34 ms·

Hong Kong protest safety app banned from iOS store

841 points by ycombonator 7y ago

deogeo 7y ago
The inevitable result of letting the manufacturer control what may run on the device.
- rsj_hn 7y ago
  Agreed. However, Android has removed Gab and other free speech apps from it's appstore, too. Although you can circumvent android easier than iOS. This is a tough call -- security versus freedom, and I don't know what the right trade off is. I'd still counsel my parents to use Apple.
  - derrick_jensen 7y ago
    100% freedom, all the time "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin I'm not sure about iOS, but Android still allows installing unsigned APKs (F-Droid and similar platforms work because of this), and what has already been installed stays on the phone until the user removes it.
    - Shank 7y ago
      You kind of can compile and run anything you want, but by default free developer accounts can only run 3 apps for 7 days until they expire. Tools like Cydia Impactor exist for this purpose.
    - bilbo0s 7y ago
      "I'm not sure about iOS, but Android still allows installing [unsigned APKs likely hacked with spyware integrated courtesy of the Chinese government]" The kind of "freedom" you're talking about generally has a high cost. At times, that cost is, well, "freedom". Frustrating actually. There is no platform out there that delivers on the promise of getting you security and freedom. Certainly none that get you privacy. Right now it's all marketing and fanboys, but where the rubber meets the road, there's just no grip.
      - derrick_jensen 7y ago
        An untrusted APK is just an APK that isn't signed by Google. They can still be signed by third parties and verified to be correct. It's a shame that more open source platforms haven't taken off, but I'm not too surprised. I don't understand what you mean by the first sentence. Can you be more specific when you say freedom?
    - Craighead 7y ago
      Everytime this quote gets brought up Benny rolls in his grave. The rights are self evident that we make laws that govern ourselves. Get over yourself.
      - dang 7y ago
        Personal attacks will get you banned here, and you've unfortunately done this before as well (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21034818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21034818). Please edit such swipes out of the comments you post to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - cortesoft 7y ago
      100% freedom is an absolutely banal phrase. What does it even mean? I am pretty sure that you don't mean someone is 100% free to murder someone else. So you clearly believe in some restrictions. I can already imagine the counter argument: "Well, 100% freedom unless your freedom infringes on someone else's freedom!" Ok, but what does it mean to infringe on someone else's freedom? Murder is the easy case; what about polluting a river? I think we would all agree dumping enough chemicals to kill all life in a river would be infringing on other's freedoms, so lets prevent that... but where do you draw the line? It will take judgement, consensus, and compromise to find out where that line is. So suddenly we are back to needing rules around curtailing freedoms that some people aren't going to like.
      - derrick_jensen 7y ago
        I agree that 100% freedom was pretty hyperbole. AnCap + the NAP is probably a better comparison (but still lacks some nuance). In the case of user privacy, I'm against any backdoors or outlawing of encryption (pretty much any government intervention in the messaging space)
    - dotancohen 7y ago
      The corollary to this quote is that there are people who do not deserve Liberty. Or Safety.
    - song 7y ago
      See, that's a dilemma I grappling with right now. I am trying to decide between an iphone and an android phone. And while android does allow me to install any APKs I want which is great. It also seems to be supremely difficult not to share all of my contacts with google, not to share more information than I want with them and to not have my privacy completely invaded. So, on one hand, android gives me freedom to install any app I want and to install a firewall like netguard, on the other hand, it destroys my privacy. I'm really looking for a guide about how to properly secure and prevent data leaking an android phone beyond the basics that I've seen online but without that I'm leaning toward Apple despite finding it abhorrent that I cannot install what I want on my own device (I can obviously side load by using my dev certificate but that's still not something I'm happy with)
      - lern_too_spel 7y ago
        > not to share all of my contacts with google You can do this even using the Google Contacts app. Just go into the account settings and turn off contacts sync. To be extra sure, just use a different contacts app. > not have my privacy completely invaded. Android has strictly less privacy invasion than iOS, even on Google phones. You can set an offline maps app to be your default. Getting your GPS location doesn't have to send it to Google, while doing the same thing on iOS always sends it to Apple, no matter which app asked. You can install your own apps usably without telling Google who you are.
      - xurias 7y ago
        The only feasible way to avoid sharing data with Google is using a custom ROM like LineageOS, a Google framework replacement like microG, and XPrivacyLua (module for XPosed). Ideally you'd avoid using any Google services at all, but at least these steps largely prevent Google from freely taking whatever data they want if you do use the Play Store or whatever.
        song 7y ago
        Problem with that is that unlocking the bootloader voids the warranty where I live... I think I'll still try to go down that road if I can't find any other solution...
  - echelon 7y ago
    > security versus freedom With the app store you're still vulnerable to state actors and zero day vulns. And on Android you're vulnerable to permissions scope creep. The app stores contain malware. You're never truly safe. You can't point to the old days of Windows in the 90s and early 2000s as a case for app stores, either. Installers and downloaded executables were great, but Windows had a broken, unsandboxed model that made it easy to break. History would have played out much better if Windows itself weren't so permissible and was more hermetic back then. If we invested the same billions of research and development dollars that Apple and Google did into their walled garden platforms, an open web with truly cross platform native wasm apps would work just as well or better than anything on the app stores, and it'd be just as "secure". And cross platform. And couldn't be shut down by Apple, Google, or an angry government. Imagine going to Netflix.com and getting the native app experience. On any mobile device. Windows Phone. Ubuntu Phone. That's how it should have worked. Walled gardens must die.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      I guess that is why everyone just uses Chrome nowadays. /s
      - echelon 7y ago
        Google searches used to present Chrome as an app you should download. Google leveraged its market dominance to get people to download their desktop browser. And on Android it's the default you can't uninstall.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - Razengan 7y ago
      > Walled gardens must die. No. As a user, I am grateful for "walled gardens" like the App Store, Steam, etc. Because I remember the chaos that was before them, with developers/publishers preying on users all the time, which they still try to do by working around App Store restrictions and so on. I'm grateful for curated marketplaces putting the foot down on them.
  - on_and_off 7y ago
    You don't have to circumvent anything and that's the crux of it. Android lets you install applications without having to jailbreak your phone or do any other trickery. This should be a prerequisite for any OS (with all the necessary warnings).
    - innagadadavida 7y ago
      There are at least two ways to install apps outside of the App Store: https://www.iotransfer.net/tips/how-to-download-apps-without-app-store-865.php https://www.iotransfer.net/tips/how-to-download-apps-without... In addition you could use TestFlight or HockeyApp to distribute to limited beta testers. HN is a technical forum, proselytizing based on your software freedom beliefs by selectively using facts is very disingenuous. Android works for you, that is great - other people actually have “freedom” to ignore your definition of freedom and do what they want.
      - lern_too_spel 7y ago
        Your solution is to use an enterprise certificate from Anokiiwin Employment Solutions Inc or NANJING SCIYON SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD. Both will certainly get revoked soon. HN is a technical forum, so we understand why your solution doesn't actually work.
        innagadadavida 7y ago
        That’s really funny, trusting my entire data, location, photos all to Google is certainly a big concern for me. I’d rather install that Chinese certificate than give my data to Google. Also, it’s entirely within Googles powers to make Android store closed like the App Store, so can we not speculate on future events? Edit: reworded my comment
        thekyle 7y ago
        Please don't use these types of irrelevant personal attacks on HN. /u/lern_to_spel has a very good point that your mentioned alternatives will likely be shut down by Apple and are not officially supported. If you are going to argue, do it against the most generous interpretation of someone else's words.
  - radley 7y ago
    > Android has removed Gab and other free speech apps from it's appstore, too Gab was removed for hate speech, not free speech.
    - romaaeterna 7y ago
      What a hateful comment about Gab users! Surely we don't need to muzzle you? Edit: (And what hateful downvotes!)
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - fennecfoxen 7y ago
      You say that as if a meaningful, non-political distinction can ever be made between "hate speech" and "free speech".
      - zapita 7y ago
        Do you consider the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be political? If so: you are equipped with the necessary building blocks to define hate speech in a non-political way. If not: your definition of “political” is so broad as to be meaningless.
        voldacar 7y ago
        >Do you consider the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be political? Well yes tbh. The fact that a certain group of people in power at a certain point in history made a "universal declaration" about something says very little about whether I or anyone else should care about it or agree with it. In other words it is the epitome of political. I am happy to make up my own mind on the nature of "human rights".
        rndgermandude 7y ago
        It is clearly political, and not so universal either by the way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Declaration_on_Human_Rights_in_Islam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Declaration_on_Human_Rig...
  - kyriakos 7y ago
    Android has multiple stores though and even if none of them carry the app you can still side load it.
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    Let's not whitewash Gab, which was created specifically to be a white supremacist social network under the veneer of free speech. We can argue whether or not Google should have removed it from the Play Store, but let's be honest about what it is.
    - el_dev_hell 7y ago
      I signed up for Gab about 1.5 years ago. It pegged itself as a "free speech platform", which I found pretty interesting. The concept of a wild west free speech utopia sounds great (and I would still like to see that), but it's filled with repetitive white nationalist bullshit. That's the early adopter group. Because of that early group, it's a horrible experience for anyone else.
      - jakelazaroff 7y ago
        It's not just their early adopter group; Gab has actively cultivated a white nationalist userbase. See for example https://twitter.com/ClenchedFisk/status/1027690034718224384 https://twitter.com/ClenchedFisk/status/1027690034718224384 I am skeptical of the "wild west free speech utopia" as a lot of people seem to conceive of it, because some forms of speech have chilling effects on others. For example, if I pass a group of angry people chanting "blood and soil", I'm certainly not going to say or do anything that makes me legible as Jewish.
      - wallace_f 7y ago
        Which is sad. Because if everyone tolerates abuse, whether from governments or corporations, we get creeping authoritarianism. Also, I think you bith are exaggerating a bit about Gabhere is obviously a lot of alt right though.
      - SkyBelow 7y ago
        Any early adopter of a technology promising freedom will be the groups who need it the most, which tends to be the groups who are most at odds with current social norms. Just look at who the early adopters are for tor or bitcoin.
    - 7y ago
  - enraged_camel 7y ago
    >>However, Android has removed Gab and other free speech apps Gab is not a "free speech app". In fact, the term "free speech app" is itself laughable.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
    > security versus freedom, and I don't know what the right trade off is That is not a trade off at all, if you believe that you have already fallen for the propaganda. Security in and of itself has no value that you could trade off against freedom, only the freedom part of that pair is valuable. Security is a means to the end of freedom: You may need a certain kind and/or amount of security to gain and maintain freedom. But security is also a means to authoritarianism if you do it wrong. Which means: Security is only valuable in so far as it causes a net increase in freedom. If you are actually giving up freedom to make space for more security, that is, you are trading off freedom against security, you have failed.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- fouc 7y ago
  Removing the app from the app store doesn't actually stop the app from running on the device?
  - slimsag 7y ago
    "The poor can put whatever they want in their refrigerators - we don't control that. We just control the food they can buy in stores."
- millstone 7y ago
  What prevents a website from offering the same service? Honest question.
  - another-one-off 7y ago
    Guessing: Got to have a system that is resistant to single points of failure and where the costs of knocking out a communication node is high relative to the benefits the government gets. A website is quite centralised.
  - swiley 7y ago
    At least on the iPhone websites can’t do peer to peer or notifications.
- djmetzle 7y ago
  :point_up: That.
Zhenya 7y ago
Any word if this app is available on the playstore/fdroid in Android form?
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=live.hkmap.app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=live.hkmap.app It's not on F-Droid, but it has a perfectly usable webapp. https://hkmap.live/ https://hkmap.live/
maximente 7y ago
disappointing, but this was obviously going to happen. there was also precedent as i believe chinese gov has hooks into iMessage, so anyone thinking they were going to do the "right" think was not thinking rationally.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > there was also precedent as i believe chinese gov has hooks into iMessage iMessage is end-to-end encrypted.
  - maximente 7y ago
    sure, but the encryption keys live in china, so it's naive to think that the chinese government doesn't have access to them. that means they can read the data on any chinese user's account.
    - xvector 7y ago
      Isn't this only if you have iCloud backup enabled for iMessage? I remember I had to explicitly enable that. Otherwise the keys are stored in the enclave on your phone. Makes it a bit harder for the government - they have to use a zero-day to get your messages at that point.
dingo_bat 7y ago
Apple can only stand up to the US government when it comes to privacy and security. They will refuse to unlock a terrorist's iphone when FBI requests it. They can do this because of the fundamental liberty everybody is granted in the US to everybody. The real test of character is how a company reacts to an authoritarian regime like China. That's what reveals the true nature. And Apple has completely shit the bed in this regard. Google has handled it so much more beautifully.
- millstone 7y ago
  Is Google helping the Hong Kong protests? Honest question.
  - guramarx11 7y ago
    No direct help...besides banning Huawei user, removal of fake news bots and pro-china propaganda on its platform
- sjg007 7y ago
  If Apple says no then there’s no iPhone 12. iPhone 13 is ideally manufactured in the us.
choiway 7y ago
Wondering if Steve Jobs would have pulled the plug.
- Jagat 7y ago
  He totally would have. In the early days of iPhone, he had a strong contempt for the idea of an app store since it would allow anyone to publish any app and he didn't want anyone other than Apple doing that. Making it a walled garden was his idea.
  - choiway 7y ago
    Fair point. It's just sad that reality doesn't live up to the marketing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I
    - gamcdono 7y ago
      You must be sad.. a lot
basicplus2 7y ago
Free people now know that its time to leave apple
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  And go where exactly? Self compiled Android without Google services? Welcome to the world. It's a messy place of conflicting values.
  - antoinevg 7y ago
    Self-compiled Android without Google services is not a bad place to start. That said, these single-vendor proprietary mobile platforms are all dumpster fires so it may be time to start developing a free software alternative.
    - npo9 7y ago
      We need free hardware before we can build free software. No one produces an LTE modem with open source firmware.
      - antoinevg 7y ago
        You absolutely do not need free hardware to build free software. It was decades before the PC's we used to build FreeBSD, GNU, Linux etc. had even a free software BIOS available. Historically, free hardware availability has followed in the wake of free software.
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    The world isn't the way it is inexorably, nor do we (especially highly technical people in a technical discussion venue) lack the power to change it. Whats genuinely harmful is shoulder shrugging "not my problem" attitudes.
  - lern_too_spel 7y ago
    No need to self compile. Use a normal Android phone, even one from Google. If you don't want to use Google services, don't log into a Google account.
userbinator 7y ago
This shouldn't come as a surprise, since Apple is well known for being authoritarian with its platforms. It just so happens that most of the time its values align with those of the users, which is why it's so popular.
aaomidi 7y ago
This type of stuff is why Warren wants to break up tech. It should NOT be up to apple to decide stuff like this.
- faster 7y ago
  Who should decide?
  - protomyth 7y ago
    The owner of the phone. Lack of side loading is the problem.
    - on_and_off 7y ago
      this. side-loading ... the term itself is ridiculous. You cannot just load an app on your phone unless Apple approves it.
      - brian-armstrong 7y ago
        It's actually a historical term - it came about from loading apps on the Nokia Ngage ("side-talking")
        hug 7y ago
        It sure didn't. Sideloading came about as content was generally downloaded elsewhere and then pushed onto a device over a local connection -- i.e. sideways. It's a lot older than the N-Gage.
  - antoinevg 7y ago
    No one should get to decide is the point. You may be a bit young to remember this but it was once possible to install any software on hardware you owned without permission from the manufacturer.
    - 7y ago
jhanschoo 7y ago
> Tim Cook Buckled Under Chinese Pressure Mods: title is misleading. The article explicitly says that they don't know if there was Chinese pressure to remove the app. Edit: title is now fixed.
- antoinevg 7y ago
  If Apple banned it _without_ Chinese pressure it would be even worse!
  - alsetmusic 7y ago
    Who says Tim Cook knee of it before it hit the news?
    - busymom0 7y ago
      I remember reading a while back that when an app gets taken down, those decisions are made by people very higher up at Apple and not low level employees/reviewers. I really doubt Tim Cook doesn't know about such a huge deal.
      - aptwebapps 7y ago
        Maybe for some category of apps. I can't believe that's the general case - there are too many to bother the higher-ups with.
      - radmarshallb 7y ago
        The app was not taken down. It never made it through the initial review process to get to the store in the first place.
- rorykoehler 7y ago
  Are we really stooping to this level of propaganda on HN? Enough already! There is no conceivable way the CCP didn't apply political pressure. That is not the world we live in.
chrisco255 7y ago
This should underscore the importance of a free and open web.
- Scarbutt 7y ago
  That's coming to an end too, the web will be google's "app/play store" someday.
  - busymom0 7y ago
    Google AMP project is a pretty big step by Google towards trying to control the entire web.
lawrenceyan 7y ago
Really hard to believe that Apple is the "privacy oriented company we can trust", that the company constantly touts in their advertising as a reason to buy their products mind you, when at the same time, you have news like this constantly coming out. If you really wanted me to believe that you were serious about this Apple, you would do what Google has done and completely remove yourself from China until issues of blatant censorship and oppression like these improve. Of course, this will never happen, because too much money comes from the revenue stream that Chinese citizens represent.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  I'm not sure about "constantly." The last big disappointment I can remember was the China/iCloud thing. The problem is that Tim Cook is a bean counter, not a technologist. He talks a good game in scripted keynotes, but he's really in it for the money, like most other CEOs. That said, Apple is the least of all available evils. When something better comes along, I'll leave. If that thing already exists, please let me know so I can begin the process.
  - monksy 7y ago
    > The problem is that Tim Cook is a bean counter, not a technologist. He talks a good game in scripted keynotes, but he's really in it for the money, like most other CEOs. When has the Apple CEO not done that? Apple is the king of marketing spin.
    - millstone 7y ago
      Accessibility comes to mind. Apple's investment in accessibility cannot be explained through bean counting.
      - rndgermandude 7y ago
        Can't it?[1] 3.2 million people visually impaired in 2015, 8.2 with vision problems, in the US alone, trend hard upwards. [1] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/visual-impairment-blindness-cases-us-expected-double-2050 https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/visual-impairm...
rdlecler1 7y ago
Companies are going to have to decide how important the Chinese market is or risk eroding the trust and good will for all of their other customers. You can’t stand on the boat of democracy and the boat of a dictatorship t the same time.
- esyir 7y ago
  Sure you can. I think you're going to find that most people will go "oh those poor people in HK", then promptly go back to ignoring them in their purchase decisions. I have exceedingly little faith in consumers to inconvenience themselves to benefit others.
  - remarkEon 7y ago
    This sentiment is absurd. I’m not going to let HK protests affect my spending. What, exactly, do you want me to do?
    - esyir 7y ago
      That was a response to the OP where: >Companies are going to have to decide how important the Chinese market is or risk eroding the trust and good will for all of their other customers. You can’t stand on the boat of democracy and the boat of a dictatorship at the same time. Emphasis on customers. Clearly, the customers have spoken on this, as well as any other atrocity that has happened in the past.
  - aaomidi 7y ago
    If only we had an entity that could direct cultural change....
- bww 7y ago
  You may recall that Google dramatically pulled out of the mainland Chinese market about 10 years ago on the basis of exactly these principles (at least ostensibly). That didn’t exactly last. And China is a much more important market now than it was then. I wouldn’t hold out too much hope for a bunch of gazillion dollar companies to decide to favor principles over revenue anytime soon.
sjg007 7y ago
Bad apple.
lacampbell 7y ago
Stuff like this is one of the main reasons I focused my efforts on web apps, not native ones. https://hkmap.live/# https://hkmap.live/# Looks like the devs were smart enough to make it a web app, so it can still be used.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
  To be fair, if your app submission is a glorified Web App (leveraging no native iOS features) Apple will reject for that reason alone [0]. "4.2 Minimum Functionality - Your app should include features, content, and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website." [0]: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#minimum-functionality https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#min...
  - thomasfedb 7y ago
    Are "website" and "web app" synonymous?
    - grandsui 7y ago
      To me a website can be a static webpage, but a web app's more dynamic
      - thomasfedb 7y ago
        Agreed, I would argue that web app implies function above a website.
  - kovek 7y ago
    Why is this comment being downvoted? It does contribute to the discussion.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 7y ago
remarkEon 7y ago
Does anyone know how much of Apple’s hardware is actually manufactured in China? I realize this is a complicated question, as some is assuredly assembled outside of China. But as a total percentage of the supply chain at a component level ... how much is Chinese? I’m going to wait for judgement on Apple’s actions here until I have more information.
- junipertea 7y ago
  What difference would it make? Apple and other companies follow the laws of countries they operate in, regardless of whether they produce there or not.
  - remarkEon 7y ago
    It makes a tremendous difference. If Apple can leverage some other aspect of their supply chain so that they can ignore any or some “requests” from the Chinese government ... that is a significant data point. If they can’t, well, that is also a significant data point about who has leverage over Apple.
sjg007 7y ago
Use Waze.
nipponese 7y ago
Was the advice qualitatively "good"? People are depending on the info in there to save their lives, and if bad advice lead to someone getting hurt, we would all surely put Apple on the hook.
- xvector 7y ago
  > and if bad advice lead to someone getting hurt, we would all surely put Apple on the hook No, you'd put the app dev on the hook. Validating the truth of all statements in every app is not Apple's job and never was.
mads 7y ago
Yeah, that was the last straw. No more Apple products for me. I hope they will enjoy all their rich Chinese customers.
emptybits 7y ago
> FTA: "Hong Kong citizens have highlighted a quirk of local laws that provide a strong counter-argument: under the law, the Hong Kong police are obliged to wave a blue flag at the spot in which they which to declare that an illegal gathering is taking place." So HK police are required to wave a blue flag so that the general public is aware the police have declared a particular gathering at a particular location illegal. Thus, HK law literally wants the location of the gathering made known, publicly drawing attention to it and the location. I assume this is to inform those gathering about their status and to let others nearby know also, as a warning, perhaps. And also nearby officers. Okay. So consider an app that shared only this publicly visible information on a map. i.e. "police have raised the blue flag on this gathering, right here", without commentary or calls to action. Less functional and informative than the existing app, but it may still serve a useful purpose for HK residents and demonstrators and perhaps even police (according to HK law) and then Apple may plausibly allow the app because it doesn't get into choosing sides or facilitating illegal calls to action.
- jMyles 7y ago
  Choosing sides and facilitating illegal calls to action is exactly what a reasonable company does in this situation. The matter of how best to serve humanity is not the slightest bit unclear here.
  - fwsgonzo 7y ago
    That's the highest horse I've seen so far on this site.
    - eru 7y ago
      It's pretty high. But far from the highest.
    - calibas 7y ago
      He expects a company to support basic human rights. That's not a "high horse", it's what everyone should expect already. We shouldn't be ridiculing people who demand companies support human rights. It's the apologists who should be marginalized.
WillPontificate 7y ago
Business strategy question. It seems like there will always be a conflict between the US view of censorship (bad!) and the reality of trying to operate in China's huge market (comply or be booted, basically).... Is that good cause to create a separate brand or subsidiary so the reputation damage of having to comply with this stuff (you know they got nudged) doesn't hit home on the US brand? Just seems like you're going to have a rough time if you're attempting to service both markets under the same brand...
- em3rgent0rdr 7y ago
  I wish American companies would focus on finding ways to bypass China's censorship rather than complying with it. When Google first acquiesced to China they made a mistake and set a bad precedent. They should have rather focused their China business on building search engine and tools that would work around China's firewall. I don't think there is an obligated to adhere to laws when those laws conflict with human rights.
  - WillPontificate 7y ago
    Morally, I agree with you. From a practical perspective, however, that would cede what little voice the American companies have in the process to the Chinese government who would replace them with local lapdogs controlled by political allies. The result would be software where censorship wasn't a bug, it is a feature...
    - rndgermandude 7y ago
      This already happened.
honkycat 7y ago
Of course Apple bitched out, what else have they ever done? Acting like a revolutionary, counter culture company is one thing. Actually sticking it's neck out and doing something important is something completely different. Part of the reason I can't stand apple. At least Microsoft acts like a lame computer company without sloughing on layers of pretentious BS.
- zuppy 7y ago
  so what would you have expected them to do, break the law? when they said no to the FBI they did it while respecting the law. should they just have quit the entire chinese market?
  - freeone3000 7y ago
    Yes.
  - icelancer 7y ago
    I would expect them to allow users to sideload applications easily so they can continue their protests in a form of mild malicious compliance. That's the least they owe their users.
  - curt15 7y ago
    The best test of any company's espoused "principles" is when it is forced to make inconvenient choices.
    - undersuit 7y ago
      Correct! Apple isn't surprised by the actions China took to get to this point. They've had their chances to stop, complain, and fight.
  - oh_sigh 7y ago
    In that case, apple shouldn't say that they care about user privacy. They should say they care about user privacy as much as the government where they happen to be operating does.
enriquto 7y ago
Apple is at fault here, not for moderating their store, but for disallowing people to install software of their own choice on their own devices. This is completely unacceptable as a user and I do not understand how apple users put up with this.
- OJFord 7y ago
  I agree with you, but 'users put up with this' because >99% just couldn't care less, Facebook and Snapchat are in the App Store, why do I need to install a different way?
- robocat 7y ago
  > disallowing people to install software of their own choice on their own devices. Yet allowing anything to be installed is the cesspit of Windows virus laden software. That said, I buy Android because I can side-load if I choose to.
  - ninjin 7y ago
    > Yet allowing anything to be installed is the cesspit of Windows virus laden software. Okay, I have seen this false choice enough times over several years and at this point it annoys me so much that I must speak up. No, Windows is (was? I have not used it for more than a decade) not the mess it is because it allows you to install anything. It is the mess it is because it there was no sensible source of approved software. The choice is not between anything goes and a walled garden, there is the middle ground of providing a solid source of approved software (frankly, I think Google has largely failed with this given the state of their Play store) and still allow side loading for cases such as the one mentioned in this very article. Heck, this was one of the amazing things I experienced when moving to Linux in 2005. You had 98% of your software approved and receiving updates through your OS, and then a game or two, oddball VPN, etc. installed in your home directory – it was endlessly refreshing.
    - Legogris 7y ago
      Even more, I blame non-existent sandboxing. Anything could practically be root for a long time. With proper permission control and isolated storage for apps, installing anything does not equal cesspit of virus-laden software.
_Understated_ 7y ago
Ok... this is giving me pause for thought. I programme .NET on Windows. Have done for years. Never owned an Apple device until I took my wife's old iPhone 6S at the start of the year. I switched from Android to Apple for a few reasons: 1. Constant spying and data-gathering for profit by Android 2. Ethics 3. I only use a handful of apps so the platform wasn't that important Apple's public stance is that they take privacy seriously. Like incredibly seriously. Above all things and stuff. And as another commenter pointed out, they told the FBI to go fish when they wanted access to a phone. That resonated with me. That told me they are a company that (appears to) genuinely believe in something other than just profit at all costs. That they may just have my interests fairly high up their agenda. This latest episode has made me rethink that. From the ground up. I understand they need to follow the law but so do the law enforcers: Have Apple been watching the footage from HK? I thought that Apple, with all the power they have, could perhaps say to the Chinese gov... "No, the app stays!" My faith in Apple has been shattered. As an aside... Apart from Librem, there isn't really any choice now. I feel like a dad here... I'm disappointed in Apple.
- 2muchcoffeeman 7y ago
  https://www.fairphone.com/en/ https://www.fairphone.com/en/ Vote with your wallet.
  - _Understated_ 7y ago
    I hadn't heard of this before but it appears to still run Android :(
    - 2muchcoffeeman 7y ago
      They support the use of alternative OSes. They may also bring back a version of their OS without the G-Apps.
- scoutt 7y ago
  > 2. Ethics The ethic ends where the money-loss (or missing profit) begins. I don't understand why so many people are surprised when Apple (or whatever) pulls something like this. I don't mean to be rude (I don't know you, where you're from, what's your age), but I though at this point in life people would be already aware that ethics doesn't fit very much into corporatism culture. In simple words, they will (at very least) plainly lie to you in order to make you buy their products. Every one of them. Or have you ever heard a company saying "Yes, our product is inferior to the competition", "Yes, we will sell your data", "Yes, if avoiding it gives us much problem, we will side with higher powers against you" or "Yes, we're burning forests to give you cheaper burgers"? They'll picture them as nice and responsible, but at the end of the day what matter most is dollars. They'll never lose.
siruncledrew 7y ago
It's all marketing. Apple is a company not a country. If Apple ups the ante on China, then China comes down and bans the App Store or tariffs Apple devices a ton as retribution - resulting in Apple getting itself into a similar situation Huawei is in with the US. If (this is all hypothetical, btw) that were to happen with Apple, then I would wager Xiaomi or Huawei would only see more investment to become the "Apple of China" and further develop a replica in-house app store.
- im3w1l 7y ago
  Apple put themselves in a position where they had the power to clamp down. Obviously they will then be forced to use this power. By western governments, by outrage mobs, by China. By their own choices and strategy of centralizing power they decided to become a fascist enabler.
  - mattnewton 7y ago
    I honestly think you are vastly overestimating the power a foreign company is capable of having in China. Any provocation would probably quickly end up in iPhones simply not getting any service in the country anymore and being banned from sale with no legal recourse.
    - polynomial 7y ago
      I think GP is saying the opposite, namely that they set themselves up to be an enabler of state control, with their centralised gatekeeping model.
deepGem 7y ago
Imagine this happening under Jobs, probably never. I truly miss Steve's leadership at Apple. The one guy who would've showed his middle finger to the communist regime.
- rkop 7y ago
  Are you kidding?
lilyball 7y ago
This article, and all the response here on HN, is really quite baffling to me. Apple complies with local laws. If the local government says the app violates their laws, Apple doesn't have a whole lot of choice here; either pull the app, or be in violation of the law. AFAIK all the app stores do the same thing.
- mda 7y ago
  Then maybe they should not portray themselves as the white knight of privacy. I am absolutely disgusted by their hypocrisy.
- mattigames 7y ago
  Maybe soon a local law in China will say everyone needs to report where all homosexuals live because they need to be executed, and then Apple will send that exact info to the police (e.g. anyone with grindr installed) and then you will say "Oh what? they are just folling the law". Yeah we know they are just following the law, still doesn't mean we shouldn't give them bad press and opinions about it.
  - weiming 7y ago
    Plot twist: As of 2018, Grindr is literally owned by a Chinese holding company, Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Ltd. It looks like they were asked by US regulators to sell it off due to privacy concerns: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-grindr-m-a-beijingkunlun/chinas-kunlun-tech-agrees-to-u-s-demand-to-sell-grindr-gay-dating-app-idUSKCN1SJ28N https://www.reuters.com/article/us-grindr-m-a-beijingkunlun/...
  - lilyball 7y ago
    Slippery slope is not a valid fallacy.
    - mattigames 7y ago
      Is not a slippery slope (because I'm not saying it will happen, I'm just amplifying the core of your opinion), is just an example with a different law; that btw exists in other countries such as Nigeria, just be honest and say you agree more with this one law than the one in the example.
dTal 7y ago
This isn't about Apple. This is the true face of the techno-feudalism future we've built. Throw your lot in with one of the tech giants, and you'll have fashionable and functional technology - but at the cost of freedom. When push comes to shove - when it matters the most - your rights can and will be revoked. Don't be a serf. Reject techno-feudalism. Use free software.
- kaolti 7y ago
  I mean, hard to disagree even if I wanted to. Seems to me that free software community is lacking UI/UX Designers and so looks and feels considerably less "cool" than commercial counterparts. What do you think?
  - dTal 7y ago
    I think free software has caught up on the prettiness score. KDE Plasma 5 looks pretty slick. Graphic designers might niggle at aspects of it, but the layperson won't care. However, human factors is undervalued. There's a cultural issue in free software wherein good UI is rejected as being for sissies and not worth the effort. Hacking is a social activity, and hackers naturally like to make stuff for other hackers. Hackers tend to be the kind of person who has a lot of patience for tedious bullshit, or they would have thrown up their hands in despair long before becoming a hacker. And so you often hear people defend poor UI with talk of "investing in tools" and "if <UI annoyance> is enough to stop you, you don't have the patience for <activity> anyway". Which is possibly true! But it's a gatekeeping self-fulfilling prophecy. The trouble is, by the time you're expert enough to write software, you've long since forgotten what good UI even looks like: "I liken starting one's computing career with Unix, say as a undergraduate, to being born in East Africa. It is intolerably hot, your body is covered with lice and flies, you are malnourished and you suffer from numerous curable diseases. But, as far as young East Africans can tell, this is simply the natural condition and they live within it. By the time they find out differently, it is too late. They already think that the writing of shell scripts is a natural act." — Ken Pier, Xerox PARC
    - kaolti 7y ago
thinkingemote 7y ago
Just to give some clarification: The app is banned from being on the Apple App Store but it never actually made it to the App Store and so was not actually removed from users. Users couldn't have used it before. Their application has been rejected (a few times it appears?). The latest rejection carried that notice https://twitter.com/hkmaplive/status/1179618848644812800 https://twitter.com/hkmaplive/status/1179618848644812800
- xvector 7y ago
  Wow, can't believe this essential piece of information is so far down. How does one get in contact with the HN moderators to get bad titles fixed?
Golfkid2Gadfly 7y ago
Remember the Snowden leaks where he showed that Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc... all the giant tech companies gave FIVE TIMES the amount of data requested by the US government ( Apple included ) in hopes of garnering lucrative government contracts by showing their compliance. It wasn't until after this that Apple took up their pro user privacy stance.
nova22033 7y ago
>“Your app contains content - or facilitates, enables, and encourages an activity - that is not legal ... specifically, the app allowed users to evade law enforcement," Wait...doesn't Waze do this too?
- Kneecaps07 7y ago
  Technically, so can iMessage, so they should ban that too.
- unethical_ban 7y ago
  That was my first thought. It is an app with a killer feature of giving drivers notifications about law enforcement presence.
ekianjo 7y ago
Think Different, Think like China I guess? At least their 1984 commercial was cool, too bad they don't grasp what it meant anymore.
marmada 7y ago
I think people/Apple defenders are creating a false dichotomy between "regulated app store" and allowing people to install their own software. Apple could still have a regulated app store to protect the masses (who will never venture outside of the app store), but still allow users to install their own software if they really need it. At least no one can deny that the inability to prevent users from loading their own software causes a lack of freedom. If someone wants to accept authoritarianism in the name of making it harder for clueless people to install malware then that's a trade-off they can make, but they shouldn't pretend to be pro-freedom/pro-user/pro-privacy.
decoyworker 7y ago
Apple should allow app sideloading.
tibbon 7y ago
Think Different* *but not so differently that it challenges an authoritarian government who is scared by ideas
ausjke 7y ago
i am glad i have never used any products from apple,and will keep using unix and android for the future
secfirstmd 7y ago
For what it's worth, so far Umbrella app hasn't had any problems in HK.
- tptacek 7y ago
  Because nobody cares about Umbrella app. https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1169323269297717248 https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1169323269297717248
  - secfirstmd 7y ago
    Thanks. Have you used it? You seem to have lots of comments about it based on here-say but I'm curious have you used it yourself?
    - tptacek 7y ago
      Is any part of what Zeynep said here inaccurate?
      - secfirstmd 7y ago
        Yes, there is in various parts. I'm curious, have you actually used Umbrella?
        tptacek 7y ago
        Could you be more specific? Zeynep Tufekci has actually been out in Hong Kong talking with and reporting on the protesters and their tactics, which your organization --- in her telling --- got comically wrong. Where is she mistaken?
        secfirstmd 7y ago
        There are many points which I have spoken about in multiple places. On the things she legitimately pointed out that I got wrong I put my hands up (like the flag things), admitted were incorrect and quickly changed. A number of other things she said were partly/entirely incorrect, did not apply to us or could not be refuted in a public forum without admitting to previous experiences or potentially endangering people we work with in HK or elsewhere. If you want more detail my email is in my bio and I am always happy to speak with people who are doing their best to help people at risk. Hence I am not being cynical, I actually am curious about whether you have used Umbrella? You talk as if you have so I am curious to know what we could do better...
judah 7y ago
This is yet another reason proprietary app stores should be supplemented, if not replaced altogether, by the open web and progressive web apps. Having a central authority that dictates what software you can and can't use is bad for user freedom.
TimTheTinker 7y ago
When there is a great evil power in the world, it is impossible not to take a political stance, given the moral duties involved. Inaction, or failing to take a stand, constitutes tacit approval. In this case, Apple granting what I assume was a request from the Chinese government to remove the app is more than tacit. The human rights abuses by the Chinese government are insanely bad: religious and ethnic persecution, forced abortions, murder of political dissidents, no habeas corpus for many, abuse of prisoners (torture, forced labor camps, harvesting and selling prisoners’ organs), to name a few. Unfortunately, too many in the West, including Apple, have become heavily economically dependent on China. I think that dependence strongly clouds moral judgment when it comes to decisions like this. Furthermore, it requires far more moral courage to call out evil in the present than it does to identify evil in the past. To Apple and everyone else: don’t become complicit! Take a stand. History will vindicate you.
- mikelyons 7y ago
  It seems to a mostly-lay-person that we have super-military and super-propaganda these days, what can individuals do? Even in groups of 100,000 they're no match for modern methods of control it seems. Am I looking at this incorrectly?
ISL 7y ago
Think Different. https://youtu.be/RSyy2-Z2m-U https://youtu.be/RSyy2-Z2m-U
moggie2 7y ago
Remind me of the original Napster - which is only providing the channel for users to share music but not providing the music by itself.
calimac 7y ago
China exerting pressure on Cookie’s supply chain. That’s how the cookie crumbles #WishJobsWasGeneral
exabrial 7y ago
Nice form Apple.
smsm42 7y ago
That's what you get when you use walled garden system. One huge single point of failure. Which always can be efficiently attacked by a resourceful adversary. I get the use case where you need apps "just work" and don't step one step out of the walled garden. HK use case is obviously not that - they should not be using any Apple mobile technology, it's all one huge single point of failure.
yccheok 7y ago
Careful Apple. Those faceless rioters will come to break your Apple store glass. Maybe time to upgrade them to bullet proof glass?
uberduper 7y ago
It's worth noting that anyone can side-load apps on their iPhone or appletv using a free apple developer account and Xcode. It's annoying to have to re-do it every 7 days, but it is an option.
21717117 7y ago
Lots of doom and gloom in here, the app has been approved according to their Twitter though... https://twitter.com/hkmaplive/status/1180140453024239617?s=20 https://twitter.com/hkmaplive/status/1180140453024239617?s=2...
tempodox 7y ago
Next startup: Build an ML model and let it feed on Chinese anti-insurrection laws and Apple app review guidelines. Then, let the ML model generate apps that comply. Should be an instant smash hit.

841 points by ycombonator 7y ago

deogeo 7y ago

The inevitable result of letting the manufacturer control what may run on the device.

rsj_hn 7y ago
Agreed. However, Android has removed Gab and other free speech apps from it's appstore, too. Although you can circumvent android easier than iOS. This is a tough call -- security versus freedom, and I don't know what the right trade off is. I'd still counsel my parents to use Apple.
- derrick_jensen 7y ago
  100% freedom, all the time "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin I'm not sure about iOS, but Android still allows installing unsigned APKs (F-Droid and similar platforms work because of this), and what has already been installed stays on the phone until the user removes it.
  - Shank 7y ago
    You kind of can compile and run anything you want, but by default free developer accounts can only run 3 apps for 7 days until they expire. Tools like Cydia Impactor exist for this purpose.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    "I'm not sure about iOS, but Android still allows installing [unsigned APKs likely hacked with spyware integrated courtesy of the Chinese government]" The kind of "freedom" you're talking about generally has a high cost. At times, that cost is, well, "freedom". Frustrating actually. There is no platform out there that delivers on the promise of getting you security and freedom. Certainly none that get you privacy. Right now it's all marketing and fanboys, but where the rubber meets the road, there's just no grip.
    - derrick_jensen 7y ago
      An untrusted APK is just an APK that isn't signed by Google. They can still be signed by third parties and verified to be correct. It's a shame that more open source platforms haven't taken off, but I'm not too surprised. I don't understand what you mean by the first sentence. Can you be more specific when you say freedom?
  - Craighead 7y ago
    Everytime this quote gets brought up Benny rolls in his grave. The rights are self evident that we make laws that govern ourselves. Get over yourself.
    - dang 7y ago
      Personal attacks will get you banned here, and you've unfortunately done this before as well (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21034818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21034818). Please edit such swipes out of the comments you post to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - cortesoft 7y ago
    100% freedom is an absolutely banal phrase. What does it even mean? I am pretty sure that you don't mean someone is 100% free to murder someone else. So you clearly believe in some restrictions. I can already imagine the counter argument: "Well, 100% freedom unless your freedom infringes on someone else's freedom!" Ok, but what does it mean to infringe on someone else's freedom? Murder is the easy case; what about polluting a river? I think we would all agree dumping enough chemicals to kill all life in a river would be infringing on other's freedoms, so lets prevent that... but where do you draw the line? It will take judgement, consensus, and compromise to find out where that line is. So suddenly we are back to needing rules around curtailing freedoms that some people aren't going to like.
    - derrick_jensen 7y ago
      I agree that 100% freedom was pretty hyperbole. AnCap + the NAP is probably a better comparison (but still lacks some nuance). In the case of user privacy, I'm against any backdoors or outlawing of encryption (pretty much any government intervention in the messaging space)
  - dotancohen 7y ago
    The corollary to this quote is that there are people who do not deserve Liberty. Or Safety.
  - song 7y ago
    See, that's a dilemma I grappling with right now. I am trying to decide between an iphone and an android phone. And while android does allow me to install any APKs I want which is great. It also seems to be supremely difficult not to share all of my contacts with google, not to share more information than I want with them and to not have my privacy completely invaded. So, on one hand, android gives me freedom to install any app I want and to install a firewall like netguard, on the other hand, it destroys my privacy. I'm really looking for a guide about how to properly secure and prevent data leaking an android phone beyond the basics that I've seen online but without that I'm leaning toward Apple despite finding it abhorrent that I cannot install what I want on my own device (I can obviously side load by using my dev certificate but that's still not something I'm happy with)
    - lern_too_spel 7y ago
      > not to share all of my contacts with google You can do this even using the Google Contacts app. Just go into the account settings and turn off contacts sync. To be extra sure, just use a different contacts app. > not have my privacy completely invaded. Android has strictly less privacy invasion than iOS, even on Google phones. You can set an offline maps app to be your default. Getting your GPS location doesn't have to send it to Google, while doing the same thing on iOS always sends it to Apple, no matter which app asked. You can install your own apps usably without telling Google who you are.
    - xurias 7y ago
      The only feasible way to avoid sharing data with Google is using a custom ROM like LineageOS, a Google framework replacement like microG, and XPrivacyLua (module for XPosed). Ideally you'd avoid using any Google services at all, but at least these steps largely prevent Google from freely taking whatever data they want if you do use the Play Store or whatever.
      - song 7y ago
        Problem with that is that unlocking the bootloader voids the warranty where I live... I think I'll still try to go down that road if I can't find any other solution...
- echelon 7y ago
  > security versus freedom With the app store you're still vulnerable to state actors and zero day vulns. And on Android you're vulnerable to permissions scope creep. The app stores contain malware. You're never truly safe. You can't point to the old days of Windows in the 90s and early 2000s as a case for app stores, either. Installers and downloaded executables were great, but Windows had a broken, unsandboxed model that made it easy to break. History would have played out much better if Windows itself weren't so permissible and was more hermetic back then. If we invested the same billions of research and development dollars that Apple and Google did into their walled garden platforms, an open web with truly cross platform native wasm apps would work just as well or better than anything on the app stores, and it'd be just as "secure". And cross platform. And couldn't be shut down by Apple, Google, or an angry government. Imagine going to Netflix.com and getting the native app experience. On any mobile device. Windows Phone. Ubuntu Phone. That's how it should have worked. Walled gardens must die.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    I guess that is why everyone just uses Chrome nowadays. /s
    - echelon 7y ago
      Google searches used to present Chrome as an app you should download. Google leveraged its market dominance to get people to download their desktop browser. And on Android it's the default you can't uninstall.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Razengan 7y ago
    > Walled gardens must die. No. As a user, I am grateful for "walled gardens" like the App Store, Steam, etc. Because I remember the chaos that was before them, with developers/publishers preying on users all the time, which they still try to do by working around App Store restrictions and so on. I'm grateful for curated marketplaces putting the foot down on them.
- on_and_off 7y ago
  You don't have to circumvent anything and that's the crux of it. Android lets you install applications without having to jailbreak your phone or do any other trickery. This should be a prerequisite for any OS (with all the necessary warnings).
  - innagadadavida 7y ago
    There are at least two ways to install apps outside of the App Store: https://www.iotransfer.net/tips/how-to-download-apps-without-app-store-865.php https://www.iotransfer.net/tips/how-to-download-apps-without... In addition you could use TestFlight or HockeyApp to distribute to limited beta testers. HN is a technical forum, proselytizing based on your software freedom beliefs by selectively using facts is very disingenuous. Android works for you, that is great - other people actually have “freedom” to ignore your definition of freedom and do what they want.
    - lern_too_spel 7y ago
      Your solution is to use an enterprise certificate from Anokiiwin Employment Solutions Inc or NANJING SCIYON SOFTWARE TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD. Both will certainly get revoked soon. HN is a technical forum, so we understand why your solution doesn't actually work.
      - innagadadavida 7y ago
        That’s really funny, trusting my entire data, location, photos all to Google is certainly a big concern for me. I’d rather install that Chinese certificate than give my data to Google. Also, it’s entirely within Googles powers to make Android store closed like the App Store, so can we not speculate on future events? Edit: reworded my comment
        thekyle 7y ago
        Please don't use these types of irrelevant personal attacks on HN. /u/lern_to_spel has a very good point that your mentioned alternatives will likely be shut down by Apple and are not officially supported. If you are going to argue, do it against the most generous interpretation of someone else's words.
- radley 7y ago
  > Android has removed Gab and other free speech apps from it's appstore, too Gab was removed for hate speech, not free speech.
  - romaaeterna 7y ago
    What a hateful comment about Gab users! Surely we don't need to muzzle you? Edit: (And what hateful downvotes!)
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - fennecfoxen 7y ago
    You say that as if a meaningful, non-political distinction can ever be made between "hate speech" and "free speech".
    - zapita 7y ago
      Do you consider the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be political? If so: you are equipped with the necessary building blocks to define hate speech in a non-political way. If not: your definition of “political” is so broad as to be meaningless.
      - voldacar 7y ago
        >Do you consider the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be political? Well yes tbh. The fact that a certain group of people in power at a certain point in history made a "universal declaration" about something says very little about whether I or anyone else should care about it or agree with it. In other words it is the epitome of political. I am happy to make up my own mind on the nature of "human rights".
      - rndgermandude 7y ago
        It is clearly political, and not so universal either by the way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Declaration_on_Human_Rights_in_Islam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Declaration_on_Human_Rig...
- kyriakos 7y ago
  Android has multiple stores though and even if none of them carry the app you can still side load it.
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  Let's not whitewash Gab, which was created specifically to be a white supremacist social network under the veneer of free speech. We can argue whether or not Google should have removed it from the Play Store, but let's be honest about what it is.
  - el_dev_hell 7y ago
    I signed up for Gab about 1.5 years ago. It pegged itself as a "free speech platform", which I found pretty interesting. The concept of a wild west free speech utopia sounds great (and I would still like to see that), but it's filled with repetitive white nationalist bullshit. That's the early adopter group. Because of that early group, it's a horrible experience for anyone else.
    - jakelazaroff 7y ago
      It's not just their early adopter group; Gab has actively cultivated a white nationalist userbase. See for example https://twitter.com/ClenchedFisk/status/1027690034718224384 https://twitter.com/ClenchedFisk/status/1027690034718224384 I am skeptical of the "wild west free speech utopia" as a lot of people seem to conceive of it, because some forms of speech have chilling effects on others. For example, if I pass a group of angry people chanting "blood and soil", I'm certainly not going to say or do anything that makes me legible as Jewish.
    - wallace_f 7y ago
      Which is sad. Because if everyone tolerates abuse, whether from governments or corporations, we get creeping authoritarianism. Also, I think you bith are exaggerating a bit about Gabhere is obviously a lot of alt right though.
    - SkyBelow 7y ago
      Any early adopter of a technology promising freedom will be the groups who need it the most, which tends to be the groups who are most at odds with current social norms. Just look at who the early adopters are for tor or bitcoin.
  - 7y ago
- enraged_camel 7y ago
  >>However, Android has removed Gab and other free speech apps Gab is not a "free speech app". In fact, the term "free speech app" is itself laughable.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
  > security versus freedom, and I don't know what the right trade off is That is not a trade off at all, if you believe that you have already fallen for the propaganda. Security in and of itself has no value that you could trade off against freedom, only the freedom part of that pair is valuable. Security is a means to the end of freedom: You may need a certain kind and/or amount of security to gain and maintain freedom. But security is also a means to authoritarianism if you do it wrong. Which means: Security is only valuable in so far as it causes a net increase in freedom. If you are actually giving up freedom to make space for more security, that is, you are trading off freedom against security, you have failed.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
fouc 7y ago
Removing the app from the app store doesn't actually stop the app from running on the device?
- slimsag 7y ago
  "The poor can put whatever they want in their refrigerators - we don't control that. We just control the food they can buy in stores."
millstone 7y ago
What prevents a website from offering the same service? Honest question.
- another-one-off 7y ago
  Guessing: Got to have a system that is resistant to single points of failure and where the costs of knocking out a communication node is high relative to the benefits the government gets. A website is quite centralised.
- swiley 7y ago
  At least on the iPhone websites can’t do peer to peer or notifications.
djmetzle 7y ago
:point_up: That.

Zhenya 7y ago

Any word if this app is available on the playstore/fdroid in Android form?

lern_too_spel 7y ago
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=live.hkmap.app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=live.hkmap.app It's not on F-Droid, but it has a perfectly usable webapp. https://hkmap.live/ https://hkmap.live/

maximente 7y ago

disappointing, but this was obviously going to happen. there was also precedent as i believe chinese gov has hooks into iMessage, so anyone thinking they were going to do the "right" think was not thinking rationally.

saagarjha 7y ago
> there was also precedent as i believe chinese gov has hooks into iMessage iMessage is end-to-end encrypted.
- maximente 7y ago
  sure, but the encryption keys live in china, so it's naive to think that the chinese government doesn't have access to them. that means they can read the data on any chinese user's account.
  - xvector 7y ago
    Isn't this only if you have iCloud backup enabled for iMessage? I remember I had to explicitly enable that. Otherwise the keys are stored in the enclave on your phone. Makes it a bit harder for the government - they have to use a zero-day to get your messages at that point.

dingo_bat 7y ago

Apple can only stand up to the US government when it comes to privacy and security. They will refuse to unlock a terrorist's iphone when FBI requests it. They can do this because of the fundamental liberty everybody is granted in the US to everybody. The real test of character is how a company reacts to an authoritarian regime like China. That's what reveals the true nature. And Apple has completely shit the bed in this regard. Google has handled it so much more beautifully.

millstone 7y ago
Is Google helping the Hong Kong protests? Honest question.
- guramarx11 7y ago
  No direct help...besides banning Huawei user, removal of fake news bots and pro-china propaganda on its platform
sjg007 7y ago
If Apple says no then there’s no iPhone 12. iPhone 13 is ideally manufactured in the us.

choiway 7y ago

Wondering if Steve Jobs would have pulled the plug.

Jagat 7y ago
He totally would have. In the early days of iPhone, he had a strong contempt for the idea of an app store since it would allow anyone to publish any app and he didn't want anyone other than Apple doing that. Making it a walled garden was his idea.
- choiway 7y ago
  Fair point. It's just sad that reality doesn't live up to the marketing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I
  - gamcdono 7y ago
    You must be sad.. a lot

basicplus2 7y ago

Free people now know that its time to leave apple

toasterlovin 7y ago
And go where exactly? Self compiled Android without Google services? Welcome to the world. It's a messy place of conflicting values.
- antoinevg 7y ago
  Self-compiled Android without Google services is not a bad place to start. That said, these single-vendor proprietary mobile platforms are all dumpster fires so it may be time to start developing a free software alternative.
  - npo9 7y ago
    We need free hardware before we can build free software. No one produces an LTE modem with open source firmware.
    - antoinevg 7y ago
      You absolutely do not need free hardware to build free software. It was decades before the PC's we used to build FreeBSD, GNU, Linux etc. had even a free software BIOS available. Historically, free hardware availability has followed in the wake of free software.
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  The world isn't the way it is inexorably, nor do we (especially highly technical people in a technical discussion venue) lack the power to change it. Whats genuinely harmful is shoulder shrugging "not my problem" attitudes.
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  No need to self compile. Use a normal Android phone, even one from Google. If you don't want to use Google services, don't log into a Google account.

userbinator 7y ago

This shouldn't come as a surprise, since Apple is well known for being authoritarian with its platforms. It just so happens that most of the time its values align with those of the users, which is why it's so popular.

aaomidi 7y ago

This type of stuff is why Warren wants to break up tech. It should NOT be up to apple to decide stuff like this.

faster 7y ago
Who should decide?
- protomyth 7y ago
  The owner of the phone. Lack of side loading is the problem.
  - on_and_off 7y ago
    this. side-loading ... the term itself is ridiculous. You cannot just load an app on your phone unless Apple approves it.
    - brian-armstrong 7y ago
      It's actually a historical term - it came about from loading apps on the Nokia Ngage ("side-talking")
      - hug 7y ago
        It sure didn't. Sideloading came about as content was generally downloaded elsewhere and then pushed onto a device over a local connection -- i.e. sideways. It's a lot older than the N-Gage.
- antoinevg 7y ago
  No one should get to decide is the point. You may be a bit young to remember this but it was once possible to install any software on hardware you owned without permission from the manufacturer.
  - 7y ago

jhanschoo 7y ago

> Tim Cook Buckled Under Chinese Pressure Mods: title is misleading. The article explicitly says that they don't know if there was Chinese pressure to remove the app. Edit: title is now fixed.

antoinevg 7y ago
If Apple banned it _without_ Chinese pressure it would be even worse!
- alsetmusic 7y ago
  Who says Tim Cook knee of it before it hit the news?
  - busymom0 7y ago
    I remember reading a while back that when an app gets taken down, those decisions are made by people very higher up at Apple and not low level employees/reviewers. I really doubt Tim Cook doesn't know about such a huge deal.
    - aptwebapps 7y ago
      Maybe for some category of apps. I can't believe that's the general case - there are too many to bother the higher-ups with.
    - radmarshallb 7y ago
      The app was not taken down. It never made it through the initial review process to get to the store in the first place.
rorykoehler 7y ago
Are we really stooping to this level of propaganda on HN? Enough already! There is no conceivable way the CCP didn't apply political pressure. That is not the world we live in.

chrisco255 7y ago

This should underscore the importance of a free and open web.

Scarbutt 7y ago
That's coming to an end too, the web will be google's "app/play store" someday.
- busymom0 7y ago
  Google AMP project is a pretty big step by Google towards trying to control the entire web.

lawrenceyan 7y ago

Really hard to believe that Apple is the "privacy oriented company we can trust", that the company constantly touts in their advertising as a reason to buy their products mind you, when at the same time, you have news like this constantly coming out. If you really wanted me to believe that you were serious about this Apple, you would do what Google has done and completely remove yourself from China until issues of blatant censorship and oppression like these improve. Of course, this will never happen, because too much money comes from the revenue stream that Chinese citizens represent.

reaperducer 7y ago
I'm not sure about "constantly." The last big disappointment I can remember was the China/iCloud thing. The problem is that Tim Cook is a bean counter, not a technologist. He talks a good game in scripted keynotes, but he's really in it for the money, like most other CEOs. That said, Apple is the least of all available evils. When something better comes along, I'll leave. If that thing already exists, please let me know so I can begin the process.
- monksy 7y ago
  > The problem is that Tim Cook is a bean counter, not a technologist. He talks a good game in scripted keynotes, but he's really in it for the money, like most other CEOs. When has the Apple CEO not done that? Apple is the king of marketing spin.
  - millstone 7y ago
    Accessibility comes to mind. Apple's investment in accessibility cannot be explained through bean counting.
    - rndgermandude 7y ago
      Can't it?[1] 3.2 million people visually impaired in 2015, 8.2 with vision problems, in the US alone, trend hard upwards. [1] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/visual-impairment-blindness-cases-us-expected-double-2050 https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/visual-impairm...

rdlecler1 7y ago

Companies are going to have to decide how important the Chinese market is or risk eroding the trust and good will for all of their other customers. You can’t stand on the boat of democracy and the boat of a dictatorship t the same time.

esyir 7y ago
Sure you can. I think you're going to find that most people will go "oh those poor people in HK", then promptly go back to ignoring them in their purchase decisions. I have exceedingly little faith in consumers to inconvenience themselves to benefit others.
- remarkEon 7y ago
  This sentiment is absurd. I’m not going to let HK protests affect my spending. What, exactly, do you want me to do?
  - esyir 7y ago
    That was a response to the OP where: >Companies are going to have to decide how important the Chinese market is or risk eroding the trust and good will for all of their other customers. You can’t stand on the boat of democracy and the boat of a dictatorship at the same time. Emphasis on customers. Clearly, the customers have spoken on this, as well as any other atrocity that has happened in the past.
- aaomidi 7y ago
  If only we had an entity that could direct cultural change....
bww 7y ago
You may recall that Google dramatically pulled out of the mainland Chinese market about 10 years ago on the basis of exactly these principles (at least ostensibly). That didn’t exactly last. And China is a much more important market now than it was then. I wouldn’t hold out too much hope for a bunch of gazillion dollar companies to decide to favor principles over revenue anytime soon.

sjg007 7y ago

Bad apple.

lacampbell 7y ago

Stuff like this is one of the main reasons I focused my efforts on web apps, not native ones. https://hkmap.live/# https://hkmap.live/# Looks like the devs were smart enough to make it a web app, so it can still be used.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
To be fair, if your app submission is a glorified Web App (leveraging no native iOS features) Apple will reject for that reason alone [0]. "4.2 Minimum Functionality - Your app should include features, content, and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website." [0]: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#minimum-functionality https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#min...
- thomasfedb 7y ago
  Are "website" and "web app" synonymous?
  - grandsui 7y ago
    To me a website can be a static webpage, but a web app's more dynamic
    - thomasfedb 7y ago
      Agreed, I would argue that web app implies function above a website.
- kovek 7y ago
  Why is this comment being downvoted? It does contribute to the discussion.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 7y ago

remarkEon 7y ago

Does anyone know how much of Apple’s hardware is actually manufactured in China? I realize this is a complicated question, as some is assuredly assembled outside of China. But as a total percentage of the supply chain at a component level ... how much is Chinese? I’m going to wait for judgement on Apple’s actions here until I have more information.

junipertea 7y ago
What difference would it make? Apple and other companies follow the laws of countries they operate in, regardless of whether they produce there or not.
- remarkEon 7y ago
  It makes a tremendous difference. If Apple can leverage some other aspect of their supply chain so that they can ignore any or some “requests” from the Chinese government ... that is a significant data point. If they can’t, well, that is also a significant data point about who has leverage over Apple.

sjg007 7y ago

Use Waze.

nipponese 7y ago

Was the advice qualitatively "good"? People are depending on the info in there to save their lives, and if bad advice lead to someone getting hurt, we would all surely put Apple on the hook.

xvector 7y ago
> and if bad advice lead to someone getting hurt, we would all surely put Apple on the hook No, you'd put the app dev on the hook. Validating the truth of all statements in every app is not Apple's job and never was.

mads 7y ago

Yeah, that was the last straw. No more Apple products for me. I hope they will enjoy all their rich Chinese customers.

emptybits 7y ago

> FTA: "Hong Kong citizens have highlighted a quirk of local laws that provide a strong counter-argument: under the law, the Hong Kong police are obliged to wave a blue flag at the spot in which they which to declare that an illegal gathering is taking place." So HK police are required to wave a blue flag so that the general public is aware the police have declared a particular gathering at a particular location illegal. Thus, HK law literally wants the location of the gathering made known, publicly drawing attention to it and the location. I assume this is to inform those gathering about their status and to let others nearby know also, as a warning, perhaps. And also nearby officers. Okay. So consider an app that shared only this publicly visible information on a map. i.e. "police have raised the blue flag on this gathering, right here", without commentary or calls to action. Less functional and informative than the existing app, but it may still serve a useful purpose for HK residents and demonstrators and perhaps even police (according to HK law) and then Apple may plausibly allow the app because it doesn't get into choosing sides or facilitating illegal calls to action.

jMyles 7y ago
Choosing sides and facilitating illegal calls to action is exactly what a reasonable company does in this situation. The matter of how best to serve humanity is not the slightest bit unclear here.
- fwsgonzo 7y ago
  That's the highest horse I've seen so far on this site.
  - eru 7y ago
    It's pretty high. But far from the highest.
  - calibas 7y ago
    He expects a company to support basic human rights. That's not a "high horse", it's what everyone should expect already. We shouldn't be ridiculing people who demand companies support human rights. It's the apologists who should be marginalized.

WillPontificate 7y ago

Business strategy question. It seems like there will always be a conflict between the US view of censorship (bad!) and the reality of trying to operate in China's huge market (comply or be booted, basically).... Is that good cause to create a separate brand or subsidiary so the reputation damage of having to comply with this stuff (you know they got nudged) doesn't hit home on the US brand? Just seems like you're going to have a rough time if you're attempting to service both markets under the same brand...

em3rgent0rdr 7y ago
I wish American companies would focus on finding ways to bypass China's censorship rather than complying with it. When Google first acquiesced to China they made a mistake and set a bad precedent. They should have rather focused their China business on building search engine and tools that would work around China's firewall. I don't think there is an obligated to adhere to laws when those laws conflict with human rights.
- WillPontificate 7y ago
  Morally, I agree with you. From a practical perspective, however, that would cede what little voice the American companies have in the process to the Chinese government who would replace them with local lapdogs controlled by political allies. The result would be software where censorship wasn't a bug, it is a feature...
  - rndgermandude 7y ago
    This already happened.

honkycat 7y ago

Of course Apple bitched out, what else have they ever done? Acting like a revolutionary, counter culture company is one thing. Actually sticking it's neck out and doing something important is something completely different. Part of the reason I can't stand apple. At least Microsoft acts like a lame computer company without sloughing on layers of pretentious BS.

zuppy 7y ago
so what would you have expected them to do, break the law? when they said no to the FBI they did it while respecting the law. should they just have quit the entire chinese market?
- freeone3000 7y ago
  Yes.
- icelancer 7y ago
  I would expect them to allow users to sideload applications easily so they can continue their protests in a form of mild malicious compliance. That's the least they owe their users.
- curt15 7y ago
  The best test of any company's espoused "principles" is when it is forced to make inconvenient choices.
  - undersuit 7y ago
    Correct! Apple isn't surprised by the actions China took to get to this point. They've had their chances to stop, complain, and fight.
- oh_sigh 7y ago
  In that case, apple shouldn't say that they care about user privacy. They should say they care about user privacy as much as the government where they happen to be operating does.

enriquto 7y ago

Apple is at fault here, not for moderating their store, but for disallowing people to install software of their own choice on their own devices. This is completely unacceptable as a user and I do not understand how apple users put up with this.

OJFord 7y ago
I agree with you, but 'users put up with this' because >99% just couldn't care less, Facebook and Snapchat are in the App Store, why do I need to install a different way?
robocat 7y ago
> disallowing people to install software of their own choice on their own devices. Yet allowing anything to be installed is the cesspit of Windows virus laden software. That said, I buy Android because I can side-load if I choose to.
- ninjin 7y ago
  > Yet allowing anything to be installed is the cesspit of Windows virus laden software. Okay, I have seen this false choice enough times over several years and at this point it annoys me so much that I must speak up. No, Windows is (was? I have not used it for more than a decade) not the mess it is because it allows you to install anything. It is the mess it is because it there was no sensible source of approved software. The choice is not between anything goes and a walled garden, there is the middle ground of providing a solid source of approved software (frankly, I think Google has largely failed with this given the state of their Play store) and still allow side loading for cases such as the one mentioned in this very article. Heck, this was one of the amazing things I experienced when moving to Linux in 2005. You had 98% of your software approved and receiving updates through your OS, and then a game or two, oddball VPN, etc. installed in your home directory – it was endlessly refreshing.
  - Legogris 7y ago
    Even more, I blame non-existent sandboxing. Anything could practically be root for a long time. With proper permission control and isolated storage for apps, installing anything does not equal cesspit of virus-laden software.

_Understated_ 7y ago

Ok... this is giving me pause for thought. I programme .NET on Windows. Have done for years. Never owned an Apple device until I took my wife's old iPhone 6S at the start of the year. I switched from Android to Apple for a few reasons: 1. Constant spying and data-gathering for profit by Android 2. Ethics 3. I only use a handful of apps so the platform wasn't that important Apple's public stance is that they take privacy seriously. Like incredibly seriously. Above all things and stuff. And as another commenter pointed out, they told the FBI to go fish when they wanted access to a phone. That resonated with me. That told me they are a company that (appears to) genuinely believe in something other than just profit at all costs. That they may just have my interests fairly high up their agenda. This latest episode has made me rethink that. From the ground up. I understand they need to follow the law but so do the law enforcers: Have Apple been watching the footage from HK? I thought that Apple, with all the power they have, could perhaps say to the Chinese gov... "No, the app stays!" My faith in Apple has been shattered. As an aside... Apart from Librem, there isn't really any choice now. I feel like a dad here... I'm disappointed in Apple.

2muchcoffeeman 7y ago
https://www.fairphone.com/en/ https://www.fairphone.com/en/ Vote with your wallet.
- _Understated_ 7y ago
  I hadn't heard of this before but it appears to still run Android :(
  - 2muchcoffeeman 7y ago
    They support the use of alternative OSes. They may also bring back a version of their OS without the G-Apps.
scoutt 7y ago
> 2. Ethics The ethic ends where the money-loss (or missing profit) begins. I don't understand why so many people are surprised when Apple (or whatever) pulls something like this. I don't mean to be rude (I don't know you, where you're from, what's your age), but I though at this point in life people would be already aware that ethics doesn't fit very much into corporatism culture. In simple words, they will (at very least) plainly lie to you in order to make you buy their products. Every one of them. Or have you ever heard a company saying "Yes, our product is inferior to the competition", "Yes, we will sell your data", "Yes, if avoiding it gives us much problem, we will side with higher powers against you" or "Yes, we're burning forests to give you cheaper burgers"? They'll picture them as nice and responsible, but at the end of the day what matter most is dollars. They'll never lose.

siruncledrew 7y ago

It's all marketing. Apple is a company not a country. If Apple ups the ante on China, then China comes down and bans the App Store or tariffs Apple devices a ton as retribution - resulting in Apple getting itself into a similar situation Huawei is in with the US. If (this is all hypothetical, btw) that were to happen with Apple, then I would wager Xiaomi or Huawei would only see more investment to become the "Apple of China" and further develop a replica in-house app store.

im3w1l 7y ago
Apple put themselves in a position where they had the power to clamp down. Obviously they will then be forced to use this power. By western governments, by outrage mobs, by China. By their own choices and strategy of centralizing power they decided to become a fascist enabler.
- mattnewton 7y ago
  I honestly think you are vastly overestimating the power a foreign company is capable of having in China. Any provocation would probably quickly end up in iPhones simply not getting any service in the country anymore and being banned from sale with no legal recourse.
  - polynomial 7y ago
    I think GP is saying the opposite, namely that they set themselves up to be an enabler of state control, with their centralised gatekeeping model.

deepGem 7y ago

Imagine this happening under Jobs, probably never. I truly miss Steve's leadership at Apple. The one guy who would've showed his middle finger to the communist regime.

rkop 7y ago
Are you kidding?

lilyball 7y ago

This article, and all the response here on HN, is really quite baffling to me. Apple complies with local laws. If the local government says the app violates their laws, Apple doesn't have a whole lot of choice here; either pull the app, or be in violation of the law. AFAIK all the app stores do the same thing.

mda 7y ago
Then maybe they should not portray themselves as the white knight of privacy. I am absolutely disgusted by their hypocrisy.
mattigames 7y ago
Maybe soon a local law in China will say everyone needs to report where all homosexuals live because they need to be executed, and then Apple will send that exact info to the police (e.g. anyone with grindr installed) and then you will say "Oh what? they are just folling the law". Yeah we know they are just following the law, still doesn't mean we shouldn't give them bad press and opinions about it.
- weiming 7y ago
  Plot twist: As of 2018, Grindr is literally owned by a Chinese holding company, Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Ltd. It looks like they were asked by US regulators to sell it off due to privacy concerns: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-grindr-m-a-beijingkunlun/chinas-kunlun-tech-agrees-to-u-s-demand-to-sell-grindr-gay-dating-app-idUSKCN1SJ28N https://www.reuters.com/article/us-grindr-m-a-beijingkunlun/...
- lilyball 7y ago
  Slippery slope is not a valid fallacy.
  - mattigames 7y ago
    Is not a slippery slope (because I'm not saying it will happen, I'm just amplifying the core of your opinion), is just an example with a different law; that btw exists in other countries such as Nigeria, just be honest and say you agree more with this one law than the one in the example.

dTal 7y ago

This isn't about Apple. This is the true face of the techno-feudalism future we've built. Throw your lot in with one of the tech giants, and you'll have fashionable and functional technology - but at the cost of freedom. When push comes to shove - when it matters the most - your rights can and will be revoked. Don't be a serf. Reject techno-feudalism. Use free software.

kaolti 7y ago
I mean, hard to disagree even if I wanted to. Seems to me that free software community is lacking UI/UX Designers and so looks and feels considerably less "cool" than commercial counterparts. What do you think?
- dTal 7y ago
  I think free software has caught up on the prettiness score. KDE Plasma 5 looks pretty slick. Graphic designers might niggle at aspects of it, but the layperson won't care. However, human factors is undervalued. There's a cultural issue in free software wherein good UI is rejected as being for sissies and not worth the effort. Hacking is a social activity, and hackers naturally like to make stuff for other hackers. Hackers tend to be the kind of person who has a lot of patience for tedious bullshit, or they would have thrown up their hands in despair long before becoming a hacker. And so you often hear people defend poor UI with talk of "investing in tools" and "if <UI annoyance> is enough to stop you, you don't have the patience for <activity> anyway". Which is possibly true! But it's a gatekeeping self-fulfilling prophecy. The trouble is, by the time you're expert enough to write software, you've long since forgotten what good UI even looks like: "I liken starting one's computing career with Unix, say as a undergraduate, to being born in East Africa. It is intolerably hot, your body is covered with lice and flies, you are malnourished and you suffer from numerous curable diseases. But, as far as young East Africans can tell, this is simply the natural condition and they live within it. By the time they find out differently, it is too late. They already think that the writing of shell scripts is a natural act." — Ken Pier, Xerox PARC
  - kaolti 7y ago

thinkingemote 7y ago

Just to give some clarification: The app is banned from being on the Apple App Store but it never actually made it to the App Store and so was not actually removed from users. Users couldn't have used it before. Their application has been rejected (a few times it appears?). The latest rejection carried that notice https://twitter.com/hkmaplive/status/1179618848644812800 https://twitter.com/hkmaplive/status/1179618848644812800

xvector 7y ago
Wow, can't believe this essential piece of information is so far down. How does one get in contact with the HN moderators to get bad titles fixed?

Golfkid2Gadfly 7y ago

Remember the Snowden leaks where he showed that Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc... all the giant tech companies gave FIVE TIMES the amount of data requested by the US government ( Apple included ) in hopes of garnering lucrative government contracts by showing their compliance. It wasn't until after this that Apple took up their pro user privacy stance.

nova22033 7y ago

>“Your app contains content - or facilitates, enables, and encourages an activity - that is not legal ... specifically, the app allowed users to evade law enforcement," Wait...doesn't Waze do this too?

Kneecaps07 7y ago
Technically, so can iMessage, so they should ban that too.
unethical_ban 7y ago
That was my first thought. It is an app with a killer feature of giving drivers notifications about law enforcement presence.

ekianjo 7y ago

Think Different, Think like China I guess? At least their 1984 commercial was cool, too bad they don't grasp what it meant anymore.

marmada 7y ago

I think people/Apple defenders are creating a false dichotomy between "regulated app store" and allowing people to install their own software. Apple could still have a regulated app store to protect the masses (who will never venture outside of the app store), but still allow users to install their own software if they really need it. At least no one can deny that the inability to prevent users from loading their own software causes a lack of freedom. If someone wants to accept authoritarianism in the name of making it harder for clueless people to install malware then that's a trade-off they can make, but they shouldn't pretend to be pro-freedom/pro-user/pro-privacy.

decoyworker 7y ago

Apple should allow app sideloading.

tibbon 7y ago

Think Different* *but not so differently that it challenges an authoritarian government who is scared by ideas

ausjke 7y ago

i am glad i have never used any products from apple,and will keep using unix and android for the future

secfirstmd 7y ago

For what it's worth, so far Umbrella app hasn't had any problems in HK.

tptacek 7y ago
Because nobody cares about Umbrella app. https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1169323269297717248 https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1169323269297717248
- secfirstmd 7y ago
  Thanks. Have you used it? You seem to have lots of comments about it based on here-say but I'm curious have you used it yourself?
  - tptacek 7y ago
    Is any part of what Zeynep said here inaccurate?
    - secfirstmd 7y ago
      Yes, there is in various parts. I'm curious, have you actually used Umbrella?
      - tptacek 7y ago
        Could you be more specific? Zeynep Tufekci has actually been out in Hong Kong talking with and reporting on the protesters and their tactics, which your organization --- in her telling --- got comically wrong. Where is she mistaken?
        secfirstmd 7y ago
        There are many points which I have spoken about in multiple places. On the things she legitimately pointed out that I got wrong I put my hands up (like the flag things), admitted were incorrect and quickly changed. A number of other things she said were partly/entirely incorrect, did not apply to us or could not be refuted in a public forum without admitting to previous experiences or potentially endangering people we work with in HK or elsewhere. If you want more detail my email is in my bio and I am always happy to speak with people who are doing their best to help people at risk. Hence I am not being cynical, I actually am curious about whether you have used Umbrella? You talk as if you have so I am curious to know what we could do better...

judah 7y ago

This is yet another reason proprietary app stores should be supplemented, if not replaced altogether, by the open web and progressive web apps. Having a central authority that dictates what software you can and can't use is bad for user freedom.

TimTheTinker 7y ago

When there is a great evil power in the world, it is impossible not to take a political stance, given the moral duties involved. Inaction, or failing to take a stand, constitutes tacit approval. In this case, Apple granting what I assume was a request from the Chinese government to remove the app is more than tacit. The human rights abuses by the Chinese government are insanely bad: religious and ethnic persecution, forced abortions, murder of political dissidents, no habeas corpus for many, abuse of prisoners (torture, forced labor camps, harvesting and selling prisoners’ organs), to name a few. Unfortunately, too many in the West, including Apple, have become heavily economically dependent on China. I think that dependence strongly clouds moral judgment when it comes to decisions like this. Furthermore, it requires far more moral courage to call out evil in the present than it does to identify evil in the past. To Apple and everyone else: don’t become complicit! Take a stand. History will vindicate you.

mikelyons 7y ago
It seems to a mostly-lay-person that we have super-military and super-propaganda these days, what can individuals do? Even in groups of 100,000 they're no match for modern methods of control it seems. Am I looking at this incorrectly?

ISL 7y ago

Think Different. https://youtu.be/RSyy2-Z2m-U https://youtu.be/RSyy2-Z2m-U

moggie2 7y ago

Remind me of the original Napster - which is only providing the channel for users to share music but not providing the music by itself.

calimac 7y ago

China exerting pressure on Cookie’s supply chain. That’s how the cookie crumbles #WishJobsWasGeneral

exabrial 7y ago

Nice form Apple.

smsm42 7y ago

That's what you get when you use walled garden system. One huge single point of failure. Which always can be efficiently attacked by a resourceful adversary. I get the use case where you need apps "just work" and don't step one step out of the walled garden. HK use case is obviously not that - they should not be using any Apple mobile technology, it's all one huge single point of failure.

yccheok 7y ago

Careful Apple. Those faceless rioters will come to break your Apple store glass. Maybe time to upgrade them to bullet proof glass?

uberduper 7y ago

It's worth noting that anyone can side-load apps on their iPhone or appletv using a free apple developer account and Xcode. It's annoying to have to re-do it every 7 days, but it is an option.

21717117 7y ago

Lots of doom and gloom in here, the app has been approved according to their Twitter though... https://twitter.com/hkmaplive/status/1180140453024239617?s=20 https://twitter.com/hkmaplive/status/1180140453024239617?s=2...

tempodox 7y ago

Next startup: Build an ML model and let it feed on Chinese anti-insurrection laws and Apple app review guidelines. Then, let the ML model generate apps that comply. Should be an instant smash hit.