If being forced to compete fairly requires them to drop their prices by 60%, I think that’s a pretty good argument that they’re not competing fairly at the moment.
When you are competing against stores that require you to use their ad-tech framework to make up the difference it is a different equation.
The idea of billions of devices out there with constantly running background ad-tech frameworks horrifying to me. It would make the AirTags stalking seem like a joke if every phone secretly tracked every Bluetooth. Right now Apple is in the stream to say no to that.
The argument seems to be Apple should just lock down things even further to prevent it from happening…
Bunch of FUD. OS features and permissions aren't going anywhere. Even if coercing users into providing permissions became a real problem, Apple could have the OS provide fake data to apps not whitelisted by the user.
If you don't want to be tracked, don't use Google, Facebook, and other ad techs. Doesn't matter whether you installed their apps or not. Even today Apple can't meaningfully shield you from their tracking if you choose to use their free ad-supported services. (And if you don't, there's not much value in tracking you since they can't sell your attention to the highest bidder)
I'm not defending ad tech, but it will take complex legislation to reign it in. You can't just hide from it in Apple's walled garden, it does not work.
That complex legislation is not going to happen because ad-tech has the money to stop it.
Facebook is right now taking a huge loss due to the fact the walled garden is working.
People compromise their privacy because they didn’t have a choice. Apple is providing that choice until you let Chrome only be installed from the Google store and web sites suddenly say “best with chrome”.
> Facebook is right now taking a huge loss due to the fact the walled garden is working.
Facebook is hitting a huge loss right now because they saturated the world, ran out of markets to expand to. Not because of Apple's minor restrictions on cross-app tracking, jeez. Their growth in US stalled long ago.
> That complex legislation is not going to happen because ad-tech has the money to stop it.
And tobacco companies had the money to prevent anti-smoking regulations, and the oil industry had the money to deny climate change, and big tech had the money to keep their app store monopolies. Well some of those are WIP but it's clear that things do improve despite the money, albeit slowly.
> People compromise their privacy because they didn’t have a choice.
Nobody's stopping you from using DuckDuckGo and Mobile Safari, not today, not if this legislation goes through. Nothing that Apple does will change that, and nobody will code websites for mobile without supporting the default browser on their target platform, unless that browser is IE-level terrible, which Mobile Safari is not, despite its many deliberate shortcomings.
If you're all about choice you should stop telling other people that they should pay for services with money rather than with ad impressions, and that they should pay Apple's 30% tax for your privilege to see one monopolist shove it to another in a superficial way.
And if you think "don't use Apple" is valid advice for these people, then it's also valid advice for you for when this legislation passes, if you really can't live on a platform that isn't completely locked down.
