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▲ saghm 6 hours ago

Yes, I can vote with my wallet, but no, it doesn't make a difference. I've been voting with my wallet since day 1 by never buying an iPhone because of how closed it is, and unsurprisingly, this has done absolutely nothing to change how open the iPhone is.

▲elmer2 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It's called freedom. Many people choose Apple products, even if you personally don't like it.

This is also the same strategy as activists: use authoritarianism to get your way, instead of a real solution.

It really tells me who I never want with any sort of power over my life.

▲dd8601fn 42 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It turns out 99.9999% of iPhone users don’t want what HN wants.

They want what Apple sells.

▲NetMageSCW 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Voting with your wallet doesn’t mean you get to take away from others. It means choosing companies you want to support.

▲saghm 5 hours ago | parent [-]

You and I have very different definitions of "take away".

I also think you might benefit from rereading the context here; someone said that government regulation is needed to make the iPhone ecosystem open, and someone else disagreed on the basis that voting with one's wallet is a viable alternative. I disagreed with that disagreement, arguing that voting with one's wallet doesn't produce the change that the original commenter said regulation was needed for; telling me "that's not what voting with your wallet does" is redundant, because that's literally what I was already saying. You're certainly entitled to disagree with my opinion that making the ecosystem more open is a desirable goal, but that's not a premise I introduced here, so if disagreeing with that is your intention, it's unclear to me why you picked out my comment as the one to express that when the original statement of that goal was several parent comments up from mine.

▲mike_hearn 5 hours ago | parent [-]

It's not redundant and he isn't disagreeing with your opinion about openness. He's saying that it's immoral to want to force your personal preferences about phone design on other people.

Buying a phone you like? Moral.

Trying to force every phone to be one you like? Immoral.

That's all it's about. Not a difference in definitions or confusing on his part, he's just saying you've got morality all wrong and need to reconsider your position.

▲saghm 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Again, my comment that he responded to literally was just making a claim that the iPhone ecosystem is not going to become more open due to voting with one's wallet. Yes, I obviously also think it should be more open, and that's an opinion that someone can strongly disagree with, but that's not what I was saying in the comment he responded to, because whether an action is moral or not is irrelevant to the question of whether it would produce a certain effect.

My point in the comment you responded to is that if person A says "we need to eat more vegetables to be healthy", person B says "no, you will be healthy if you only eat meat", and person C says "I tried only eating meat and I was unhealthy, so I think that's evidence that meat alone might not make you healthy", it's a non-sequitur to respond to person C by saying "it's immoral for you to say someone else should eat vegetables". If you responded to person A saying that, it wouldn't be as weird, but to remain silent when person A and B are debating the health effects of vegetables but then suddenly take issue with person C trying to provide evidence about whether the claims for A and B are correct or when they didn't introduce the topic that you have moral opinions on is very weird.

▲lazide 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That is like saying prosecuting murder is immoral because it is taking away the murderer and victims rights.

For a society to function there needs to be balance. ‘You can do whatever you want as long as enough people pay you to cover your bills’ gets bleak fast.

▲ 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
[deleted]
▲righthand 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you did that then you probably made clear your reasons which probably created mindshare with others which probably has helped the EU open up the iPhone. Don’t be so defeatist because the outcome isn’t immediately apparent.

▲saghm 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not being defeatist; I'm pretty much arguing for what you're saying, which is that I think government intervention is needed. The parent comment I was responding to said that regulation isn't needed because voting with our wallets is sufficient, and I was disagreeing.

▲righthand 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Convincing people to vote with their wallets is much easier than convincing them to write their pols to make laws. The latter is much harder while the former allows a message to be spread. Should people do both? Yes.

▲saghm 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure, I just don't see how you read my comments as inconsistent with that viewpoint though. Literally the only point I was trying to make was that when a parent comment said regulation is necessary, and someone responded "No it's not. You can vote with your wallet right now.", I thought that was a very weak counterargument to the idea that we needed regulation.

The responses to my rebuttal are honestly confusing to me; one person seems to think that I'm arguing against voting with your wallet (which seems bizarre, given that my comment was literally saying that's something I actively do), one person seems to think I introduced the idea that Apple should have a more open ecosystem to the conversation rather than inheriting it as a premise from the grandparent comment, and one person upvoted my comment. I have absolutely no clue how three different people managed to read something completely different from my comment when the context and content seems clear to me, but I guess I'm missing something here because the point that I thought would be apparent is not consistently being understood.

▲righthand 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It’s your phrasing. Reread your comment:

> this has done absolutely nothing to change how open the iPhone is.

And tell me how that doesn’t sound defeatist or come off as giving up on voting with your wallet.

I can only speak for my replies but you were too concise on your opinion that it spawned multiple interpretations. Brevity breeds misinterpretations or something or other.

▲saghm an hour ago | parent [-]

> And tell me how that doesn’t sound defeatist or come off as giving up on voting with your wallet.

"This" has done nothing doesn't imply "nothing will do anything". From my perspective, it sounds like you basically were assuming that anything I didn't explicitly repeat from the parent comments was no longer relevant, whereas I would have assumed that it would be noisy and annoying for me to repeat it directly.