Apple has proven, time and again, that it heavily favors censorship in the name of profits. The real issue we should be talking about is the de-facto monopoly Apple has because of their hardware device success (e.g. iPhone), and how and when this monopoly will be prevented from censoring the speech and content of millions of lives. Or do we expect monopolistic censorship to be the new norm of the future? Disgusting.
Is it censorship in the name of profits when they make less money by taking apps off the App Store?
Apple Removes American Civil War Games from the App Store
201–210 of 226 posts
Re: Apple Removes American Civil War Games from the App Store
#202The scariest thing is how fast sweeping and unanimous these acts of compliance are. It's like these companies just woke up suddenly, had a conference call and without a hint of discussion, analysis or feedback started enforcing moral revisionism. It reeks of dishonest, cheap PR. What's next on the agenda? The saddest part is that this has totally taken over the discussion of shootings in North Carolina. US is unique…
Because gun control is pretty much dead in the US. If 20 children being killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting wasn't enough to pass new legislation, 9 adults certainly wouldn't be. The flag has become an issue so politicians can be seen "doing something."
I think that's a little more cynical than need be. Most of the politicians who are doing anything about the flag are Republicans and they are doing it despite the fact that it is upsetting some of their base, in a rare show of basic decency.
The retailers who stopped selling merchandise are saying that they don't want to make money selling racist memorabilia. Apple is more or less saying that as well - though they could potentially reverse their opinion on this singular case. These decisions are made by relatively low-level employees following unwritten guidelines.
I see nothing wrong with a bunch of Apple employees waking up one day, coming into work, and receiving an announcement that, "We're getting rid of the confederate flag."
Re: Apple Removes American Civil War Games from the App Store
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Primarily states' rights or primarily slavery, that "peculiar institution"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech It's a bit of historical revisionism to suggest that slavery wasn't the main driving cause of the rebellion, and ultimately the treason, committed by those ruling in the South. It was the choice of slavery over patriotism back when the states seceded then, and it's ever more abhorrent now to th…
"t's a bit of historical revisionism to suggest that slavery wasn't the main driving cause of the rebellion" It's also revisionist history that Lincoln cared about slaves' rights. The main reason slavery was made illegal was to gut the south if it's resources, and it worked. The side-effect was, however, morally right. Here is a good example of this: http://www.history.com/news/5-things-you-may-not-know-about-... Thi…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation
The American flag does probably mean oppression and injustice for certain groups of people, both within the States and outside the States. The collective "we" could probably do better about how we reflect on those past injustices so as to do better in the future.
The more I read your arguments, the more I feel that you are cornering yourself into the position that you are trying to argue against. The symbol of the swastika can have many meanings, and context has not been collectively forgotten: if it's spray-painted on a synagogue in the West by some angsty teenager, but has the orientation of the Buddhist peace symbol, is anyone really going to think that the kid was promoting world peace? Of course not. If the symbol's painted on a truck for good luck on a food delivery guy's rickshaw in some Indian city, is any visiting Westerner going to think that he's a Neo-Nazi? No.
The closest comparison that I can draw between the swastika and the continued flying of the Confederate flag would be if some non-Hindu or Jainist in Germany tried to pass off their use of the swastika on their car as a good luck token. That's a slap in the face to anyone (or their descendants) that had to deal with the atrocities promoted by the Third Reich. That's what the continued flying of the Confederate flag amounts to: a slap in the face to those impacted by slavery and the culture surrounding slavery. You're attempting to argue that the context surrounding the Confederate flag doesn't actually exist anymore. The legacy of slavery (and its incipient inequalities) still exists to this day, so I find it quite a stretch to say that "the Confederate flag is no longer a symbol of slavery." Who are any of us to individually decide whether or not it is still a symbol of slavery? I'm hard pressed to see it as a neutral symbol, when as recently as 60 years ago, legislators and citizens alike were passing it off as a cultural "homage" during the battle against integration. [1] There's not much of a slippery slope argument to be made here: we aren't talking about one or two people that are offended or impacted, we're talking about an entire socio-/ethno-/econo-demographic that wouldn't exist were the institution of slavery extinguished in a just manner. The flag is as plain a symbol as any for 1. the institution of slavery, 2. the socio-cultural romanticism of the "Lost Cause" of the South, 3. the legacy of Jim Crow laws into the present day, and, 4. the continued inequalities faced by African-Americans at the short end of the stick of the previous three.
[1] (bottom of PDF pg. 33) https://web.archive.org/web/20141204200939/http://www.senate...
EDIT: Do I think the Confederate flag should be removed from historical video games? No. Do I think it should be removed from any and all state offices? Yes. White-washing descriptions of history for the sake of hurt feelings is silly, but disallowing the adoration of symbols of cruelty and inequality promotes good nation building and the integration of communities.
Re: Apple Removes American Civil War Games from the App Store
#204It's quite ironic that Apple is setting a precedent for the intolerance of any symbol of slavery while they are knowingly supporting manufacturing which utilizes child labor, which is often forced labor. The epitome of hypocrisy which hopefully leads Apple to change.
You seriously need to cite some sources if you're going to make a claim like that.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/apr/30/apple-chin...
http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-apple-suppliers-accused-o...
The accusations are some widespread that it caused Apple to publish this: https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/
Re: Apple Removes American Civil War Games from the App Store
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think your comment is really out of place here, because I don't think anyone here is arguing for what you're arguing against. Regardless, the Confederate Flag is something other than a symbol of overt racism. It is the emblem of the Confederate Army that is most recognizable to modern people. It's certainly because of that fact that the flag is also a symbol of overt racism. When presenting media of a historical ge…
There's a lot of talk about historical accuracy with regard to Apple's decision. Hence it's in context to post what exactly that flag represented to the people at the time of secession. When I lived in the South I never saw anyone other than white people flying that flag. It didn't represent pride to non-whites and the declarations of white people that it was part of their heritage went along with talk about 'those'…
I think "heritage" and "history" are different things.
As americans, slavery is part of our history, and the civil war happened. I don't think we should remove the confederate flag from history books, because that is how we know how offensive it is.
So if this game's purpose is to let you imagine commanding the Union army and defeat the Confederate army, with historically accurate battlefields, and this is a teaching tool to help people understand how fundamentally fucked up that war was, I think that's very different from someone who says, "You can't take my confederate flag because free speech!", though as an individual they are correct that they have the right to loudly and proudly declare to everyone who will listen that they are a racist, and I think that's a beautiful thing about free speech.
This is different from free speech IMO, this at least borders on the academic.
Re: Apple Removes American Civil War Games from the App Store
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their stance makes perfect sense. The App Store is not a commons, it is the private property of Apple, in which they curate the works of others at their convenience. But unlike a book store or a music store, they can closely associate what they stock with the brand becaues the "App" medium is so new . It's pretty similar to a local coffee shop maintaining a few book cases for customers to borrow or buy, but being pre…
Your simile is completely off. It's not like a local coffee shop with book cases, it's like a (fictitious) company that has a monopoly on stocking the book cases in all coffee shops nation-wide. Your cellphone is the coffee shop.
Re: Apple Removes American Civil War Games from the App Store
#207The scariest thing is how fast sweeping and unanimous these acts of compliance are. It's like these companies just woke up suddenly, had a conference call and without a hint of discussion, analysis or feedback started enforcing moral revisionism. It reeks of dishonest, cheap PR. What's next on the agenda? The saddest part is that this has totally taken over the discussion of shootings in North Carolina. US is unique…
What companies?
> had a conference call
You mean, watched/read the same news in the same country?
> US is unique in that 9 people gunned down in cold blood somehow turns into a discussion about a flag?
The guy who shot them had pretty strong feelings about the flag, and a racist manifesto.
US is unique in that actual state and city governments (SF flew a confederate flag at civic center plaza in the 60s), in response to the civil rights movement, revived the symbol of a civil war in which the substantive disagreement was whether or not human beings are property.
Re: Apple Removes American Civil War Games from the App Store
#208This is a very Apple move. When I saw it, I wasn't surprised. There are Civil War games where it makes total sense for the flag to show, and there are probably a few tasteless "The south will rise again" things that never should have been allowed on in the first place. But it takes a lot of people and time to figure it out for each app on the store. And when it comes to this kind of stuff Apple doesn't like spending…
> But it takes a lot of people and time to figure it out for each app on the store. Right, because why would they dedicate resources and effort to the biggest feature of their biggest product?
Re: Apple Removes American Civil War Games from the App Store
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
This one's a little different still. What you're describing is small-scale political misdirection and shortsightedness. Politicians always react in this nonsensical way whether motivated by powerful lobby groups or personal advancement. Here we also have large corporations that seemingly have no horse in this race other than some cheap, blatantly dishonest PR participating in this moral misdirection on a grand scale.…
Yeah, that comment isn't meant to apply to Apple, it was just a response/agreement with onewaystreet. I know this kind of thing always happens, but I was surprised how fast 'everyone' latched onto the flag as the core issue this time that will solve everything.
The flag was re-raised in response to the civil rights movement.
It's not the core issue, but I think it would be silly to say, in post-WWII Germany, that simply taking down nazi symbols won't stop people from thinking like nazis.
Re: Apple Removes American Civil War Games from the App Store
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, that comment isn't meant to apply to Apple, it was just a response/agreement with onewaystreet. I know this kind of thing always happens, but I was surprised how fast 'everyone' latched onto the flag as the core issue this time that will solve everything.
It won't solve everything, but it's about damned time it stopped being socially acceptable. The flag was re-raised in response to the civil rights movement. It's not the core issue, but I think it would be silly to say, in post-WWII Germany, that simply taking down nazi symbols won't stop people from thinking like nazis.
It's just too bad that's probably the only change that will come of this.