Apple doesn't have a social network. They also don't rely on advertising and 3rd party data brokering.
It's easy for Apple to be the 'good guys' here when they have physical products as their profit generators.
FOSS would have worked better in the Facebook case too as people and developers would know/discover a) where their data is and b) what risks it faces
Of course part of the answer is that new comments have no votes so a quick downvote will make them grey, but there are frequent strange cases.
One thing for sure is that a lot of people downvote based on disagreement rather than a comment's quality - which in my opinion is not right (and I think against the intent of a downvote), but that's a different issue.
Between those two facts, I think downvote bots aren't a terribly likely explanation. You would need to establish an account with downvote privileges and then hope the mods don't revoke its downvote privilege in short order. It seems like a lot of work for probably not much pay off.
That doesn't mean there can't be downvote bots, but it just seems to me a much more likely explanation is people cruising the Comments page.
Although it's possible that there's some confounding happening here, such as the handful of people who hit refresh on HN hundreds of times a day are also ones who can't stand certain political viewpoints. But it seems unlikely. Far more likely is that there are a handful of downvote bots in operation on a keyword basis.
It's not a huge deal to me, but it does seem kind of obvious.
From what I gather (but I don't have any comments at hand), the mods do pay attention to voting behavior, both to detect up-voting rings and to penalize those abusing downvotes. Their usual recommendation, when coming across a comment you think is unfairly downvoted, is to silently apply a corrective upvote.
FYI, want to start off with that to help indicate the likely reason for any downvotes you got on this post.
> One thing for sure is that a lot of people downvote based on disagreement rather than a comment's quality - which in my opinion is not right
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but it doesn’t make it any more valid than other’s and doesn’t make it a fact either.
> (and I think against the intent of a downvote)
@Dang has said on multiple occasions that the intent wasn’t as you are assuming. Apologies I don’t have a link handy at the moment.
Thanks, I did know the price, no problem.
> @Dang has said on multiple occasions that the intent wasn’t as you are assuming. Apologies I don’t have a link handy at the moment.
I would be curious to read dang's opinion on this if anyone has it, it's not in the guidelines.
> Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but it doesn’t make it any more valid than other’s and doesn’t make it a fact either.
Yes, that is the definition of an opinion.
>“I don’t believe they are interested in this capability because they have a strict policy around what they do with user data,” Crawford said. “IAd has great assets and great capabilities, but they are going to follow Apple’s policy to the letter of the law.”
So they crippled a potential new revenue stream because of their privacy policy.
[1] https://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/07/13/drawbridge-hires-app...
When iAd launched, it required mid six digit buys for ads. Users complained that they only would see the same half-dozen ads. Over the course of the next two years, that was steadily reduced, low six digits, fifty thousand, and the complaints stayed the same.
Before iAd shut its doors, you could get ad buys for a minimum of _fifty dollars_.
I tend to be a bit skeptical that instead of the platform being a failure, Apple realized after a few years of cutting buy prices that "hey, privacy is important".
That sounds a lot more like a PR soundbite.
And I don't think a former iAd exec has any reason to be doing PR for Apple when the purpose of that WSJ story and his cooperation with it was to pimp his new job/startup.
Will be interesting to see what happens with Apple if the i-products do ever decline significantly. (I believe their Brand is strong enough to sell their other services effectively so long as they get the price right).
They tried, and failed.
> They also don't rely on advertising
They tried that, too.
On a general note, I find it frustrating that a lot of the discussions around this area end up with people talking past each other. Some people are concerned about advertising, others about privacy, others about using user data, others about open source software/hardware, others about encryption. They've got some overlap when it comes to specific features, but often get conflated, making the discussion even more difficult. One thing I've appreciated about reading your comments is that you often are able to cut through that quite decisively. Thanks!
What are you thinking of -- iTunes Ping? That was never really intended as a general-purpose social network.
What about iMessage?
