49 ms·

Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong

• wind0w 7y ago
  What's wrong with this? Hong Kong is part of China, which does not recognize the territorial sovereignty of Taiwan. You may disagree with their sovereignty claim, but this is a reasonable extension of that claim
• degenerate 7y ago
  The degree that China goes to censor things reminds me of kindergarten. Pull the shades down, and kids won't want to go outside? Is it simply a reminder to their people of who's in charge, at this level of pettiness?
  • duxup 7y ago
    I think it is petty. At the same time it's a good gauge for them to figure out what else they can do. Start with "hey man don't show that one pic" and the company figures "it's one pic, whatever we're not really compromising our values". A few more steps and then it seems less dramatic when it comes to "give us that information on that one user"... and so on. Personally I would expect an external social credit score coming soon too. It doesn't have to be all encompassing like the social credit score, but good luck getting a job with a company who wants to work with China if you're on the list...
    • goodluckchuck 7y ago
      It also tells China how useful Apple is to US intelligence efforts. Setting aside the financial aspect, if Apple is unwilling to make a stand here, then they can infer that Apple is not willing to lose access to the market over this. If they push further and further in a "measured" approach, they can detect resistance. If Apple gets close to the point where they are willing to fight / bail. They it's likely because the situation is getting to the point where its a losing deal. By knowing the costs they impose, they can measure the value to Apple. By controlling for the financial aspect (which they can calculate based on production costs + sales), they can figure out a rough value of the intel and it's nature. Of course, that's assuming Apple acts rationally, which would be ill-advised.
    • awayfromhomenow 7y ago
      Pretty scary thought, but progress being what it is, I don't see anything blocking it. I'm sure they already decline to do business with anyone that is vocally critical of China, or for example, highly complementary of the Dali Lama.
      • president 7y ago
        Happened just yesterday after GM of the Houston Rockets spoke out *for the HK protests: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/07/business/houston-rockets-nba-china-daryl-morey/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/07/business/houston-rockets-nba-... EDIT: s/against/for/
        • jaynetics 7y ago
          *for
        • 7u5432throw 7y ago
          At least he didn’t kneel during the anthem!
    • fauigerzigerk 7y ago
      >A few more steps and then it seems less dramatic when it comes to "give us that information on that one user"... and so on. That has already happened. Only instead of handing over data on specific users upon request, Apple has simply handed over all iCloud data of all its (mainland) Chinese users to a government owned company: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351
    • diminoten 7y ago
      This is a fallacy, stop with this kind of logic. At whatever point where the requests become unreasonable is the point at which to raise issue, not because of some arbitrary "precedent setting" bullshit. The frog, in reality, just jumps out of the pot when the water gets too hot.
      • pjlegato 7y ago
        If most people operated rationally, it would be correct to disregard slippery slope arguments as fallacies when analyzing the spread of ideas in society. However, most people do not operate rationally most of the time -- they use rough heuristics and perceived social signaling of others to arrive at (usually irrational) conclusions about most issues. Empirically, slippery slopes have always been an extremely common way change is driven in mass social thinking. This has been formalized as the "Overton window": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
        • diminoten 7y ago
          I understand what you're trying to say, but it's not true or real in the sense that the counter-argument is entirely effective. Specifically, "When that thing you're worried about actually comes up, then we'll decide what to do." Saying, "We're still three steps from my issue but this thing that, in and of itself I have no problem with, can't happen because it might lead to the thing I have a problem with." is not a valid argument. To try and bring it back into focus, it's a real problem that this "one pic" isn't being shown. It's not a slippery slope conversation, because we're already at the thing I/we have a problem with. No need to argue the "this paves the way for worse things" because this is the worse thing! We're here!
    • __m 7y ago
      Well if the NSA gets access why not opening up to other governments?
  • hatsunearu 7y ago
    I think the fact that they have so much power that they can micromanage incredibly petty things is indicative that CCP has way too much power.
  • president 7y ago
    They do it because it works. Combine censorship with a populace that is largely taught not to exercise critical thinking and you get China. Many of my Chinese colleagues who did not know about Nazi concentration camps, let alone the concentration camps that are currently running in their own country today.
    • yourbandsucks 7y ago
      Mmm, yeah, lack of critical thinking combined with a nationalist, "we're number one" media environment. We would never be like that.. I mean, we're better than them. We're number one.
  • maweki 7y ago
    I think most people on Hacker-News would know that Taiwan exists, even though a flag is missing on their phone. I think for the general population in the US or Europe that's not so clear. If one would never hear about Taiwan, would we really "know" it exists?
    • have_faith 7y ago
      > If one would never hear about Taiwan, would we really "know" it exists? It's a sort of reverse branding exercise. If you can reduce exposure as much as possible there's not going to be a lot of sentiment for supporting the cause. What would be of Palestine today without the exposure that has been directed at it.
      • maweki 7y ago
        It's not like Israel is - not talking about the truth of that claim here - denying the very existence of their neighbouring states. On the contrary, palestine and part of the palestine people are branded as great evil. Being branded as _anything_ is being "known". Famously or infamously.
    • JumpCrisscross 7y ago
      > I think most people on Hacker-News would know that Taiwan exists I frequently come across, in America, people who are genuinely surprised that Taiwan is a sovereign state.
      • oasisbob 7y ago
        Are you sure they don't just disagree with your use of the word sovereign? I find it a strange way to describe the ROC and Taiwan. Without a clear territory under exclusive control, recognition from other governments, or independence from the mainland, what's so sovereign about it?
        • JumpCrisscross 7y ago
          > Are you sure they don't just disagree with your use of the word sovereign? Yes, when people debate Taiwan’s sovereignty (for, independent foreign relations and a military, against, limited recognition) they understand the local context. That there is legitimate dispute with respect to its status is news to a surprising number of Americans.
  • thrwn_frthr_awy 7y ago
    China is showing the ability to control one of the world's largest, and most advanced companies. It isn't petty–it is scary. The U.S. and others have sold their soul to the devil for $299 flat screen tvs.
    • blotter_paper 7y ago
      As if the US hadn't sold their soul already? :/ I'm not trying to downplay the horrors of China, but let's not act like the US had clean hands before importing bulk electronics.
      • gtirloni 7y ago
        Always this same comment when anyone points the finger at China.
        • jaynetics 7y ago
          The comment is just pointing out to the OP that any moral bankruptcy of the US can most certainly not be blamed on China.
        • blotter_paper 7y ago
          The comment I was replying to implicitly suggested the US had a "soul" prior to engaging in business with China, I wasn't the one who brought up the US. If I had brought up the US out of the blue I'd agree that it was an irrelevant whataboutism, but in this context I feel it was entirely appropriate and on topic.
      • thrwn_frthr_awy 7y ago
        I'm not sure the average American benefited as directly to the atrocites of the past. The U.S. simply cannot change course without a serious alteration of the the ethos of the country.
        • diminoten 7y ago
          Oh we definitely have, everyone benefitted massively from the "manifest destiny" attitude behind the many atrocities committed against the native Americans. It's also not our fault, infar as we didn't literally pull any triggers. We're probably still complicit to some degree, however, by our general lack of support for reparation actions.
  • oconnor663 7y ago
    Imagine that the war of 1812 had resulted a complete British/Canadian conquest of the US, which lasted for the most of the 19th century. Then imagine that Florida had successfully seceded from the US after WWII and joined the Soviet Union, along with all of Canada. Then finally imagine that the Soviet Union won the Cold War and has been the sole world superpower for the last thirty years. How would we feel, in that world, if the US government wanted to censor people mentioning Florida? Of course there would be complicated questions about whether that censorship was ethical or helpful, and about the government's real motivations for proposing it. But I think it would be clear to everyone involved that "kindergarten levels of pettiness" wasn't the right starting point for understanding those motivations.
    • frozenport 7y ago
      Not complicated, we've never sensored the names of our enemies, at all.
    • Analemma_ 7y ago
      Tell your bosses at the Ministry of Culture that trying to use Britain and the United States as analogies to the situation with Taiwan is going to backfire on you. At this point, Taiwan is fully-independent with its own national identity, and so saying they need to reunify with China is as ridiculous as asking Americans to "reunify" with the UK. It's not gonna happen, at least not voluntarily.
    • yellowarchangel 7y ago
      I don't think censoring facts is ever anything but black and white. The fact that Taiwan exists, Hong Kong exists, Falun Gong, Tibet... These are all real things. There shouldn't ever be a reason to hide the fact that they exist no matter if todays reality wasn't todays reality.
      • yourbandsucks 7y ago
        Facts are rarely black and white. Look at USA reporting about Venezuela or Cuba. It's factual, yet it also implicitly takes sides. Which facts? How are they presented?
  • adrianmonk 7y ago
    Personally, I wouldn't use the word petty because I think it suggests that the motivation is basically about childish insecurity and that there isn't a deliberate rationale behind it. Instead, I think China does this sort of thing to control discourse and/or to send constant reminders that certain lines should not be crossed or there will be consequences. Both are bad things, but they are different types of bad thing.
    • dmix 7y ago
      Censorship has a natural way of forever expanding and broadening in scope. Often because it’s the only power some groups can exert on others (in this case China's gov to western companies) so they push it as far as they can into the realm of ridiculousness. Plus people get job promotions or feel-good emotions about "doing something". Eventually you run out of legitimate things to ban so you expand the scope. Then you can start banning people who complain about bannings, which naturally generating groups with victim complexes warranting more bannings, etc. This is not unique to China.
  • vkou 7y ago
    This level of pettiness is very much the international norm for territorial and sovereignty disputes. The only newsworthy thing is that China's a big enough market that it can compel vendors to comply.
  • headsupftw 7y ago
    The United States doesn't officially recognize Taiwan as a country. Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations. Apple's revenue in Taiwan is peanuts compared to that of mainland China. The list goes on.
    • mytailorisrich 7y ago
      The US used to recognise the government as the government of the whole of China and the communists as insurgents, with Taiwan holding the Chinese seat in the UN. Obviously, at some point realpolitik caught up and they reversed their stance, though they continue to help Taiwan because... more realpolitik.
    • jrockway 7y ago
      We might not officially recognize them as a country, but we do have a law called the "Taiwan Relations Act". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Relations_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Relations_Act
    • umvi 7y ago
      Trump enraged China when he tweeted that he talked to "the President of Taiwan" though, so clearly most people in the US think of Taiwan as being separate from China
    • brobinson 7y ago
      The US has also never recognized Taiwan as being part of the PRC. I'm not even sure why you're bringing this up in relation to the parent's comment.
    • CharlesColeman 7y ago
      > The United States doesn't officially recognize Taiwan as a country. That means little. The US has de-facto diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and has made official commitments to its defense against threats (which realistically could only ever come from the PRC), such as selling it arms. The weirdness and official ambiguity here are driven by the PRC's sensitivities, and do not represent any real commitment to the PRC's position. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Relations_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Relations_Act
  • 7u5432throw 7y ago
    Petty would be China requesting Apple to hide the Japanese or American flag. Taiwan is the result of a civil war. No one says Americans are petty when they try to remove Confederate flags or when Germany bans the Nazi flag.
    • brobinson 7y ago
      The ROC is the successor state to the Qing Dynasty. It acquired Taiwan when the Japanese surrendered it at the end of WW2. The PRC is the result of the civil war. The ROC never stopped existing nor did it start to exist as the result of the civil war.
  • espadrine 7y ago
    > Is it simply a reminder to their people of who's in charge, at this level of pettiness? Most countries have petty border disputes. A famous country occupies territory in Cuba where it built a military prison. Cuba claims that the military presence is occupation of territory it rightfully owns. The famous country refuses to leave; it claims it only leases it based on a hundred-year-old document, and sends $4k checks yearly. Cuba denies, and refuses to cash the checks.
    • untreasure 7y ago
      China decided to take control of Hong Kong based on a hundred year old document.
      • chrischen 7y ago
        Control was taken from China in the first place.
        • nickv 7y ago
          Which china? If the world was truly fair and honored the original signatories, it'd have gone back to the ROC and not the PRC. But it didn't because of might is right. I saw you made a comment earlier that both countries say "China" on their passports missing the point of this whole conflict. I think you should spend at least an hour reading about the history of this conflict (not through China's censored Internet).
      • hajile 7y ago
        A document signed with Taiwan instead of POC I would add.
    • hajile 7y ago
      That's hardly an accurate telling. Cuba started a war for independence. The US sunk their own ship, the USS Maine to get an excuse to go to war (according to the Northwoods document declassified in 1998). This kicks off the Spanish-American war where Teddy Roosevelt rises to prominence (the perhaps biggest point of note was the butchering of whole villages, mass rapes, and what were essentially concentration camps in the Philippines). After liberating Cuba, the US government drafted the Platt Amendment as conditions for giving up the Cuban territory they had won from Spain. There were 7 conditions and one of those was the establishment of Guantanamo Bay. Fidel Castro and his chief gestapo butcher Che Guevara overthrow the previous government and then proceed to break most of the other conditions (though it could be argued that the US should have exercised article 3 and prevented the coup). Cuba later argues that the Vienna convention on treaties overrules the previous agreement, but the Vienna convention is explicitly non-retroactive (and more to the point, agreements due to a war are by their very nature coercive). It could be argued that the US created an excuse for war isn't very savory and most Americans of the time would have opposed involvement if an honest case had been made (I agree with this). If they had not, it's most likely that Cuba would have remained a Spanish colony and that point is immaterial. International law doesn't leave room for "pettiness" in this case. If the US were trying to pretend the Cuban government didn't exist and was trying to force non-US entities to comply with that non-reality, that go far beyond petty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_Naval_Base#Guantanamo_Bay_during_the_Spanish%E2%80%93American_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_Naval_Base#Guan... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platt_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platt_Amendment
• seph-reed 7y ago
  Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems like a better response would be to add a bunch of other "not real country" flags. Flags from ancient civilizations, or countries that no longer exist. Then they wouldn't be taking a stand as the people responsible for defining what is and is not a country.
  • lonelappde 7y ago
    You know who's not stupid? The Chinese Communist Party is not stupid.
    • carapace 7y ago
      Millions of CCP members are not stupid but the CCP as an organization is extremely stupid. That's part of the horror of it.
  • slimed 7y ago
    That's not how it works in China. Plausible deniability, benefit of the doubt, etc, is not in the CCP's vocabulary.
    • seph-reed 7y ago
      I'm less worried about China than the precedent they're setting. I think, perhaps, if they'd done something like this a while ago, it might have taken China that much longer to care. There are (generally) very few "solutions" in these things, so it's best to focus on small gains, cracks that things slip through, and temporary safe spaces.
  • lostlogin 7y ago
    > add a bunch of other "not real country" flags. I’d prefer that they altered the flags of despotic countries in some way that indicated their inferior ruling system.
    • jefftk 7y ago
      I can't tell if you're serious, but if you are: which entity should be responsible for categorizing countries into "despotic" and "not despotic"?
• mey 7y ago
  It's easy to forget the freedom I enjoy and expect in the United States. Again brings to light the question, how much do you actually own your device? Since I assume there is no recourse for these users on a censorship level, is there such a thing as a class action lawsuit for removing a feature in Hong Kong?
  • milankragujevic 7y ago
    Even if there was (I don't know, am not a HK lawyer), you would probably have a few problems if you complained about THAT exact feature being removed. Of course, this is just speculation on my part.
    • nailer 7y ago
      'One country two systems' as agreed to by the CCP under the Sino-British Joint Declaration, prior to the handover of Hong Kong, means that the PRC is only responsible for military defence of HK. Anyone who disagrees that 'one country two systems' applies in Hong Kong is accusing the CCP of lying. Which we know the CCP would never do. Edit: anyone who has spent time on HN in the last few years and commented on the actions of the CCP should be familiar with the usual brigading by pro-CCP people - anyone with half a sense of decency would welcome the downmods. But to those who downmod, you just accused the CCP of lying. Enjoy being disciplined by your masters.
      • FabHK 7y ago
        People might be complaining about your use of unexpanded acronyms (CCP, PRC), or infusing a huge political stance onto a narrow legalistic question.
      • dang 7y ago
        That last bit breaks the HN guidelines badly. Would you please re-read them and follow them? Such cheap accusations of brigading get made all the time from both sides and have proven to be completely unreliable. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• milankragujevic 7y ago
  Hmmm. Would I get banned by the GFW for these two characters? 0x1F1F9 0x1F1FC...? (🇹🇼)
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • jrockway 7y ago
    The last time I was in China, HN was already banned.
    • milankragujevic 7y ago
      I mean, AFAIK my blog isn't. Yet. I get visitors from China on my post about controlling the world's cheapest quadcopter from a PC via arduino and nrf24l01+... edit: I just checked, it's accessible from mainland China, though quite slow.
      • rdbell 7y ago
        If anyone else wants to check their website's accessibility from China, I run a service that lets developers proxy HTTP requests through real Chinese (and worldwide) residential ISP customers: https://packetstream.io https://packetstream.io We have a worldwide network of real users that install a relay app on win/mac and we proxy customer requests through their home ISP connections like this: ``` developer@Developers-MacBook-Pro-2:~% curl -x http://xxxx:xxxx_country-China@proxy.packetstream.io:31112 https://ifconfig.co/json {"ip":"223.166.106.16","ip_decimal":3752225296,"country":"China","country_eu":false,"country_iso":"CN","city":"Qingpu","latitude":31.1539,"longitude":121.1141,"asn":"AS17621","asn_org":"China Unicom Shanghai network"} ``` I just tested HN several times from different Chinese IPs and it is indeed blocked: ``` developer@Developers-MacBook-Pro-2:~% curl -v -x https://xxxx:xxxx_country-China@proxy.packetstream.io:31111 https://news.ycombinator.com/ * Trying 34.234.216.249... * TCP_NODELAY set * Connected to proxy.packetstream.io (34.234.216.249) port 31112 (#0) * Establish HTTP proxy tunnel to news.ycombinator.com:443 * Proxy auth using Basic with user 'xxxx' > CONNECT news.ycombinator.com:443 HTTP/1.1 > Host: news.ycombinator.com:443 > Proxy-Authorization: Basic xxxx > User-Agent: curl/7.54.0 > Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive > < HTTP/1.1 502 Proxy Error (destination unreachable) < Proxy-agent: PacketStream Proxy < Content-Type: text/html < * Received HTTP code 502 from proxy after CONNECT * Closing connection 0 curl: (56) Received HTTP code 502 from proxy after CONNECT ``` If any HN users want free PacketStream credits to test their own endpoints send me an email with your PacketStream username: ronald at packetstream dot io
• georgeecollins 7y ago
  I don't know if things are different now, but when I went to school in HK a long time ago, most Chinese people in Hong Kong I talked to felt Taiwan should be part of China.
  • johnzim 7y ago
    1 Country 2 Systems has been shown to be a scam so things have changed. I can't speak for people of my generation but the kids are alright.
    • 7u5432throw 7y ago
      Macau is doing fine.
    • georgeecollins 7y ago
      I agree, but I think the idea (then) was that people were very proud of being Chinese, and thought that Taiwan should be part of China. They may have wanted a different Chinese government, but not one that didn't rule over Taiwan.
  • lonelappde 7y ago
    It's interesting that someone thinks that people of one region have a relevant opinion about what government people of another region should be controlled by.
    • your-nanny 7y ago
      why is that interesting?.
      • your-nanny 7y ago
        Are questions against Hacker News guidelines!?!?!?!?!?
    • thefringthing 7y ago
      Isn't that exactly what most of the commenters on this post are doing?
• TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
  The Extradition Bill ostensibly existed to allow extradition to ⊠⊠
• typeformer 7y ago
  This is fffffffkkkkkdddd
  • dang 7y ago
    Maybe so, but could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
• tinus_hn 7y ago
  In other news, when you were able to visit Google Maps in China you would see the Chinese view of the world where disputed regions are part of China, while the rest of the world would see something else. https://qz.com/224821/see-how-borders-change-on-google-maps-depending-on-where-you-view-them/ https://qz.com/224821/see-how-borders-change-on-google-maps-...
  • hkai 7y ago
    To be fair, that's true elsewhere as well. They reflect the borders as they are officially recognized in the user's country.
  • thrwn_frthr_awy 7y ago
    In China, any mapping app is ran through the government owned mapping servers. Apple Maps, Google Maps, etc., are all using Chinese servers deployed and ran by external Chinese teams.
    • tantalor 7y ago
      No
  • paxys 7y ago
    This is true for every country in the world. Google Maps in the US displays borders/countries which the US government recognizes.
    • unethical_ban 7y ago
      I disagree. You may see "contested" borders, but not outright US policy. For example, the US recognizes the sovereignty of Kosovo, but Google Maps shows it as a dotted border. And Wikipedia accurately describes it as a disputed state.
      • dheera 7y ago
        Recognition of one side or another in a foreign dispute is a little different than having your own dispute or claim. Guantanamo Bay (disputed between US/Cuba) used to be marked as US territory in Google Maps at least when viewed from the US, although interestingly, I'm looking at it now it doesn't say Cuba / United States along the border anymore. I can't imagine the amount of crap they must go through on the backend to deal with these idiotic human politics. Humans suck.
• rkapsoro 7y ago
  Humble suggestion: Hong Kong iOS users should file a radar/feedback.
  • xvector 7y ago
    It isn't a bug, the decision is intentional. I'm sure Apple is aware of how ridiculous this is and how their users hate it.
    • hkai 7y ago
      True, but they also need to earn money. See last week's south park about exactly that.
• alkonaut 7y ago
  Stop sucking up to dictatorships. If they don't want to do business with you because your map or flags or search engine shows something they don't like - leave. Don't censor your search engine or modify your maps to fit their worldview.
  • beisner 7y ago
    This is a simplistic view. When push comes to shove, companies don't behave with political principles. Apple is not going to throw away access to 1/6 of world's population over a political dispute. It's unrealistic to expect any company to, if they're sufficiently large. The only way to achieve political goals is to apply political pressure directly at the state level, or to work with domestic movements that seek to undermine the policies in question.
    • ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
      Google did. Yea they want to head back (now that they realize nobody cared), but they pulled out of China entirely back in 2011 over censorship.
      • est31 7y ago
        They were also hacked by the Chinese. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora
      • chrischen 7y ago
        That was the public reason but i’ve also heard they simply could’t compete and decided to use that excuse to save face.
        • djohnston 7y ago
          by couldn't compete, i assume you mean, "didn't want to hand over all their IP to CCP, who would in turn give it to the native competitor", right?
• pcurve 7y ago
  Anyone hazard to guess China's next few chess moves?
  • goblin89 7y ago
    Depends on their near-term goals. If dismantling HK’s SAR status is on the list, make sure that protests in Hong Kong remain violent and feature people waving flags of USA. Use that as an excuse to intervene in order to fight terrorism and/or maintain national sovereignty against foreign powers. Status re Taiwan is unlikely to radically change in near future, as far as my understanding of the situation goes. As an aside, while in times like these any information may turn out to be propaganda, this looks like a thoughtful analysis of the current situation in Hong Kong (Google Translate works adequately with it): https://gateway.pinata.cloud/ipfs/QmUg7C7s7umWp24Qr9x9kc68zEi2ixJqbyAQTCNT4FUg22/ https://gateway.pinata.cloud/ipfs/QmUg7C7s7umWp24Qr9x9kc68zE...
    • goblin89 7y ago
      Apparently the author of that article is considered pro-PRC in HK, as he supports the Greater Bay Area idea. Uhm. On the merits, though, some of what he writes makes sense.
• mikelyons 7y ago
  To fight the censorship cancer, would the western world have to agree to exclude and isolate China? Would this inevitably end up in a west vs. China+Russia world war? Will China eventually grow to the size that it can successfully invade and annex the west? One Earth = one China?
  • squarefoot 7y ago
    "To fight the censorship cancer, would the western world have to agree to exclude and isolate China?" I would rather wait the day our beloved western world agrees on a single, objective, independent definition on what censorship is, then I would want to see people like Snowden, Manning, Assange and similar others walk free and unharmed. That day I could concede we would have superior moral grounds to exclude and isolate other countries.
    • mikelyons 7y ago
      Can you extrapolate about the link between whistle-blowers and the definition of censorship? It's unclear to me what point you're intending to make.
      • MiSeRyDeee 7y ago
        It's simple and clear: western country censors media as well.
      • squarefoot 7y ago
        My point is that their "crimes" were painted as such by the same establishment which got damaged by their revelations, while others would find many of those revelations a public service. Forcing the media to align with the establishment POV, with the intended purpose of manipulating public opinion about those people, is not much different from Chinese censorship: a pot-kettle-black scenario in which the cleanest one stinks badly.
        • mikelyons 7y ago
• djohnston 7y ago
  This is why I laugh when Apple tried to paint themselves as champions of anything more than their share price
  • MrZongle2 7y ago
    "Think different. Just not too different."
  • _bxg1 7y ago
    They are, loosely, the champions of their customers at least, unlike most of the tech world. They have to do a good enough job to get you to spend $1k on the next year's device. Google just has to not-suck enough that you won't stop using it for free. But yes, any true moral posturing they make is baloney.
    • hesarenu 7y ago
      The mobile phones are not free. Don't belittle people who pay good amount of money to purchase them. Even though some can purchase iPhone.
      • _bxg1 7y ago
        I'm not belittling, I'm just laying out the economic forces. Google doesn't have to give a care when it comes to services, at least, because its customers are the ones buying ads, not the ones using the products.
        • hesarenu 7y ago
          You are still belittling. Customers buy mobile not ads. Just ask any android users. It's like you are saying iPhone users are buying status symbols not mobiles.
• iserlohnmage 7y ago
  I was wondering what the next step is? Ban the VPN and extend the GFW?
  • hkai 7y ago
    Something more prosaic, like removing the gay flag emoji in countries where it's frowned upon.
• peterkelly 7y ago
  This reminds me of the story about how the first release of Windows 95 was banned in India because 8 pixels of the map shown in the timezone selection control panel were colored in such a way that suggested parts of Kashmir were part of Pakistan. https://www.cnet.com/news/how-eight-pixels-cost-microsoft-millions/ https://www.cnet.com/news/how-eight-pixels-cost-microsoft-mi... https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42823 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42...
  • behnamoh 7y ago
    Man that's crazy! They must've paid real close attention to it, but I think it's partly due to low resolution screens available in circa 1995. On a low-res screen, it's impossible to draw maps completely according to the borders, so this was probably inevitable and unintentional.
    • pradn 7y ago
      Inside Microsoft, there's a whole database of geopolitically-sensitive issues that have been accrued over the years. You can see all sorts of border disputes and differences in language that you had to take into account when working on global products. On a related note, now you have movies with different scenes in China. https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the_extra_looper_scenes_y https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the_extra_looper_scenes_y https://kotaku.com/why-many-in-china-hate-iron-man-3s-chinese-version-486840429 https://kotaku.com/why-many-in-china-hate-iron-man-3s-chines...
      • Swizec 7y ago
        At least 30% of my enjoyment of Venom came from it being set in SF and me going “Hey look I know that corner!” or “Wow we’ve been to that restaurant, they totally used a different place for that shop front!” Seeing your town in a movie is incredibly rewarding. Just like a musician is basically required to shout “Hello $PLACE” at some point during a performance PS: for the downvoters, that’s what the linked article cites as the reason that movie gets extra scenes in China. Chinese audiences liked seeing their city in a scene that Western audiences didn’t care about.
• luckydata 7y ago
  For how long will the duck need to walk like a duck and quack like a duck to be finally called a duck?
  • awayfromhomenow 7y ago
    Depends on what the duck identifies as.
  • some_random 7y ago
    For as long as the duck keeps up the payments and no one else really cares otherwise.
• factsaresacred 7y ago
  In a way it's a good thing that China is revealing its petulant nature to the world. Not that they hid it all that well, but until recently everybody was too busy enjoying cheap electronics to notice the monster they were feeding. China—the people and country—are spectacular. China—the Party—is an malevolent force obsessed with self-preservation. Such is the nature of autocratic regimes. A quote from Czech dissident Václav Havel bears repeating: > The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies. Depriving people of information is called making it available...the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.
  • mistermann 7y ago
    > In a way it's a good thing that China is revealing its petulant nature to the world. It's probably somewhat risky strategically, but they likely realize they're now strong enough to do such things with absolute impunity, and it will make their eventual victory that much sweeter.
    • howhigh12323 7y ago
      I think they are tired of playing crouching tiger hidden dragon. Its good for China, but not so much for the rest of the world.
  • Fricken 7y ago
    The two top priorities for any institution are first to hold on to the power they have, and second to expand those powers. This is as true for the neighbourhood gardening club as it is for the Communist party of China.
    • 7y ago
• yters 7y ago
  I consider this reason to ditch Apple next round of device purchases. Nice UI and all, but it's just a pretty face on Unix.
  • dlivingston 7y ago
    "Just a pretty face on Unix" is a bit of a simplistic way of viewing an operating system(s), no?
• adamnemecek 7y ago
  I really wonder about the information flow here. Does Xi Jinping call Tim Cook directly?
  • thesquib 7y ago
    In China, Tim Cook's name is Xi Jinping.
  • CharlesColeman 7y ago
    > I really wonder about the information flow here. Does Xi Jinping call Tim Cook directly? I doubt it. The PRC is far more important to Apple than Apple is to the PRC. If I had to guess, I'd say the government didn't talk to Apple at all, but Apple has a department whose tasks is to proactively ensure their products do not offend Chinese government sensitivities.
• explusion 7y ago
  sigh im tired of seeing so much HK content online im involuntarily becoming a chinese govt supporter because of this
• CoconutPilot 7y ago
  Apple stood up to the US government's requests to decrypt devices but capitulated to China's request to remove an image of another country's flag. This is scarey.
  • Synaesthesia 7y ago
    They also denied apps which track US bombing and attacks, drone strikes and such
    • ultrarunner 7y ago
      Do you have more information? I didn't find anything with a few quick searches but would like to know more.
      • rangibaby 7y ago
        https://theintercept.com/2017/03/28/after-12-rejections-apple-accepts-app-that-tracks-u-s-drone-strikes/ https://theintercept.com/2017/03/28/after-12-rejections-appl...
  • zepto 7y ago
    Removing an emoji from a keyboard is as scary as hacking all of someone’s personal data?
    • CharlesColeman 7y ago
      > Removing an emoji from a keyboard is as scary as hacking all of someone’s personal data? Yes. While seemly small, removing the emoji is an instance of political censorship.
      • natch 7y ago
        I doubt Apple leadership is unbothered by the reality of censorship that some countries impose. Unfortunately China fully embraces censorship though. There is a lot of good done by giving another billion and a half people access to a non-privacy-invading mobile OS so balancing that against bowing to censorship is a tough decision. If you think you disagree, please discuss your reasons.
• rmrfnodemodules 7y ago
  This is what China (CCP) does when it gets money. Imagine what it will do if they got real, substantial military forces. Please wake up American people!
• dmix 7y ago
  > replaces the flag of Taiwan with a missing character tofu () TIL, is it really called tofu?
  • kps 7y ago
    Yes; for example, the Noto font family is so named as an abbr for ‘no tofu’. (Taiwan should change their flag to �. Checkmate, CCP!)
• NilsIRL 7y ago
  Apple is basically saying that Hong Kong is ≈ to China which is Chinese propaganda.
  • 7u5432throw 7y ago
    Isn’t that also the stance of the UN? Hong Kong and Macau are special administrative regions of China until 2047.
    • NilsIRL 7y ago
      What I meant was more equal than before. Basically Apple is treating both places in the same way with the same restrictions whereas before nothing special applied to HK.
• dangero 7y ago
  Can you imagine if this is just a bug and you're the engineer that caused it? I'm thinking it might be a bug because the emoji is still available on the system through other means.
• dheera 7y ago
  It's worth noting that the ROC flag (== Taiwan flag) was the flag flown all over the mainland before 1949. It's a part of mainland history as well. I'm not supporting any political stance here, but just saying that it's a bit weird to ban a symbol that was part of the mainland's history as well, and on its own, carries more historical significance than just Taiwan independence.
  • mytailorisrich 7y ago
    Indeed, this flag has little, if anything, to do with "Taiwan independence". But according to the PRC the ROC no longer exists (that's what they mean by "Taiwan is part of China" and I'm guessing that they see the flag used by people opposing the (PRC) government, so the standard procedure is to ban it. I'm curious, though, if this comes from a specific demand or if, for example Apple has moved to releasing the same version of iOS in HK and the mainland (I'm guessing that the flag isn't in the mainland's version of iOS here, but I don't know for a fact).
    • datagram 7y ago
      The article mentions that you can still view and copy/paste the Taiwan emoji in Honk Kong, whereas you can't on the mainland.
  • chrischen 7y ago
    While the US doesn’t ban the confederate flag, it is heavily discouraged and official government cannot use it. Lots of controversy over confederate symbolism too with one side arguing it is history, and another arguing it is racist symbolism. Germany bans the swastika. I do think it is well within the sovereign right of a nation to ban symbols of a competing government. In Taiwan’s case it is claiming itself as a rightful government to China, which is actually somewhat different than simply a historical symbol. Allowing it can be a tacit acknowledgement of legitimacy.
    • chadlavi 7y ago
      it's a lot more like if the confederacy won and banned the stars and bars in this case.
• wmblaettler 7y ago
  Years ago when working in Microsoft SharePoint, I noticed this method: SPUtility.HideTaiwan [1], which would hide the Taiwan calendar option in China, Hong Kong and Macao. [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/developer/sharepoint-services/ms441219(v%3Doffice.12) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/de...
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• omegaworks 7y ago
  Ubuntu was the first OS to support Kurdish in 2006[1]. We have to keep pushing for open platforms in the face of state sponsored cultural suppression. Prior to 1991, Turkey banned speaking Kurdish in public and they successfully pressured Microsoft to keep it out of Windows until version 10. It is of increasing relevancy as imperialist governments around the world put pressure on minority populations. Just yesterday the Trump admin opened the doors to Turkish expansion into a Kurdish region of northern Syria. 1. http://www.unthinkingly.com/2006/12/07/ubuntu-in-kurdish/ http://www.unthinkingly.com/2006/12/07/ubuntu-in-kurdish/
• mulle_nat 7y ago
  Apple's "Courage" ends at little technical details like headphone jacks.
• dalore 7y ago
  This type of localization/internationalization is common place. I remember doing locale files that contained timezones for Nokia phones for Hebrew and Arabic. Notable the Hebrew files didn't contain Palestine for example. China didn't have Taiwan etc.
• baybal2 7y ago
  I have mainland version of Huawei Maimang 5 and it has Taiwanese flag on the keyboard... thou, only on the last page, tucked along non-nations
• throwaway13372 7y ago
  What's the worth of this? The local law says HK is part of China, and automatically Apples has to abide to local law, which states China view Taiwan not as an independent nation. What's so surprising?!
  • Freak_NL 7y ago
    > HK […] Taiwan Dear Chinese keyboard warrior, you seem to be mixing up a former British colony and a beleaguered sovereign nation in a single sentence. But your English is getting better I guess, so there is that.
    • dang 7y ago
      Please don't break the site guidelines, regardless of how wrong another comment is or you feel it is. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• tibbon 7y ago
  What's it take for an engineer in the US to actually do something like this? If my boss/product manager wanted me to do something like this, I'd be calling them out for shitty politics, and telling them they need to find a new engineer because I'd quit immediately - and likely incite others to come with me. Maybe I have a higher sense of morality than others, but I'm no shill for China's power over Taiwan. I can use my entitlement/privilege as an engineer to say "fuck off" to anyone who wants me to do things I find immoral. Furthering the needs of a power hungry regime looking to assert dominance over others? Nope. I spend all my day working to further democracy and freedom, not to enable free thought and self-determination to be squashed. Whoever coded this change and approved this PR, shame on you.
  • organsnyder 7y ago
    Perhaps that engineer had a baby on the way and was terrified of losing health coverage, or was in the United States on an H1B visa and was afraid they'd be deported... I'd probably have made the same decision as you (I'm fortunate to have a safety net), but many people don't have that luxury.
    • Macuyiko 7y ago
      I agree. We shouldn't blame the engineer but the managers asking for this in the first place and knowing they can get away with any sort of "small pressures" they put on their employees.
      • forkerenok 7y ago
        Perhaps that manager had a baby on the way and was terrified of losing health coverage, or was in the United States on an H1B visa and was afraid they'd be deported... But seriously, moral is the thing that applies not only when it's convenient. Disclaimer: I have no moral right to preach this.
        • Zenst 7y ago
          Maybe that the engineer or the manager (or both) are not that old and still paying of their student loans and other debt babies. Though I'd go with the ability to add or remove emojis or restrict them was a facility engineered for more moral motives and was a point and click level of solution that those with access could do such a change with ease. Or It was upper management... Either way - I do not expect an announcement from Apple saying "Zach in engineering did it, his bad, sorry for that", or indeed anything at all as that would fuel this and unless it is still trending as an issue after a few weeks, then they might. But in general, such things PR wise, blow over and Apple like most have found that not fueling it with any response unless it is exactly what the populus want to hear, it is best to say nothing. At least, that is how many such comparable matters play out with such large corporations throughout history, though they have improved. EDIT[ s/hold/old/ ]
• EGreg 7y ago
  I thought Apple took the physical Taiwan flag and hid it in Hong Kong. And clicked to find out why.
• natch 7y ago
  Curious, anyone in Hong Kong, what do some of the various flavors of Android do?
• 886 7y ago
  To get the facts right. It isn't called "Taiwan flag". It is the flag of Republic of China. And To People's Republic of China, ROC is not legitimate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_the_United_Nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_the_United_Nations
  • lacampbell 7y ago
    The Republic of China is commonly known as Taiwan. No one is confused about the geopolitical entity you mean when you say "Taiwan". The ROC government has for some time used some variation of "Taiwan (Republic of China)" when using English - passports, visa entry stamps, embassies, etc.
• rhema 7y ago
  In 2008, I worked at livemocha.com. I remember there was a formerly Chinese national that mentioned the same problem. The company received complaints (from users, I think). The story also reminds me of one dev's solution to conflicting instructions on how he was to label a button. So, he hard-coded special rules for each individual boss and both thought they got what they wanted.
• nabla9 7y ago
  South Park's latest episode was about Chinese censorship in the West. 'South Park' Scrubbed From Chinese Internet After Critical Episode https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/south-park-banned-chinese-internet-critical-episode-1245783 https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/south-park-banned-chi...
  • 0xdeadb00f 7y ago
    I should get back into that show. I don't recall why I stopped watching.
• thesausageking 7y ago
  The anger towards Apple in this thread is misdirected. The US government's official stance recognizes "that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China" and that "the United States does not support Taiwan independence" From: https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-taiwan/ https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-taiwan/ Why should Apple be expected to take a political stance at odds with the official Chinese and US government policies?
  • philliphaydon 7y ago
    The only way the US was allowed to trade with China is if it accepted the one China policy. The US is FORCED to not accept Taiwan. Taiwan is not part of China. Period.
  • rangibaby 7y ago
    You forgot the first part of the US statement: “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.”
  • paulddraper 7y ago
    > Why should Apple be expected to take a political stance It is really a political stance to have Unicode Emoji 1.0 as a feature?
  • alliao 7y ago
    I'll quote the full text "the United States recognized the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China, acknowledging the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China." I'll put the emphasis on "Chinese position"
  • surajama 7y ago
    The US's relationship with Taiwan is much more nuanced than that. Taiwan-US relations are actually at the closest they've ever been. For example: 1. US sells $8B of fighter jets to Taiwan (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/08/approves-8bn-sale-66-16-fighters-taiwan-190821002905496.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/08/approves-8bn-sale-66-...) 2. US passes the TAIPEI act, which outlines the US's strategy in dissuading Taiwan's few remaining diplomatic allies from switching recognition to China. (https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/3406/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22taiwan%22%5D%7D&r=1 https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/340...) 3. Visa free travel in the US for Taiwanese citizens (https://www.export.gov/article?id=Taiwan-Visa-Requirements https://www.export.gov/article?id=Taiwan-Visa-Requirements) The US might officially not recognize Taiwan as a country, but would it sell $8B of military equipment to a country it truly believed to be China?
• supernova87a 7y ago
  I feel the need to inject some perspective here. Every country imposes requirements on manufacturers of devices or service providers that some person(s) might object to. If you choose to do business in that country, you play ball, or you leave. How you pick which ones that are tolerable enough to live with is the question -- and don't imagine that it's moral principles that define it. It's how much a company wants to stomach the loss of that business. Saudi Arabia (and many others) prevent the installation of Whats App, etc. on phones activated there. Israel (and the US by the way) censor imagery of certain places on the maps shown in those countries. Japan for chrissake even forces devices to emit a camera shutter sound when a picture is taken. And you're singling out China for censoring the Taiwan flag emoji? How about those other cases? Where does it start / end? Are you saying engineers should quit over every one of these infringements?
  • ShteiLoups 7y ago
    This is more blatantly political. Do you have anything more I can read about the Isrealy/USA map censorship?
    • supernova87a 7y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyl%E2%80%93Bingaman_Amendment https://phys.org/news/2018-05-scientists-open-skies-imagery-policy-israel.html https://phys.org/news/2018-05-scientists-open-skies-imagery-...
    • vkou 7y ago
      Adobe just cut off the entire country of Venezuela from the software it paid for, over a political row between the US and Venezuela.
  • antoniuschan99 7y ago
    This is in hong kong though not in the mainland
  • p7IDD243 7y ago
    >Japan for chrissake even forces devices to emit a camera shutter sound when a picture is taken. This is actually pretty cool, I'm always paranoid that I'll end up on someone else's photo without knowing.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• nudpiedo 7y ago
  My understanding is that we should expect private embedded backdoors and weakened security on firmware for certain regions, and that the rights will be molded to the each local region. That’s just the great power of influence over an American company, in spite of the clear position from its own government regarding Taiwan. Say goodbye to all those ideals of universal rights and freedom in the cyber world as it was once long ago theorized. Somehow what sci-fi cyberpunk became almost true without bionic implants nor anarchy in the streets.
• throwawaysea 7y ago
  Apple and others also changed the pistol/gun emoji to a squirt gun (https://emojipedia.org/pistol/ https://emojipedia.org/pistol/). It seems like these big tech companies generally want to make cultural/intellectual/political choices and impose their mindset/influence. This is exactly why large tech platforms should not be trusted with managing (read: censoring) speech broadly across society behind the veil of protection as private entities.
• throwaway490194 7y ago
  An idea: In situations like this, encourage a whistle-blower in Apple to come forth to disclose who was involved. If the wrong doer knows they will be publicly exposed and forever branded for the wrong doing, they might be a little less likely to do it.
• toptal 7y ago
  Lol
• jefe_ 7y ago
  The craziest part of this article is the note at the end about airlines being forced to remove mention of Taiwan in order to do business in China. Went to Delta website to find a flight to Taipei, and sure enough every stop of trip lists city, state/country and for Taipei is just says: Taipei, According to the article, even this is still 'out of compliance,' because it should say 'Taipei, Taiwan China,' blown away this is how the booking page appears on the Delta website when loaded from the United States. Makes me worry, localization takes effort, and effort often leads to blanket solutions that 'check everyone's boxes.' The most worrying examples of this in my opinion have been the superhero movies of the past decade. These blockbuster franchises were all written to accommodate distribution in China (and worldwide for that matter) as a goal. This led to simplified dialogues for translation, story lines that avoided pushing controversial buttons, and the result was a decade of moderately entertaining and decidedly safe cinema. Sure, blockbusters are not the best barometer for a nation's ability to push artistic boundaries, but they have historically spoken to the sentiments, dreams, and challenges of a time. Unfortunately with the sequels and superheros era, it seems the tone has been one of risk-averse idealism, which strikes me as a particularly low form of entertainment, entertainment that is truly disposable, unable and unwilling to stand the test of time. Possibly straying into problems with corporate consolidations, but I think it's all related as larger corporations tend to take smaller risks in efforts to appeal to broader audiences. If very few companies are able/willing to tell China no, censorship features become acceptable, and then they become normal, and then maintaining two branches becomes burdensome, so then censorship becomes the compliant option, and at that point the dream of technology empowering regular people to do amazing things, to become real superheros, fighting corruption, injustice and oppression, that dream will be truly dead. Think about how much things have changed since the Arab spring... it happens quickly.
  • chrischen 7y ago
    I don’t see what the big deal is. Taiwan’s own passports say China on them.
    • pwinnski 7y ago
      I'm graciously assuming ignorance here. They say "Republic of China," which is the legal name of Taiwan. That is different from "People's Republic of China," which we in the west just call China.
• newnewpdro 7y ago
  Didn't GNOME remove flags altogether due to a similar circumstance? Rather than being political about which flags are valid, they just removed all of them.
• chrischen 7y ago
  China executes an official Taiwan belongs to China stance to save face, as communist bureaucracies love to do. In practice, their official policy lets Taiwan exist as an independently governed region more than the US even allows Hawaii or Cuba to be independent. Even Canada has more of a attachment to the US and its laws than Taiwan does. This is probably a fact lost on most foreigners unaware of the situation. If China really wanted to assimilate Taiwan they would not have such deeply connected bilateral trade, cross-border tourism, or give access to their market by Taiwanese companies like Foxconn, HTC, Asus, and hundreds more. China does impose tourism restrictions to pressure Taiwan, but if they really wanted to crush Taiwan they can easily do so without raising so much as a hand gun. The funny thing is armchair Chinese nationalists (people on the other side of the planet reading hacker news) are more up in arms about this than actual Taiwanese people because the de-jure stance has always been like this, and the de-facto independence of Taiwan has been pretty stable.
  • philliphaydon 7y ago
    People in Taiwan can freely travel to China. But people in China can only travel to Taiwan via a tour group. So there’s no pressure to taiwan on tourism...
    • chrischen 7y ago
      They often restrict tourism from Mainland China as leverage, as Taiwan receives a lot of tourism revenue from China.
      • philliphaydon 7y ago
        The restriction of not allowing mainland into Taiwan is controlled by Taiwan. Not by China... Taiwan is the one that put the policy in place that China can only visit Taiwan via a tour group only.
        • chrischen 7y ago
          Here you go: https://www.dw.com/en/taiwan-reduces-reliance-on-mainland-chinese-tourists/a-37645694 https://www.dw.com/en/taiwan-reduces-reliance-on-mainland-ch... "Beijing's attempt to punish Taiwan by throttling tourism from the mainland hasn't made much impact. Taiwan set a new tourism record last year by successfully courting visitors from the rest of Asia." Yes Taiwan has the sovereignty to do that, but China also has exit restrictions (USA does not have exit restrictions, which I assume is why you may be unfamiliar with this concept).
• reaperducer 7y ago
  I wonder what Foxconn, a Taiwanese company and massive Apple manufacturing partner, thinks of this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn
• bigpumpkin 7y ago
  My prediction: Two days later: Apple reinstates ROC flag emoji in HK apps just like the U-turn they did with HKmap.live
• todd3834 7y ago
  For someone who is completely ignorant to what is going on with Taiwan / Hong Kong / China… What's the quickest way to get up to speed from a "neutral?" source?
  • bigpumpkin 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Taiwan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hong_Kong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hong_Kong
  • llaappqq 7y ago
    Unfortunately I don't think there's any "neutral" source for news regarding China right now. Both Chinese media and Western media have biased views.
  • bllguo 7y ago
    I encourage you to talk to some Chinese-Americans, at least they will have some understanding of both viewpoints unlike all the Western and Chinese media coverage out there
• mattmurdog 7y ago
  Profit > rights
• sixstringtheory 7y ago
  Personally I hate seeing this happen both as a specific instance in the case of HK/Taiwan but just in general with corporations and politics. Professionally and philosophically it's another interesting wrinkle in the implications of the emoji technology. It reminded of something we saw a couple years ago when Apple changed the depiction of the gun emoji [0]. Interestingly, that blog post's proposed solution (note: same author as the OP article): > Hide it. This speaks to how fragile Unicode is, that things that were written in the past may so easily be changed in the future (like the replacement for Taiwan in China) or hidden in various ways. Another article mentions how emoji might be used by e.g. fascists to minimize uncomfortable concepts [1]. Even after you apply Hanlon's razor, there's still opportunity for good old-fashioned miscommunication [2]. [1] specifically mentions the mosquito emoji being introduced for health awareness, but what if we eradicate Malaria or even the mosquito as a whole, and then the irrelevant emoji is replaced with something not widely feared or hated, or maybe even beloved (like another social awareness campaign)? Then there'd be a lot of "Man I hate :positive-thing:" messages out there. I'm not saying let's ban emoji, it's just interesting to think about. Still, I hope the whitewashing effect mentioned in [1] doesn't gain more ground, here or otherwise. [0]: https://blog.emojipedia.org/apple-and-the-gun-emoji/ https://blog.emojipedia.org/apple-and-the-gun-emoji/ (discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12240386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12240386) [1]: https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2018/07/the-absolute-denial-of-/ https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2018/07/the-absolute-denial-of-... (discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17552067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17552067) [2]: https://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-miscommunication-using-emoji/ https://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-m... (discussed briefly, couldn't find a better thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11446047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11446047)
  • syncsynchalt 7y ago
    > This speaks to how fragile Unicode is, that things that were written in the past may so easily be changed in the future Unicode does not define code points for individual country flags. It defines 26 code points "Regional Indicator Symbol Letter A" through "Regional Indicator Symbol Letter Z" and implementations use that to represent two-letter ISO codes as the region or country's flag. To use a more neutral example, one implementation might recognize the combination of SU to represent the Soviet flag while another might not. This is more than a political dodge by the Unicode Consortium (though it is that too), it also uses fewer code points than the 200+ that would be needed for all countries, plus it allows new countries to be represented without a new Unicode version.
• amelius 7y ago
  Why can't we just send custom emoji, and maintain a library of them?
  • aembleton 7y ago
    Because it is a character, not an image so the recipient would also need the character to display it.
    • amelius 7y ago
      This may be how it is implemented, but it may not be what the user wants. The user may just want to send "image of X", where X may be something that was not predefined by some company or standards-committee, or it may be something that some company or government does not want the user to send.
• ethagnawl 7y ago
  So, _that's_ what they meant by, "think different".
• qwerty456127 7y ago
  The whole "unrecognised country" nonsense should begone. Everybody knows Taiwan is a distinct country (and does a reasonable job of being a decent country for the people living in it, it obviously is a better country than a number of completely recognized ones) yet it still has "limited recognition". How about recognizing the facts rather than virtual reality of politicians' imagination? Banning an entire country is bullshit.
  • thewholeview 7y ago
    It's not nonsense, and "everybody knows Taiwan is a distinct country" is a flawed statement. The UN does not recognize Taiwan. Taiwan is recognized as a sovereignty by 19 UN member states. It has formal diplomatic relationships with ~50 UN member states. UN has 193 member states in total. Please refrain from using subjective unprovable ideology to represent the mass.
    • AWildC182 7y ago
      The UN is a political organization and, importantly, highly leveraged by China for political gain. The objective reality is that Taiwan is an independent country that sets its own laws and is free to conduct its own foreign relations.
      • thewholeview 7y ago
        The objectivity in your eyes is subjectivity to another. Similarly objectivity in others is subjective in yours. There is never true objectivity in our collective presence. If UN ceases to be your objectivity, that's respected.
      • vkou 7y ago
        The objective reality is that most of the world, including the United States, does not actually recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country. It recognizes that it exists as... Something. I think you would be hard-pressed to argue that the Department of State, and its counterparts in Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Brazil, Japan[1], etc, etc, etc, have been 'highly leveraged by China for political gain'. Oh, and to throw another monkey wrench in your argument, consider that both China and Taiwan believe that Taiwan is not an independent country, but that it is part of China. What they disagree on is who is the legitimate government of China. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-China_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-China_policy
• NeoBasilisk 7y ago
  Disgusting and cowardly, but if it makes a buck (or billions), am I right?
• xur17 7y ago
  Does it make anyone else uncomfortable to see a fairly high number of freshly created accounts that only comment on China related threads? Specifically (read the comment history for these accounts): * https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thewholeview https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thewholeview * https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=surajama https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=surajama * https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thrwy_01 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thrwy_01 * https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=7u5432throw https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=7u5432throw * https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=howhigh12323 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=howhigh12323 * https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=throwaway13372 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=throwaway13372
  • sekasi 7y ago
    This, if accurate, is quite reflective of all online forums of discourse unfortunately. The game is rigged.
    • dang 7y ago
      Please see my reply at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199884. It's really, really important not to jump to conclusions about other posters. When people do that they usually make serious mistakes and sometimes quite regrettable ones, such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195898 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358. In the latter case the user really was hounded off the site.
  • indalo 7y ago
    Been noticing it as well. Strange indeed
  • 0xdead 7y ago
    Also surprising to see pretty good English in these comments given the fact that most Chinese residents absolutely suck at it.
    • 7y ago
• mzs 7y ago
  ROC and JP flags removed from upcoming Top Gun movie https://twitter.com/markmackinnon/status/1152241649893945346 https://twitter.com/markmackinnon/status/1152241649893945346
• ddtaylor 7y ago
  Today it's a flag emoji, but eventually Apple might be doing something with the Chinese government that is worse. It's a slippery slope.
• huffmsa 7y ago
  Literally kowtowing.
• coygui 7y ago
  Talk is cheap, show me your weapon.
• imulligan 7y ago
  Looks like the US Trade Policy is driving the car that carries the flag.
• blunte 7y ago
  This is another reminder that we should not have corporate gatekeepers to the apps and content on our devices.
• yungcoder 7y ago
  Between this and the NBA's capitulation to making the Rockets' GM retract his statements on Hong Kong, at what point does appeasement just become acceptance of China's behavior? Sure, from the individual business' perspective they don't want to risk alienating the Chinese government and losing the Chinese market, but if China sees that they can get their way by simply threatening foreign companies then it will just embolden them to push for more concessions down the road. Quite frankly this all stinks of 1930s European appeasement policy and we all know how that turned out.
  • bigpumpkin 7y ago
    Wow, did not hear about the Rockets thing until now. Thanks. I am confused tho, as an NBA fan, should I support the Rockets now that the Chinese are boycotting it. Or should I boycott them cause they bowed down to Chinese pressure?
    • b88d80170 7y ago
      People really don't care.
      • tjpnz 7y ago
        And until people do corporations will continue to enact censorship on behalf of the CCP.
    • Mountain_Skies 7y ago
      The (new) ABA has lots of teams you could support. Lots and lots of teams. If you have some extra cash, you could probably even have your own ABA team.
  • acangiano 7y ago
    A recent South Park episode parodied this quite well.
    • davidkuhta 7y ago
• emsign 7y ago
  This is like in 1984 and what the Minitrue is doing.
• jaimex2 7y ago
  It's crazy how South Park episodes play out in real life the same week they are released.
• xigency 7y ago
  Interesting how Apple's phones are a marriage of Taiwanese and Chinese manufacturing when the two countries are bitterly divorced.
• Keverw 7y ago
  The whole one China policy has always been confusing to me, but haven't done too much research. Taiwan, Hong Kong and China each have different entry requirements for example for visiting, yet they are supposed to be the same country? I guess it has to do with control after their civil war though, but confusing for people who haven't been following the whole story. They are not separate, yet they are separate is like some sort of double speak. But the US has some confusing things too going on, like people from American Samoa are considered US nationals but they aren't US Citizens. They still get US passports, but can't vote, etc. I guess they aren't technically citizens of any country then but aren't completely stateless since still considered a national. It's like they aren't really citizens anywhere but are kinda like a half citizen in a way since they still get a passport. John Oliver did a segment on this, https://youtu.be/CesHr99ezWE https://youtu.be/CesHr99ezWE
  • why-oh-why 7y ago
    One country can have various entry requirements for its regions. China’s own Hainan island lets me enter visa-free for 30 days while Mainland China doesn’t. Same identical country, different rules.
    • Keverw 7y ago
      Yeah I know I've heard that about Tibet too, has different rules to entering than the rest of China. Then I've heard there's even cities that ban westerns completely, but unsure if that's true. Just a very odd concept to someone from North America. If you fly to Miami you are allowed to visit New York or Seattle all the way across the country. Same with Canada. I know Mexico has some odd things like that too though, you can visit border towns or cruise ports but if you want to go so much more inland you need a Visitor Permit called a FMM, or tourist card some refer to it as. Read conflicting amount of miles, seems about 12 miles though in. So seems like if your cruise final departure was in Mexico and you flew back home you might need to worry about it, but a port of call at the beach seems like most wouldn't need it. However read also flights and cruises will also include it with your ticket, but if you were taking a road trip across Mexico you'd for sure need to get one yourself it seems. But seems more like a tax than anything, since not the same as a visa.
• on_and_off 7y ago
  Hiding the flag from the keyboard is one thing (and already pretty bad) but refusing to display the character in China is surreal. Censoring an emoji is just insane.
• alexnewman 7y ago
  We must respect the wishes of sovereign governments and the rule of law if it's capitalism and not the jungle
• Ericson2314 7y ago
  Between China censoring abroad, and today's Syrian back and forth, I've been thinking about what a non-rightist foreign policy for the US could be. It's a really difficult problem. The world can be rightfully indignant at America's post-war history of barely paying attention to the mess it makes. From the inside, foreign policy has all this classist baggage that makes it really had to touch from the left.
• m0zg 7y ago
  That's just what happens when the Communist Party of China has you by the balls. Note to other manufacturers: diversify and disengage.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• Galanwe 7y ago
  Can anyone actually validate that this news is true? I live in Hong Kong and have the latest iOS updates. I still have the Taiwanese flag... same for all my colleagues, both on personal and work phones.
  • dang 7y ago
    That's important. It would be dismaying if this story spent an entire day at #1 on Hacker News and turned out not to be true.
    • frankacter 7y ago
      It affects device models with “CN” or with “ZA” set as region: https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/10/05/taiwan-flag-emoji-disappears-latest-apple-iphone-keyboard/ https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/10/05/taiwan-flag-emoji-disa... It is also limited to just the keyboard and not enforced in 3rd party apps or websites: https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20903613/apple-hiding-taiwan-flag-emoji-hong-kong-macau-china https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20903613/apple-hiding-tai...
      • Galanwe 7y ago
        How do you check this CN/ZA settings? I have an iPhone bought in HK, region set to “Hong Kong” (General -> Language & Region), iOS 13.1.2 and I see the Taiwanese flag in emojis. I test with the built in emoji keyboard in the “Notes” app.
        • frankacter 7y ago
          Our phones are Taiwan models and we can reproduce it. Which iPhone do you have? If it still has the ZP region for Hong Kong instead of ZA region it will not be impacted. More here on it: https://hiraku.tw/2019/10/4855/ https://hiraku.tw/2019/10/4855/
          • Galanwe 7y ago
            I see, I just checked, mine has the ZP region (Hong Kong & Macau), so that would explain why I still have the Taiwanese flag.
• flying_sheep 7y ago
  I found some serious problem about Hacker News. This sharing was ranked #1 in news tab just two hours ago. But now it disappears in the list. This scares me because someone is censoring Hacker News.
• Razengan 7y ago
  Is this the same Apple that was peacocking about defying its OWN government not long ago, during the FBI iPhone access hullabaloo? Now they're aiding the repression of an entire nation trying to defy a much more tyrannical government? Regarding Taiwan, I haven't been there, but from what I've seen/read about the country and spoken to the people from there, their situation seems like such a shame too. They deserve better recognition. China has long been acting like a petty schoolyard bully, "If you're their friend you can't be our friend!" I know I shouldn't be feeling this way about an entire people, but this whole situation is making me cold towards Chinese people in general, for letting such a government carry on like this for so long.