S
If you are in the UK, I'd like to beg 5-10 minutes of your time to file comment with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) about the proposed (toothless) "Interoperability Commitments" from Apple and Google.
These are dramatically weaker guidelines than even the EU's DMA, and Apple (particularly) has been utterly contemptuous there, ducking compliance for more than a year. Why is the UK rewarding scofflaw behaviour over these predatory practices?
/cc @pluralistic
@pluralistic At root, this is about power structures. Apple and Google are now complicit in the authoritarian system, roped into it through incremental self-deceptions. A lust for illegitimate power led to state capture to avoid regulation. From there the logic of user abuse is self-fulfilling.
As Samuel Bagg points out, this is *corruption*;
I quote @pluralistic here because his work has helped us all understand how technically and ethically threadbare the app store justifications are. Now that they're silent in the face of widespread, above-the-fold abuse of women and girls, the jig is well and truly up. Tim and Sundar's next arguments before any self-respecting regulator are forfeit.
Apple and Google's quisling era unearths the lies they've told to justify monopoly power over software for the most consequential computing platforms of our lives. If the app stores can't move against Musk/Grok, they should not be trusted with any of the powers they demand:
Apple and Google's app stores stand for nothing and will stand up to no-one. Good riddance.
Infrequently Noted (infrequently.org)
The Verge is actually doing it. Actually connecting the dots between the fascistic tendencies of app stores with the profit motives of their proprietors.
FINALLY.
The open web has been roadkill in the profit games the mobile duopoly has set up, muscled out of view with policies and choices that were designed to leave no fingerprints. But we can all see it clearly now:
Apple and Google have left X in their app stores, despite its AI-generated images that violate their own rules. There are no principles left in Silicon Valley.
The Verge (www.theverge.com)
All I can add [1] to @pluralistic's latest is that Apple are the primary force keeping us from having powerful, interoperable apps on phones through suppression of the web. It's not an accident, and @owa has the receipts [2]:
[1]: https://infrequently.org/2025/09/apples-antitrust-playbook/
[2]: https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apples-browser-engine-ban-persists-even-under-the-dma/
