Apple's lobbyists must have studied the playbook of the fake reviews on their own platforms. The "public" commentary on the Arizona bill to grant devs protection from App Store extortion/retaliation is 🤯. These identical comments just go on for days. apps.azleg.gov/RequestToSpeak…
I hear the hearing of the bill has been delayed, which is probably a good thing, given how much obvious fraud in the public commentary on this bill has entered the record. You'd hope they have someone investigating who's behind this kind of interference.
I thought this level of amateurish execution of corporate astroturfing had expired a decade or more ago? What's even the point if you're going to be so blatantly obvious about it? Do they really think @JeffWeninger and the rest of the committee are that naive? Try harder! 😂
It just goes on and on and on and on...
...and on and on and on 😂
Hilarious that there just happened to be an entire army of people who care about the fact that this is FTC JURISDICTION!! 😂 So fucking blatant.
Corporate astroturfing isn't anything new. Cable companies used the same tactic to fight Net Neutrality. Which is sorta poetic, given how similar these issues are. The app stores too should be treated as common carriers. vice.com/en/article/8gd…
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This is an ongoing disgrace from @nytimes. It should not take 17 MINUTES(!!!) to cancel your subscription. imgur.com/a/K8m7p2t
"[The Times] said it added 2.3 million net digital subscribers [in 2020].. it had 7.52 million total digital and print subscribers, including 6.69 million digital-only subscriptions.. Net profit was $10 million", they don't need to be a roach motel. wsj.com/articles/new-y…
I'm a subscriber of @nytimes in both print and digital. But nothing makes me want to cancel my subscription more than knowing that if I had to it'd be a total fucking hassle. This is so fucking scammy. Beneath the NYT in every way.
24-year old Chinese graduate student is moved between jail, psychiatric ward, and an isolation cell in a notorious detention facility after self-reporting a visa overstay during her studies due to Covid. Grotesque story of willfully cruel treatment. thelocal.dk/20210216/denma…
But perhaps not so grotesque as expectable, given the current Danish regime on immigration. An overcorrection of epic proportions, where simply making things ever "tougher" has become a competition in itself. And counterproductive or cruel rules are never revisited.
We've gotten a front-row seat to the system after staying in Denmark for just three months required a bureaucratic maze to allow my wife to stay in the country with her Danish husband and three Danish kids. Met with nonsensical rules and demeaning officials every step of the way.
"'We don’t want to put the state in a position where we need to spend our taxpayer dollars in litigation, because these are some very big companies,' Jerry Klein, a Republican state senator, said", Apple & Google are now officially Too Big To Legislate 😵 nytimes.com/2021/02/16/bus…
This goes to the core of the problem with monopoly power. Once it festers, producing trillion-dollar companies, democracy becomes too scared to fight back. Apple in particular showed up with an army of lobbyists, thinly-veiled threats, and unlimited funds to cow North Dakota.
As Kyle Davison, the state senator who introduced the bill, said: "When banging heads with Apple you need to be able to match their intensity with resources, including lobbyists." And nobody can match Apple in terms of resources. They're literally the richest in the world!
Yes! Spy pixels are clearly a violation of the GDPR. We need this tested before regulators. It's absurd that companies can claim they've gotten informed consent through privacy policies or because recipients aren't using self-defense techniques. This must stop.
On behalf of @BBCNews, we tested how common it was for major UK companies to use spy pixels. They basically all do! This is a prime case to be tested by ICO.
The Arizona House Commerce Committee is having a hearing tomorrow on a bill to offer software makers protection from app store payment processing extortion and retaliation. I'll be testifying remotely! This is like the ND bill, but without alternative app stores. Just payment.
This is the kind of legislative momentum I only dared dream about when I testified before Congress a year ago. Everything seemed like such a long shot back then. No more. The pressure is mounting, change now looks way more likely than not 🙏 m.signalvnoise.com/testimony-befo…
The passage of this bill would simply be huge. As soon as its passed, we could start offer Arizona customers the path to sign up for @heyhey and @basecamp directly from the apps. Opening those doors that Apple and Google made us shut.
North Dakota has a historic shot at dealing big tech a reminder that monopolies ought to be controlled by democratically-elected governments, not the other way around. But if North Dakota punts, there's a string of states lined up to be first coming soon! nytimes.com/2021/02/14/tec…
And I'm not kidding about setting up a Basecamp office in North Dakota! If they end up being the only state with this sort of protection from big-tech extortion, it's a complete no-brainer for most mid-sized software companies to open an office there to gain protection.
I'd infinitely rather spend our company funds on local real estate, local hires, and local services in North Dakota than send grotesque shake-down cheques to Cupertino or Mountain View. We need to distribute the spoils of tech much broader than we have so far.