It's not, I see it on the front page all the time. Lots of times the topics they report on get flagged, though. My favorites has a lot of 404 links. My understanding is if there's an archive link it should be fine.
"Softbanned" here means that it comes dead-on-submission without any users actually flagging it, requiring vouches from multiple other users to get back to baseline.
Those submissions you saw likely either had enough vouchers lurching new with showdead or a mod blessing.
EDIT: See sibling comment. In dangs words, they are banned.
It is banned, apparently because it is paywalled and doesn’t allow people to use paywall bypass links, which isn’t true and so the reasoning doesn’t make any sense, so clearly there is a different reason
That policy deserves re-evaluation. I don't pay for 404 Media. But they're breaking stories on this issue. Banning them de facto bans discussion of not only Apple's App Store monopoly, but also Cupertino's capitulation to this administration.
> If their articles are so important, why don't they allow everyone to see them?
Most people read the news to be entertained. They aren’t making decisions of consequence, they aren’t civically involved and they don’t know anyone who does either. For these folks, TV and free news is fine.
The minority of decision makers, on the other hand, value information directly, but are not numerous enough to sustain investigative journalism through ads. They won’t pay, however, if they can get what they need for free.
So you wind up with an ecosystem of emotionally-triggering free slop and deeply researched, potentially at risk to the journalist, and paywalled journalism. The latter is impactful in part because it reaches people the former would not.
I'm gonna steelman an argument I don't hold: What about CIA? Revealing the identity of a CIA operative is a crime.
I'm just responding to the part "Don't they serve us?"
> Intentionally disclosing the identity of a U.S. intelligence agent, including a CIA officer, is a federal crime under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), which can result in up to 10 years in prison and fines. This law applies to individuals with authorized access to classified information and those without access who intentionally expose agents, knowing their actions could harm U.S. foreign intelligence operations.
But intelligence and law enforcement aren't the same thing, and the CIA is specifically prohibited from operating domestically. Valiant attempt, but talking about law enforcement (again, as opposed to intelligence) activities that take place in public is a matter of settled law. We decided that you're allowed to warn people that the police are around, even if it will help people get away with crimes, as a first amendment matter when we decided that police can't make it illegal for you to flash your lights at an oncoming driver to warn them (https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/headlight-flashing/). There's no steelman for this, Apple is just trying to preemptively comply with an administration that considers civil rights inconvenient.
Revealing the identity of a CIA officer is not a crime unless you hold/held a clearance or it is part of a 'pattern of activities' designed to reveal such identities. Regular people have freedom of speech.
Such a law protecting ICE would not withstand scrutiny by the courts.
They're some kind of law enforcement agency that is on a mission to capture people breaking laws.
If your local sheriff is on their way to serve a warrant of some kind, and you call the person and warn them to leave or alert them to destroy evidence, is that going to go well? I don't think it should.
– Parent is talking about making public the identities of ICE employees, doing things in public, which is by far and large true of your local sheriff;
- Individuals are reporting the presence of ICE in the area. A deliberate ambiguity is maintained about what ICE does beyond "detain people" -- whether as "collateral damage" or targeted. Intervening with the two gives us two very different circumstances.
What is it they are enforcing then? I once showed up in Vietnam without my tourist visa approved correctly (long story). Let me tell you, they take that stuff very seriously.
Canada won't even let you visit Canada if youve had a DUI in recent years.
A semifamous comedian wasn't allowed entry into Canada 20 years after he got charged with some form of statutory rape at 18. (He and two friends, 18 to 20, pressured a 16 year old into sex. Heavily contested).
Yet we are supposed to let people in without documentation? Without background checks? What kind of insanity is that.
Let's also talk about the how of the enforcement not just the what.
Would you be saying the same thing if you HAD a valid Vietnamese tourist visa and was snatched off the road and detained for several hours without access to a lawyer in terrible conditions by unbadged masked "agents"?
The examples you mentioned would not fall into ICE scope of action, but CBP.
> Yet we are supposed to let people in without documentation? Without background checks? What kind of insanity is that.
Let me tell you that, in my experience, the US very much enforces all these requirements, to the point where foreigners have to pay the US government hundreds of dollars for the _chance_ of getting a temporary visa. And again, ICE has nothing to do with the process.
Yes - you have the right to observe public actions of federal agencies and agents and to report on them.
However a private entity, including Apple, is free to censor whatever they want on their platforms.
For example, I have the right to voraciously criticize or praise the current Administration or the prior Administration without government interference. However if you own a grocery store you are generally free to ban anyone wearing, or not wearing, a garment criticizing or praising either Administration (or any specific combination of praising or criticizing or referring to the current Administration or the prior Administration). Political views, unlike race or religion for example, are not a protected class under federal law even in a public accommodation such as a grocery store.
Apple and Tim Apple are here for profits. <---period.
They could not care less if you, the customer lived or died, as long as your check clears.
Source: Tim Apple sucking up to Trump like he's the antidote. This is even more ironic considering Tim's sexual orientation and Mango Jabba's take on "the gays".
100%. There is even a very strong national security argument for the US Government allowing Apple this level of control over the hardware that ~200 million Americans carry.
baffling that in this day and age Apple can have some sort of a dictatorship in deciding what people can or cannot install in their own phones they purchased with their own money, and Google taking similar steps towards that direction as well. I guess people just got used to this.
It's REALLY weird the Apple's app store supports generic "targeted groups". Looks like Apple literally is chasing the lowest common denominator of risk management by not upsetting groups.
App Stores need to be taken away from the control of a single corporation and given to a larger non profit made up of multiple stakeholders to manage. Apple should have it's monopoly of the app store taken away.
"You’ll also need to configure some things (primarily service workers and integration with Apple's Push API) in the backend code of your Progressive Web App to handle push notifications (and permissions received from users)."
Does Apple allow integration with the Push API for everyone or same limitations that got this removed from stores?
The corruption is allowing illegal immigrants into the country in the first place. Its a mess that needs cleaned up. I dont condone excessive use of violence unless it's warranted, but open your eyes. Biden allowed the flood gates open. You have to recognize this reality.
Trumps deportation numbers are not out of trend with prior presidents. Its on par with Obama.
Make immigration easier for law abiding productive members of society. Dont reward those who cut in line.
Trump's deportation numbers, despite being wildly disrespectful of the Courts and lacking legality, are way down from Biden and Obama. Instead he's arresting and harassing citizens and people with legal status based on their ethnicity.
Trump is pushing to deport people fleeing authoritarian dictators and war zones, and stripping resources from counter narcotics and people smuggling operations. People smuggling is actually increasing and communities will no longer co-operate with police, leading to increased gang activity. This suits Trump perfectly.
Apple CEO Tim Cook "secretly" signed an agreement worth more than $275 billion with Chinese officials, promising that Apple would help to develop China's economy and technological capabilities - https://www.macrumors.com/2021/12/07/apple-ceo-tim-cook-secr...
Last week, the Chinese government ordered Apple to remove several widely used messaging apps—WhatsApp, Threads, Signal, and Telegram—from its app store. [..] In a statement, Apple said that it was told to remove the apps because of “national security concerns,” adding that it is “obligated to follow the laws in the countries where we operate, even when we disagree.” [but they don't disagree so much that they'd stop locking their devices against their users] - https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/apple_appstore_china_cen...
Apple happily locks you out of your own devices, then cries "just complying with local governments" when those locks are used against their users. They're the person holding you down while others kick you. Every bit as guilty - especially when they see their users kicked again and again, yet continue holding them down.
I see ethically there being a difference between what the Chinese and Russian government told them to do where leaders make and enforce the laws with their capitulation to the Trump administration in what is suppose to be a democracy where only the legislative branch and/or court system can demand anything.
I’m also not trying to escuse their heavy handedness about “being nice to China”
“Targeted group” is the language that the Apple guidelines use.
This annoys me because I agree that ICE shouldn’t be a protected class (e.g. have the same legal status as minorities)… but no one is saying that they are.
I don't know why you feel it's loaded if the language of "targeted group" is accompanied with every single group that is a protected class.
> 1.1.1 Defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content, including references or commentary about religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, national/ethnic origin, or other targeted groups, particularly if the app is likely to humiliate, intimidate, or harm a targeted individual or group. Professional political satirists and humorists are generally exempt from this requirement.
This "ackchyually" behavior from HN is so bizarre.
There's nothing objectionable about arguing that a particular piece of bad press that a big tech company gets is false or misleading or not actually bad. Doing so doesn't even imply that you generally like that big tech company or disagree with other criticism of it.
That's one of the things I routinely find frustrating about this site. Though, on the whole, I still think responses on HN are more reasonable than many other places in the internet.
It doesn’t cover every protected class. You can look them up.
> This "ackchyually" behavior from HN is so bizarre.
Folks generally want to discuss the facts here, not hyperbole. The headline is hyperbolic. The fact is that Apple isn’t saying ICE is a “protected class”. The content of the article doesn’t even back this point up.
> Folks generally want to discuss the facts here, not hyperbole
Are you new here? No they dont. Dolks here generally discuss like folks anywhere else, riffing off headlines and going by feels. We are overall more educated then average, more wealthy then average and biased tech way. That is it.
The fact is that neither the headline nor the article claims that the definition of "protected class" being used is the same exact legal definition used in the US.
The fact is that Apple is saying ICE is a "targeted group" and lays out every single legally protected class along with it. You can look them up if you are unaware.
The fact is that the article backs this point by citing the exact TOS.
>This "ackchyually" behavior from HN is so bizarre.
Demanding rhetorical precision is a wholly predictable backlash from 20yr of language games being a key element of a lot of the rhetoric that got us to where we are.
It’s a bit funny because even the comment is a bit of a language game
> This "ackchyually" behavior from HN is so bizarre.
At any rate, I don’t usually care for precision but this case seems particularly egregious and can actually cause misunderstanding. At least, I misunderstood what the article was about from reading the headline.
I'm generally very anti-Apple when it comes to their draconian control over the code I'm allowed to execute on hardware I've purchased. However, I'm going to devil's advocate this situation for a minute (and I do mean the devil, because that is what Apple is):
Very broadly speaking, my position that I feel strongly on is: Apple should enjoy a right to distribute or restrict whatever apps they want through their app store. They might have a reasonable right to restrict what apps can be installed on their operating system and the means through which those apps are installed; I could be convinced either way depending on the day and I would not lose sleep if precedence is established in either direction. But they absolutely should not have any rights when it comes to restricting what operating systems I can run on their devices. I outline that only to state the context and framework within which the next paragraph is typed.
If Apple doesn't want to carry and distribute the anti-ICE app, I think that's their right. Apple's problem right now is that this unilaterally now means that the native application can no longer be executed on iOS, and that is a problem, but let's pretend like it isn't and that this app is now only available through the Epic Games App Store (or wherever). Why is this situation better for the anti-ICE app than just being a web app? This should be a web app, right? It shouldn't really rely on any native capabilities.
Phrase this another way, flip this on its head: the anti-ICE app wants in the App Store because of the marketing and ease of distribution it enables, which I feel are not natural rights developers should have when making applications. Its similar to freedom of speech; you have a right to speak, but you don't have a right to be heard. You should have a right for your app to be available (not all apps can be web apps; but this can). You should not have a right to ultra-streamlined distribution through Apple's servers.
I understand why this is a flashpoint, and I think its important that we push Apple on this issue because there should be more options when it comes to running code on mobile devices. However, functionally speaking: Y'all should just make this a web site.
You can't just do this. If you assume 1=2 all of math falls apart, and the same is true when you assume obviously un-true facts: the reason all of this matters at all is only because Apple wants to ban this kind of software from being native AT ALL, not merely because they don't want to themselves distribute something they dislike. I'd happily stand up to defend their right to do the latter if-and-only-if they stop doing the former, and you can't separate these two issues.
> ...the anti-ICE app wants in the App Store because of the marketing and ease of distribution it enables...
And so like, here: I don't care if the app doesn't get to be in the App Store, and I don't care if it gets "marketing" or "ease of distribution" from Apple. I do care that it gets to be a native app. I deeply deeply care about that.
(BTW, the App Store in fact DOES NOT provide marketing, and if you ever go to any developer conference that focuses on mobile apps that's extremely common knowledge. Except in extremely narrow circumstances, users do not discover apps inside the App Store: they discover apps from advertisements, word of mouth / viral features, and searching for things on Google. The search engine inside of the App Store is pitiful and, to the extent to which it works at all, often surfaces your competitor's app before yours.)
> Why is this situation better for the anti-ICE app than just being a web app? This should be a web app, right? It shouldn't really rely on any native capabilities.
I mean, in a perfect world, this app wouldn't be a web app, because a web app makes it really easy to go to the servers and shut it down, allows for a network choke-point to discover its users by traffic analysis, and generally harass (whether legally or illegally) the people who are paying for the service to exist.
What you want here is a peer-to-peer service, which requires a native app that you can download from numerous sources, one that is published anonymously, one which uses DHTs to store information and which builds on a platform capable of hidden services... and yet you also want to have things like push notifications (possible from native apps using local notifications that are surfaced after background updates).
Like, I dunno: this entire discussion is always so broken as it relies on so many assumptions made by people about what actually should happen... but every single one of these assumptions is buying into a narrative frame that Apple themselves have set through the years by choosing what to cripple in their quest to own app distribution.
Apple Banned an App That Simply Archived Videos of ICE Abuses
https://www.404media.co/apple-banned-an-app-that-simply-arch...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45520110
https://eyesupapp.com/