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Comment by rbrtl | Hacker News Reader

I think the reactionaries in any of these conversations are the ones advocating that Apple not improve security, i.e. that they don't make progress in protecting their users.

There are many reactive voices speaking out in support of Apple, but they are responding to those who complain (for the most part) from the outside, or on their way out of Apple's door.

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I specifically mean reacting to the criticism Apple is getting. You see the same level of criticism of any major tech company in the comments section of the front page but very rarely are those criticisms followed up by a bunch of users defending the tech company in the comment section. You're arguing a weird semantic that doesn't really have anything to do with what I'm saying.

A cursory scan of the front page article concerning Amazon turns up a few standing in Amazon’s defence. I guess Apple isn’t the only tech giant with blindly loyal fans

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25240953

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25237993

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25237932

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25237628

None of these comments are reacting to people complaining about Amazon in the comments or claiming that HN is unfairly biased against Amazon, which is what the comment I replied to was about.

Very good. You got me. Here you go:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9583362

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25238542

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6420048

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23655400

Some of these are the replies to the claims of bias, some are the original claims themselves. The search bar is at the bottom of the home page. I may have been rather childish throughout this thread, it's a defence mechanism, but it doesn't mean I'm wrong, and it doesn't mean there isn't pro-Apple bias on HN. That doesn't mean there isn't pro-<FAANG> bias around here either.

People are entitled to these opinions, and to express them, as are you and I to participate in whatever you call this exchange. It's why I still love the internet even though it feels like it's raising my blood pressure from time to time. And why I go through spits and spats of spurning all social media and then participating in controversial discussions like this and other philosophical debates.

Would you happen to know any data science? I took a course on R but I never got to use it, but this is actually starting to sound like an interesting project. There's a lot of data entry level work to do I guess. My data chops aren't great but I can handle repetitive tasks.

Yeah that’s reactive, rather than reactionary. It’s a significant definition, particularly as reactionary tends to be used pejoratively to describe the proverbial “stick in the mud”.

And my point was that the very fact that Apple is the one with defendants, among the technologists who tend to make up HN commenters, should make one wonder if they aren’t doing some of those things right, not that the supporting commenters are mouth-breathing dullards who just “don’t get it”. Apple are getting bad press right now over pushing for a bill in the US designed to eliminate slavery from supply chains, and I will join the voices calling on them to take responsibility for that. But in reference to how they control their hardware-software ecosystem for their customers, the reactionary point of view is that they shouldn’t be progressing towards a user-safe environment.

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