Not sure I 100% agree with the attitude but yeah… 10 dumbest iphone app rejections This first one got me. Banning satire does seem like an early warning of unpleasantness to come.
On the plus side, it’s encouraging that Apple seem to be using humans in the review process. Not so Google Adsense or Ebay. I wrote the following in May 2006
Basically, the way it works is that if you find yourself in a situation where on aggregate a crime takes place then you are arrested, whether or not you had any intention of committing a crime. Aggregate justice is a whole new way to say goodbye to our Eighteenth century friends. Maybe we'll be bringing back the lash next...
and this about Google in 2008
The same rules apply: justice cannot be applied by formula or filter. Unless each case is handled (note 'hand' as in 'human') individually by a trained adjudicator a never ending stream of injustice ensues.
Ohna (my sister) had just had a film removed from YouTube that YouTube staff had manually selected for their site! As we move to life in the cloud, we increasingly need to keep an eye out for automated judgments based on algorithms and pattern matching.
I don’t care how smart your Silicon Valley mathematicians are, when the big hand comes into your life, you want to know it’s connected to a human.