More likely it's homophobes

I've heard so much conflicting shit over this event that I have no idea what to believe

Apple has put a lot of effort into (successfully) creating a customer-base that thinks overpriced goods and different colored texts make them in a special club, I'm not surprised that an exec thought this excuse would fly

That's because reducing the bot problem isn't actually what they're trying to do. They're trying to patch the gaping hole in revenue that advertisers left in their exodus

Self reporting is also notoriously unreliable

I very much love the stance of "When everything/everyone is remarkable, nothing/noone is."

Counterpoint: it doesn't make everything/everyone unremarkable, it just raises the standard and the bar for what remarkable is. Imagine using that argument for modern graphics, game design, etc, and that you want things to be lackluster because it really highlights the occasional times that they aren't.

The regulation is worded to require whatever the USB-IF currently requires, which is what companies that adopted USB already follow. The concern here died before the ink on the law even dried.

It literally does not, as evidenced by the state of chargers in the 2000s and early 2010s, before the EU threatened to regulate if phone companies didn't get their shit together. Back then you'd have a different charger design for virtually every phone, including new models of the same phone. USB only became ubiquitous because the EU told companies to stop fucking around and legislate themselves, or the EU would make formal legislation. Most companies got the memo, but Apple decided to be cunts for long enough that the EU decided they needed to finally step in.

Consumer-based regulation being the end-all is based off the classical- and neoliberal ideas that humans are rational actors and companies have a greater incentive to compete than to collude. Both of which are lies.

Musk fanboys are like MAGAs, nothing will change their opinion

Ah fair, apologies if I misread the tone

Synthetic isn't inherently bad just because some synthetic things are bad. Until we get more information on this thing, your snark is entirely baseless

and I prefer it to be water and dust proof.

Adding replaceable batteries does nothing to affect this. An o-ring with a clamping mechanism will make it just as water and dust resistant as before. Your phone's charging port is more susceptible to water and dust than a replaceable battery will ever be