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I completely agree. When rules aren't codified it invites biased interpretation of them. However.... I've worked on an internal communications platform. For s
by shaftway 6y ago
I completely agree. When rules aren't codified it invites biased interpretation of them.
However....
I've worked on an internal communications platform. For some reason people would forget that they were on a corporate site with their corporate email linked to it and spew garbage that any decent person would be embarrassed to say out loud.
So we deliberately didn't codify our rules. We chose not to because we were aware that if we did then people would deliberately cozy up as close to the line as they could, and that wasn't the kind of environment we wanted to foster.
We avoided bias by removing information about the flagger or flagee when content was flagged and judged it based on the content ourselves. After we judged we'd look up who was responsible for the content, and if we felt they were doing some penetration testing to see exactly where those lines were we would start to loop in their manager, HR, legal, and anyone else we felt should be aware. Our escalation procedure went up to banning, though nobody ever reached that point. And our content improved.
If the story ended there I would still be against not having codified rules, but begrudgingly accept that it worked in that situation.
Unfortunately the story doesn't end there. Staff was hired so that engineers wouldn't be responsible for this. The staff was less familiar with the ecosystem and they proceeded to clamp down more and more on acceptable content. They cozied up to HR and legal who were never really comfortable with the permissiveness of the platform, and received praise and additional funding to grow the team for these clampdowns.
I left the project and haven't looked back.
You're right, "I'll know it when I see it" is a garbage sentiment that at best is a cop out, but too often is used to withhold rules and keep people in the dark as a power play, or even squash dissenters with arbitrary and unbalanced application of force.
- baybal2 6y agoTo begin with, I think they made it to accommodate Tencent, who once threatened to pull Wechat from App Store if they don't let them use their own payments. First, they used them for transfers only, but later came games, and etc.
- Hokusai 6y agoBecause it is not about fairness or rules. It is about extracting as much values as possible from app developers. That made sense when the Apple store was a small kind of start up enterprise. Nowadays, it should be regulated so all developers can use the platform in a level field where competition is real and it is not just a game for big corporations.
- AnthonyMouse 6y agoRegulating the app store isn't beneficial. They should be able to reject bad apps for being bad without having to go to court over it. The problem is that they restrict the user from using any other app store. So then when they get it wrong there is nothing anybody can do. And then they have less incentive not to get it wrong, because it's much harder for them to lose users to a competitor, so then they prohibit things the user actually wants more often.
- chillfox 6y agoI don’t know if you have seen the trash heap of bad apps that is on the App Store. It gives the distinction impression that Apple does not reject bad apps, only apps they don’t like for arbitrary reasons. I do agree that the best solution would be allowing third party stores.
- dd36 6y agoOr just charge a flat review fee.
- yungstevejobs 6y agoJust because bad apps may make it onto the app store doesn’t mean Apple’s implementation is failing. Security holes are not discovered in a vacuum. It’s like playing wack a mole. For obvious points just like at how Epic got banned from the App Store. They snuck in a direct payment option and got approved for release, only later did Apple find out. It’s possible that those bad apps snuck in malicious codes and the app reviewer missed it. It happens. However without Apples review and ability to act as goal keeper there would be much more of those kind of apps,. I’m not sure how third party stores are the best solution to this. That means users would have to trust another gate keeper for security and validation. 3rd party app stores will just increase the possible of malicious apps
- solidsnack9000 6y agoYeah, the thing is to have codified questions. Seems weird but that's how the law does it. We are always asked to frame things in terms of what a reasonable person would find explicit, threatening, likely, implausible...basically, the law asks you: can you answer this question with a straight face?
- sneak 6y agoYour codified rule was “don’t habitually say stuff you don’t want to be attributed to you with your manager, HR, legal, and anyone else at work you don’t want reading it”. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
- palijer 6y agoI think there is a difference in kind over rules that govern paid employees, and rules that govern developers who are paying to be on the platform, and told to design and innovate, but if you step over a line we're not going to write down, we'll kick you off the platform and damage your business.
- usefulcat 6y agoDoesn’t sound like a platform I’d want to bet my business on.