Matt Massicotte, looking for leverage to make Apple feel that their course of action is not okay (also on Mastodon):

To put it mildly, I have been struggling with this. I have been trying to find ways to respond. Something that could give me some kind of leverage.

Apple relies heavily on feedback from third-party developers to find bugs in new APIs and OSes. Because of their development cycle, this is especially critical during a beta period.

So I’m just no longer going to use Feedback Assistant. I will not use beta OSes. I will not share crash reports for Apple software. Because of Swift’s continued use of X, I will no longer participate in the Swift forums or evolution process. I will also actively discourage others from doing these things.

What leverage does Matt have?

What leverage do I have?

What leverage do you have to change the course of a tech giant like Apple?

On our own, we can basically do nothing. Each of us is utterly powerless.

Matt not filing bugs anymore is statistical noise in Apple’s ecosystem. I bet that his «☼Feedbacks☼» were of masterful quality, but still, it’s merely the output of one dedicated developer.

Activism is all that we, the people depending on and working with Apple, really have.

The helplessness and powerlessness in facing odds like this is expected.

What could have more impact?

Outright abandoning ship. Boycott Apple’s developer stuff, forums, social media accounts – and stores.

To escalate further, one would have to remove apps from stores (or pause sales). This will hurt the platform’s quality when you stop shipping quality software anymore.

Still, it would mostly hurt you first, and longest. No income, no business. You’d be putting your life on the line.

That’s what’s so tough about it.

Transforming a single person’s determination to stop helping a huge company, transforming this statistical anomaly into a significant problem, requires mass.

Orchestrating an outright protest will be a noticed.

A protest that includes, say, the 100 top-grossing indie developers to pause sales for a month. (Or two weeks, if a month is too much for your business to bear. Some of us have people to pay. Or family to feed. Maybe one week. Maybe one week every 3 months. So that their store revenue graphs show an actual dent.)

I’m none of the big players, so it’s easy for me to say. To stop selling my apps will still hurt tremendously (we have savings, of course).

On its own, my protest to participate in the Apple ecosystem on the developer side (like Matt) and on the sales side (like proposed here) would only hurt me. It’s so insignificant that it’s pointless.

That’s why we should combine our efforts and orchestrate a protest proper.

Let’s start with a Feedback Assistant and Beta boycott. It won’t cost each of us anything, so the risk is low. And when we do this together, sign a virtual petition, put up a teensy tiny manifesto website, then we will, eventually, be heard.

Then we will have leverage.

Update 2025-02-18: More on the topic:

• Matt’s Mastodon post with more discussion in the thread(s), including announcements by Steven Woolgar, Graham Hall.
• Konstantin on how he’ll be stopping to contribute to the Swift/Apple ecosystem: https://iamkonstantin.eu/blog/its-not-easy-its-necessary/

• Craig Hockenberry is maybe a bit too excited :)

  Empires crumble. This is how Apple’s begins.

• Jeff Johnson’s 2023 Feedback boycott, its website, and his bleak outlook for the movement.