Everyone who took Apple at their word was already doing extreme mental gymnastics because Apple's privacy stance was a farce on borrowed time to begin with. Now it's just blatantly obvious to everyone.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28163326.
It took a six hour rollercoaster ride before flags killed it - not even a fair shake for anyone to vouch despite no flagged children.
1. Your comment didn't add any information—it was just grandiose, inflammatory claims ("extreme mental gymnastics", "farce to begin with" and "blatantly obvious")
2. Replies like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28163531 are to be expected to such comments. This is the way that discussion degrades. (That was the top reply to your comment before I downweighted it, so the effect was a lot more obvious before that.)
Ok, three issues:
3. This entire subthread is way more generic than the better parts of the discussion. That's to be expected from inflammatory comments that don't add information. Generic threads are much more predictable and much less interesting than specific ones: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
"Extreme metal gymnastics" was the only inflammatory claim and it was the same language used by the person I was replying to. "Farce" has no more charitable a synonym [1] and "to begin with" does not make it any more or less inflammatory. "Blatantly obvious" - really? It was. Plenty of replies agree based on the merits of the argument. This isn't a flamewar
> 2. Replies like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28163531 are to be expected to such comments. This is the way that discussion degrades. (That was the top reply to your comment before I downweighted it, so the effect was a lot more obvious before that.)
People get defensive sometimes, so what? Take the charitable interpretation. (and this is a deflection - I was asking about my comment).
"Please stop insulting... Don't act superior..." - how in the world did that get flagged!? How does this level of genuine politeness degrade the discussion?
"No one thinks you're any smarter by saying "I told you so"." - ...really? By HN snark standards thats praise.
> 3. This entire subthread is way more generic than the better parts of the discussion. That's to be expected from inflammatory comments that don't add information. Generic threads are much more predictable and much less interesting than specific ones: ...
That's a self fulfilling judgement (see above).
Worst case I'm guilty of extreme snark. Call it a coping mechanism.
[1] https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/farce https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/facade
That's a really bad worst case, far below the line the guidelines draw. Would you mind reviewing them (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart? We want thoughtful, curious conversation here, not snark and fulmination.
> People get defensive sometimes, so what?
The problem is that it evokes worse from others and leads to a degenerative spiral, ultimately to flamewars, and in the long run to the site burning itself to a crisp. Remember that this has traditionally been the fate of internet forums and HN was started as a conscious experiment in trying to avoid that (https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html). Scorched earth is not interesting (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...).
It's possible to learn not to provoke this kind of thing, and that's what we're asking users here to do. Of course one can't predict specifically how others will react, but one can definitely play the odds. Since the odds are roughly knowable in advance, we want users to post comments with a positive expected value, so to speak: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Please give me the benefit of the doubt that after a decade on HN I have read the guidelines many times and reply to the meat of my comment instead of the knee-jerk rhetoric (aka joke) at the end.
*> The problem is that it evokes worse from others and leads to a degenerative spiral, ultimately to flamewars, and in the long run to the site burning itself to a crisp.
IMO it demonstrably didn't.
Yes, they do a lot for privacy. But when it comes to their bottom line, they also have a record of compromising on privacy (and consumer rights in general) to preserve business with less than freedom-loving countries such as China, the UAE, Russia.
It is sometimes difficult to criticize them for this because the financial loss to them would be huge if, say, China kicked them out of their market (and utterly devastating if they kicked them out of manufacturing in China), and because people like to make the argument that iOS is (probably) "still the the bets option for privacy in China" - but it doesn't change the fact that in Apple's hierarchy of priorities privacy ranks lower than making money.
To give a concrete example: if Apple allowed sideloading of apps as Android does, Apple would no longer be in the position to remove VPN apps on behest of China - but at the cost of opening up app distribution outside their own store, which means no free rent-seeking income from that anymore. They'd now actually need to compete on providing the best store for developers, which is obviously going to be more work and cost for them. So, instead they choose the "lesser evil" of putting themselves in a position where they are the only thing that stands (or rather: drops dead lie a wet sack) between an authoritarian state and people trying to circumvent that state's surveillance.
It's a good thing Apple shows more Courage(TM) when it truly counts, for instance when it comes to ridding us all of that terrible scourge of human existence, the 3.5mm jack.
Except that they are making money on overpriced headsets and acquisitions like Beatz.
I guess they have always compromised on privacy to make more $$, whether it is the crummy protections for browsing on iOS, selling out to Google, or the nearly required bluetooth. Now, I am sure there are a lot more things to add to this list..
Two Final thoughts:
From a business perspective this is a serious impairment on Goodwill.
Loss of Privacy is going to negatively impact Apple services.
This is merely a reminder that Apple was founded in and most HN readers live in the United States, a nation founded on the idea that, without checks and balances, any power that can be abused will be abused. Without something legally binding and someone holding Apple to their word, their privacy stance was never going to be anything more than a temporary ploy in their ultimate goal: to make more money.
Too bad. Scumbags they are.
It's kind of funny how I am very suspicious of governments and politicians but when it comes to a trillion dollar corporation, I was giving them more of benefit of doubt. I was wrong.
Say, what is Apple's advertising policy? Hmm. It looks very familiar, doesn't it?
Considering how often Apple gives up customer data without a fight when requested to by the government, I don't really believe that.
According to Apple, they respond to government data requests with customers' data ~85% of the time, and 92% in cases of "emergencies"[1].
Apple gave customer data from over 31,000 users/accounts based on FISA requests and National Security Letter requests in the first half of 2020 alone[1].
During that same 6 month period, Apple provided customers' data to the government's data requests (not FISC related) about 9,000 times[1].
To clarify: The 9,000 figure is the number of individual data requests, but the requests themselves asked for data from a total of ~120,000 different users/accounts. Multiple users' data can be requested in a single request.
Doesn’t make Apple look any better though. I’m curious about how often Google and Facebook hand over information.
Apple is a public corporation at the mercy of several superpowers. Economic incentives and the people with the guns make the rules. Full stop. Apple's privacy stance was always one desperate/amibitious business unit or bureaucrat away from complete collapse.