undefined

points

[-]

It's also a very general European mindset thing. They have a very different approach to privacy there - they basically expect everyone's identity to be public, and then protect those identities from abuse, rather than the more US approach of letting you hide your identity so it can't be abused. You see supermarkets with the owner's full name plastered across the storefront underneath the franchise logo. "This store is EDEKA John Smith"

by bluebarbet5 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

There's something to this but it's still a slightly dodgy generalization.

A random counter-example from France. If you have a one-person small business (i.e. with a registered business number and the right to invoice), all personal information beyond the name is private by default, it cannot be looked up. The Nordic countries are perhaps closer to the image you're painting. Personal tax information is famously public in Sweden, for example.

But IMO differences are easy to exaggerate. Let's not forget that private phone numbers used to be published in paper directories - with home addresses! - everywhere, including America.

by hbn8 hours ago|

parent|

prev|

[-]

A store is more reasonable to put your name on because generally if you want to meet the person running it you could just walk into it regardless of whether you know their name.

The internet has created a culture of deranged harassment that makes posting your identity online alongside anything you publish more insane than ever. And your market is more or less the entire world rather than your local community.

by inigyou7 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

Europe has basically applied the same principle to websites as to stores, unlike the US where both websites and stores can be fairly anonymous.

by plagiarist3 hours ago|

parent|

prev|

[-]

Occasionally mobs of hateful psychos will target individuals with harassment. There is absolutely not enough protection from unwanted messages, unwanted phone calls, false reports to SWAT teams, identity theft, who knows what else.

by inigyou3 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

In Europe, a lot of the protection is that they have to provide their own identity to access the system. So I can host something on my internet connection, which is tied to my ID, and people can DoS it, but those people also have to provide ID for their own internet connections and can be traced, unless they are outside Europe in which case I can solve it by blocking all other countries. If someone spam-calls me from Europe, their phone is registered to their ID and caller ID is strictly enforced, so I know who is spamming me. For this reason there are few spam calls. If someone sends me a letter - well, I don't think sender address is mandatory because it couldn't be enforced. If someone wants to look up my details on the business registry, they leave a record showing who is looking them up.

by Grombobulous7 hours ago|

prev|

[-]

Why isn’t Apple the business with the contact info? They’re taking 15-30% cut and fully control their software APIs.

Unless I’m mistaken, Steam and GOG games aren’t listing the address of the game developers in the EU, but I admit that I might be mistaken.

by aetch6 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

Apple is just the delivery man, the app contents are solely created by the developer and are not changed by apple

by wahnfrieden6 hours ago|

parent|

prev|

[-]

Because of how the EU law was written

by seba_dos14 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

Nope, at least in Play Store it's because of how Google chooses to run their store. Google is the middleman between two sides of the transaction and its the developer that actually sells these apps, while Valve is one of the sides of the transaction and sells things based on the license granted by the developer. Not sure how Apple does it though.

by wahnfrieden3 hours ago|

parent|

[-]

Google publishes seller contact and Google and Apple both do so because of how EU law was written as it pertains to how they set up their stores

by Izkata8 hours ago|

prev|

[-]

It's also in the US. A consumer protection law in California started it around a decade ago and Google applied it to everyone instead of letting us opt out of the state (it's why I let my Android app die), and since then they've also disallowed PO boxes.