Hacker News Reader

Comment by wbronitsky | Hacker News Reader

This poster continues to fling accusations at Apple and has yet to provide any proof of any of these suppositions whatsoever. I’m not sure why the commenters are so eager to believe a comment from a random Twitter account posted to HN. Confirmation bias is strong, I guess.

This is a heavy accusation and I think the burden is heavily on the accuser to provide clear evidence that lack of payment for anything somehow locks you out of your Apple account. These comments and posts also seem to be conflating different accounts, like Apple ID, iCloud, and the Apple Card Account.

I’m in no way trying to defend Apple, this just seems like an incredibly user hostile policy, and also one that doesn’t exactly follow sound business logic.

If this is true, can you point to this policy? Can you share the “unusual confluence of events”?

View on HN

The level of evidence you're expecting is unreasonable given the events. Consider it from his perspective, which is what most of us are doing:

You suddenly notice that you can't access any of the stuff you need to live out your life. Oh fuck. You make a tweet in a panic, and maybe hoping to get some attention, since the faceless trillion dollar company doesn't give a fuck about you.

The tweet blows up, and wbronitsky comes along demanding more information. A clear timeline, strong evidence, legal arguments etc etc. Meanwhile this poor guy is just trying to get his shit back.

Trust me, Apple pays plenty of people to run interference for them. You don't need to do it for free.

I think my posting history would show that I’m far from a company shill. It would be cool to respond to the best interpretation of my post, instead of the worst, maybe.

Either way, I’m sure this person had their account frozen; I’m merely wondering how this person knows that there is policy at Apple to intentionally do such things.

The OP posted a hugely contradictory post with respect to these original comments. The tweet and the defensive comments here now hold no water.

This forum is no longer seems a place for rational conversation backed up by facts. The GP used dismissive language to put me down and even called me out by my user name in an attempt to intimidate me into silence. I flagged it, but nothing happens; in HN it’s not the intent but purely the language. We are allowed to go on insulting and attacking each other as long as it’s subtle enough to be able to be explained away. This is corporate gaslighting coming down to us here.

It’s a trap full of idiotic rhetorical devices and capitalist wannabes. But then I remind myself that really HN is just a tool for billionaires to steal our ideas.

Receipts: https://dcurt.is/apple-card-can-disable-your-icloud-account

> I’m not sure why the commenters are so eager to believe a comment from a random Twitter account posted to HN.

dcurtis isn't a random Twitter account; he's a regular here (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dcurtis) and made svbtle.

He has credibility here, and I think a lot of the upvotes (including mine) are based on expecting he wouldn't say something like this without a good reason.

> he has credibility here

I don’t even know how to respond to this appeal to amorphous authority, and to reply to the best possible interpretation of the post, I’ll pass over it.

I’m sure this person is not lying that their account was shut down; I’m asking for an accounting of the Apple policy that supposedly exists. It would certainly be something I would be deeply concerned about.

I'm not saying you have to take Dustin's word for it or anything, but I think him being known to many here makes his tweet more likely to be upvoted than if it were posted by someone without a reputation.

I would like to point out that the tweet and subsequent comments were inflammatory nonsense. Here is the proof https://dcurt.is/apple-card-can-disable-your-icloud-account

Maybe we shouldn’t just blindly believe and defend people just because lots of karma and Twitter followers and built a thing. I think these actions make this forum much much worse.

> based on expecting he wouldn't say something like this without a good reason

That’s why people are asking for the reasons.

He’s exactly the kind of person you’d expect to be able to be able to give them, and frankly without them it doesn’t matter who is making the statement.

He has already partially walked it back, effectively invalidating the tweet.

Downvoting of this comment is ludicrous.

This is a very serious accusation and it's irresponsible to fling around such charges without evidence.

There's no way Apple is doing this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com