Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship • Hacker News Board

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#231

Post by varispeed » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 12:40 AM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #76

tshaddox wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, okay, it may be the case that our democracy is so crippled that it can’t protect basic consumer rights. But even so, what are we supposed to do? Quit our jobs, abandon our livelihoods, and take to the streets until our government decides we’re too much trouble and hands over power to a more consumer-friendly replacement government? Or just continue to want to use subscriptions through Apple where possible?

This is a false dichotomy that both pro-government and pro-corporate people fall into. Whether Apple or "Our Government", we shouldn't be giving this much power to institutions. > But even so, what are we supposed to do? Vote with your wallet. Stop consuming whatever it is that comes with attached strings. Stop putting convenience above principles. Refuse to pay/subscribe/accept any terms that are clearly not in your…

You stand no chance against multi billion big corporation that can own you. It's the level of influence needed that only government can attain. The trouble is our corruption laws are so weak, you can just call it lobbying and be on your way to money town. It must be a combination of voting with your wallet and making your local politicians aware of the issues you are facing. More people put pressure the more will get done. You know if people are not doing anything, then in their mind problem is not serious.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#232

Post by harry8 » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 12:44 AM UTC

matwood wrote: post #108

mdoms wrote: post #35

It's really not normal to be "in love" with a corporation to begin with....

I have used Apple products for years and like them. I've tried competing products and they never worked as well as a complete package. Sure, they might have had a feature or two that was better by some metric, but overall Apple stuff works well for my use case. Does this mean I'm in love with Apple? I don't think so, but for now they work. Love and hate are also pretty similar emotions. I find both the people who lov…

> ...either use their products or don't.

This is where the hate comes from: It is frequently not a choice that one is able make, to not use their products. "You're at work, you must use $this." Is one of thousands of examples where your preference is made utterly irrelevant.

Also this is where the love comes from.

When forced to use something else and you hate it because your dislike of it is supercharged by that coercion, and you would much prefer to use this other product you might decide you love this other product and even evangelise it to increase your chance of being able to exercise your preference.

The idea that we use choose our use of, and knowledge of, operating systems by our own free will is a little fanciful. X billion smart phone users and 99+% of them freely choose 1 of 2. "It's your choice" doesn't make sense as soon as you look at it from that perspective. At best, exercising your preference comes with a non-trivial cost. At worst, you have no choice.

If it were easy to decide to use something else, something different whenever you felt like it the evangilism and ire would be more like it is for fast-food chains or clothing manufacturers. ie A little more fringe than we're seeing in computing.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#233

Post by harry8 » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 12:47 AM UTC

unishark wrote: post #34

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is another way of saying "I believe Apple should either not operate in certain countries, or should try to operate in those countries in defiance of the laws of those countries." That's true, but it doesn't mean your beef is only with the governments, in exactly the same way that IBM's collusion during WWII can't be pinned solely on the German government. They can choose not to do business in that country, or…

I think the point is when it comes to censorship, taking the high road of refusing to collude with the government and ceasing to operate in the country (whether willingly or by non-compliance leading to being banned yourself) has ultimately the same effect as following the law. The communication which the govt wants to censor gets censored.

"Someone else will do it if I don't so I might as well get paid for assisting evil."

It's a common enough point of view. I disagree with it myself. There's plenty to discuss about just how evil it has to be before you can't live with it anymore. Those are interesting discussion. Binary discussions based on purity are usually pretty dull.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#234

Post by webmobdev » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 12:50 AM UTC

dimitrios1 wrote: post #152

Hokusai wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't need Big Government to do that. Regulations are there tools that citizens have to reign in corporate behavior. 'Big government' is just a catch name for many anti regulation lobbying entities to remove power from citizens and acumulats it on corporations. > Vote with your wallet. Yes. And also vote with your ballots, one person one vote triumphs one dollar one vote if you want freedom.

> 'Big government' is just a catch name for many anti regulation lobbying entities to remove power from citizens and acumulats it on corporations. This is completely reductionist, and completely uninformed. Banks, as an easy counter example to your worldview, don't have armies of third party regulators, corporate compliance staff, and auditors because they hate regulation. They love big government. It acts as a barri…

Strong banking regulations is necessary to ensure that people trust the banks, and the banks don't misuse the fund you deposit with them. The collapse of some banks in US and India due to lax oversight, greed and corruption, in the last 2 decades is strong proof of this.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#235

Post by jsjohnst » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 12:50 AM UTC

webmobdev wrote: post #225

jsjohnst wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to emphasize your point, 30% take is relatively small in the retail world. A store like Amazon or Walmart or Target or Best Buy generally wants a cut of 40-50%, if not more. And that doesn’t include the cut many distributors want to take for being the middle person. (Source: I’ve been on the executive team at startups with products sold in retail stores)

> Just to emphasize your point, 30% take is relatively small in the retail world. The internet already provides a nearly free distribution medium for software application - so even paying a 5% markup to an unnecessary middleman is just outrageous. The app store only exists so that Apple (and others) can gauge even more money from developers, who ultimately pass on the cost to us customers.

And how does that dispute anything I said? I wasn’t making a claim that the AppStore commission is warranted or not, I was speaking to what retail stores charge. I get it, you think Apple is out of line, but maybe reply to someone who is claiming it’s justified rather than pointing your vitriol towards me?

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#236

Post by Despegar » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 1:46 AM UTC

anotherman554 wrote: post #205

Despegar wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My layman understanding was Epic had to do this to be able to legally challenge Apple in court This is obviously false because there are other antitrust cases against Apple pending.

It's not obviously false because unless you've read the case law on the legal concept of "standing" you have no insight into the issue at all.

Fortunately I have and they do have standing.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#237

Post by zepto » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 1:58 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #220

zepto wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m only responding when you make false claims, as you have done here. You have no proof that Apple is recording people’s travel history, only speculation about how they could be. It’s a lie to say they are.

Ahh, I understand you now. Perhaps that you do not realize that storing client IP logs is standard practice for all internet services, and indeed without special and custom engineering effort is necessary for preventing brute-force attempts and denial of service as well as other types of abuse. Any system as vast and reliable as APNS or the App Store is logging client IPs (and is thus logging approximate client locat…

Anyone who doesn’t embed Tor for all communications, is recording your travel history?

First off, this is still simply false.

It may be technically possible that they are in fact reconstructing identifiable location history for individuals.

It’s also possible that they do what they say they are doing, which is to anonymize as early as possible and not use data for this purpose.

They could easily be keeping these logs separate, and disposing of them in a timely fashion, and not attempting to use them to analyze individual’s locations.

You are clearly technically competent enough to know that either scenario is possible (as well as many others).

Therefore you know it is not true to say that Apple is ‘recording you travel history’ in the absence of additional evidence.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#238

Post by zepto » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 2:00 AM UTC

lern_too_spel wrote: post #227

zepto wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, both of you are lying. I claimed your location wasn’t sent, because it isn’t. An anonymous location is being sent. You claim it’s possible they could de-anonymize the location. That may or not be true. Claiming that they are de-anonymizing the data when you know you have no evidence to support the claim, is a lie . If you or he can prove Apple is de-anonymizing location data to track people’s individual travel hi…

I never said that they were actively doing it for everybody, only that they can do it, and there is nothing in their privacy policy that prevents them from doing it. Your claim that I said otherwise is the lie. Your claim that sneak had been repeatedly told he was wrong is also a lie. You have repeatedly called me and sneak liars even though we have provided proof that you have simply not read. Will you apologize to…

You said sneak’s statement was correct.

Sneak said that they were recording people’s travel history, which is a lie.

You haven’t provided any such proof. All you have done is equate logging ip addresses with recording people’s travel history, which is false.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#239

Post by rglullis » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 2:08 AM UTC

webmobdev wrote: post #230

rglullis wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a false dichotomy that both pro-government and pro-corporate people fall into. Whether Apple or "Our Government", we shouldn't be giving this much power to institutions. > But even so, what are we supposed to do? Vote with your wallet. Stop consuming whatever it is that comes with attached strings. Stop putting convenience above principles. Refuse to pay/subscribe/accept any terms that are clearly not in your…

> we shouldn't be giving this much power to institutions. In a democracy, the government derives power from us, the people. In a good and functioning democracy there exists other democratic institutions to ensure that the government cannot abuse the powers granted to them. "Vote with your wallet" is a disingenuous argument were all the corporates work together like a cartel towards a particular business model that ma…

> In a good and functioning democracy (...) institutions to ensure that the government cannot abuse the powers granted to them.

This is the idealistic view. In the real world we have people in power, with their own personal interests, with institutions that are ever more distant from the people and with ever less consequences to face when they do wrong.

The one exception is perhaps Switzerland, and this would be more due to how local governments and cantons prevail over national leaders. The institutions are small and limited in reach. Aside from them, every model (US, the EU, China, Russian) relies on over-centralization and ever-expanding reach of the institutions and the consequential subversion of said institutions to the favor of interest groups.

So, unless you are Swiss I really don't have any reason to believe you actually have any power over the government, and I really don't believe you should be defending to give them even more power and attributions.

> maximises profit to the detriment of consumers

Last I checked, no one forced me to buy anything from Apple. I don't think closed systems are beneficial for me, so I don't buy them. No one forced me to buy anything from Google, either. No one forced me to buy a car or to live in an expensive metro area or even check any trendy bar with overpriced drinks. No one forced me to buy home appliances that can I not repair.

"Well, where I live there is only one internet provider, so I am forced to use it". No, you are not. It's just that the inconvenience of not having internet at home outweighs your willingness to get your community and put together an alternative. Also, more likely than not, the reason that there is no alternative is due to REGULATIONS that lobbyists from big telco managed to pass so that they have an advantage.

To truly believe that "regulations creates a level-playing field" is beyond naive. It's borderline harmful to you and for society at large.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#240

Post by webmobdev » Tue, Dec 08, 2020, 2:32 AM UTC

jsjohnst wrote: post #235

webmobdev wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just to emphasize your point, 30% take is relatively small in the retail world. The internet already provides a nearly free distribution medium for software application - so even paying a 5% markup to an unnecessary middleman is just outrageous. The app store only exists so that Apple (and others) can gauge even more money from developers, who ultimately pass on the cost to us customers.

And how does that dispute anything I said? I wasn’t making a claim that the AppStore commission is warranted or not, I was speaking to what retail stores charge. I get it, you think Apple is out of line, but maybe reply to someone who is claiming it’s justified rather than pointing your vitriol towards me?

I was bringing the debate back to what it was about, not "spewing vitriol" at you.