paintbucketholder

The numbers were reported by Hamas. The UN merely used those numbers.

Tell me why we should put blind faith into anything published by Hamas?

I can’t see a business reason why Apple would degrade image sending purposefully- it would drive its own users to get third party apps.

Depends on what the majority of people are using.

In markets where iPhone users are not in the majority, that's exactly what's happening: iPhone users are switching to third party apps.

If iPhones users are in the majority, though, then people will just default to iMessage, and non-Apple phones get associated with poor messaging quality. Which creates social pressure for non-iPhone users to buy an iPhone.

So it makes perfect business sense for Apple to degrade the messaging quality when a non-Apple phone joins the conversation.

Must eradicate it.

For the safety and security of our users!

Because the IDF reported those numbers, and if the IDF reports those numbers, that means you were right?

Is it intentionally hostile on Apple’s part to bar androids from joining? Yes. But the reactions from Apple users aren’t entirely unjustified

The reaction from Apple users is to blame Android users - which is entirely unjustified.

But of course, post purchase rationalization and brand loyalty play a big part in why people want to externalize blame rather than questioning their own decision or blaming their favorite company for providing a shitty cross-platform messaging experience.

You mean we should believe the numbers when the IDF is reporting them?

It really depends on what a Trump reign will look like, right?

Will he be able to round up tens of millions of people and deport them, as he has promised? Will he institute another Muslim ban, as he has promised? Will he stay in office after his next four year term, as he has said he wants to? Will he use the office of the president to persecute political opponents, as he has promised? Will he "root out" all the "vermin" in the United States, as he had promised? And if yes: who will get declared to be "vermin?" How will they be "rooted out?" Will he make torture legal, as he promised? Will he bring back family separation and child detention camps? Will he threaten nuclear war again? And if yes, will some crazy regime take him up on the offer?

And if all of that or even just a fraction of that comes to pass, will you still sleep well, knowing that you might have been able to stop all of that but voting for the lesser of two evils was just beneath you?

Because ultimately, that's the decision you're making.

Because I don't think Hamas are democratically chosen in Gaza.

That's true for the majority of nations in the region, though, isn't it?

Nobody elected the House of Saud to rule Saudi Arabia. Nobody democratically chose the House of Al Thani to rule Qatar. Nobody voted on having the House of Maktoum rule Dubai.

Gaza is not a country. It's an open air prison created by Israel.

Israel withdrew its troops from Gaza, it evacuated Jewish settlers, it tore down illegal Jewish settlements, it handed over Israeli assets to the Palestinians, it effectively completely handed over control.

It didn't open its borders to Gaza, just like Egypt didn't open its borders to Gaza.

If Gaza is an open air prison, isn't Egypt to blame, too?

People there lack basic freedom.

People there primarily lack basic freedom because they're being ruled by an Islamist terrorist organization that claims for itself to be the official government of Gaza.

But how is that different from other nations like Saudi Arabia or Dubai or Qatar or Bahrain or Abu Dhabi - other than the fact that those totalitarian regimes are swimming in money, and Palestinians aren't (ignoring the fact that Hamas leadership managed to squirrel away $11 billion for itself)?

I should have also been more specific, my problems are not the government of Gaza, but the militant side of it.

I find it hard to draw a line, since the official government of Gaza often just echoes the exact same language used by its terrorist wing.

But let's say it were possible to draw a strict line: would you then be willing to do the same for Israel as well? Are you explicitly drawing a distinction between Likud and e.g. Shas or Labor or Hadash-Ta'al? Or between militant settlers building illegal settlements in the West Bank, and people practicing communal socialism in a kibbutz in Israel proper? Or between people who have been demonstrating for months against the Netanyahu government, and people voting for and supporting Netanyahu?

Or do you just not care, and you'll simply condemn all and anything under the label of Israel?

So again, I want to ask, do you condemn Israel SPECIFICALLY?

That's REALLY kind of predicated upon your answer to how you would define Israel or draw distinctions between groups within Israel.

But let me ask you: why do you appear to be so unhappy with a position that condemns any and all violence against innocent civilians? Given how many different sides and factions are committing so many different atrocities, isn't that a reasonable position?

I condemn any atrocities committed by any side against innocent civilians.

Doesn't matter whether it's Hamas or the IDF or Islamic Jihad or militant settlers in the West Bank or Hezbollah or Huthi rebels firing rockets into Israel.

Can I ask you why you would say that you condemn Hamas rather than saying "I condemn Gaza" - given that Hamas is being treated as the official representation of the people of Gaza, that Hamas has majority approval in the population of Gaza, that the October 7th attackers came from Gaza, that the rocket attacks are being launched from Gaza, etc?

Exactly.

So why are people not calling out Gaza, which is ruled by a terrorist organization that commits mass murders, mass rape, infanticide and terrorism?

Ah yes, poor genocidal Israel is being held to "a different standard" after killing more children and journalists within a month than has ever happened in recorded history.

You've never actually opened a history book, right?

Poor souls, clearly everyone is only criticising them because they are Jewish, not because they are an apartheid ethnostate (and since fucking when are ethnostates a good thing).

We've just been over this.

Your argument would hold water if people criticized other nations doing the exact same thing in the exact same way they criticize Israel.

That's not the case - so something has to be different.

I think you are delusional.

I think your hatred for Israel blinds you.

You're really puzzled that a nation founded as a Jewish ethnostate is being held to an entirely different standard than virtually any other nation in the world? And yet you're here, commenting on the Palestinian-Israel conflict?