Oh wow, this app got pulled from everything because it's an unofficial 3rd party client for Instagram? I'll say it again, companies should be legally forbidden from blocking 3rd party clients. They don't have to explicitly support them, but taking action to explicitly thwart them (and writing ToS that forbids them) should be outlawed. There's no reason I should have to be subjected to untold tracking, snooping and advertising functionality to be able to post or look at photos and comment on them. Tech companies get to exploit the public under the guise of something useful, while also getting to completely dictate the terms of that usage. The only thing that limits their exploitation of users is the laws applicable in the relevant jurisdictions (and sometimes not even that). Too bad looking out for the rights of users is apparently just a complete non-issue to anyone in power.
Why should 3rd parties be allowed to make unauthorized api requests?
Additionally, some apps are only monetized through advertisement, and 3rd party apps don't display them. How do you expect the 1st party to stay in business?
I don't align with Meta on a lot of issues, but they should be able to control what apps interact with their platform. Don't like it, don't use it.
Every time this kind of thing happens I just remember how much bigger Twitter got with the help of third-party clients, and then implemented terrible login token limits to prevent any from becoming as good as their own offerings once traction picked up.
Ok, that’s fair, but how should the platform be compensated for the resources expended by the users or developers in question?
Would you be ok with a usage plan? Something like $1 per 10,000 tweets read? I mean, the developer could save money by caching the most popular tweets and serving them from their cache, I imagine they’d have to charge for that infrastructure though and somehow they would pass the costs into the user. Maybe the could offer a monthly plan, with some kind of fixed cost that would keep most users fed with tweets while also not making uses worry about usage based billing.
Maybe Twitter/Insta/whatever could just require you to have a paid plan to use 3rd party clients?
> companies should be legally forbidden from blocking 3rd party clients
While, in cases like this, I agree with you, I think there needs to be nuance to a rule like this.
Consider what would happen in the reverse case. A competitor arises to some aspect of Facebook's services—say, an app that does something kinda like Instagram, but not quite—and becomes somewhat popular.
Facebook adds support for accessing this competitor's service from their own app—look how convenient! You don't need to download two apps, just our app!
They replace the ads from the service maker with their own, thus starving them of revenue...or they just wait until some critical mass of users access the other service through their app, then offer free and easy migration from the other service to their own. Then they start introducing UX problems with the other service—oh, but it's not their fault. It's because of changes to the API or ToS of the other app!
In short, if this sort of thing is mandated universally, it simply tips the scales back in favor of the behemoths already ruling the roost, who can afford to build support for a dozen competing apps right into their own, and use the good old Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (or any similar playbook) to make sure the competitors die of asphyxiation.
Nonsense, it’s a private company, they can allow or not any access to their platform. I’m not a fan of Facebook in any way, but they have the right to do this, and ban users for their own reasons. Don’t like their policies? Don’t use the service, I don’t.
> There's no reason I should have to be subjected to untold tracking, snooping and advertising functionality to be able to post or look at photos and comment on them.
Of course they should be able to block 3d party clients. Just because it's technically possible to hijack an API, doesn't mean it's legal or ethical. If you don't want to be tracked, don't use Instagram.
However, Meta blocking the developers fb accounts is basically harassment. Let the courts sort it out if their app is illegal. Meta shouldn't take things into their own hands.
Devil's advocate: you see a ToS when using service for the first time. If that ToS is not illegal in your jurisdiction - you may either accept it, or abstain from using the service. How are you eligible to use any service beyond their ToS? It's like a private club: adher to the rules or go find another club. Or, even better, open your own.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. However I can't resist shilling self hosted alternatives here.
> There's no reason I should have to be subjected to untold tracking, snooping and advertising functionality to be able to post or look at photos and comment on them.
Stand up your own PixelFed instance for your family and friends today!
> Another way the FTC says Facebook violated the order was by failing to adequately assess and address privacy risks posed by third-party developers. Other than getting developers to click an “I agree” terms-and-conditions box when registering an app with the Facebook Platform, Facebook didn’t screen developers or their apps before giving them access to massive amounts of data that users had designated as private. Of course, in the wrong hands, information like that can grease the wheels for identity thieves and fraudsters.
> The order imposes additional requirements to address Facebook’s illegal conduct. For example, Facebook must implement a stringent program to monitor third-party developers and terminate access to any developer that doesn’t follow the rules.
Are you accusing these developers of violating privacy?
If not, you're twisting things to the point of deception. Facebook is supposed to crack down, yes, but it's a specific thing they're supposed to crack down on, not ad-removal.
It's also worth noting that the Instagram API is extremely locked down for typical users (which is the reason why there hasn't been a clone like this) as it is limited to Businesses and Creators, but the app demonstrates features not available by the official API: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram
This is honestly the exact reason I haven't tried to develop a facebook app or extension... I've heard that the smallest mis-step can get your account suspended like this. Not like a 'here's a warning' but 'you read a variable you shouldn't have, now your whole account is deleted'.
This isn't usually a problem, except Facebook has a pretty unique position in our society. It might be the only social media some of our immediate family have. It's the de-facto social media presence for some smaller community organizations (like parent groups) and hobby groups. A ban from Facebook is a lot more deeply impactful than being banned from, say, gmail or something.
I could understand if they sent the developers a cease-and-desist or initiated some sort of legal action with this as a potential consequence. I could even understand blocking the app until it was resolved. But actually searching up the dev team and banning their personal Facebook accounts for something they're building on Instagram...
This makes it so much scarier because Oculus is also Meta, and the community there is still heavily reliant on developers to grow since Meta has sunk so much money into it and it still hasn't quite found its footing in the market. Do they think more people are going to develop for it if a potential consequence is their facebook account will be perma-banned as a first-resort? Would you be willing to experiment on that platform?
Anyways, I'm no gazillion-dollar monopoly, but it seems vindictive more than good business sense.
Many folks on here might be too young to remember, but there was an era where cable companies served premium channels with a scrambled signal to all customers, and sold access by way of attaching the appropriate filter. In fact, all channels were protected in this way, with your cable box holding the necessary filters. Albeit, some were merely hidden by a band pass filter and not scrambled.
Anyhow, those arguing that third party clients ought to have access to the API are making a similar argument to those who wanted to use third party filters to access channels they hadn't paid for. Why, it would go, if the cable company didn't serve the signal then it wouldn't be available to be used.
Which is not unlike claiming that the data provided by a private API is free for the taking. It's not, and it's certainly not with the consent of those endeavoring to keep the API private, even if it's accessible.
They aren't making the api private, they are making it tricky.
They have no intention (that I know of) of banning new browser technology. They don't say you must use Firefox/Chrome. Which means I can make my own browser and render it however I like.
If the data was meant to be secret, it would be encrypted. At the moment, if I do
> curl -L instagram.com
I get a mix of HTML, JS and CSS. In plain old text.
What am I allowed to do with this data?
Do I have to render it according to what WHATWG says? Obviously not.
If they were trying to limit access to their data, they would, like cable companies do, provide a secret to me so that I could decrypt the response.
Why don't they do that?
Because they want the data *public*.
They could make instagram available only via its own app with its own transport layer.
If they did that you would be violating anti-circumvention in the DMCA by reversing and publishing the protocol.
They want the data open and available to everyone to lower the barrier to entry to make more money. The tradeoff is that they don't control how that data gets presented.
Doesn't seem like a valid analogy to me. Access to an API isn't the same thing as intentionally accessing a paid service for free.
If someone writes an app that somehow bypasses needing a Netflix account and lets you stream video from them without paying them. That would be analogous. The intent would be to illegitimately access a paid service.
Using a third party client with a valid account to access API endpoints that respond to that account. I don't see a problem with that. I don't care what the ToS says. It should not be legal to disallow that in a ToS. It also shouldn't be legal to intentionally obfuscate your APIs.
Third party clients are okay and attempting to block them is morally wrong and should not be legal.
>Many folks on here might be too young to remember, but there was an era where cable companies served premium channels with a scrambled signal to all customers
Even more esoteric, there was an over-the-air company, IIRC called Vu, that broadcast an analog encrypted signal that required a box to decode properly. Tuning in without it resulted in a signal that was not in-sync so the h&v blanking floated across the screen. In my area, it was a UHF channel that would switch to the premium encrypted signal at 7pm. The decoder was about the size of an Atari 2600 console.
If a third party can build a box to decrypt your encryption without you providing a key, then instead of suing the third party out of existence, you should pick a new encryption algorithm that's actually secure. Consider this analogy: should Master Lock be able to sue companies that make padlock shims, since several of their locks are vulnerable to shimming attacks?
These companies can ban the US President from their platforms. What makes you think they can't ban yours - you don't even have any nuclear launch codes...
*These companies can ban a terrorist from abusing their platforms as a terrorist control channel, banning him years too late due to their corrupt incentives.
the personal account of the president, an important and not pedantic distinction because as a citizen he has no more rights than anyone else, despite having a lot of might. The president's not a king or a queen who can just walk into whatever place he or she wants, in my book a win for the rights of private citizens and companies in a Republic.
Most any business can ban a president. Put up a sign in your gas station and poof, you’ve banned Joe Biden.
What you’re talking about is the platforms relenting and finally enforcing their own terms of service. In this case, _not_ giving a president special exemption from rules that would have caused another user to be banned.
The only special treatment they applied was ignoring their rules for years. Your imagined persecution was simply equal treatment.
If it was a really good app you made, why not also make your own backend and completely decouple from meta?
If you build an app using the meta platform in a way that is a clear violation of their tos, the app will obviously be killed the second it gets popular. If I was running a service and another company attempted to do this to my service (violated my TOS, built on top of my private API in a way that striped all my revenue and repackaged it under their name, etc) I would definitely ban them...
Well, what did they expect? Does anyone think a company will sit around while you strip their app of their revenue source and republish it?
Now I'm all for trying, I use adblockers and SponsorBlock, but we all know that they're unofficial methods that could be taken down at any time. That's exactly what happened to Vanced.
Maybe I’m just a graybeard but all this is reminiscent of the shenanigans that Ma Bell pulled. Not exactly the same but similar. History doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes, as they say.
There’s a very simple solution here: common carrier. Treat social media as a modern utility. No viewpoint discrimination, censorship, algorithmic social manipulation or proprietary on-ramps.
There is one thing worse: Typically these phone carriers had a duty to provide service in exchange for their monopoly. Here FB can ban you from their monopoly playground piercing the liability shield working for a legal typically company gives you.
There is plenty of freedom out there. If someone wants to be a Nazi/Antifa/Climate Skeptic (not you but the usual suspects) and try to stir up murderous crowds/riots/etc then do it on your own platform. There is Gab, Stormfront, Fox News comments, etc for that. There is no lack of platforms out there. All you have to have are the $$ and the grit.
> UN1feed says Apple removed The OG App, which let users create and share Instagram feeds without ads and suggested posts, from the App Store; the app ranked #50
I wonder how many who think Meta are in the right here are themselves using things like adblockers, other browser extensions that modify page content to their liking, even Reader Mode, or basically anything other than a "I'll bend over and take it" attitude towards everything they use, because you're a hypocrite if you do.
I think Meta is in the right, and I use an adblocker on my browser. If they stopped serving me content because I'm using an adblocker, I would have to accept it or disable my adblocker on their website.
There's nothing hypocritical about this position. They allow me to use their content in this way so I will, if they didn't, I wouldn't. Working against their explicit wishes (circumventing anti-adblock) is what's wrong.
I'm unable to block their ads on my phone app, so I use it less, but when I use it, I have to see ads.
Modern ad-funded software is less a "bicycle for the mind" and more a "hamster wheel for the brain". Of course third party clients would be seen as a threat - they empower the user.
God I hate having to defend Facebook in any way shape or form, but this is the right call. Not only is this company sort of suspicious looking at it, but as another user brought up they don't even have a privacy policy. I have no clue what the extent of data or permissions their app has once you sign in as a user.
This is a PR nightmare waiting to happen because they're siphoning data using a reverse engineered API. You could argue 'what's the worst that could happen' but if they're inserting themselves into the middle of that process, they can effectively behave as that user and request anything they wanted as that user.
OAuth exists for a reason and it's to ensure that users are made aware of what exactly an app is requesting on behalf of them and so that full chain can be properly tracked. If you really want to argue that third party clients should be allowed then it should be from the standpoint of forcing companies to offer something along those lines, not this. People defending this app is horrifying from a security standpoint.
i don't have enough backstory on this. but i find it troubling that they banned personal accounts. the developers speculate that they used linkedin to source their personal accounts.
aren't developer and personal accounts separate on facebook?
So a group of developers gets their app and accounts banned because they violated the terms of service of a major platform. They built a third-party client for Instagram, fully aware that this use-case is a violation of the terms they agreed to. Now they complain because the obvious happened. Not only that, on Twitter they complain about Apple removing their app and not a dozen of similar but different apps.
All larger issues regarding infrastructure providers and user rights aside (and that’s a big swipe), this is childishly silly. It’s the equivalent of stealing some merchandise from a big box store, getting caught and claiming that it should be okay because “everyone’s doing it”. No, it is not okay.
And I say that as someone who fundamentally despises Facebook/Meta. Effective regulation needs to happen resulting in a different set of incentives driving actors like Meta. However, unnecessary stunts like this will only ever cause a storm in a glass of water.
Stunts like this are also intellectually dishonest – they confuse, twist and blend different issues together just to try to amplify their outrage potential until they dissolve into meaninglessness. If the developers are actually serious about this, I’m at a loss for words. Then again, maybe that’s today’s social media in a nutshell.
hot take: AT&T and the old monolithic services are great. I'd rather have a contract I can't really cancel easily, then an account that gets permabanned because of black box can't tell you reasons that can't be helped and no human service.
[+] [-] amatecha|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Matheus28|3 years ago|reply
Additionally, some apps are only monetized through advertisement, and 3rd party apps don't display them. How do you expect the 1st party to stay in business?
I don't align with Meta on a lot of issues, but they should be able to control what apps interact with their platform. Don't like it, don't use it.
[+] [-] MattDemers|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voidwtf|3 years ago|reply
Would you be ok with a usage plan? Something like $1 per 10,000 tweets read? I mean, the developer could save money by caching the most popular tweets and serving them from their cache, I imagine they’d have to charge for that infrastructure though and somehow they would pass the costs into the user. Maybe the could offer a monthly plan, with some kind of fixed cost that would keep most users fed with tweets while also not making uses worry about usage based billing.
Maybe Twitter/Insta/whatever could just require you to have a paid plan to use 3rd party clients?
[+] [-] danaris|3 years ago|reply
While, in cases like this, I agree with you, I think there needs to be nuance to a rule like this.
Consider what would happen in the reverse case. A competitor arises to some aspect of Facebook's services—say, an app that does something kinda like Instagram, but not quite—and becomes somewhat popular.
Facebook adds support for accessing this competitor's service from their own app—look how convenient! You don't need to download two apps, just our app!
They replace the ads from the service maker with their own, thus starving them of revenue...or they just wait until some critical mass of users access the other service through their app, then offer free and easy migration from the other service to their own. Then they start introducing UX problems with the other service—oh, but it's not their fault. It's because of changes to the API or ToS of the other app!
In short, if this sort of thing is mandated universally, it simply tips the scales back in favor of the behemoths already ruling the roost, who can afford to build support for a dozen competing apps right into their own, and use the good old Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (or any similar playbook) to make sure the competitors die of asphyxiation.
[+] [-] onlyrealcuzzo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roydivision|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quickthrower2|3 years ago|reply
You don’t! Just don’t use meta products at all!
[+] [-] geysersam|3 years ago|reply
However, Meta blocking the developers fb accounts is basically harassment. Let the courts sort it out if their app is illegal. Meta shouldn't take things into their own hands.
[+] [-] SergeAx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d110af5ccf|3 years ago|reply
> There's no reason I should have to be subjected to untold tracking, snooping and advertising functionality to be able to post or look at photos and comment on them.
Stand up your own PixelFed instance for your family and friends today!
[+] [-] olliej|3 years ago|reply
Given that, what should a company do?
[+] [-] cplusplusfellow|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ipsum2|3 years ago|reply
> Another way the FTC says Facebook violated the order was by failing to adequately assess and address privacy risks posed by third-party developers. Other than getting developers to click an “I agree” terms-and-conditions box when registering an app with the Facebook Platform, Facebook didn’t screen developers or their apps before giving them access to massive amounts of data that users had designated as private. Of course, in the wrong hands, information like that can grease the wheels for identity thieves and fraudsters.
> The order imposes additional requirements to address Facebook’s illegal conduct. For example, Facebook must implement a stringent program to monitor third-party developers and terminate access to any developer that doesn’t follow the rules.
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2019/07/ftcs-5-bi...
[+] [-] Dylan16807|3 years ago|reply
If not, you're twisting things to the point of deception. Facebook is supposed to crack down, yes, but it's a specific thing they're supposed to crack down on, not ad-removal.
[+] [-] abigail95|3 years ago|reply
What's the difference between me creating my own web browser that renders instagram according to my own rules vs Chrome?
[+] [-] minimaxir|3 years ago|reply
It's also worth noting that the Instagram API is extremely locked down for typical users (which is the reason why there hasn't been a clone like this) as it is limited to Businesses and Creators, but the app demonstrates features not available by the official API: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram
They tweeted that they reverse-engineered the Android API, which would likely get personally you banned anywhere, even without a business: https://twitter.com/TheOGapp_/status/1574811387737407490
[+] [-] i_dont_know_|3 years ago|reply
This isn't usually a problem, except Facebook has a pretty unique position in our society. It might be the only social media some of our immediate family have. It's the de-facto social media presence for some smaller community organizations (like parent groups) and hobby groups. A ban from Facebook is a lot more deeply impactful than being banned from, say, gmail or something.
I could understand if they sent the developers a cease-and-desist or initiated some sort of legal action with this as a potential consequence. I could even understand blocking the app until it was resolved. But actually searching up the dev team and banning their personal Facebook accounts for something they're building on Instagram...
This makes it so much scarier because Oculus is also Meta, and the community there is still heavily reliant on developers to grow since Meta has sunk so much money into it and it still hasn't quite found its footing in the market. Do they think more people are going to develop for it if a potential consequence is their facebook account will be perma-banned as a first-resort? Would you be willing to experiment on that platform?
Anyways, I'm no gazillion-dollar monopoly, but it seems vindictive more than good business sense.
[+] [-] dleslie|3 years ago|reply
Anyhow, those arguing that third party clients ought to have access to the API are making a similar argument to those who wanted to use third party filters to access channels they hadn't paid for. Why, it would go, if the cable company didn't serve the signal then it wouldn't be available to be used.
Which is not unlike claiming that the data provided by a private API is free for the taking. It's not, and it's certainly not with the consent of those endeavoring to keep the API private, even if it's accessible.
[+] [-] abigail95|3 years ago|reply
They have no intention (that I know of) of banning new browser technology. They don't say you must use Firefox/Chrome. Which means I can make my own browser and render it however I like.
If the data was meant to be secret, it would be encrypted. At the moment, if I do
> curl -L instagram.com
I get a mix of HTML, JS and CSS. In plain old text.
What am I allowed to do with this data?
Do I have to render it according to what WHATWG says? Obviously not.
If they were trying to limit access to their data, they would, like cable companies do, provide a secret to me so that I could decrypt the response.
Why don't they do that?
Because they want the data *public*.
They could make instagram available only via its own app with its own transport layer.
If they did that you would be violating anti-circumvention in the DMCA by reversing and publishing the protocol.
They want the data open and available to everyone to lower the barrier to entry to make more money. The tradeoff is that they don't control how that data gets presented.
Entirely their choice.
[+] [-] d110af5ccf|3 years ago|reply
If someone writes an app that somehow bypasses needing a Netflix account and lets you stream video from them without paying them. That would be analogous. The intent would be to illegitimately access a paid service.
Using a third party client with a valid account to access API endpoints that respond to that account. I don't see a problem with that. I don't care what the ToS says. It should not be legal to disallow that in a ToS. It also shouldn't be legal to intentionally obfuscate your APIs.
Third party clients are okay and attempting to block them is morally wrong and should not be legal.
[+] [-] dylan604|3 years ago|reply
Even more esoteric, there was an over-the-air company, IIRC called Vu, that broadcast an analog encrypted signal that required a box to decode properly. Tuning in without it resulted in a signal that was not in-sync so the h&v blanking floated across the screen. In my area, it was a UHF channel that would switch to the premium encrypted signal at 7pm. The decoder was about the size of an Atari 2600 console.
[+] [-] josephcsible|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lmz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobsil1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gpm|3 years ago|reply
Vindictive actions like this are rarely profitable, they tend to scare people off from doing business with you.
[+] [-] Barrin92|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shakezula|3 years ago|reply
Good, you should be able to choose who you do business with, or at least that’s what conservatives argued for years.
[+] [-] ninth_ant|3 years ago|reply
What you’re talking about is the platforms relenting and finally enforcing their own terms of service. In this case, _not_ giving a president special exemption from rules that would have caused another user to be banned.
The only special treatment they applied was ignoring their rules for years. Your imagined persecution was simply equal treatment.
[+] [-] naet|3 years ago|reply
If you build an app using the meta platform in a way that is a clear violation of their tos, the app will obviously be killed the second it gets popular. If I was running a service and another company attempted to do this to my service (violated my TOS, built on top of my private API in a way that striped all my revenue and repackaged it under their name, etc) I would definitely ban them...
[+] [-] josephcsible|3 years ago|reply
Because of the network effect.
[+] [-] rabuse|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agileAlligator|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minimaxir|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cercatrova|3 years ago|reply
Now I'm all for trying, I use adblockers and SponsorBlock, but we all know that they're unofficial methods that could be taken down at any time. That's exactly what happened to Vanced.
[+] [-] efitz|3 years ago|reply
There’s a very simple solution here: common carrier. Treat social media as a modern utility. No viewpoint discrimination, censorship, algorithmic social manipulation or proprietary on-ramps.
The bad behavior has gone on long enough.
[+] [-] heisenbit|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abigail95|3 years ago|reply
Should they?
There is no logical difference between:
Creating a new web browser that renders HTML from www.instagram.com and manipulating it via extensions.
The OG app that renders JSON from api.instagram.com.
If we can do one, why not the other?
[+] [-] defrost|3 years ago|reply
> UN1feed says Apple removed The OG App, which let users create and share Instagram feeds without ads and suggested posts, from the App Store; the app ranked #50
[1] https://www.techmeme.com/220928/p47#a220928p47
[2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-og-app/id1637701040
[+] [-] userbinator|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Matheus28|3 years ago|reply
There's nothing hypocritical about this position. They allow me to use their content in this way so I will, if they didn't, I wouldn't. Working against their explicit wishes (circumventing anti-adblock) is what's wrong.
I'm unable to block their ads on my phone app, so I use it less, but when I use it, I have to see ads.
[+] [-] AlexandrB|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] etchalon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fzeroracer|3 years ago|reply
This is a PR nightmare waiting to happen because they're siphoning data using a reverse engineered API. You could argue 'what's the worst that could happen' but if they're inserting themselves into the middle of that process, they can effectively behave as that user and request anything they wanted as that user.
OAuth exists for a reason and it's to ensure that users are made aware of what exactly an app is requesting on behalf of them and so that full chain can be properly tracked. If you really want to argue that third party clients should be allowed then it should be from the standpoint of forcing companies to offer something along those lines, not this. People defending this app is horrifying from a security standpoint.
[+] [-] Eleison23|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] computerfriend|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blondin|3 years ago|reply
aren't developer and personal accounts separate on facebook?
[+] [-] hrbf|3 years ago|reply
All larger issues regarding infrastructure providers and user rights aside (and that’s a big swipe), this is childishly silly. It’s the equivalent of stealing some merchandise from a big box store, getting caught and claiming that it should be okay because “everyone’s doing it”. No, it is not okay.
And I say that as someone who fundamentally despises Facebook/Meta. Effective regulation needs to happen resulting in a different set of incentives driving actors like Meta. However, unnecessary stunts like this will only ever cause a storm in a glass of water.
Stunts like this are also intellectually dishonest – they confuse, twist and blend different issues together just to try to amplify their outrage potential until they dissolve into meaninglessness. If the developers are actually serious about this, I’m at a loss for words. Then again, maybe that’s today’s social media in a nutshell.
[+] [-] sfmike|3 years ago|reply