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Comment by ribit | Hacker News Reader

I'm all for letting the user decide. But what you are proposing is not letting the user decide.

If Melinda wants to use the Facebook app, but the Facebook app is only available on the Meta store, then Melina is forced to use the Meta store. This is not giving users choice. This is replacing one corp-backed store by multiple corp-backed stores. The user loses.

The only way how this would be a choice is if the same app, with the same basic functionality was available on all stores. Then the user would really have the choice which store to use. Or if there were alternative apps on different stores. Good luck with that given the current monopoly markets.

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Melinda should be able to choose to have a business relationship with Meta. The Meta store, aka a trivial hosting/payment service, would be part of that Meta offering. She should not however only be allowed to have an Apple(Meta) relationship where Apple gets to tax and restrict Meta for it's own commercial benefit.

An "App Store", when it is not used as a rent-seeking choke-point, is a nothing-burger, it's a simple website to buy and download an app, yet you are trying to claim some great horror if this website was run by Meta not Apple. Please. It's nonsensical.

Right. So you are saying that Meta has the right to implement their services and platforms in any way they see fit, and the user has the right to choose between using those services under Meta's conditions or not using them at all. But Apple has no similar right to their own services, platforms, or SDKs, and is forced to let Meta harness their platform and user base while expecting no compensation? And this apparently makes sense to you? What you are proposing is the dictatorship of the developer. This completely throws the idea of proprietary platforms and SDKs out of the window.

By the way, I couldn't care less if Meta has their own shop or not, and I don't see any horror in that, they decide how to best run their business, not me. But I take an issue with claims that Meta running their own exclusive show somehow creates more user choice (which is the direction the commenter I was replying to was heading towards)

I can barely parse what you say it's so unhinged.

It's such a bizarre belief that a product sold by Apple remains "their platform" once in the hands of a consumer. The only thing they still "own" is copyright IP. They sold a product. They don't get to legislate user actions. Their power over the device post sale, that they use to extract rent, is entirely artificial.

This is quite funny, because I feel the same about what you are saying. The way I understand you is that a seller of the product should grant any third party extensive access to that product, so that the third party can modify and implement their own services in any way they see fit. Frankly, this is completely shattering the idea of business relations as we know it. By your logic no proprietary store or platform SDK should ever exist (e.g. console SDKs should be free for all developers). What's more, extending this argument software itself should be moldable at will (I bought the app, I have the right for it to be modified in any way I please).

I mean, it's not that I would oppose this ideology in particular, it just sounds a bit radical. We'd have to change quit a lot of things for it to be feasible.

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