16 ms·

Skype Vanishes from App Stores in China, Including Apple’s

232 points by votepaunchy 9y ago

mtgx 9y ago
There was a theory that they were working on end-to-end encryption for Skype. If true, this may be related to that. I sure hope it's true, otherwise they will not be able to say that they "can't" provide people's communications with a court order, as they're now doing in Belgium. https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/930063589565747200 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/93006358956574720... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/27/belgian_court_fines_skype_intercept_criminals_calls/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/27/belgian_court_fines... Also, the court classified them as a "telco," likely because Skype offers integration with regular phone lines. It's also why, in the U.S., the government can use CALEA to intercept Skype calls. So if they want to keep using that excuse, they may want to offer a "secure" data-only version of Skype, too (that's the default Skype), and provide a deprecated version that's integrated with regular phone calls. This would also make it easier for them and everyone else to move on from the convoluted WebRTC 1.0 standard to the ORTC-based WebRTC 1.1. It would've been ideal to make this change with the overhaul of Skype's design to be more easily accepted by people, but oh well, better late than never.
qwerty456127 9y ago
What are the app stores other than Apple?
- pathsjs 9y ago
  Uh... Google play?
  - tacomonstrous 9y ago
    Not available in China.
  - qwerty456127 9y ago
    I didn't know they can block an app from Google Play for a particular country. Used to think it's an Apple-specific antifeature.
    - idrios 9y ago
      Google Play itself is blocked in China. Have to download a Chinese app store or download apks directly
- Andrenid 9y ago
  There's that little tiny one called Android too.
- runjake 9y ago
  Google Play Store Windows Store Samsung has their own deal.
  - bpicolo 9y ago
    China has a bunch of different app stores on android: https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-10-android-app-stores-china/ https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-10-android-app-stor... In this regard they actually have a sweet deal
unsigner 9y ago
Fantastic, let's hope it vanishes from everywhere!
- oblio 9y ago
  And we replace it with... ?
  - slivanes 9y ago
    How about the Skype before it was bought by MS? You know, the one that was actually good, lean, and without ads.
    - unsigner 9y ago
      Also it could transfer files peer to peer.
  - iaml 9y ago
    Discord, hangouts, facetime - take your pick.
    - oblio 9y ago
      I'll rephrase my question: how are those any better? The others are just as bad and/or closed source and on top of that Facetime is only available in the Apple ecosystem.
canjobear 9y ago
When I was in China in 2010 you couldn't download Skype. If you tried you'd be redirected to something called "Tom's Skype".
- goldenkey 9y ago
  That's humorous. On a serious note though, Skype should be renamed to "Skype--" in the US. After MS bought it, it became a buggy piece of crap. Every new version had more useless features and was more prone to crashing/freezing up than the last. Screenshare and the other golden features became riddled with issues. Skype was once great. During the period in which it was down for "maintanence" many believe that spying measures were added. In any case, there are much better options these days considering how bloated and buggy the actual client-side software has become.
  - cevn 9y ago
    Agreed. And the way they try to push it on you in win10 is egregious.
    - goldenkey 9y ago
      Right. Most people will just assume that is the only version of Skype available for Win10. Skype has gotten worse..but not to be judged by the bundled metro app worse... Metro is just a total failure altogether, I haven't seen a metro app that convinced me otherwise. It's a must to use PowerShell to uninstall that version of Skype and instead install the normal win32/win64 executable.
  - babuskov 9y ago
    AFAIR, they changed communication model from Peer-to-peer to client-server and then it all started. Why did they need all conversations to pass through their servers...? Something is hinted in the last paragraph of this article though: https://www.lifewire.com/skype-changes-from-p2p-3426522 https://www.lifewire.com/skype-changes-from-p2p-3426522
    - 9y ago
xoa 9y ago
This sort of thing represents one of the true dangers of single-source App Stores on general purpose computers with no side-loading fallback, and is why we should be proactively working to make it illegal. It's not that Apple is malicious per se, or even that they're particularly slow at reviews or whatever (though that has been the case at times too), but the mere fact that they represent a single, easy to pressure choke point. Apple themselves have reacted to this appropriately when it comes to the hardware by removing more and more of their own ability to affect it once it's been sold and giving that power to the owners instead. That's not just a positive for owners' privacy and security (and in turn a selling point), it also reduces Apple's exposure and liability. If they don't hold a given set of data or power in the first place, then nobody can go after them for it. Unfortunately on the software side they have not sought any of the better tradeoffs available between security and vetting vs owner power and decentralization, and in turn find themselves in the crosshairs for every single app. Not even just from governments though they're most coercive, but from any public cultural/religious interest group at all. Since Apple has to approve everything, Apple is also seen (correctly) as directly responsible for everything on the App Store. The result has been exactly as you'd expect: they're more conservative on average about what sort of content they'll allow, not merely about objective issues like security. Perhaps negative PR from actions like this might be sufficient eventually to get Apple to change course on their own. They wouldn't actually need to do very much, even selling a one-time permanent single device signing cert might be sufficient [1], and could form the basis of alternate App Stores even. But if Apple (and others) won't move it should be legislated. Improving wearable displays will ultimately mean the merger of "mobile" and "PC", that is the next disruptive evolution in computers. We should not allow that to become the end of bazaars for software too. ---- 1: Right now they have a free one, but it only lets apps run for 7 days, and the developer one is yearly and subscription based.
- ma2rten 9y ago
  The title clearly states that it disappeared from multiple app stores not just apple's. At least for Android China has multiple app stores not just Google Play.
- ickwabe 9y ago
  My take away from this is quite different. Or at least tangential. I expect Apple and any other company to have to comply with local laws in various countries. It's unavoidable. What else could they do? Refuse and loose access to that population? But right now, as regards device encryption and back doors, there is a sort of mutually assured destruction. A MAD that the US law enforcement (e.g. FBI et al) are constantly trying to undermine. Right now Apple claims the iPhone is designed such that they cannot unencrypt it. The FBI wants to force them to create a method. Regardless of the technique used that then will make every similar device world wide subject to the whims of local law as regards allow that country access. What would stop any country from then demanding blanket access to devices? But at the moment this doesn't seem happen because there's an unspoken detente among adversarial countries to not demand such back-doors. This situation reminds me of that. Since it is possible for Apple and others to block things on their app stores, countries demand it. It's a cautionary tale of why it's important for companies to design certain things from the bottom up to prevent bad behavior.
agentgt 9y ago
Honest question: Just curious on how China explain this to its citizens? Or do they not even explain it and just do it. Is it similar to USA where we say its to catch the "bad guys". I guess they could argue they are "protecting" their citizens by perhaps lowering the security attack surface.
- kevin_b_er 9y ago
  Lián. Truths about things like corruption must be suppressed, because they don't look good. Thus allowing people to talk about such things is bad.
  - agentgt 9y ago
    That is what they say (the government) or is that what is implied (by the government) or is that what you inferred?
- goldenkey 9y ago
  Another HNer said that it has been missing from China for a while now, redirected to something called "Tom's Skype." I'm not wholly surprised considering that even the official Google Play Store is banned.
  - PakG1 9y ago
    That's just their local official distributor. It's been that way for a long time. http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/1353906/microsofts-skype-run-under-new-joint-venture-china http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/1353906/micro...
- PakG1 9y ago
  Who says there are explanations? It's basically an accepted and unavoidable fact of life that you can't access certain foreign Internet services at times. It is what it is.
  - agentgt 9y ago
goldenkey 9y ago
Well, Skype has vigorous anti-debugging measures to keep most of its unwarranted behavior under wraps. And when MS bought Skype, it was taken down for a significant time, thought to be when the NSA [etPhoneHome] method calls were added. It's all just conjecture though... But I'd stick with other voip/telcos. I really can't blame China for not wanting their people subject to what is pretty obvious US spying.
- PuffinBlue 9y ago
  Wasn't it taken down to be rearchitected (spelling?) to a "superhub" peer to peer setup? Kind of a half way house between fully 'cloud' (centralised) like it is now and fully peer to peer like it was before MS bought it? I guess that doesn't preclude it becoming part of PRISM and I might be misremembering the details too.
  - goldenkey 9y ago
    Something like that. But reverse engineers (who I trust) after busting through all the anti-debugger protection, and looking at the protocol, seemed to be of the opinion that the app was way too reliant on Skype's servers and way too obfuscated for just IP protection alone. Better open source than sorry. Skype is not to be trusted. At least most EXEs you can debug but Skype has literally wiretrapped and packed the crap out of their exe for unworthy reasons. Stallman would consider it untrustworthy computing, let alone the networking part.
commenter1 9y ago
Western countries should put up same kind of laws just for Chinese companies.
- mattnewton 9y ago
  No need yet, they usually can’t compete with incumbents. And as a US consumer I am fine with keeping local companies in competition with foreign ones because it usually means I just get more options.
  - colejohnson66 9y ago
    Do cheap $5 USB power supplies count as competition?
afrophysics1 9y ago
I'd like to see a P2P app store on the same kind of system as cryptocurrency. Like torrents meets P2P consensus for file verification, with weights for trusted sources.
- niksmac 9y ago
  I have actually thought of this a while ago and decided not to proceed because of - file storage - verify app developers - prevent cracked apps. If you can justify all these questions, id like to work on the same idea further.
  - slimshady94 9y ago
    File storage - Sia Verification - Civic/KYC solutions? Prevent cracked apps - some game theory/staking mechanism that makes you lose if you don't play the official version
- dilippkumar 9y ago
  Take a look at this: https://tox.chat/ https://tox.chat/
  - libertyEQ 9y ago
    You are replying to a comment about a distributed repository of software based on some sort of blockchain, while you are linking to a P2P messaging protocol. Not that isn't relevant to discussions about Skype, but it is irrelevant to SW repositories of the parent comment.
aapjesverkoper 9y ago
Seems like The New York Times has invented a new annoying method of mouse hijacking. When click selecting the text while reading I am `swiping` to the next article on desktop. And double click increases font size?
- smeyer 9y ago
  I'd never encountered this before, but it looks like it's been around for a while: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=554644 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=554644 .
  - Tempest1981 9y ago
    From that page: This is a site "feature": the page cycles through font-sizes 17px->20px->26px on each double-click or tap.
rd108 9y ago
When companies centralized and controlled app downloads, they did it primarily to make more money. Now their greed ends in the loss of real human rights. When America was founded, the fourth pillar of government was the free press, i.e. the gatekeepers of information. Today, capitalism and naked avarice have broken the back of this key democratic institution, and the effects on society in the U.S. and abroad will be continue to ripple for years to come. It's like Obama was fond of reminding tech CEO's when they'd start pontificating on leadership... “Government will never run the way Silicon Valley runs because, by definition, democracy is messy. This is a big, diverse country with a lot of interests and a lot of disparate points of view. And part of government’s job, by the way, is dealing with problems that nobody else wants to deal with. “Sometimes I talk to CEOs, they come in and they start telling me about leadership, and here’s how we do things. And I say, well, if all I was doing was making a widget or producing an app, and I didn’t have to worry about whether poor people could afford the widget, or I didn’t have to worry about whether the app had some unintended consequences … then I think those suggestions are terrific."
- conanbatt 9y ago
  > Today, capitalism and naked avarice have broken the back of this key democratic institution, and the effects on society in the U.S. and abroad will be continue to ripple for years to come. How do you interpret that China, a pseudo-capitalist country, bans skype and its because of the greed and avarice of private capital. This is textbook china. It was before and there is no reason it won't be this way for decades to come.
  - Mindwipe 9y ago
    Because if iOS didn't prohibit installation of apps from anywhere but it's app store then this would be much less problematic. But Apple does, because it decided at the start of the platform that being able to take a 30% cut and defend it's own weak services applications from competition was worth more than the inevitable human rights problems a closed app platform presents.
    - stanmancan 9y ago
codezero 9y ago
Do VPNs work to get around regional app restrictions like they do for GFW and streaming?
- 0xJRS 9y ago
  Possibly, but you'd also have to be a VPN to use it as well.
- tcas 9y ago
  Nope. You can login with a different region's iTunes account (e.g. with a US address) however and download it without a VPN. You need a billing address/CC/PayPal in that region though, so you can't just simply register a new account and access it without basic validation.
  - Canada 9y ago
    That has started failing with iPhone. Now you need that and you need need a VPN. I haven't looked into why yet. Outside of China you can just choose US as your region and it's fine.
- Canada 9y ago
  Yes
shadowtree 9y ago
Impacts all vendors that provide telephony solutions, not just Skype. Nothing to do with Apple as some here in the comments are suggesting. China requires any software vendor that provides telephony to sell its software through a Chinese telco-licensed company. Pure VoiP is fine. The moment you offer dial-in / call me as Skype, WebEx, G2M, Zoom do, you're toast. This is China walling off their market a bit more, making it far easier for their own telcos to compete.
stevespang 9y ago
When is Hacker News going to STOP allowing posting of NY times articles which are all hidden behind a paywall ? Most Hacker News readers are never going to subscribe, so why allow them to be posted ?
squarefoot 9y ago
I wonder what is their attitude to other communication software and protocols, especially FOSS ones. Skype by its closed nature could contain all sorts of CIA/NSA spying routines, but what about Ekiga for example? Open Source software would hardly justify any national security concerns except those implied by letting common people freely communicate.
- tonyztan 9y ago
  > "except those implied by letting common people freely communicate." This is the key. They don't want people freely communicating without interception capabilities.
ksk 9y ago
Is there any article explaining the Chinese point of view? I'd like to know what they're hoping to accomplish by banning apps.
- alexbeloi 9y ago
  Two public reasons that are commonly given * controlling data about Chinese citizens from going outside of Chinese control (e.g. onto international/US servers where it can be subpeona'd by the foreign government host) * protecting local industries from foreign competition
  - ksk 9y ago
    Thanks ! Do you have any link where I can read this?
usaar333 9y ago
Interestingly, Skype is still functioning fine. In case it goes, does anyone know a good alternative to connect from the US to China that didn't require VPN usage in China? I've found wechat's call quality awful.

232 points by votepaunchy 9y ago

mtgx 9y ago

There was a theory that they were working on end-to-end encryption for Skype. If true, this may be related to that. I sure hope it's true, otherwise they will not be able to say that they "can't" provide people's communications with a court order, as they're now doing in Belgium. https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/930063589565747200 https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/93006358956574720... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/27/belgian_court_fines_skype_intercept_criminals_calls/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/27/belgian_court_fines... Also, the court classified them as a "telco," likely because Skype offers integration with regular phone lines. It's also why, in the U.S., the government can use CALEA to intercept Skype calls. So if they want to keep using that excuse, they may want to offer a "secure" data-only version of Skype, too (that's the default Skype), and provide a deprecated version that's integrated with regular phone calls. This would also make it easier for them and everyone else to move on from the convoluted WebRTC 1.0 standard to the ORTC-based WebRTC 1.1. It would've been ideal to make this change with the overhaul of Skype's design to be more easily accepted by people, but oh well, better late than never.

qwerty456127 9y ago

What are the app stores other than Apple?

pathsjs 9y ago
Uh... Google play?
- tacomonstrous 9y ago
  Not available in China.
- qwerty456127 9y ago
  I didn't know they can block an app from Google Play for a particular country. Used to think it's an Apple-specific antifeature.
  - idrios 9y ago
    Google Play itself is blocked in China. Have to download a Chinese app store or download apks directly
Andrenid 9y ago
There's that little tiny one called Android too.
runjake 9y ago
Google Play Store Windows Store Samsung has their own deal.
- bpicolo 9y ago
  China has a bunch of different app stores on android: https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-10-android-app-stores-china/ https://newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-10-android-app-stor... In this regard they actually have a sweet deal

unsigner 9y ago

Fantastic, let's hope it vanishes from everywhere!

oblio 9y ago
And we replace it with... ?
- slivanes 9y ago
  How about the Skype before it was bought by MS? You know, the one that was actually good, lean, and without ads.
  - unsigner 9y ago
    Also it could transfer files peer to peer.
- iaml 9y ago
  Discord, hangouts, facetime - take your pick.
  - oblio 9y ago
    I'll rephrase my question: how are those any better? The others are just as bad and/or closed source and on top of that Facetime is only available in the Apple ecosystem.

canjobear 9y ago

When I was in China in 2010 you couldn't download Skype. If you tried you'd be redirected to something called "Tom's Skype".

goldenkey 9y ago
That's humorous. On a serious note though, Skype should be renamed to "Skype--" in the US. After MS bought it, it became a buggy piece of crap. Every new version had more useless features and was more prone to crashing/freezing up than the last. Screenshare and the other golden features became riddled with issues. Skype was once great. During the period in which it was down for "maintanence" many believe that spying measures were added. In any case, there are much better options these days considering how bloated and buggy the actual client-side software has become.
- cevn 9y ago
  Agreed. And the way they try to push it on you in win10 is egregious.
  - goldenkey 9y ago
    Right. Most people will just assume that is the only version of Skype available for Win10. Skype has gotten worse..but not to be judged by the bundled metro app worse... Metro is just a total failure altogether, I haven't seen a metro app that convinced me otherwise. It's a must to use PowerShell to uninstall that version of Skype and instead install the normal win32/win64 executable.
- babuskov 9y ago
  AFAIR, they changed communication model from Peer-to-peer to client-server and then it all started. Why did they need all conversations to pass through their servers...? Something is hinted in the last paragraph of this article though: https://www.lifewire.com/skype-changes-from-p2p-3426522 https://www.lifewire.com/skype-changes-from-p2p-3426522
  - 9y ago

xoa 9y ago

This sort of thing represents one of the true dangers of single-source App Stores on general purpose computers with no side-loading fallback, and is why we should be proactively working to make it illegal. It's not that Apple is malicious per se, or even that they're particularly slow at reviews or whatever (though that has been the case at times too), but the mere fact that they represent a single, easy to pressure choke point. Apple themselves have reacted to this appropriately when it comes to the hardware by removing more and more of their own ability to affect it once it's been sold and giving that power to the owners instead. That's not just a positive for owners' privacy and security (and in turn a selling point), it also reduces Apple's exposure and liability. If they don't hold a given set of data or power in the first place, then nobody can go after them for it. Unfortunately on the software side they have not sought any of the better tradeoffs available between security and vetting vs owner power and decentralization, and in turn find themselves in the crosshairs for every single app. Not even just from governments though they're most coercive, but from any public cultural/religious interest group at all. Since Apple has to approve everything, Apple is also seen (correctly) as directly responsible for everything on the App Store. The result has been exactly as you'd expect: they're more conservative on average about what sort of content they'll allow, not merely about objective issues like security. Perhaps negative PR from actions like this might be sufficient eventually to get Apple to change course on their own. They wouldn't actually need to do very much, even selling a one-time permanent single device signing cert might be sufficient [1], and could form the basis of alternate App Stores even. But if Apple (and others) won't move it should be legislated. Improving wearable displays will ultimately mean the merger of "mobile" and "PC", that is the next disruptive evolution in computers. We should not allow that to become the end of bazaars for software too. ---- 1: Right now they have a free one, but it only lets apps run for 7 days, and the developer one is yearly and subscription based.

ma2rten 9y ago
The title clearly states that it disappeared from multiple app stores not just apple's. At least for Android China has multiple app stores not just Google Play.
ickwabe 9y ago
My take away from this is quite different. Or at least tangential. I expect Apple and any other company to have to comply with local laws in various countries. It's unavoidable. What else could they do? Refuse and loose access to that population? But right now, as regards device encryption and back doors, there is a sort of mutually assured destruction. A MAD that the US law enforcement (e.g. FBI et al) are constantly trying to undermine. Right now Apple claims the iPhone is designed such that they cannot unencrypt it. The FBI wants to force them to create a method. Regardless of the technique used that then will make every similar device world wide subject to the whims of local law as regards allow that country access. What would stop any country from then demanding blanket access to devices? But at the moment this doesn't seem happen because there's an unspoken detente among adversarial countries to not demand such back-doors. This situation reminds me of that. Since it is possible for Apple and others to block things on their app stores, countries demand it. It's a cautionary tale of why it's important for companies to design certain things from the bottom up to prevent bad behavior.

agentgt 9y ago

Honest question: Just curious on how China explain this to its citizens? Or do they not even explain it and just do it. Is it similar to USA where we say its to catch the "bad guys". I guess they could argue they are "protecting" their citizens by perhaps lowering the security attack surface.

kevin_b_er 9y ago
Lián. Truths about things like corruption must be suppressed, because they don't look good. Thus allowing people to talk about such things is bad.
- agentgt 9y ago
  That is what they say (the government) or is that what is implied (by the government) or is that what you inferred?
goldenkey 9y ago
Another HNer said that it has been missing from China for a while now, redirected to something called "Tom's Skype." I'm not wholly surprised considering that even the official Google Play Store is banned.
- PakG1 9y ago
  That's just their local official distributor. It's been that way for a long time. http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/1353906/microsofts-skype-run-under-new-joint-venture-china http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/1353906/micro...
PakG1 9y ago
Who says there are explanations? It's basically an accepted and unavoidable fact of life that you can't access certain foreign Internet services at times. It is what it is.
- agentgt 9y ago

goldenkey 9y ago

Well, Skype has vigorous anti-debugging measures to keep most of its unwarranted behavior under wraps. And when MS bought Skype, it was taken down for a significant time, thought to be when the NSA [etPhoneHome] method calls were added. It's all just conjecture though... But I'd stick with other voip/telcos. I really can't blame China for not wanting their people subject to what is pretty obvious US spying.

PuffinBlue 9y ago
Wasn't it taken down to be rearchitected (spelling?) to a "superhub" peer to peer setup? Kind of a half way house between fully 'cloud' (centralised) like it is now and fully peer to peer like it was before MS bought it? I guess that doesn't preclude it becoming part of PRISM and I might be misremembering the details too.
- goldenkey 9y ago
  Something like that. But reverse engineers (who I trust) after busting through all the anti-debugger protection, and looking at the protocol, seemed to be of the opinion that the app was way too reliant on Skype's servers and way too obfuscated for just IP protection alone. Better open source than sorry. Skype is not to be trusted. At least most EXEs you can debug but Skype has literally wiretrapped and packed the crap out of their exe for unworthy reasons. Stallman would consider it untrustworthy computing, let alone the networking part.

commenter1 9y ago

Western countries should put up same kind of laws just for Chinese companies.

mattnewton 9y ago
No need yet, they usually can’t compete with incumbents. And as a US consumer I am fine with keeping local companies in competition with foreign ones because it usually means I just get more options.
- colejohnson66 9y ago
  Do cheap $5 USB power supplies count as competition?

afrophysics1 9y ago

I'd like to see a P2P app store on the same kind of system as cryptocurrency. Like torrents meets P2P consensus for file verification, with weights for trusted sources.

niksmac 9y ago
I have actually thought of this a while ago and decided not to proceed because of - file storage - verify app developers - prevent cracked apps. If you can justify all these questions, id like to work on the same idea further.
- slimshady94 9y ago
  File storage - Sia Verification - Civic/KYC solutions? Prevent cracked apps - some game theory/staking mechanism that makes you lose if you don't play the official version
dilippkumar 9y ago
Take a look at this: https://tox.chat/ https://tox.chat/
- libertyEQ 9y ago
  You are replying to a comment about a distributed repository of software based on some sort of blockchain, while you are linking to a P2P messaging protocol. Not that isn't relevant to discussions about Skype, but it is irrelevant to SW repositories of the parent comment.

aapjesverkoper 9y ago

Seems like The New York Times has invented a new annoying method of mouse hijacking. When click selecting the text while reading I am `swiping` to the next article on desktop. And double click increases font size?

smeyer 9y ago
I'd never encountered this before, but it looks like it's been around for a while: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=554644 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=554644 .
- Tempest1981 9y ago
  From that page: This is a site "feature": the page cycles through font-sizes 17px->20px->26px on each double-click or tap.

rd108 9y ago

When companies centralized and controlled app downloads, they did it primarily to make more money. Now their greed ends in the loss of real human rights. When America was founded, the fourth pillar of government was the free press, i.e. the gatekeepers of information. Today, capitalism and naked avarice have broken the back of this key democratic institution, and the effects on society in the U.S. and abroad will be continue to ripple for years to come. It's like Obama was fond of reminding tech CEO's when they'd start pontificating on leadership... “Government will never run the way Silicon Valley runs because, by definition, democracy is messy. This is a big, diverse country with a lot of interests and a lot of disparate points of view. And part of government’s job, by the way, is dealing with problems that nobody else wants to deal with. “Sometimes I talk to CEOs, they come in and they start telling me about leadership, and here’s how we do things. And I say, well, if all I was doing was making a widget or producing an app, and I didn’t have to worry about whether poor people could afford the widget, or I didn’t have to worry about whether the app had some unintended consequences … then I think those suggestions are terrific."

conanbatt 9y ago
> Today, capitalism and naked avarice have broken the back of this key democratic institution, and the effects on society in the U.S. and abroad will be continue to ripple for years to come. How do you interpret that China, a pseudo-capitalist country, bans skype and its because of the greed and avarice of private capital. This is textbook china. It was before and there is no reason it won't be this way for decades to come.
- Mindwipe 9y ago
  Because if iOS didn't prohibit installation of apps from anywhere but it's app store then this would be much less problematic. But Apple does, because it decided at the start of the platform that being able to take a 30% cut and defend it's own weak services applications from competition was worth more than the inevitable human rights problems a closed app platform presents.
  - stanmancan 9y ago

codezero 9y ago

Do VPNs work to get around regional app restrictions like they do for GFW and streaming?

0xJRS 9y ago
Possibly, but you'd also have to be a VPN to use it as well.
tcas 9y ago
Nope. You can login with a different region's iTunes account (e.g. with a US address) however and download it without a VPN. You need a billing address/CC/PayPal in that region though, so you can't just simply register a new account and access it without basic validation.
- Canada 9y ago
  That has started failing with iPhone. Now you need that and you need need a VPN. I haven't looked into why yet. Outside of China you can just choose US as your region and it's fine.
Canada 9y ago
Yes

shadowtree 9y ago

Impacts all vendors that provide telephony solutions, not just Skype. Nothing to do with Apple as some here in the comments are suggesting. China requires any software vendor that provides telephony to sell its software through a Chinese telco-licensed company. Pure VoiP is fine. The moment you offer dial-in / call me as Skype, WebEx, G2M, Zoom do, you're toast. This is China walling off their market a bit more, making it far easier for their own telcos to compete.

stevespang 9y ago

When is Hacker News going to STOP allowing posting of NY times articles which are all hidden behind a paywall ? Most Hacker News readers are never going to subscribe, so why allow them to be posted ?

squarefoot 9y ago

I wonder what is their attitude to other communication software and protocols, especially FOSS ones. Skype by its closed nature could contain all sorts of CIA/NSA spying routines, but what about Ekiga for example? Open Source software would hardly justify any national security concerns except those implied by letting common people freely communicate.

tonyztan 9y ago
> "except those implied by letting common people freely communicate." This is the key. They don't want people freely communicating without interception capabilities.

ksk 9y ago

Is there any article explaining the Chinese point of view? I'd like to know what they're hoping to accomplish by banning apps.

alexbeloi 9y ago
Two public reasons that are commonly given * controlling data about Chinese citizens from going outside of Chinese control (e.g. onto international/US servers where it can be subpeona'd by the foreign government host) * protecting local industries from foreign competition
- ksk 9y ago
  Thanks ! Do you have any link where I can read this?

usaar333 9y ago

Interestingly, Skype is still functioning fine. In case it goes, does anyone know a good alternative to connect from the US to China that didn't require VPN usage in China? I've found wechat's call quality awful.