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> are complicit in this stuff I don’t know that that is fair. This framing is designed to shame people into feeling guilty for their point of view, rather tha

• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• beeflet 1y ago
  The wrongdoing is supporting this company's dominance, which enables this level of censorship.
  • andsoitis 1y ago
    You’re still not shaming me.
    • saagarjha 1y ago
      Maybe the framing was not intended to do so?
    • bigyabai 1y ago
      Bud Tribble was shaming Apple cronies in 1981 when he put "reality distortion effect" in circulation. You can feel however you want, but everyone can see the truth for what it is. Been that way for a while now.
    • beeflet 1y ago
      If you buy apple products, work for the company or own its stock then you are financially facilitating this. I don't know who you are and I don't care, I am just saying this is the basic cause and effect. Things cannot improve unless stakeholders use their levers to change or abandon the company.
      • deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      • what 1y ago
        Do you have a 401k that somehow doesn’t hold Apple stock? Or are you complicit too?
        • beeflet 1y ago
          I don't contribute to my 401k or I liquidate whatever is in it as soon as feasible within the tax model. I think I have some index funds but I am going to try to put them into the DOW or gold or something.
          • angoragoats 1y ago
            I have some bad news for you about the Dow: the top 4 companies by market cap in the Dow are Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon.
            • geodel 1y ago
              It is simple really. "I do things when they are feasible do me. so others must do things when they are feasible to me"
            • beeflet 1y ago
              I wasn't planning on investing in those. Aside from ideological reasons, I am pessimistic about their role in the economy. I don't have access to the DOW directly, I would still have to choose individual stocks.
              • angoragoats 1y ago
                If you can buy individual stocks, then you absolutely do have access to the Dow in the form of a myriad of ETFs [1][2][3]. There are also numerous standard mutual funds which consist of all the companies in the DJIA. This is what I thought you were referring to when you said you'd invest in the Dow, hence my comment. [1] https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profile/dia https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profi... [2] https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profile/djd https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profi... [3] https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profile/edow https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profi...
    • concinds 1y ago
      Okay. So your point was not really: "I disagree on moral philosophy, responsibility and the attribution of guilt", it was: "I support Apple's centralized control on all apps you can run, but I don't want to be criticized for the moral implications of state control, censorship and authoritarianism, nor do I want to defend my position on the merits". That's cheap.
      • CrossVR 1y ago
        It's more like: "I support Apple's centralized control on all apps you can run, as long as that monopoly is only used to squeeze out competition and not for censorship." Of course government censorship becomes a lot easier if you only need to put pressure on one company.
      • Freedom2 1y ago
        I don't know if that's necessarily a charitable interpretation of the comment, keeping in mind the HN commenting guidelines. Despite differences in opinion we should give everyone the chance to state their view, no matter what it is, as long as it generates "curious" discussion.
  • afavour 1y ago
    Supporting it is still not complicity though. Wrongdoing, sure.
    • beeflet 1y ago
      Whatever the word is, the cause and effect is this: 1. Apple users tolerate the status quo through inaction, which is the centralized distribution of software. 2. Governments take advantage of this status quo to control apple users. If it was the case that the OS was open, then the US Gov. would have no leverage to prevent the distribution of the software mentioned in the article. However apple's stakeholders enable and justify the centralized software distribution as a feature rather than a bug. Developers are in on it too: the locked-down ecosystem is more lucrative for them because there are higher entry costs to producing software, and thus reduced competition. It prevents piracy for example, at the cost of preventing the distribution of pretty much all open source software.
• g-b-r 1y ago
  Their action is supporting and promoting the model to other people, if they do that
• themafia 1y ago
  > This framing is designed to shame people into feeling guilty for their point of view, rather than their actions. Having a point of view and then using that point of view to make public claims, often counter-claims in face of precisely this type of criticism, is an action. Examples are easily found on this forum. > or wrongdoing act Which includes simple dishonesty.
• cyanydeez 1y ago
  [flagged]
• handsclean 1y ago
  It’s happened many times before, and people heard about it and aren’t that stupid or forgetful. They just want to believe something incompatible, so they permit themselves a little internal dishonesty: maybe it’s a separate issue that somebody else will surely figure out, or there’s a better solution (that we won’t pursue), or everybody always exaggerates (but we won’t verify that), or they find a way to hate and dismiss everybody who talks about it. Declaring your own shamelessness is more of the same: you’re reframing the problem from the consequences of your actions to your feelings about those consequences, then addressing only your feelings. It’s the same sort of behavior as heroin addicts, who find a route to happiness that doesn’t push them through the good things that the pursuit of happiness was meant to.
• scheeseman486 1y ago
  They knowingly created the systems they built around having centralized control, everyone told them the consequences of doing that, they did it anyway, this is the result, they are responsible.
• goku12 1y ago
  You're dismissing the parent argument merely based on a narrow interpretation of the word complicity. The way they use it is common and correct in English language. All it needs is to aid the wrongdoing in some manner. That's exactly what you do when you choose to support and lend credence to Apple's flawed arguments on safety and thus blunt the opposition to their hostile practices. This is significant because Apple has been forced on occasions to backtrack on bad decisions in the face of public backlash. (Anybody remember their plan to scan all photos in the phone for CSAM?) Now even if you want to go the pedantic or legal route, the meaning of complicity changes according to jurisdictions. Many legal jurisdictions consider interference in the opposition to a crime or even silence in the face of a crime to be complicity if you had sufficient knowledge about wrongdoer's intent. In this particular case, people had been warning for decades of this exact outcome, down to the details of the headline. You could argue that this is policing of thought and opinion. Obviously, we're talking about moral responsibility here, which is just another opinion too as far as consequences are considered. (Except in cases of astroturfing and sock puppeting where the complicity is more direct. But we will ignore that possibility for now.)
  • andsoitis 1y ago
    Thanks. I don't know about this line of thinking. If you truly believe this, then you could point to just about anyone on earth and state they're complicit in some atrocity or oppression. I would concede there are degrees of proximity, but this particular example, that if you are in any way contributing to Apple's success (not matter the size) that you are complicit, and by implication be held responsible, for fasicm is truly whacky in my books.
    • goku12 1y ago
      > If you truly believe this, then you could point to just about anyone on earth and state they're complicit in some atrocity or oppression. Ah! I see where it's going now. You can't reinterpret and dismiss others' statements to your liking. If you choose to vocally support an activity that you know to be harmful in some way, then you're actively complicit in it. That's a choice. And not one that everyone takes to end up fighting with their own conscience. And even those who do, weigh their actions against a moral boundary they maintain. > I would concede there are degrees of proximity, but this particular example, that if you are in any way contributing to Apple's success (not matter the size) that you are complicit, and by implication be held responsible, for fasicm is truly whacky in my books. Misinformation peddlers actively frustrate and defeat the efforts of those who try to raise awareness and alarm about the problem. That's plenty enough for them to be held morally responsible for the results.
• heavyset_go 1y ago
  There's a difference between having a view and spreading apologia for public consumption. For example, surely anti-abolitionists' apologia made them more complicit in the continued institution of slavery than those who chose not to make excuses for it did, even if they themselves did not own or facilitate the sale of people. We don't seem to have a problem with assigning some responsibility for abolition with abolitionists' own apologia, some of it still read in schools today.
• thisisit 1y ago
  Here's a simple thought experiment. Would have Apple done the same if it was any another country? Probably not. They would have courts and the democratic processes to help them resist. But in face of authoritarian government who can hurt Apple's sales the company always bows. Be it actions in China or now action in US. The motive is simply profit. The company cannot have a centralized control to make it "safer" and then give that way if the profits are under threat. Companies should be shamed for that.
  • dialup_sounds 1y ago
    I'm skeptical of this angle. If the app in question is being used by some to commit targeted violence, is it really a question of profit and not safety? Does it really take much pressure to want to get out of that position? Does Apple publish apps designed for reporting locations of immigrants or minority groups? Is that a line of business they want to be in at all?
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • angoragoats 1y ago
      Please show where these apps have been used to commit targeted violence. Your second paragraph reads to me like you’re equating the desire to protest and document the atrocities being committed by government agents to physical threats and violence being committed by unhinged private citizens against minority groups. This is a disingenuous argument.
      • dialup_sounds 1y ago
        You do not understand. I am equating the desire of unhinged private citizens to commit violence to the desire of other unhinged private citizens to commit violence. Reasonable people aren't the problem. "An app that gives you real-time updates on the location of people you deeply dislike" is It's extremely unlikely that there are not more people out there The point is that If you're in Apple's position it doesn't especially matter who is being targeted and how many people are actually using the app that way. If they don't want to be in the anonymous people-reporting app game on the basis that it may make people unsafe vis a vis said unhinged private citizens, that's not unreasonable or inconsistent, and it doesn't necessarily take an extraordinary government threat to the business for Apple to want to distance themselves from that kind of app.
• godelski 1y ago
  > rather than their actions. OP's comments are about action >> everyone who claims that Apple fundamentally needs the centralized ability to control apps on their platforms "for everyone's safety" This is an action. If you go around defending Apple or advocating for their position then yes, you are complicit. You are not just a bystander, you are actively participating in their propaganda. This is especially true on HN where we expect the average user to be fairly technically literate. Everyone here should know how phones are not unique computers that need extra central authority control to make them safe when compared to your desktops and laptops. Sure, Apple probably wants to have control over that too, but are we really going to let them destroy the very thing that made these systems magic? Computers are "magic" because we can program them. Because they are environments. You cannot make a product for everybody. But you can make an environment in which everyone can adapt to their individual needs and use cases. That's what makes the computer magical and so special. A smart phone is nothing without its apps. So yes, complicit.