Editor's note: During the composition of this article, Marco Arment reversed the ban on 9to5Mac, rendering such coverage pointless. It's available for your reading anyway.
[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ast week, in an audacious move, Marco Arment, the founder of read-it-later service Instapaper, decided it was time he blocked Apple rumor mill 9to5Mac from being read using his service. Immature as that may sound, there was good reason behind the decision. Last week, Élyse Betters of 9to5Mac wrote an article about the alleged FBI’s release of personal UDID information pertaining to Apple’s iOS devices. (This event as a whole was a scandal waiting to pounce on anyone suspicious, yet journalists kept spreading rumors.) Betters decided to formulate a theory including Marco and his service, holding him responsible for giving the UDID information to the FBI, blatantly misspelling Arment’s name as “Marcus Armento”, and calling his service “Instascraper”. 9to5Mac editor-in-chief Seth Weintraub said he did this “as a laugh”. This was only the beginning.
Following said insensitive offenses to Arment, the developer blocked (this link is an image because he deleted the original Tweet) 9to5Mac from being read using Instapaper. But the developer was a bit hypocritical in his rash decision — he accused another app of being the wrongdoer. Regardless, Arment accusing one app of being guilty does not give 9to5Mac right to do the same thing.
This conundrum is a combination of pure stupidity, impetuous decisions, unprofessional “journalists”, and other such idiocy. People think it brings up the question of whether Instapaper will begin blocking other publications that disparage it, but these people haven’t thought that Arment did not block 9to5Mac for criticism (other blogs like The Awl dislike the service as well), but rather what a first-grader would designate as name-calling. It really seemed like each party was immature at least once, and the offense, no matter what Arment says, was personal. That’s obvious to anyone who paid attention to the situation. The problem was his reaction — it was immature, as ubiquitous and cliché as that term has become in coverage of this incident.
You know what the best part of all is? Seth Weintraub updated his article on 9to5Mac to say that “Matt Buchanan from Buzzfeed probably has a better version of this.” The amendment was added to the top of his post. I’m not usually one to go around giving bloggers lessons on how to be more successful and professional, but Weintraub needs to understand that he’s not helping 9to5Mac’s quality any by saying that people should go read the coverage of an event directly related to his publication on another one; this seems unproductive and he’s hurting himself.
That’s the story, the one that some will come to know as “The Instapaper Scandal”. I think it’s ridiculous and there’s nothing worse than two people acting like children, no matter the environment — I am, of course, referring to the Internet. Marco has now apologized for his “overreaction”, mercifully. Maybe it will teach Weintraub and others to learn some respect for developers. If not, I hope some good comes of this because there’s no excuse for all the immaturity that was showcased.