An extremely dark pattern.

This, combined with the recent changes to how 'Ads' are displayed in the iOS store (almost unrecognizable from non-advertised apps at this point since they dropped the background) suggest that Apple is getting more and more aggressive about juicing it's users for revenue in tasteless ways.

Apple probably employs more lawyers than Oracle. You could be a Fortune 500 business and still be afraid to take them to court.

cuz they have the money that talks right into the ears of the “powerful “ people.

Everyone. Subscribe. Hit the 39.99. File a CC dispute. Then class action.

My theory. Apple not doing this for the money (as this is like me scamming a homeless guy for 0.001c) but someone working for Apple did it to hit an OKR for their promo.

The chargebacks and class action for Apple like me paying a 0.1c fine.

To stop this needs Brussels to sprout.

They have teams of lawyers who figure out exactly where the legal boundaries are. They push right up to those limits to shield themselves from lawsuits.

Bloomberg like companies employ thousands of people who’s livelihood depends on their salaries. This in turn helps them pay rent and spend money. The economy is interdependent on a lot of such bad businesses. While on the outside we may think this is a scam it would be very difficult to crack them without having mass effects on the population. What happened in dot com bubble or 2008 when these scams collapsed is an example of what can happen when these unethical and illegal companies collapse.

This is of course a capitalist economy where the government cannot provide simple benefits like free healthcare and subsidized higher education in exchange for high competition and high churn rate of businesses and startups.

So the solution is to tame these beasts from time to time and use that as political agenda to win votes and try to keep things sane.

So far it has mostly worked.

It’s legal because big corps lobby. They pay.

Ever notice that it’s only when the wealthy get scammed do you see someone go to prison? The Madoffs, the Enrons, the Bankmans…their mistake was taking money from money.

Lobby your way to scamming the populace, it’s just easy money.

Corruption exists and is real. It never goes away or completely takes over, but comes and goes like the tide.

While meritocracy might be a magical place idealists like to inhabit, rules of the jungle invariably triumph when people roll over or lack the power or knowledge to find justice.

AliBaba just stiffed me $4.54 in undisclosed nonrefundable fees charged as Paypal fees because a supplier failed to check that they had stock before creating an order. AliBaba threw boilerplate bullshit in my face which says "fuck you, buyer."

A newspaper can’t do proper copy anymore.