11 ms·

I am annoyed by something else: today Apple stepped on the wrong toe, the community will cry foul and someone from Apple who reads HN will rush to salvage the s

• vbezhenar 10y ago
  Human support is supposed to help them. What I found unacceptable is "We are banning you and we won't tell you anything about it". This pattern is extremely common. And extremely frustrating. You can't put one in jail without telling why (and right to defend). In many developed countries you can't even fire a worker without a solid reason. It should be prohibited for companies to halt service someone without providing a reasonable explanation.
  • sithadmin 10y ago
    >It should be prohibited for companies to halt service someone without providing a reasonable explanation. By US standards, that would require an absurd level of legislative and/or judicial overreach. I don't think I'd even want to do business in that kind of regulatory climate.
    • brokentone 10y ago
      This is very true. However, I wonder if we as engineers and the like can provide a better TLDR ratings guide for marketplaces. Kinda like https://tosdr.org/ https://tosdr.org/ or a BBB that works... Then we as engineers refuse to build apps for marketplaces below some kind of score. Or does it even matter if the Apple App store is the only marketplace of its kind?
      • weaksauce 10y ago
        If people are making money on a platform, people will develop for it regardless of these issues. Unfortunate reality.
        • jeffbr13 10y ago
          Democracy only works in a growing economy.
          • abakker 10y ago
            Why is this a meme? Is there any evidence that this is true?
            • abakker 10y ago
              Self reply- it appears that Sam Altman made this assertion in a recent New Yorker article as well as a blog post. I think the observation of low growth is good, but the assertion that democracy does t work without a economic growth is less persuasive. All forms of progress need not be measured by GDP. In fact, many issues indicative of social progress have difficult to measure economic impact or even potentially negative economic impact with good social benefits.
      • dandare 10y ago
        On a related note, as a small startup I am looking for some TOS generator that I - the single developer - could also understand and that will be clear and fair to my users. Any advice?
        • brokentone 10y ago
          Excellent question. I know of no answer, but maybe part of the issue of terrible TOS's is lack of resources to write good ones?
        • llwt 10y ago
          Iubenda,https://www.iubenda.com/en https://www.iubenda.com/en, has worked well for us.
    • blazespin 10y ago
      On the contrary, that's exactly the environment I'd want to do biz in. Some kind of pro-small biz small claims legislation.
      • pc86 10y ago
        An environment where anyone you provide services to can take you to court because they don't find your explanation "reasonable"?
    • kolinko 10y ago
      Well, even in US there are antitrust laws, right?
    • usrusr 10y ago
      How could that be worse than doing business in an environment of dominant platforms that will arbitrarily shut you down whenever the business they lose to a false positive (i.e. none, because the business just moves to the next guy) is cheaper than the investigation that would avoid the false positive?
    • CamperBob2 10y ago
      Any sufficiently dominant monopoly is indistinguishable from a government. So, choose your poison. We can govern them, or they can govern us.
  • enraged_camel 10y ago
    >>It should be prohibited for companies to halt service someone without providing a reasonable explanation. What a terrible idea.
    • 13of40 10y ago
      Is it? I don't think the idea is that they can't stop service for whatever reason, but that they have to provide a reason. On the other hand, I guess it doesn't have any teeth if they can just say, "Because you smell funny plus it's Tuesday..."
      • chii 10y ago
        What about price discrimination? Should that be legal or illegal?
        • 13of40 10y ago
          Do you mean the kind where my wedding cake costs twice as much because I'm gay or the kind where my car insurance costs twice as much because I'm a serial car wrecker?
          • tremon 10y ago
            What about the case where your car insurance costs twice as much because some of your neighbours are serial car wreckers?
            • icantdrive55 10y ago
              The insurance industry is Ripe for reform--political, and business reform. I've noticed a few start-ups trying to shake up the system, but there's rooms for so much more competition/innovation. I'm talking about all forms of insurance--car, home, life, business, heirloom, etc. (I have only felt like I wasen't getting reamed with insurance premiums by one company. It's a well know company that insures collectable vechicles.) Home insurance is for all practical porposes useless, but we still pay huge premiums. Now--they are using the drought in CA to triple insurance rates in parts of this state. Why--not because of risk analysis--just because they can. Your house practically needs to burn to the ground in order to see any money from these "Good ole boys", and they will fight you at every turn. They have been ripping us all off for years. With vehicle insurance, don't fall for the six month premium--Esurance. Don't just get into the habit of paying that ever increasing bill because you see "good driver discount", or "long term customer discount". I have never had an insurance premium go down with the same company, and I've been insured since I was 15.5 years old. They go up slightly, even with a good driving record, and no change in risk level. I am so disgusted with California auto insurance rates; I wouldn't mind seeing mandatory insurance nixed. The insurance companies lobbied hard for that bill. It made sence at the time, but Insurance industry did what they do best; abuse it for their benefit.
  • gumby 10y ago
    How should the law define "reasonable explanation?" In the US that kind of thing is litigated, which small companies can't afford. Such protections exist for employees, involve lots of lawyers and complexity, and sometimes screw companies and sometimes screw employees and sometimes screw both (though they do also fill an important need). But the economic cost of compliance and management of these rules is quite high, and there are a lot more employees than software developers by several orders of magnitude.
    • ytpete 10y ago
      A law could be written so it only applies to larger companies. Those companies both have greater leverage/power over consumers and small businesses (making the regulation more important), and have more resources to handle the overhead. I believe some existing regulations in the US already have an annual revenue threshold before they kick in.
  • andrei_says_ 10y ago
    I also see the need for a company to be able to close an account for truly fraudulent activity and not disclose how they caught the misconduct. I'm in no way implying that such activity happened in this case, just that the policy makes sense. An appeal process should be in place though.
    • Cthulhu_ 10y ago
      They don't need to disclose how they caught it, just what said misconduct was - going "yeah we're closing your account due to misconduct" is like fining someone for no reason. It'd be a violation of human rights if that happened, and in this particular case, it's potentially ruining someone financially.
      • maccard 10y ago
        It's not really - it's more akin to closing someone's bank account and saying "we're closing your account for misconduct" which does happen.
      • andrei_says_ 10y ago
        Not disclosing the details for the reason could prevent a malicious actor to learn and improve their strategies.
    • waterphone 10y ago
      Except false positives always happen, and when you have such a policy, innocent people are caught in the middle and face an accusation of vaguely defined misconduct with no details to use to try and appeal the incorrect accusation, because they don't even know what they're being accused of.
  • sametmax 10y ago
    Except apple is not society. It is not democracy. It's a for profit company, and can do whatever it wants. It is in no way entitled to be fair. If you don't want it to behave this way, as a consumer or developer, you just have to choose to not deal with it. But you don't want to, because it makes you money and makes you life more comfortable in some way. What it means is that you value money/confort more than been respected by this company. Accept this is what you choose and don't bitch about it, this is dishonest. You can't have it both way.
    • bambax 10y ago
      Society can decide what behavior is allowed and what isn't. Just because a company is a company doesn't mean it's out of reach of judicial rules. A company can't dump chemicals in any river without oversight; it could be compelled to accept an appeals process when terminating a contract with a developer.
      • sametmax 10y ago
        But what apple is doing is not currently illegal. Just highly disrespectful. Now we can act as a society to make it illegal, but this won't happen.
        • fauigerzigerk 10y ago
          >Now we can act as a society to make it illegal, but this won't happen. Certainly not if everyone heeds your advice to "Accept this is what you choose and don't bitch about it". Bitching about stuff is a necessary part of the democratic process.
          • sametmax 10y ago
            No, debating, finding solution and acting is part of the democratic process. Bitching is just acting like the victim you aren't, since it's just the consequence of your choices. There will always be apple like players. Either you do something about it, or you don't.
  • petre 10y ago
    > You can't put one in jail without telling why Yes you can (if you're Goldman & Sachs). It's called "contempt of the court". See the Martin Armstrong case. There are others.
  • CalRobert 10y ago
    I am banned from being an Amazon marketplace seller. I have no idea why. They say there is no way to learn more, and it's for life. I've never even sold anything there. My wife was banned a bit before more. She sold one textbook and fulfilled the transaction perfectly. She found out she was banned when they said they were keeping her money for 45 days, and they would be kind enough to release it to her if the buyer confirmed receipt of the book (they did, and she did get her money eventually). Based on the mail that was arriving, we _think_ that someone who lived at our apartment before us was doing something shady. Amazon doesn't care though. This kind of thing is why it's incredibly frustrating that people blithely let a few companies control most commerce.
    • PakG1 10y ago
      I wonder if that attitude is reflective of simply how tech companies whitelist and blacklist stuff for many things. Once, my organization's email server was considered a spammer because it had a new IP address that apparently was part of a blacklisted IP block. It took us so long to get everything sorted out and get ourselves off of all the blacklists. Admittedly, we at least had recourse, while you don't for whatever reason, in the event that you one day do want to become a marketplace seller. My point is that it's really easy to get blacklisted. Perhaps it's because they prefer to have some false positives, rather than deal with real bad actors. Just a conjecture.
    • CalRobert 10y ago
      Ugg, I meant "a bit before _me_". Not "more". too late to edit though.
    • rurban 10y ago
      You really should be able to sue them for cheap. Like filing it by yourself, without any lawyer, at a small claims or conciliation court (<$5000). There should be a guide explaining how to do that and the justice ministry needs to support that guide. Lawyers will not come up with such things. E.g. http://hirealawyer.findlaw.com/do-you-need-a-lawyer/before-you-sue-10-things-to-think-about.html http://hirealawyer.findlaw.com/do-you-need-a-lawyer/before-y... Might be $500 max for the court fees. Then they eventually have to explain it and litigate with you. And eventually revise their ridiculous CS practices.
  • Certhas 10y ago
    Electricity providers, water providers, road maintanance, phone systems, etc... Infrastructure everywhere is either in public hands or tightly regulated. Infrastructure provision is simply not a problem for which unregulated markets are a good solution, for fairly obvious reasons. Sooner or later the IT infrastructure companies will need to be regulated like infrastructure providers.
    • rubber_duck 10y ago
      The reason these things are regulated is because they are fundamentally limited by and tied to land property/ownership laws and there is no way to efficiently reach a consensus without violating them. IT infrastructure has nothing in common with this aside from ISP.
      • takno 10y ago
        They are mainly regulated because they naturally form into monopolies, just like the large internet services.
        • dec0dedab0de 10y ago
          Large internet services do not form natural monopoplies. Amazon has New egg, ebay, walmart, plus a million new ones trying to overthrow them. The local cable company only has the local Phone company.
          • Certhas 10y ago
            For Amazon this might just about be true, however, there are strong platform effects. Amazon is growing faster than the market. There is a fairly obvious argument to make for why its a natural monopoly: If its the first place buyers go to look for stuff, it's the first place sellers go for stuff. If it's the place where all the sellers are, it's the place buyers go to look first. Really, given that this is a market that is growing double digits by year, the amount by which amazon dominates it is shocking. And that is in a market that is still growing rapidly. For Facebook/Whatsapp this is even more obviously not true. Facebook even failed to leverage its social network monopoly to establish its messenger against insurgents, simply because they were a bit late.
• fattire 10y ago
  Take this question for what it is-- I'm not blaming the victim here-- but how much responsibility do small and nameless developers bear for making a deal with the devil to begin with? Don't they go into this knowing that Apple can at any time capriciously cut them off from the sole means of distribution of their product at will? I get that there is money to be made on the iOS app store-- but why is there a willingness to set up shop in a town where if one of the local officials doesn't like you-- for any reason-- he or she can effectively confiscate your hard-made product so you can't sell it anywhere else and kick you outside the walls?
  • Rotten194 10y ago
    You act like there's a choice -- customers get apps through the app store, so that's where developers have to be if they want to eat.
    • dj-wonk 10y ago
      When people say "there is no choice" it usually means there is a choice. A better way to have the discussion is to avoid the binary framing and talk about the tradeoffs. Here is one key tradeoff I see: the App Store brings more visibility in exchange for a cost. This situation accentuates another downside: plug-pulling for intentional or unintentional reasons. FWIW, I use plenty of apps not on the app store.
    • fattire 10y ago
      The choice is that if you're going to develop software for sale to the public, you can choose to develop software for sale in another market which is not so restrictive and oppressive. Other platforms and marketplaces exist, and money can be made there. To contemplate the actual possibility of sweating for years building a business, slaving over software, creating marketing campaigns, and a brand and fighting to beat out the competition, all while knowing that at any point for any reason Apple may decide to pull the plug and leave me with absolutely nothing-- no sellable product and no other avenue to sell it-- sounds like a pretty obvious choice: Don't ever get in business under circumstances like that unless there truly is no other choice. Stories like this from Dash (and others) is a real-living and breathing worst-case scenario... it makes the choice to not participate in this marketplace all the more obvious to me.
• dandare 10y ago
  On a related note, as a small startup I am looking for some TOS generator that I - the single developer - could also understand and that will be clear and fair to my users. Any advice?
• pkamb 10y ago
  "If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps."