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Your Smartphone, Their Rules: App Stores Enable Corporate-Government Censorship

https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/app-store-oligopoly
87•pabs3•1h ago

Comments

whatsupdog•42m ago
"What you gonna do about it?" - Apple, probably.

Ok a serious note, that ICEBlock was ridiculous. It was putting law enforcement officials, who are just doing their job, at high risk.

righthand•36m ago
What of the people that have done nothing wrong that were just living their lives now at high risk because of ICE’s ridiculous false agenda?
conception•30m ago
At high risk, eh?
ghettoCoder•27m ago
Ridiculous take on the situation. You’re either a bot or a maga pos. Not sure which yet.
nancyminusone•24m ago
They weren't "just doing their job", they were also doing something else. You'll find the something else as legitimate reasoning for ICEBlock.
NateEag•23m ago
"Befehl ist befehl."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders

coffeefirst•14m ago
In the United States reporting on the presence of law enforcement on your street is protected by the first amendment. You can even film them and broadcast their activity in public places to the world.

You may not like it. Apple may not like it. But there's not much ambiguity here.

analog8374•21m ago
When is censorship ok?

We have moderators, here in hn. We also have them in reddit.

So sometimes we like censorship and sometimes we don't.

Retr0id•17m ago
It's ok when users have choice. Those who don't like HN moderation can hang out somewhere else (and many do).

Not using app stores isn't an option for most users, especially on iOS.

analog8374•13m ago
"If you don't like it you can leave" strikes me as an evasion of my point.

The fact is, we sometimes like censorship. Which is funny.

stronglikedan•10m ago
Just because it's here doesn't mean it's liked. Various factors contribute to whether any given site is moderated, and to what degree. It's almost never just "the will of the users".
analog8374•1m ago
When the subject arises, the consensus seems to be that moderation (and thus censorship) is indispensable.

I blame a deep, possible even genetic, authoritarianism.

isodev•17m ago
But is HN the only forum for tech discussions available to you?

The whole point is that both phone platforms are required to participate in modern life. Imagine if your water or electricity company decides not to supply your house. There is a reason such fundamental services are made into universal rights and do not follow the usual competition rules.

Apple/Google can’t be both the store, the device and the OS.

hmry•16m ago
Censorship by a website moderator means you need to move to another website to express your ideas. Censorship by the government means you need to move to another country.

Censorship on an app hosting page means you need to host your app somewhere else. Censorship on the only app hosting page allowed means you can't host your app at all.

Xelbair•13m ago
Moderation is okay when it properly adjusts signal-to-noise ratio of discussion.

Censorship is about suppressing opinions which fall out of Overton's window, which is not okay, as all it does is to enforce status quo.

There was a good blogpost by Ex-reddit engineers about it where the idea was to treat it as signal which you cannot understand, and your core purpose as moderation(from automated PoV) is to adjust the signal to noise ratio without being able to comprehend/read the underlying data.

A bit hypocritical of them, looking at how reddit's moderation works.

Frankly i'm also against private censorship in case of social media - as it is basically outsourced government censorship.

backpackviolet•12m ago
I think it's inversely correlated with power, influence and reach. HN and Reddit don't have guns, can't throw you in prison, and there are lots of social medias to choose from, so a fair bit of censorship can be tolerated. Apple can't deport you, but you also don't have a lot of other choices, very low tolerance for censorship. The Government can really ruin your life if you get on the wrong side and your options for changing it or escaping it are pretty limited, we should demand the highest levels of transparency. Sure, some secrecy around military and intelligence for a little while, but we should eventually know what they decided and why.
analog8374•5m ago
Censorship is fundamentally poisonous. Even without all that other stuff.
HumblyTossed•1m ago
It's censorship if my government does it. If a corporation does it, I can opt out.
isodev•20m ago
I’m very happy to see a US organisations picking this up finally. Apple/Google clearly want to fight this on a country by country basis so they can stretch it until forever. Hope the pressure results in meaningful changes for all.
shagie•10m ago
If it's not done on the basis of jurisdiction, then laws about what constitutes illegal content in Germany or China or United States applies to everyone.

Taking the stance of "we're not going to follow any laws and publish everything" puts the companies in very difficult places in those countries as publishers of the content.

vorpalhex•6m ago
Or just.. make it easier to not be constrained to app stores. I realize losing that sweet, sweet 30% fee on every transaction hurts their wallet but I think my $1000 phone should be mine to freely install things on.
isodev•3m ago
They’re welcome to curate a store if they want to but installation and configuration of any 3rd party software, freely, without attestation mandates should be available. Also, Apple introduced a very complex process of fear mongering for the Alt Store in the EU - all that must go away in order to rectify the user’s right to own their device.
AlgebraFox•15m ago
While censorship is one thing, they forgot another overlooked ability of these app stores: pushing unwanted apps/services to our personal devices without our knowledge.The fact that the majority of people don’t care about this censorship and backdoors makes me think we don’t really appreciate the concept of freedom, and maybe we are okay with being slaves—at least until we cannot take it anymore. Maybe that’s why history repeats itself every few decades to remind us about these values.
gruez•6m ago
>While censorship is one thing, they forgot another overlooked ability of these app stores: pushing unwanted apps/services to our personal devices without our knowledge

When was the last time the play store or app store pushed apps "without our knowledge"? I've only heard of it done by shady third party bloatware that OEMs bundle with the OS. The actual issue is a system that can perform OTA updates, not app stores themselves.

knollimar•5m ago
The play store doesn't even update my apps for me anymore often
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