Not picking on you specifically, because this attitude is extremely common among software developers these days, but I think this mentality of treating software running on users' machines as "yours" rather than "theirs" is at the core of a lot of problems with the modern software industry.

Software should serve the interests of its users, not its developers. The advent of ubiquitous internet connectivity, automatic updates, and business models based around selling ads rather than selling software have changed this dynamic somewhat and I think that's really unfortunate.

This is one of the most important points of the conversation. The other most important point would be the difficulty / impossibility of reverting to an older version of the application on mobile systems. When you put them together you get users powerless on their own devices, stuck in a needless dilemma between keeping the application in its new, worsened state, or throwing away the whole thing.

On my PC I download "portable" / .zip releases of software whenever possible, and I keep every single package. If a program has an update with a regression, I can just choose to not use it, or run it side-by-side with the older version.

On Android, F-Droid serves the last couple APKs for each app, and I download these to my PC also. However, Android makes side-by-side installation difficult unless you recompile the app with a different package ID. If it's a closed-source app from the Play Store, you're screwed. I would not be surprised if it's impossible on iphone.

So, I disable auto updates, and I ignore the boy who cries "important security fixes". Better luck next time.

It is my belief the software is serving the betterment of society if it offends the people who don't approve my activism ;-)

More important than serving the individual users is serving society as a whole.

When has ideological grandstanding ever been a successful strategy for convincing anyone of anything? Surely it would just further entrench the convictions of those who disagree with you, harming your own cause and helping theirs gain legitimacy in the eyes of those who are not convinced either way.

Pride logos and icons in companies have made it so you can’t “not think” of LGBT anymore for example. This is HUGE for a lot of people. I’ll give you a specific example, before pride no one in Iran dared speak about LGBT. Now it’s unavoidable when all the apps and services you use have a pride version.

This has already lead to more acceptance privately re: lgbt. The next steps are pushing acceptance to welcoming to them “you’re not going to be treated differently”.

It’s one tool in your entire arsenal.

To oversimplify and quote Obiwan, you were supposed to bring balance to the force, not destroy it.

There are some people you're never going to win over, and pushing them into a position of persecution is sadly a naive political move.

They’re not the group I’m optimizing for, and their population is dropping YoY.

If the existence of a group of people is triggering them that much, then they can go disconnect and live in isolation or something.

No one here is, for example, calling out marriot for shoving bibles and Book of Mormon into my face.

Christianity is constantly shoved into my face with no ability to opt out. They can deal with pride flags.

There is acres of christian art and media that simply doesn't register for the populace. People scroll by Jude Law as the Young Pope on Netflix and ignore the methodist Christian substructure of star wars. People can be told via memes that ObiWan is like space jesus and it's like water off a duck's back.

Christianity doesn't oppress people, they can't even identify it, when it is infront of the open eyes. People naturally don't even know what it is, that they reject. Can't describe what a priest would even say.

Bibles in the marriot is a charity and mormons are debatably not christian at all. Joseph smith was not jesus, sorry.

But make no mistake we all know what pride is, what lgbtq people want legislated and exactly how it's going to affect us. Our choice be damned.

2. Am I reading this right? You think LGBT people and pride is oppressing people more than Christianity?

Christanity is not noticed. The public rarely knows the content of the faith it rejects. And the point is reinforced by the complete lack of knowledge about what it is and how pride might impact it, in this conversation.

2. "Normalization" and "oppression" are not words that mean what I'm talking about.

Christianity is "unknown" to the public and the LGBT politicians turn a blind eye to people they don't want to relate to. They are tripping over landmines they don't see. I pointed this out and was met with the same old desire to flee from relating to Christianity, as we see from lgbtq activists all the time.

Not everybody thinks pride is a good thing nor that it should be shoved in their face, thinking that media spam is going to result in political conversions is hopelessly naive to how faith functions, what christianity is and without mutual knowledge of one another's worldview, it'll never be resolved in love.

And this extremity is definitely something LGBT folks see all the time. Their states are passing laws banning them from sports and bathrooms. LGBT issues can no longer be mentioned in their schools. So don't play the pity card when Christians behave like monsters, and the non-Christian world responds in kind.

I'm just saying the truth as I see it and think shared knowledge should be the basis of political unity, not activist tribalism.

Ohh the irony.

As a European atheist living in Texas, I know exactly what Christians want legislating, since they never stop bleating about it.

Ronald Reagan Jr appears to be the only person willing to hold America to its own basic constitutional amendments, frankly.

The history of “rainbow washing” in corporate marketing material served the original purpose of saying “you’re welcome here”. There are many stores/places that choose to not serve queer people.

Publicly sharing that you will allow queer people to use your product is serving the interest of those users, but perhaps not the interest of every user. But the remaining users thankfully never had to question if they’d be served by that business, so there’s no need to signal anything to them.

> A 2019 study by Hua Sun and Lei Gao of Iowa State University found that from 1990 to 2015, same-sex couples were 73% more likely to be turned down for a mortgage than similarly qualified different-sex couples. In addition, same-sex couples who were approved for mortgages paid about 0.02% to 0.2% more, on average, in interest and fees.

https://www.investopedia.com/mortgage-lending-for-lgbtq-peop...

The US government has made positive changes to combat this practice,

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lgbt-banks/u-s-banks-...

but you would be mistaken to assume such discrimination has completely disappeared or doesn't still exist in similar forms.

So if the banks are inputting this to a "go/no go" algorithm, the results do not surprise me at all.

Also, we aren’t past that point.

You are unlikely to be able to pursue the author and force them to remove their review, so your choices are to not change the icon, or change the icon and accept the bad review. That’s certainly your problem.

Sure, but then I'll make sure that I won't use your apps if I can.

And we have the right to complain about these things as much as we want. It's your PR problem, not ours.

I wouldn't hire you as well. Having a functional and meritocratic workplace is much more important to me than virtue signalling.

Also, your comment is clearly a personal attack and against HN guidelines.

But who knows? Maybe we should have done background checks to keep your type out. Certainly, Google has become a shadow of its former self now, filled with employees who seem to be phoning it in and spending all day searching for meaning in hating their own users instead of creating great new products.

I don't like deciding on the fate of others. It's not my place to do that.

I've just seen teams go to shit when you have hateful people join it. So, I'm sharing my observations with that.

Weird that, no? There was no drama or employee in-fighting, yet also no racism, sexism or homophobia. How ever did we manage that.

You also end up having awful products :)

Ye gods. What has become of that once great organization when this is the best response you can come up with?

I’m not against a cause just because I prefer my app icons to not change colors with the political season.

How would you feel if most apps all over the App Store for one whole month used right wing political symbology to signal their compliance? I’m sure you’d get pretty angry about it. Try to put yourself in other’s shoes, and stop participating in this low-effort fascism.

Imagine if half your app icons suddenly changed to incorporate dollar signs in celebration of Capitalism Month. Every day a new CEO is celebrated for their job creation prowess and you can't avoid it because it's everywhere. Would you simply shrug and say, well, we live in a capitalist country so it's not political? Of course not. The craziness that would unleash would bea sight to behold.

Luckily for you, people elsewhere on the political spectrum don't share your need to constantly sealion every conversation and space.

Why would that be? Every month is "Capitalism Month". Also, I can't remember the last time capitalists (the ones with the capital, not their workers who aspire one day to have capital) were oppressed.

Nobody ever overtly celebrates capitalism. It isn't true that there is such a thing as "capitalism month" in the same way there is pride month, with explicitly named events, flags suddenly popping up everywhere and so on. Communism has May 1st but capitalism? No. There never has been. You know this full well, which is why you have to lie to try and distract from the point - if there was such an event you'd hate it.

LGBT people aren't oppressed anywhere that celebrates pride day/week/month but at any rate, the obsession with dividing society into oppressed and oppressors is pure hard left ideology. Always was, since the days of Marx or even the French Revolution. It has no place being forced into people's lives via every possible angle - that is and always has been the strategy of highly destructive people.

Let's create a scenario where the changing of an icon which is visible on your phone to anyone around you might actually present a danger in a certain country.

What if your app changed to have a gay pride flag and one of your users lived in an extremely homophobic country where any signs of support of homosexuality could actually result in fines or even jail time?

The poor user (Who may or may not agree with your ideology) who has been using your app for months has no idea that your icon is literally going to change without their knowledge or approval.

But you didn't think of this scenario, did you?

When they arrive and you catch them in the act, the damage is already done. (Can applications be downgraded in the typical walled-garden OS environment?)

The choice is simple, if you don't like it, just stop using the app. There are probably tons of alternatives.

However, there is a license, and this goes both ways.

Or would you consent to the statement, "Yup, users are private individuals and can pirate software as they please. The developer has consented to this by publishing the software."?

Ok, I'll take it. It's your app. I rather not wear the clown shoes when it comes to understanding property and expression rights, but also etiquette in app/business spaces.

You might own the app's code but if the user paid for the app, they're entitled to not wanting their screen to become some billboard to The Current Thing™. Buy a few billboards and airtime if you feel you should shove your political beliefs and opinions down everyone's throat. With this behavior, you're the representation of everything wrong with corporate political activism and the tech industry at large: You're the app's developer, and for some reason you think you know more than the user.

(We may think of exceptions where an app is specifically about posting such messages, like an iconographic motd, but this is not what's here addressed.)

I may be old fashined, but I remember it being considered a problem for the seller if a potential customer does not like offered product.

It should always be OK to fire your customers.

No right or wrong involved, this means less money for you.

My morals are not for sale.

That doesn't sound like making a informed tradeoff, that sounds like the adage of "The customer is always right", which is a very different approach to business.

I highly doubt any company making a statement by changing their app icon hasn't considered the impact and I'm sure is actively watching metrics like uninstall metrics. And I'm sure given they're making the change they found it an acceptable trade off.

So in short, I don't really understand what you're point was trying to make, unless you disagree with my premise that the companies made an informed decision to modify their app icon?

When your fashionable beliefs fall out of fashion, it will be your problem soon enough. Just don't cry about oppression then.

The righteousness of these individuals make them blind to the fact the pendulum swings back and forth.

That's why they're down-voting you. That's why they're posturing about not being able to say what they think, because they know what they think won't fly here, yet. Meanwhile, of course, out in the real world, we have right-wing preachers talking about how gay people should be shot, we have half of the political mainstream suddenly accusing LGBT activists of being pedophiles...but we're supposed to believe these guys here that it's just them suddenly being weird and territorial about the icons on their screens

By pulling your head out of the sand and paying attention.

You just condemn the heresy and scream, like all good true believers.

It was a nice illustration of my point.

Pedophilia enjoyer.

Do keep up the histrionics and the half-assed insults as you argue here, though. Those antics will absolutely make people take you seriously.

If you are doing that in a free app, OK, but you are going to get bad reviews from the users you vandalized, and might be violating the advertising/spam rules of the platform your are distributing on.