Tech (or political?) choices
There’s a small but significant crisis in the world of Apple blogs and independent iOS developers. The blog MacStories, after loudly announcing its departure from what was then Twitter in 2022, returned to Elon Musk’s platform this August.
The return was made quietly. Not even the blog’s regular contributors knew beforehand. All of them jumped ship after the news spread. Readers and paying subscribers of MacStories also learned of the news from other sources.
Two days after the news broke, Federico Viticci, founder and one of the two partners of MacStories, published a justification on a page generated by a note-taking app — not on MacStories itself, as they had done four years earlier when announcing their departure from Twitter:
We want to be absolutely clear about something: returning to X does not represent a change in our values, what MacStories or we stand for, or an endorsement of Elon Musk. We abhor Musk’s politics, his rhetoric, his careless disregard for others, and the direction he has taken X. But we also disagree that participating on X means we have aligned ourselves with any of Musk’s views or actions. We reject Musk’s worldview and will continue to treat people with the kindness and respect they deserve wherever they are on the Internet.
The stated reason for the blog and its two partners (besides Viticci, John Voorhees) returning to X is business-related. MacStories has been losing audience to Google’s AI (“Google Zero”) and suffering from subscription fatigue. On top of that, Viticci has been pouring time and effort into producing content about artificial intelligence, which, so the story goes, has a bigger audience on X. So much so that he now describes himself as “a new kind of builder”, in addition to writer and podcaster.
Developers came out in defense of MacStories. Brent Simmons, of NetNewsWire, called the decision a “tech choice,” leaning on the “iPhone socialist” fallacy: anyone criticizing the move uses and depends on Big Tech technologies, so they’re hypocrites for condemning MacStories‘s decision.
Jeff Johnson, known for the Safari extension StopTheMadness, reposted Simmons’s piece, saying it’s actually a political decision made within a system that incentivizes hard choices, and that within that system, bad individual choices are inevitable.
Marco Arment, of the podcast app Overcast, reposted Simmons’s piece without comment.
Among the critics, Steve Troughton-Smith, of the internet radio app Broadcasts, pointed out that more than the return to X itself, the worst part of the whole episode was the way Viticci and Voorhees carried out the decision:
making a tech choice is one thing. Doing it on the sly and waiting 2 weeks for people to notice is another. Not discussing it with your contributors until the point everybody walks out, angry and hurt, is also a choice. And waiting a further 2 days to admit to it in public in some tiny corner of the internet that you know your readers & subscribers probably won’t find. That’s worthy of criticism. As is pushing out every member of staff or contributor who isn’t a straight white male
Niléane Dorffer, a (now former) MacStories contributor and a black trans woman, said she was upset at having been made a fool of in the post announcing her departure from the project. She also said Viticci had made editorial decisions that whitewashed the tightening relationship between Apple CEO Tim Cook and the Trump administration, out of fear of being barred from U.S. airports. (Viticci is Italian.) Finally, she said she had expected more from the blog’s founder, but that he’s “just another white techbro.”
In the replies to Simmons’s post, a non-developer, Craig Scrogie, was the one who best summed up the disappointment of contributors and readers alike:
This is not about “tech choices”. MacStories reversed a principled, political choice, betrayed trust, and abandoned support for an inclusive community. They made their stand until it became inconvenient. That’s why folk are upset. This community will not heal if its instinct is to give a pass for shitty behaviour.
Although he claimed he would remain on Mastodon and Bluesky, Viticci’s profiles on those platforms have been reduced to automated links to new MacStories posts. Quite different from X, where he’s been posting a lot. He, Voorhees, and the MacStories profile are all paying for X subscriptions to get the verified badge and (supposedly) greater reach for their posts.
Politics aside, I wonder whether X will make any difference to MacStories‘s business. The platform’s recommendation algorithm punishes external links harshly, and the competition for the attention of AI-slop addicts is fierce. X passed the final stage of Cory Doctorow’s “enshittification” long ago, the point at which all the value a service generates flows back to the Big Tech company providing it. Curious to see how this story unfolds.