Apple Removes American Civil War Games from the App Store
toucharcade.com
toucharcade.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_§_86a
When a movie like Iron Sky has no problem being shown in German cinemas with the swastika left untouched, because it's clearly art, then it should be fairly obvious to Apple that banning historically accurate representations in historically accurate interactive art is far overreaching; though not legally, but ethically.
In practice all games that contain forbidden symbols get a German version in which these are replaced for example in the Wolfenstein franchise (that were not censored due to violence).
There is a very reasonable expectation of this changing at some point in the future.
A lot of gamers seem to be happy with versions that have these symbols replaced and everyone else simply imports them (which is as simple as ordering from amazon.co.uk instead of amazon.de). Publishers have simply no incentive to pursue this and because violence in games can be censored, publishers censor a lot of games on their own already anyway. I would not be surprised to learn that there are companies even profiting from the current situation.
(Even though, imo, the dude outright lies by stating that their interpretation of the law is what the law factually says.)
Also, do note that i said at some point in the future.
Nevertheless to my understanding if a publisher were to get a game censored by the OLJB due to forbidden symbols, the publisher could go to court and I think they would have a decent chance at winning such a case.
Are you agreeing with the law exactly as it is written? (I am.) Are you agreeing with the interpretation of the law as it applies to computer games? (I don't.) Do you think computer games should never be allowed to contain historical symbols of forbidden groups? (I don't.) Do you think computer games should be allowed the usage if the usage serves the art? (I do.)
It depends on the context. The computer game should not facilitate identification with Nazism (e.g. by the player flying that flag in a RTS or being a member of it in an FPS) or downplay the disastrous results of Nazism. So potentially I would be okay with a Wolfenstein-like game where the player operates strictly against these powers/symbols, but doing this consequently in online multi-player games seems difficult.
Exactly that is my point. :)
"We view Apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical App."
Their stance makes very little sense (arbitrarily dividing games away from books or films), but there it is.
Essentially they want to separate themselves from most existing legal precedent.
Why would that end up in court? Apple is a private company. It's free to include/exclude whatever content it wants. Consumers don't have a right to force a company to provide the content they want.
Get in trouble for anti-monopoly stuff usually requires two parts: that you be a monopoly and that you somehow use it. Shaping a market to your desires is an example of using your monopoly standing.
Apple won't get in trouble because they're not a monopoly, but that's how a private company can get in trouble for filtering speech in an eco-system they control.
IANAL, but I feel like there were previous monopoly cases successfully brought on behalf of far smaller groups than that. E.g. the fact that I'm a vegetarian doesn't invalidate a steak-knife monopoly
this looks more the result of living in the land of the lawsuit-happy easily offended puritans than anything else. if they could shift liability to esrb for their apps and games, they would
actually, I wonder how did they managed to pass under the esrb radar so far.
It's pretty similar to a local coffee shop maintaining a few book cases for customers to borrow or buy, but being pretty strict about what books can be put in their selection.
Ultimately, I suspect they are more controlling about apps than about books or music because apps are (or were) a new medium that, for both financial and marketing reasons, they wanted to think about differently. Apple probably feared (and/or hoped) that Apps would have a more intimate connection to their brand than e.g., the tracks in iTunes.
(edit: 1. Not saying I agree; 2. this post is a descriptive conjecture about why/how Apple treats apps differently, not an advocacy that they continue to do so. Jeesh.)
The simile is only stronger in that case. The local coffee shop might be OK stocking some Marxist rags or hard core Libertarian texts or whatever the owner likes. Meanwhile, Starbucks only stocks the inoffensive books. Thus, the masses go to Starbucks because they want a cup of coffee from a nice normal person, and don't want to have to listen to a bunch of Marxists talk down to them while waiting in line or (perceive that they are being) condescended to by a Barista.
The book case simile is fictional, but Starbucks appropriating only the completely inoffensive parts of the canonical local coffee shop is a perfect parallel example.
Something like "Want a huge catalog of high-quality Apps curated by a company with good taste? Get an iPhone."
It makes sense because IT WORKED. People DO associate certain high-quality Apps with the iPhone, even when those apps are made available on Android at some point.
Just because you (or I) disagree with it doesn't mean it's not a policy that makes good sense. It gave a huge boost their their product's reputation...
[Citation needed]
But anecdotally, most people I know who own an iPhone and aren't Apple devouts chose it because "the software is better". I assume the typical consumer lumps Apps in with OS, because I doubt they are making purchasing decisions based upon the quality of the OS kernel or the quality of the background processes...
[1]. http://images.techhive.com/images/idge/imported/article/ctw/...
US society has moved past moral panic over books and music. We're still in the thick of it with software (Brown vs. EMA was decided in 2011). Apple already chose to make themselves a certifying authority for software on other axes, so I don't find it surprising they sanitize content in the US-flavor of "family friendly" similar to other game consoles.
edit: slightly rephrased.
An app with pictures of classic paintings that happen to include nipples will not be approved for sale.
After all, if you really want that kind of stuff, you can always install a different package manager and use someone else's selection of apps.
Oh, wait.
It's like these companies just woke up suddenly, had a conference call and without a hint of discussion, analysis or feedback started enforcing moral revisionism. It reeks of dishonest, cheap PR.
What's next on the agenda?
The saddest part is that this has totally taken over the discussion of shootings in North Carolina. US is unique in that 9 people gunned down in cold blood somehow turns into a discussion about a flag?
And how do we get rid of racism? Remove the symbol. We'll get rid of the symbol and the racism will be fixed.
We took action! We did something! It's solved! Time to move on. What's the point in discussing complicated issues of housing development or law enforcement and making changes that might not have a positive and noticeable effect for a generation or two?
It's good we did something now. Now it's solved.
Here we also have large corporations that seemingly have no horse in this race other than some cheap, blatantly dishonest PR participating in this moral misdirection on a grand scale. For what reason? I doubt Apple's comical over-reaching in banning of these games is worth the liberal brownie points.
Does this maybe have something to with using the confederate flag controversy to distract people from the Trans Pacific Partnership bill which is being rammed through without any significant challenges as we speak?
I know this kind of thing always happens, but I was surprised how fast 'everyone' latched onto the flag as the core issue this time that will solve everything.
The flag was re-raised in response to the civil rights movement.
It's not the core issue, but I think it would be silly to say, in post-WWII Germany, that simply taking down nazi symbols won't stop people from thinking like nazis.
It's just too bad that's probably the only change that will come of this.
Seems contradictory to an anarchists' ideals.
I think that's a little more cynical than need be. Most of the politicians who are doing anything about the flag are Republicans and they are doing it despite the fact that it is upsetting some of their base, in a rare show of basic decency.
The retailers who stopped selling merchandise are saying that they don't want to make money selling racist memorabilia. Apple is more or less saying that as well - though they could potentially reverse their opinion on this singular case. These decisions are made by relatively low-level employees following unwritten guidelines.
I see nothing wrong with a bunch of Apple employees waking up one day, coming into work, and receiving an announcement that, "We're getting rid of the confederate flag."
Who thinks Apple would stick their neck out to do something that they "care" about if the public wasn't 100% on-board already?
What companies?
> had a conference call
You mean, watched/read the same news in the same country?
> US is unique in that 9 people gunned down in cold blood somehow turns into a discussion about a flag?
The guy who shot them had pretty strong feelings about the flag, and a racist manifesto.
US is unique in that actual state and city governments (SF flew a confederate flag at civic center plaza in the 60s), in response to the civil rights movement, revived the symbol of a civil war in which the substantive disagreement was whether or not human beings are property.
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. "
It astounds me that there are large numbers of whites in this country who think the Civil War was about anything other than slavery. The Confederate flag represents and evil institution and represents the evil intent of white Southern power brokers 155 years ago.
I don't have an opinion as such on Apple's decision but let's not pretend that the Confederate flag is anything other than a symbol of overt racism.
"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens
Savannah, Georgia
March 21, 1861
http://web.archive.org/web/20130822142313/http://teachingame...
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-t...
---
CNN anchor Ashleigh Banfield this week questioned whether the Jefferson Memorial should be taken down because Jefferson owned slaves. "There is a monument to him in the capital city of the United States. No one ever asks for that to come down," Banfield said.
Fellow anchor Don Lemon responded by saying Jefferson represented "the entire United States, not just the South." But he added: "There may come a day when we want to rethink Jefferson. I don't know if we should do that."
---
Jefferson, unlike most confederate figures and institutions, also made important philosophical contributions to the founding ideology of our nation (besides slavery). So, while I'm all for remembering Jefferson's flaws, I think his legacy is, at worse, far more complicated (and better) than that of the Confederacy, confederate symbols, and confederate leaders.
Actually living in the south, there is still a generational memory of being invaded and occupied. There are still cemeteries where the graves are unknown as the bodies and headstones were thrown aside when union troops dug up corpses to rob jewelry. There are still ruins, largely in remote areas and parks, where people's homes and businesses were put to the torch as part of an inhuman scorched earth policy.
These events are older than anyone alive's grandparent's memory, but emotions surrounding the confederacy are tied up into a lot more than slavery. That an elected Republic was overthrown by an invasion, much like if the American Revolution had been quashed by the British.
It's rare to find someone who truly wants to resurrect these issues, but self-righteous attitudes rub people the wrong way.
The US flag represents slavery as well. We changed it to something more socially acceptable, but we moved it to the prisons, stocked it with racist laws, and to this day continue to profit off of forced labor. To say nothing of the slavery American countries profit off of by outsourcing.
Of course, prison slavery isn't as bad. Instead of being born a slave if your parents are, you just have a much higher chance of ending up in prison. Instead of being for life, it is for only a portion of your life with strong incentives to bring you back once you are out. But it is still quite horrible.
The prison system is atrocious and I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if forced labor in prison can be a good thing or if it is always a bad thing.
Ask someone from that wedding party that gone attacked by a drone predator missile last year what the U.S. flag represents.
By removing the visible signs of issues, you remove the easiest ways to talk about and educate others about the issue.
Regardless, the Confederate Flag is something other than a symbol of overt racism. It is the emblem of the Confederate Army that is most recognizable to modern people. It's certainly because of that fact that the flag is also a symbol of overt racism. When presenting media of a historical genre, to represent the Confederate Army, I think it's appropriate to use the Confederate Flag.
Here are some things I experienced while living in the South. My first promotion ever was when I worked as a bag boy in a grocery store. I was promoted because, "There's nothing but a bunch of sorry niggers working here so I'm giving it to you." I was told once by an evangelical, white Christian that black churches didn't really count as Christian because they don't truly believe. They don't have the commitment that we do. I was told by another person that slaves were treated well and that the war had nothing to do with slavery.
These are all anecdotes but the impression left was indelible. The people telling me these things were nice people. People I never suspected of harboring such feelings. Whenever the Confederate flag is flown or defended in anyway I think it is appropriate to remind people of just what secession meant to the people at the time. I typically encounter defensive reactions to such reminders and this means, at least to me, that more reminders are needed.
But we're talking about depictions of the flag in dramatizations of the Civil War.
At least one person in this thread is doing exactly that.
I think "heritage" and "history" are different things.
As americans, slavery is part of our history, and the civil war happened. I don't think we should remove the confederate flag from history books, because that is how we know how offensive it is.
So if this game's purpose is to let you imagine commanding the Union army and defeat the Confederate army, with historically accurate battlefields, and this is a teaching tool to help people understand how fundamentally fucked up that war was, I think that's very different from someone who says, "You can't take my confederate flag because free speech!", though as an individual they are correct that they have the right to loudly and proudly declare to everyone who will listen that they are a racist, and I think that's a beautiful thing about free speech.
This is different from free speech IMO, this at least borders on the academic.
It's easy for people to get tripped up by their own ideologies and lose site of the time period that the Civil War occurred in. If you're all about states' rights these days, it's easy to focus on that part of the Civil War because it fits your narrative. Unfortunately it ignores that the only states' right that they were really concerned with was that which kept slavery legal.
I know this because there was definitely a time when I felt that way. Thankfully I eventually realized I was wrong.
Indoctrination with these beliefs in pretty common at high schools in places like Mississippi and S. Carolina, and even at (rural) high schools in border states. We watched Gone With the Wind in my History class in high school. Not when discussing e.g. "the role of film in civil rights/modern history" mind you, but when discussing reconstruction. It was pretty explicitly treated as a more-or-less accurate portrayal.
However, I do take issue with narrow oversimplifications, and as such I would encourage you to do some research before making such blanket statements.
I have some people close to me who once wore t-shirts that had elements of the flag on them. If I were to ask them why they wore it, they would not answer or think anything along the lines of "overt racism." They're just people who have a bit of a redneck streak, are into country music, hunting, etc.
Symbols are what we make them to be. As someone in the design world I am very aware of this. Perhaps your experience is that everyone around you who sports the flag is an overt racist, but that hasn't been the experience for me. Do I still think it's misguided to use the flag? Personally, yes. But I think to paint the issue with such a broad brush doesn't do anyone any good.
Same thing about those "who think the Civil War was about anything other than slavery" - I think there's a solid case to be made for that among the "power brokers", but as is the case in history, things were much more nuanced, particularly for the rank and file. Search around a bit for why your average non-slave-owning Southerner signed up for the war, or even look at a guy like Robert E. Lee.
If you're interested in the nuances of the secession question, check out http://history.stackexchange.com/q/2056 - lots of good points on either end of the spectrum.
TL;DR: History is complex, be careful about blanket statements.
The flag at its inception represents something overtly racist. People used it to rally others when opposing the Civil Rights Act and desegregation. Now they use the coded language of 'Southern pride' and 'Southern heritage'. In much the same way that the famous Southern Strategy of the Republican party in the 80s used coded language to talk about race. Welfare queens, ghetto kids, etc.
Can you find a knowledgable person who flies that flag who isn't a racist? Knowledgable about what the declarations of secession actually say? I haven't encountered such people.
I met a lot of people in the South who I never thought of being racists. But their racism was subtle and underneath their outward appearance. At my first job the manager was a very nice gentleman. Then one day he gave me a promotion and said to me, "I'm giving you this promotion because all we have here are a bunch of sorry niggers." I'm white. I had many other such encounters. In secret when others weren't around, if you gained enough confidence, it came out.
Secession was about preservation of slavery. I don't think there exists a cogent contrary argument.
[1] http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/553/why-did-the-s...
I also think that I've seen a lot of rhetoric thrown around online and this is the first time I posted about it, so perhaps I was attempting to speak to the "flag symbolizes treason too" argument that you never made.
I know what you're saying, having grown up in the non-deep south. However, I disagree with you.
The flag makes a lot of people very uncomfortable (and for very good reasons). Placing one's sense of self-importance/rebellion above other's feelings of safety and belonging in a community that has historically enslaved and murdered them shows a profound lack of sympathy. Punk kids might just be ignorant of that reality, but grown adults should and do know better.
For that reason, I absolutely believe any adult who flies the flag is being racist in their wilful neglect of the traumatizing history it rightfully represents, in the same sense that all holocaust deniers are anti-Semitic regardless of whether they would perpetuate another holocaust.
Some things really are black and white. Flying a symbol of racial terrorism is one of them.
> Symbols are what we make them to be.
I think this is a really dangerous point of view.
There are certainly some symbols with wiggle room, but I would argue that symbols transcend language by encoding meaning.
Surely you know that Lincoln didn't care about the slaves (or at least they weren't his highest prority, which is odd for a war that's supposed to be about slavery.):
> “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union…”
It's also a complex situation about taxes, jurisdictions and a supposedly 'voluntary' union between states. I suppose one does not take likely the realization that their voluntary cooperation was in fact hidden servitude.
What boggles the mind is seeing how people on HN are very skeptical of any current politician, but will gladly accept many propaganda issued by past ones.
Do many of you believe that the crusades were really to free the Holy Land? That it was for the good of the people?
> "It astounds me that there are large numbers of whites in this country who think the Civil War was about anything other than slavery."
And it astounds me that a large numbers of whites in USA think that their history was a series of clear cut victories against evil enemies. And when the enemies were from within the borders... well they were also evil. Obviously.
This is plain ridiculous.
The messaging on this is really bad. You can't feign outrage at symbols of slavery without doing the same for symbols of genocide.
In Wolfenstein 3D you can't play a nazzi shooting Americans (for example). You play the good guy shooting the bad guys.
I also don't think the problem is the flag. IMO the real problem is that in most of the games you can play on both sides. Kids can easily start identifying themselves as the side on which they play and forget the important details. Like... history.
And apple would cede, if the people affected made enough of a fuss, so this whole thing is more about perception and PR more than actual beliefs in justice, etc.
Can someone get Taylor Swift on the case please?
For me though, this is nothing new for Apple, and it's why I don't like their software in general. As RMS said, roughly, "Apple puts the user in a prison. It is a beautiful prison though."
Some people embrace the beautiful prison for it's simplicity and ease of use. I suppose that's their choice, but what will they do when they wake up and realize they hate the new warden, after they are so tied into the ecosystem?
I still think those who embrace FOSS now will be at a huge advantage as time progresses and the nanny mentality of companies such as Apple and Microsoft becomes more prevalent, and users of those will be at a large disadvantage. RMS is a man ahead of his time and only time will prove him right. As a matter of fact, I think that's part of the reason why MS is trying to get more ground in the open source community, because they understand that FOSS is actually becoming a threat these days, and they are trying wildly to stop the haemorrhaging.
In Apple's defense though, I do view them as the lesser of two evils, and would gladly push OSX/iOS on users rather than Windows/Windows Mobile. At least it's unix under the hood, and we can see most of the source code.
I'm not so sure about that. Apple is doing this to gain favor with their customers, who want to feel safe in an insular bubble.
I had long thought that Free would win out economically, when centralized stores were forced to ban torrent clients and the like, but unfortunately the zeitgeist has even shifted to pay streaming apps. This is the real damage that centralization causes - the culture gets permanently warped from internalizing good-enough solutions.
Then again we've had decades of receive-only broadcast media conditioning people into thinking centralization is the natural way of things, so maybe it's just going to take that much longer to break it up. Still, I feel that this current decentralization swing might be our last chance to correctly distribute power, besides the otherwise inevitable societal collapse.
When I saw it, I wasn't surprised. There are Civil War games where it makes total sense for the flag to show, and there are probably a few tasteless "The south will rise again" things that never should have been allowed on in the first place.
But it takes a lot of people and time to figure it out for each app on the store. And when it comes to this kind of stuff Apple doesn't like spending lots of people and time on these kind of things.
Blanket bans are so much easier to implement.
Quite disappointing, but not surprising. And they'll probably reverse parts of it within days. Or new games will slip through and people will forget about it.
Right, because why would they dedicate resources and effort to the biggest feature of their biggest product?
They've already approved these apps. They already have the people to approve these apps.
> And when it comes to this kind of stuff Apple doesn't like spending lots of people and time on these kind of things.
Incorrect. They've already demonstrated they want to do this. After all, you had to have people find and remove these apps in the first place.
The truth is Apple approves a ton of stuff that is clearly and directly against clauses of the App Store rules. They seem to exist mostly to let Apple pull your app later and have a pre-defined reason. Enforcement is incredibly inconsistent, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if there was some pretty racist stuff that had been there before this event; despite hate apps being against policy.
> Incorrect. They've already demonstrated they want to do this. After all, you had to have people find and remove these apps in the first place
But they don't have to critically examine the game to understand the context, only determine if it contains a confederate flag. Hell, maybe they used a program to dissect app bundles and scan all images to see if they match the flag and probably ban those.
Yes, I know. That doesn't mean they get a free pass because of it.
> But they don't have to critically examine the game...
Yes, I know, but once again, that doesn't mean they get a free pass because of it.
Listen, you are giving them excuses. Excuses that are, frankly, wrong. They are a company with massive resources. They could have done this the right way. They decided not to. It's as simple as that.
They are wrong. They did wrong. End of story.
I don't understand the ban on the historical apps - the civil war did happen and the confederate flag was used.
Are nazi flags and symbols banned from ww2 games ?
Or do we expect monopolistic censorship to be the new norm of the future? Disgusting.
Apple is certainly within their rights to do this, but I think it's silly and impulsive.
Walmart making a business decision to stop selling something that is racist has nothing to do with freedom of speech. It would also be a poor business decision to start selling ISIS flags, Nazi symbolism, those racist figurines that were once popular, a holocaust reenactment video game, KKK robes, or any other merchandise that divides their customer base. So what?
Part of freedom is the freedom to choose what you do and don't sell.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/25/us-usa-shooting-so...
>EBay specifically bans their sale while Amazon bans the sale of "products that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views."
Seems to me they both [generally] ban Nazi merchandise but have problems enforcing the ban.
Anyways, its irrelevant. Amazon can sell what it wants. That's a business choice they make. I don't care what they choose to sell, that is their choice.
edit: de-ambiguified some terms
Choice is good for consumers. I'm an AAPL shareholder too but that doesn't mean you should be an apologist.
Someone else's phone won't access the huge amounts of data I have in iCloud. Or are you actually advocating for vendor lock-in as a force for good? I don't understand.
I totally get and agree with removing the Confederate flag from state flags in the United States -- The confederacy failed. But, must we deny an important part of US history happened?
And I'd call the regular terrorizing and murder of black people under this flag far more than "someone felt bad".
Apple simply took a way-to-heavy-handed approach here.
I totally understand the negative connotation and why that exists. And the fact that public institutions still fly it is "disturbing." But people against it should stop while they're ahead, they'll only see a massive backlash if this keeps up.
PS - I wonder how hard it will be for educators, civil war re-creationists, and similar to get a Confederate flag?
Maybe I'm wrong but I kinda got the impression rrss1122 was referring to Apple wanting games removed which were based on historical events where the confederate flag was used. Perhaps OP also meant it for the current events for removing it from government buildings, etc but I assumed not.
It is however a token effort that effectively signals "I care" while actually achieving nothing but the censorship of historically accurate games. Banning violence in comics didn't reduce crime. Banning symbols in art isn't going to reduce this wildly rare form of shooting.
While what Apple says about privacy is admirable, end-user control is still a serious problem.
The only reason these seem incompatible is that iPhone owners can only get apps from Apple.
If you want both Apple and users to have freedom of choice, lock-in is the real enemy.
(Side note: lock-in also goes hand-in-hand with DRM, which goes hand-in-hand with surveillance: if the user isn't allowed to see what code they're running, and the software company isn't allowed to disclose what the government made them do, then the user can't know how their device is bugged. Cory Doctorow explains nicely how fighting lock-in and DRM is good for political freedom, too: https://vimeo.com/123473929)
If anything it will feed into the paranoid narratives advanced by those who truly believe in the symbolism of the Confederate battle flag, triggering the Streisand effect, or a close relative of it.
Is it time for HN to review whether the upvotes-vs-comments penalization-heuristic still makes sense? It's feeling a little ad hoc and brittle to me.
As you point out, they probably approve WWII historical games with Nazi symbols in them. But they probably don't approve content that glorifies Naziism.
So if you have content that wasn't similarly vetted regarding the CORRECTION: Army of Northern Virginia battle flag (not "stars and bars"), what can you do but de-authorize all of it and start over?
It's Apple's playground, they can do whatever they want. This seems ham fisted to me, but i understand the desire to simply eradicate all evidence. They're not in the business of historical accuracy. They're in the business of selling stuff. bad feelings about imagery interferes with selling stuff.
Pretty stupid, anyway.
But do you know for a fact that Apple utilises child labour or is that more speculation? I know it is common in clothing manufacturing (and other cloth-like accessories e.g. shoes, bags, etc) but didn't know it was common in electronics and or in China.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/apr/30/apple-chin...
http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-apple-suppliers-accused-o...
The accusations are some widespread that it caused Apple to publish this: https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/
We have a lot of flags left to ban!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_State...
Even being extremely pedantic it doesn't seem accurate, that symbol was used all over the place during the American Civil war to support the Confederated states (both as a battle flag, and as their second and within their third official flags).
Essentially when the war ended that was their primary symbol, and would be completely appropriate to be used in a war game about the American civil war.
American Civil War games are not racist nor is representing the Civil War or any other conflict in a game. What is next? Scrubbing history books of any offending flag or words?
If the flag is shamed out of the public zeitgeist, in the same way that the n-word or the c-word have been, then that is a symbolic victory for those on the side of civil rights.
Whatever you think about the actual meaning or symbolism or historical context of the flag is beside the point.
Arguments about the importance of "heritage" fall flat because symbols do not teach history; they simply stand in for particular narratives.
I feel this is another sign that we are headed towards a culture that does not tolerate anything that might offend anyone, an intolerance of intolerance.
This is just the quickest, laziest, and a relatively ham-fisted way to get rid of the actually problematic apps, so that's what they did. Sadly thats kinda status-quo for Apple dealing with this kind of stuff.
I suspect this is a poorly handled auto ban of anything with the flag and not the intended result.
That said, this is silly.
Apple should respect their developers and let them use historical symbols used by the opposing sides.
Removing "unnecessary" references (ones without any historical context or other legit justification) might be more reasonable.
It's like an emotional drug addiction for some people, they can't get enough outrage. They'll invent it as needed.
The media loves it to, it's great for ratings. So you have both sides feeding on a perpetually worsening cultural spiral.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_Sta...
It seems like the solid flag is now pretty much only used For shock value and racist advertisement, without the historical content.
I liked what Dave Winer had to say about his experience with it:
http://scripting.com/2015/06/22/theConfederateFlagIsAHateCri...
>I'm not from the states
There's a cultural difference that rears its head here. Free speech in the US seems to be nearly-absolute when compared to even its northern neighbour (Canada), which has some provisions for "hate speech". Europe, from what I can see, is even more interventionist. I'm not using this post to argue for or against either perspective, but only to show that people from outside the US bring a very different perspective to the table, and it is reflected in their laws.
NB (to everyone not noarchy): Down down vote things you disagree with - down vote things that don't add to the conversation.
Everyone else is discussing how to distinguish racist and historical use of symbols like swastikas and Confederate symbols.
You're actively advocating vicious totalitarian policy such as censorship that those symbols represent and that Conederates and Nazis used to promote, defend, and continue evil policies.
Of course I am.
I support free speech, but that doesn't mean I am going to allow the KKK to do their demonstrations on my front lawn because "free speech." Disallowing that is not "stamp[ing] out free speech." Not even in the slightest.
Its a two way street - they are free to do their cross burning elsewhere and I'm also free to put signs on my lawn that support racial harmony.
Walmart (or whoever) is free to decide they don't want to sell the Confederate flag. The Daughters of the Confederacy (or whoever) are free to decide they want to sell the Confederate flag. Neither is stamping out free speech. BOTH are practicing free speech.
Free speech (as a value) doesn't mean "I need to facilitate everyone else all the time, always and so does everyone else." Free speech (as a value) means "you let me say what I want and I let you say what you want." The KKK can do their own thing and American Atheists can do theirs.
I can choose to hold an atheist convention and disallow priests to speak. Priests can choose to hold Mass and not allow atheist to speech. Its each party's choice.
If some types of items are unpopular with the public (or unpopular with the people who choose what to sell) it is a business decision to not sell them in order to appeal to their chosen demographic. It is not "stamp[ing] out free speech." There are niche markets everywhere for items that don't appeal to the general public. Most companies you are hearing about (Walmart, Sears, Apple) are trying to appeal to the masses.
Being forced to support everything is the exact opposite of free speech.
Let's also distinguish "the law" from "the Constitution." They are different.
The irony is palpable.
>Down down vote things you disagree with - down vote things that don't add to the conversation.
We just removing something that "intimates" us, you understand.