They're mostly intended as entertainment, but some of them use the data to analyze where species are growing in realtime.
Did the developers of google maps fail their moral obligation if they know some users will follow google map's directions, despite their GPS being broken, and go down wrong streets, walk into walls, get lost without water, etc?
Did the developers of the bird scooter app, which tells you to wear a helmet (but developers know that warning will be ignored), fail their moral obligation since they know some scooter riders won't actually know how to ride and will fall and be injured?
Do the developers of competitive sport apps, like strava, fail a moral obligation since they know some people will injure themselves trying to get on a leaderboard?
Like, I agree that there's a moral obligation for developers. But on the other hand, I feel like you can expect some baseline of "bad users who misuse the app horribly", and it feels like if that's enough to obligate you to not build said app, you just can't build anything. Just about anything can be misused, and at the scale of most apps, it's reasonable to expect it will be.
Is there something about plant identification that makes it more special than the other apps above?
I think you're missing how many steps are necessary.
Those apps for identifying your local poplars and evergreens.
This person pointed it at a mushroom, picked the mushroom, used it as a topping and digested it.
I would be for an additional warning label when mushrooms are identified. But we need more people on the same page about the apps themselves, if you haven't used them I think you might be out of the loop.
There was a time when you could publish a book on how to make a pipe bomb and nothing would happen to you. Now the wrath of the government descends on you as if you broke the law by having knowledge and telling it to someone.
I do like mushrooms but I think it's just a step too far into 'Russian Roulette' territory to risk trying to forage for those. Eating something which might make you sick for a day or two is one thing. But risking eating something which might kill you or require a liver transplant, if you get it wrong, is a bit too scary for me. The only mushroom I'm confident in my ability to ID is psilocybin.
[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.floraincog...
There’s a lot of room between a one in a billion mistake that hurts somebody and a fifty fifty chance a mushroom is poisonous. There are plenty of edible vs deadly mushrooms that only have incredibly subtle differences that you should trust nobody but a human expert to identify.
Effectively what I’m saying is a disclaimer shouldn’t be able to get you out of murder charges for a game of Russian roulette.
By your logic knife makers will all be praying that their knives arent used for killing or harming people or they'd be charged for murder.
These identification apps are selling incomplete information where the need for full information about toxins is obvious.
Nobody was ever surprised that a knife hurt somebody or had cause to accuse a knife maker that their product could cut things in a way a consumer wouldn’t know about.
The issue isn’t that a tool can be harmful but that a danger to the producer of a product would be obligated to know and share isn’t obvious to the consumer without previous knowledge. If you’re selling information you must know your audience.
Any human teaching you to identify mushrooms will teach you about the risks of poison right away. “I didn’t tell you what you needed to know but you should have known better” only works when it’s reasonable for you to know better. General audience mushroom identifiers shouldn’t be expected to know how easily a misidentification could kill them, plus it’s just not difficult to do.
This doesn’t match the situation with knives unless you can find me someone who really does need to be warned about knives and isn’t, say, 4 years old.