Comment by _qulr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _qulr | Hacker News Reader

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> I like how strongly people seem to be reacting to having to ask permission to digitally follow someone around

I don't have any analytics whatsoever in my apps.

When I make the "cake or death?" analogy, do you seriously believe I'm defending the "death" option?

But if we continue with this analogy, it's important to remember that Apple has been allowing "death" in its App Store for 12 years and is only now getting around to asking users whether they want death. Moreover, the App Store "race to the bottom" intentionally undermined the previous business model of selling upfront paid software. App Store devalued software and propped up the alternative of making everything free and turning customers into products. Apple has a lot of "blood" on its hands in this matter.

I personally install Little Snitch on my Mac to block apps from phoning home. Yet Apple doesn't allow a similar tool on iOS. So I don't buy Apple's "privacy" BS for one second, because they don't allow me to protect my own privacy.

Then why are you complaining about them implementing privacy controls?

I'm not. I'm complaining about the claim "It's not a ban! It's not a ban! Apple isn't doing anything!"

This whole argument seems like a variation of "Guns don't kill people, [X] does." If Apple puts a (metaphorical) gun in every user's hand and points them at the analytics SDKs, it seems ludicrous to claim that Apple has nothing to do with the analytics SDKs getting killed. Regardless of whether or not they deserve to be killed. At the very least, it's passive-aggressive, if not incitement to "violence".

Now, the article says, "Apple did not – and from a legal perspective likely can’t – explicitly ban the Google Analytics, Flurry, Facebook, and Firebase SDKs." I'm not clear on what legal perspective the author means. Antitrust? In any case, from your perspective, why wouldn't Apple ban them if it could? There are plenty of things that Apple does ban in the App Store, without giving the user a choice. I still don't get why you think "ban" is a dirty word.

The reason I and others object the the word ‘ban’ is because it is implying (not even implying, falsely stating) that it is Apple that is the active party in denying these developers and SDKs access to user data. It is not Apple denying access to user data, it is users denying access to their data.

The thing is “users ban collection of their personal identifying data, killing tracking SDKs” is an inconvenient narrative for Facebook, Google and developers that use these SDKs for that purpose.

You avoided my question: from your perspective, why wouldn't Apple ban them if it could?

What's wrong with banning? Why is that such an inconvenient narrative for you? Why is it inconvenient for Apple? This feels like just a game where Apple is trying very hard to avoid personal (or legal?) responsibility for its choices by pushing the choice onto users. It seems to me like a cop-out. Again, Apple takes away choices from users in many other areas, so why give the choice here, knowing what choice almost everyone will take?

The Google/Facebook, etc position is that they should decide what user PII they collect and how they use it. Your position is that it's ok for Apple to decide what user data can be collected and how it's used ("What's wrong with banning?").

But there is a third party here who's opinion is the one that actually matters. If you considered their existence and role here for even a second, the reason why it would be wrong for Apple to decide with a direct ban would be immediately obvious - that third party is the users.

My position, and that of Apple, is that it's none of Apple's business, and it's none of Google/Facebooks business to decide these things. It's the user's business how their data is used, they should be making these decisions. That's why it would be wrong for Apple to impose a ban.

After all the Google/Facebook narrative is that their use of PII brings value to users in the from of relevant ads and personalised services. Well ok, make that case to users and let them decide.

I've been banging on about this through the whole comment thread, but you just seem flat out unable to even see that users have any role at all in this. You ignore their existence and role implicitly without the slightest consideration; their right to choose is _the_ consideration here. It's not some incidental, inconvenient factor to be dismissed as a 'de facto' input to be taken for granted so you can point the finger unerringly at Apple.

> You ignore their existence and role implicitly without the slightest consideration; their right to choose is _the_ consideration here.

This is silly. I said, "Apple takes away choices from users in many other areas". iPhone is an extremely locked down device. Users do not have the right to do what they want with it. (Which I complained about earlier, not being able to install software like Little Snitch on iPhone.) I've been a Mac user for a long time, since before the App Store, before the iPhone, before Gatekeeper, even before code signing existed. I'm very aware of what user choice is about, and iPhone is definitely not at all about user choice.

So, please start over without the fake moralizing, which cannot be taken seriously in this case. The right to choose is almost never Apple's consideration nowadays. There's currently legislation under consideration in North Dakota that would give users the right to choose, but Apple is complaining that it would "destroy iPhone as we know it". Exactly. iPhone is not about user freedom. Everyone knows that... except apparently you.

> so you can point the finger unerringly at Apple

The funny thing is that a lot of iPhone users would praise Apple for banning the SDKs. Only you seem to think that the iPhone is all about user choice. The majority opinion seems to be that Apple's lockdown is good, for the user's "protection". So I'm still puzzled why you even think using the word "ban" is a criticism of Apple.

I can speculate that perhaps an explicit ban would get Apple into antitrust trouble, which may have been what the article author was referring to. But if your argument is, "It's not a ban, because a ban would be legally problematic for Apple", that would not be very convincing argument.

I'm making no claims about Apple's behaviour on any other issues and I'm not going to be derailed on a tangent. If you have nothing further to say on privacy controls or to address my actual points we're done.

> I'm making no claims about Apple's behaviour on any other issues and I'm not going to be derailed on a tangent.

It's strange that you think this issue can be discussed as if it's sui generis and completely unrelated to anything else. What you call "a tangent", I call the broader context. So I guess we are done.

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