Because money. And the laws are useless against them.
I’ve been an Apple user since the 80s, I used to be penpals with their CFO Ellen Hancock. Would get care packages from their PR team full of promo items. Exchanged emails with Wozniak and Jobs. I was deeply obsessed.
Obviously things have drifted away from the core “underdog” vibe that Apple exemplified for so long, as their popularity and device adoption surged, they’ve been less of the Apple I knew.
But Cook’s behavior this year has me realizing I’ve bought my last Apple device. Bring on Linux in every form.
I know I don’t matter at all, but it would have taken epic amounts of bullshit to make me sour on them, and here we are.
Your individual change is a drop in the ocean but everyone making that change is a tidal wave. I have very recently moved to linux after almost 30 years using windows. It is an incredible set of OSs with brilliant support from a fantastic community and it keeps getting better.
We need to make the change and encourage others too.
You’re not alone. Used to be the biggest Apple fan, worked there for nearly ten years until 2023.
Last year I made the cut, the new PC I bought was custom built and is running Linux. My MacBook Air is running Asahi Fedora Remix primarily and the iPhone was sold on. Disconnecting from iCloud was a pain, getting pictures off of their system took me three months but it was worth it. Self hosting my stuff now and 2026 is the year to switch my family and friends over as well.
I recently saw a video about what changed and it’s very clear that it is almost entirely Tim Cook’s fault. He’s a rotten snake who no one ever seemed to really like and who was constantly wrong about nearly everything and yet was left in charge and, with zero surprise whatsoever, immediately and consistently fucked it all up.
He was handed a roadmap to making money without sacrificing quality or much integrity(corporations seem hell-bent on making sure they always suck a little bit at the very least) and he threw it away to be a little bitch instead.
Just finishing off setting up ElementaryOS on my wife’s early 2015 MacBook Air. It’s based on Ubuntu LTS, but with a custom theme to make it macOS-esque. Seems pretty good so far, but time will tell if she enjoys using it.
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No, I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. I think people are theorizing that X is very likely to respond to pressure from Google and Apple threatening to deplatform them, and loudly complaining about them not applying their own rules equally is a great way to remind their internal lawyers to put pressure on them (insulting the CEOs is just a nice bonus).
Frankly, if the fallot here is a relaxed adult policy, that’s still a win. LGBTQIA advocacy groups tend to get lumped in as ‘adult’, which is a problem for trans-affirming suicide prevention hotlines trying to save lives.
As for your slippery slope question, that Pandora’s box is already open. Just half a year ago Mastercard and VISA put the strongarm on Valve and itch.io to let the payment processors ban any game they choose under the guise of pornography censorship. Pressuring a platform to censure an app ‘for the sake of the children’ just isn’t the virgin ground you seem to think it is.
There is another battle: There is a fight to open up app installation on phones. The EU recently forced Apple to allow other app stores on iOS and Apple is fighting this as hard as you would expect. Apple & Google are taking 30% of each sale in their stores and are making bank. One of the arguments they are pushing is “safety”. Only apps on their vetted app stores are safe, every other store is unsafe and so on. If they allow a child porn app in their store, all of their arguments in this debate are invalid. And that is also an important fact for that debate.
Post deepfake porn of them and their wives or husbands on X.
That’s…actually a pretty good idea.
More views, more ads. Go ahead make them richer.
Sometimes I have the impression X is doing everything to be removed to the App Store so Musk can sue and get rid of the guidelines. And as we can see here we can do even CSAM on his social network and no one do anything, this should be a matter of law, not a private company like Google or Apple.
It appears to demonstrate that it’s very much profit over principles and values.
I mean Grok is literally being used to make CSAM so it should not only be taken down but the law should get involved in any reasonable country.
how many times do we have to say it
the law is optional for corporations and the rich
the law is for oppressing the poor and justifying it
The thing is though… is it actually CSM according to the law if there is no real child involved along the way? At least some countries might need a law change first before tackling this.
Edit: I checked the local law where I’m located and it’s “images or videos depicting a minor during a sexual act”. I’d argue these AI generated images aren’t of minors because they don’t exist. We probably need new laws first unless it’s provable that the images represent a specific real life minor.
The thing is though… is it actually CSM according to the law if there is no real child involved along the way?
Legally, yes. The law in the UK also includes images of children that are drawn or computer generated.
Good. I also read a bit more into it and while I’m not located in the UK apparently there is a specific extension to the law that also includes drawings and “collage” type edits. It doesn’t mention AI yet but surely this should count.
RIP my search history. But I’m glad we don’t need to wait for the law to catch up (in some places). Now all we have to do is scream from the rooftops that the laws need to be applied. Or even better: sue someone.
Because they are indeed cowards.
“Coward” implies that they want to do good, but are too scared to do so. There’s no reason to think that, and indeed we shouldn’t. They want money and Elon makes them money; that’s all there is to it. If ethics mattered to them at all, they wouldn’t have been able to climb to the position of CEO of a major corporation in the first place.
Fuck Tim Apple and Sundar Google.
They pulled Tumblr over cartoon porn, but using AI to sexually abuse actual women and children is all good, apparently.
It’s because they fear what Musk might do.
Twitter should be banned for making CSAM.
They are not cowards, they don’t give a single shit about it. There isn’t enough backlash to effect Google so Google doesn’t care. That is how corporations deal with every subject. They don’t treat child porn differently becuase it’s one of the more henious offenses; it’s simply another rule broken and it is delt woth the same way as anyother broken law or rule: ignore it or throw money at it and admit no wrong doing.
It’s the opposite. They are cowards. Any move to do the right thing makes you a target for oh dear leader (who is also a pedophile). So they ignore it because it’s more profitable to avoid falling out with the administration. The only value a corporation has is greed.
this is actually a pretty wild headline to appear on the verge frontpage
good on them
I see a lot of people hate The Verge and I don’t understand why. Is it perfect? No. But, I think they have a pretty solid ethics policy and they call out bullshit.
I like 404 better but Verge is by no means bad.
Maybe there was an issue with them that I don’t know about? Idk!
An eon ago they made a PC building guide that was riddled with mistakes and had to pull it down again and I think that’s still where most of that comes from.
IIRC the initial response to extremely valid criticism of the video was also terrible, and they threw the video host under the bus for a rushed video that should’ve never been produced under the circumstances it was (granted he was part of the terrible response to criticism)
Yeah. I just looked it up. That video was dumb and bad. Shouldn’t have made it up, but the article is still on their site. They did issue a retraction and update the story to correct the inaccuracies.
I don’t know if it warrants the Lemmy hate but I also know that Lemmy hates anything corporate so it is what it is. I’ll still read The Verge as long as they follow their own ethics policy.
It goes earlier than that debacle for me but I honestly do not remember anymore.
If they’ve turned a new leaf then hey good for them.
Paywalls mostly (speaking for myself).
That and, back in the day, they trashed Samsung for making big phones, then praised Apple for making objectively less functional ones (no stylus, no Note like features). We started calling them iVerge back then, for favoritism to Apple. Even as an Apple guy, I found it annoying.
Google “verge pc build”. They ran a video of a guy, completely unqualified, building a “$2000 PC”, and doing almost everything wrong. And then the guy called people racists for dunking on him. There’s layers to the story. The Verge has been a joke of tech reporting for years.
And “completely unqualified” in this case means a motivated 12 year old with an Internet connection would do significantly better.
Found it. Yeah that video was bad.
To their credit, they did issue a retraction and repost the story with correct steps.
The copyright strikes were definitely a dumb way to handle it.
Idk if true or not but in an Arstechnica story, The Verge’s editor in chief apparently asked the Vox lawyers to rescind the copyright strikes.
I don’t mean to sound like I’m defending them. The video should never have made it up in the first place, but people make mistakes. If you own it and apologize, I’ll give you a second chance.
I don’t always agree with their take on a topic, but for the most part I have found them to be factual.
I do also agree with many Ed Zitron takes about them tho. They could be doing a better job on AI, but over the last few weeks I’ve seen an improvement there.
TLDR: that PC build from 8 years ago was dumb and extra embarrassing, they should feel bad for it, but I still think some if the hate they get is unjustified.
If you have an Apple account take a min to report it.
Thanks, this is very helpful!
It’s only allowing me report apps I’ve installed so I’m wondering if I should very briefly install the app to allow that. I’m generally cautions of allowing dodgy apps on my devices.
I wouldn’t even download apps you don’t feel comfortable with because the permissions they are granted are agreed-upon at the time of download and you are also boosting the download and usage metrics simply by installing it and opening it once.
It’s also extremely unlikely that an application such as X could ever be reported enough to have anything happen. I’m sure it’s on a manually approved list
Yes, I feel the same way you do. I really don’t want to add to the download metrics. I’m making an exception this time. Some good journalists, for example Richard Chambers (Ireland), have downloaded it to test and debunk claims made by Musk about safeguards. I think their contribution was a net positive. So there are cases where it’s worth doing.
I did not need to open the app once. Just downloading it allowed me to complain to apple using the link above. I feel when it comes to a CSAM factory such as this (possibly even trained on CSAM material), and with EU headquarters in my country (Ireland), I have to report it so Apple cannot claim ignorance. Who knows, maybe a whistleblower will someday tell us how many reports there were. Unfortunately our leaders are not leading on this issue, so the social contract is broken and we should all (IMO) do much more than posting on social media. My personal discomfort is less important.
You don’t have to open it. Therefore not being able to grant it permissions to access info.
*I mean that theoretically but it’s worth a shot.we can also review bomb it on the App Store.
Perfect. Done. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
Everyone watched as Tim Apple bowed and kissed the ring. ‘Coward’ was already his namesake.
More proof that rules and guidelines only apply to those without power or privilege.
