Apple Refused To Remove Negative Ratings for Facebook App Left by Pro-Palestinian Activists (businessinsider.com) 242
Apple refused a request from Facebook to remove negative reviews in the App store after pro-Palestinian protesters coordinated an effort to tank ratings because of censorship of Palestinian content, NBC News reported. From a report: On Saturday, the Facebook app had a 2.3 out of five-star rating in the App store compared to a more than four-star rating last week. The largest category of ratings is one-star reviews, with many comments saying their rating is due to Facebook censoring hashtags like #FreePalestine or #GazaUnderAttack.
"User trust is dropping considerably with the recent escalations between Israel and Palestine," said one senior software engineer in a post on Facebook's internal message board, NBC reported. "Our users are upset with our handling of the situation. Users are feeling that they are being censored, getting limited distribution, and ultimately silenced. As a result, our users have started protesting by leaving 1 star reviews." An internal message reviewed by NBC showed that the company was very concerned about the coordinated effort to tank ratings, categorizing the issue as an SEV1, which stands for "severity 1."
"User trust is dropping considerably with the recent escalations between Israel and Palestine," said one senior software engineer in a post on Facebook's internal message board, NBC reported. "Our users are upset with our handling of the situation. Users are feeling that they are being censored, getting limited distribution, and ultimately silenced. As a result, our users have started protesting by leaving 1 star reviews." An internal message reviewed by NBC showed that the company was very concerned about the coordinated effort to tank ratings, categorizing the issue as an SEV1, which stands for "severity 1."
imagine that (Score:5, Insightful)
Who would have though that picking sides in a civil war would make you unpopular? You'd have to read some 20th century history books to know that deep level shit.
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Don't need a civil war for that effect. Just post here.
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Yea but the musings of Slashdot posts, hardly matter. Just a bunch of Boomer and Late Gen X white men, who are still pissed off that 20 years ago their high paid web developer job got outsourced to India, or that they are not hiring Mainframe Programmers anymore.
Attitudes like this are why democrats lose elections and why support among critical traditional democratic working class strongholds is weakening. Enjoy the midterms...
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I'm against killing human beings. /change my mind/
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Re: imagine that (Score:4, Insightful)
Start by not calling it a civil war, because it isn't close to that.
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How about if we call it an uncivil war?
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Try ethnic cleansing.
Indeed. Thankfully, though, the Jews have managed to hold back those who want to exterminate them for the last seventy years.
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I think they'd prefer to call it a clever real estate deal. After you evict all the tenants (perhaps to Iran?) then you can rezone and build luxury condominiums?
I just heard some people are saying such terrible things. Of course I would never even think it.
Don't fall for F.U.D. A thief is a thief. (Score:3, Informative)
"Civil war" my ass! Israel simply stole land in 1967 and should give it all back. They invent and spread red herrings to make it sound like a civil war or some other ridiculous classification, but in the end their zealots prefer land over peace because they believe God gave the land to them and that they have a God-given mission to be special on their special land.
Bibi is the Putin of the Middle East.
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It's the Arab side that refers to it as a civil war [yahoo.com]. I try to be generous and not take sides and some internet crank shows up and tries to debate-through-gaslight.
Re: Don't fall for F.U.D. A thief is a thief. (Score:4, Insightful)
How long can a territory be occupied before it's de facto part of the same state?
The only reason Israel doesn't want to claim the territory is because then they'd have to let the Muslims vote and have rights.
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If my country's (US) history is any indication of how this works, land is yours if you can take it and keep it. But maybe the Might Makes Right ethic has fallen out of favor after colonialism, the cynic in me doubts that method will ever go away though.
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Nobody is questioning whether or not that the islands of Hawaii are the dominion of The United States of America, because America left no doubt.
Israel has perpetually left doubt and uncertainty on the table on the matter of the Palestinian State.
A significant population has over the years, been born into and have been perpetually locked within, for all of the now many decades of their lives, wh
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How long can a territory be occupied before it's de facto part of the same state?
Until the inhabitants are truly assimilated. Not faking it for practical necessity or convenience. Rather they actually identify as being part of the state. So it varies. History suggests that people can seem assimilated for centuries and then return to their original state as the conquering state weakens.
Re: Don't fall for F.U.D. A thief is a thief. (Score:2)
What you're describing is called "ethnic cleansing" by the U.N.
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What you're describing is called "ethnic cleansing" by the U.N.
Not if they do so voluntarily. Ethnic cleansing requires a forced assimilation.
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The fact is Israel stole land in 1967 and is obligated to give it back.
That's never going to happen because the 1966 boundary is indefensible from a military standpoint. Israelis will always prefer self-preservation over making the UN happy.
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In Israel, Arabs and Jews alike recoil from mob violence [csmonitor.com]
For Hamas, the war is in Gaza, but Jerusalem is the prize [csmonitor.com]
‘They changed everything’: A central tension roiling Jerusalem [csmonitor.com]
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You imply that there was no conflict before 1967. That is 100% false.
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No, it was self defense. Egypt had negotiated "mutual defense" agreements with Syria and Jordan, thus encircling Israel. Then, after numerous warnings that the closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping would be a cause for war, the dumbass did just that. On 26 May Nasser declared, "our basic objective will be to destroy Israel".
If the Arabs weren't so fucking incompetant, it could have been the end of Israel. Israel took and kept territory from each of the three neighbors as defensive buffer. Noti
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You skipped the part where he actually closed the Straits to Israeli shipping. It was more than just blowhard talk.
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It was relatively quiet for a while and most countries agreed to the borders. Israel had no reason to grab land except greed and zealotry.
Land grab? You mean the Six Day War [wikipedia.org]? You mean the one where 5 Arab countries triggered a war with Israel and got their asses handed to them in less than a week? Here is why that war happened:
In May 1967, Nasser received false reports from the Soviet Union that Israel was massing on the Syrian border.[45] Nasser began massing his troops in two defensive lines[46] in the Sinai Peninsula on Israel's border (16 May), expelled the UNEF force from Gaza and Sinai (19 May) and took over UNEF positions at Sharm el-Sheikh, overlooking the Straits of Tiran.[47][48] Israel repeated declarations it had made in 1957 that any closure of the Straits would be considered an act of war, or justification for war,[49][50] but Nasser closed the Straits to Israeli shipping on 22–23 May.[51][52][53] After the war, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson commented:[54]
If a single act of folly was more responsible for this explosion than any other, it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision that the Straits of Tiran would be closed. The right of innocent, maritime passage must be preserved for all nations.
So basically Israel said if you close the straits it means war. Then the Arabs did exactly that, then massed a couple of hundred thousand troops on Israel's border. So Israel destroyed their air forces (helped by the incompetence of the Arab commanders) and then preceded to destroy the Arab ground forces from the a
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Oh, and because nobody here seems to remember why the Palestinians are where they are, it is because they backed Germany in WWI, committed a large scale genocide (as part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire)...
Not quite that simple or clear cut. The Allies in WW1 promised recognition [britannica.com] for the Arab states that rebelled against the Ottoman Empire. Several, including Palestine, did and the reneging on that agreement was/is a major point of contention.
We're still living with the utter cock-up that the dissolution of the British Empire made. The French didn't help, either.
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Several, including Palestine, did and the reneging on that agreement was/is a major point of contention.
The Arab tribes did side with the British. The Palestinians civilians simply didn't oppose (fight in a guerrilla fashion) the British after the Turkish army was smashed at Gaza (specifically the 3rd battle of Gaza in 1917). The Palestinians that fought during that campaign primarily were in the Turkish forces. But you are right about what a mess the British made of the Middle East. Of course, there was also the issue of the British allowing equal say to the Jews in the land that would become Israel 30 y
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Re: Palistinian state pre-modern-Israel (Score:2)
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I don't believe that's entirely true, but even if it were, if Israel wants to pick a fight with Jordon over that, that's fine, but unrelated to the current conflict. They can take it up with Jordan, not the Palestinians.
More red herrings.
Make up your mind. The "occupied" land you're complaining about was--wait for it--Jordanian territory before the 1967 war, so it seems that Israel did, in fact, take it up with them.
Old world rules? Then be consistent (Score:2)
No it's not equivalent because that happened in the 1800's, not in the 1960's. As I mentioned elsewhere, national standards and expectations have generally changed.
That assumes the war is "over". The Palestinians don't think so. Israel calling it "over" doesn't make it so.
You
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No it's not equivalent because that happened in the 1800's, not in the 1960's. As I mentioned elsewhere, national standards and expectations have generally changed.
You mentioned it elsewhere, but you didn't mention a standard for how old it has to be before it becomes acceptable.
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Do you think Palestinians want Gaza handed back to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan? (The Golan Heights aren't going back to Syria unless they manage to get the forces necessary to take it.)
Don't fall for liar's bullshit (Score:2, Informative)
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Sorry, but to me this is clearly more FUD, red herrings, and excuses for blatant theft. It's all distractions away from Israel's original sin.
That's not an excuse to keep the land. Even if they kept the shipping routes, that's not a reason to keep the other land that has nothing to do with shipping. That's poor rationalization. It's "head for an eye".
Two wrongs don't make a
Re:Don't fall for F.U.D. A thief is a thief. (Score:4, Informative)
A significant minority of Palestinians are Christians.
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And a significant minority of Palestinians support Israel, even joining their army.
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Ignorant and false statement, there are Palestinian Christians and also other religions.
Israel engages in ethnic cleansing and oppression of them all.
Re:Don't fall for F.U.D. A thief is a thief. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you go back far enough, yes, everybody invaded everybody at some distant stage. But we are talking modern borders. We punish Russia with sanctions for moving modern borders, so why not Israel? Double Standard.
Slavery also used to be acceptable.
What if Canada took the states of WA, MT, and MN tomorrow; and replied, "we won them fair and square in war, so shuddup and pipe down." Of course the US wouldn't "pipe down", for USA would not agree that "the war is over" and stay salty.
The "everybody used to invade" is yet another FUD red herring from Israel. The modern standard is you don't change modern borders, and violators should be punished.
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So then why don't you punish Jordan and Egypt for invading in the first place and ethnically cleansing the indigenous jewish population of Gaza, Judea, Samaria, and the 100 year old majority-jewish population of Jerusalem? Why is it you decided to draw the line exactly after the half-successful genocidal war led by a guy who literally met Adolf in person to discuss the Final Solution and pledge his loyalty, literally commanding uniformed SS divisions?
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Palestine isn't a race. Neither is Israel or China. Your go-to insult meant to stifle discussion is pathetic.
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Western Civilization (i.e. "culture") is far superior and it does not make me a whatever-"ist" for pointing that out.
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In my book it does. Culture is relative, for the laws of universe don't "care" either way. Ranking is a human trait, not written into the stars. You are arbitrarily voting your kin "superior", which is highly arrogant.
And "my culture is superior" is the cause of a good many conflicts, as one believes they possess a pound-other-cultures-for-free card, and become conflict-causing dicks.
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Western Civilization (i.e. "culture") is far superior and it does not make me a whatever-"ist" for pointing that out.
In 2021, objectivity is now evidence of an "ist".
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We can maybe say there is a good side and bad side of "western civilization". I'd consider the good side to be democracy, open political expression, free press, "reductionist logic" thinking (clear reasoning steps), and the scientific process.
But the bad side is "might makes right" and cultural arro
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Those are pan-cultural traits and your 'similar' is unfounded by magnitudes.
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You just demonstrated the crux of the problem.
A definition is a definition (Score:2)
We don't have a common comparable word for "ethnicism" or "culturism", so we are stuck with "racism" as the go-to way to describe the concept. I didn't create English, I'm just the messenger.
That's not how languages work, you can't just insert an erroneous word into a sentence because that word carries greater political payload than better fitting words. Languages work when both the sender and receive have the same definition of the word, otherwise it's just useless noise.
FYI - The Israelis and the Palestinians share ethnicity, culture and race. Attempting an "ism" is these categories is foolish. Their difference, and the nature of any potential bigotry, is religious in nature. Tribalism mig
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There is no Official Semantics Cop to make sure everyone has the same understanding of a word; ..."
Again, the concern is a very practical one. If sender and receiver have different definitions of a word the communication is a failure. In your particular case your communication will be dismissed as nonsense as the two parties share ethnicity, culture and race, accusing one party of "racism" is nonsense.
... thus the ideal often can't happen in practice. If there's an insufficient word or phrase ...
There are sufficient words, for example one would be "tribalism".
... then a long description can be given, but in our short-attention-span internet world, being verbose means you are likely to get ignored.
You are also ignored when your statement is nonsensical.
Thus, one must choose between no (actual) communication and lossy communication.
It not lossy, its nonsensical. Its nothing more than political spin which is a dist
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Re: Don't fall for F.U.D. A thief is a thief. (Score:4, Insightful)
Explain for me what a "palestinian" is in a way that doesn't also include jordanians, syrians, lebanese, and the 1/4 of Israel's population that are arabs. "Palestinian" is a political distinction, not an ethnic one.
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"Israeli" is a political distinction, not an ethnic one. So why are attacks on Israel labelled racist?
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Because two wrongs don't make a right. The Jewish religions don't score so well on those either, by the way.
Are you saying the US should have a written policy for permitting the invasion of countries with poor LGBTQ and women's rights records? I'm not sure what "moral rules" you are trying to form or state, and invite clarification.
Re: Don't fall for F.U.D. A thief is a thief. (Score:2)
Learn English, you illiterate fuck. Start with define:racism in Google and keep doing that until you understand all the words.
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Have at.
Apple has picked sides about this before (Score:2)
https://www.alphr.com/apple/1003526/apple-backpedals-on-politically-charged-palestinian-game
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This reminds me of the Robinhood reviews re GameStop, and I think in that case Apple was removing them.
I'm having a hard time saying how the results are consistent. In the Robinhood case, people were complaining about something they couldn't do (buy GME), rather than the app itself. The same is true for Facebook, users are complaining that they can't post certain stories,not that the app is crappy.
I also wonder if the ongoing trial is affecting their internal deliberation on these matters.
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This reminds me of the Robinhood reviews re GameStop, and I think in that case Apple was removing them.
So basically they opened Pandora's box by agreeing to remove actual human reviews for "reasons".
I am shocked that Apple didn't see this coming and cared enough about Robinhood's reputation to intervene. Now they'll be dealing with adjustment requests until the end of the universe.
Re: Apple has picked sides about this before (Score:2)
I can see the confusion with that game. It's maybe 10 minutes of playtime, then two minutes of listing incidents on which it's based. There's no real way to fail. Where you fail, you get to try again, with most situations being resolved by making the other choice.
I can see why somebody would think this doesn't belong in games. It's in that weird area, often occupied by educational or religious content, where game mechanics are very much a distant second to communicating a message.
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Thanks for the Heads Up (Score:2)
Hello, I am a firm helps the KKK. (Score:2)
Here's a shocking idea... (Score:2)
While I understand the desire to "fix" what they see as a problem, it sets a funny precedent where some reviews are "unfair" without a formal definition.
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Cancel Culture (Score:3)
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Facebook has no room to whine about being cancelled; they've done more than their share of it.
I honestly can't imagine why Facebook would care enough to request removing bad reviews. Do the users have any choice? Will they go somewhere else?
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Facebook is mostly the middle aged and boomers now. Nobody under 30 bothers with it.
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Facebook has no room to whine about being cancelled; they've done more than their share of it.
I'm no fan of Facebook, but I'm even less a fan of political bullshit on a product review.
Like Yelp reviews of McDonalods or Subway (Score:5, Interesting)
Facebook shouldn't have a star rating. Anymore than McDonalds or Subways needs a Yelp review. All are known quanties that serve 10s of millions every day.
Once an app has reach 100 million downloads or some threshold like that we should just turn off comments. It seems like a waste of Apple resources and just provides yet another place for toxicity and nothing else.
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Some restaurant locations are way worse than others. I’ve written plenty for google maps.
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Your suggestion strengthens an already one sided two class system. People may be critical of smaller groups, but not of larger ones. That is not in any way conducive to competition.
Also you're ignoring the temporal nature of an app. Quickpic for instance had an insane global following before one day being sold to another company who straight away injected both full screen video ads and malware into the app. Just because it was good one moment doesn't mean its good the next. Just because it *had* many millio
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Facebook shouldn't have a star rating. Anymore than McDonalds or Subways needs a Yelp review.
Funny you should mention McD's and Yelp.
True story: on a recent trip my wife asked Siri for directions to the nearest McDonald's (shameful, I know, but convenience is king on road trips, so we let our standards slip). Siri—somewhat derisively, if you ask me—responded, "One option I found is McDonald's at $location, but it only has a 1.5 star rating on Yelp. Want to try that one?". Though she hadn't said it, we both heard that second sentence as, "Still want to try that one?". Wide-eyed at Siri's
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Facebook shouldn't have a star rating. Anymore than McDonalds or Subways needs a Yelp review. All are known quanties that serve 10s of millions every day.
Once an app has reach 100 million downloads or some threshold like that we should just turn off comments. It seems like a waste of Apple resources and just provides yet another place for toxicity and nothing else.
Exactly what I was thinking.
"Facebook has a two-star rating? Unacceptable. I better delete my account right away."...said not one addict.
Lets see... (Score:3)
Imaging having your nice little house and suddenly, someone walks in and says, this is mine now and its able to do this because it has a powerful and scary uncle armed to the teeth.
What do you do, bend over and take it or at least try to fight for what is yours?
Anyways, good for Apple to stand their ground. Negative reviews should not be touched, as they do with the positive ones.
Karma is awesome (Score:2)
Funny FB refused to remove 1 star ratings and defamatory reviews that I sold drugs at my store from people in the US who never heard of my town. These were penny stock pumpers for a weed company trying to go public in Canada. Had to change the category my shop was in to disable the reviews by obvious fake accounts. 6 years later the accounts are still active and the reviews are still there if I put the business into a category that allows reviews
Google is almost as bad but they do remove the fake bad revie
Wrong NBC News link (Score:2)
I know, I know, nobody reads TFA so it doesn't really matter, but the NBC News link in TFS goes to an unrelated article titled "Destiny and divination: Online fortunetelling booming among young people in Hong Kong".
The actual NBC News article is this one [nbcnews.com].
Hypocrites (Score:3)
Mixed feelings on this story (Score:2)
What? How dare anyone say bad things about Facebook?
On the one hand, it's really hard to object to anyone saying bad things about Facebook. Whatever bad things someone says about Facebook, my initial response is "Not bad enough." And my second response is "And some more besides!"
No mixture in my feelings about Facebook. Well, maybe a teeny tiny little bit of mixture. Like looking for a needle in a haystack, except it isn't hay.
On the other hand, I don't want to touch the substance with a 10-foot fork. Even
Re:Anti-Semitism - So hot right now... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Anti-Semitism - So hot right now... (Score:4, Insightful)
Palestinians believe in executing homosexuals and subjugating women
And your solution is to execute and subjugate them based on their race? I suppose the idea is to go ahead and exterminate the children [go.com] before they can start a life of misogyny. I think that one can believe in LGBT rights without taking it to genocidal levels.
Re:Anti-Semitism - So hot right now... (Score:4, Insightful)
The point about human rights is that we respect them even when the person benefitting from them is the worst of humanity.
While I find a lot of the things that the Palestinian authority does to be disgusting and wrong, it in no way justifies what Israel does to them.
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The interesting thing about your statement is that you're saying that Israel on the other hand, a country that's just about 1/4 arab and recognizes gay marriage, is so inherently evil that they DO deserve what Hamas does to THEM.
Because what Israel does is stop Hamas from launching 3000 missiles at civilians from behind civilians... missiles that about a third of the time land in Gaza, something organizations like Al Mezan will openly admit in their arabic publications but lie about and blame Israel for whe
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To be crystal clear, Israel does not deserve to have human rights violated either.
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Don't want your ass kicked by the black belt? Don't swing on the black belt.
Re:Anti-Semitism - So hot right now... (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the occupation, the illegal evictions, the blockade? What response do those things merit and how does responding bring us closer to peace?
Re:Anti-Semitism - So hot right now... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ultraorthodox Israelis probably agree with Palestineans over this. Netanyahu's government (currently a bit in limbo) relies on that party's support.
The side of history here is not pro or anti democracy, but about displaced peoples. You cannot forgive Israel's sins here merely because it's a democracy, or that it's ok because the Palestinean government is not any better. The entire world is opposed to Israel illegally building more settlements, even the Israeli government occasionally says "we'll pretend to stop doing this" while settlements keep growing. Get rid of the settlements and you get rid of 99% of the instigating causes of violence.
There's no "fake Marxist" going on here, that's just tossed out by you as an ad-hominem attack. Label everyone left of center as Marxist is silly. There is nothing antifa or BLM going on here either. This is a problem that has been around for many decades.
Re:Anti-Semitism - So hot right now... (Score:4, Insightful)
Israel believes in Democracy and rights for all.
Unfortunately illegally occupying land that is Palestinian as laid out by the United Nations, continuing to expand those illegal settlements and kicking out the people who were living there kind of calls bullshit on your claim.
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Back to the article, it seems like the rating system is working as expected. Editing out reviews is dishonest (and rampant). If a special interest group doesn't break the rules in rating the app, you just move along and try to run your business co
Re: Anti-Semitism - So hot right now... (Score:2)
Learn something about the world.
Or just spew nonsense online. Your choice.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0... [nytimes.com]
Re: Anti-Semitism - So hot right now... (Score:2)
It took 2 minutes to prove how much of a dumb fuck you are. Read something sometime, will you?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0... [nytimes.com]
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Re: Anti-Semitism - So hot right now... (Score:3)
Maybe we can get them to stop after Israelis and Christians stop honor killing their women.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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Re: Anti-Semitism - So hot right now... (Score:2)
"Spoken like a true person of privilege."
Spoken like someone who doesn't read or doesn't understand rhetorical devices, such as re-using the framing which you are responding to.
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Re: What about Google Android? (Score:3)
2.4 stars on Play Store.