The fact that Twitter is a customer service channel, the tweet was sent with "Qualtrics Social Connect" which describes itself as a customer service tool, the fact that there was a personal sign-off on the tweet which big companies don't tend to do when they're making policy announcements, but that they do tend to do when a customer service rep is replying to a customer question. Plenty of large companies do this sort of support via their official account rather than through a dedicated support account, it generally provides a better customer experience because no one wants to look up an account like "LufthansaSupportEMEA".
I'm not sure what makes you think this is not a customer service interaction?
> the fact that Twitter is a customer service channel
This is circular reasoning. Nowhere is it established that Twitter is a customer service channel.
Other parts of your in your first paragraph makes sense, but are also non-obvious and reflect expertise and evidence collecting on your part.
Plenty of large companies do also use Twitter for PR rather than customer service.
Unless clearly stated otherwise, there is no reason for anyone to treat an official Twitter account as anything other than an official statement by a corporation, no different from their official blog, or website.
It sounds like you are coming from the position of "prove to me Twitter does customer support", and you're right I went and gathered some evidence for this. If you started from that position though I think you're entirely justified in not realising this was a customer support interaction.
However, in my experience of ~14 years on Twitter, seeing support processes inside companies, and as a consumer, I think most consumers treat any two-way comms channel from a company as customer support regardless of whether the company is providing it. Many even treat review websites as customer support, despite it being wholly inappropriate for that.
Companies do support on Twitter because their customers are treating it like that, not the other way around.
There's a difference between the Lufthansa account tweeting out a statement, and a Lufthansa rep, named in the tweet, replying to one user. The reply means that it's hidden from anyone who isn't either following both users (unlikely) or actively seeking it out.
I see this interaction as closer to a customer service phone call where a rep got something wrong, and the only fallout should be that I as one single customer am now misinformed. The amount of checks and balances to ensure that messaging is correct doesn't need too high as it's low risk if one customer is misinformed. Whereas if Lufthansa makes a full statement they should expect all customers to be misinformed, or expect the press to pick it up.
This brings me back to my original point. I don't think the press reported on this well, because this was clearly not an official statement prepared for the press or the audience of all customers, with the level of thinking about it that should go into that sort of thing. It was clearly (to me) an isolated thing. The correct course of action for a journalist would be to confirm with Lufthansa, which appears not to have happened.
Using Firefox definitely supports the existence of a free browser. Loss of market share is the #1 threat to the continued existence of a free browser. Beyond the obvious (if a tree falls in a forest, crushing the last copy of the code for a browser that has zero users, then was it a browser at all?):
lower market share =>
nobody testing against the free browser or fixing site breakage =>
quirks (bugs, underdefined specifications, nonstandard features) of other browsers becoming required for a functional Web =>
free browser is no longer a browser of the actual Web.
Being controlled by corporate interests is completely orthogonal to being free. A lot of Free Software is being controlled by corporate interests and there's nothing wrong with it.
It’s not as simple as that. ‘Talking’ doesn’t create a reference where you can see what’s been done yet, and of course people leave teams or get sick etc. so there are many reasons to want to see what was and wasn’t completed.
Very true. My point was that you don’t have to use ticketing as a control mechanism - you can use it however you like and it doesn’t imply distrust. Similarly you can have an overbearing or micromanaging boss whether or not ticketing is used.
This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. It’s true that you can’t rebuild the kernel or os services, or modify the system very much at all so if that is the kind of hacking you want to learn, then you shouldn’t use a Mac.
However, if by ‘learn to hack’ you mean ‘learn to code applications and services’, then Macs are great. You can learn both Apple’s proprietary stuff and all of the significant open source tooling and languages.
However, it does seem fairly likely that he's a bit of a pushover, politically. I hate to beat a dead horse, but this is the guy who doubled-down on China while even Google was appalled by how they were using personal data to hunt dissidents. He's not Batman, but he's also not powerless to stop the incredible human suffering caused through Apple's deliberate labor partners and political allies. If Tim Cook had the gall to start moving away from China 10 years ago, maybe he'd have a shot at being even better than Bruce Wayne.
All of this is to say, Tim Cook is certainly not going to stand up for your data privacy when national interests step in. The best he can do is encrypt your device and give you a copy of th- I mean, your keys.
When your business partners are world governments, unfortunately mass suffering is the table stakes. Even ignoring Apple's exploitation of cheap laborers who subsist on a standard-of-living magnitudes below you or I, their repeated inability to admit failure is what scares me. Apple gives the US government access to too much data without a warrant. That's a fact. Here's another fact for you; the CCP has equally oppressive access to the data of their citizens. Apple has no right to sell entire nation-states access to their citizen's data, especially if they want to educate everyone else about how "privacy is a human right" and all that.
> When your business partners are world governments, unfortunately mass suffering is the table stakes.
You haven’t mentioned any suffering Apple is causing.
If you mean to say anyone who does business with a government is causing untold suffering, then I guess you are advancing an anarchist agenda. Fair enough.
> cheap laborers who subsist on a standard-of-living magnitudes below you or I
Orders of magnitude above the average in China, a developing country.
I mean, Apple has put Lidar into a decent percentage of iPhones over the past few years. Wifi and cellular signals can be used in a similar way to generate low-resolution maps of the world around your phone. And there's of course cameras on the front and back.
All running on closed source Apple software, with no physical on/off switch for those data collection pathways... or even the phone itself, which never fully shuts down. So maybe Tim Cook really is Big Brother.
Ok, so I trust Apple about privacy, but back when I tried self publishing on the App Store I kept every copy of the developer agreement because running diff was the only practical way to know about half the changes they made, and for which I was only given a Hobson's choice to accept or stop using the store.
I don't trust them to stay good forever.
I definitely don't trust them to not get infiltrated by government agents who want the sensor data. I only mostly trust their digital security enough for Apple Pay and Keychain.
I recognise none of this is evidence against Apple as it is today, and that my concerns speak of hypotheticals. But then, I don't think of anyone at Apple as Big Brother; the closest is that I find their content rules to be that frustrating Anglosphere dichotomy which treats sexuality as vastly worse than violence.
the store is part of the OS, you cannot delete the app store, you cannot use an alternative app store, and you cannot turn the ads off. Ads are part of the OS.
If my phone automatically recognizes addresses but refuses to recognize the world’s leading map service and instead sends me to the App Store to use their second rate app, it’s certainly an ad.
It seems that you are unaware that Google maps uses location data to make ads follow you around. That seems like a pretty good reason for Apple to protect its users from Google’s data collection machine.
I want google maps to use my position data so that I know where traffic jams are in real time. It has saved me a bunch.
Apple Maps still sends people to strange places when you leave the city. (Apple Maps once sent us to the middle of a farm field, which was funny at the time, so I was glad it happened.)
But they are? Under Settings, there is no "Apple Arcade" where I can decide whether to enable it or not. It's on top of all settings, and it pushes me to do it. It's an ad.
This doesn’t make sense. Of course you can decide whether to enable Apple Arcade or not. Obviously it’s a paid service, so you have to pay to enable it.
It's a banner on top of settings that has to be forcefully hidden, it's not in the Apple Arcade setting. Many people are explaining to you that if it behaves like an ad and smells like an ad, it's an ad.
I feel that you are either arguing in bad faith, or determined to defend Apple at all costs. I guess when your car manufacturer will start showing you "Enable Entertaining Package Plus for 14$/mo" in your car dashboard, you will be happy, think "of course I can decide whether to enable it or not", and probably feel very clever.
It’s pretty normal that if you want to use the developer tools on a platform and you are not a developer for that platform, you are going to have to figure out how to install the tools.
I was in this position just recently where git suddenly stopped working, due to needing a complete update of xcode tools. Annoying blocker but OK, let's get it done.
But trying to download the xcode tools put me into a loop which wasn't completing for some reason. After several attempts waiting for it to download and install I gave up and created an alias 'git' which points to my brew install of git (in usr/local/bin I think).
When you try to install git it forces you to install Command Line Tools for XCode (whatever the f that is) which can take an unknown time to download, force you to accept a license and breaks, and force you to reinstall them at least once a year (or randomly the next time they break something)
Did you know that GCC take an unknown time to download, and forces you to accept a license?
I think it’s pretty common knowledge that Macs are sold as consumer machines that don’t include a full tool chain out of the box. Guess what - it’s free to download and sometimes it gets updates.
It’s hard to understand why you are making such a fuss about installing developer tools on a developer machine.
Sometimes I find I have to install gcc or clang or llvm on a Linux machine in order to install some other package. Why would I moan about this?
> Did you know that GCC [...] forces you to accept a license?
No it doesn't. The GPL is only relevant if you plan to distribute GCC, and you are never made to affirm your agreement when downloading, installing or using GCC. GCC never prompts you with any "click agree to continue" bullshit.
> Prompt or no prompt, if you use GPL software, you are forced to accept the GPL.
No prompt, no forced acceptance. You are simply wrong. The GPL permits all use, it has no restrictions on use. It restricts only distribution.
> This is no different from Apple’s license, which also allows you to use the software freely unless you want to redistribute it.
You are wrong. You didn't read Xcode's license. I did, it places substantial restrictions on how and where you can use Xcode, not just restrictions on distribution.
Limits on distribution are limits on use. If you don’t understand that, I suggest you Google for some discussions about why many people don’t use GPL’s software - it’s because the limits on distribution affect their usage.
Fair point about the XCode license being more restrictive than I said.
