I’m a little techno-skeptical at times. And the concept of (mobile/native) apps has bothered me ever since the first true smart-phones popped up 20 years ago. The word “app” is annoying in itself: we’ve had software “applications” for decades. And we’ve had software package managers, too. Then someone comes along, hijacks the term “app”, puts them in a “store”, and acts like it’s this cool new thing.
Ever since then, every single service provider is trying to push their own stupid apps on us. Looks like it’s not just us nerds who have had it with this. Even regular, well-adjusted people (“normies”) are starting to get pissed off.
A couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to see a bit about it on Late Night with Seth Meyers (YT). So let’s have a look at their app-controlled Good Time Fun Wheel:
Sure, this was not just about apps. It also touched on forced subscription models, user tracking, pointless community features, and technology being generally annoying and unnecessary.
Here in Germany, we have the term “Digitalzwang”. This roughly translates to “enforced digitality”, though I haven’t encountered this exact term in English yet. According to digitalcourage.de, there are 4 dimensions to Digitalzwang. In a nutshell, goods, products, services, administrative processes, etc. enforce digitality when they:
- Are only available digitally, with no viable real-world alternative.
- Enforce usage of specific proprietary apps.
- Require account registration.
- Enforce disclosure of personal data.
All of these are relevant, but personally I take most issue with numbers 2 and 4. (The latter is about data privacy, which I haven’t given up on yet. But let’s put that aside for another post.)
So why being bothered by apps in particular?
What bothers me most about apps is their commercial character. We have two major app ecosystems, and both are ultimately controlled by individual corporations. It’s gated communities, for those who can afford it. (This looks much worse in the iOS ecosystem, as compared to the Android ecosystem. iOS basically prevents users from installing software from any other source than their official “app store”. )
In contrast, we have a vibrant ecosystem of standards-based open-source software applications. Here, users themselves can decide where they get their software from. Be it through a Linux distribution, some other package manager, directly from the creator, or even self-build from source-code.
Plus we have this beautiful open ecosystem that is the World Wide Web. Sure, the web has accumulated heaps of technical quirks over its long history. But it has constantly adopted new capabilities and grown into a general-purpose application platform in its own right. I’d guess that 90% of mobile apps could easily be replaced by web applications. (There are rare exceptions in scenarios that make use of mobile hardware in specific ways that are not available through web technologies – yet.)
Of course, the web is still digital and it can be abused for enforced digitality. But it’s not a gated community in the way that an app store is. The browser-wars are over, and there is a great choice of standards-compliant web browsers out there. Today, there’s only two major browser engines left – WebKit and Gecko – but both are open source and standards compliant. As are the numerous web browsers that build on top of them. And these browsers are available for all sorts of hardware, be it budget smart phones, high-end desktops, or developer VMs. (And, in a weird twist, many mobile apps make use of these browser engines under the hood in one way or another.)
Circling back on US late-night comedy, the Colbert Questionnaire (YT) asks:
[What is the] most used app on your phone?
My answer will always be “the browser” (currently mostly Firefox) … until something objectively better pops up.
Why should “normies” care?
Well, I’m a computer nerd. I have particular opinions on tech topics, and I understand that other people have different stuff to worry about. But many people are affected by enforced digitality (and apps in particular) for a whole bunch of different reasons. Such as poor people, people with learning disabilities, and old people.
To my surprise, my parents have brought up this topic recently. Out of nowhere. Obviously, they are quite a bit older than I am. My father has had computers since about 1990, but he is certainly no digital native. Now they had one particular situation that forced them to install and use a proprietary app for something that should have worked without it.
They wanted to return a product that they had ordered online. The vendor had sent them a retour label along with the delivery. Delivery and retour were handled by a big parcel delivery service. This company has automated parcel lockers (“packstation”) everywhere our part of Europe. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve used one of these myself, and back then they had a touch-screen and a bar-code scanner (and I think some payment system) built in. So anyone could use their services without additional digital devices. The level of forced digitality seemed acceptable.
But now I’ve learned that you need the company’s mobile app in order to use packstations. At first, I thought that my parents must have missed something obvious. But it’s true: newer packstations can only be used through an app. They’ve even received a Big Brother Award for it back in 2023. The jury also pointed out the intrusiveness of this particular app.
But how much enforced digitality is this really? The parcel company collaborates with local stores, where you can hand your parcel to a real human. But such stores can be far apart, even in urban areas. Plus they have limited opening hours and long lines can build up.
So, yeah, non-digital alternatives do exist. Kinda. But forcing an app on “packstation” users is a particularly dickish move. Even if the company insists on excluding everyone who is not a smart-phone owners, a web site could handle most “packstation” scenarios in a convenient manner. A simple QR-Code that takes users to the right page would do the trick.
The bigger picture
In my opinion, forced mobile apps are ultimately just another building block of enshittification. So, if you want get really enraged about such stuff, just follow Cory Doctorow (EFF), who has coined this term. I can recommend his talk at the past CCC Congress (39C3):
💩 💩 💩