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Gosh, there goes Apple with their anti-competitive monopolistic behaviour again. Facebook better join Epic in the queue at the courtroom.

(sarcasm, in case it wasn't obvious)



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I wonder if FB tried to negotiate and Apple's response was "For a small fee, merely 30% of your company's ad revenue, we can remove the permission requirement.."

Apple absolutely does abuse their power as a monopoly. I'm not sure how that's related to asking users for permission to share data with third parties, which is what this was about.

Apple is exempting itself from this policy, keeping its own tracking on by default: https://twitter.com/eric_seufert/status/1291730115253145600?...

Previously, Apple and third-party tracking were both controlled by the same opt-put setting. Using your power as platform owner to turn your competitor’s ad tracking off by default while keeping yours on? Sure seems abusive to me.


Completely agree. I was not aware they were doing this too.

iOS 14 has a prompt for third party tracking.[1] It isn't off by default.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/22/apple-ios-14-ad-tracking/


In what way is Apple a competitor to Facebook or Google Ads?

Facebook’s top ad business on iOS is promoting other apps. The tracking being blocked by this change is how they attribute app sales to the Facebook ad. Apple has a competing service: https://searchads.apple.com/

I think the purpose of this change is to redirect the revenue from FB to Apple.


That is, for Apple, perhaps a nice side effect of the change. But I don't see it replacing Facebook app ads ... I never "see" the Apple ads.

The real purpose of this change is to continue to drive home to Apple users, who are increasing aware of privacy issues, that Apple has their back. Anything else is gravy.


My opinion: follow the money. Apple’s publicly stated growth strategy is to expand services revenue. Taking this ad market from Facebook is part of that strategy. The PR is gravy. Apple isn’t the EFF.

Monopoly of what? A platform of their own creation?

It's not of the app market or the mobile phone market, there are strong viable competitors in both.

No one says Toyota is a monopolist of Toyota cars and yet Apple is called a monopolist of the App Store, iOS, and Apple phones.


Strangely, nobody says Microsoft has an xBox monopoly either. Likewise, no complaints about the PS4/5 monopoly or Nintendo Monopoly.

Oh I would love to be able to buy a full-price PS5 to install whatever I want on, rather than the discounted-because-PS-store one we have now.

Likewise, I'd be willing to pay a reasonable premium for a truly unlocked iPhone.

The difference is the iPhone isn't sold below cost, you should already be able to unlock it (except Apple just doesn't want you to) .

This makes no sense. As a consumer, I'm dropping $500 on a console. How much it costs Microsoft to make doesn't affect my relationship with them or my relationship with developers of the platform.

It does when they don't want you to be able to unlock it because they'll lose money on it.

It's called a PC.

And the fact that people still flock to consoles means that users want a safe, curated, vibrant, affordable gaming platform. Which would be destroyed if you (a) stopped Sony making a profit of games and forcing them to make it from the hardware and (b) stopped Sony from blocking crapware, malware and counterfeits.


Why even make these straw men? What's the use?

1) Who said that games need to be sold at cost?

2) Who said anything about stopping Sony doing anything?

Does the fact that you can unlock Android phones mean that the manufacturers (or Google) have now gone out of business? Or that they can't curate their stores?

Just a super low effort reply.


Consoles are unique in that they sell the hardware initially at a loss which they recoup through game sales and future production efficiencies. If you allow people to install third party software without Sony's approval then you deprive them of this revenue stream and make the platform basically like a PC. Which us console gamers do not want.

Android manufacturers make their money from the hardware so it's irrelevant to them which apps you install.


Yes, Sony won't make profit on games unless you actually want games. I don't see what the problem is. Sell a more expensive, unlocked version of the PS5 I can do whatever I want on.

What's the issue?


[deleted]

Play PS4 games.

Genuine question: what is the difference between a last gen video game console and a PC with artificial locks that allows the user to run only what the manufacturer wants?

What?

Facebook is playing in Apple’s garden here. Remember when Facebook made their own phone and app store, and nobody wanted it?


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