Why should Samsung users turn Auto Blocker off? The lawsuit against Google and partners is expected to reach 100 million mobile users by the end of the year

The new lawsuit being filed today is intended to deter and discourage Google and partners from pursuing a malicious compliance strategy. You could argue that the judge asked for it, as he repeatedly told the lawyers who were trying to get an anti-circumvention provision.

I suspect Samsung will point out that it doesn’t secretly or quietly turn on Auto Blocker, though; it lets users choose. “The default setting for Auto Blocker is set to On in the phone’s initial setup wizard, but you can also change this setting to Off during the initial setup,” the company’s support page notes.

Epic claims it now requires “an exceptionally onerous 21-step process” to download a third-party app store onto a Samsung phone, making it that much more likely users will give up somewhere along the way.

When I try to turn off auto blocker in my phone, there are no relevant results in the search bar, and I have to use several screens to shut it off. One of them asks me if I’m really sure, claiming “Auto Blocker keeps your phone safe by blocking threats and other suspicious activity.”

Tim Sweeney says that the thing is not designed to protect against a certain type of software. It is designed to prevent competition.

He says the Epic Games Store has now reached 10 million mobile installs, against a “totally achievable” 100 million target by the end of the year. He characterizes that as “traction but not an enormous amount.”

Is It Just Constraints on the Effective Protection of Users against Malicious Programs, Revisited? A Comment on Sweeney

There are not reasonable measures that can be made to protect users against malicious software, according to Sweeney. “It’s about obstruction of competition.”