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Comment by eggsnbacon1 | Hacker News Reader

> Tech companies have made clear that they don’t like the idea of blocking apps without a more organized policy process, and have suggested that they see this as a First Amendment issue, said Adam Segal, a cybersecurity expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Yet they're both perfectly fine with blocking apps for arbitrary reasons citing "app store policy".

Lets be blunt here, whether you agree with the Tiktok issue or not, for Apple and Google this is purely a money issue. They are probably afraid this will increase support for third party app stores among the masses

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> Yet they're both perfectly fine with blocking apps for arbitrary reasons citing "app store policy".

Phrased less disingenuously: Private companies are fine making decisions based on their own internal policies, as opposed to blocking certain apps based on nebulous requests/pseudo-demands from the government.

That doesn't quite capture it. I want to buy an app for my phone and a vendor wants to sell it to me. But because my phone is a walled garden, Apple and Google who are third parties to the transaction can step in and prevent it.

The Department of Commerce is saying that the Uniform Commercial Code is also a bit of a walled garden, and we can step in and prevent it.

just apple. you can sideload apps on google, you can easily install 3rd party stores.

There are many, many things that are totally legal for private companies to do but the government is implicitly or explicitly prohibited from doing. Freedom of speech (not saying this is an example of that) is probably the prime example.

A company can bar you from saying just about anything. You can be fired for wearing a tie your boss doesn't like (this never happens, but it's legal in 49 states). The government has very narrow parameters in which is can limit speech, or more accurately, punish you for given speech.

I believe they're afraid this will increase the strength of the argument that app stores can be regulated for national causes, which is bad news for their control of their own ecosystem (to a first approximation: government involvement always increases cost). It's also, sort of, bad news for, like, Americans... If a foreign company makes a parody game critical of US politics, can the government use this precedent to get it yanked from app stores?

Yes.

It's called the free market. Private businesses can make decisions as they see best, and the barrier for government overriding that is extremely high. In America at least, this is traditionally viewed as a good thing.

We also generally believe that making things "purely a money issue" is how to incentivize people to do their best work.

There are countries in the world where it's widely accepted that the government is closely involved in business decisions and does what it thinks is best for the country, and they ask people to be motivated the goals of the country, as determined by the ruling party, not their own profit motive. TikTok is familiar with one of those, in fact.

Exactly, I have no idea why you're being downvoted.

Private companies are supposed to able to follow whatever legal policies they want to in order to compete and make as much money as possible.

In a democracy, the executive branch of the government is not supposed to be able to do whatever it wants arbitrarily. That's why the legal principle of "due process" exists -- it has to follow established rules that don't single out individual people or organizations for arbitrary reasons.

The two issues (banning apps, banning companies) could not be more different in terms of the principles involved.

Yes! I completely agree that this is a free speech issue, but that's also my (primary) issue with not allowing side-loading on iOS.

I think they are asking for something like "App Store Policy", except from the US government.

Current App Stores are capricious and make mistakes, but they are not completely random as the TikTok and WeChat bans.

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