We have moderators, here in hn. We also have them in reddit.
So sometimes we like censorship and sometimes we don't.
Not using app stores isn't an option for most users, especially on iOS.
The fact is, we sometimes like censorship. Which is funny.
I blame a deep, possible even genetic, authoritarianism.
The whole point is that both phone platforms are required to participate in modern life. Imagine if your water or electricity company decides not to supply your house. There is a reason such fundamental services are made into universal rights and do not follow the usual competition rules.
Apple/Google can’t be both the store, the device and the OS.
Censorship on an app hosting page means you need to host your app somewhere else. Censorship on the only app hosting page allowed means you can't host your app at all.
Censorship is about suppressing opinions which fall out of Overton's window, which is not okay, as all it does is to enforce status quo.
There was a good blogpost by Ex-reddit engineers about it where the idea was to treat it as signal which you cannot understand, and your core purpose as moderation(from automated PoV) is to adjust the signal to noise ratio without being able to comprehend/read the underlying data.
A bit hypocritical of them, looking at how reddit's moderation works.
Frankly i'm also against private censorship in case of social media - as it is basically outsourced government censorship.
Taking the stance of "we're not going to follow any laws and publish everything" puts the companies in very difficult places in those countries as publishers of the content.
When was the last time the play store or app store pushed apps "without our knowledge"? I've only heard of it done by shady third party bloatware that OEMs bundle with the OS. The actual issue is a system that can perform OTA updates, not app stores themselves.
whatsupdog•42m ago
Ok a serious note, that ICEBlock was ridiculous. It was putting law enforcement officials, who are just doing their job, at high risk.
righthand•36m ago
conception•30m ago
ghettoCoder•27m ago
nancyminusone•24m ago
NateEag•23m ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
coffeefirst•14m ago
You may not like it. Apple may not like it. But there's not much ambiguity here.