Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#941

Post by kombucha111 » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 3:19 PM UTC

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #785

kombucha111 wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is being silenced from what public Square? Facebook and Twitter are not the public square. If you'd prefer that they be considered as such then you better get cracking on some legislation/regulation or nationalize these privately held for-profit companies.

Twitter, Google, Facebook and Apple are monopolies that are most certainly the public square. "Market Allocation Schemes" where companies collude to fix prices and rig markets are explicitly illegal, and I don't see why the collusion of monopolies to "fix" speech is any different. If we lived in a country with a functional government these monopolies would have been broken up long ago and the internet would be regula…

They are not the public square they are private property that people gather on at the behest of its owner(s) but I will totally agree with you that to most people they are the defacto public square and that there plenty of monopolies that need to be broken up. Id also agree with you that regulating these companies as public utilities is the solution to your grievances (as well as having net neutrality). The only thing I disagree with you is the collusion aspect, even if they were colluding to "fix" speech, and not just towing the same line, that isn't actually illegal. Price fixing on the other hand is. I feel like there is common ground here that sensible governance, accountability and nonpartisan compromise could absolutely solve.

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#942

Post by jimmydorry » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 3:31 PM UTC

ketamine__ wrote: post #813

leshenka wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's not a chance in hell Apple would approve a web browser as an app Thankfully, there is a web browser. But corporations want us to use apps instead of web browser to restrict this. Like, everything must be an app. Every social network basically forces their app down your throat. "Ew you use a browser, what a loser"

Except Parler's app blows. It might as well be a web app. I guess it's hard to find talent when talented people don't want to work with right wing kooks.

Can’t you say the same of reddit? The reddit app is actually worse and supports les features than the web version.

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#943

Post by stefantalpalaru » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

jariel wrote: post #919

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #908

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voter ID, removal of hackable voting machines, and hand count of votes are not disenfranchisement. You may have been told by the media that it is, but it's not. Many advanced democracies have such things in place.

This is completely false. The machines are not hacked, and the voter rolls are legitimate. There is zero evidence of systematic fraud, therefore, there is no 'disenfranchisement'. To suggest that 'maybe one day, someone could mess with our election' is not 'disenfranchisement'. "You may have been told by the media" - Rudy Giuilani and the President clearly failed to make a case or provide any evidence - moreover, the…

> There is zero evidence of systematic fraud, therefore, there is no 'disenfranchisement'.

"This study applies Benford’s law to detect anomalies in county-level vote data for the 2020 US presidential election. Most prominent distribution violations are observed with Republican vote counts in blue states, all vote counts in states won by the Democratic candidate, and Democratic vote counts in swing states. Distributions are anomalous in swing states won by the Democratic nominee and not anomalous in swing states won by the Republican nominee." - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3728626

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#944

Post by spoonjim » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

nicbou wrote: post #153

bjtitus wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their legal cases are rejected. The mainstream media refuses to take them seriously. Well these last two seem pretty par for the course for illegitimate claims been promoted as legitimate. At a certain point the line of absurdity has been crossed at it is not the duty of society to constantly debunk illegitimate claims. > The other side keeps deplatforming them In this particular case, Parler has been host to a num…

Yes, that is what reddit, twitter and Hacker News reinforce constantly. It's either because it's true, or because the other side has been repeatedly discouraged from adding their two cents in those communities. I've been seeing the world through this lens for so long that I can't tell. I find it somewhat implausible that half the population is dumb, racist and all those other labels. It seems much more likely that I…

95% of the country was racist 100 years ago. Why would things change so fast? And for dumb... remember Carlin’s observation: think about how dumb the average person is, then realize that half of them are dumber than that.

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#945

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

wisty wrote: post #856

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Racism was the absolute norm in the US until ~not that long ago. The racists during the time of slavery and Jim Crow made no attempt to deny their racism. The large majority of Republicans, including Trump, denounce racism. The news will find every schmuck with a confederate flag and put them on the TV, but that doesn't explain why a Republican majority Senate passed criminal justice reform and Trump signed it. > S…

You seem to be contributing to the discussion, but people are downvoting without actually voicing any disagreement. This seems to be common when you take the conservative "side" even if it's not really a partisan position you take, simply disagreeing with implications that the entire right are dumb racists.

> This seems to be common when you take the conservative "side" even if it's not really a partisan position you take, simply disagreeing with implications that the entire right are dumb racists.

I don't even want to be doing this. Trump supports coal. Ajit Pai. He's a pathological liar. Trump sucks.

But a lot of the things he gets wrong actually help him in swing states. There is a lot of coal in Pennsylvania. So lazy opponents can't easily use those things to attack him because it would only get him more votes in places that matter.

And then we end up in a situation where the majority of people hate Trump for reasons that are actually lies, because the truth translates inconveniently to the electoral map and too many people care more about winning no matter the cost.

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#946

Post by mlac » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

inpdx wrote: post #852

mlac wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I've had an issue with for a while. It's not a great move to assume that conservatives are dumb. There are plenty of brilliant people who hold conservative values. Their idea of "success" may not follow the path of others who have moved from their hometown to a coast working in IT. Or the path of those who were "enlightened" with advanced degrees where the sophisticated choice is obviously to be a d…

Conservatives are in no way synonymous with Trump Republicans. Many of the stalwarts of conservatism have not just disavowed Trumpism, but have worked actively against it. Much of the discussion in modern (Trump) Republican circles would be unrecognizable to self-identified conservatives of 20, 30, 40 years ago.

I think we're in agreement here. Maybe it would have been better to say "republicans" than conservatives. But the point stands that not all Trump voters are Trump supporters that OP identified as racists with below-average intelligence. They may just be voting "not-democrat" on a ticket with two sub-optimal choices.

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#947

Post by mlac » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

geedy wrote: post #833

mlac wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I've had an issue with for a while. It's not a great move to assume that conservatives are dumb. There are plenty of brilliant people who hold conservative values. Their idea of "success" may not follow the path of others who have moved from their hometown to a coast working in IT. Or the path of those who were "enlightened" with advanced degrees where the sophisticated choice is obviously to be a d…

> It's not a great move to assume that conservatives are dumb, racist, and unsophisticated. I don't love labels, but I don't think "conservatives" are simply any of those things. This isn't an original thought, but I think they are mostly afraid of losing their community if they change their mind. Fear of disconnection is innate and biological. When my trump supporting friends say "I believe it" to somebody suggestin…

Votes in a functioning democratic society are anonymous. You can vote one way and tell folks you voted another to "fit in".

But people become who they hang around. So if they are in a vacuum and they only hear that the election was stolen, anything else is fake news, and the president is telling them this, they may seriously believe that democracy is under siege.

Amp it up with technology echo chambers and reinforcing behaviors and you wind up with extreme situations where a group of people storms the capitol.

It's when people don't believe they can end up with similarly distorted views on a topic that they are susceptible to this themselves. This is along the lines of the Lucifer Effect.

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#948

Post by gpm » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

shakkhar wrote: post #922

gpm wrote: post #169

Fundamentally I believe this should be an anti-trust violation. But then I think the whole "only allow your own software to run on your patented hardware (which you therefore have a government granted monopoly on)" should be an anti-trust violation too. Taking it as a given that Apple has the right to control what software people run on the IPhones that they own. And taking it as a given that we have apparently decid…

Historically, anti-trust authorities have been more concerned about horizontal integration, not vertical integration. On top of that, Apple is not even the largest phone maker in the US, owning around 13% market share. For an anti-trust suite to be successful, the prosecutor needs to prove consumer harm, and that will be hard in this case. (IANAL.)

I am without a doubt arguing for a change of law.

There are actually two changes that would need to be made for my post to work.

First, that the law should acknowledge that Apple has 100% market share on every patented feature, and therefore they have a monopoly, not on smart phones, but on "smart phones with rounded corners" and numerous other design decisions and features that they have chosen to patent and gain a monopoly on. This is a change in how the relevant market is defined.

Second, that any prevention of competition in after markets should be illegal, not just prevention of competition in after markets that consumers weren't aware of when they bought the device.

Consumer harm here is trivial. That want to use an app, they cannot, that is harm.

(Ianal either, but spent a lot of time reading about this sort of issue)

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#949

Post by quotemstr » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #908

TheGRS wrote: post #834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the main argument this group was making for the last 2 months was to disenfranchise much of the US voting population. The people voted, and this group attempted to say it wasn't legitimate. They proved nothing in court to their claims, but persisted anyway right up until they got worked up into a frenzy and stormed the Capitol.

Voter ID, removal of hackable voting machines, and hand count of votes are not disenfranchisement. You may have been told by the media that it is, but it's not. Many advanced democracies have such things in place.

Yep. One side is screaming "No fraud! You're bad for even considering the possibility!" while simultaneously being against every single transparency or robustness measure that might actually convince the other side that there was no fraud. Hmmmm...

Re: Apple has threatened to ban Parler from the App Store

#950

Post by trianglem » Sat, Jan 09, 2021, 4:39 PM UTC

nicbou wrote: post #11

Someone brought an interesting perspective in another thread and I can't shake it off. The other side keeps deplatforming them. Their legal cases are rejected. The mainstream media refuses to take them seriously. We're not even listening to them, because it's science and they're *ists if they disagree. We're not debating anymore. We just assume we're right. We are slowly squeezing a significant segment of the populat…

Racism, sexism, belief in science are things that are not going to be negotiated on. The other side are literal intolerant fascists and should be silenced. Let’s the chips fall where they may, even if that’s some sort of civil conflict.