EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms
There's several very good provisions in this legislation (3rd party payment processors, non-preferential treatment for 1st party apps), there are several that have a mix of upsides and downsides (sideloading is one--I personally like knowing that Facebook can't ask people to sideload some privacy destroying crap on iOS).Then there's:- Allow developers to integrate their apps and digital services directly with those belonging to a gatekeeper. This includes making messaging, voice-calling, and video-calling services interoperable with third-party services upon request.- Give developers access to any hardware feature, such as "near-field communication technology, secure elements and processors, authentication mechanisms, and the software used to control those technologies."Apps will use near-field communication technology and other mechanisms to track us (consider how many device related APIs have restrictions in web browsers for just this reason), and I think it's credible that the interoperability requirements are going to be used to smash end-to-end encrypted messaging. You can have a decentralized end to end encrypted protocol. Can you retrofit every existing messaging service to use it in the short-term? Probably not.As an end user, the things that give developers maximum freedom are not necessarily the things that let me use my device with maximum freedom. I support people who want a FOSS device that is in no way locked down. I just don't want that, because I don't want to play systems administrator for an always on tracker in my pocket.