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Comment by Ajedi32 | Hacker News Reader

> If it's my app

Not picking on you specifically, because this attitude is extremely common among software developers these days, but I think this mentality of treating software running on users' machines as "yours" rather than "theirs" is at the core of a lot of problems with the modern software industry.

Software should serve the interests of its users, not its developers. The advent of ubiquitous internet connectivity, automatic updates, and business models based around selling ads rather than selling software have changed this dynamic somewhat and I think that's really unfortunate.

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> automatic updates

This is one of the most important points of the conversation. The other most important point would be the difficulty / impossibility of reverting to an older version of the application on mobile systems. When you put them together you get users powerless on their own devices, stuck in a needless dilemma between keeping the application in its new, worsened state, or throwing away the whole thing.

On my PC I download "portable" / .zip releases of software whenever possible, and I keep every single package. If a program has an update with a regression, I can just choose to not use it, or run it side-by-side with the older version.

On Android, F-Droid serves the last couple APKs for each app, and I download these to my PC also. However, Android makes side-by-side installation difficult unless you recompile the app with a different package ID. If it's a closed-source app from the Play Store, you're screwed. I would not be surprised if it's impossible on iphone.

So, I disable auto updates, and I ignore the boy who cries "important security fixes". Better luck next time.

> Software should serve the interests of its users, not its developers.

It is my belief the software is serving the betterment of society if it offends the people who don't approve my activism ;-)

More important than serving the individual users is serving society as a whole.

> It is my belief the software is serving the betterment of society if it offends the people who don't approve my activism ;-)

When has ideological grandstanding ever been a successful strategy for convincing anyone of anything? Surely it would just further entrench the convictions of those who disagree with you, harming your own cause and helping theirs gain legitimacy in the eyes of those who are not convinced either way.

I disagree with this. Minds don’t changed based on one interaction. It changed based on your observations from the world.

Pride logos and icons in companies have made it so you can’t “not think” of LGBT anymore for example. This is HUGE for a lot of people. I’ll give you a specific example, before pride no one in Iran dared speak about LGBT. Now it’s unavoidable when all the apps and services you use have a pride version.

This has already lead to more acceptance privately re: lgbt. The next steps are pushing acceptance to welcoming to them “you’re not going to be treated differently”.

It’s one tool in your entire arsenal.

This just gives fuel to the Christian street preachers who complain about pride being shoved in their faces and being unable to opt-out.

To oversimplify and quote Obiwan, you were supposed to bring balance to the force, not destroy it.

There are some people you're never going to win over, and pushing them into a position of persecution is sadly a naive political move.

I legitimately don’t care what the Christian preechers are complaining about.

They’re not the group I’m optimizing for, and their population is dropping YoY.

If the existence of a group of people is triggering them that much, then they can go disconnect and live in isolation or something.

No one here is, for example, calling out marriot for shoving bibles and Book of Mormon into my face.

Christianity is constantly shoved into my face with no ability to opt out. They can deal with pride flags.

This is the naive blindness.

There is acres of christian art and media that simply doesn't register for the populace. People scroll by Jude Law as the Young Pope on Netflix and ignore the methodist Christian substructure of star wars. People can be told via memes that ObiWan is like space jesus and it's like water off a duck's back.

Christianity doesn't oppress people, they can't even identify it, when it is infront of the open eyes. People naturally don't even know what it is, that they reject. Can't describe what a priest would even say.

Bibles in the marriot is a charity and mormons are debatably not christian at all. Joseph smith was not jesus, sorry.

But make no mistake we all know what pride is, what lgbtq people want legislated and exactly how it's going to affect us. Our choice be damned.

1. You’re claiming Christianity is so normalized people don’t notice it. That’s exactly the point with pride.

2. Am I reading this right? You think LGBT people and pride is oppressing people more than Christianity?

1. Mcdonalds is 'normalized'. Everybody knows you can get a double quarter pounder at mcdonalds.

Christanity is not noticed. The public rarely knows the content of the faith it rejects. And the point is reinforced by the complete lack of knowledge about what it is and how pride might impact it, in this conversation.

2. "Normalization" and "oppression" are not words that mean what I'm talking about.

Christianity is "unknown" to the public and the LGBT politicians turn a blind eye to people they don't want to relate to. They are tripping over landmines they don't see. I pointed this out and was met with the same old desire to flee from relating to Christianity, as we see from lgbtq activists all the time.

Not everybody thinks pride is a good thing nor that it should be shoved in their face, thinking that media spam is going to result in political conversions is hopelessly naive to how faith functions, what christianity is and without mutual knowledge of one another's worldview, it'll never be resolved in love.

I would argue that practitioners of the faith rarely know the content of the faith they practice. Hence the extreme anti-LGBT stance pushed in their politics and preferred media, despite the conspicuous lack of relevant scripture.

And this extremity is definitely something LGBT folks see all the time. Their states are passing laws banning them from sports and bathrooms. LGBT issues can no longer be mentioned in their schools. So don't play the pity card when Christians behave like monsters, and the non-Christian world responds in kind.

I have zero interest in playing the 'pity card. Even though compassion is a good thing.

I'm just saying the truth as I see it and think shared knowledge should be the basis of political unity, not activist tribalism.

> not activist tribalism

Ohh the irony.

> But make no mistake we all know what pride is, what lgbtq people want legislated

As a European atheist living in Texas, I know exactly what Christians want legislating, since they never stop bleating about it.

Ronald Reagan Jr appears to be the only person willing to hold America to its own basic constitutional amendments, frankly.

Yes virtue signalling serves society by identifying attention seekers.

Or those unwilling to be silent accomplices.

Yeah, software turned into service. Especially when speaking of apps, they are much more like a service, as opposed to a traditional good that you can own.

> Software should serve the interests of its users, not its developers.

The history of “rainbow washing” in corporate marketing material served the original purpose of saying “you’re welcome here”. There are many stores/places that choose to not serve queer people.

Publicly sharing that you will allow queer people to use your product is serving the interest of those users, but perhaps not the interest of every user. But the remaining users thankfully never had to question if they’d be served by that business, so there’s no need to signal anything to them.

I'm pretty sure we are past the point where LGBT people need to be worried about whether a major bank will serve them or not. And yet the rainbow washing continues. Why is that?

Interesting you mention banks.

> A 2019 study by Hua Sun and Lei Gao of Iowa State University found that from 1990 to 2015, same-sex couples were 73% more likely to be turned down for a mortgage than similarly qualified different-sex couples. In addition, same-sex couples who were approved for mortgages paid about 0.02% to 0.2% more, on average, in interest and fees.

https://www.investopedia.com/mortgage-lending-for-lgbtq-peop...

The US government has made positive changes to combat this practice,

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lgbt-banks/u-s-banks-...

but you would be mistaken to assume such discrimination has completely disappeared or doesn't still exist in similar forms.

I'm going to dispute "similarly qualified". Being married is a huge indicator of future financial stability, and for most of the cited time period, SSM couples could not get married. There are also many statistics which point to SSM relationships (regardless of marital status) ending sooner.

So if the banks are inputting this to a "go/no go" algorithm, the results do not surprise me at all.

People still think a rainbow is political. And look at all the political stunts GOP is pulling at LGBT peoples expense.

Also, we aren’t past that point.

We'll have to agree to disagree on whether we are past that point. I have seen no evidence of major corporations or banks refusing to serve LGBT people. Companies are simply hoping they can attract more customers by appearing relevant.

If you’re not part of the LGBT community, you’re opinion is literally worthless for this argument regardless of the evidence you see.

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