Tim Prepare dinner and Sundar Pichai are cowards
Since X’s customers began utilizing Grok to undress girls and youngsters utilizing deepfake photographs, I’ve been ready for what I assumed can be inevitable: X getting booted from Apple’s and Google’s app shops. The truth that it hasn’t occurred but tells me one thing severe about Silicon Valley’s management: Tim Prepare dinner and Sundar Pichai are spineless cowards who’re afraid of Elon Musk.
Right here’s the related Apple App Retailer developer guideline: “Apps shouldn’t embody content material that’s offensive, insensitive, upsetting, meant to disgust, in exceptionally poor style, or simply plain creepy.” Huh! How about that.
They offered their ideas for energy, and now they don’t even management their very own firms
Right here’s Google’s model of the identical guideline, which is even clearer: “Apps that don’t prohibit customers from creating, importing, or distributing content material that facilitates the exploitation or abuse of youngsters shall be topic to instant elimination from Google Play. This contains all youngster sexual abuse supplies.”
However booting X from these app shops for its flagrant violation of coverage means upsetting Musk and the complete right-wing media ecosystem he controls by way of X — and with it, immediately upsetting the clout-chasing content material vampires who at present run america. Prepare dinner’s Apple has a large dependency on China, and smartphones, computer systems, and chips are at present exempt from the tariffs on China. Prepare dinner can current Donald Trump with as many golden items as he needs, however these tariffs don’t have to remain that method.
Google’s Pichai is equally weak. Trump has threatened Google quite a few occasions over his placement in search outcomes, and to this point YouTube has managed to largely keep away from scrutiny over its content material moderation insurance policies as a result of Pichai has been content material to coddle Trump with guarantees that every thing he does is the most important factor in Google search historical past. Google can also’t danger upsetting Trump whereas AI coverage stays deeply contested, and having an sad Musk influencing that coverage is a nightmare of corruption.
That is the entice these males have gotten themselves into: They offered their ideas for energy, and now they don’t even management their very own firms. Welcome to gangster tech regulation!
Apple’s attorneys closely implied {that a} bare bananaman known as Mr. Peely was in some way inappropriate for courtroom
Apple and Google didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Lower than 5 years in the past, I sat by way of the interminable Epic v. Apple antitrust trial. Actual heads will do not forget that Apple’s attorneys closely implied {that a} bare bananaman known as Mr. Peely was in some way inappropriate for courtroom. This got here after per week the place Apple argued that an indie storefront that customers might set up by way of Epic was an issue as a result of it hosted porny video games, calling video games on Itch.io “offensive and sexualized.”
You recognize what’s “offensive and sexualized,” you nugatory fucking cowards? Nonconsensual AI-generated photographs of girls in bikinis spreading their legs, and of youngsters with so-called “donut glaze” on their faces — which, by the best way, have been being generated at a price of 1 per minute. I’d additionally name that “offensive, insensitive, upsetting, meant to disgust, in exceptionally poor style” and particularly “simply plain creepy”! Do you want a again brace to face up straight, buddy? As a result of at this level, I’m sure you haven’t received a single vertebra.
Hey, does anybody else keep in mind when Tumblr received booted from the App Retailer over pornographic photographs of youngsters? I assume the actual drawback was that Tumblr wasn’t owned by Musk, not its violation of App Retailer coverage. Whoopsie!
Can Apple and Google even determine their values past their dedication to “shareholder worth”?
It’s genuinely unbelievable to me that I wasted hours of my precise life on a courtroom case the place Apple defined it wanted complete management of its App Retailer to guard its customers. Whole management of the App Retailer was Apple’s principal argument towards antitrust enforcement: The corporate insisted that its monopolistic management of what customers might set up on their telephones was important to create a walled backyard the place it might defend youngsters from unsafe content material.
Does Google have the identical drawback with its app retailer, Google Play? After all it does, and naturally it has made all the identical arguments as Apple, though it does permit sideloading apps on Android. Nevertheless it nonetheless hasn’t enforced its guidelines and pushed X to various app shops. Why? Hey Google, present me the picture of Sundar Pichai guffawing with Elon Musk at Donald Trump’s inauguration!
The one comfort right here is that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg virtually definitely has steam popping out of his ears. Keep in mind when Apple yanked Meta’s App Retailer enterprise certificates as a result of it was taking an excessive amount of knowledge? Ah sure, these have been the times. At this level, it kinda looks like Alex Roman wasn’t the one Apple witness overtly mendacity on the stand.
I by no means need to hear any ethical grandstanding from these boys ever once more. The subsequent time Tim Prepare dinner says “privateness is a human proper,” the one doable response is to snigger in his face. I imply, Apple and Google are advantageous distributing an app that has created an undressed picture Grok manufactured from Renee Nicole Good, the mom who was shot by ICE in Minneapolis. How do you propose to defend eliminating the ICEBlock app whereas permitting X to generate degrading photographs of a lady ICE killed? Can Apple and Google even determine their values past their dedication to “shareholder worth”? What’s your fucking endgame right here, guys?