app stores – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Brazil Bans ExTwitter In Battle With Musk, Takes VPNs & Users Down With It

from the everything-about-this-story-is-terrible dept

In the battle between Elon Musk and Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the biggest losers are Brazilians. They are now at risk of being stripped of VPNs while facing massive fines if they somehow get around a countrywide ban on ExTwitter.

Yesterday, I wrote about the standoff between Elon Musk and Brazil, and how neither side comes out of it looking very good. Where it was left was that Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes was (1) freezing Starlink assets and (2) threatening to ban ExTwitter entirely from the country.

As we noted, there was nothing particularly new about the second point. Brazil has done this in the past with WhatsApp and Telegram. The freezing of Starlink’s assets already appeared to be an overreach and suggested how far Moraes would be willing to go in this posturing battle.

Apparently, he was willing to go even further, to the point of potentially blocking VPNs entirely.

On Friday, it was announced that ExTwitter would indeed be banned across Brazil. But what may be most interesting (or, rather, scary) is the method. First, ISPs and app stores have been ordered to block access to the app within five days. That’s not all that new, even if it is generally problematic. Countries simply should not be banning apps on the open internet.

But then it gets worse. The original ruling said that app stores are also told they need to ban VPNs. Here’s a translation of the order.

(2.1) APPLE and GOOGLE in Brazil to insert technological obstacles capable of making it impossible for users of the IOS (APPLE) and ANDROID (GOOGLE) systems to use the “X” application and remove the “X” application from the APPLE STORE and GOOGLE PLAY STORE stores and, similarly, in relation to applications that enable the use of VPN (‘virtual private network’), such as, for example: Proton VPN, Express VPN, NordVPN, Surfshark, TOTALVPN, Atlas VPN, Bitdefender VPN;

(2.2) That manage backbone access services in Brazil, so that they insert technological obstacles capable of making it impossible for users of the “X” application to use it;

(2.3) Internet service providers, represented by their Presidents, such as ALGAR TELECOM, OI, SKY, LIVE TIM, VIVO, CLARO, NET VIRTUA, GVT, etc…, to insert technological obstacles capable of making the use of the “X” application unfeasible; and

(2.4) Those who manage personal mobile service and switched fixed telephone service, to insert technological obstacles capable of making the use of the “X” application unfeasible;

I initially thought that first section couldn’t possibly mean that app stores also had to ban VPNs. But that’s what it pretty clearly says and what multiple Brazilian reports claim.

The end result is taking away VPNs from millions of Brazilians, which is an awful lot of collateral damage just because Elon Musk is a jackass. VPNs have many legitimate uses other than accessing ExTwitter after a ban in Brazil.

A few hours after the decision, Moraes seemed to walk back that section of the ruling, though perhaps only temporarily. In a second short ruling, he “suspended the execution” of that item “until there is a statement from the parties in the proceedings” in order to “avoid any unnecessary and reversible inconvenience to third-party companies.”

In other words, after Moraes hears from “the parties in the proceedings,” the VPN ban could come back. It’s unclear if that’s just ExTwitter, or if Apple/Google are included, given they were the ones directed to block VPNs.

Then, the original order (in a part that has not been rescinded) also threatens to fine anyone who is able to get around the block nearly $9,000 dollars per day:

(3) THE APPLICATION OF A DAILY FINE of R$50,000.00 (fifty thousand reais) to individuals and legal entities that engage in conduct involving the use of technological subterfuges to continue communications carried out by “X”, such as the use of VPN (‘virtual private network’), without prejudice to other civil and criminal sanctions, as provided by law.

When Brazil tried banning Telegram recently, this element was in there too, with the fines being twice as high. Though apparently it was never used.

Either way, this got a lot of attention very quickly. The NY Times notes that civil society folks are spooked by the VPN demands:

“This is the first time they asked for VPN blocking. This is something unprecedented,” Paula Bernardi, a Brazil-based policy adviser at the Internet Society, which pushes for an open internet. She said the Brazilian government could potentially now ask VPN providers to reveal who used their services to access X. “That’s going to be a very heated debate,” she said.

I was already concerned about the efforts by Moraes here, even if Elon is being terrible in response. But it’s fucking crazy that he ordered Google and Apple to ban VPNs entirely and then also threatened huge fines to users of VPNs (even if there’s a low likelihood of it being enforced).

One other oddity in all this is that Apple apparently started banning VPNs from its iOS App Store last week, perhaps knowing this order was coming. But that only raises even more questions. Did Apple know the details of this “unprecedented” order a week early? Why would it agree to ban VPNs?

As I said on today’s Ctrl-Alt-Speech, neither side looks good here. Now that it’s turned into a kind of schoolyard fight between Moraes and Musk where each one seems to be going further and further to piss off the other, it’s getting worse and worse for the public. Indeed, I’ve seen some speculation that Moraes doesn’t even have the authority to issue such a widespread ban on VPNs, but no one seems to be stopping him either way.

This is no longer about policy or law. It’s just become about egos. And because of that, everyone loses*.

* With the possible exception of Bluesky, which has had a flood of users from Brazil in the past two days. I will remind people that I am on the board of Bluesky, but this is not how I want Bluesky to gain new users. Bluesky itself has many advantages, including that it would be much more difficult to “ban” the service like this given its decentralized nature. But seeing pissing matches between Musk and Brazil seems like an unfortunate way for it to get more attention.

Filed Under: alexandre de moraes, app stores, ban, brazil, countrywide block, elon musk, vpns
Companies: apple, google, twitter, x

Things That Make No Sense: Epic Lost Its Fight Over Apple’s Closed iOS Platform, But Won It Over Google’s More Open Android Platform

from the fucking-juries dept

When Epic went after both Apple and Google a few years ago with antitrust claims regarding the need to go through their app stores to get on phones, we noted that it seemed more like negotiation-by-lawsuit. Both Apple and Google have cut some deals with larger companies to lower the 30% cut the companies take on app payments, and it seemed like these lawsuits were just an attempt to get leverage. That was especially true with regards to the complaint against Google, given that it’s much, much easier to route around the Google Play Store and get apps onto an Android phone.

Google allows sideloading. Google allows third party app stores. While it may discourage those things, Android is way more open than iOS, where you really can’t get your app on the phone unless Apple says you can.

Still, it was little surprise that Apple mostly won at a bench trial in 2021. Or that the 9th Circuit upheld the victory earlier this year. The 9th Circuit made it clear that Apple is free to set whatever rules it wants to play in its ecosystem.

Given all that, I had barely paid attention to the latest trial, which was basically the same case against Google. But, rather than a bench trial, this one was a jury trial. And, juries, man, they sure can be stupid sometimes.

The jury sided with Epic against Google.

That leaves things in a very, very weird stance. Apple, whose system is much more closed off and where Apple denies any ability for third parties to get on the phone without Apple’s permission is… fine and dandy. Whereas, Google, which may discourage, but does allow third party apps and third party app stores… is somehow a monopolist?

It’s hard to see how that state of affairs makes any sense at all.

Google has said it will appeal, but overturning jury rulings is… not easy.

That said, even if the ruling is upheld… it might not be such a bad thing. Epic has said that it’s not asking for money, but rather to have it made clear that Epic can launch its own app stores without restriction from Google, along with the freedom to use its own billing system.

And, uh, yeah. Epic should be able to do that. Having more app stores and more alternatives on app payments would be a good thing for everyone except Google, and that’s good.

So I don’t necessarily have a problem with the overall outcome. I’m just confused how these two rulings can possibly be considered consistent, or how they give any guidance whatsoever to others. I mean, one takeaway is that if you’re creating an ecosystem for 3rd party apps, you’re better off taking the closed Apple route. And, that would be bad.

Filed Under: 9th circuit, antitrust, app stores, competition, consistency
Companies: apple, epic, epic games, google

Meta Joins Google In Turning Its Back On The Open Web, And Embracing Unconstitutional Mandates That Pretend To ‘Protect The Children’

from the keep-pulling-up-the-ladder dept

A month ago we wrote about Google effectively “pulling up the ladder” on the open internet by embracing age verification mandates as part of a regulatory approach to child safety. As we pointed out at the time, this is bizarre and stupid for a variety of reasons, but also not too surprising.

It’s bizarre because mandates like that have recently been found unconstitutional by multiple courts. It’s stupid because there’s little evidence that age verification does anything useful, and lots of evidence that it’s actually dangerous, because in verifying ages, services need to collect a lot of personal data which is then put at risk.

It’s not surprising because the big tech companies are now facing real competition for the first time in a while, and have learned that regulatory mandates may become their only useful moat against upstart competitors.

As we noted in that original article, while Google had been somewhat better than others, Meta had already shown a willingness to throw the open internet under the bus to appease regulators. It turned the political tide on FOSTA by supporting it wholeheartedly. It has loudly embraced support for reforming Section 230, which would give Meta a huge leg up on competitors who could no longer rely on 230’s protections.

So it should be little surprise that Meta has now come out with a similar statement to Google’s, embracing mandates on parental controls. As with FOSTA, which Sheryl Sandberg wrote about in highly emotional language, Meta’s embrace of these mandates came from the company’s “Global Head of Safety,” Antigone Davis, and again uses emotional appeals.

My daughter was 12 years old when we gave her her first phone. It wasn’t an easy decision, and I agonized over whether it was the right time. As a former teacher, advisor to a state attorney general, and now an executive at Meta — I’ve dedicated my career to protecting children online. You’d think I would be confident of the right rules and guardrails to put in place for my daughter, but I worried all the same.

If you’re focused on child safety, maybe you could start by not using your child as a prop in your political ploy?

And, look, if Meta wants to use age verification or set up parental controls, it should go for it. After all, the latest less-redacted version of the lawsuit dozens of states filed against Meta shows that the company “routinely documented” how those under 13 were using Instagram, despite being banned under the company’s terms. So, it’s a bit rich for Meta to now say that there needs to be government mandates for such technology. Why not just implement it themselves?

Again, the reality here is that Meta seems focused on pulling up that open internet ladder, and you can see it in the details of this new announcement. First of all, the demand for a mandate would mean that other, much smaller competitors would also have to implement the expensive and ineffective technology that Meta never did, limiting their ability to grow.

But even more nefarious is that Meta’s embrace of these mandates also seeks to make sure that the major part of the burden doesn’t fall on Meta, but on Apple and Google. Because it suggests the age verification and parental controls should take place in the app stores.

Parents should approve their teen’s app downloads, and we support federal legislation that requires app stores to get parents’ approval whenever their teens under 16 download apps. With this solution, when a teen wants to download an app, app stores would be required to notify their parents, much like when parents are notified if their teen attempts to make a purchase. Parents can decide if they want to approve the download. They can also verify the age of their teen when setting up their phone, negating the need for everyone to verify their age multiple times across multiple apps.

Of course, as we keep pointing out, for many kids, parents are the problem. How would this kind of system work when there is an LGBTQ child searching for information or communities where they can express themselves or learn, and they have parents who are not open minded about such things?

This is a proposal that would harm many kids. Over and over again the research shows that one of the most important parts of the internet in kids’ lives is that they can use it to find their communities and better explore their own identities.

Yes, there’s a role for parents, teaching kids how to be safe, and when to know to ask for help. But that should never mean that parents (especially of teenagers) spy on every little thing that a kid does.

Yet that’s what Meta’s proposal is suggesting.

Teaching kids to be good digital citizens means teaching them about the dangers online, how to recognize them and keep themselves safe. Meta’s proposal is inserting Google and Apple as gatekeepers and taking agency away from kids, making them less prepared for the adult world that they’ll have to deal with eventually.

It’s fundamentally an approach that undermines helping kids grow into adults, all while pretending to “protect” the kids. Protect them from real life? Protect them by making sure their parents spy on every app they use? It’s a horrible plan, and a cynical one from a company that has embraced a cynical, political approach to everything.

Yes, Meta is getting hit from all sides about child safety claims, much of it driven by moral panics. So I get the decision to come out with some sort of plan to claim to politicians that “we’re doing something, and we’re not against regulations.” But this plan is bad, it’s dangerous, it’s cynical, and it appears designed to be anti-competitive at the same time.

Filed Under: age verification, antigone davis, app stores, parental controls, protect the children
Companies: meta

Twitter’s Former Head Of Trust & Safety Explains Why, For All His Billions, Elon Musk Can’t Magically Decide How Twitter Will Work

from the reality-sets-in dept

There are a variety of myths about how the world works that get people really screwed up when they make big bets on trying to “fix” things. I think Elon Musk has fallen prey to a few of them in how he’s trying to run Twitter. First, he falsely believes (as was the widespread myth among many, especially in right wing circles) that Twitter’s content moderation/trust & safety efforts were driven mainly by extreme “woke” employees who were seeking to silence opinions and viewpoints they disagreed with. As we’ve discussed repeatedly, that’s never been the case. Twitter had a far more free speech-supporting position than any other site, and the trust & safety decisions were made based on what they believed was actually best for the site, which means trying to minimize hate and harassment as that drives both users and advertisers away.

A second big myth that Musk seems to have bought into is the idea that this is all a technical, rather than human, problem. And that he can just “hardcore” nerd harder his way through these challenges. But, that’s not true either. Yes, Twitter actually had some pretty sophisticated technology, which was mainly around scaling a massive many-to-many messaging system. But the real “product” innovation at Twitter was the human element, and the community that built up around it. And it was often that the community required the kind of moderation policies that Twitter put in place, otherwise the site would not have been nearly as useful or valuable to so many.

The key point in both of these things, though, is that the moderation policies are not being driven by ideological viewpoints of the employees of the company, but what actually worked best for Twitter. It’s unclear if Musk is realizing this as he speedruns the content moderation learning curve (such as by announcing his first big “innovation” in content moderation is “shadowbanning” — one of the main things his fans were sure he’d get rid of).

Either way, there’s a much larger point here. Elon bought Twitter because he felt that the current management was doing a terrible job with content moderation (among other things) and he thought it was obvious to him how to do it better. But he’s quickly learning that there are reasons that fences are put where they are, and you might not want to tear them down so quickly.

Anyway, for the first two weeks of his reign, Musk came to rely on Yoel Roth, a long time Twitter employee who was running trust & safety. Yoel knows the challenges of trust & safety better than just about anyone, and it seemed like a good thing that Musk appeared to trust him. However, Roth resigned, and has now published an op-ed in the NY Times that does an interesting job highlighting how you can’t actually just show up and run a website like Twitter the way you want and expect to stay in business. As Roth notes:

The truth is that even Elon Musk’s brand of radical transformation has unavoidable limits.

Roth then highlights three major outside forces that are well beyond Musk’s ability to control, even as he controls Twitter itself: advertisers, governments, and app store operators (i.e., Google and Apple). Each one has some interesting elements to them. We may not like the fact that any of these outside forces have so much power over Twitter (and I could make arguments for why all three are problematic), but the actual reality is that they do.

Advertisers (at least for now) remain critical to the business:

Advertisers have played the most direct role thus far in moderating Mr. Musk’s free speech ambitions. As long as 90 percent of the company’s revenue comes from ads (as was the case when Mr. Musk bought the company), Twitter has little choice but to operate in a way that won’t imperil the revenue streams that keep the lights on. This has already proved to be challenging.

Almost immediately upon the acquisition’s close, a wave of racist and antisemitic trolling emerged on Twitter. Wary marketers, including those at General Mills, Audi and Pfizer, slowed down or paused ad spending on the platform, kicking off a crisis within the company to protect precious ad revenue.

While Musk has whined about “activists” causing the advertisers to leave, and even implied in tweets that he might file lawsuits against the activists or “name and shame” the advertisers, this is simply the free market (and free speech!) at work. Businesses want to avoid brand risk, and especially when the returns from advertising on Twitter are low, why bother?

The reality of most social media is that this business (not social) reality has driven much of the decision making behind trust & safety teams and how they operate. And, I should be clear that it is rarely that advertisers are directly pressuring trust & safety teams to moderate content. In hours upon hours of interviews I’ve done with trust & safety professionals, there are very, very, very few examples where there was any direct pressure from the advertisers to make changes. But there’s a natural (and common sense) understanding that for advertisers to want to put their money into your site, they have to feel that the site is trustworthy and they won’t get burned.

Next up: regulators. We’ve been writing a bit about this of late as well. And Roth highlights the realities at play:

But even if Mr. Musk is able to free Twitter from the influence of powerful advertisers, his path to unfettered speech is still not clear. Twitter remains bound by the laws and regulations of the countries in which it operates. Amid the spike in racial slurs on Twitter in the days after the acquisition, the European Union’s chief platform regulator took to the site to remind Mr. Musk that, in Europe, an unmoderated free-for-all won’t fly. In the United States, members of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission have raised concerns about the company’s recent actions. And outside of the United States and the European Union, the situation becomes even more complex: Mr. Musk’s principle of keying Twitter’s policies on local laws could push the company to censor speech it has been loath to restrict in the past, including political dissent.

Regulators have significant tools at their disposal to enforce their will on Twitter and on Mr. Musk. Penalties for noncompliance with Europe’s Digital Services Act could total as much as 6 percent of the company’s annual revenue. In the United States, the F.T.C. has shown an increasing willingness to exact significant fines for noncompliance with their orders (like a blockbuster $5 billion fine imposed on Facebook in 2019). In other key markets for Twitter, such as India, in-country staff work with the looming threat of personal intimidation and arrest if their employers fail to comply with local directives. Even a Musk-led Twitter will struggle to shrug off these constraints.

While I think I’ve been pretty clear that I’m not at all comfortable with much of this regulatory oversight, especially when it touches on editorial discretion and speech issues (and when it appears to be about retaliation), it is a reality now. And Musk can’t just wish it away. Especially over in the EU, where they’ve built this entirely ridiculous structure for regulating content moderation issues online.

Finally, perhaps just as problematic is the power of Apple and Google as the gatekeepers to get on phones:

There is one more source of power on the web — one that most people don’t think much about, but which may be the most significant check on unrestrained speech on the mainstream internet: the app stores operated by Google and Apple.

While Twitter has been publicly tight-lipped about how many people use the company’s mobile apps (rather than visiting Twitter.com on a browser), the company’s 2021 annual report didn’t mince words: “Our release of new products … is dependent upon and can be impacted by digital storefront operators” that decide the guidelines and enforce them, it reads in part. “Such review processes can be difficult to predict and certain decisions may harm our business.”

“May harm our business” is an understatement. Failure to adhere to Apple and Google’s guidelines would be catastrophic, risking Twitter’s expulsion from their app stores and making it more difficult for billions of potential users to access Twitter’s services. This gives Apple and Google enormous power to shape the decisions Twitter makes.

Roth notes that Apple and Google take this role seriously, even if in patently ridiculous ways:

In my time at Twitter, representatives of the app stores regularly raised concerns about content available on our platform. On one occasion, a member of an app review team contacted Twitter, saying with consternation that he had searched for “#boobs” in the Twitter app and was presented with … exactly what you’d expect. Another time, on the eve of a major feature release, a reviewer sent screenshots of several days-old tweets containing an English-language racial slur, asking Twitter representatives whether they should be permitted to appear on the service.

Just as an aside, um, who the fuck searches for “#boobs” and what is wrong with them?

Anyway, much of this makes me… uncomfortable. We had some discussion about this when Parler was yanked from the app stores. It’s more troubling for Apple/iOS than Google, because Android does allow sideloading, even if it keeps making it more difficult. But, in the end, even if you’re not in the app store, you can access the services via the web (even on mobile). It would be nice if mobile app stores were more open, and there were more competition.

But, again, this is a current market reality.

All three of these outside forces could change over time. And Musk could take steps to help change them. But none will change quickly, and many of Musk’s actions over the last couple of weeks actually make it more difficult to avoid these issues, rather than less.

There are, of course, other outside forces at play as well, including a big one: users. If you don’t make your website welcoming, people will go elsewhere. No one signs on to a website looking to be harassed, abused, and yelled at.

Roth notes that a key reason he left Twitter was that Musk’s view of trust & safety did not seem to be driven by principles or carefully developed policies. Rather, it seemed focused on Musk’s whims of the day:

It’s this very lack of legitimacy that Mr. Musk, correctly, points to when he calls for greater free speech, and for the establishment of a “content moderation council” to guide the company’s policies — an idea Google and Apple would be right to borrow for the governance of their app stores. But even as he criticizes the capriciousness of platform policies, he perpetuates this same lack of legitimacy through his impulsive changes and tweet-length pronouncements about Twitter’s rules. In appointing himself “Chief Twit,” Mr. Musk has made clear that at the end of the day, he’ll be the one calling the shots.

It was for this reason that I ultimately chose to leave the company: A Twitter whose policies are defined by unilateral edict has little need for a trust and safety function dedicated to its principled development.

Of course, there’s quite a lot of irony here. One of the reasons Musk insisted he needed to take over was the false belief that the earlier trust & safety policies were driven by ideology, and that he needed to come in and set forth some basic principles to make it “fairer.” Yet the reality, as we see it, is that the old system was driven by thought-out policies with processes to enforce them. Not always policies you or I might agree with, and not always enforced all that well, in part because it’s impossible to do it well, but there were policies and there were processes.

And now Musk is basically doing it all by edict… or random polls.

Thus, we’re in this funny(ish) state whereby everything that Musk and his fans insisted was true was not… but now that Musk is in charge, he’s implementing things in exactly the way he thought they were implemented before and railed about.

Oh, and on that note, Roth drops this little tidbit in the middle of the article:

In response, Mr. Musk empowered my team to move more aggressively to remove hate speech across the platform — censoring more content, not less.

Huh. Look at that. Meanwhile, people are still yelling at me when I point out that the previous regime was more supportive of free speech than anyone realizes.

Filed Under: advertisers, app stores, content moderation, elon musk, eu, free market, ftc, trust & safety, yoel roth
Companies: twitter

FCC’s Carr Once Again Heads To The Fainting Couch Over TikTok

from the performative-face-fanning dept

Thu, Jun 30th 2022 06:36am - Karl Bode

A week or two ago we noted how there was a mass panic because TikTok was found to be sharing U.S. user data with executives at the company’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance. This was in stark contrast to the strict, U.S.-based data management controls the company claimed to be implementing, and, to be clear, was not a good thing.

But while this showcased how TikTok’s privacy standards are often performative, it wasn’t truly all that different than what happens with countless other domestic and international companies with shitty privacy practices. Vast troves of varying US consumer behavior, location, and browsing and app datasets are bought and sold everyday in the largely unaccountable telecom/adtech/app/hardware data world without anywhere near the same level of hyperventilation TikTok receives.

There’s a tendency among some performative politicians (see: Trump) to specifically single out what TikTok is doing on this front for xenophobic, political, or cronyistic purposes, yet turn a complete blind eye to the broader policy failures that made TikTok (and everybody else’s) lax privacy practices possible in the first place.

That’s been a particular habit of FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, whose public record shows he literally could not give any less of a shit about any of the vast privacy abuses in a sector he actually regulates (telecom), yet loves to head to the fainting couches any time TikTok is mentioned.

Like this week, when Carr sent a letter to Google and Apple demanding they kick TikTok from the app store because he’s just super concerned about American consumer privacy!

TikTok is not just another video app.
That’s the sheep’s clothing.

It harvests swaths of sensitive data that new reports show are being accessed in Beijing.

I’ve called on @Apple & @Google to remove TikTok from their app stores for its pattern of surreptitious data practices. pic.twitter.com/Le01fBpNjn

— Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) June 28, 2022

If you were to dig through the resulting news reports covering Carr’s empty letter, you’d be hard pressed to find a single one that could be bothered to note that Carr doesn’t have any regulatory authority over social media or app stores, the letter has absolutely no meaningful legal backing to support his request, or that Carr himself has absolutely zero credibility on consumer privacy issues.

Yeah, there are serious concerns about TikTok user security and privacy. But there’s equal concern about the privacy violations in the telecom sector Carr actually regulates. And in adtech. And in the internet of things space. And in Chinese-made routers and other hardware. And among app makers, and data brokers, smart TV makers, Wi-Fi-connected toys, modern vehicles, and….

Carr’s voting and policy record has made it pretty clear he doesn’t care about any of that. The sector Carr actually regulates, telecom, has been plagued with a parade of location data scandals showcasing how cellular carriers have repeatedly failed to protect user location data, often to devastating effect. Carr’s been largely a no show on the subject, despite its increased relevance post Roe.

Several former officials who worked with Carr to help AT&T kill net neutrality and lobotomize the FCC’s consumer protection authority have since gone on to work at Targeted Victory, a right wing K Street policy and lobbying shop recently busted trying to smear TikTok on behalf of Facebook. Surely that’s just a weird coincidence, though.

Not only does pushing scary stories about TikTok help Facebook, it helps feed xenophobia to a growing right wing base proud of its own bigotry. This kind of scary rhetoric is of great benefit to any U.S. company that doesn’t want to compete with China. Of course Carr’s letter also does something else incredibly important (to Carr), it puts his name in headlines for no real reason.

As recently noted, you could demolish TikTok today with a giant patriotic hammer and the Chinese government could just nab much of the same data from any number of unaccountable app makers, telecoms, ad brokers, or hardware giants. And they can do that because we have garbage privacy standards, no functional privacy laws with any teeth, and zero accountability.

That’s directly thanks to politicians like Carr, who don’t believe in meaningful privacy oversight, laws, or guidelines of any kind.

It’s extremely easy for U.S. companies like Facebook or Cisco to use politicians as marionettes to create or feed moral panics about China. But the underlying motivations usually have absolutely nothing to do with a genuine interest in US consumer privacy or security. Made evident by those same politicians’ completely hollow track record when it comes to tackling the broader problem.

Filed Under: adtech, app stores, brendan carr, china, competition, fcc, privacy, scare-mongering, security, social media, surveillance
Companies: apple, google, tiktok

Federal Court Rejects Former US Ambassador's Attempt To Sue Google Over Things Telegram Users May Or May Not Have Posted

from the waste-of-everyone's-time-but-mostly-a-waste-of-the-plaintiff's-money dept

People feeling ways about stuff continue to file stupid lawsuits against all and sundry because, well, we have a pretty open court system (which is good!) and not enough lawyers willing to tell people their stupid lawsuits are unwinnable (not great!). [For everything else, there’s pro se.]

This completely foreseen ending at the hands of a federal court is not the result of a winnable lawsuit. It’s also not the result of an average person deciding they can lawyer themselves up (avert your eyes, children!). It’s someone who should know better being represented by someone who should definitely know better.

The plaintiff is Marc Ginsberg, who briefly served as a US ambassador. The lawyer is Keith Altman, formerly of Excolo Law, who has screwed plenty of clients by pretending it’s actually possible to sue social media services for the physical, deadly acts of terrorists. Excolo Law, along with shitty lawsuit boutique 1-800-LAW-FIRM, have yet to win any of the several lawsuits they’ve filed on behalf of victims of terrorism.

This lawsuit is no less stupid. (It’s stupider, actually.) Ambassador Ginsberg (as he insists on referring to himself in the lawsuit) sued both Apple and Google, claiming their failure to remove the Telegram app from their respective stores somehow wrecked up his life by potentially subjecting him to anti-Semitic content. How this happened is anyone’s guess, considering Ginsberg admitted in his lawsuit he himself has never downloaded the app or accessed any content (anti-Semitic or otherwise) posted by Telegram users.

“Breach of duty” Ginsberg (via Altman) claimed. Apple and Google both owed Ginsberg the right to be free of anti-Semitic content posted by third parties to third parties apps. Ginsberg would have been better served by withdrawing $350 from the bank and setting it on fire while his lawyer typed up an affidavit affirming his client had indeed torched the contents of his wallet in the presence of his legal representative.

Google moved to dismiss the suit three months after it was filed, pointing out literally nothing in well-settled US law said it could be held responsible for content posted by users of services Google did not directly control. (Even if Google did own Telegram, Section 230 would still protect it from this lawsuit. Google does not own Telegram, so the motion to dismiss could have just been “lolwut” in 72-point type and still have been just as effective.)

The court has agreed with the basic tenets of law, logic, and Google. Ambassador Ginsberg has wasted his filing fee and whatever he spent retaining the “services” of Keith Altman. The federal court says there’s nothing to sue over and has disinvited Ginsberg from continuing to assert there is.

Ginsberg tried to duck Section 230 by claiming this wasn’t about third party content (but it totally is). He claimed this was about Google (and Apple) not enforcing their own app store rules to eject apps that traffic in objectionable content. But this rule only applies to the apps themselves. It’s up to the platform providers to police the content of their users. And app store guidelines are just that: guidelines. They’re not legally binding agreements with app users. And they’re definitely not any sort of agreement with people who don’t even use the apps they’re suing about.

That just doesn’t work, as the court [PDF] points out:

Plaintiffs in the present case do not allege the existence of a contract – or indeed any interaction – between themselves and Google. Plaintiffs do not allege that Ambassador Ginsberg purchased his smartphone from Google or that he downloaded Telegram or any other app from the Play Store. Thus, the Barnes court’s rationale for finding that Section 230 did not bar Barnes’ promissory estoppel claim is not applicable here.

Section 230 applies. So does pretty much everything else, which means there’s nothing in California law that will help Ginsberg, either. There’s no negligent infliction of emotional distress by Google (since Google did not create the distressing content) and there’s no violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law (UCL).

Plaintiffs has not cited, and the Court has not discovered, any authority for the proposition that Google’s publication of guidelines for its app developers creates an enforceable duty to any purchaser of an Android device.

[…]

In the present case, Plaintiffs have not alleged facts showing that Google’s compliance with its developer guidelines was an agreed-upon benefit of the phone purchase transaction. Plaintiffs do not allege that Ambassador Ginsberg purchased the phone from Google, so no such agreement could have been reached at the point of sale. Plaintiffs point to Google’s guidelines for app developers who distribute apps through the Play Store. However, Plaintiffs do not allege any basis for Ambassador Ginsberg’s apparent belief that Google’s enforcement of those guidelines was part of his bargain with whomever he purchased the smartphone from. Consequently, Plaintiffs have not plausibly alleged that Google’s alleged failure to enforce its guidelines for app developers, that is, failure to remove Telegram from the Play Store, caused Plaintiffs to suffer economic injury.

So long, says the court, without adding “good luck.” This is the end (barring an appeal). There’s no argument to be had, no matter how much the plaintiff wants there to be.

The Court nonetheless concludes that leave to amend is not warranted because amendment would be futile. It is clear from the FAC [first amended complaint] that Plaintiffs’ claims are barred by Section 230 of the CDA, that Plaintiffs lack statutory standing under the UCL, and that the facts of this case do not give rise to liability for NIED [negligent infliction of emotional distress]. Plaintiffs have given no indication, either in their opposition brief or during oral argument, that they could allege additional facts to cure these deficiencies. To the contrary, Plaintiffs clearly have set forth the facts upon which their claims are based. In the view of the Court, those facts simply do not give rise to a viable claim against Google.

Based on its determination that amendment would be futile, the motion to dismiss is GRANTED WITHOUT LEAVE TO AMEND.

Adios, ambassador. If the anti-Semitic content posted by some Telegram users bothers you, perhaps it’s best to keep doing what you were already doing: not downloading or using Telegram. How the hell you thought this was Google’s problem is completely inexplicable, although I imagine Keith Altman — the lawyer behind a whole bunch of similarly-misguided lawsuits — played a large part in this windmill joust.

Filed Under: app stores, keith altman, marc ginsberg, section 230
Companies: apple, google, telegram

Russian Government Abuses IP Law, Regular Law To Shut Down Alexey Navalny's 'Smart Voting' App

from the hashtag-just-Putin-things dept

The Russian government sent KGB 2.0 (the FSB) to kill opposition leader Alexey Navalny late last summer. That effort failed. Navalny survived the poisoning attempt to continue to be a thorn in Putin’s side. So, the Russian government did the next best thing. It tossed Navalny in jail, revoking his suspended sentence to imprison him in a “corrective labor colony.”

That still hasn’t managed to silence Navalny to the Russian ruling party’s satisfaction. He’s still capable of moving masses and shaping elections despite being confined. One of his efforts — Smart Voting — continues to make things difficult for the dominant “United Russia” party. Debuting in November 2018, Smart Voting aids in the consolidation of opposition votes in areas where parliamentary races are close enough they can possibly be swung in favor of opposition candidates.

The effort to silence Navalny continues, with the Russian government trying to kill off his Smart Voting project. Its first move was to secure a court order forbidding Google and Yandex from returning search results for the term “smart voting.” Enjoy this incredibly bold blast of extreme shadiness that does everything but provide a phonetic pronunciation of the word “corruption.”

The Moscow Arbitration Tribunal issued an injunction prohibiting Google and Yandex from creating a list of results for the search query “Smart Voting”. The relevant decisions were made on the website published by the court.

The documents showed that the lawsuit against both companies was brought by Woolintertrade. The main activity of the company is the wholesale of agricultural raw materials. Woolintertrade deals with the purchase and processing of unwashed sheep’s wool in order to sell it. In the summer, the company received approval from Rospatent to register the “Smart Voting” trademark.

So, through the magic of government intervention, a company that has nothing to do with “smart” and/or “voting” managed to secure a trademark during the run-up to an election and talk a court into issuing an injunction that would prevent voters from working together to elect opposition candidates.

This bullshit still didn’t satisfy the Russian government, which has now ordered Google and Apple to boot Navalny’s Smart Voting app from its stores.

Russia demanded this month that Apple and Google remove the app from their stores, saying a refusal to do so would be treated as meddling in its parliamentary election.

Apple and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

On Thursday, Russia said official approaches had been made to the two companies’ chief executives.

The demands worked. The apps were removed. And the worst possible outcome for both companies has been achieved: the gratitude of the thuggish Russian government.

During a daily briefing Friday, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin welcomed Google and Apple’s decisions to comply with the Russian government’s lawful orders.

“Both platforms received a notification and they have apparently decided [to delete the Navalny apps] in accordance with the letter and spirit of the law,” Peskov told reporters.

“We dislike [Smart Voting]. This is just another absolutely provocative attempt that actually harms voters. There’s no other way of treating this,” Interfax quoted Peskov as saying.

Yep, giving Russian citizens the power to loosen United Russia’s grip on national governance is definitely “provocative.” However, it’s definitely not “harmful” to voters… unless Peskov was insinuating those who voted for opposition candidates will be subjected to retaliatory actions by the government they failed to unseat.

As for Apple and Google, refusing to comply was always an option. Why they didn’t refuse remains unclear. I mean, both companies could have just told the Russian government to put it on their respective tabs.

Google, Apple and social media platforms Facebook, Twitter and Telegram have been subject to several months of court-imposed fines totaling several million U.S. dollars for their failure to delete content that Moscow deems illegal, including calls to attend unsanctioned protests.

The only difference here was the dangling threat of criminal prosecution, which may have forced the companies to make the wrong decision for the right reasons: to keep their Russian-based employees from being rounded up and sent away to penal colonies to spend a few years with Navalny and his supporters.

Finally, there’s this censorial cherry on top:

Following a request from Russian authorities, YouTube has blocked access to a video posted by Alexei Navalny’s team with a list of anti-Kremlin candidates it wants voters to back in nationwide parliamentary elections currently underway

That’s right. A complete “fuck you and your YouTube video too” from a government obviously afraid it can’t win a parliamentary election without pulling out all the stops to silence the imprisoned leader of its opposition.

Filed Under: alexey navalny, app stores, content moderation, corruption, court orders, russia, smart voting, voter suppression, voting apps
Companies: apple, google

Google Has Been Paying Wireless Carriers Billions To Not Develop Competing App Stores

from the not-so-innovative-I-guess dept

Fri, Aug 20th 2021 05:36am - Karl Bode

To be clear, wireless carrier app stores have always kind of sucked. Verizon’s efforts to create its own app store were shut down in 2012, after underwhelming consumers for years. At the time, the narrative was that Verizon just didn’t find it worth the trouble in the face of Google domination and innovation. And while that’s still largely true (wireless carriers are utterly unfamiliar with competition and therefore historically suck at innovation and adaptation), it turns out there was another reason.

Namely, that Google was paying Verizon and other major wireless companies a big chunk of money to not compete with the Android marketplace. And they were paying smartphone manufacturers to ship devices without competing app stores installed. Both nuggets were buried in a freshly unredacted copy of Epic’s antitrust complaint (pdf) against Google, first spotted by Jeremy Owens:

Man, I love when the redactions come off and there are fascinating numbers underneath.

This unredacted graf shows that telcos get up to 25% of Google's app sales to keep them from developing rival app stores on the smartphones they sell and service. pic.twitter.com/Vx6p1YBU6S

— Jeremy C. Owens (@jowens510) August 19, 2021

This agreement to start paying wireless carriers 20-25% of app sales was occurring right around the time that Google brass was visibly starting to wimp out on consumer-centric issues like net neutrality. That involved working closely with Verizon to push the FCC toward flimsy, loophole-filled, “compromise” 2010 net neutrality rules that excluded wireless entirely. Verizon proceeded to then successfully sue the FCC to have those repealed anyway, leading to better rules in 2015 that were also dismantled a few years, later, albeit thanks to lobbying, not the courtroom.

Google’s shift from hugely innovative disruptor to entrenched, elbow-swinging turf protector has been a fairly ugly and historically unsurprising transition. You can clearly see the line in the sand somewhere around 2010 to throw away many of the guiding principles that made them successful and popular. There was another executive leadership pivot sometime around 2016 that brought with it increased timidity at the company (see: the company’s abrupt decision to largely give up on expanding Google Fiber and many other exciting moonshot projects). Then, more recently there’s the whole AI ethics scandals, which speaks for itself.

To be clear Google still does a lot of interesting and popular stuff, but it’s pretty damn clear that the ethics and bravery that guided the company originally were obliterated some time back.

I have to think that revelations Google was paying wireless carriers and smartphone manufacturers to not compete with it will likely fuel several different antitrust inquiries and court cases. Maybe wireless carriers would have always failed to develop compelling app stores of their own thanks to innate incompetence, but it’s harder than ever for that to happen when Google is paying you billions of dollars to not even try. And then, should those competing app stores succeed, paying handset makers not to carry them anyway, even if they happen to become popular.

As a little side note, the fact Google has been paying wireless carriers billions of dollars to do nothing kind of puts an additional dent in FCC Commissioner’s ongoing, dumb claim that “big tech” gets a “free ride” on telecom networks. Getting paid to do nothing is the exact kind of thing AT&T has been pushing for since 2003 or so. It’s the kind of stupid demand that started the net neutrality debate. Whether the payoffs violated the law is for antitrust lawyers to decide, but the fact Google repeatedly thought nothing about ignoring its original founding principles continues to speak pretty loudly either way.

Filed Under: android, app stores, competition, fees, mobile app stores, mobile operators
Companies: google, verizon

from the huckster,-llc dept

There’s a new cottage industry of Section 230 lawsuits springing up from the law offices of Tycko & Zavareei in Washington, DC (with the assistance of Pearson, Simon & Warshaw of California, the state where the lawsuits are being filed).

Over the past few years, we’ve seen a plethora of lawsuits alleging vicarious liability for terrorist attacks being filed against social media platforms by opportunists at 1-800-LAW-FIRM and Excolo Law. Not a single one of these lawsuits has made it past the pleading stage, even if one Ninth Circuit judge went off the rails a bit during oral arguments last spring. Whatever Section 230 immunity doesn’t eliminate, the law firms’ decision to sue the wrong parties (i.e., anyone but the people who committed the crimes) has generally proven fatal to their claims.

Fortunately, this new batch of lawsuits doesn’t involve exploiting people who’ve recently suffered personal tragedies. Instead, they’re trying to force companies like Google and Apple to reimburse small-time losers who lost real money to gambling apps.

No less than five putative class actions over (incredibly small) gambling losses have been filed by Hassan Zavareei of Tycko & Zavareei and Daniel Warshaw of Pearson, Simon & Warshaw. The only unique factor is the dollar amount of gambling losses. But these aren’t whales. These are small fish in the online gambling ocean demanding courts order app store purveyors pay them back for the tens of dollars they’ve lost. Not a single one of these plaintiffs has lost more than 300togamblingapps,buteverysingleoneofthemisdemandingachunkofdamagestheirattorneysclaimexceeds300 to gambling apps, but every single one of them is demanding a chunk of damages their attorneys claim exceeds 300togamblingapps,buteverysingleoneofthemisdemandingachunkofdamagestheirattorneysclaimexceeds5,000,000.

Everything is boilerplate, other than the named plaintiffs’ individual losses and their choice of app store purveyor. Apple is named in one lawsuit. Google is named in all the others. But they’re all equally ridiculous. Feast your eyes on this accusation:

Google permits and facilitates illegal gambling by operating as an unlicensed casino.

The lawsuits reach this conclusion by noting Google (and Apple) allow users to download gambling apps from their app stores. At no point do Google or Apple create and develop any gambling apps, nor do they operate or maintain ownership of the apps. All they do is offer a storefront. Users are responsible for their own actions while interacting with third-party apps. The companies do not need to obtain licenses to operate casinos because… THEY DON’T OPERATE CASINOS.

The lawsuits then do a bit of narrative explaining the obvious: gambling can be addictive and it can cost people vast sums of money. The suits also note that several states have laws prohibiting exchanging money for more playing time — some of those put in place recently to protect users from things like pay-to-win games and “loot boxes,” which some states have chosen to view as another form of unlicensed gambling.

Then the lawsuits quote liberally from the Statute of Anne — something we’ve seen misquoted more often in terms of copyright enforcement here at Techdirt, even though it was instrumental in creating the idea of “public domain.” The relevant part of the Statute, passed in 1710 partly as a legislative attempt to prevent British citizens from gambling themselves into bankruptcy, allowed residents to sue to recoup their gambling losses. (That it was repealed almost entirely in 2005 seems to have escaped the notice of the find legal minds at both law firms.)

[A]ny Person . . . who shall . . . by playing at Cards, Dice, Tables, or other Game or Games whatsoever, or by betting on the Sides or Hands of such as do play any of the Games aforesaid, lose to any . . . Person . . . so playing or betting in the whole, the Sum or Value of ten Pounds, and shall pay or deliver the same or any Part thereof, the Person . . . losing and paying or delivering the same, shall be at Liberty within three Months then next, to sue for and recover the Money or Goods so lost, and paid or delivered or any Part thereof, from the respective Winner . . . thereof, with Costs of Suit, by Action of Debt . . . .

So how does a 1710 British law factor into a bunch of online gaming lawsuits filed in the United States? Well, a lot of nascent US states adopted British laws because they didn’t have many of their own at that point. And it was safe to assume newly minted US citizens were just as likely to make bad decisions in games of chance. So, these laws went into the books, along with other large chucks of the Statute of Anne and its offshoots.

This aspect of the Statute has rarely the focus of gambling related litigation. But it has been used successfully in a few cases where courts allowed families/significant others to sue over gambling losses, usually under the theory an entire family shouldn’t be put into the poorhouse just because one of its residents blew a bunch of money on gambling. And in the cases that did secure a victory, the amount at stake was hundreds of thousands of dollars, rather than the $160-250 range represented in these lawsuits.

Only twenty-five states have adopted this aspect of the Statute of Anne. The litigants represented here are from states that adopted the anti-gambling text. But it’s not going to be nearly as helpful as they believe it will be. At best, the law simply makes some gambling debts unenforceable.

Online gaming in virtual casinos (unlike more direct gambling options like online betting services that provide actual cash payouts) don’t incur gambling debt, even if they may result in regular, non-gambling debt if users spend too much money gaming. No one is under any obligation to pay to do more gaming, nor are they able to obtain credit from app operators to continue gaming, which makes it impossible to rack up the sort of gambling debt this Statute was adopted to address. That’s just the beginning of the apparently willful misreading of this law by the attorneys representing these clients. There’s more.

First, the lawsuits have been filed in California, which — as a late-arriving member of the Union — did not adopt this Statute. Second, even if the courts decide that the losses occurred in the plaintiffs’ home states (rather than wherever the app developers’ gaming servers are located), it’s definitely not going to help in at least two cases. There’s a case directly on point dealing with venue-shifting by Mississippi plaintiffs hoping to use another state’s laws to allow them to recover gambling losses.

We too find that it would be a great injustice if Tennesseans could reap the benefits of gambling in states where it is legal when they are successful, but seek shelter in Tennessee courts when they lose. As a result, we conclude that there is nothing in the Mississippi laws in question that outrages the public policy of Tennessee. Therefore, the gaming contract between the parties is enforceable in Tennessee.

This means the two plaintiffs from Mississippi aren’t going to be able to use another state’s laws to claw their money back from Google and Apple. But even if local laws are given deference — along with the residents’ claims their losses occurred in Mississippi — it still won’t work. The adoption of the Statute of Anne varies from state-to-state. In some states, it only allows for government enforcement via suits brought by the state attorney general. In other states, gambling losers can sue directly, but they have to sue the entity they lost money to. No matter how the local laws are interpreted, they cannot be read to allow people who lost money to online casinos to sue a third-party that never took any money from them.

But there’s really no reason to even get into the weeds of local laws adopted hundreds of years ago by newly developed states in a brand new country. The lawsuits all note the plaintiffs lost money to app operators like Zynga, SpinX Casino, and DoubleUGames. None of those companies are listed as defendants. Only the operators of app stores are. And that’s not going to work. You have to sue the party that injured you, not one at least once step removed from the equation.

Section 230 allows Google and Apple to exit lawsuits that claim they’re responsible for content — including apps — uploaded by third parties. This holds true even if the content is vetted by Google, etc. before being allowed to go live. Moderation (or this perceived lack thereof) does not undermine these protections.

But that argument likely isn’t even likely to be considered. Suing the wrong party should result in dismissals even if the court decides not to consider Google and Apple’s expected Section 230 defense. You just can’t hope to win a case if you’re not willing to sue the right defendants.

The only silver lining in this batch of bad-faith litigation is the plaintiffs haven’t lost hundreds of thousands of dollars gambling at this point, so they likely haven’t destroyed anyone’s lives at this point, not even their own. But who’s going to take up the case of possibly hundreds of class-action plaintiffs who are going to be duped by law firms and lawyers like those pushing these cases? I mean, as long as we’re talking about holding other people responsible for your own bad decisions, why not find someone willing to go after shit-heel attorneys padding their resumes with the sad stories of rubes they’ve duped into believing they actually have something worth suing over?

Filed Under: app stores, apps, class action lawsuits, gambling, intermediary liability, loot boxes, section 230
Companies: apple, google, pearson simon and warshaw, tycko and zavareei

Arizona Moves Forward With Law To Force Google & Apple To Open Up Payments In App Stores

from the some-good-some-bad dept

Arizona appears to be moving forward with an interesting (though, potentially unconstitutional) bill to say that Apple and Google would need to allow alternative payment systems in their app stores. I think this bill means well in that it’s targeting what appears to be a real issue: the control that Apple (especially) and Google (to a lesser, but still significant extent) have over getting apps onto iOS and Android devices. Both companies take a pretty large cut out of in app-purchases — basically 30% (it’s a little more complicated than that).

The argument from both companies is that (1) it’s their system and their providing value by creating the very platform that effectively allows all these apps to exist in the first place, and (2) part of the value of having a single app store model is that it allows for more security and privacy protections for end users (that’s a big part of Apple’s argument, certainly). Google is slightly more open in that it does allow for sideloading and even third party app stores, but it strongly discourages such practices. And, there is some validity to that argument… but it’s also partially nonsense. For many apps, Google and Apple aren’t really adding that much value, and for them to demand such a large cut seems silly. 30% is also… quite a lot. It’s way more than other platforms in more competitive situations take, which often take closer to 5 to 10%. That certainly suggests some rent seeking.

That said, the bill has some issues as well. The biggest being that this is a state bill, which likely makes it unconstitutional. Regulating Apple and Google services like that likely violates the Commerce Clause, which limits the states’ ability to pass laws that regulate “interstate” commerce. It seems like if this kind of law is being written, it should be a federal law, rather than a state one.

The other big question is what are the downstream impacts of such a bill. If Google and Apple rely on their cut of these in-app sales for revenue, and those effectively go away with such a law, then they’re going to seek to make up that revenue elsewhere. Now, one hopes that they would do this by improving their offerings, adding additional value and figuring out ways to charge for those value-added features. And perhaps that would happen. But the fear is that the companies would seek to find a different revenue stream to tap — such as charging for access to dev tools or even just to list an app on the app store. And, the end result of that might be to shut down or shut out smaller app developers.

The other odd thing about this bill is that it literally exempts the equivalent situation with video game consoles (which also take a ~30% cut):

The bill specifically exempts game consoles ?and other special-purpose devices that are connected to the internet,? and it also bars companies like Apple and Google from retaliating against developers who choose to use third-party payment systems.

I don’t quite understand this. If this approach is good for mobile phone devices, why shouldn’t it also apply to video game consoles? I can’t see any consistent reason to not treat the two similarly.

So, there does seem to be a legitimate concern about Apple and Google’s effective control over the phone device software ecosystem. Perhaps it would be less of a problem if web apps had more access to core device functionality and could bypass the app stores entirely. Or, if sideloading was more common (or even allowed, as in the case with iOS). However, that doesn’t change the fact that this particular bill doesn’t seem like the best way of dealing with this particular situation.

Filed Under: app stores, arizona, commerce clause, competition, payment platforms, payments, state's rights
Companies: apple, google