Comment by RNCTX | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RNCTX | Hacker News Reader

The article doesn't pass the smell test to me.

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.

If you read the article, you'll find that the app itself doesn't even link to any content by default and you have to explicitly enter a data source yourself.

Also, I'd say referring to that app (however problematic it was, and I agree they did a terrible job building and deploying it) as a "vote manipulation app" is unnecessarily inflammatory.

> distributed via a test platform with the financial backing of former Clinton and Obama / recent Pete Buttigieg staffers This implies that TestFlight has financial backing from those groups. Maybe that's just unclear wording, but interpreted as written the claim is unsupported by the provided source.

Assuming you meant to say the Iowa caucus app was supported by those former staffers, it should be clarified that the company who made the app also provided services to those campaigns. I wouldn't consider Shadow Inc. to be competent as a technology company, but it doesn't surprise me that Democrats would buy political tech from a company founded by people who worked on digital outreach for the most recent Democratic presidential campaign.

I read the article, I still think this is a fine line that overall points to a nefarious intent, I suppose we can debate which one it is...

1) Desire to cut Apple out of their share by trying to monetize a test app

and/or

2) Desire to escape the review process which might flag and reject an app designed to allow the user to easily fetch data from source that would be in violation of copyright laws.

This is relevant to the political example for a similar reason. Sure, we can say there's nothing wrong with the judge in a politician's criminal trial being seen with the politician in a restaurant after the politician's acquittal.... on the same day (look up Edwin Edwards and you'll see examples of just that), but it certainly does look bad, doesn't it? Similarly we can say that people from the vote counting app and their investors being seen in a bar with the guy responsible for failing to count the votes is not necessarily nefarious, but when the guy who counts the votes fails to count the votes in a way that favors the candidate whose staffers were also at the same get together at the same bar, it sure does look bad, doesn't it?

There's no reason for a guy with a successful app to fail to launch it and monetize it, unless he's trying to skirt Apple's rules in some way. It's just a matter of what way he's trying to game their system, isn't it?

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