Pluralistic: 17 Jun 2022

doctorow · 17 June 2022 14:17

Originally published at: Pluralistic: 17 Jun 2022 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Today's links

Facebook's right, Apple is too powerful: And so is Facebook.
This day in history: 2002, 2007, 2012, 2017, 2021
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

The Apple logo with a smiling worm peeking out of it.

Facebook's right, Apple is too powerful (permalink)

On the one hand, Facebook's comments to the NTIA on Apple's market power are supremely ironic. Facebook, complaining about excessive market power?

https://downloads.regulations.gov/NTIA-2022-0001-0145/attachment_1.pdf

Even worse is what Facebook is complaining about: Apple's App Tracking Transparency update to Ios devices like the Iphone, which allowed users to comprehensively and easily block all the apps on their phones from spying on them. When Apple gave users this choice, nearly all of them chose privacy.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/

Facebook says this cost them $10b (no wonder they're mad). Nothing Facebook did – neither deceptive messages about why users should choose to be spied on, nor astroturf campaigns from small businesses extolling the value of submitting to surveillance – worked:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/facebook-makes-the-case-for-activity-tracking-to-ios-14-users-in-new-pop-ups/

So on the one hand, Facebook's motivations here are straightforward. Facebook profited from depriving its users of the right to decide how they used its service. Apple gave users more control. Facebook lost money, and complained.

But on the other hand…they've got a point.

Not about why it's bad that Apple gave its customers the ability to choose privacy – but that those Apple users had to wait for Apple to decide that they deserved that protection. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about Apple deciding to protect its users – but I am complaining about Apple preventing its users from protecting themselves.

As far as Apple -and Facebook, and Google, and other large tech companies – are concerned, we’re entitled to just as much privacy as they want to give us, and no more. For example, Google and Apple kicked the worst location data brokers out of their platform – but left dozens of nearly equally terrible ones to ply their trade:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/apple-and-google-kicked-two-location-data-brokers-out-their-app-stores-good-now

Apple argues that preventing its users from choosing rival app stores is just a manifestation of the company's sense of duty and commitment to caring for its users. But Apple, like all other tech giants, has conflicting priorities here. The company's decision to take a 15-30% cut of every penny you spent using apps means that its motives are, at best, mixed.

As Apple fights laws in the EU (Digital Markets Act) and USA (Open Apps Market Act) that will force it to allow its customers to choose other app stores, it continues maintain that it objects to these purely on security grounds. Apple makes that argument, but doesn't acknowledge the possibility that a third party app store might increase security:

https://www.eff.org/document/letter-bruce-schneier-senate-judiciary-regarding-app-store-security

The pretense that Apple objects to competition on purely altruistic grounds is absurd. Apple's decision to take a 30% commission on in-app sales means that its own products have a 30% advantage compared to its competitors. Think of audiobooks, which Apple sells through its media player, and also lets Amazon sell through its Audible app, on preferential terms. The retail margin on audiobooks is 20%, which means that a competing audiobook store on Apple's platform loses money on every sale (that's why indie alternatives to Apple/Amazon all make you buy your books using a browser).

But even if you take Apple at its word and stipulate that Apple wants to protect its customers (which it often does!), the company has made it clear that it shouldn't have the last word on this. Yes, it has stood up to governments that tried to force it to weaken the privacy protections in Ios:

https://www.eff.org/cases/apple-challenges-fbi-all-writs-act-order

But the company also caves in when some governments order it to weaken security:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html

And sometimes Apple weakens its security even when no government tells it to:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/apples-plan-think-different-about-encryption-opens-backdoor-your-private-life

In Facebook's complaint, they accuse Apple of intentionally raising the "switching costs" of leaving Ios for Android, by refusing to improve Safari so it can run web apps that work equally well on any platform, and by blocking users from installing non-Safari-based browsers on Ios:

https://open-web-advocacy.org/

Facebook is a world authority on the abuse of high switching costs as a means of locking users to its platform, even when they'd prefer to leave. After all, that's what Facebook does. Internal FB memos, published by the FTC, expose a parade of mustache-twirling Facebook execs discussing how to make leaving Facebook as painful as possible:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

Many of the proposals to address Apple's inconsistently benevolent dictatorship of Ios customers' apps have toyed with the idea of forcing Apple to include apps it doesn't like in its App Store. This is…not great. I don't believe in corporate personhood, but you don't have to be a Citizens United megafan to worry that the federal government maybe shouldn't be allowed to order companies to publish things they don't think are worth publishing.

By contrast, rules that allow Apple customers to choose other stores, ones they trust more, are pretty great. The reason we cheer when Apple lets Facebook users choose to use some parts of the service (talking to their friends) but not others (being spied on) is because people – not corporations – should have the final say over their technology.

That's true of Apple, too.

Again, it's great when Apple protects its customers' privacy. It's great when Facebook does it (as they did when they turned on end-to-end encryption for billions of Whatsapp users). But the final word on whether a privacy measure is legitimate shouldn't rest with Facebook or Apple, or any other tech giant.

That word should to to the public, through a national privacy law with a private right of action, one that sets the floor on privacy protections on all platforms, app stores and services:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/you-should-have-right-sue-companies-violate-your-privacy

(Image: Electronic Frontier Foundation, CC BY US 3.0)

This day in history (permalink)

#20yrsago Can Rusty keep running Kuro5shin for free? https://web.archive.org/web/20050609081348/http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2002/6/17/23933/5831

#20yrsago Woody Guthrie on copyright https://web.archive.org/web/20020625051152/http://techdirt.com/articles/20020608/1555239.shtml

#15yrsago When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth wins the Locus Award! http://www.locusmag.com/2007/06_LocusWinners.html

#10yrsago Father’s day songs to learn and perform, by Groucho Marx https://memex.craphound.com/2012/06/17/fathers-day-songs-to-learn-and-perform-by-groucho-marx/

#10yrsago FunnyJunk’s lawyer vows revenge on The Oatmeal and Matthew Inman https://www.popehat.com/2012/06/15/the-oatmeal-v-funnyjunk-part-iii-charles-carreons-lifetime-movie-style-dysfunctional-relationship-with-the-internet/

#10yrsago Rev. Ivan Stang retires from Church of the Subgenius, appoints successor https://revstang.blogspot.com/2012/06/news-release.html

#10yrsago Valve’s new economist-in-residence will publish notes on the political economy of games https://web.archive.org/web/20120617233156/http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/it-all-began-with-a-strange-email/

#10yrsago Class action against PublishAmerica; claims the business is a ripoff for would-be writers http://accrispin.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/class-action-lawsuit-filed-against.html

#5yrsago In Rhode Island, students and parents must let schools spy on them day and night through their laptops https://web.archive.org/web/20170622123813/https://riaclu.org/images/uploads/ACLU_1-1_School_Privacy_Report_Final.pdf

#5yrsago Trump’s no-experience, fake-degree wedding planner will be in charge of billions in NYC housing spending https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-chooses-family-event-planner-run-n-y-housing-programs-article-1.3251314

#5yrsago The Commute Deck: a homebrew Unix terminal for tight places https://makezine.com/2017/06/15/commute-deck-keyboard-device/

#5yrsago The FBI’s Gary Gygax file calls the original Dungeon Master “eccentric and frightening” https://reason.com/2017/06/15/dd-creator-gary-gygaxs-fbi-records-make/

#5yrsago In 1956, Hugh Hefner gave MAD’s founding editor an unlimited budget for a new satire magazine called “TRUMP” https://memex.craphound.com/2017/06/17/in-1956-hugh-hefner-gave-mads-founding-editor-an-unlimited-budget-for-a-new-satire-magazine-called-trump/

#1yrago Tali Farhadian Weinstein paid virtually no tax on millions and millions: And she wants to be the Manhattan DA and go after Trump's tax-dodging https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/17/quis-custodiet-irs/#trumps-taxes

#1yrago Interop Sci-Fi: Inside the Clock Tower, my interoperability sf for Consumer Reports https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/16/inside-the-clock-tower/#access-act

#1yrago Suing all of ad-tech: Will an EU country finally enforce the GDPR? https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/16/inside-the-clock-tower/#inference

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

Some Men Rob You With a Fountain Pen, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. Yesterday's progress: 522 words (15788 words total)
The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, a nonfiction book about interoperability for Verso. Yesterday's progress: 517 words (13054 words total)
Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. (92849 words total) – ON PAUSE
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, WAITING FOR EXPERT REVIEW
Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION
Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FINAL DRAFT COMPLETE
A post-GND utopian novel, "The Lost Cause." FINISHED
A cyberpunk noir thriller novel, "Red Team Blues." FINISHED

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: Regulatory Capture: Beyond Revolving Doors and Against Regulatory Nihilism https://craphound.com/news/2022/06/12/regulatory-capture-beyond-revolving-doors-and-against-regulatory-nihilism/

Upcoming appearances:

A New HOPE (NYC), Jul 24
https://www.hope.net/

Recent appearances:

Supp-Lie Demand (Bad Faith podcast with Briahna Joy Gray):
https://www.patreon.com/posts/67550669
The Sci-Fi Feedback Loop: Mapping Fiction’s Influence on Real-World Tech
https://csi.asu.edu/calendar/events/the-sci-fi-feedback-loop-mapping-fictions-influence-on-real-world-tech/
Privacy is the New Celebrity
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1806101/10643084

Latest book:

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
"How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59 (print edition: https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)
"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html
"Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin, nonfiction/business/politics, Beacon Press, September 2022

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