3 ms·
It's amazing how people accept censorship when it comes from Apple or other corporations (as evidenced by the sales and usage of iPhones and similar technology)
by joesmo 13y ago
It's amazing how people accept censorship when it comes from Apple or other corporations (as evidenced by the sales and usage of iPhones and similar technology) yet complain when the government does it. What's even harder to accept is the extent of damage that a corporation like Apple does in this case. Through arbitrary censorship, they're essentially eliminating other businesses' ability to exist. They're essentially saying, "develop at your own risk." A company who has poured a ton of money and development resources into a project that falls within guidelines can no longer publish their product because of the invisible guidelines at Apple and their rigidity. One would think they would at least have an appeals process to deal with all the mistakes.
EDIT: With arbitrary approval like this, what is the incentive for a business to take such a huge risk?
- joakleaf 13y agoIt isn't really censorship in a strict big-controlling-bigbrother-government sense. If a government is censoring, they block completely 100%. You will not be able to freely say what you want. Here, you can definitely say and do what you want (within the law) -- Just not on an iPhone. If you own a website with a forum on it, and you don't allow certain links to dubious content in the comments, that isn't really censorship either, is it?
- Karunamon 13y agoCensorship doesn't necessarily imply a government authority is the one doing the censoring.
- joesmo 13y ago"censorship: the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts." -- https://www.google.com/search?q=censorship+definition&oq=censor https://www.google.com/search?q=censorship+definition&oq=cen... I'd say this is definitely censorship. It's censorship chosen by those who choose to purchase an iPhone. It negatively affects those who have an iPhone and especially those developing for the iPhone. Yes, you can make an argument that one doesn't have to own or develop for the iPhone, but for the developer, that's over 40% (I believe) of the mobile phone market in the US. That's a huge customer base to ignore simply because it's risky to develop iPhone apps due to Apple's censorship. Also, iPhone apps are generally useless outside of the app store. Sure, someone with enough technical know-how can install them, but for all intents and purposes, they have no value if they're being censored. That is very different from moderating a website. There are billions of websites and only one app store.