> 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.