Like a Bouncer at a Bookstore: Texas' App Store Accountability Act | Hacker News Reader

Like a Bouncer at a Bookstore: Texas' App Store Accountability Act

cdt.org

12 pointsbilsbie16 comments

I wish Texans realised that sovereignty over your own computer was in the same camp as the right to bear arms - the power to control your own life and not have someone else control you. Maybe this is a sign they're starting to get it.

A lot of Texans do. We didn't elect those Texans and if the current legislature has their way, we never will. The Legislature and Governor, et all, are too busy trying to implement the Republic of Gilead, the Old South and the State of Elon combined to think about anything else.

I don’t mind Apple’s walled garden in the abstract, but the fact is they’ve been a terrible steward of their App Store. If you search for an app to do something small but useful, instead you’re presented with an ocean of identical apps that all have $10 a week subscription fees. The golden age of “hey I’ll just go on the App Store and buy something handy for $3” has long past, and a lot of those few-dollar apps have switched to a subscription plan anyway, meaning the money you spent was thrown away.

I have an Android phone, and almost everything I use on it is installed through F-Droid or directly from the author's Git repository. Every time I do something useful on my phone, and iPhone users ask how to do it, there's nothing equivalent available for a their phone.

The worst part is the maintenance required just to keep the same unchanged software available to new phones. You have to pay annually to keep your account open, and regularly recompile the application for new OS versions, even when the OS is backward compatible. This not only means someone's open-source weekend project isn't going to be worth publishing for free, but it won't even be worth publishing for a one-time charge. For the simplest utilities, everything is shifting to recurring charges. Often that entails someone else compiling an open-source application to iOS, filling the market with sketchy unofficial releases, with predatory billing schemes and unexpected add-ons.

Sometimes Apple straight-up prohibits useful utilities. One of the most useful things a phone can do is act as a portable Wi-Fi signal analyzer, logging signal strength and signal to noise ratios from various locations. That's not even allowed by Apple.

> requires parents to approve every app download and re-approve use of apps every time a “significant change” is made

Sounds good to me! We keep being told that parents should do a better job and this helps!

With one exception: app stores should be forbidden from verifying the age of legal adults.

Stupid impossible requirement

Speak ill of no man

Who did I speak ill of?

That's not parents doing a better job, it's just more government overreach.

This law is terrible and I hope it isn't implemented, but it's enabled by the locked down and centralized nature of iOS and the way most people get apps on Android, the Play store.

Once you try Android, you can't go back. I used an iPhone all my life, but a few months ago I switched to GrapheneOS and the FOSS software ecosystem is fantastic.

On iPhones, if a government doesn't want an app, like those ICE tracking apps, they can force Apple to remove them and no-one can install them. On Android, I source more than 90% of my apps from GitHub.

Dispelling FUD about Android:

1. The Google locking down Android only affects devices with privileged Play Services. GrapheneOS will not be affected because play services are not installed by default, and if they are installed, they are sandboxed and wouldn't have that authority.

2. If you were on a stock Android distribution, it's not that bad to wait 24 hours once. Yes, Google could make it worse, but that's just speculation. Their monopoly is being challenged to an extent through the GrapheneOS attestation, and will hopefully become illegal under anti trust law.

The change is only in play servics, AOSP takes a lot of steps to protect your privacy.

3. Causes for incompatibility on GrapheneOS are either exploit protections catching problems with an app, which can be disabled, or the app explicitly banning alternative operating systems as security theatre.

Only a small portion of banking and government apps completely ban GrapheneOS. Over 99% of apps are compatible. App developers have to add additional measured to break their app on GrapheneOS. I have over 40 apps and none are broken or have broken.

Some banking apps are officially supporting GrapheneOS through their privacy respecting attestation.

As more people use GrapheneOS, more apps will be pressured to support it. For example, although VW recently banned GrapheneOS, Hyundai and Kia have added express support for GrapheneOS in their apps.

That’s great for Kia, but if I owned at VW it doesn’t do me much good.

Same problem with banking apps.

My point was that more apps practicing this security theatre are adding compatibility for GrapheneOS because it's rapidly growing in users.

We own a VW and I use GrapheneOS. The problem is that you have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. There are always reasons not to do the right thing and that's how we end up with systems that we don't control and track our every movement.

GrapheneOS now has ~500,000 users and is becoming a force to be reckoned with. But 5,000,000 would be even better. At some point you become hard to deny.

If VW does not fix this soon, our next car is not going to be a VW. Same if our bank decided to block GrapheneOS (very unlikely though, they are a green bank, and I communicated with them in the past about non-certified Android phones and they seemed very supportive).

I may be a bit out of the loop, because I still drive a car with a solid metal key and a manual transmission, but why would your car care what OS your phone is running?

Apps occasionally ban alternative operating systems as security theatre because Google tells them to, to enforce Google's monopoly.

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