Linked List: June 18, 2020

Thursday, 18 June 2020

Facebook Removes Trump Campaign Ads With Symbol Once Used by Nazis to Designate Political Prisoners ★

Isaac Stanley-Becker, reporting for The Washington Post:

A red inverted triangle was used in the 1930s to identify Communists, and was applied as well to Social Democrats, liberals, Freemasons and other members of opposition parties incarcerated by the Nazis. The badge forced on Jewish political prisoners, by contrast, featured a yellow triangle overlaid by a red triangle so as to resemble a Star of David.

The red triangle appeared in paid posts sponsored by Trump and Vice President Pence, as well as by the “Team Trump” campaign page. It was featured alongside text warning of “Dangerous MOBS” and asking users to sign a petition about antifa, a loose collection of anti-fascist activists whom the Trump administration has sought to link to recent violence, despite arrest records that show their involvement is trivial.

Facebook removed the material following queries from The Washington Post, saying ads and organic posts with the inverted triangle violated its policy against organized hate. “Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol,” said Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesman.

No snark: good on Facebook for doing this.

My point two weeks ago regarding the controversy over Twitter putting a warning label in front of Trump’s “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” post basically came down to the fact that there need to be lines that can’t be crossed. It’s up for debate where exactly those lines should be drawn, but they need to be there. Twitter drawing a line that says it is not acceptable for the president to use Twitter to condone deadly state violence against protesters is, in my opinion, a sane and proper line. And the vehement backlash against Facebook for not drawing that same line, particularly internal opposition by employees, suggests Zuckerberg really blew that one.

With these Nazi symbols, I really can’t help but wonder if the point was not to force Facebook’s hand. That Trump and his enablers need enemies, and they’ve decided the entire social media internet is one of those enemies, and so they pushed Facebook in a way that forced them to take down their ads.

Using MacOS Without a Magic Mouse or Trackpad ★

Here’s an interesting accessibility issue with Apple’s new Developer app for the Mac: there are panels that scroll horizontally, and because MacOS doesn’t show scrollbars for them, if you’re using a mouse without a touchpad (or a two-axis scroll wheel) there’s no way to scroll the contents. I didn’t notice this because at the moment I’m only using a MacBook Pro, but I’ve seen this before when using my iMac with a mouse that only has a vertical scroll wheel.

I’m not sure if this is a bug or oversight even, but to my knowledge, Apple has never officially said that you need a touchpad or two-axis scroll wheel to navigate MacOS.

Update: OK, I went and dug out my old beloved scroll wheel mouse. It turns out you can use a vertical scroll wheel to scroll horizontally by holding down the Shift key on your keyboard. And, yes, this works in the horizontally-scrolling carousels in the Developer app. (This trick may not work with all mice, however, but the Logitech mouse I just used is, I swear, at least 20 years old.) So you can get by with just a single-axis scroll wheel, but I still think it’s true that Apple has never officially said that you can’t navigate to everything system-wide just by simply clicking and dragging.

Microsoft Pushing for Antitrust Regulators to Review Unnamed ‘App Stores’ ★

Dina Bass, writing for Bloomberg:^*

Microsoft Corp. President Brad Smith said it’s time for antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe to discuss tactics that app stores use to take advantage of those who want to distribute their software.

Some app stores create a far higher barrier to fair competition and access than Microsoft’s Windows did when it was found guilty of antitrust violations 20 years ago, Smith said Thursday at an event sponsored by Politico. He didn’t specify which app stores he was referring to, but Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google operate popular ones for their devices.

I get why Smith would choose not to mention Apple or Google by name — he doesn’t have to. They don’t merely operate two popular app stores, they operate the only two app stores that matter at all in the U.S. and E.U. Without arguing over the legal definition of monopoly, it speaks to the market share of Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store that one can talk about “app stores” in general and everyone knows you can only be talking about those two stores in particular.

“They impose requirements that increasingly say there is only one way to get on to our platform and that is to go through the gate that we ourselves have created,” Smith said. “In some cases they create a very high price per toll — in some cases 30% of your revenue has to go to the toll keeper.”

I get the strong sense — reading between the lines of Smith’s carefully measured opening public salvo here, and listening to private sources behind the scenes — that this is not just an offhand remark but a sign that Microsoft is strategically positioning itself to push for antitrust regulation here. They have much to gain and nothing to lose — and they have experience, to say the least, with antitrust regulators.

Just mind-boggling on a 25-year time scale that Microsoft and Apple are now on these sides of a serious antitrust controversy. (And Google, of course, didn’t even exist when Microsoft was going through the Windows antitrust battle.)

* You know.

Indie Sticker Pack ★

No in-person WWDC tchotchkes this year, but here’s a great idea put together by the developers of the Nighthawk iOS Twitter client — an assortment of fun stickers from a slew of popular indie developers. What kind of stickers? Both kinds: an iMessage app with virtual stickers and a pack of real-world printed ones.

They’re splitting all proceeds between the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund and the Equal Justice Initiative.