Oh my lord. Gruber is really doubling down on his defence of Facebook using the argument of "how dare you tell me I have to stop robbing banks? How else can I preserve these profits?". Along with a sprinkle of not understanding that the DMS only applies to large dominant companies.
Did anyone write a good rebuttal to this yet? I need something to clean the bad taste from my mouth.
@fiend_unpleasant I wish. Unfortunately he's a "blogger or "journalist" (I put it in quotes because there isn't much writing, 90% of his posts are generally quotes from various blogs), and he's practically a part of the Apple marketing department.
@loke Completely unsurprising, honestly. Since it became clear that Facebook/Meta are a key bit of the US military spy apparatus, he's gotten behind their "targeting". He's a pretty hardcore militarist right-wing Democratic Party shill, after all.
@tfb I'm not sure I need to attribute his actions to him running the errands of the government. Regardless of reasons, it's clear that he's set out on a crusade against big bad EU. This is exactly in line with the unusually frank statements from Apple.
I think he's supporting Facebook here based on the My enemy's enemy is my friend idea.
He really needs to emphasise how the EU is being bad, to the point of completely ignoring facts that he is clearly aware of (because it was pointed out by that fantastic article by @ianbetteridge ) just because it helps the fiction that the EU is doing this to support European businesses.
@loke@ianbetteridge The idea that data protection is something people should have a right to have, for free, is certainly at odds with his belief that Apple is selling a right to privacy with their products (and that this is a good thing)
@loke@ianbetteridge I think it's both that only Apple can be trusted, but also that if something is going to prevent a company from making profit, it should be another profit-making company
@ianbetteridge@tfb@loke Sharp post and in the comments you get at something that has genuinely made me sad: the correlation between the reactionary shift and the upstart of Dithering. I like John and Ben personally, their rightward drift over the past four years though just bums me out.
@tantramar@ianbetteridge@tfb@loke I’m not a regular Talk Show listener but did listen to an episode with @anildash a while back and I could see glimmers of the old Daring Fireball.
@jimray@tantramar@ianbetteridge@tfb@loke yeah I think John is at least still willing to engage honestly with people who favor regulation, but certainly that cohort is surrounded by VC-style extremism around demonizing laws.
He did wrote a post in reply now. His main point appears to be that giving a user the choice is sufficient.
What of Facebook released a paid version of their application on the store and said you have to use that one for no tracking and made it mandatory on the free version? Would Apple remove the need for the tracking permission screen? Would that be considered OK for Apple users? I doubt that.
The most interesting thing is that that's exactly in line with what the EU is saying. It's just that the EU doesn't consider pay or consent as being an actual user choice.
Is paying 1 million Euro a valid user choice? I don't think he'd agree with that. What about 10000? 100? 10? Where is the line between valid user consent and a forced one?
And to people who can afford, there is the extra hassle of going through the payment process. Facebook could put the amount at literally 0 Euro (but still have the payment process) and people would still not do it, because it's easier to click yes to make the dialog box go away. It's not about the money, but introducing enough friction to get them to do what they want.
The way I think about it (and I think my understanding of the law is correct) is that tracking is illegal (no matter how much money the poor company can make from it) unless the user has explicitly said it's OK, and the decision can't be forced. In that light, it should be obvious that the payment option can't be acceptable.
That dude (Hobbes) was raised and lived in a world of continuous civil war and so believed that a strong monarch who imposes rules on everyone is the best thing ever, because at least it's rules. Also, everything where you have the twinkle of a choice is Freedom.
Telling that John has similar ideas about Freedom. Does he also believe himself being surrounded by a world in constant civil war?
@loke@anildash@jimray@tantramar@tfb On your point about tracking legality, like most legal things, "it's complicated" :) And we (both John and I) are really conflating multiple things. The ultimate and important point is that, for gatekeepers in the DMA, things which would otherwise be legal can't be done. That's not connected directly to how data is used directly, but there are ways that data can be used legally if you're not a gatekeeper which might be illegal if you are one.
I think many European observers are sometimes confused by all this (including myself, but my excuse is that I moved overseas many years ago), so it's not surprising that people outside Europe has problem with all of this.
@loke@anildash@jimray@tantramar@tfb It's confusing, definitely! And it's also quite different to the US – even ordinary antitrust law works differently (there's much more focus on functioning markets in the EU, and less focus on direct consumer harm, which TOTALLY fries US brains raised on Borkian antitrust).
@ianbetteridge@loke@anildash@jimray@tantramar@tfb This – and many other differences – is something most US commenters don't understand. This includes Mike Masnick, John Gruber and the lot. It's frustrating to engage with them, but somewhat understandable that they don't know.
More critically however, it seems that an increasing number of European commenters and journalists don't know those differences. They just tout the outrage of the US VCs. :(
@ianbetteridge His posts supportive of suitcase company exec screaming at employees, his support of Bootcamp during it's whole drama, his not exactly saying the quiet part out loud with Apple and unionisation.
There very much is a pretty strong right-leaning slant through is writing, especially through the lense of "how dare you tell CEOs what to do".
@ianbetteridge@tfb@loke@anildash I disagree with your criticism of @gruber. Facebook is offering an option to ‘being targeted’. Oh, and another option is to not use Facebook. Wouldn’t that allow another social media platform to gather users?
@DaveRyder@ianbetteridge@tfb@anildash@gruber It certainly would, and if that new platform grows larger than a specific size, it too would become a gatekeeper and thus being regulated under the DMA.
@loke@ianbetteridge I don't think it's running errands of the government, rather he's a very enthusiastic supporter of the Clinton-Biden right wing of the US Democratic Party, and has been pretty vocally for decades. They're on a "fuck the EU" crusade these days, so he's on board. More a weather-vane, less an errand boy.
But ever since the AT&T scandal where they were caught spying on traffic through a major network interchange on behalf of the US government, he's very consistently expressed the abhorrent opinion that it's a bad thing for the US to spy on US citizens, but perfectly normal to spy on the rest of the world.
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