Holy misinformation Batman! You don’t have to use the App store for anything on MacOS. Matter of fact many popular apps are not found in the AppStore at all.

iPhone and iPad may be walled gardens but I’ll go out on a limb here and say that MacOS is actually more open than Windows or at the very least it’s as open.

Even if this were true they could still sell to anyone else. I’m still not convinced that the CCP doesn’t sees TikTok being more valuable as a cultural weapon than as a simple social media. Hell getting it banned is probably as good in their eyes as it staying because it creates more tension between citizens and the government and they’re all about creating instability.

Could you explain how DEI works in practice. Not in theory or what it is supposed to do, but rather how companies implemented it and carried it out.

I would argue that Apple has actually done more to increase the quality of working conditions in China than any other company. Is it still a horrible environment, yes, but without Apple I’m not sure that it would have been better.

I don’t find a problem with exploiting tax loopholes because 9/10 times the loopholes are there by design, this is something to take up with the IRS and the government, because corporations HAVE to take advantage of said loopholes to stay competitive.

But to address directly your comment, I didn’t say that them retaining DEI was a moral choice. I believe it was a business decision, which is why I framed it as them historically beating the market while these firms don’t. Apple has clearly seen the value of DEI in their revenue and operations, otherwise they would be cutting the program real quick.

Tim is a very pragmatic man, and like any CEO he’s not an ideologue so he paid the bribe. It’s the cost of doing business under the corrupt Trump administration. Is he a coward for doing so? Maybe. But if he didn’t pay it and Trump acted against Apple the blame would fall on Tim and he would be replaced with someone friendlier towards Trump. Maybe Tim figured it was better he stayed in charge to minimize damage, as gay man who has no doubt faced his fair share of persecution and prejudice.

Then again Peter Thiel is also gay and he’s the puppet master behind Silicon Valley’s sudden heel turn. So is Sam Altman who is also donating.

Yet that’s how many orgs implemented it which is why so many people are against it. It’s not that DEI is bad, it’s that badly implemented DEI is worse than no DEI at all. But the pendulum ever swings and always with more momentum towards progress.

Man they really botched his last update.

Im just gonna say that Bytedance reluctance to sell their brainrot inducing app tells me everything about their intentions. They could sell it for stock and still benefit from its growth. But they won’t do it, I wonder why?

Fuck the CCP.

If Microsoft has a monopoly on gaming it’s not because they’ve made an effort to build one. It’s just that MacOS and Linux have never been actual competition. Linux because the user base was so small that making games for it was a big financial risk. SteamOS devices could change this but I doubt it.

And Apple just wont put the effort in for some reason. I’m sure they could make a huge dent on the market, as every iPhone and iPad with Apple silicon are pretty capable of running modern AAA games with a few tweaks, as are their computers. But they just won’t invest in making porting easier and cheaper and refuse to pay more devs to bring their games to the platform or to build a proper gaming division to support them. I’m convinced that Tim Cook just thinks gaming is for losers and doesn’t want it associated with the brand in any way.

You know who hasn’t abolished DEI efforts yet and asked shareholders to vote against abandoning them? Apple. And historically Apple tends to beat the market. So imma go ahead and make a the wild statement that these companies will eat a bag of dicks in 10 years and end up adopting DEI under another name while Apple stays the course.

I do think that badly implemented DEI is worse than no DEI and many orgs implemented it badly so this could be a net positive in the end.

Through the discussion I’ve had here I can see that I should have been more specific and defined what kind of algorithm is the problem. But that was the point of making the post in the first place, to understand why the narrative is not moving in that direction and now I can see why, it’s nuanced discussion. But I think it’s well worth it to steer it in that direction.

Exactly my point. In lemmy I can still see all the posts, Meta’s algorithm will remove stuff from the feeds and push others and even hide comments. It is literally a reality warping engine.

I dunno, old forums were fun as fuck and they had no algorithm beyond sorting by most popular, new etc. Hey if it makes people spend less time looking at their phone it is still a win in my book— I type as I spend hours on my tablet. I’m a hypocrite, won’t lie.

I think the point of that article is closer to my own argument than what I myself would have thought. I do still think that the problem is the design of the algorithm: a simple algorithm that just sorts content is not a problem. One that decides what to omit and what to push based on what it thinks will make me spend more time on the platform is problematic and is the kind of algorithm we should ban. So maybe the premise is, algorithms designed to make people spend more time on social media should be banned.

Engaging with another idea in there I absolutely think that people should be able to say that Joe Biden is a lizard person and have that come up on everyone’s feed. Because ridiculous claims like that are easily shut down when everyone can see them and comment how fucking dumb it is. But when the message only makes the rounds around communities that are primed to believe that Joe Biden is a lizard person, the message gains credibility for them the more it is suppressed. We used to bring the Klu Klux Klan people on tv to embarrass themselves in front of all of America and it worked very very well, it’s a social sanity check. We no longer have this and now we have bubbles in every part of the political spectrum believing all kinds of oversimplifications, lies and propaganda.

I still cannot abolish personal responsibility. But I agree with you, that that is also a big part of the issue but for me a skeptical eye comes from being well educated on at least basic stuff. When you don’t know much about anything it’s really hard to decide what is fact or fiction and because trying to untangle the lies from the truth is hard work most people just default to taking everything at face value and accepting it without much skepticism.

The easy answer for me would be to ban algorithms that have the specific intent of maximizing user time spent on the app. I know that’s very hard to define legally. Maybe like I suggested below we can ban what kinds of signals algorithms can use to suggest and push content?

Like I said below I think the distinction is that a) I have access to a algorithm free feed here and b) lemmy (as far as I understand it) simply sorts content, rather than outright removing content from my feed if it thinks it will make me spend less time on it. I could be wrong about that second point though.

But correct me if I’m wrong (I’m not a programmer), lemmy’s algorithm is basically just sorting; it doesn’t choose over two pieces of media to show me but rather how it orders them. Facebook et al will simply not show content that I will not engage with or that will make me spend less time on the platform.

I agree that they are useful but at a certain point we as a society sometimes need to weight the usefulness of certain technologies against the potential for harm. If the potential for harm is greater than the benefit, then maybe we should somewhat curb the potential for that harm or remove it altogether.

So maybe we could refine the argument to be we need to limit what signals algorithms can use to push content? Or maybe that all social media users should have access to an algorithm free feed and that the algorithm driven feed be hidden by default and can be customizable by users?

While transparency would be helpful for discussion, I don’t think it would change or help with stopping propaganda, misinformation and outright bullshit from being disseminated to the masses because people just don’t care. Even if the algorithm was transparently made to push false narratives people would just shrug and keep using it. The average person doesn’t care about the who, what or why as long as they are entertained.

The alternative is Google which is way worse if you ask me. At least Apple doesn’t touch your data, Google will absolutely record every bit of activity on your phone and use it with extreme prejudice to feed you ads and sell you shit you don’t need.