Oh, Roblox by far and away is worse than Apple. But also, Facebook is pretty clearly implicated in a genocide in Myanmar. It's difficult for me to put any genocide in a bucket less important than some kids being put into out-groups.
242 karma · joined May 8, 2025
Which lawsuit PDF related specifically to iMessage interacting with Android was mentioned in this comment? I see a comment about RCS.
Now, maybe you are right, maybe I narrowly interpreted RCS in iMessage to mean chat bubbles, and there's a wider interpretation. Even still, there's no possible way that's the singular most evil thing tech has ever done. The OP is free to be anti-Apple, more power to them, but like, let's be real about levels of evil.
> Also, bringing up IBM, Microsoft or Facebook is "whataboutism".
It's absolutely not whataboutism. The claim the OP made was about Big Tech broadly. Bringing in examples of Big Tech doing evil things is a direct and appropriate rebuttable to the argument that Big Tech doesn't do evil things.
That's not what the parent is asking. The OP said it was the most evil ever done.
Big Tech does predatory and evil stuff all the time. That's not what's being claimed. The OP is claiming that this specific thing is the worst, the singular event that is above and beyond all others.
I think you might be living in a bubble, if this is the "most evil" thing you have heard of a big tech company doing. Go read up on IBM's history, especially in the 30s and 40s. Or a more contemporary example, read up on Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Or Amazon's mistreatment of workers in both corporate and warehouse settings. Or Meta scraping data off your devices without permission to train AI.
And, though I know some folks here disagree, plenty of people around the world believe what's happening in Gaza is a genocide, and Big Tech has materially contributed to making it happen. Or, if you want another example of human cost, talk about how resources for electronics are mined, or how electronics are manufactured.
Saying, "the most evil thing big tech has ever done is make some chat bubbles blue" puts a whole lot of human lives below the color of some chat bubbles.
You can think Apple did a really bad thing by doing that, that's fine. No complaints. But to call it the most evil thing ever done erases an incalculable amount of human suffering.
I did not read this claim. I read the claim that Apple's approach unevenly benefits companies that engage in surveillance capitalism. No one's ad revenue, for instance, must pay a 30% cut of their revenue.
You are making an argument (and then arguing against it) that Proton did not make, as far as I can read.
> if you make the platform that others run on and which creates entirely new economies and allows businesses to thrive, don’t you get to define the constraints that you want since it’s _your_ platform?
I don't think you do. We constrain what companies are permitted to do all the time. Apple must abide by regulatory constraints first, and then they can add the additional constraints they like.
A simple test -- could Apple say, "Everyone is allowed to use Messages, except Hindus"? It's their platform, don't you get to define the constraints because it's your platform? No, we've collectively decided that kicking some people out based on certain characteristics is generally bad.
Nope, just the left handed people I know.
Reliable energy? Possible, but difficult -- need plenty of batteries
Cooling? Very difficult. Where does the heat transfer to?
Latency? Highly variable.
Equipment upgrades and maintenance? Impossible.
Radiation shielding? Not free.
Decommissioning? Potentially dangerous!
Orbital maintenance? Gotta install engines on your datacenter and keep them fueled.
There's no upside, it's only downsides as far as I can tell.
I'm saying that prison sentences are not a deterrent to crime, and, in fact, increase the amount of crime done. Research has consistently shown that the threat of being caught is considerably higher deterrent than prison time, and that harsh sentences don't influence behavior:
https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterr...
> That has nothing to do with the point I made, which was about people becoming criminals.
We are discussing crime. Which has a total sum. You can reduce that sum by preventing people from being criminals or you can reduce that sum by reforming criminals. I believe you need both. So it is important to remember that prisons negatively contribute to reforming people, increasing total crime, while research shows they don't contribute to preventing people from being criminals.
We need other systems, systems that prevent people from becoming criminals AND reduce the likelihood of re-offending if they do.
In the 80s and 90s, violent crime rates were well above 1000/100k residents, and property crimes 12k/100k.
Here is a study supporting the assertion that prisons increase (or do not reduce) the likelihood of someone reoffending in the future. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/715100
Your claim that prisons reduce the likelihood of the population at large is not obvious on its face, as the US has very high rate of incarceration, but still has moderately high crime rates. Can you supply some data?
Police reports aren't the only source of data. If this was a widespread impact then there would be other sources of data that could be used to build this case.
Additionally, we cannot make policy decisions on "just trust me, my friend said...". Maybe we can't get a perfect signal, but if you are going to challenge the prevailing data, I expect you to bring something novel beyond vibes. It doesn't have to be perfect, but a single anecdote plus "I believe it" is not sufficient to oppose what the data we do have is consistently saying -- crime is lower in Seattle, and has been consistently lowering over time.
I'm a hardcore Homeworld fan. I've run campaigns of their TTRPG, modeled their ships, played the old games to death. I found my own experience with 3 to be "mixed", it's hardly the best entry in the series, but the reviews absolutely are artificially low due to brigading.
Aside, an unoptimized game is actually one I'd want included in my benchmark. Games that have the teams and budgets to really polish will likely perform well no matter what. But how does OS level changes affect those other games, games where the developers didn't put in the care? Does one OS make those games worse? Or does it help with the shortcomings? It's valuable to have entries like that in your dataset.
Locking up people for petty theft is almost certainly FAR more expensive than the cost of the materials being stolen. It costs tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars to house an inmate every year, to say nothing of the damage it causes that inmate. Prisons make criminals more likely to commit crime in the future.
A person would have to be stealing like 40 bottles of mouthwash every single day for it to be cheaper to jail an inmate rather than just replace the mouthwash for the business. Cases like that also clog the justice system and prevent solving more serious crimes, deplete shared resources like police and public defenders, and overcrowd prisons.
Even if you aren't a prison abolitionist like me, surely the rational approach here isn't "Pay more and increase the likelyhood the petty criminal becomes a serious criminal". It just makes zero rational sense to try and solve the issue that way.
My experience also seems to match statistics. So, it would seem that your friend's experience might be the outlier -- I'm not saying they are wrong, I'm saying their experience doesn't match the data and there's at least one anecdote (mine) that runs counter to their anecdote. Seems like a good opportunity to try and find data that supports your hypothesis?
> The problem is that we obviously can't let you deduct everything, because if you can deduct everything there would be nothing to tax, aside from savings.
This is the point the parent poster is making. We say that it's ok for corporations to deduct everything, but not the people? Why are we ok with that?
I create an account, and delete it once I start feeling invested. If I can downvote people, I've probably ridden that account too long.
Once I start seeing the number next to my name and think "I should make that number bigger! This is fun!" then I've hit the point that I'm too invested. I'm letting the number make decisions, not me.
Then I delete it. I'll leave it deleted until I find a comment I simply cannot not respond to, and deal with being a green text person again for awhile. I'll get irritated at being blocked by default for most folks, and engage less.
It helps me self-moderate a slightly toxic experience so it's something I enjoy without it becoming a problem.
That lower speed limit was set for a reason.
Additionally, predictable car movement is important for wildlife, pedestrians, and other vehicles. If the cars on that street always go 30, the others there will learn to predict the movement of a car. If some rando car start speeding along at 40 out of the blue, that will disrupt the calculations and decision making of everyone else.
Finally, are we comfortable saying, "Any company can decide whether it thinks obeying the speed limit is important, and is free to go over the speed limit by 1/3rd if they deem it safe"? Are we sure that precedent is healthy and desirable? I'm not. I don't think automated cars should just decide to add 33% to a speed limit and go that fast in normal operating conditions.
So yes, it does matter.
I want more people out here who are willing to vote (or withold their vote) for a candidate based on the policy positions. This "Vote Blue No Matter Who" (or whatever the Republican equivalent is) mindset leads to candidates who don't have to hold coherent positions or perform their duties. They simply need to not be the other guy.
While being "not the other guy" they will get courted by capital interests, because they need that money to run their campaigns. It's really not hard to connect the dots between these politicians and the donors who buy them and mysteriously get policies that make regulatory capture and capital concentration easier. It's not even conspiratorial -- it's pretty much out in the open these days.
I'm so tired of hearing, "But not the democrats" or "but not the republicans" -- my friends, stop treating the people you vote for like part of your identity. Expect more from the people who represent you, be harshly critical of your own party to help it grow.
When you have two parties in control, and they are both staunchly pro-capital, anti-worker parties, one party will push conservative and the other will ensure "nothing fundamentally changes".
Obama, Biden, Bush, and Clinton all had parts to play in empowering the executive, normalizing political violence, demonizing and silencing the left (the actual left -- socialists, workers parties, anarchists, etc.), and ramping up the militarization of the police.
This isn't some sudden moment, it might be the first time it's affected people you know, but this has been happening for awhile now.
They know exactly what they are doing.
The assumption of discrimination is therefore baked in to every national project -- there are people who wish to participate in the nation but are barred from doing so. It's uncomfortable for many people to consider this, because it runs counter to the idea that their nations are welcoming places, but it's important to remember this discrimination occurs (even if you think it's a good idea.)
Why is it so difficult to believe that there are people here who view social media as a harmful thing they try to mostly avoid?
That's certainly not true. Unless Red Hat, MongoDB, Chef, etc. are not open source.
While I love to believe that the FOSS world is an anarchist utopia that believes in wellbeing for all, I think there are plenty of profit driven people there. They just don't sell access to the code/software.