the next 5 minutes, then go another direction 5 minutes later.

We are not dealing with a stable individual here. The only predictable trait he has is vindictiveness.

That would be pretty sweet

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How does this make sense? Cherry picking things you agree with is exactly what you should do. Based on reason and evidence.

What's wrong with "cherry-picking" things you like, and supporting those?

Honestly the more I think about your comment, the less I can make sense of it. You are talking about their support of the DMA as "cherry-picking", right?

It's a lot easier cognitively to just choose a side than it is to have nuanced opinions

everything's so partisan and not nuanced today - tons of people go with the idea "the [political party] are 10,000% correct, and nothing you say can make me think otherwise!!

i don't like any one party or group unconditionally. while I have a leaning, nuanced opinions on issues can be a good thing :)

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1) that will never happen. 2) that should never happen.