I see the regulators only regulated that first-party and third-party apps be treated equally, and didn’t specify how.

It’s a bummer (albeit an expected one) to see Apple reducing the burden for third-party publishers to collect personal data, rather than increasing the burden for themselves to collect it, thus overall raising the floor of user privacy. This is to say, when a regulator requests “everyone be treated equally to ensure competition” maybe they should also take into account how users are impacted and instead request something more nuanced like: if there are unequal standards, they must be equalized in a way that maximizes user benefit.

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Zagitta an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Regulations for user privacy shouldn't be conflated with regulations for market competition.

I also delight in this highlighting Apple's hypocrisy

	▲	drakythe an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Apple's hypocrisy is a longstanding issue with regard to their apps vs 3rd party apps. As I recall when the Green Bubbles first happened in messages someone pointed out that Apples own design guidelines specified a minimum contrast in colors or they would reject apps, and the green bubbles with white text did not meet that threshold at the time, and it stayed that way for quite a while. And for all I know the light themed version of the app still does (I have mine on permanent dark theme). https://medium.com/@krvoller/how-iphone-violates-apples-acce...
	▲	greggman65 23 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		In Japan (not sure in other countries), I went to the Apple Store. They said to complete the purchase, use the Apple Store app and scan this QR code on their device. I did and it immediately wanted me to share a ton of info with the main highlighed button "Share Now" and in small lettering below that "customize and share", where in you can see all the stuff they were going to take. Apple, That's Privacy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb9vJq4gQOw

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kmeisthax an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

There's two problems here:

1. The competition law people are not the data protection people. From the perspective of competition law, they only care that the playing field is leveled, they don't care if you equalize down or up.

2. The EU has fumbled the ball on GDPR by not enforcing it on the tech giants that it was intended to regulate[0], to the point where a tech company enforcing the intent of the law and not the letter of the law feels like singling out competitors.

[0] In particular, the Republic of Ireland is a rotten borough for Facebook, who has all their EU offices there.