181–190 of 357 posts
Apparently it looked too much like the iPad Settings app.
Insane.
And Apple is not even an isolated case. Google will close gmail accounts, take away adsense revenues, or remove youtube videos on a whim. Visa blocked users from giving their money to political causes they decided didn't aligned with their view of the world. For years Microsoft made it super hard to buy hardware without paying the Windows licence. They killed xbox remotely. They have invasive telemetry in Win 10. Pay…
And that, dear reader, is why you should host your own infrastructure on your own network connection. Besides being cheaper than using hosted services it: - protects you from this type of arbitrary abuse of power - helps in keeping third parties from mining you for all your data - helps in resisting censorship - protects you from surprise changes or cancellations of services (Google Reader, Google+, Microsoft PlaysFo…
They will then attack your Domain Register, or your DDOS protection (CloudFlare) or ISP (as more residential plan forbid running any server the ISP will ban you not for political or other reasons but for running a server on a residential plan), have your bank account / credit card cancelled (this has happened) etc etc etc
By his own description of what it does, I'd say the app is highly likely to be selling access to content that the author hasn't licensed, and is on sketchy copyright grounds.
Also, the fact that a vote manipulation app...
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122737/iowa-democractic-...
...was distributed via a test platform with the financial backing of former Clinton and Obama / recent Pete Buttigieg staffers...
https://apnews.com/5232ce5601996c1de440806ad30fa4fb
...has likely put Apple in the position of being compelled to more actively police what goes on in test apps. I get the knee-jerk tendency to blame corporate oppression of indie developers since that is usually what we see from the Googles and Microsofts of the world, but Apple has little monetary interest in kicking a successful app developer off of their ecosystem, unless that app developer is blatantly flaunting civil / criminal statutes or trying to scam Apple out of their cut of the profit.
If I had a to guess I'd say this guy is doing both.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Visa blocked users from giving their money to political causes they decided didn't aligned with their view of the world. Just curious, what were the political causes affected?
9y ago they cut off Wikileaks; this is well before the 2016 election. https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/12/07/visa-m...
And Apple is not even an isolated case. Google will close gmail accounts, take away adsense revenues, or remove youtube videos on a whim. Visa blocked users from giving their money to political causes they decided didn't aligned with their view of the world. For years Microsoft made it super hard to buy hardware without paying the Windows licence. They killed xbox remotely. They have invasive telemetry in Win 10. Pay…
And that, dear reader, is why you should host your own infrastructure on your own network connection. Besides being cheaper than using hosted services it: - protects you from this type of arbitrary abuse of power - helps in keeping third parties from mining you for all your data - helps in resisting censorship - protects you from surprise changes or cancellations of services (Google Reader, Google+, Microsoft PlaysFo…
ISPs can ban users just as capriciously as any other company. And they do.
Decentralized internet alternatives are both harder to use (and "host your own infrastructure" is already impossibly hard for the vast majority of people) and too limited to be useful.
It's time to accept that and emergent behavior of the internet is to become more centralized, not less.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At one point abolishing paper cash is even remotely plausible? maybe in 100 years? So far cash rules majority of the world and I don't see it going away any time soon.
Cash is already going away in some countries. Almost nobody pays for anything with cash in the UK anymore.
Payment systems should be nationalised and run by a country's central bank. It's a very boring infrastructure equivalent to roads. There shouldn't be a private company taxing every single transaction someone makes. Do that and the small stores can drop the fees.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> i can guarantee you that there are probably hundreds (if not thousands) of stories like that, with people getting shut down for no good reason, and having their business killed How about Apple telling me they don't like my business bank (a well known UK bank I've been with for 10 years) and simply refusing to set up the account. In a very cold, "go away already", manner. I wasn't going to kill the relationship with…
All the issues people have with apple can be applied to most corporations. Don't get me wrong, I think it's abhorrent, but it's something you should think about. I once tried to open a new bank account with my bank of 10y, and set up direct debit to it. The point was that I was going to pay my rent from that new account (both me and a roommate would pay into the account, and a direct-debit would go to the landlord).…
With long established institutions (like banks) you still have lots of competitors to choose from, and legal recourse if you are wronged. There is no recourse when PayPals, Amazons and Apples of the world decide to scrub you.
In my case it was Apple refusing to work with a bank because they don't have branches, apparently. It's a well known private bank, with a gazillion businesses banking with them, a subsidiary of a rather large multinational bank. For ten years my company has been paid by, and paid out to, numerous entities in the UK and abroad, with no problems. But now Apple comes around, all arrogant as they are, telling me to switch banks because they have enacted a rule that doesn't exist in any laws, just because they can? I am not willing to go down that route.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
OT: why do you care which bank you're in?
Why would you allow Apple to decide which bank you must use?
And Apple is not even an isolated case. Google will close gmail accounts, take away adsense revenues, or remove youtube videos on a whim. Visa blocked users from giving their money to political causes they decided didn't aligned with their view of the world. For years Microsoft made it super hard to buy hardware without paying the Windows licence. They killed xbox remotely. They have invasive telemetry in Win 10. Pay…
I had about 12 domains once and decided to park them as I was busy, set them all up on adsense, went to all the domains to make sure they all worked, a couple I refreshed a few times as it wasn't working properly. The next day I got an email saying my adsense was closed for 'fake views / clicks', no way to challenge it or anything. That was like 10 years ago. I still can't use adsense to this day.
I haven't been able to trust gmail with anything important after that.