If you’ve hot any occam’s razor left in you, consider:
1. Apple is a masterful media manipulator, carefully planting stories like this by gradually seeding fringe media first, then more mainstream, with a clever and subtle goal of making themselves look dumb in order to trick people into, uh, ok, I’m lost here, but something. Maybe drum up demand for products they can’t keep in stock anyway?
2. Media outlets chase clicks, and when fringe media finds a hit, mainstream media follows because you can always write a story about the fact that other people are writing stories. Low cost, proven clicks, nobody yells at you for missing a trend.
Which is more likely? I’ll cheerfully stipulate Apple is pure evil, serves cooked babies in their cafeterias, whatever it takes to discuss based on reason rather than big-evil-corpos.
Maybe. More likely is there are AI bots used to proliferate messages much cheaper than "paid posters."
> Why would anyone defend a billion dollar corporation so vehemently and not earn a single dime?
Because some like the products made by said billion dollar corporation?
Because others like to be contrarian?
Because not everyone is motivated by being paid?
Maybe, just maybe, people are different and have differing motivations not easily reduced into being "am I getting paid for this or not."
Besides, Apple isn't a "billion dollar corporation", it's a multi-trillion dollar corporation.
> People don’t like nitpickers. “He literally did the WELL AKTUALLY!” If you say Joe Criminal committed ten murders and five rapes, and I object that it was actually only six murders and two rapes, then why am I “defending” Joe Criminal?
> Because if it’s worth your time to lie, it’s worth my time to correct it.
> If one side lies to make all of their arguments sound 5% stronger, then over long enough it adds up. Unless they want to be left behind, the other side has to make all of their arguments 5% stronger too. Then there’s a new baseline - why not 10%? Why not 20%? This mechanism might sound theoretical when I describe it this way, but go to any space where corrections are discouraged, and you will see exactly this.
Certainly employees at these companies are earning more than a single dime, so even if innocent there's still an obvious conflict of interest. That doesn't mean the posters are wrong or their opinions invalid, on the contrary their direct experience is valuable to hear.
But they are certainly paid, and this is fair to remember when reading opinions.
edit: oh, I see, they're focusing on taking the last little bit super literally. great.
https://www.businessinsider.com/nyu-professor-says-apple-is-...
And, this isn't making them look particularly dumb. It is making them look dumb the way that most people make themselves look "bad" when they list their biggest weakness in a job interview. Silly Apple, not seeing how fantastically great their product is and how much people are dying to have it.
The most serious point in favor of this being organic nonsense is just the sheer lack of any actual evidence that it isn't, but the case is being wildly overstated, in part because we're using the non-standard term "psyop" to describe what I'd consider to be mundane marketing practices.
At this point I feel like there is no reasonable way to draw a conclusion. However, viral marketing like this is common and in fact, incredibly easy. This is done through PR services (and even shadier sources) all the time... I'm a bit surprised people on HN are unfamiliar with how utterly common the practice is, it wasn't new when I first came into contact with the industry over a decade ago. The hallmark of this is very similar articles appearing suddenly through the Internet and in the news. It's often not just random plagiarism. This is why the news is constantly running stories about how suits are back in vogue and other vain crap like that.
”Oh wow our product is so amazing we can’t keep up with demand you better buy before we run out”
It's not a “complicated psy-op”, promoting viral stories is the basics of marketing in the age of social media…
WOW, this is some remarkable (would rather use different word starting with R) desperate attempt to somehow turn the reality upside-down,of Apple being overpriced unrepairable unupgrade-able junk sold through pure marketing of exploiting insecurities of losers by selling them something that makes them feel "elite".
Unsolicitated "send via iPhone" SMS footer is perfect example.
> Which is more likely? I’ll cheerfully stipulate Apple is pure evil, serves cooked babies in their cafeterias, whatever it takes to discuss based on reason rather than big-evil-corpos