Reading the shocked reactions that Apple and Google removed ICE warning apps from their stores, I think that more should probably read about the role of IBM during the holocaust. Can we please finally get rid of the fairytale of social corporate responsibility in big tech?
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@bastianallgeier
All of this but at the same time, corporations are made up of humans. Why can't enough of those humans have a sense of solidarity with other humans?
@bastianallgeier and IBM and others helping build China's surveillance system.
http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/2025-09-09-SiliconValleyEnabledBrutalMassDetentionAndSurveillanceInChinaInternalDocumentsShow
@bastianallgeier
24 days ago a man was assassinated while simply talking to people because the shooter believed that the man willing to talk to people was a nazi and a fascist.
Two weeks later, a gunman using the very apps that you referring to shot up an ICE facility, killing one migrant and wounding two others.
Perhaps continuing to compare people to nazis is not a great idea.
And perhaps the tech companies aren't removing the apps because they suddenly agree with the current administration.
@bastianallgeier I was saying to someone yesterday that people love to talk about Mercedes, BMW, Beyer, etc's, involvement in Nazi Germany, but don't put two and two together with Google or Apple or Microsoft or whoever.
Fascism is the purest form of capitalism
@bastianallgeier
Sorry Apple users, you bought yourself into a very expensive (ie high corporate profits for billionaires) consumer brand cult that has throttled use, installed "updates" that cause features not to work to make you buy new phones, spied on you, exploited vulnerable workers overseas, bent to foreign dictators, and treated you no differently than other cell phone manufacturers but with an air of elan, exclusivity and sophisticated branding that you cling to, just as you're manipulated to do. It's the Elizabeth Holmes syndrome.
Buy whatever phone you like, just stop pretending Apple is different - it's not. We all live with our contradictions, our choices -- that's normal, but Apple isn't different as a for-profit corporation whose goal is profit, not people and not product. The product iteration is a means to profit, as is subservience to authoritarians.
Ask Trump. He knows greed is what matters to corporations. Including Apple. The only way to send Apple corporate a message of rebuke is to use your power to cost them more than Trumpism. Like Disney subscribers who also believed the Disney brand, be direct, give up your Apple subscriptions, buy a cheaper android.
@bastianallgeier
They are the government
Honest question here, how come these tracking things are being done with apps vs. just simple web pages? seems like you can host a webpage anywhere in the world and not need to distribute any sort of app.
@bastianallgeier
I think you missed the memo after the social media bosses were browbeaten by Republicans in Congress because of their supposed liberal bias they we're happy to toe the MAGA line.
@bastianallgeier that fairy tale is PR strategy to deter any chat about increasing taxation of corporations, as they are purely profit driven and they will say absolutely everything and bribe anyone.
And yes, it has been "corporations is how money talks and peace is guaranteed" propaganda forever. Similar to GOP strategy, it just doesn't hold any water anymore.
@bastianallgeier on that theme, “IBM and the Holocaust” by Edwin Black is a phenomenal book.
Fascism always helps government-aligned corporations.
@bastianallgeier someone should publish an app to find and highlight Music Festivals as you see them pop up in your neighbourhood.
@bastianallgeier
I haven't experienced the features of these now-blocked apps. Other apps, like Google Maps and Waze, have for years alerted users to police presence. They're not blocked. They've also been used to manually track #ICE activity.
This blocking, complicit with the fascist plots of the #convictedFelon #sexOffender #DonaldTrump regime, will be circumvented somehow. Online censorship is treated like a network outage: Traffic will be routed to bypass it.
