_qulr

> I like how strongly people seem to be reacting to having to ask permission to digitally follow someone around

I don't have any analytics whatsoever in my apps.

When I make the "cake or death?" analogy, do you seriously believe I'm defending the "death" option?

But if we continue with this analogy, it's important to remember that Apple has been allowing "death" in its App Store for 12 years and is only now getting around to asking users whether they want death. Moreover, the App Store "race to the bottom" intentionally undermined the previous business model of selling upfront paid software. App Store devalued software and propped up the alternative of making everything free and turning customers into products. Apple has a lot of "blood" on its hands in this matter.

I personally install Little Snitch on my Mac to block apps from phoning home. Yet Apple doesn't allow a similar tool on iOS. So I don't buy Apple's "privacy" BS for one second, because they don't allow me to protect my own privacy.

Eddie Izzard: "I'm simply asking people, cake or death? It's disingenuous to suggest that this is a loaded question. After all, people could choose death. I'm only presenting the options."

From the article: "In the coming weeks, iOS 14.5 will require apps that engage in “3rd Party Tracking” to ask explicit permission, which most users will opt out of."

If most users opt out, then an analytics SDK becomes effectively useless. You're ranting about the possibility of using an analytics SDK - which nobody is denying, because it's a "de facto" ban, not a "de jure" ban. But an analytics SDK that gathers almost no analytics is not even worth having. So in effect, it's a ban.

> All they will have to do is indicate third party tracking in the App description and present an opt-in dialog.

Oh, that's all. And then get no analytics. But they can still "use" the analytics SDK... to do nothing.

You know, I don't even have any analytics whatsoever in my apps. I have no horse in this race. But I've got no problem with the phrase "de facto ban". It seems like a reasonable description of the situation. And again, some people would love a de jure ban, so it's not like the author of the article is using a "naughty" word.

Is it accurate to say that your only evidence that this article constitutes "Apple bashing" is the word "ban"?

If so, that seems hypersensitive and defensive IMO.

A "de facto ban" is not a "de jure ban", so it's already a pretty weak statement.

> the author of that blog don’t like to face up to that fact, so they will assiduously blame Apple for this

Could you please quote the relevant section of the article you're referring to?

If it's just "the article title", that seems to be quite a stretch to me.

If, as you say, the preference of users is obvious and predictable, and Apple gives an option to users with a completely predictable outcome that will prevent analytics SDKs from being viable, then I think it's fair to say that this is a de facto ban.

Whether that's good or bad is a subject for separate debate. But the main question of the article is whether developers can still use these SDKs, and the author speculates that it will no longer be possible for developers to use them. That sounds like a de facto ban to me. Again, I'm not even commenting whether that's good or bad.

If you read other comments here, some people would be very happy with an outright explicit ban. Are they "Apple bashing"? No, of course not. I still don't see how talking about a de facto ban is bashing, it's just a natural consequence of the iOS changes, at least according to the article author.

Where do you see Apple bashing in the article? It was an article targeted at app developers, offering them advice on how to adapt to the new rules.

Oh yes, I agree!

> well regarded philosophy journals (in my academic neck of the woods) have ridiculously low acceptance rates (2-3% often)

This just shows that academic philosophy is a very exclusive club. It doesn't say anything about the standards involved.

If anything, an extremely high rejection rate tends to enforce intellectual conformity and conservatism on a field that you would think is least in need of those qualities.

> the majority of philosophers silently agree that 80% of all publications or more in philosophy are nonsense or bullshit

> These disciplines have overall lower standards in comparison to philosophy

Given your earlier statement, may I ask what you consider to be the higher standards of philosophy?

I ask somewhat rhetorically as a former philosophy PhD student who left because I felt the whole field seemed quite indifferent to anything other than careerist journal stuffing.

> we're only back down to three because of a (going on) five decade streak of executives that favor laissez-faire economics, which kind of proves my point that it's a good solution

I think that kind of disproves your point, but maybe we should just stop there. :-)

> That's not what the laws on the books say. It's a colloquial term, and nobody like a pedant.

It was merely a play on words, but the point was that antitrust only kicks in when significant market power is involved, some kind of restraint on competition, whereas other laws protect consumers from abuses by companies of all sizes, even the smallest "mom and pop shop" companies.

> Ralph Nader said the same thing in the 60s and 70s. Consumer protection laws have been used to encourage economic concentration and the abuses of labor and society that always come with it. The American government has never succeeded at compliance regulation — it gets weakened and corrupted, and we always wind up getting the worst version of laissez-faire economics as a result.

Again, I find it strange how you think one set of laws can't possibly be intelligently and usefully applied by the government, while at the same time thinking another set of laws can, i.e., antitrust.

> Further, how would you make it "permanent"?

What do you mean? Laws are permanent by default, unless the legislators write an expiration date into the law.

> You know what is permanent? Court-ordered break-ups under the Clayton Act.

Tell that to AT&T. ;-)

> I don't believe we are as impotent as your response would imply

I don't believe we're impotent, which is why I'm suggesting new laws such as a consumer bill of rights and right to repair. I think that antitrust is actually too little too late in addressing problems. After all, you can't take anti-trust action against a company until it's already a trust. ;-)

> It's a losing proposition to focus our energy on short term fixes.

I think we disagree about which is the long term fix and which is the short term fix. I personally consider antitrust action against individual companies to be a short term fix, whereas permanent universal consumer protection laws are a long term fix.

> It's a bit strange to think a nebulous "consumer bill of rights" is going to protect you when the actual Bill of Rights is routinely violated.

The Bill of Rights were written over 200 years ago and could really use a rewrite for modern times, but passing constitutional amendments is much more difficult than passing laws. Moreover, the issues involved in the Bill of Rights are much more contentious, whereas pretty much everyone is annoyed by Google's complete lack of customer service.

I also find this statement to be somewhat at odds with your later statement: "These are solved problems, we just don't enforce the laws on the books or modernize them appropriately." How does your Bill of Rights analogy not also apply to your own argument about antitrust?

I would say that consumer protection laws that can be applied in an ongoing, daily basis are better than antitrust laws, because antitrust enforcement is a monumental task that at best can take years to achieve, only comes into play when problems have already gotten out of hand, and may not have the desired results, as you mentioned. Better to try to prevent some of the problems from occurring in the first place, with laws that apply to all companies without exception, instead of trying to just go after a few of the current biggest troublemakers.

And Google is far from the only company who pulls this crap, so at the very least we would need multiple successful antitrust actions.

Right to repair is a similar issue. So, breaking up Google and Facebook might help somewhat with the account suspension issue, but then we also have to break up Apple. And John Deere! And other companies. Or... we could pass right to repair laws. Antitrust feels a lot like Whac-A-Mole to me. Not that antitrust is bad, but you knock down one BigCo, and another arises. Why not more directly address the abuses caused by the BigCos?

> The only resolution guaranteed to work is to break up these companies down to smaller parts until they no longer act like quasi-governments.

Why not both?

A consumer bill of rights and breaking up Google are not mutually exclusive. Consumer protection laws protect consumers from all companies big and small, present and future. Breaking up Google won't do anything about the "next Google".

It's a bit strange to think that antitrust is a long-term solution when the successful antitrust case against Microsoft didn't prevent Google, Facebook, and Apple from arising.

> As an attacker, you can also hire people in call centers to make phone calls at scale for you.

I think we may be talking about different things? I was just talking about a scaling problem of providing legal notifications of account suspensions and providing a means on getting them unsuspended. I wasn't talking about DoS attacks.

Lots of companies have call centers, so I'm not sure what you're envisioning here, or what financial gain there would be for spammers to DoS the call center. After all, their accounts are already getting suspended by the algorithms, regardless of whether innocent consumers have any appeal to this, and DoSing the call center won't help spammers get their accounts unsuspended.

This was specified in my original comment: "At the very least, companies must be legally required to present you in writing with the so-called violation of terms they're accusing you of, evidence of the violation, and a phone # or other immediate contact so that you can dispute the accusations." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063313

Except for the part where someone has to answer phone calls, it could be automated if the account suspension itself is automated.

I'll also point out my later comment: "I'm not saying that companies shouldn't be able to suspend accounts temporarily. I'm simply saying that there needs to be a way to get your account unsuspended if you're innocent. The way it "works" now is that innocent consumers are without any recourse whatsoever." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063399

And to forestall any replies that providing information to suspended accounts would help the spammers, I've already responded to that point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26063660

Temporary account suspensions that you can quickly reverse on appeal are annoying but could be justified to fight abuse, as long as they don't happen too often. On the other hand, indefinite account suspensions that are impossible to reverse, such as the case of Andrew Spinks of Terraria, are simply indefensible, there's no justification whatsoever for that.

> E.g. if a spammer can pretend they're 10 million different people, and each of those "people" requests an explanation, the whole system grinds to a halt.

Again, it's not a "request".

If spam detection and account suspension can be automated, then suspension notifications can also be automated.

I'm not sure I understand where the 10 million number is coming from. Are you suggesting that 1 spammer can create 10 million accounts on your system (which appears to be Facebook)?

Regardless, no spammer has the time to get on the phone and personally dispute 10 million account suspensions — disputes which are unlikely to succeed if there is good evidence — so I'm not sure how the system grinds to a halt.

> Want to be treated like a person? You have to pay for that.

Andrew Spinks, the author of the linked tweet, was a business partner of Google's. That didn't save him.

> This isnt criminal law.

Not yet, but that's my whole point, it needs to be: It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies.

You can't really compare getting kicked out of a bar with losing access to your gmail. There are no "algorithms" automatically kicking innocent people out of bars. Getting kicked out of a bar is a direct human interaction, which is exactly what I'm demanding.

My point is that literally millions of people could be considered "high profile". Does (the recently deceased) Leon Spinks pass the bar? I could go on naming semi-famous people indefinitely, they all ought to pass this bar.

> they don't give away these explanations because such explanation would hint the spammer to what they should _not_ do next time

We've heard this excuse countless times, but it's simply not acceptable. The foundation of our legal system is that it's better to let a criminal go than to punish an innocent person. How many innocents have to get caught in the crossfire before we start protecting them?

> You’d think that there’d be a “this person is high profile and any automated bans will cause a stink” flag on accounts

What does high profile mean? I've heard of Leon Spinks, the boxer, but I've never heard of Andrew Spinks in my life until today. People with 5 digit Twitter follower counts are actually a dime a dozen.

Even people who were obscure can become "high profile" for a day. That's how going viral works.

> If every abuser requests those explanations (which they will)

It's not a request, it's a requirement. If your account is suspended, you deserve an explanation. You should get one without having to request it.

I'm not saying that companies shouldn't be able to suspend accounts temporarily. I'm simply saying that there needs to be a way to get your account unsuspended if you're innocent. The way it "works" now is that innocent consumers are without any recourse whatsoever.

It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies. At the very least, companies must be legally required to present you in writing with the so-called violation of terms they're accusing you of, evidence of the violation, and a phone # or other immediate contact so that you can dispute the accusations. It's insane that these basic legal rights don't even exist.

You could of course sue Google, but that's an extremely expensive and time-consuming option, rarely worth it for a mere consumer. Going to court certainly won't make your suspended account become unsuspended any quicker.

Excellent point.

There's also the dubious assumption that increasing the divorce rate is a bad thing. Kids can sometimes suffer more from an unhappy marriage than from divorce. Especially older kids who are more aware of the situation.

It's crucial to understand what these percentages mean.

"between the ages 13 and 18, parents of first-born girls divorce more than parents of first-born boys. The odds of divorce within this period are 10.7% for parents of boys, and 11.3% for parents of girls." https://theconversation.com/parents-of-teenage-daughters-mor...

There are 2 ways of spinning this. 10.7% to 11.3% is only a 0.6% increase in "absolute" terms. In "relative" terms it's a 5.6% increase, but that sounds worse than it really is. If you start with a very small number, then almost any increase no matter how small represents a significant increase in relative percentage.

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

I don't know. Does anyone know? Accurate stats are hard to come by, as this is of course underreported by the victims. We do know the number is greater than 0.0% though.

The Conversation article has a link to the original paper https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_... which does not even mention this possibility at all as a factor. I find this to be a curious omission.

Non-sexual physical abuse could also be a factor. The teenage years are when boys and girls start to "grow apart" in terms of height and strength, which makes teenage girls on average less able to defend against physical abuse than teenage boys. Also, our society is "more accepting" of violence against males than violence against females. Is this a factor in the divorce rate? I don't know, but the possibility should not be ignored.

This is much ado over almost nothing: "between the ages 13 and 18, parents of first-born girls divorce more than parents of first-born boys. The odds of divorce within this period are 10.7% for parents of boys, and 11.3% for parents of girls." https://theconversation.com/parents-of-teenage-daughters-mor...

10.7% vs. 11.3%. Not much difference.

What little difference there is could be explained by, for example, the father sexually abusing the teenage daughter, not by trouble caused by the daughter.

> why are people so surprised?

Because the DTK was handled completely differently by Apple during the PowerPC to Intel transition.