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Comment by meghan_rain | Hacker News Reader

Not sure why this is getting downvoted. It's an existential risk.

I didn't downvote, but I assume people are because everything you can possibly do in life comes with some risk -- you need to evaluate the risk versus the benefit to decide whether to do something. Not even considering developing an app because of the risk of your app being banned seems like a fairly extreme overreaction.

It's kind of like saying, "I've never considered getting a job because the risk is too big that a faceless corporation is going lay you off without any reason and visibility."

The comparison would be IMO more accurate if there were only 2 employers in the world.

That still doesn't change the underlying mechanics of the analogy though. It doesn't matter how many employers there are, if the worst case scenario is that you end up where you are now (jobless / no app)

The analogy would be more accurate if you could end up in a worse off position by taking the job / making the app, say through lost development time with no payoff

In an scenario with 2 employers, even ignoring market dynamics of an oligopoly/monopoly, once you are rejected by them you have nothing to lose.

The risk of your app being banned when there is only 2 marketplaces is way way higher than the risk of being laid off when there are many more companies.

IMO OPs argument breaks when they equate a bit of risk to a lot of risk, as if any risk amount were the same as any other.

An existential risk is typically considered any risk that has the potential to eliminate all of humanity or, at the very least, kill large swaths of the global population.

Being controlled by software restricts choice, while being wiped out by software eliminates choice altogether.

I suspect you may be being a little too literal here. It is an existential risk to the software development house.

I agree and nothing I wrote conflicts with that assertion. The point is that it depends on the individual's perspective and the complexity of the issue at hand. Restricting choice is often an advantage because it saves us time in exchange for the risk of being (company, individual or humanity) wiped out by an exception to the rule.

Hmm typically I've heard the phrase existential risk alongside a qualifying / local scope phrase.

So something may be an existential risk to this company or this endeavour. Only a small fraction of usage of existential risk are globally scoped to humanity.

It’s an existential risk to a business’s survival

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