Month: March 2024

In 2022, the Biden administration was sued by two Attorneys General because it said the government had overstepped in opining on the moderation of social media platforms. A narrowed version of that case — after removing incidents from before the Biden administration existed — made its way to oral arguments before the Supreme Court of the United States today.

Mark Joseph Stern, Slate:

What happens when a lawless judge and a terrible appeals court embrace the dopiest First Amendment claim you’ve ever heard out of pure spite toward a Democratic president? That would be Murthy v. Missouri, a brain-meltingly dumb case that the Supreme Court was unfortunate enough to hear oral arguments in on Monday. Murthy poses a question so asinine that to ask it is to answer it: Can government officials encourage social media companies to moderate certain content that they deem harmful—most importantly, disinformation about COVID-19 in the middle of the pandemic?

Yes, of course they can […]

There is some kind of cosmic poetry at play landing this case in the spotlight less than a week after the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill which, if passed by the Senate and signed into law, would create the ability to force an application’s divestiture or ban it. The two circumstances look like funhouse mirror versions of each other. In the case of TikTok — the current target of the bill passed by the House — the problem lawmakers have is a “foreign adversary” seems to be leaning on the company — a situation the U.S. would like to rectify by giving it the power to lean on the company. In Murthy, a U.S. state is arguing the U.S. government should not be able to communicate with social media companies about policy at all because doing so is inherently coercive.

But the resolution of the two cases could be in seemingly opposing decisions. In Murthy, it seems likely the court will side with the Biden administration — see the analyses from Amy L. Howe and Mike Masnick. But in the TikTok bill, lawmakers are clamouring to give the government the power to suppress an app and its speech, and arguing that will be a tall order. I have been writing more about the latter as it seems it is suddenly locally relevant.

Even for a Mac user who prides themselves on refined taste in typography, one would be excused for missing the rather buried Typography palette in MacOS. It is available in any application that supports the Fonts selector and allows you to enable all manner of features, depending on what the specific font file permits. You can set which ligatures are supported, toggle specific alternate characters, and enable old-style numbers which flow more nicely in body text.

For a long time, this palette was a dry list of checkboxes and disclosure triangles. A user would need to first know this palette exists, and then know what each option did. But, in a recent version of MacOS, the palette has been updated with icons that more clearly display what will change. Depending on the font file in question, there are many different options available, and the numerically differentiated “stylistic sets” have never been clear. This is much nicer.

I have not seen this documented anywhere and I do not remember it launching with MacOS Sonoma. I am running MacOS 14.3.1 as of writing. I have not seen anything relevant in Howard Oakley’s documentation. Regardless of when it was updated, it is a very nice change that helps everyone understand typography a little better. Now, if only Pages defaulted to old-style figures when writing paragraph-level text.

Tim Berners-Lee:

Three and a half decades ago, when I invented the web, its trajectory was impossible to imagine. There was no roadmap to predict the course of its evolution, it was a captivating odyssey filled with unforeseen opportunities and challenges. Underlying its whole infrastructure was the intention to allow for collaboration, foster compassion and generate creativity — what I term the 3 C’s. It was to be a tool to empower humanity. The first decade of the web fulfilled that promise — the web was decentralised with a long-tail of content and options, it created small, more localised communities, provided individual empowerment and fostered huge value. Yet in the past decade, instead of embodying these values, the web has instead played a part in eroding them. […]

Ed Zitron, in a post provocatively titled “Are We Watching The Internet Die?”:

Right now, the internet is controlled by a few distinct platforms, each one intent on interrupting the exploratory and creative forces that made the web great. I believe that their goal is to intrude on our ability to browse the internet, to further obfuscate the source of information while paying the platforms for content that their users make for free. Their eventual goal, in my mind, is to remove as much interaction with the larger internet as possible, summarizing and regurgitating as much as they can so that they can control and monetize the results as much as possible.

There are some things in Zitron’s post which one could quibble over — too much handwaving around algorithms and generative A.I., for example, and Zitron conflates the web and the internet. But both these pieces are related and worth your time.

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During a White House press briefing on March 12, CBS News’ Ed O’Keefe asked press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre if photos of the president or other members of the White House are ever digitally altered. Jean-Pierre laughed and asked, in response, “why would we digitally alter photos? Are you comparing us to what’s going on in the U.K.?” O’Keefe said he was just doing due diligence. Jean-Pierre said, regarding digital photo manipulation, “that is not something that we do here”.

It is unclear to me whether Jean-Pierre was specifically declining the kind of multi-frame stacking apparent in the photo of the Princess of Wales and her children, or digital alterations more broadly. But it got me thinking — there is a strain of good-faith question to be asked here: are public bodies meeting the standards of editorial photography?

Well, first, it depends on which standards one refers to. There are many — the BBC has its own, as does NPR, the New York Times, and the National Press Photographers Association. Oddly, I could not find comparable documentation for the expectations of the official White House photographer. But it is the standards of the Associated Press which are the subject of the Princess of Wales photo debacle, and they are both representative and comprehensive:

Minor adjustments to photos are acceptable. These include cropping, dodging and burning, conversion into grayscale, elimination of dust on camera sensors and scratches on scanned negatives or scanned prints and normal toning and color adjustments. These should be limited to those minimally necessary for clear and accurate reproduction and that restore the authentic nature of the photograph. Changes in density, contrast, color and saturation levels that substantially alter the original scene are not acceptable. Backgrounds should not be digitally blurred or eliminated by burning down or by aggressive toning. The removal of “red eye” from photographs is not permissible.

If I can summarize these rules: changes should minimize the influence of the camera on how the scene was captured, and represent the scene as true to how it would be seen in real life. Oh, and photographers cannot remove red eye. Those are the standards I am expecting from the White House photographer to claim they do not digitally “alter” photos.

Happily, we can find out if those expectations are met even from some JPEG exports. Images edited using Adobe Lightroom carry metadata describing the edits made in surprising detail, and you can view that data using Photoshop or ExifTool. I opened a heavily manipulated photo of my own — the JPEG, not the original RAW file — and found in its metadata a record of colour and light correction, adjustment masks, perspective changes, and data about how much I healed and cloned. It was a lot and for clarification, that photo would not be acceptable by editorial standards.

To find out what was done by the White House, I downloaded the original-sized JPEG copies of many images from the Flickr accounts of the last three U.S. presidents. Then I examined the metadata. Even though O’Keefe’s question pertained specifically to the president, vice president, and other people in the White House, I broadened my search to include any photo. Surely all photos should meet editorial standards. I narrowed my attention to the current administration and the previous one because the Obama administration covered two terms, and that is a lot of pictures to go through.

We will start with an easy one. Remember that picture from the Osama Bin Laden raid? It is obviously manipulated and it says so right there in the description: “a classified document seen in this photograph has been obscured”. I think most people would believe that is a fair alteration.

But the image’s metadata reveals several additional spot exposure adjustments throughout the image. I am guessing some people in the back were probably under-exposed in the original.

This kind of exposure adjustment is acceptable by editorial standards — it is the digital version of dodging and burning. It is also pretty standard across administrations. A more stylized version was used during the Trump administration on pictures like this one to make some areas more indigo, and the Biden administration edited parts of this picture to make the lights bluer.

All administrations have turned some colour pictures greyscale, and have occasionally overdone it. The Trump administration increased the contrast and crushed the black levels in parts of this photo, and I wonder if that would be up to press standards.

There are lots more images across all three accounts which have gradient adjustments, vignettes, and other stylistic changes. These are all digital alterations to photos which are, at most, aesthetic choices that do not meaningfully change the scene or the way the image is interpreted.

But I also found images which had more than those simple adjustments. The Biden administration published a photo of a lone officer in the smoke of a nineteen-gun salute. Its metadata indicates the healing brush tool was used in a few places (line breaks added to fit better inline):

<crs:RetouchInfo>
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                spotType = heal
        </rdf:li>
        <rdf:li>
                centerX = 0.432986, 
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                spotType = heal
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                spotType = heal
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                spotType = heal
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</crs:RetouchInfo>

I am not sure exactly what was removed from the image, but there appears to be enough information here to indicate where the healing brush was used. Unfortunately, I cannot find any documentation about how to read these tags. (My guess is that these are percent coordinates and that 0,0 is the upper-left corner.) If all that was removed is lens or sensor crud, it would probably be acceptable. But if objects were removed, it would not meet editorial standards.

The Trump administration also has photos that have been retouched (line breaks added to fit better inline):

<crs:RetouchInfo>
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Even though there are lots more edits to this photo, it seems plausible they were made to remove lens or sensor dust made more obvious by the heavy use of the dehaze (+14), contrast (+50), and clarity (+2) adjustments.

For what it is worth, this does not seem like a scandal to me — at least, not unless it can be shown edits to White House photos were made to alter what was actually in the frame. But, to review: does the White House digitally alter images? Yes, at least a little. Does the White House conform to accepted editorial standards? I am not sure. Should it? In my view, yes, always — and so should the products of any government photographer. Has the White House done anything remotely close to that Princess of Wales image? Not that I have seen. Should I stop writing this as a series of rhetorical questions? Oh, hell, yes.

Kashmir Hill, New York Times:

But in other instances, something much sneakier has happened. Modern cars are internet-enabled, allowing access to services like navigation, roadside assistance and car apps that drivers can connect to their vehicles to locate them or unlock them remotely. In recent years, automakers, including G.M., Honda, Kia and Hyundai, have started offering optional features in their connected-car apps that rate people’s driving. Some drivers may not realize that, if they turn on these features, the car companies then give information about how they drive to data brokers like LexisNexis.

[…]

After LexisNexis and Verisk get data from consumers’ cars, they sell information about how people are driving to insurance companies. […]

If this subject feels familiar to you, you may have read Mozilla’s September report about mass data collection. At the time, I wrote that it was possible a car’s privacy policy is suggesting a greater amount of data collection than is actually occurring. (As an aside, how messed up is it that a car has a privacy policy?) This is something I felt compelled to note, as one of the most circulated disclaimers was Nissan’s permission to collect drivers’ “sexual activity” and “genetic information”, something Mozilla noted was possibly boilerplate stuff. There was lots else in Mozilla’s report I found credible, but this clause in particular read to me like a standard cover-your-ass contract thing — perhaps a template that a law office would keep on hand. While it is not impossible Nissan could, somehow, inadvertently collect this kind of information, it seems unlikely it is actually trying to do so. Why would Nissan want it in the first place?

What Hill’s investigation found is more plausible and understandable — not only because Hill has evidence, but also because everybody involved has a clear financial incentive. Insurance companies can use this information to fiddle with their rates or entirely decline to serve someone. Data brokers and automakers each get paid. Car dealers also get financial bonuses for signing people up — perhaps without their full knowledge.

There is also a mechanism for collecting this information: the car itself knows how you accelerate, brake, and how fast you drive. A pathway this obvious was not present in the Nissan example.

If drivers were fully aware of how their behaviour behind the wheel was disclosed and there were adequate privacy laws protecting its use solely for insurance providers, I think that would be a fair trade off. I would welcome my insurance provider virtually riding along; my one redeeming quality is that I drive like a saint. But this arrangement with data brokers under the mask of driver aides is skeezy in all the ways this same sort of thing appears everywhere. Data is valuable and there are way too many avenues to quietly monetize it.

Update: General Motors has apparently stopped sharing OnStar data with LexisNexis and Verisk.

Jason Snell, Macworld:

And now we can fully see Apple’s strategy of incremental compliance, brought into action: The company announced the minimum possible and then waited to be told what else it needed to do. Now it will begin modifying those policies, as required, in order to satisfy regulators while still doing the minimum required of it, presumably hoping that it won’t get nudged by the regulators all that often.

Expect to see the same kind of settling and negotiation everywhere, from third-party app distribution to the European Commission’s enforcement, over the span of years. It will all be messy — and that is the process working as intended.

Sarah Perez, in her Small Screens newsletter (Update: Perez lost her home and possessions in a fire. Thankfully, all occupants escaped. You can donate to the fundraiser at GoFundMe if you are able.):

What’s worse is that Apple doesn’t seem to think that IAP [in-app purchases] can stand up to the competition: app developers’ websites.

In reality, Apple’s IAP is the most natural and easiest way to buy things on the iPhone, whether that’s virtual goods or currencies in games, subscriptions to favorite apps, paid downloads, micropurchases, and more. You simply double-tap a button and look at your phone to make a transaction. It’s incredibly simple, fast, and relatively painless. (Except when you cave and purchase boosters to pass that tough level in Candy Crush, of course. That’s painful.)

IAP is arguably the best way to buy things on iPhone and gives Apple a huge competitive advantage. It could stand up to competition, but Apple is behaving as if it could not.

John Gruber:

Message from a DF reader:

I came across an app that’s getting away with directly linking to a website to start a subscription instead of IAP. It’s a straightforward violation of App Store rules in the US. If you look at reviews, a lot of people complain about fraudulent charges and not being able to cancel. But apparently Apple hasn’t stopped them yet.

[…]

I don’t think DealMachine is a scam. Stripe is as legit as it gets. But when you handle payments on your own, you handle refunds and subscription cancellations on your own too. Renewal reminders too. […]

A few things can be true:

  1. Apple’s in-app purchasing system is a particularly nice way to buy digital goods and manage subscriptions.

  2. Apple requires most developers to use in-app purchases for many types of transaction. It does not compete independently in the market of digital payment systems. This is probably in part because Apple wants a consistent experience in third-party apps. But its 15–30% commission cannot be ignored, and Apple’s mandate implies little faith in IAP’s niceness and familiarity to convince developers to use it.

  3. Easy cancellation of subscriptions can be the domain of consumer protection authorities if you want it to be. You can just pass a law. This sort of stuff is a political slam dunk across the spectrum, except for weird libertarians. It is possible to just require things to be better for everybody regardless of what they bought or how they bought it.

In November, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a revised version (PDF) of its case against Amazon with some notable redactions removed or adjusted. There is much to learn in this newer version which I have inexplicably ignored for four months. For example, paragraph 39 originally read (PDF):

Plaintiffs bring this lawsuit despite Amazon’s extensive efforts to impede the government’s investigation and hide information about its internal operations. Amazon executives systematically and intentionally [long redacted string] of the Signal messaging app. Amazon prejudicially [another long redacted string] despite Plaintiffs’ instructing Amazon not to do so.

In the revised copy, however, we get a little more colour (emphasis mine):

Plaintiffs bring this lawsuit despite Amazon’s extensive efforts to impede the government’s investigation and hide information about its internal operations. Amazon executives systematically and intentionally deleted internal communications using the “disappearing message” feature of the Signal messaging app. Amazon prejudicially destroyed more than two years’ worth of such communications — from June 2019 to at least early 2022 — despite Plaintiffs’ instructing Amazon not to do so.

Executives of technology companies facing FTC scrutiny sure seem to like deleting evidence — allegedly, or whatever.

Leah Nylen and Matt Day, Bloomberg:

Amazon’s founder and former Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos personally ordered executives to accept more ads, even ones the company had internally labeled as “defects,” indicating they weren’t relevant to user searches, according to the new version of the complaint.

The FTC alleges that Amazon’s increased use of ads boosts profits while it harms sellers and consumers, making it harder for shoppers to find products they are searching for. “We’d be crazy not to” increase the number of advertisements shown to shoppers,” the FTC quoted Amazon executives as saying.

This sort of thing has been a recurring complaint for years, but it is apparently working for Amazon, no matter how much it sucks for customers. Amazon has become a place I dread shopping. It is just about my last choice — a retailer where I know I will be paying too much, and dodging drop-shipped junk left and right.

Obviously, there are still places where Amazon will often have much lower prices than local retailers — northern Canada springs to mind — and even a small savings can add up for many people. Amazon is also a boon for people who have disabilities. So there is this huge customer base for whom Amazon is still the best option, and they must wade through the gunge.

Stacy Mitchell, the Atlantic:

In Amazon’s case, the FTC lawsuit suggests that the company’s financial disclosures effectively conceal a major source of profits: its third-party marketplace, which connects buyers with outside sellers. Third-party transactions represent about 60 percent of Amazon’s sales volume. The company acts as a middleman, matching vendors with shoppers and providing logistics to get the product from one to the other. The FTC alleges that, within this third-party market, Amazon imposes exorbitant fees on the sellers who rely on its site to reach customers, fees well in excess of what it costs Amazon to provide those services, leading to big profits. How big? That’s redacted.

[…]

That leaves the public, as well as journalists, other businesses, and policy makers, with no way to evaluate the lawsuit’s pivotal claim. (The case is not expected to go to trial until 2026, if not later.) […]

Even though the FTC has settled numerous smaller cases, it is the big ones — Amazon, Facebook, and likely Apple soon — which are notable both for how ambitious they are and how sluggish progress is made. One might argue the FTC should scale its cases and pick its battles more carefully, but that would effectively become a license for a corporation to become so sprawling and complicated it defies investigation. The U.S. is, unfortunately, one of two places where such a massive investigation is possible, and the other one already tried.

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Dan Moren, Six Colors:

That’s where optics comes into play. Apple’s not publishing a 1500-word piece about why it disagrees with the EC’s ruling in order to convince the EC to change its mind. Presumably it made all of these arguments in its discussions with the regulator, and if it did not, then its army of lawyers is not doing its job.

No, this piece is for the public and the press (who will relay said arguments to the broad swath of the public that hasn’t consumed them firsthand). It’s there to point out all the great things that Apple does and cast it as the one being targeted unfairly by Europe. Apple’s just here making the world a better place! Fundamentally, Apple wants you to be party to its point of view here: that it’s the one being taken advantage of.

But that argument falls a bit flat when you boil the argument down to its essence.

It is still bizarre to read that press release even keeping in mind a presumed audience of journalists who might neutrally relay a few quotes and link to it. Surely someone at Apple knew what they were doing when they approved this thing; I do not run communications at a multitrillion-dollar company so this strategy is clearly lost on me.

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Kalhan Rosenblatt and Kyle Stewart, NBC News:

A bill that would force TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance to divest the popular social media company passed a crucial vote Thursday, as the company sought to rally users to its defense with a call to action that flooded some congressional offices with phone calls.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted unanimously to pass the bill.

On Thursday, TikTok sent push notifications to some of its users to encourage them to call their representatives and ask them to vote against the bill. It displayed text that read “Stop a TikTok shutdown” in big, white letters before urging users to “speak up now.”

Apparently, representatives did not much appreciate having a bunch of people decades younger calling their offices and expressing their opinion on this legislation, in a manner not dissimilar from campaigns by Airbnb and Uber.

The introduction of this legislation makes no subtle statements in specifically targeting ByteDance and TikTok, and the platform’s data collection practices and opaque algorithmic feed. However, the bill (PDF) itself appears to apply more broadly to large internet companies — excluding travel and product review websites, for some reason — operated by a “foreign adversary country”.1

Even so, this proposal has many of the same problems as the last time I wrote about a TikTok ban about a year ago. Instead of attempting to protect users’ private data generally, it is trying to wall off select countries and, therefore, is subject to the same caveats as that recent Executive Order. Also, U.S. lawmakers love to paint TikTok’s recommendation engine as some kind of Chinese mind control experiment, but this should not be interpreted as an objection to political influence in social media feeds more generally. After all, U.S. social media companies have eagerly adopted customized feeds worldwide, driven by opaque American systems. Obviously, the U.S. is happier projecting its own power instead of China, but it would be a mistake to assume lawmakers are outraged by the idea of foreign influence as a concept.

During tonight’s State of the Union address, U.S. President Joe Biden said it was a priority to “pass bipartisan privacy legislation to protect our children online”. It is unclear what this is referencing.


  1. Unfortunately, there is not a cool forced acronym in the title:

    This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act’’.

    Or “PAFACA” for short, I suppose. ↥︎

Jason Koebler, 404 Media:

The New York Times has filed a series of copyright takedown requests against Wordle clones and variations in which it asserts not just ownership over the Wordle name but over the broad concepts and mechanics of the word game, which includes its “5×6 grid” and “green tiles to indicate correct guesses.”

The Times’ two most recent ideas for games were blatantly ripped from “Only Connect” but, sure, some random people on GitHub are irrevocably diluting Wordle’s reputation. It is shaping up to be a big week for bullies.

Big news out of Brussels:

The European Commission has fined Apple over €1.8 billion for abusing its dominant position on the market for the distribution of music streaming apps to iPhone and iPad users (‘iOS users’) through its App Store. In particular, the Commission found that Apple applied restrictions on app developers preventing them from informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside of the app (‘anti-steering provisions’). This is illegal under EU antitrust rules.

Margrethe Vestager, executive vice president of the European Commission, in the transcript of a speech announcing the Commission’s findings and penalty:

Let me give you three examples of Apple’s anti-steering obligations:

  • First, music streaming developers were not allowed to inform their users, inside their own apps, of cheaper prices for the same subscription on the internet.

  • Second, they were also not allowed to include links in their apps to lead consumers to their websites and pay lower prices there.

  • And third, they were also not allowed to contact their own newly acquired users, for instance by email, to inform them about pricing options after they set up an account.

These anti-steering rules have been among the most aggressively policed of all the App Store policies. They have snared apps for violations like having a link buried in some documentation, requiring even large developers to create special pages — perhaps because Apple saw even small transgressions as opening the door to loopholes. Better be as tedious and cautious as possible.

Nevertheless, a few years ago, the Commission started looking into complaints that streaming music services — specifically — were disadvantaged by these policies. One could argue its interest in this specific category is because it is one area where European developers have some clout: in addition to Spotify, Deezer and SoundCloud are also European products. That is not a criticism: it should be unsurprising for European regulators to investigate an area where they have the grounds to do so. Alas, this is a relatively narrow investigation ahead of the more comprehensive enforcement of the Digital Markets Act, so treat this as a preview of what is to come for non-compliant companies.

The Commission has illustrated this in its press release with an image that features the icons of — among other apps — Beats Music, which Apple acquired in 2014 and turned into Apple Music, and Rdio, which was shut down in 2015.

Aside from the curious infographic, the Commission released this decision without much supporting documentation, as usual. It promises more information is to come after it removes confidential details. It is kind of an awkward statement if you are used to reading legal opinions made by regulatory bodies elsewhere, many of which post the opinion is alongside the decision so it is possible to work through the reasoning. Here, you get a press release and a speech — that is all.

Apple’s response to this decision is barely restrained and looks, frankly, terrible for one of the world’s largest and most visible corporations. There is no friendly soft-touch language here, nor is it a zesty spare statement. This is a press release seasoned with piss and vinegar:

The primary advocate for this decision — and the biggest beneficiary — is Spotify, a company based in Stockholm, Sweden. Spotify has the largest music streaming app in the world, and has met with the European Commission more than 65 times during this investigation.

[…]

Despite that success, and the App Store’s role in making it possible, Spotify pays Apple nothing. That’s because Spotify — like many developers on the App Store — made a choice. Instead of selling subscriptions in their app, they sell them on their website. And Apple doesn’t collect a commission on those purchases.

[…]

When it comes to doing business, not everyone’s going to agree on the best deal. But it sure is hard to beat free.

Strictly speaking — and we all know how much Apple likes that — Spotify pays more than “nothing” to distribute its app on iOS because a developer membership is not free.

But — point taken. Apple is making its familiar claim that iOS software avoids its in-app purchase model is basically freeloading, but it is very happy for any developer’s success. Happy, happy, happy. Real fuckin’ happy. Left unsaid is how much of this infrastructure — hosting, updates, developer tooling, and so on — is required by Apple’s policies to be used by third-party developers. It has the same condescending vibe as the letter sent to Basecamp in 2020 amidst the Hey app fiasco. At the time, the App Review Board wrote “[t]hese apps do not offer in-app purchase — and, consequently, have not contributed any revenue to the App Store over the last eight years”, as though it is some kind of graceful obligation for Apple to support applications that do not inflate its own services income.

Nevertheless, Apple is standing firm. One might think it would reconsider its pugilism after facing this €1.8 billion penalty, investigations on five continents specifically regarding its payment policies, new laws written to address them, and flagging developer relations — but no. It wants to fight and it does not seem to care how that looks.

Today, Spotify has a 56 percent share of Europe’s music streaming market — more than double their closest competitor’s — […]

Apple does not state Spotify’s closest European competitor but, according to an earlier media statement, it is Amazon Music, followed Apple Music. This is a complicated comparison: Spotify has a free tier, and Amazon bundles a version of its service with a Prime membership. Apple Music’s free tier is a radio-only service.

On that basis, it does seem odd from this side of the Atlantic if the Commission concluded Apple’s in-app payment policies were responsible for increased prices if the leading service is available free. But that is not what the Commission actually found. It specifically says the longtime policies “preventing [apps] from informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside of the app” are illegal, especially when combined with Apple’s first-party advantages. One effect among many could be higher prices paid by consumers. In the cases of Deezer and SoundCloud, for example, that is true: both apps charge more for in-app purchased subscriptions, compared to those purchased from the web, to cover Apple’s commission. But that is only one factor.

Carrying on:

[…] and pays Apple nothing for the services that have helped make them one of the most recognizable brands in the world. A large part of their success is due to the App Store, along with all the tools and technology that Spotify uses to build, update, and share their app with Apple users around the world.

This model has certainly played a role in Apple’s own success, according to an Apple-funded study (PDF): “Apple benefits as well, when the ecosystem it established expands and grows, either directly through App Store commissions or indirectly as the value users get from their iPhones increases”. Apple seems fixated on the idea that many apps of this type have their own infrastructure and, therefore, have little reason to get on board with Apple’s policies other than to the extent required. Having a universal software marketplace is probably very nice, but having each Spotify bug fix vetted by App Review probably provides less value than Apple wants to believe.

Like many companies, Spotify uses emails, social media, text messages, web ads, and many other ways to reach potential customers. Under the App Store’s reader rule, Spotify can also include a link in their app to a webpage where users can create or manage an account.

We introduced the reader rule years ago in response to feedback from developers like Spotify. And a lot of reader apps use that option to link users to a webpage — from e-readers to video streaming services. Spotify could too — but they’ve chosen not to.

About that second paragraph:

  • This change was not made because of developer requests. It was agreed to as part of a settlement with authorities in Japan in September 2021.

    Meanwhile, the European Commission says it began investigating Apple in June 2020, and informed the company of its concerns in April 2021, then narrowing them last year. I mention this in case there was any doubt this policy change was due to regulatory pressure.

  • This rule change may have been “introduced” in September 2021, but it was not implemented until the end of March 2022. It has been in effect for less than two years — hardly the “years ago” timeframe Apple says.

  • For clarification, external account management links are subject to strict rules and Apple approval. Remember how Deezer and SoundCloud offer in-app purchases? Apple’s policies say that means they cannot offer an account management link in their apps.

    This worldwide policy is specific to “reader” apps and is different from region-specific external purchase capabilities for non-“reader” apps. It only permits a single external link — one specific URL — which is only capable of creating and managing accounts, not individually purchased items. Still it is weird how Spotify does not take advantage of this permission.

  • Spotify, a “reader” app, nevertheless attempted to ship app updates which included a way to get an email with information about buying audiobooks. These updates were rejected because Spotify is only able to email customers in ways that do not circumvent in-app purchases for specific items.

You can quibble with Spotify’s attempts to work around in-app purchase rules — it is obviously trying to challenge them in a very public way — but it is Apple which has such restrictive policies around external links, down to how they may be described. It is a by-the-letter reading to be as strict as possible, lest any loopholes be exploited. This inflexibility would surely be explained by Apple as its “level playing field”, but we all know that is not entirely true.

Instead, Spotify wants to bend the rules in their favor by embedding subscription prices in their app without using the App Store’s In-App Purchase system. They want to use Apple’s tools and technologies, distribute on the App Store, and benefit from the trust we’ve built with users — and to pay Apple nothing for it.

It is not entirely clear Spotify actually wants to do any of these things; it is more honest to say it has to do them if it wants to have an iPhone app. Spotify has routinely disputed various iOS policies only to turn around and reject Apple’s solutions. Spotify complained that users could not play music natively through the HomePod, but has not taken advantage of third-party music app support on the device added in 2020. Instead, it was Apple’s Siri improvements last year that brought Spotify to the HomePod, albeit in an opaque way.

If we accept Apple’s premise, however, it remains a mystery why Apple applies its platform monetization policy to iOS and the related operating systems it has spawned, but not to MacOS. By what criteria, other than Apple’s policy choices, are Mac developers able to sell digital goods however they want — unless they use the Mac App Store — but iOS developers must ask Apple’s permission to include a link to an external payment flow? And that is the conceded, enhanced freedom version of this policy.

There is little logic to the iOS in-app purchase rules, which do not apply equally to physical goods, reader apps, or even some à la carte digital goods. Nobody has reason to believe this façade any longer.

Apple obviously believes the Mac is a different product altogether with different policies, and that is great. The relatively minor restrictions it has imposed still permit a level of user control unimaginable on iOS, and Apple does not seem to have an appetite to further lock it down to iOS levels. But the differences are a matter of policy, not technology.

Apple justifies its commission saying it “reflects the value Apple provides developers through ongoing investments in the tools, technologies, and services”. That is a new standard which apparently applies only to its iOS-derived platforms, compared to the way it invested in tools for Mac development. Indeed, Apple used to charge more for developer memberships when third-party software was only for the Mac, but even the top-of-the-line $3,500 Premier membership was probably not 30% of most developers’ revenue. Apple also charged for new versions of Mac OS X at this time. Now, it distributes all that for free; developers pay a small annual fee, and a more substantial rate to use the only purchasing mechanism they can use for most app types in most parts of the world.

For whatever reason — philosophical or financial — Apple’s non-Mac platforms are restricted and it will defend that stance until it is unable to do so. And, no matter how bad that looks, I kind of get it. I believe there could be a place for a selective and monitored software distribution system, where some authority figure has attested to the safety and authenticity of an app. That is not so different conceptually from how Apple’s notarization policies will be working in Europe.

I oscillate between appreciating and detesting an app store model, even if the App Store is a mess. But even when I am in a better mood, however, it seems crystal clear that such a system would be far better if it were not controlled by the platform owner. The conflict of interest is simply too great. It would be better if some arm’s-length party, perhaps spiritually similar to Meta’s Oversight Board, would control software and developer policies. I doubt that would fix every complaint with the App Store and App Review process but I bet it would have been a good start.

The consequences of being so pugnacious for over fifteen years of the App Store model has, I think, robbed Apple of the chance to set things right. Regulators around the world are setting new inconsistent standards based on fights between large corporations and gigantic ones, with developers of different sizes lobbying for their own wish lists. Individual people have no such influence, but all of these corporations likely believe they are doing what is right and best for their users.

As the saying goes, pressure makes diamonds, and Apple’s policies are being tested. I hope it can get this right, yet press releases like this one gives me little reason to believe in positive results from Apple’s forcibly loosened grip on its most popular platform. And with the Digital Markets Act now in effect, those stakes are high. I never imagined Apple would be thrilled for the rules of its platform to be upended by courts and lawmakers nor excited by a penalty in the billions, but it sure seems like it would be better for everybody if Apple embraced reality.

I only drop into “Decoder” every now and again, but this recent episode is fantastic. It is a reversal of the usual format — instead of Nilay Patel interviewing an executive, guest host Hank Green chats with Patel about the Verge’s business and publishing on the web. It seems a little silly for me to recommend an episode from a very popular podcast, but I do think this one is worth checking out.

Jason Koebler, 404 Media:

We have recently been getting bombarded with Instagram Reels of influencers explaining how they make five figures a month by using AI to create tons of viral TikTok pages using stolen celebrity clips juxtaposed next to Minecraft gameplay footage. This strategy, the influencers say, allows them to passively make $10,000 a month by flooding social media platforms with stolen and low-effort clips while working from private helicopters, the beach, the ski slope, a park, etc.

What I found was a complex ecosystem of content parasitism, with thousands of people using a variety of AI tools to make low-quality spammy videos that recycle Reddit AMAs, weird “Would You Rather” games, AI-narrated “scary ocean” clips, ChatGPT-generated fun facts, slideshows of tweets, clips lifted from celebrities, YouTubers, and podcasts.

Abbie Richards, in a video for Media Matters co-presented with “Joe Rogan”:

So that’s how you make a conspiracy theory video, but the more important question is “why?”

Remember when I said that the videos need to be over sixty seconds long? The reason is because art really requires that people be present in the moment and pause and really listen to — I’m kidding, the reason is money.

In case you needed another reason to watch it, this video contains the sentence “I don’t feel like ‘spooky sea shanty’ is the right vibe for Play-Doh conspiracy theory”.

Kate Wagner wrote, for Road & Track, a exploration of Formula 1 from the perspective of a cycling journalist who does not have a driving license, and it is wonderful:

One thing that strikes me about Formula 1 is its unexpected resemblance to fencing — it is an absolutely poised and disciplined affair. Recently, for my 30th birthday, I took up medieval sword fighting — historical European martial arts, they call it. For the first two weeks we worked on standing in a good medieval stance, always prepared to move. Sword fighting is learned through what are called set plays, specific motions of sword and body combined into one fluid action. But when you watch people who are really good at sword fighting, an ornate, flowing dance emerges from these seemingly disparate parts. Formula 1 is like that. When the cars line up on the grid, everything is totally neat and rehearsed, completely in its place. Tires, people, staff, even journalists. The teams are meted out in perfect sections — they don’t call it the grid for nothing. But when time comes for the sprint to begin, team members move in perfect coordination, synchronized. They have stances and footwork. This is most true of the pit crew and the astonishing speed at which they travel through space as one organism, totally practiced in set plays of their own. This was beautiful to watch in real life. The unfurling of the apparatus of the setup, groups peeling back one by one until there are only these alien cars, these technological marvels kissing the ground. Before the heartbeat, they respirated.

I have followed Formula 1 with varying levels of dedication for about twenty years, and this is one of the best things I have ever read on the subject. It is a fascinating contradiction to many of the values I hold dear: it is an environmentally devastating product of unimaginable wealth, positioned with a level of glamour I cannot see in myself. But it is, as perfectly captured by Wagner, a precise orchestra of mechanical, digital, and human control.

You may notice I am linking to the Internet Archive’s copy instead of Road & Track directly. That is because this article — published just three days ago — has been removed for unknown reasons.

Greg Storey:

Obviously, someone in a position of power didn’t like Kate’s perspective. That’s the only conclusion I can think of as to why the article was pulled within 48 hours of publication. Even Kate’s author profile page on Road & Track has gone missing. Somebody just wants all of this, Kate included, to go away.

I cannot understand why anyone at Road & Track would believe this would be a good idea. I only learned of this article because it was deleted and now I am mostly offended the magazine would dare remove such an exquisite piece of writing.

Update: Daniel Pund, editor-in-chief of Road & Track, told Patrick Redford of Defector the article was deleted because Pund “felt it was the wrong story for our publication”. It is hard to know what to make of that — given the widespread praise, it sure seems like something any magazine would be proud to publish.

Update: More commentary from Rusty Foster at Today in Tabs.

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