Back in 2011, Apple removed apps that crowdsourced warnings about DUI checkpoints. It remains Apple's policy today. According to Grok, "In March 2011, four Democratic senators—Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), and Tom Udall (D-N.M.)—sent letters to Apple, Google, and Research in Motion (BlackBerry's parent company) urging the removal of such apps […]" So, we have precedent wher…
Source? Not even your quoted Grok output is claiming that Apple removed the apps, just that the senators asked them to. At least one source I found says that "Apple and Google did not give in" https://reason.com/2011/05/23/no-app-for-that/ I don't think a situation like this is impossible, quite the opposite, but let's try to not invent facts please.
Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ
371–380 of 645 posts
Re: Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
Overthrown by whom? Aliens? Power supports power, there is no way out of this black hole.
The neat thing about the US is that governments are overthrown regularly by automatic operation of law: 12pm on the 20th of January 2028, in the case of the 47th president. I'm sure you know this but I feel everyone needs to remind themselves of this immutable fact regularly until then.
You are 8 months in since your last 20th of January and your chief turd already collected all top military officials and started his speech by intimidating them. There is no such thing as "automatic operation of law".
Re: Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ
#373Methinks this won’t be the last politically-motivated removal from Apple’s App Store; the more apps they remove then the more they weaken their own arguments about how a locked-in walled garden is in consumer interests.
Apple removed a lot of apps from the store in order to stay present in Russia. Just business
Did anyone actually believe {MEGACORP} would prefer political alignment to money?
Re: Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ
#374Re: Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ
#375Back in 2011, Apple removed apps that crowdsourced warnings about DUI checkpoints. It remains Apple's policy today. According to Grok, "In March 2011, four Democratic senators—Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), and Tom Udall (D-N.M.)—sent letters to Apple, Google, and Research in Motion (BlackBerry's parent company) urging the removal of such apps […]" So, we have precedent wher…
> It remains Apple's policy today. What is that policy? > According to Grok Why did you ask an LLM which is manipulated by a single person when he doesn't like facts? > So, we have precedent where four Democratic senators pressured Apple to remove an app that allowed people to evade law enforcement. Yes, senators sent letters to several companies. Apple listened. What would have happened if it didn't? What would happ…
> Do you sincerely believe that both situations are comparable?
How are they not? In both cases US government officials applied pressure and implied legal action to force private companies to act in ways that enabled law enforcement to act with less resistance. It’s why we should always push back against government overreach and bullying. Because the “slippery slope” might be a logical fallacy, but that doesn’t stop it from also being the most likely outcome of the government pushing the boundaries.
Re: Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ
#376ICE tracking apps put ICE agents in danger, and the same kind of app for, say, tracking Meta employees or “people who wear Team Blue T-shirts” or any other group would obviously be a danger as well. How on earth do people find this controversial..?
Are masked Meta employees kidnapping people at gunpoint and deporting them to foreign gulags?
Re: Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
So exactly which festures would be needed in a PWA that’s not currently available in iOS? It’s just a meaningless talking point without specifics
I have looked into developing a PWA. For starters: 1. Decent storage API. Last time I checked, there were serious limitations on the amount of storage you can use, especially in iOS 2. Mechanism for the user to save a certain . Analogous to saving and running a .exe and being able to compare the file hashes and run different versions of a file without the app developer's intent. This would include the ability to writ…
And this has nothing to do with my question - what features are lacking that would prevent this particular app from being a web app?
Re: Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
If there’s a coherent point in here I genuinely can’t find it.
I can't help you there. This is what matters https://whatwg.org/ Not this https://developer.chrome.com/blog https://www.electronjs.org/
Sorry, I genuinely can’t even tell what you think we are talking about here at this point.
Re: Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW, if you have no problem with what Apple is doing--and a lot of people might not: they might even actively cheer Apple on if they went out of their way to help ICE... not my jam, but a lot of people want to simultaneously be anti-ICE or anti-Trump and pro-Apple--then I don't think my comment becomes "untrue": the point simply would have no serious effect on you, as I guess you are simply OK being "complicit"... t…
The thing is these are all your opinions and you have a right to them... but you are choosing these words (my guess is they are chosen for you based on your source material) words like "complicit", "patsy", "authoritarian control". Using these words doesn't make them true. I give you credit for speaking up for what you believe in publicly. My opinion is that it is pretty self evident that a large or small company wou…
Ah, OK, so, that isn't actually the issue I am pointing at directly, which might be the confusion! I am not saying that--if you believe that such apps being pulled is, itself, a bad thing (and, a lot of people do, as they want to claim they are anti-ICE or anti/Trump), the reason that happens at all is not because Apple didn't fight back hard enough today (somehow): it is because Apple didn't make the correct choices years ago, and now they have no choice. Apple is only in a position to do this at all and be asked to remove stuff due to the government's wishes because they set themselves up to have no choice in the matter.
In fact, it is because of just how obviously "self evident" it is that the point can even be made in the first place: if you construct a giant centralized bottleneck on the distribution of software and information, you will end up being asked to use that bottleneck to filter content by governments... not just in the United States, but around the world. If that is truly "self evident" to you, you do not build the centralized bottleneck unless you like the idea of the eventual possible results of such.
And, in that analysis, if you like the result, then you can argue with the tone of the wording, but I don't think the point is "untrue". Apple doesn't really have any choice in the matter, so they are a patsy here. And if you argued to help Apple obtain their centralized position, you are complicit in said result. You might be proud to be complicit, or you might be happy that Apple is a patsy, but that doesn't change the truth of the situation.
So like, great: you say that is self-evident... did you like what happened today? If not, do you like it when Apple does the same thing for counties all over the world--when I said "authoritarian control" it was me talking about other countries, such as China, where I think you would be hard-pressed to argue otherwise--and pulls apps like VPNs and protest coordination tools? If so, again, very not my jam... but it certainly makes sense for you to be happy Apple has no choice and proud of any prior involvement you have with such...
...but, if you ever think Apple is doing stuff that makes your stomach lurch because they have no choice but to follow the edict of a government, the question is: what does that imply for moral product development in this world? Do you build--and then advocate for, or defend on forums--a centralized App Store and deny the ability for third-party software? Or do you, as a principled stance... not do that?
To refrain one more time: we are in intense and powerful agreement that "it is pretty self evident that a large or small company would remove an app at the request of the US Government that actively tracks federal agents that are attempting to enforce the law". That isn't only "your" opinion: that is "our" opinion! ;P
As the moment of agency then happens well before this moment today, we then can't shy away from the real question: do you like Trump and how he's running ICE, and the result it has on families? If you do, again: not my jam ;P, but I totally get why you'd be happy about the result today or confused as to why you should feel differently about it.
However, it isn't obvious to me you do, as you want to hide behind the action today being "self evident", as if that obviates the need to even verify someone's (I want to say "yours" but you might technically be arguing on behalf of an anonymous third party, and I don't want to leave opening to pivot the discussion into whether or not you personally ever advocated for Apple) opinion on ICE: in fact, that is why that political opinion matters so very very much!
In a world where we decide one company has a bottleneck on information and freedom strong enough to quickly remove access to content and tools from a large percentage of the population, suddenly we must care deeply about how that tool will get used. If you don't like how that tool gets used, you really have to be advocating for that tool to not exist.
Re: Apple takes down ICE tracking apps after pressure from DOJ
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It remains Apple's policy today. What is that policy? > According to Grok Why did you ask an LLM which is manipulated by a single person when he doesn't like facts? > So, we have precedent where four Democratic senators pressured Apple to remove an app that allowed people to evade law enforcement. Yes, senators sent letters to several companies. Apple listened. What would have happened if it didn't? What would happ…
> Do you sincerely believe that both situations are comparable? How are they not? In both cases US government officials applied pressure and implied legal action to force private companies to act in ways that enabled law enforcement to act with less resistance. It’s why we should always push back against government overreach and bullying. Because the “slippery slope” might be a logical fallacy, but that doesn’t stop…
Oh, please. Senators do not head the department of justice and requested, not demanded under threat of retribution under a "unitary executive". For them to do anything would require a quorum of 50% of the entire government to make a law.