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If you're hoping for multi-trillion dollar multinationals to fight political battles on your behalf, you're playing the wrong game. Either your country is a de

If you're hoping for multi-trillion dollar multinationals to fight political battles on your behalf, you're playing the wrong game. Either your country is a democracy where people get to choose what their government does (aka, a majority of people want these invasive policies), or it's illegitimate and should be treated as such.

zarzavat 1y ago
The UK isn't a democracy anymore. There are now five parties in England trying to co-exist in an electoral system designed for two. Our democracy is in the process of collapsing under its own weight.
- nurettin 1y ago
  How do you design for two parties? How is having more parties worse? This is very confusing!
  - zarzavat 1y ago
    The first past the post system works reasonably well for two parties. But now we have more, it has broken down. Even with the most advanced statistical methods we now have no idea who would win if an election were to be held tomorrow. Even though we know the % support for each party, the way that it translates to seats is chaotic. Each of the 649 seats is a 3, 4 or 5 way race. When we had major 3 parties (most of the 20th century) election results could at least be predicted by basic statistical methods, even if they weren't very fair they were at least predictable. Now the results are neither fair nor predictable. As the smaller parties started to gain ground into the 21st century the polling companies developed increasingly sophisticated and expensive methods such as MRP polling to try to keep up. That worked in the 2024 election but it won't work next time. Random selection (sortition) could be considered a viable form of democracy if the selection of members is uniform. However the precise way that random selection of members occurs now is that one party can end up with a huge number of seats regardless of their proportion of the vote. That form of random selection isn't democracy.
  - ninalanyon 1y ago
    First past the post elections tend to have long periods with only two large parties.
jbjbjbjb 1y ago
Sadly, the majority of the people want these policies because they’ve been brainwashed or they’re too apathetic to care. The major political parties want it too. Democracy is flawed.
GeekyBear 1y ago
> Either your country is a democracy where people get to choose what their government does (aka, a majority of people want these invasive policies), or it's illegitimate and should be treated as such. The US government has previously tried to force Apple to insert a backdoor into its iPhones. Apple did fight it in court. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_dispute https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_...
- schrodinger 1y ago
  I didn't read the quoted message as saying that Apple won't fight, but that if you need to rely on Apple to fight (especially when you live outside Apple's home country), you've got serious problems.
  - thewebguyd 1y ago
    Agreed. This is the people’s fight with their government, it’s not Apples fight. The answer is don’t store your data on iCloud. Self host everywhere you can, and protest. Don’t wait for or rely on a corporation to fight your battles against your government for you.
  - GeekyBear 1y ago
    I took it as a criticism of the state of affairs in the UK, and wanted to remind people that the US doesn't have the moral high ground on this issue. Apple fought Comey and the Biden administration on this issue back in 2015, and is still fighting in the UK.

zarzavat 1y ago

The UK isn't a democracy anymore. There are now five parties in England trying to co-exist in an electoral system designed for two. Our democracy is in the process of collapsing under its own weight.

nurettin 1y ago
How do you design for two parties? How is having more parties worse? This is very confusing!
- zarzavat 1y ago
  The first past the post system works reasonably well for two parties. But now we have more, it has broken down. Even with the most advanced statistical methods we now have no idea who would win if an election were to be held tomorrow. Even though we know the % support for each party, the way that it translates to seats is chaotic. Each of the 649 seats is a 3, 4 or 5 way race. When we had major 3 parties (most of the 20th century) election results could at least be predicted by basic statistical methods, even if they weren't very fair they were at least predictable. Now the results are neither fair nor predictable. As the smaller parties started to gain ground into the 21st century the polling companies developed increasingly sophisticated and expensive methods such as MRP polling to try to keep up. That worked in the 2024 election but it won't work next time. Random selection (sortition) could be considered a viable form of democracy if the selection of members is uniform. However the precise way that random selection of members occurs now is that one party can end up with a huge number of seats regardless of their proportion of the vote. That form of random selection isn't democracy.
- ninalanyon 1y ago
  First past the post elections tend to have long periods with only two large parties.

jbjbjbjb 1y ago

Sadly, the majority of the people want these policies because they’ve been brainwashed or they’re too apathetic to care. The major political parties want it too. Democracy is flawed.

GeekyBear 1y ago

> Either your country is a democracy where people get to choose what their government does (aka, a majority of people want these invasive policies), or it's illegitimate and should be treated as such. The US government has previously tried to force Apple to insert a backdoor into its iPhones. Apple did fight it in court. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_dispute https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_...

schrodinger 1y ago
I didn't read the quoted message as saying that Apple won't fight, but that if you need to rely on Apple to fight (especially when you live outside Apple's home country), you've got serious problems.
- thewebguyd 1y ago
  Agreed. This is the people’s fight with their government, it’s not Apples fight. The answer is don’t store your data on iCloud. Self host everywhere you can, and protest. Don’t wait for or rely on a corporation to fight your battles against your government for you.
- GeekyBear 1y ago
  I took it as a criticism of the state of affairs in the UK, and wanted to remind people that the US doesn't have the moral high ground on this issue. Apple fought Comey and the Biden administration on this issue back in 2015, and is still fighting in the UK.