60 Year Old Rep. David Cicilline Thinks You Should Be Able to Remove Every App From Your Phone
Rebecca Kern, reporting for Bloomberg (for whatever that’s worth):
Cicilline told reporters Wednesday that a proposal prohibiting tech platforms from giving an advantage to their own products over those of competitors would mean Apple must let consumers decide which apps to use or remove.
[…]
The bill contains a provision that would prohibit Apple, for example, from restricting or impeding iPhone users from uninstalling apps that have been pre-installed
David Cicilline is a sixty year old single gay man, the only substantial experience he has with technology is searching “NSA young tops” on the Craigslist personals section. Nobody asked him to come up with asinine legislation that would force Apple and other manufacturers to ship phones that allow users to delete every app. Sure, let users delete the phone, or the clock, or the settings app, or the App Store. We’ll see how that goes.
In all seriousness, we do need substantial antitrust legislation in the tech industry, but this is not it. The legislation we need is going to have to be written by people who are capable of understanding the issues at hand (i.e., people who are under 45).