So sue for defamation.
Apple's terms and EULA don't matter, because the injured party is not an Apple customer.
Apple's terms and EULA don't matter, because the injured party is not an Apple customer.
To me that would imply small businesses that can't afford the time to go through such a process would be hard pressed to stay listed.
The deep pockets and scale of the damage Big Corp can do against a small player is extensive.
This sounds very much like "I want to be automatically included in these map services, but I don't want to do any work to ensure accuracy".
In terms of "company with lots of money should be able to manually verify every entry", I can't find info on Apple Maps, but at a general approximation of scale google talks about 200 million businesses and points of interest[2], yelp alone has 5 million[3] and operates in a relatively small area.
Let's be conservative and say apple is at 50 million. Let's guesstimate 5 minutes per verification and now you have 250 million minutes of work just to validate this information once. Assuming a 40 hours per week, that would require 2000+ people full time employees doing nothing but calling to constantly [re-]verify business information. That would be (according to wikipedia) a 1% increase in the number of employees for the entire company, just for information that could easily be kept more accurate by the business owner. For google's 200 million PoIs you obviously require 8000 full time employees which for them would be a 6% increase in their work force.
It's super easy to say "well these companies have lots of money and so should be able to be 100% accurate", but the scale of these services does not actually make that true, especially when there are systems that allow business owners to just report the correct information directly.
[1] For whatever it's worth wikipedia says it gets information "provided by approximately twenty companies, including Booking.com, Foursquare, TripAdvisor, and Yelp" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maps
[2] https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/maps-platform/how-goo...
[3] https://gitnux.org/yelp-statistics/#:~:text=Yelp%20has%20mor....
No, the publisher doesn't get to be off the hook because "it's hard to be accurate."
My guess is that Apple et al have contracts which indemnify them and if he is the ultimate source, he's already signed away any right to damages for information he provided (and maybe information he didn't).
What difference does the scale make? Just look at the unit economics. If they can't afford to spend 5 minutes verifying this data point before sending it out to thousands or millions of users, maybe they shouldn't be sending it out at all; that's true whether you have 1 data point or 1 billion. If they're going to make the effort to publish it, they should make the effort to verify it. Or if they think their accuracy rate without verification is "good enough", they should accept the consequences of that and pay fair compensation when they screw up.
I would hope that any such lawsuit would be thrown out, unless this is a particularly widespread issue, or Apple intended to harm this business. This seems like an honest mistake on Apple's part, perhaps because someone reported the business as closed.
What do you want Apple to do? Personally verify every edit to every business on Maps?
Anyone with an iPhone, Mac or web browser can do so and I've done it dozens of time because as everyone knows the POI quality is terrible.
And it's really not hard to interact with Apple here in Australia. You can either call their support number which goes direct to a person or visit an Apple Store.
Google maps can be used from all platforms...
Anyway, I don't own a Mac or iPhone. I guess if I was a small business owner and Apple Maps had wrong information about my business I'd just be out of luck.
And so instead I'm supposed to call some support number and wait on hold to talk to someone who has no idea how to fix my problem, and bounces me around for a while until the connection accidentally disconnects? Yeah, no. I think you overestimate how much time she'll business owners have to deal with this sort of garbage.
I don't really understand why that would be too big of an ask for one of the wealthiest companies in the world, but at the very least, I'd expect Apple to yield to the authority of the business operator when changing the status to closed. Seems like a pretty solid reason for a lawsuit imo. I'm sure Apple would feel the same way if someone changed all of the Apple store retail locations to "Permanently Closed" on Google Maps and nobody checked it.
Yes, you do need an Apple device to use Maps, but it's at least a viable alternative to Google that casual users pick (versus, say, OpenStreetMaps).
How much is the cost to continually verify every business on Maps? I would expect it to be a very large amount. If it were very expensive, would Apple have created Maps, or keep Maps operating? I don't know.
I guess what I'm getting at is that Apple doesn't get much direct gain (as far as I know -- maybe they get some money from Yelp?) from Maps, and I'm rooting for Apple because at least they're not Google.
How does Apple Maps exploit users? As we've discussed, you must first own an Apple device. Does Apple Maps sell data or advertise or something?
And if not, then perhaps they at least have a moral duty. Even if Apple were fined for something like this, likely the fine would be cheaper than ensuring compliance would cost. Meanwhile, a restaurant losing customers for a week because people think it's closed could bankrupt their business.
If Apple Maps isn't available to to people without Apple devices, it's not free.
You can. DuckDuckGo uses it as their provider. https://duckduckgo.com/?hps=1&q=1600+pennsylvania+ave&ia=web...
Albeit as a developer OpenStreetMaps offers better experience
It's like google maps ten years ago... Well no, they already had itineraries.
Why do people act like human moderation would be such an untenable burden? These tech companies are GIGANTIC, they can afford to do human moderation.
Almost every car accident is an honest mistake. Does that mean that the at fault driver should not have to fix the harm caused because they didn’t mean to cause it?
Not true. Many, probably most, car collisions are caused by negligently disregarding if not wilfully exceeding the speed limit, negligently disregarding an obligation to yield to other traffic, illegally operating a phone while driving, or some combination thereof.
I’m just using a colloquial term for people whose actions are neither intentional or malicious to make the point that you can be held responsible for damages you didn’t foresee or intend to cause.
Rarity of the event does not comfort the victim.
> or Apple intended to harm this business
No one cares what they "intended" to do, only what was done.
> What do you want Apple to do?
I want them to pay the guy who they harmed.
> Personally verify every edit to every business on Maps?
That's absolutely right. This isn't Open Street Maps where anyone including the business owner himself can edit the information. Apple's reponsible for this.