Apple’s power over Facebook ought to worry the rest of us | Hacker News Reader

Apple’s power over Facebook ought to worry the rest of us

theverge.com

13 pointsEndXA6 comments

On the other hand, the fact that Apple applies the same rules to Facebook as it does to the rest of us small developers, is a good thing. Apple protects his customers. Of course, you may ask who controls the controller, and whether "Do no evil" is enough, but Apple plays a role that no state is able to provide currently.

But they don't, and they certainly play favorites.

- So far, they have taken no action to Google's similar behavior ( and yes, the removed the app, but after Facebook was punished )

- They had a huge privacy bug with Facetime that they have brushed it under the rug, which may expose underlying privacy issues ( how is this possible if the connection isn't established before you consented? )

Apple has done some good, but it's no saint, and should not be a vigilante.

Looks like they did do the same thing with Google today.

> And just like that, Facebook’s entire day was wasted.

Well, yeah, because

> the team within Facebook that built this market-research program appears to have acted recklessly

Although "appears" is a weasel word there because they definitely did.

Please explain which part of this timeline is where Facebook was innocent: - 1. Facebook publishes app that steals user data to App Store, disguised as a VPN and it gets removed because it violates the terms & conditions that Facebook agreed to - 2. Facebook publishes similar enough shady app through program meant for enterprise app deployment, violating another rule on top of violating the previous set of rules again, also they access children's data - 3. get punished, rule-violating enterprise app distribution channel gets suspended

Thought experiment: If you published an app to Microsoft's Xbox One store which spies on users' out of app habits and therefore breaks the rules and got removed, then proceeded to send everyone jailbreak kits for xboxes and trying to incentivise them to use the app that way and got punished for it, would you feel that Microsoft has it out for you?

Apple's actions in this matter are unsurprising.

However, we should all be continually disturbed that one company has the final say over which executables are allowed to run on one of the largest computing platforms on earth.

Comparing the iPhone to a game console is fair, but game consoles are for very specific purposes (running interactive entertainment) whereas it's increasingly common for the iPhone to be a person's primary computing device.

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