[zepto]

>> the essentially-stolen M1 MacBook

> This description is over the top. The only amount at issue is the trade-in credit.

Presumably hundreds of dollars.

Well above what most companies would think of as theft.

Whichever way you look at it, they disabled the account because he hadn’t paid for his computer, which is not unreasonable in itself.

Whatever happened, Dustin must have known he hadn’t sent in the trade-in, but he didn’t mention that when he incorrectly stated that his account had been disabled because of non payment of just one Apple Card bill.

[_qulr]

> Presumably hundreds of dollars. Well above what most companies would think of as theft.

This spin is so strange. Dustin is a longtime customer of Apple. Apple has a lot of information on him, and has done a lot of business with him. The idea that now he's suddenly going to become a criminal and steal money from a trade-in credit is absurd. Then what, high-tail it to Mexico and live a life of luxury with those hundreds of dollars?

> Whatever happened, Dustin must have known he hadn’t sent in the trade-in, but he didn’t mention that when

You mean in the tweet? Which has a limit of 280 characters? Because he did mention it in the article that he wrote after the tweet. It's silly to criticize a tweet for having incomplete information. Of course tweets have incomplete information, that's inevitable. Are you going to die on the hill of the tweet? The article expanded on the tweet.

zepto, I have to wonder what you think Dustin's goal is here? Do you think he's "out to get" Apple or something? Because buying Apple's latest MacBook Pro is a really strange way to bring down the company. Why are you so committed to tearing down one person who experienced a problem that nobody should experience? We're all interested in exactly how the problem occurred, but I don't know, I just find it so strange when people feel they need to be Apple's self-appointed unpaid internet defender. Apple, as one of the world's most powerful corporations, can speak for itself if it so chooses, as it just did today.

You know, this never would have become a public issue if Dustin could have just spoken to someone on the phone at Apple and gotten his problem resolved right then over the phone. Shouldn't that be the bare minimum of customer service? Dustin certainly tried to do that. He only went public after multiple failures to resolve the problem first. Nothing you can say, and no mistakes that Dustin made, can change the fact that there was a massive failure of Apple customer service here.

[zepto]

You are continuing to speculate based on incomplete information.

You are painting a picture, but really that’s all it is until we have more answers.

You really don’t know what happened.

> this never would have become a public issue if Dustin could have just spoken to someone on the phone at Apple and gotten his problem resolved right then over the phone

Perhaps true. We don’t know for sure, but irrelevant to whether Dustin made bullshit statements. He could have made it public without that.

> Which has a limit of 280 characters?

What he wrote in those 280 characters turned to be total bullshit, completely unsubstantiated by anything He or Apple later said.

That has nothing to do with the character limit.

> I have to wonder what you think Dustin's goal is here? Do you think he's "out to get" Apple or something?

You can follow the link I posted elsewhere in reply to Dustin himself.

I don’t think it was his goal to harm Apple, however it is definitely some people’s goal, and by posting a false statement, he has created misinformation which such people readily exploit.

> there was a massive failure of Apple customer service here

No. This is just more speculation from you. As we have already established, you really don’t know what happened.

> Why are you so committed to tearing down one person who experienced a problem that nobody should experience?

Nobody is tearing anyone down. I’m just saying that we need to hear from him in order to understand what is happening. My response is to you drawing conclusions without waiting to hear from him.

He provided incomplete and incorrect information and that has led people to draw faulty conclusions. It would help if he cleared this up.

Even just saying “my bad, I was upset at having my account disabled and jumped to the wrong conclusion in my tweet” would help. Remember he doubled down later and made a second false claim about Apple’s policies.

Why are you defending this anyway? Just because Apple can make press releases, why would you encourage the spread of false information here in this forum?

The moderators do make effort to prevent that, but it takes a certain amount of community support too.

It’s pretty simple - you made a list of questions which I agreed was reasonable, but that the clarification is clearly for Dustin to give now. The rest of this discussion stems from you drawing conclusions without waiting for him to reply.

[_qulr]

zepto on the one hand:

> incomplete information

> until we have more answers

> You really don’t know what happened.

> we need to hear from him in order to understand what is happening

> the clarification is clearly for Dustin to give now

zepto on the other hand:

> What he wrote in those 280 characters turned to be total bullshit

> he has created misinformation

> He provided incomplete and incorrect information

> made a second false claim

> the spread of false information here

You're talking out of both sides of your mouth. Are you actually waiting for more information from Dustin, or have you already made up your mind and are only waiting for an apology?

> which such people readily exploit

This is again an over the top description. Apple is doing just fine, raking in the money at record rate. Exploit? Exploit how? Dustin hasn't released a 0day security vulnerability here. Relax, Apple is going to be fine, you don't have to run with your musket to the front line to defend the company from certain death. If one Twitter user could actually do so much damage to Apple, if it were that easy to significantly hurt the company, then Apple would be out of business by now.

Even back in the 90s when Apple was "beleaguered", it wasn't internet commenters like you who saved Apple. It was Apple's own change in technology, business strategy, and leadership that saved Apple. You really don't have to go online and "protect" Apple. They are going to be ok. IMO the army of online  defenders actually do more harm than good to Apple, because they make it appear like a religious cult. Public criticism of powerful entities is necessary. Some criticism will be accurate, some inaccurate, but in any case it's healthy. The worst scenario would be if individuals are afraid of ever speaking out about Apple or other corporations, for fear of the online mob, and being branded as a criminal, as is being done to Dustin. So many "he basically stole a MacBook Pro" comments, I want to scream.

[zepto]

> You're talking out of both sides of your mouth.

Personal insults are inappropriate in this forum. Please look at the HN guidelines.

I think you are trying to suggest that there is some contradiction between me saying that ‘we really don’t know what happened’, and also saying ‘the tweet was bullshit’.

Obviously there is no contradiction. We really don’t know what happened between Apple and Dustin because the two stories leave an incomplete picture. You wouldn’t still have ‘questions’ if this wasn’t true.

We really do know that the tweet (and the comments about Apple’s policy) are bullshit, because those have already been contradicted by both Apple and Dustin.

What we don’t have is Dustin’s explanation for how he came to post them.

If you look back through the comment thread, you’ll see that this conversation is a response to you denying that we needed to hear from Dustin.

Nothing more.

I haven’t made any positive comments about Apple here, or denied that there is a problem.

All I have done is point out that you are drawing conclusions that you cannot actually know to be true without more information, which Dustin can provide.

What is your aim in this thread?

> Exploit how?

By taking the falsehoods and magnifying them to create widespread false beliefs.

There are plenty of people with an ideological or personal axe to grind against Apple.

There are also competitors and investors who benefit from bad press about Apple.

Obvious stuff really.

> Are you actually waiting for more information from Dustin, or have you already made up your mind and are only waiting for an apology?

I haven’t made my mind up about anything, except that Dustin’s original tweet was bullshit, and that we don’t have enough information about his side of what happened.

> Public criticism of powerful entities is necessary.

Agreed. Bear in mind that Dustin is a public entity too. He is a prominent tech blogger, founder, and investor.

Obviously he’s not comparable to the worlds largest corporation in terms of power, but he has had respect in this forum and has influence in his communities.

His original bullshit tweet for example, was echoed to his approx 50,000 followers.

How many of those people also read the blog post, and how many are now aware of the uncertainty?

We have a right to expect forthrightness from him as much as from Apple.

Regardless of present size and power, I think it’s reasonable to want to promote that.

Portraying him as purely a bumbling victim doesn’t do him justice.

Portraying him as ‘loyal’ to Apple is even weirder. Customer loyalty is a figure of speech used in marketing.

It just means someone is likely to buy again. Not that they see the company as a friend whose interests they want to protect.

> Some criticism will be accurate, some inaccurate, but in any case it's healthy.

Firstly, in context this reads as an an attempt to minimize responsibility for making false statements.

Secondly, if that is your view, then we definitely disagree.

I think that inaccurate statements are inevitable, but that doesn’t mean they are healthy.

I think it’s important for people to take responsibility when they make false statements, for whatever reason.

Propagating misinformation simply isn’t a good thing to do in this world. It pollutes the discourse and weakens the very critique that I think we do agree is important.

It’s disappointing that you don’t see this.

> and being branded as a criminal, as is being done to Dustin. So many "he basically stole a MacBook Pro"

Nobody is branding Dustin a criminal, nor is there anything for him to ‘fear’.

The comments about the stolen computer are people pointing out that this is the situation almost any business would be concerned about in the absence of a response from the customer.

It is perspective taking by people who are trying to understand both party’s points of view under the circumstances we know about.

[_qulr]

> Personal insults are inappropriate in this forum.

It's not a personal insult. Talking out of both sides of your mouth means saying contradictory things, and I made lists of the contradictory things you said in one comment.

> I haven’t made any positive comments about Apple here

There are several HN usernames that I recognize on sight, because I've seen them repeatedly defending Apple in the comments of every HN story. zepto is one. coldtea is another, for example. Your reputation precedes you. ;-)

> I haven’t made my mind up about anything, except that Dustin’s original tweet was bullshit

I don't think "bullshit" is a helpful way framing it. It may be the case that Dustin misunderstood the full causal connections in this case. However, there were still some very strange occurrences:

1) If your autopay fails, Apple Card will disable your card immediately and prevent further transactions. 2) If there's a mixup in returning a trade-in, then Apple will quickly hold your accounts as hostage. 3) If either 1 or 2 happen, you can't call Apple on the phone and get it cleared up quickly.

As an Apple customer, I wouldn't expect any of those to happen. Especially since Apple supposedly controls this whole process and has its name on every part.

> How many of those people also read the blog post, and how many are now aware of the uncertainty?

9to5Mac has a wider readership than Dustin, and their story was also repeated by other tech media. So I'd say there was ample opportunity for Apple's response. Moreover, if people make up their mind forever based on one tweet and/or blog post, and never revisit the issue, the blame is on them, not on either Dustin or Apple.

> We have a right to expect forthrightness from him as much as from Apple.

I just found this comment from Dustin. "Shortly after publishing, I received a phone call from "Apple, Inc.". When I tried to answer, the call dropped. Then my Apple ID account was suddenly unlocked and I got an email from someone saying they are going to try to call again tomorrow." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26314385 So yes, hopefully we'll see a follow-up article with further details.

> It just means someone is likely to buy again. Not that they see the company as a friend whose interests they want to protect.

Agreed. My point in calling him a loyal customer is this if someone is likely to buy again, a company ought to treat them well and give them the benefit of the doubt rather than treating them like a criminal with immediate suspicion. Such treatment is very likely to decrease their odds of buying again. In other words, locking Dustin out of his accounts was bad business, regardless of what Dustin did.

> Nobody is branding Dustin a criminal

You apparently haven't read the various comments that I have.

> The comments about the stolen computer are people pointing out that this is the situation almost any business would be concerned about in the absence of a response from the customer.

In general, I'm very concerned about out of control "fraud detection algorithms", big tech companies locking people out of their accounts based on false positives, and the complete inability of users to contact those companies and get support and restore their accounts. This is where I'm coming from. It's becoming a very big problem, and I disagree strongly with the many people who have claimed that Dustin got what he "deserved". None of us deserve that, no matter what. We're at the mercy of these giant corporations, who appear to have no mercy.

Apple has created perverse incentives for people to go public with problems, because that actually gets results, unlike trying to contact Apple customer service privately. Look how fast Apple reacted after the article was published! If our only recourse is to "run to the press", that's what you can expect, and that's what we see.

[DanBC]

> Talking out of both sides of your mouth means saying contradictory things,

It's a bit more than that, isn't it? There are elements of dishonesty.

From Cambridge Idiom Dictionary

> be speaking/talking out of both sides of (your) mouth

> American

> to say different things about the same subject when you are with different people in order to always please the people you are with.

> How can we trust any politicians when we know they're speaking out of both sides of their mouths?

[zepto]

> I made lists of the contradictory things you said in one comment.

An incorrect interpretation, but I accept that you thought that at the time.

>> I haven’t made any positive comments about Apple here

> There are several HN usernames that I recognize on sight, because I've seen them repeatedly defending Apple in the comments of every HN story. zepto is one. coldtea is another, for example. Your reputation precedes you. ;-)

I think you may be mistaken. I don’t generally make positive comments about Apple.

Clearly you aren’t referring to any such comment here, so this is a pure ad-hominem, and nothing to do with this conversation.

You seem to classify people as ‘Apple defenders’ or ‘cultists’ which doesn’t seem like an accurate way to make sense of what people are doing when you read their comments.

> > I haven’t made my mind up about anything, except that Dustin’s original tweet was bullshit

> I don't think "bullshit" is a helpful way framing it. It may be the case that Dustin misunderstood the full causal connections in this case.

As written, the tweet contained no truth whatsoever. It was bullshit.

>> However, there were still some very strange occurrences:

Perhaps, but that is in no way connected to the truth of the tweet.

> 1) If your autopay fails, Apple Card will disable your card immediately and prevent further transactions. 2) If there's a mixup in returning a trade-in, then Apple will quickly hold your accounts as hostage. 3) If either 1 or 2 happen, you can't call Apple on the phone and get it cleared up quickly.

Not complete bullshit, but also certainly not something we know to be true.

Here’s why:

1. We don’t know Dustin’s side of the full story, so these conclusions themselves are in doubt. We know he hasn’t told us everything yet.

2. Even if he bears them out, you are stating these as if they are generally true, rather than a rare occurrence. You simply don’t know that, and so are making a false generalization.

As pointed out in the prior thread, if this was happening as a matter of course, it would be unlikely that we were only just hearing about it now.

> As an Apple customer, I wouldn't expect any of those to happen. Especially since Apple supposedly controls this whole process and has its name on every part.

The only reason anyone would think that at this point is if they had read a false claim about it. If it turns out to be standard practice, we will certainly hear about it from more people who have experienced it.

However we still don’t even know if your interpretation is even valid in this one case, let alone in general.

> How many of those people also read the blog post, and how many are now aware of the uncertainty? 9to5Mac has a wider readership than Dustin, and their story was also repeated by other tech media. So I'd say there was ample opportunity for Apple's response. Moreover, if people make up their mind forever based on one tweet and/or blog post, and never revisit the issue, the blame is on them, not on either Dustin or Apple.

Clearly false. It’s well known that headlines influence people, and misinformation is often not checked. Yes, it would be better if people didn’t operate that way, but we know they do.

If you spread misinformation, you are responsible for it. It’s clearly false to say it’s on everyone else for not being sufficiently skeptical.

On this subject of skepticism, it seems like you are now agreeing that we should in fact be skeptical of Dustin, and want to see information corroborating his claim, otherwise it is on us for believing him.

Interesting change of position.

> We have a right to expect forthrightness from him as much as from Apple.

>>I just found this comment from Dustin. "Shortly after publishing, I received a phone call from "Apple, Inc.". When I tried to answer, the call dropped. Then my Apple ID account was suddenly unlocked and I got an email from someone saying they are going to try to call again tomorrow." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26314385 So yes, hopefully we'll see a follow-up article with further details.

As I said - it’s on him to respond next. He seems to agree. We’re only talking this because you denied that.

> It just means someone is likely to buy again. Not that they see the company as a friend whose interests they want to protect. Agreed. My point in calling him a loyal customer is this if someone is likely to buy again, a company ought to treat them well and give them the benefit of the doubt rather than treating them like a criminal with immediate suspicion. Such treatment is very likely to decrease their odds of buying again. In other words, locking Dustin out of his accounts was bad business,

I assume you are speaking from ignorance here. My guess is that Apple has a lot more data on fraud prevention and customer retention at their scale then you do.

> regardless of what Dustin did.

Weird. Obviously not true. There are many things a customer can do that should cause a business to hold them in bad standing. Suspected theft would be one.

>> Nobody is branding Dustin a criminal

> You apparently haven't read the various comments that I have.

Or possibly I just haven’t read into the comments what you have.

>> The comments about the stolen computer are people pointing out that this is the situation almost any business would be concerned about in the absence of a response from the customer.

>> In general, I'm very concerned about out of control "fraud detection algorithms", big tech companies locking people out of their accounts based on false positives, and the complete inability of users to contact those companies and get support and restore their accounts.

A reasonable concern.

> This is where I'm coming from. It's becoming a very big problem, and I disagree strongly with the many people who have claimed that Dustin got what he "deserved".

Ok - but that has nothing to do with our conversation. You seem to be bringing baggage with you. If you want to debate people who think Dustin ‘deserved’ something, you should reply to them and not bring that to someone who isn’t saying that.

> None of us deserve that, no matter what. We're at the mercy of these giant corporations, who appear to have no mercy.

Also true of many corporations. Apple however has many avenues of customer service, and indeed if this was a regular occurrence, we’d know about it.

> Apple has created perverse incentives for people to go public with problems, because that actually gets results, unlike trying to contact Apple customer service privately.

This is clearly false. Apple has billions of customers, millions of Apple Card users, and only one person going to the press with this problem.

> Look how fast Apple reacted after the article was published! If our only recourse is to "run to the press", that's what you can expect, and that's what we see.

Apple seems to offer many more avenues for recourse than most other companies.

Dustin ‘running to the press’ was based on him somehow forgetting about the return and falsely attributing his account lockout to Apple Card.

If true this would have indeed been something to raise.

It’s possible that Dustin shares your concern, and that this caused him to falsely assume the worst and make the incorrect accusation that he did.

I’m just guessing of course, but I agree that these concerns exist. This is all the more reason not to rush to judgement.

It’s certainly possible, even likely that Dustin’s case was bad customer service. That’s bound to happen sometimes when you have a billion customers.

There is no evidence at all that Dustin was left with no other recourse than to make an incorrect tweet to correct that.