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OpenWebAdvocacy / website

Source code for the Open Web Advocacy website.
https://open-web-advocacy.org/
MIT License
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Create an informational resource for developers to link to in their "why your iOS PWA experience is terrible" banners/popups #104

Open nickchomey opened 9 months ago

nickchomey commented 9 months ago

With PWAs being killed in the EU, many people are going to soon be blindsided by a non-functional PWA that they use (and perhaps even depend upon - it seems like healthcare, in particular, makes a lot of use of them). Many developers have been expressing their outrage and dismay at this situation, and some are even saying that they're just going to give up on developing their PWA for iOS. For example:

Since there has been zero communication from Apple, we will make it extremely clear to our EU-based iOS app users precisely who is responsible for this setback. We will leverage the recent attention our web app gained from its feature on apple.com to shed light on Apple's blatantly anti-competitive actions. Users will understand how Apple's restrictive practices not only degrade their experience but also inflate costs and hinder disruptive apps like ours, which benefit from the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of a unified code base across platforms.

Now, more than ever, is the time to campaign for the open web and double down on developing premier, web-first applications — applications that will intentionally not function on iOS. We're shifting our approach from appealing to legislators about Apple's monopolistic behaviors to directly educating end users about the disadvantages they face due to these practices. We were motivated before but now it's on!

So, OWA should get in front of the impending death of iOS PWAs and harness its inevitable outrage towards a unified call to action. It could do this by providing developers with an informational resource that they can easily link to within their apps' iOS banners/popups to explain to their users why their iOS experience is now (and, frankly, always was) significantly degraded.

Only a few will link to it to start with, but, for better or worse, the tech industry has shown a consistent pattern of expressing outrage for injustices as well as signalling towards change (and sometimes even acting towards it) - consider how everyone in tech has reflexively and contagiously added statements and links about BLM, DEI, pronouns, and specific wars to their profiles, site banners, emails etc... I see no reason why Tech wouldn't act similarly here - even if just to save face amongst the sea of virtue signalling

The resource could explain the issue at numerous levels:

If everyone shared the same link, it would present this all as a unified front which would both carry more weight as well as be more likely to be contagious. And, of course, this would all lend more awareness and credence to OWA and its efforts.

nickchomey commented 9 months ago

Where could such a resource be announced?