Linked List: December 14, 2022

Wednesday, 14 December 2022

Jason Snell: ‘Answering the Burning Questions About Apple’s Reported App Store Plans’ ★

Jason Snell:

What’s the world going to look like after this happens?

You know. Round… blue. Pretty much the same as now. I really have a hard time seeing most members of the public turning off App Store protections and installing separate App Stores. Yes, it will happen, but the Play Store is still the place to be on Android, despite its long-time support for sideloading. In fact, Android developers have found that leaving the Play Store and going it alone is quite bad for business. Bet on the status quo.

Snell’s detailed take on this story is exemplary, and (I hate to say) much more cohesive than my own, primarily, I think, because he didn’t waste the time I did trying to parse the letter of the law in the E.U.’s Digital Markets Act. But the above encapsulates both how I think this will turn out in the end (not that big a deal), and my frustrations with Apple not self-regulating to open iOS on its own terms years ago.

I also think Snell’s summary explains the disdain for this effort within Apple itself. Mark Gurman reported:

Apple is applying a significant amount of resources to the companywide endeavor. It hasn’t been a popular initiative within Apple, considering that the company has spent years decrying the need for “sideloading” — the process of installing software without using the official App Store. [...] Some engineers working on the plan also see it as distraction from typical day-to-day development of future features, according to the people.

Maybe you think Tim Cook and Apple’s leadership care mostly or even only about the money generated by App Store commissions. I won’t argue with you about that here. But Apple’s engineers and system designers do not care about those commission rates. They just want to spend their time building great features people will actually use, that will make Apple’s platforms better. I think Apple is spending an inordinate amount of time and effort to comply with the E.U.’s DMA to build features and OS subsystems that will provide little to no practical benefits to actual users, and if anything, will likely be setbacks on the privacy front.

One More for the ‘Everything Is Going Just Fine at Twitter’ File ★

Ryan Mac, Mike Isaac, and Kate Conger, reporting yesterday for The New York Times:

To cut costs, Twitter has not paid rent for its San Francisco headquarters or any of its global offices for weeks, three people close to the company said. Twitter has also refused to pay a $197,725 bill for private charter flights made the week of Mr. Musk’s takeover, according to a copy of a lawsuit filed in New Hampshire District Court and obtained by The New York Times.

Twitter’s leaders have also discussed the consequences of denying severance payments to thousands of people who have been laid off since the takeover, two people familiar with the talks said. And Mr. Musk has threatened employees with lawsuits if they talk to the media and “act in a manner contrary to the company’s interest,” according to an internal email sent last Friday.

Seems more than a bit euphemistic to describe not paying rent or promised severence packages as mere cost-cutting measures. And it also seems like an inauspicious time to shake up the company’s legal department.

Platformer: Twitter Considering Making Personalized Ads and Location Sharing Mandatory ★

Zoë Schiffer and Casey Newton, reporting for Platformer:

And it’s not just personalized ads that Twitter plans to require. The company is also considering forcing users to share their location, let Twitter share their data with its business partners, and use contact data phone numbers used in two-factor authentication for ad targeting purposes. (In May, Twitter paid a $150 million fine for doing this without obtaining users consent.)

Personalized ads have become increasingly important to social networks since the launch last year of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature. [...] ATT represented a significant blow to Twitter’s business as well: less than 35 percent of users opted in, multiple sources said. About 23 percent of users opted out of sharing their location data as well.

Twitter’s solution: require users to opt in to personalized ads and share their location information, or risk losing access to the service. The company is developing plans to prompt existing users to opt in to personalized ads and will make it the default for new users, according to plans shared with Platformer.

This sounds awful, of course. But it’s so awful that it’s hard to see how it could be successful. And it doesn’t make a ton of sense: if only 23 percent of users opted out of location sharing, why bother trying to force them to? But, as we’ve seen, “doesn’t make a ton of sense” doesn’t mean Twitter isn’t going to try it under Elon Musk.

‘The Meadows Texts: A Plot to Overturn an American Election’ ★

Hunter Walker, reporting for TPM:

The messages you are about to read are the definitive, real-time record of a plot to overturn an American election.

TPM has obtained the 2,319 text messages that Mark Meadows, who was President Trump’s last White House chief of staff, turned over to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Today, we are publishing The Meadows Texts, a series based on an in-depth analysis of these extraordinary — and disturbing — communications.

The vast majority of Meadows’ texts described in this series are being made public for the very first time. They show the senior-most official in the Trump White House communicating with members of Congress, state-level politicians, and far-right activists as they work feverishly to overturn Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. The Meadows texts illustrate in moment-to-moment detail an authoritarian effort to undermine the will of the people and upend the American democratic system as we know it.

This trove of messages would be quite the scoop for any news organization, but it’s particularly remarkable for a small independent publication like TPM.