Reply To: The Shabbos App Controversy

GAW – (Besides for all the other issues,) Why isn’t there a separate problem with the word showing up on the other person’s screen after you hit “send”? Unless I am mising my mark, by creating a P’sik Raisha (even if you claim it is indirect) that writing will appear elsewhere, that should be at least a D’rabbanan (even if the Kesiva is not shel kayama).

They have a box where they claim anyone can write their halachic queries and they will respond. I did so last week (the name was “Questioner” if anybody wants to see it), and I asked about the Kesiva:

There are two possible problems of Ksiva; on screen and on hard drive. Both of those are potential problems, as they themselves point out. Both those problems present themselves even with their app, both on your own screen and on the recipient’s screen.

The response I got was hardly worth copying down (ill try post it tomorrow!):

We fixed both. For starters, we modified the message input from our previous keypad to a new wordpad. On the new wordpad a user can pick from pre-made word blocks and create a sentence. There are 120 included words and 30 words that a user can add (before Shabbos). With the new wordpad there is no problem at all of Kosev, as the user is never creating a word.

I disagree, because whatever Koisev there was without this keypad, they still have now. When you select a word to form a sentence, all that means is deleting it from one space and rewriting it on another. The same thing is with the Hard Drive. And there is no way they can get around the other persons phone.

I tried reasoning, and they stopped responding. (Full Shakla vetarya to follow)