This is by no means recent news, but since most people don’t know the difference between lies and bullshit, I thought I’d post up some food for thought.

Recently Apple and AT&T were put under fire by the FCC in the decision to remove Google Voice from the Apple App Store (original story). Now AT&T has no official connection with the App Store and responded with the following public statement: “AT&T does not manage or approve applications for the App Store. We have received the letter and will, of course, respond to it.”

Now no one with even a half a brain thinks that Apple was alone in the decision to pull the app. After all, why should they care if Google steals airtime (and thus money) from AT&T? They are in the business of producing products, not gouging poor souls over air. But that is neither here nor there.

AT&T’s official stance struck a chord with many netizens. People cried foul. Others burned effigies. Still, others accused AT&T of outright lying to both the FCC and the public. People were right to be prickly, but the US telecom giant didn’t lie.

Philosopher Harry Frankfurt makes a clear distinction between lying and bullshit. Admittedly the carrier’s response to FCC’s query may not strictly fall into Frankfurt’s latter category (bullshit), but it also does not clearly fall into the former either (lying). At best, we may call the response: Loose bullshit.

Think about it. AT&T never lied—there is nothing factually incorrect in their statement. They truly don’t manage apps in the Apple App Store. Moreover, they also do not approve apps in the App Store. Apple ultimately retains both of those exclusive rights.

At the end of the day, I think most people’s reaction to the public statement is spot on, but it’s not because AT&T lied, but rather because they issued complete bullshit. A former professor of mine gave me a beautiful example of bullshit some years ago: You borrow the family car and come home way after curfew (and wreaking of booze) with a dented fender. Your dad, furious and visibly distraught over the damage to his car, demands to know what happened and why you’re dead drunk! You respond curtly, “Yeah, thanks dad, I’m fine. I can’t believe you care more about that stupid car than your own son’s life!”

Obviously that’s not going to prevent you from picking up your prom date on your Huffy, but it’s always worth a try. At the very least, it’ll give you time to formulate a somewhat believable story (since by now, you are most certainly scared sober), because your drunk ass couldn’t come up with something even remotely plausible on the way home.

Practically speaking, skillful bullshit won’t incriminate you. Lying most certainly will.

AT&T Officially Responds to the FCC

Now this is an example of an outright lie. Notice how they draw your attention to the Google Voice (GV) web app? That’s not happenstance. And a web app is not the same thing as a native iPhone app, and Google (along with a large chunk of the iPhone user base) knows it. Any decent developer knows that people don’t like hurdles, even seemingly simple ones (like using Safari to run Google Voice and then adding an icon to the iPhone launcher). Adding these barriers (even if AT&T thinks them to be spurious or trivial) will limit the spread of GV. I’m sure AT&T doesn’t care though. They sure sound like they couldn’t care less if people adopted GV as their primary phone number… sure. If you buy that, then I have some terrific land I’d like you to look at. Great deal. Really.

Moreover, notice the cleverly worded sentence: “AT&T does not own [...] the Apple App Store and is not typically consulted regarding the approval or rejection of applications…” So they do get consulted from time to time, except not in this case (I imagine because they feel there is no proof of such a conversation, ergo, it never happened). I’m not one to jump the gun, but based on AT&T (and every other North American carrier for that matter) business practices, I’d bet dollars to donuts they don’t have a halo over their heads on this one. I doubt much will come of this, but it would be nice to see GV become a native iPhone app. We all know that competition in the air business is very much needed.