Bonum Certa Men Certa

Alexandre Oliva: The WWWorst App Store

Picture the most abusive app store.



Programs in it are meant to run on your own computer.



However, you have to be online to run them.



Every time you start them, they contact the app store.



If there is an updated version, it's installed automatically, no questions asked. You'd rather run the earlier version? Tough.



If the app store decides you're no longer welcome, the program won't start any more.



If the app store servers are offline, or if you are, it won't start either.






Programs in this app store must also hold your data in the app store's servers.



If the program won't start, you can't get to the data on the servers any more.



You may have downloaded backups of your data, but you'd have to figure out how to decode them without the program.






Sounds like a nightmare? It is. But it's also very real.



Well-known app stores are approaching this level of nastiness.



But they are just catching up with the real thing.



The most abusive app store is the business-driven perversion of the old user-empowering distributed hypertext system called "the Web".



Users have been encouraged to adopt "web apps" for much of their computing, paving the way for other app stores to follow suit.






"Web apps" are most often distributed as JavaScript (though Java and Flash have served similar purposes), automatically installed and executed on your browser.



But the problem is not that they're in JavaScript, or that it's your browser that runs them. It's that:





The app store owner takes all that control away from you, thereby gaining control over you.



You lose when the JavaScript code is nonfree software.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html



But you also lose when it is (nominally) free software!






When the app / web site has so much control over what runs on your computer, the effect "is equivalent to using a nonfree program with surveillance features and a universal back door."
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/network-services-arent-free-or-nonfree.html
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html



The owner gets all the freedom, and you, the user, get none.



That's not a self-respectful way to do your computing.



It invades your privacy, it keeps you and your data hostage, it takes away your agency and your freedom when it comes to your digital life.






The web used to be a wonderful way to share information.



Web apps and mandatory JavaScript have turned it into the worst app store.



It is time to separate the WWWonderful from the WWWorst practices.



Here are some ways to help:





More generally:





Now, if you wish your site to give its users a taste of how the WWWorst app store feels to us, add to web pages you control the following JavaScriptlet:



document.body.textContent = 'Please disable JavaScript to view this site.'



If you wish, make "disable JavaScript" a link to this article.






Thanks to Richard Stallman for the inspiration to write about this issue, and for the encouragement to publish it.



Copyright 2021 Alexandre Oliva



Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this entire document worldwide without royalty, provided the copyright notice, the document's official URL, and this permission notice are preserved.



The WWWorst App Store

Recent Techrights' Posts

New XBox Leaks Probably Serve to Confirm XBox's Collapse (Many More Layoffs)
It's very much consistent with what many other sites have reported lately
 
Noteworthy Claim That IBM is Firing a Lot of Lawyers This Week (RAs in the Legal Department)
A lot of what they do is patent 'trolling' or lawyering up against their own staff (e.g. HR disputes)
Links 10/10/2025: US Judge Bars Attacks by ICE On Journalists and Protesters; “We Took The Freedom of Speech Away” Says the President
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Serial Sloppers, Google News Gifting Slopfarms, and Fake News/Plagiarism About "Linux"
Google itself is a slop pusher these days
Qualcomm, the New Owner of Arduino, Blasted for Its Software Patents Tax on 'Smartphones'
A lot of Qualcomm's patents are on software. We wrote about this in prior years.
XBox Layoffs Rumours, Downtime, and Criticism From XBox Co-Founder
"everyone is ditching the xbox."
Links 10/10/2025: Honoring The Legacy Of Robert Murray-Smith, Many Articles on the Hey Hi (AI) Bubble
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: October Gothic and Reading Middle Earth Role Playing; C and Ada
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 09, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 09, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Farewell to Jane Goodall, California Bans Algorithmic Price-Fixing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Lost Wages and a Saga Of Continuing To Use Palm PDAs
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Talk in Helsinki is Done. Tomorrow Göteborg.
There are scarce details in Finnish about Dr. Stallman's talk
The Slop Song
The train wreck marches on
LLM Slop/Advanced Plagiarism Flooding the Zone With Capital That Does Not Exist
Many publishers out there still participate in this bubble instead of calling it what it is
Links 09/10/2025: Sacked Microsoft Workers Make "Sackbird", IBM Taps CockroachDB for PostgreSQL
Links for the day
"Happy Hacking Day" Richard Stallman Talk This Afternoon (From 14:00 to 16:00) at Haaga-Helia University in Pasila
Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 08, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Impact of Microsoft Layoffs, More Data Breaches
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Autumn Blues and C IRC Bot
Links for the day
Slopwatch Appreciated by Real Authors of GNU/Linux Articles
We do try to keep on top of those things
Upgraded R.R.R.R.R.R. Today
The Web of 2025 is full of garbage, not limited to slopfarms
Freedom From Proprietary Prisons
Forking always an option
IBM's Watson Died in 1956, Now Watson Dies Again
IBM is becoming just a reseller of GAFAM and other stuff
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, and Google News
We've also just noticed more slop from UbuntuPIT
Microsoft Says That Constant Mass Layoffs Are Success, the Media Isn't Buying This Microsoft Narrative Anymore
If people in the media feel an obligation to repeat whatever lies Microsoft tells, what point will there be to the media?
Links 08/10/2025: "Mali Puts Free Speech on Trial" And Apple Enforces Dictatorship
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: ‘Death to Spotify’ and Law to Ban Loud Commercials on Streaming (Dis)Services
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Real Innovation and Nina.chat is Dead
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Y2K38 Bug is a Vulnerability, Chat Control in Europe a Threat
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows is No Longer an Operating System, It's Surveillance Project
Why is this even legal to preload on PCs outside the US?
How and Why Once-Legitimate Sites Turn Into Slopfarms
Many sites will go offline and many social control networks will shut down once they realise or even openly admit they spend money and time gardening a bunch of bots and slop
UbuntuPIT Became a Slopfarm and Gnoppix Tarnishes Its Own Brand With Slop
It fits all the characteristics of mildly-edited (if at all) slop
Slopwatch: Linux Journal and Other Slopfarms
GAFAM needs to go the way of the dodo
Gemini Links 08/10/2025: "Seek Seek Revolution" and Gradient Backgrounds
Links for the day
Qualcomm Arduino Takes Aim at Raspberry Pi
Qualcomm is a Microsoft partner
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 07, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 07, 2025
Stagnation of the Economy and What Free Software Can (or Could) Do For It
If your economic model is based on a pyramid of lies, it won't last very long
Social Control Media is Sinking
it would rightly seem like the era of centralised "social" sites (they're not social, they're about controlling the users) is ending, not overnight but gradually