Yesterday Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke at the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) Global Privacy Summit. He discussed, as you would expect, discuss privacy and trust in today’s digital economy.
As noted by The Mac Observer, Cook pointed out a need to stop laws and regulations from forcing Apple to accept side-loading because of the threat to privacy.
“When companies decide they want to leave the App Store because they want to exploit user data, it could put significant pressure on people to engage with alternate app stores, where their privacy and security may not be protected,” he said.
However, the folks at “Fight for the Future” — a U.S. digital rights organization — disagree and are launching a new campaign in collaboration with the China-based human rights group Great Fire called “Free the iPhone.”
The campaign aims “to debunk Apple and Tim Cook’s disingenuous talking points on antitrust legislation, and explain why the app store monopoly is a human rights catastrophe.”
“If you own your phone, you should be able to install whatever software you want, from whatever source you want, period,” Joe Thornton, a campaign manager at Fight for the Future, says in a press release. “As companies like Meta become hardware manufacturers (Oculus), and look to turn Facebook into a metaverse company, we run the risk of these mega monopolies defining our entire online experience. This could make Apple’s stranglehold over our mobile devices look quaint. We must act now to ensure that these virtual spaces, and the devices and software that power the experience, are open and interoperable, and users are not locked down to one giant corporation, app store, or platform.”
Fight for the Future wants Congress to pass the Open App Markets Act (OAMA), a bill designed to “fix major human rights and antitrust issues with the Apple App Store and similar digital marketplaces.”
This isn’t the first time that Fight for the Future has taken on Apple. Last year it launched a petition asking Congress to end the Apple App Store “monopoly.”
