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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

This sort of perception about community bias comes up with every $BigCo. Then the comments complaining about it get highly upvoted, undermining the supposed observation.

I think it has more to do with how our emotions subtly influence how we weight what we read. We're more likely to notice the cases we dislike/disagree with and let the ones we like/agree with glide by without affecting our impression of the community. Because of this, negative impressions and overgeneralization are much more common than the data really support.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

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Part of the concern is Apple spends a ton of money marketing themselves as "pro-privacy and pro-consumer, more than those "other" $BigCo's". I've seen people say they're immune to advertising and then beat the Apple drum many times.

I am so tired of this “marketing” angle, as if anyone having different priorities must be an idiot manipulated by the communication department of a large evil company. It’s been a trope since the 1990s.

Also, nobody is immune to advertising, so you can take these comments as seriously as the “sheeple” ones.

>Apple spends a ton of money marketing themselves as "pro-privacy and pro-consumer, more than those "other" $BigCo's"

I mean they also seem to deliver functionality that is pro-privacy, since of course their money doesn't depend on violating your privacy. Two of the other BigCo's business models are built on violating your privacy, and the other one certainly makes more money on its retail efforts by doing so.

So the scary quote marks up there seem a bit weird given the circumstances.

There's an analogous argument to be made about every $BigCo though. People's perceptions of these, and of how the community relates to them, are hugely conditioned by their pre-existing feelings.

Fair enough, and the search results are both illuminating and humbling, but I'll also offer that perceptions of community bias aren't necessarily wrong even though they aren't an absolute fact.

perceptions that aren't fact are much more likely to be actual bias rather than 'not necessarily wrong'

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