Hacker News Reader

Comment by luso_brazilian | Hacker News Reader

Evil is a very loaded word because the API is being used for the exact purpose it was created: to allow the users of the platform to move their data unimpeded.

This kind of reasoning central point of the copyleft vs. permissive licensing debate: should the goal be

- to maximize the freedom of choice for the end user even if the choice curtails his own freedom?

- or to maximize the freedom of the software / system itself even if that curtails the freedom of choice for the end user?

Whatever the path taken it is naive to expect people and companies to follow the spirit of the license instead of its letter when is more beneficial to them to follow the later. Neither imoral nor evil IMO.

View on HN

It's one of those sad cases where someone "doing the right thing" opens doors for the bad guys. I remember Google having a page that "educated" about the potential pitfalls of having data locked up in Facebook (on the OAuth approval page). Maybe they will do the same thing here?

Thing is: for technical people like us it's a no-brainer, stay the hell away. This kind of thing is going to get a whole bunch of Aunt Tillys locked up in Apple. From that perspective the one option is clearly more "evil" as it preys on ignorance.

> Thing is: for technical people like us it's a no-brainer, stay the hell away.

Are you implying that technical people do not use iOS? Well, you might be surprised if you dig for some statistics.

No, just making an assumption about the target market of the feature: Android users. It's not a huge leap of faith to imagine that they would care more about issues like this.

How noble of Google to "educate" their users about their data being locked up in Facebook. I am sure they were doing for the benefit of their users and not so they could access the advertising goldmine that is Facebook. Especially since IIRC this education was happening around the time that Google+ was floundering.

Sure, it's not evil in the ISIS/Cheney sense, not even in the "banner that looks like a Download button on Sourceforge" sense...

But it's misleading because it creates the impression that users can easily move between mobile operating systems, when in fact this door Apple has built is strictly one-way. They won't tell you that ahead of time, of course.

To us technical users, it's obvious that moving data between closed server-based services is fraught with complications. But a lot of regular people don't understand those nuances. Copying data from a phone to another is just moving over some files, right? Apple is supporting that expectation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com