Entire servers can now be marked as NSFW if their community “is organized around NSFW themes or if the majority of the server’s content is 18+.” This label will be a requirement going forward, and Discord will proactively mark servers as NSFW if they fail to self-identify. Discord previously allowed individual channels to be marked as NSFW and age-gated.
The NSFW marker does two things. First, it prevents anyone under the age of 18 from joining. But the bigger limitation is that it prevents NSFW servers from being accessed on iOS devices — a significant restriction that’s almost certainly meant to cater to Apple’s strict and often prudish rules around nudity in services distributed through the App Store. Tumblr infamously wiped porn from its entire platform in order to come into compliance with Apple’s rules.
There’s two things happening here. There’s the tighter restrictions by Discord, which I think are reasonable – you don’t want minors or adults who simply aren’t interested in rowdier conversations to accidentally walk into channels where people are discussing sex, nudity, or porn. Labeling these channels as such is, while not a panacea, an understandable move, also from a legal standpoint. I still think sex and nudity are far, far, far less damaging or worrisome than the insane amounts of brutal violence children get exposed to in movies, TV series, games, and the evening news, but I understand American culture sees these things differently.
Then there’s Apple’s demands placed on Discord. This is an absolutely bizarre move by Apple on so many levels. First, the line between porn and mere nudity is often vague and nebulous, such as in paintings or others forms of art. This could be hugely impactful to art communities sharing the things they work on. Second, Discord is primarily a platform for close-knit groups of friends, and if everyone in your friend group is over 18, there’s going to be discussions and talk about sex, nudity, porn, and other things adults tend to talk about from time to time, just as there are in real life. None of these two – art and casual conversation – are criminal, bad, or negative in any way.
And third, and this is the big one, these restrictions Apple is placing on Discord do not apply to Apple’s own applications. iMessage serves much the same function as Discord does, yet there’s no NSFW markers, 18+ warnings, or bans on such content on iMessage. Other platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and the damn web through Safari, provide access to far vaster collections of the most degenerate pornography mankind ever wrought, and yet, Apple isn’t banning them either.
This just goes to show that, once again, that iPhone isn’t really yours. Apple decides how you get to use it, and you’re merely along for the $1000 ride. Android may have its problems, but at least I don’t have Tim Cook peeping over my shoulder to see if I’m looking at something he deems lewd.
I once got into a debate with a little old lady I worked with about how opposite American (read USA, as clearly we think there is only one America…) culture is to the rest of the world. Namely the flup of Violence vs Sexuality. The weidly puritan views that sex is and sexuality is this evil thing and that violence is fine and fun and entertaining. Where on the one hand, it is fine to have a beheading in a live action cartoon like Attack of the Clones, yet we have to cover up Cosmopolitan magazine because it says Orgasm on the cover, or simply has an attractive woman on it.
My point of debate is that sexuality and sex are both natural things that are required for the species to survive. Violence, and especially violent behavior between each other is not a natural thing that other species really show unless they are starving or something. But some of our species will simply deploy violence because they don’t get what they want. It is weird, and we shouldn’t encourage it.
Who here believes that the casual acceptance of violence as entertainment translates to violent episodes IRL?
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/16/us/mass-shootings-45-one-month/index.html
Obviously many people consume violent video games and media without being socially violent. As someone who doesn’t feel the need to translate on-screen violence into the real deal, it’d be easy to just assume everyone’s the same way. But that’s not really a scientifically grounded conclusion. I’m not really sure if there are groups of particularly suggestive people who develop violent tendencies as a result of the media. And intentionally or not some people make the mistake of confusing correlation and causation.
Regarding the conniption on nudity, it’s a case of twisted priorities.
Here’s a sketch about pixelated nipples from now defunct college humor and if you can believe it, youtube originally flagged this video as 18+ despite the fact that it was pixelated and it being a parody of the ridiculous ways that the US media censors human anatomy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMCjWpXy_aI
Not normally something I’d normally post to osnews, but seems appropriate here.
One origin of the problem might be the conquest of the west was done showing muscle, not diplomacy, hence one can understand firearms is power. Also the USA is very religious (In God we trust = Allah Akbar) so condemn sexuality in general, basically what make looks humanity as a needy animal (but owning firearms isn’t, of course).
Plus there is the under-toned social violence done to ethnic groups in the USA, the self called most powerful country in the world, yet with such unequal share of wealth, inability to reach some position if you don’t come from the right group or family. Just look at the electoral frauds when they can legally prevent thousands of people from voting just based on a name of someone alleged of committing a crime. It’s widely used to prevent minorities from expressing their voice in the country of freedom of speech.
And some many more cases. One has to wonder if that’s not also a great part of the problem.
That’s a great point you bring up. My fiance’s family is from “the south”, and the mentality there is that their freedom of religion is more important than any other freedom or basic human rights. There is no room for compromise on this issue, either. Her and I have had conversations in the past about how they actively fight against their own interest. Her response is always, “because they think it’s blasphemy”. For a good example, thing the lottery: Some southern states ban the lottery because it incentivizes gambling (forget the fact that you can actually gamble in real casinos in some of these same states). In the US, the lottery is one of the largest sources of income for public education. So the states with the poorest populations and worst education continue to fall further behind.
Well, in the US, we measure our collective worth not by the worth of the many, but by the worth of the most powerful. Here, we constantly hear how the US is the land of opportunity because we have the most number of billionaires in the world, and this is something we must protect at all costs. If we lose our billionaires, they’ll just simply go somewhere else (like they realistically have that option). The fact that over half the population doesn’t have $500 for an emergency (https://money.cnn.com/2017/01/12/pf/americans-lack-of-savings/index.html) is not factored into the equation.
Why the F is funding of school done through the lottery ? This isn’t normal. And also does that mean the lottery is one of the largest source of income for the region ?
I think it all boils done to the culture and how much a human life is valued in the US.
The ever growing group of homeless people and the cost of healthcare and no bans on at least rapid fire weapons.
And the looking down on people who have less. If you are poor it most be because you are stupid.
Lennie,
For better or worse I think it’s pretty normal for US states to give themselves an exception to their prohibitions on gambling because they want the added revenue. In different states it pays for different things though, in pennsylvania the lotto pays for elderly care/ meals and has for decades…
https://www.palottery.state.pa.us/Benefits/Benefits-Info/Benefits_Guide.aspx
Some people enjoy gambling or find it entertaining. I’ve never played the lotto personally, but people buy them as gifts all the time and over the years I’m sure they’ve spent a couple hundred dollars on my behalf… I don’t expect “gifts” from anybody, but I’m never happy when I get a lotto ticket, haha. I’ve been to a casino and didn’t find it that enjoyable either, nothing to do but loose money. I’d rather be at a water park, although $52 / person + food + parking. my god it’s expensive to do anything these days. Don’t fret, the water park actually has payment plans (not kidding).
It’s discouraging that things have gotten so unaffordable. I really enjoy taking the family camping, but the cost even for this has gone up so much that we’re cutting back even this simple tradition. “Rustic Tent site $130/night”…it makes me want to cry.
https://i.postimg.cc/WbJTkTgN/image.png
At least the state run campgrounds are more reasonably priced, but the demand is so high that the highly coveted summer and weekend slots disappear within moments of opening up registration for the year. You have to plan for next year and hope you can get a campsite. My inlaws have a camper and they’re fuming that they couldn’t get a spot at the state campground this year and they want us to pay the rates above to go camping with them.
Anyways the point of this rant was supposed to be that while I may shun people who gamble for being financially irresponsible, they might just as well shun me and my hobbies for being no better on the wallet. Capitalism is just heartless.
Last Week Tonight has a segment on how states use lottery as a replacement for taxes in school funding:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PK-netuhHA
So, basically instead of using the property tax from the middle class, they use the lottery income from the poor people (let’s not kid ourselves lottery is mostly targeted for the poor).
I find this entire thing very disturbing.
While Jon Oliver does bring up some interesting points in a very humorous way, he misses a very important one: Nobody is interested in raising taxes. States with higher taxes have been struggling as the population moves to lower taxes states like Texas and Florida. I live in Florida and see this playing out. Florida, in particular, is almost exclusively funded by the “tourism tax” with citizens paying no income tax, and low property and sales tax.
Fair or not, this is the trend. New York has been the latest state to legalize sports gambling to supplement state revenue (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-york-approves-legal-online-sports-betting-11617744458). This is not just about gambling, either as a bunch of states have also legalized marijuana to the same end, raise revenue.
And how does corruption “plays” into the game ? With that amount of money involved, I’d be surprise if everything was invested where it’s supposed to be.
teco.sb,
Yes, that’s exactly the trouble. And to make matters even worse, huge corporations like apple, google, amazon, facebook, etc get to play up a state bidding war over themselves such that their expenses and tax bills end up getting subsidized by other tax payers. They are so privileged that paying outright for their own investments and paying the standard tax rate are often beneath them, meanwhile they get to keep all of the profit. This is such a slap in the face to all the local businesses and residents who pay their fair share of taxes only to end up subsidizing their competitor. I’ve long wished that this sort of tax discrimination would be outlawed at the federal level: A state should not give any perks/favors to one business that it cannot give to all others. If all states in the union had a no favoritism policy, it would help limit the abuse.
There’s never been a problem identifying culprits and coming up with more fair ways to govern. The problem is the corruption that stems from corporations having such extreme power and leverage such that multinational corporations essentially end up running both state and federal governments. With more foresight corporations should have been constitutionally barred from the political process just like churches were. The government’s responsibility should be solely to the electorate and not to wealthy corporate interests, alas here we are corporations are running the world. Every passing year it seems more inevitable that we’re going to live through another robber baron era, although this time round we have globalization, meaning multinational corporations have a ton more leverage to use against national governments attempts to regulate them.
Alfman,
I think this sounds good at first. But if you look at the history of many industries, it would be counter-productive.
For example, Hollywood was founded in California to escape higher labor costs in the East Coast:
https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/how-did-hollywood-end-up-in-hollywood
However Hollywood now has the highest grossing film companies, and very strong labor unions. The initial cheap proposition enabled the explosive growth.
Now the direction is going back, Georgia providing incentives to film companies, and building up their own movie industry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_industry_in_Georgia_(U.S._state)
Not letting poor locales compete with the only thing they can offer: cheaper business costs, we would condemn them to staying poor forever.
(I agree this is not always positive, For example small towns in Texas are now hosting a huge patent portfolios, causing too much trouble for everybody else with judges almost always siding with patent trolls).
sukru,
I’m not sure you understood what I was saying. I wasn’t saying states couldn’t be competitive, but that they shouldn’t do so with discrimination. Any legal perk given to company A must be given to companies B-Z as well. The laws and taxes should be applied equally. The practice of giving the giants (ie google / apple / etc) preferential treatment by governments should be completely outlawed.
Alfman,
Sorry, I misunderstood the statement.
Yes, any* private deals should be prevented.
(Asterisk here, since there could be legitimate exceptions, but even those should be a public process).
Kochise,
These are interesting points. I agree there is plenty of violence against minorities and economic inequality throughout our economy, I would not have thought to link these to society’s views on censorship in general. I still think there’s an increasing amount of violence against one’s own peers though, which can’t be explained by simple racial motivations and IIRC the vegas shooter was wealthy and “privileged”. I don’t know if we ever learned his motives.
teco.sb,
Yes, it says a lot about society how it treats it’s poor (and heck even it’s middle class now days). It really is getting worse and we are the first generation in modern capitalism who are doing worse than our parents on the whole. The gap between the average and median is huge, which is a measure of economic (un)fairness.
Yes, the lotto is heavily taxed and for better or worse many states are financially dependent on them.
For your sanity, I hope you and your fiance are on the same page politically. I try to see the best in people, but sometimes I’m flabbergasted by what I see. I feel like I’m witnessing firsthand how mass ignorance, prejudice, and one dimensional thinking can be exploited to lead towards the resurgence of Nazi-like parties. I appreciate that some people are republican (or democratic) to the core no matter what because of their identity and “us vs them” mentality. But to what end does one allow an authoritarian regime use their hometeam loyalties? The greatest threat to democracy isn’t on the battlefield, it’s letting a dictator in through the front door.
“I would not have thought to link these to society’s views on censorship in general.”
Futile attempt to keep people in check, just like Facebook’s stance on nudity, even in artistic forms (ie. paintings of nude). It’s a form of cultural repression, because the rich will have their own art gallery on the very topic, they don’t need Facebook to access knowledge. Same repression on third parties applications that do not benefit the same rules as Apple’s own application.
“Yes, it says a lot about society how it treats it’s poor (and heck even it’s middle class now days).”
And obviously:
“A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Having billionaires by itself is not a very meaningful metric (although having many unrelated billionaires could be considered a sign of economic competition).
How they earn and spend their money is the problem.
For example, the British aristocracy is still alive today, because they do take active officers’ roles in wars, and do not shirk from “duties”: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/irish-times-editorial-praises-british-aristocracy-for-sacrifices-in-first-world-war-1.2536057 . (I actually do not like that compromise for landed / hereditary nobility. But it is their culture, cannot judge from here).
It is similar here in US. Well… for billionaires anyway.
For example, the current Bill Gates has a high social ranking because of the way he spends his fortunes. He takes active roles in solving disease, hunger, and climate change.
Compare that to Rockefellers, who also spent their fortunes in philanthropy, but people remember them for their aggressive anti-competitive tactics, and first major anti-trust case in history. It could be the grandson Rockefeller, my history is not good on that part. (But that is another issue in itself).
I could recommend this book on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail . Acemoglu discusses sustainable growth, and compares “inclusive” and “extractive” methods of wealth generation.
If you make a fortune by making something useful, and your customers happy, good for you.
If you make a fortune by stealing from others… then things change.
sukru,
No one has ever become a billionaire by earning it themselves, they become billionares by owning the means of production, which often (but not always) stems from a privileged starting point. Gates came from a family of multimillionares already with connections and never had to work or borrow money for anything. Likewise guys like Trump did not start from the ground floor, he started sitting on way more wealth than anyone in the middle class would ever see. The Walton family don’t materially work for their hundreds of billions of dollars every year, not even by a long shot. Still, they collect their multi-billion dollar payments every year because they own such large shares of the profit of the low wage workforce who work for walmart and samsclub. Meanwhile the majority in the lower & middle classes starting from scratch don’t get the same opportunities or rewards for their struggles.
It’s true that every business had to start somewhere, and 40-60 years ago our economy had a lot more room for social mobility and it was pretty normal for people from middle class means to open up their own businesses. But over time mom & pop stores began consolidating or going out of business, regional businesses began consolidating or going out of business, national chains began consolidating, multinational industries began consolidating, etc. Now we’re left with very little opportunity for many middle class dreamers to realistically start from scratch and break into the market the way our parents and grandparents did. The commerce in my hometown is unrecognizable to what it was when I grew up, so many independent businesses have permanently closed up shop, entire shopping malls are gone, all that remains are a few huge national/multinational chains and we’re even seeing more consolidation on this front.
So from my perspective, billionares are costing our society dearly by virtue of taking more and more for themselves leaving us with few opportunities for independent businesses and vertical mobility. There are lots of ways to fix this, like reimposing the tax rates of 50s and 60s, but for better or worse it means the billionares would have to take a hit, something that they won’t do voluntarily.
sukru,
I do appreciate that many people disagree with the “billionares have been inherently bad for the rest of us” point of view. Instead they believe the saying that “a rising tide lifts all boats”, but I’m just afraid that the so called “american dream” becomes more and more faint for the middle class when we allow those at the top to have such a ridiculously disproportionate share of the pie. We’re already seeing the effects that such highly concentrated wealth in some cities has on gentrification, I fear that allowing wealth consolidation to continue we’re going to see the effects of gentrification spread to the rest of the country with insane levels of wealth and mass poverty with very little in between. I feel it irresponsible to leave our children in this kind of dystopian future.
Alfman,
Both statements can be true, sometimes even for the same person.
“they become billionares by owning the means of production”
“a rising tide lifts all boats”
Once again you can make a billion dollars by selling something for $1 to a billion people. Or you can by preventing others from doing so, If you have time take at Acemoglu’s book, it has really good examples.
As we are speaking about Bill Gates, (paywalled) Microsoft minted many millionaires (and multiple billionaires): https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/28/business/microsoft-s-unlikely-millionaires.html
And this article is from 1992, even before their greatest hit (Win 95) was out.
But after a while Bill Gates himself was starting to turn from “inclusive” to “extractive” with exceedingly anti-competitive behavior.
At that point the government put them on a leash, and after some squabbles, they reformed once again.
So, yes some billionaires are actually useful (we have plenty and cheap computing thanks to a reasonable operating system), some are harmful (blocking OEMs from installing Linux or other OSes), some are even the same person.
Overall don’t hate the billionaire, but those who put roadblocks on other people.
As for gentrification…. (that is a very, very long discussion).
sukru,
In the west we’re guilty of giving way too much credit at the very top and almost zero credit to the base who actually do the work. Wealthy owners love holding the reigns of the companies they helped to found, and understandably so, but objectively their own importance to a company’s success actually declines dramatically as the company grows. The importance of Bill Gates to microsoft was never greater than at the beginning in the early 80s, but by the time it grew to a big multinational company, the importance of him personally being in charge is negligible. To put this differently, if Gates had died during the early 80s, it would have ruined microsoft, if he had died in the early 90s, microsoft could have continued just fine without him, almost indifferent to his existence. The same is true of virtually every billion dollar company, despite their egos, high level executives are expendable and there’s no shortage of candidates who are both willing and able to do their job. If it were a meritocracy, you’d probably be able to find even better candidates in the company’s ranks AND for less compensation. The reason executives have such high compensation has almost nothing to do with their contribution to the company and virtually everything to do with their ability to take a cut of everyone’s productivity beneath them. In fact worker productivity has never been higher and GDP is way up as a result. This should be great, ostensibly. But over 100% of the gains have gone to the very top. And so despite being more productive than ever, our middle class is actually worse off than previous generations. There’s more money going around, but because our corporate executives are guilty of taking a bigger share of the pie to enrich themselves, our lower & middle class are actually worse off than when we were less productive as a whole.
This is getting long-winded, but there’s a tangential point I wanted to make quickly: the financial gains of tech companies including microsoft did not happen in a vacuum. The technology boom did not depend on microsoft’s existence (or any other specific company). It was a time of great innovation with advances in technology coming in from all sides. Microsoft owes much of its success to the exclusive IBM deal, and not because their products were particularly innovative for the time. But regardless of one’s opinions about microsoft, I think it’s fair to say that billions & trillions were going to be made in this industry whether “microsoft” had been there or not. In short, microsoft didn’t fundamentally create the industry, they just cashed in on it.
Well, the thing is that practically speaking, we cannot address such problems without acknowledging the roles that billionaires play in creating them.
Alfman,
I think you give far too little credit to Bill G.
Success = Talent x Hard Work x Luck
I would say luck is only a minor component. There are many lucky guys at Las Vegas, but none would be considered successful.
The common story is his mom had connections at IBM that led to the infamous MS-DOS sale. That is just a small part of the big picture. IBM was talking to many companies for the OS of their new PC platform. Microsoft was there because they were already a successful software company. Even with the mom’s help, they would not be called otherwise:
https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/the-agreement-that-catapulted-microsoft-over-ibm/94437/
And even if another company had won the contract, they would have faced an uphill battle. They would have to compete against one of the most popular x86 operating systems: Xenix, which happened to be developed by Microsoft at the time.
https://www.unixmen.com/xenix-the-microsoft-unix-that-once-was/
Even though he did not do much coding in 1990s, Bill G continued to be very active in leading project development. There is a nice anecdote on the “Joel on Software” blog (then Office, and later Stack Overflow, Trello fame): https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-review/
And he was very instrumental in the industry too. He paid back for the initial success of Office (which was an Mac product back then), by saving Apple from bankruptcy: https://medium.com/cornertechandmarketing/why-microsoft-saved-apple-from-bankruptcy-930f530c18e6 (1997).
And you can easily see how much different Microsoft was without Bill G in a simple chart:
https://money.cnn.com/infographic/technology/gates-ballmer-microsoft-stock/
Until Satya Nadella came along they had a very rough time (and were very unfriendly to open-source, too).
Bill G was a very talented and very hardworking guy. He had the rare combination of both technical and business talents, which catapulted his success. He was also nice to his friends, many of whom also went onto being very successful.
Alfman,
I realized I am pushing too much for this. Don’t worry.
sukru,
Not at all. I’m just saying what’s objectively true about companies becoming much bigger than their founders such that their input becomes much less relevant over time. I don’t mean that they don’t have a lot of power to move the company, they certainly do, only that their personal work and effort becomes significantly smaller than everyone else’s.
When Gates rakes in $10B in a year and an employees takes in $100k, it does not mean that Gates has 100,000 times more talent, he’s personally admitted that many MS employees are more talented than he is and laughed that he might not even hold the qualifications to get hired as an employee (try to apply these days without a degree). It does not mean that Gates works 100,000 times harder than the employee either. In fact he’s been known to go on personal retreats for months at a time. Many MS employees work very hard and there have even been lawsuits over not being compensated for it.
And as for luck, that overlooks things like predisposition and connections. Gates had both. You can be extremely talented and hard working, but if takes a long time to pay back your bills you are at a huge disadvantage compared to those who start with more wealth than middle class families will ever see in a lifetime.
The best indicator for exceptional wealth isn’t talent, hard work, or luck, but whether someone owns the means of production in a growing industry. It really is that simple. Holding large amounts of stock is the fastest and easiest way to becoming wealthy without doing any work at all. Yes those other things can help or hurt you, and it’s true that many billionares often do work anyways, but the fact is it is not the principal driver of their wealth. It’s NOT your work that gets you billions, it’s NOT your talent that gets you billions, it’s the fact that you own the means of production and that’s it.
Yes that’s the point, he was very fortunate to have the wealth and connections early on to position microsoft at such a critical juncture in the industry.
sukru,
No worries, cheers 🙂
The pearl clutchers can label anything they want as 18+, I still watched Ken Russell films as a kid.
Thom, as far as I can tell, you didn’t link to any source you’re quoting. I assume you’re referencing The Verge article covering this. Here’s the thing: none of the articles covering this indicate that Apple has placed this demand on Discord, nor has Discord said they are doing this because Apple is demanding it. As you pointed out, Facebook and Twitter are showing NSFW on iOS. Heck, on iOS, it’s hard to find the part of Reddit that isn’t NSFW. I completely understand why Discord would fear this coming down the road, and I completely understand why Microsoft might not want to buy a company that might get banned from iOS. But, as of today, there’s just no indication Apple even cares about NSFW being available on Discord.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/04/13/discords-ios-app-now-blocking-adult-nsfw-communities
Perhaps just as you said, it’s to make the Discord acquisition fail.
I will be the devil’s advocate here. But iPhone doing this kind of behavior is precisely the right choice for its target audience.
(Sure I would want Android to be more successful, but I’ll try to keep this on topic).
My mom used an iPhone for years. Her previous phone was a Nokia (not the smart kind, the classical ones), and she was really happy with it. There was not much to think about, the apps work, all the settings are in the same place, it received updates for many years.
(We finally convinced her to switch after the battery completely died. She is now using our older Galaxy S7, which still receives updates).
For most of the population who are not too tech savvy, a simple to use smartphone is the best choice. And if the platform holder is enforcing security for them, it is better. They know their photos are safe, even though they cannot change the default camera app. They know their networks are safe even though they cannot (easily) change VPNs. They know their browsers are safe, even though they cannot install any other. They don’t have access to a “filesystem”, but most ordinary people would not know how to use a file manager anyway.
Overall by providing a single restricted choice, iPhone allows mass adoption.
(Yes, I would not want these for myself).
sukru,
It may be ok so long as it reflects the owner’s will, this part is key! We best not ignore that censorship is a very short stepping stone to oppression and authoritarianism. Taking away an owners right to access content goes against the 1st amendment. Alas corporations including apple are not subject to it. While the founders saw the threats that authoritarianism and organized religion can and do pose to our civil freedoms, they failed to anticipate the power and control that private corporations (other than the church) would eventually wield over every part of our lives. It may have been impossible for them to predict this, but had they been able to comprehend the role of technology and the power that just a couple corporations would hold over this technology, there’s no doubt that the constitution would vehemently expunge walled gardens where owners cannot opt out as having no place in free society. Since this didn’t happen, the burden is on every one of us to stand up for our freedoms from corporate censorship and control, otherwise our freedoms will gradually rot away.
It’s popular in spite of censorship, not because of it.
Alfman,
Yes, the arguments on “Philosopher king” has been around since the times of Plato. And actually liking the freedom myself, I believe all those wise kings eventually succumb to either incompetency, or outright corruption.
That being said, my argument was more for meeting a current customer need. If Apple says “buy this iPhone for your 14 year old, we will make sure they cannot enter NSFW rooms”, on the other hand Razer advertises a “gaming phone” with no mention of controls, the parents are more likely to choose the “safer” option. And that customer population is very large.
Frankly, I still prefer the very old Windows Mobile model where all boot-loaders were open, you could install any OS you wanted and customize entirely to your liking. But me as a customer segment is tiny compared to the mass adoption of locked down devices.
sukru,
Again, if the owner chooses censorship, that’s not the problem. The problem is when companies including apple apply censorship and restrictions against the other’s will. It’s the same thing with school computers, there’s less controversy when the school opts for censorship on it’s own computers, but it violates our freedoms when tech companies including apple apply censorship and restrictions against an owner’s will.
There’s no reason a device can’t satisfy all users by giving owners control over their own policies. The only reason apple doesn’t provide that is withholding control from owners has been great business.
Real life violence used to be blamed on violent movies. I guess the trend now is to (still) blame video games. Yes, you can find studies that link real life violence to violent video games. Yes, there are legitimate examples of this. However, the exact opposite is true as well. Studies have shown people who play violent video games get their anger/aggression/frustrations out that way rather than acting out those feelings in reality. The problem is not movies or games, it’s society & culture, and probably human nature to a certain extent. We live in a country founded on the genocide of Native Americans. Our government was formed in corruption and during a time when it was legal to own another human being as property. We don’t value people, we value wealth & power and when those entities commit legal or moral crimes against us, they’re almost always rewarded rather than punished. Sorry citizens, the people who evaporated your savings/retirement were naughty thing but they’re the only ones who can fix it. Sorry citizens, yes those big corporations invade your privacy and fleece you into (borderline) poverty but they’re “too big to fail”. Sorry citizens, you get taken advantage of economically but don’t worry, you’ll be given plenty of credit to go into debt with so the money keeps flowing. Two-thirds of our population claim to be christian, yet they shit on and shun the poorest and most needy among us. Instead of sending help to the homeless, we send the police to force their relocation, somewhere out of view. The way this country treats the sick, the poor, the homeless, the elderly, is about as un-christian as it gets. In fact, it diametrically opposes what most religions teach.
Are we really a nation of freedom & opportunity, or are we really a nation of control & abuse under the illusion of it? The US is not an experiment in democracy, it’s a Ted Talk on how to manipulate a population and systematically transfer wealth and resources to the few from the many. Normal people have value as long as they keep feeding the beast. And, keep the people fighting each other so you don’t have to. They’ll be too busy watching their neighbors to watch what’s happening behind their backs. There’s a reason why history repeats itself and is littered with fallen empires. Yes, we here in the US are more free and have more opportunity than many other places in the world. Yes, we live in a first-world country, at least as long as you belong to the right social and economical classes. For now anyways. People will taken action over temporarily needing to wear a mask during a pandemic, but all they’re willing to commit to is `thoughts & prayers` when it comes to mass shootings/killings. The 2nd Amendment doesn’t exist to protect ourselves from a tyrannical government in 2021. The government, or rather the rich & powerful, don’t need brute force to get what they want. The 2nd Amendment still exists to “protect you” from those with differing views and lifestyles. There’s no bigger threat than someone you disagree with and we all know that people aren’t allowed to disagree anymore. They’re either on Team You or they’re trying to take everything from you as deemed so by our overseers.