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Comment by dilap | Hacker News Reader

I don't care or know if it counts as a "monopoly" (I guess I can use Android...), but as a consumer and human being, I would love it if governments compelled big companies to act more in the public interest and less in their own.

In particular, I would love to be able to install 3rd party app stores and software w/o having to resort to jailbreaks or weird certificate hacks.

To me, it seems obvious this would be a net win for society.

(I think you could make the argument that the iPhone is one of the most important creative mediums of our time; from that perspective, it's outrageous that it is censored by an unacountable, prude (& often Kafkaesqe) bureaucracy. Imagine if artists had to get each painting approved by the company that manufactured their oil paints? It's absurd.)

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Although I agree with the sentiment I am wary of the government trying to force companies to act in the public interest as I am worried it will end up with the government forcing companies to act in the government's interest masquerading as the public's interest.

Remember you must always ask yourself when the government is given additional power if you would be okay with your worst enemy having that power as in a democratic society that can happen.

So much this. Let's keep our actual utility functions in view. Who cares whether or not it's technically a "monopoly"? It sucks!

Worth remembering that "monopoly" wasn't a bad word until we decided it was in the early 20th century. We can decide other things are bad too.

What? Companies behaving in anticompetitive behavior was considered mostly illegal in ... the U.S.’s inherited common law from the British before the U.S. was even formed. If anything, we’ve become more restrictive in how we define this.

These platform monopolies are absolutely anticompetitive. And it doesn’t need quotes.

> It sucks!

It does, but it’s better than what we had before.

Forcing us backward will not improve things.

We need an actual open OS and open ecosystem, not a government regulated one that is still owned by a monopoly.

is it actually a net win for society, or just a personal win for power users like those found on hn? Simply allowing all third party apps probably leads to lots of extra malware being installed on iPhones.

Power users mostly imho. I give iPhones to family and friends I support because it’s locked down with less ability to install bad actor apps

It is a win - there is a similar model that we live in everyday that separates Government from Business. It is done in that way in an attempt to balance control.

A first-party only ecosystem is authoritarian and non-competitive. Apple's ecosystem in particular on iOS and iPad OS is akin to your government controlling everything that you can do.

There are several parallels that can be drawn between societal and technological infrastructure.

Security framework is mostly orthogonal to AppStore being the only way to install apps.

Also, Apple strips developer's signature replacing it with AppStore signature. So I, the user, cannot independently verify that I'm running the same thing that developer deployed.

Imagine if you could buy apps on iPhone, switch to an Android and not lose access to your whole app library?

I don't think that's necessarily fair. There are expenses on each platform and paying a dollar or so to pay for those seem fair to me.

You act as if "public interest" is objective. A lot of people in government (maybe most?) consider maximizing shareholder value to be "public interest".

> I would love it if governments compelled big companies to act more in the public interest and less in their own.

First I’d like to see a government prove it can work in the public’s interest and less in its own.

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