Meta, Spotify, and Match Launch Coalition Against Apple and Google

[Amazing Iceman]

If it's Apple's platform, then why does Apple not want to handle age verification?

Because that opens the door to huge privacy issues. Expand your thoughts on this and you will see all that implies to do age verification, and how that makes it possible to other entities to track down who is using the App Store.

Parents should be responsible to keep their children safe. Most parents nowadays are very lazy about this, don't make their lives any easier, or they will keep forgetting their child is in the back seat of their car.

 

[Keav]

Here’s the part that makes me really skeptical of this coalition: they all can be accessed through the web which means they’d have to do age verification themselves anyway. If they have to do it anyway why do this unless they’re lobbying for something else…like lower App Store fees…this feels a bit dishonest…

This. They all need to do age verification if enacted in law. Apple, Google AND the rest of them.

 

[diskrisk]

That Meta and Spotify are part of this (I’m not sure who Match Group is) tells me that this is pure Astroturfing. they want legistlators to think there is a groundswell of support for making their competitors do this. It’s all about trying to use the legal system to gain business advantage.

Match group owns like 80% of dating sites on the internet, including apps like Tinder

 

[Tailpike1153]

I’m confused, I thought these companies wanted Apple to open iOS up… so everything *wouldn’t* have to go through the AppStore?


Now, they want Apple to handle all age verification and related tasks… because they own the AppStore? Wha? Which way do you want it?


Either you can have Apple control everything, from App distribution to payments to age verification… or you want Apple to open its platform. You can’t have both, you can’t have the cake and eat it too.


For anything like this to actually be *useful* it’s pretty much required to go through one single App Store controlled by one single company, in this case Apple.


Or else it does nothing. If Facebook can be downloaded outside of the AppStore, but the AppStore handles *everything* including age verification, now there’s a simple way around any verification, which is to… not use the AppStore.


Again Meta, Spotify, Epic, you either want Apple in charge of everything or Apple in charge of nothing. You can’t have both.


They are literally making Apple’s argument against sideloading for them.

Back in my day, we'd look at cooters and hooters on IBM Computers in grayscale. It used to take all day to look at a single picture. Email was slower than the USPS. A kid could get into some serious trouble and not get caught for awhile. Now they scan your face or run your credit cards when you want to "do research." Sadly my card keep coming back declined. And my face...

 

[HylianKnight]

I trust Apple more than the mentioned companies as well, which is precisely why I would prefer they handle age verification that involves uploading my driver’s license.

If forced by law, sure, but the government shouldn’t be in the business of policing who can and cannot access the internet.

 

[justanthonylee]

If forced by law, sure, but the government shouldn’t be in the business of policing who can and cannot access the internet.

That's literally the job of a government body, to protect people with rules on content and items, like saying you need to be an adult to drink or smoke. Who do you think sets that law and enforces it?

 

[neuropsychguy]

"The coalition's members argue that Apple and Google, as gatekeepers of the iOS App Store and Google Play Store respectively, are best positioned to implement uniform age verification protocols across devices and markets."

I agree with this. It is better for a company like Apple, which has a dedicated privacy focus, to do this instead of a random X, Y, or Z company. This also tightens up the security of the process.

Some of the decision is simply to have those companies spend the time, effort, and money to do it, but I am surprised the companies want Apple or Alphabet to do this. Keeping verification centralized further solidifies the power of those two companies. This is a very counter-intuitive argument for Meta and the others to make. They've made some arguments that they want Apple and Alphabet to have less power but then are arguing with this to give them more.

 

[gleepskip]

That's literally the job of a government body, to protect people with rules on content and items, like saying you need to be an adult to drink or smoke. Who do you think sets that law and enforces it?

It's the job of the government that some people want. It's not the job of the government I want.

 

[jz0309]

They don’t want to do the work…
Does MS do age verification on the Windows platform?

 

[cocky jeremy]

If it's Apple's platform, then why does Apple not want to handle age verification when Apple thinks they should handle pretty much everything else?

Because they don't want to?

 

[justanthonylee]

It's the job of the government that some people want. It's not the job of the government I want.

When a govement is elected it's not what "some people want" it's what usually most people want, and really I see nothing wrong with setting guidelines on types of media a child can reach. It's the same as Movies, Games, Alcohol, Smokes, and so much more, so why is it that if the media is digital from the web vs physical, and or in a digital game store it's any different...?

 

[justanthonylee]

Because they don't want to?

This, plus they are not responsible for the content within the specific app especially if social media due to the fact that they have NO say in content moderation on that service so why would they want to be responsible for this when someone can go to Facebook.com and bypass the App Store and they will just get Sued because they are responsible for age verification... but cant.... because it was accessed outside the App Store....

 

[picpicmac]

A Triumvirate of "Loser" companies.

Unfortunately they are a triumvirate of money making outfits.

They are also a triumvirate of leeches, of moral vagabonds and destroyers of humanity.

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

Sure.

1. The app is literally garbage.
2. They sold NFT's.
3. They make artificial music by fake bands and use them in most playlists so they internally collect all the royalties.
4. They donated to Trump and hosted a brunch for the chetto.
5. They made a device called Car Thing that they sold and stoped working on within 1 year and disabled so it would not function anymore for anyone who purchased it.
6. Spotify does not fairly compensate musicians.
7. They host and gave money to Joe Rogan.
8. They spread misinformation and refuse to make corrections.
9. They have destroyed the Podcast space by removing the definition of a podcast (public rss feed that can be ingested by any feed reader) and privatizing it.
10. Was found to be padding music with stock music attributed to a handful of little-known musicians, mostly Swedish, in an effort to reduce its royalty payouts.
11. They actively hide some artists music and make it so music does not play on global playlists when they criticize Spotify.
12. The company only made money this last year and did so after firing a massive amount of staff and the CEO has received billions in compensation.
13. The CEO has publicly stated he does not think artists deserve money due to in his words music being easy to create and costing almost zero to produce.

Really it can keep going on and on and on, but they are a cancer in the music industry who do what they want and don't give a F about artists, or creators of any kind, and in many ways people who give them money by doing things like within 1 year bricking a device people paid for.

1. Apple's music app is is utter utter garbage last seen ceding their US market share to .... yep! Spotify.

2. 🤷‍♂️

3. Some of the 'perfect fit content creators' also put their stuff on Apple Music and Amazon

4. So did Apple and Tim Cook attended the inauguration

5. They offered refunds to people who bought them

6. This is not true at all. They paid more royalties to the industry than any other service.

7. The had an exclusive deal for his podcast that Apple happily hosted for free for years and continues to do so.

8. Did they? Does Apple Podcasts not have any podcasts where people spread misinformation? Do Apple issue public apologies for anybody who does? Nope.

9. This is nonsense there were also other companies making exclusive deals for podcasts, Apple have also jumped on this bandwagon since.

10. You've already done this one?!

11. Have you imagined this? There is no proof of this at all.

12. *Gasp* The CEO cashed in a load of stock while the company made layoffs. That happened at Apple too.

13. Yeah nah he never said that. His comments were very clumsy though.

 

[picpicmac]

When a govement is elected it's not what "some people want" it's what usually most people want

Given governments typically are elected by a minority of the actual population they govern, the use of "most" in your statement is a poor choice of words.

 

[aloysiusfreeman]

When a govement is elected it's not what "some people want" it's what usually most people want

Boy, I think right now that logic is completely out the window

 

[spazzcat]

Visa runs just fine making billions off 2-3% fees no company needs 30%/15% of EVERY developers revenue to run a store

Visa processing hundreds of billions of transaction a year.

 

[spazzcat]

That's literally the job of a government body, to protect people with rules on content and items, like saying you need to be an adult to drink or smoke. Who do you think sets that law and enforces it?

It is not the goverments job to parent. We are not talking about illegal substances or substances that modify someone's mood/personality.

 

[dannys1]

When are Epic joining them? You'd think they'd be part of the starting core - Match is a curve ball.

 

[zahuh]

Visa processing hundreds of billions of transaction a year.

Umm so does Apple. Think about ALL paid apps, ALL in-app purchases, ALL paid apps. 2-3% is perfectly reasonable

 

[Naraxus]

Spotify.....ofc...Not entirely surprising these freeloading jackyls want more of Apple's work for free but here we are. Apple needs to kick Spotify the **** out of the App Store and block their access to Apple's api's in the EU.

Enough is enough.

 

[dannys1]

Visa runs just fine making billions off 2-3% fees no company needs 30%/15% of EVERY developers revenue to run a store

What do you think Target or Walmart should make?
What about online only stores selling hardware?


Why should Apple charge less than every other device marketplace, Microsoft, Playstation, Google Store, all charge the same - basically if you want to make an app for these established platforms where you could make a massive amount of money you need to pay the fee to get on them, or release your own highly successful platform.

 

[dannys1]

Umm so does Apple. Think about ALL paid apps, ALL in-app purchases, ALL paid apps. 2-3% is perfectly reasonable

Well no, Apple does roughly around 30 billion transactions a year on the app store.

Visa does 300 billion a year. That's roughly 10x more! Not to mention that Visa probably accounts as the payment method for most of the App Store transactions as well! They don't have to host apps on a server, they don't need terabytes of data, they don't need to create a massively popular hardware world known hardware platform, they don't need to advertise, they don't need to provide customer service or support, they don't need to have a full checking every app should work on the store.

They do one thing and one thing well but it's a tiny amount of effort compared to running a store and the card providers that use their services do all the customer service side.

 

[Hewhowalksbehindtherows]

Do the incompetent parents who buy their kids devices bear any responsibility for the adult sites their kids go out of their way to peruse?

 

[Zoboomafoo]

Let's not pretend this is about anything other than the App Store commission.

it does seem like this is a backdoor into that, but I imagine they're also trying to offload the risk of failing at this task. I can't imagine anyone wants to be the responsible party for failing to properly age ID a person and having any assortment of awful things happen as a result.