4 ms·

That is some incredible spin.

wutbrodo 7y ago
I'm as sympathetic to the protests as anyone and I'm definitely not used to defending Apple's behavior, but are we sure that this is spin? Undoubtedly the app is being used for more than just "ambushing and attacking police". But absent a firm belief that this reason from the Chinese government is bullshit, it's actually a pretty tall order (and questionably ethical) for a corporation to push back against a govt demand to remove a tool ostensibly being used to attack police forces. My views on computing freedom generally skew towards the Stallman side of the spectrum, so I'd actually be fine with a stronger norm that Apple could tell govts to screw off[1]. But I'm very aware that I'm an outlier in this sense, and expecting Apple to push back in the face of a demand like this seems well beyond consistency with the norms that currently exist around tech companies' responsiveness expect to govt demands, on grounds of what the power relationship should be between governmental and corporate entities. [1] (and ideally stop being so heavy-handed about their own enforcement of App Store apps...but that's another story)
- idlewords 7y ago
  The point is the app is not being used for ambushing and attacking police at all, because there have been no such ambushes in Hong Kong. The few situations where Hong Kong police have been in danger have come when a small group splits off and is isolated during a protest. In no case have protesters caught the police unawares in an ambush, let alone off-duty police. By its nature, the app shows large concentrations of police forces. The argument is ridiculous on its face, even if you don't know the situation on the ground in Hong Kong well. No one has been able to point to a single Hong Kong law this app violates, or to any example of it being misused in the way the statement alleges.
  - _tik_ 7y ago
    The protestors always try to find away to ambushes the police. There is a case that the protesters try to burn a police alive. The protester definitely monitoring the police movement to vandalize the train stations and the shops
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      > The protestors always try to find away to ambushes the police. So then why ban the app?
      - _tik_ 7y ago
        To prevent the protestor to use the app for guerilla tactic. The protestor are known to ambush police if their number is small. And to play cat and mouse with the police to vandalize
  - rjf72 7y ago
    This [1] is the video of the first shooting in the Hong Kong protests - reasonably safe for life for anybody who has not seen it. Something I didn't understand when I first saw the video is how the protesters were able to do what they do. An armed group of protesters moved rapidly towards their target, and manage to ambush him around a blind corner. Their target was a single police officer that seems to have temporarily become separated from other officers. The protesters seemed to know this and all immediately set upon him. You could make an argument that somehow they used some other technology to carry out their attack, but I'm not sure how much weight it'd have beyond the fact that no we don't have video (to my knowledge) of one of those guys explicitly opening and looking at the app to find the target. In any case, it certainly refutes the argument that no protesters have managed to catch the police by surprise or ambush them - because that is exactly what happened. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN4MvOrPotk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN4MvOrPotk
    - idlewords 7y ago
      Just look at the app. It doesn't have the spatial resolution to do this, nor does it identify individual officers, and it's got a considerable lag in real time. Or look at the video preceding this incident, and you'll see that the officers ran ahead of their group, and the kids confronting them were not looking at their phones because they were busy trying not to get shot. Or come and see for yourself. Or rely on the eyewitness testimony of hundreds of journalists in Hong Kong who have seen this same situation play out—cops run out too far, get isolated, get scared, draw a sidearm. Or figure it out from first principles on a message board.
      - rjf72 7y ago
        > Or look at the video preceding this incident, and you'll see that the officers ran ahead of their group, and the kids confronting them were not looking at their phones because they were busy trying not to get shot. Are you saying this video is taken out of context? Please do share any available video evidence. I assure you I tried quite hard to try to find more and this all I came up with! This is the thing that most confuses me about these protests. They are, by far, the most widely recorded protests in a developed nation - yet lengthy in context footage of the critical events events is surprisingly difficult to come by. Instead we just get snippets taken out of context that can be framed to show anything you want to show. For instance this [1] is Reuters reporting of this video entitled "Dramatic footage captures moment when Hong Kong protester was shot." It strips out absolutely all context and splices the video together in a way that even makes it seem like it's an officer charging a protester who is simply trying to defend himself from an officer drawing a gun. It then includes clips from a police statement which, without the context of what that conflict was about, paired with the selected footage they provided sounds comically absurd. This is absolutely propaganda, and quite ham handed propaganda at that. But of course there is also extensive propaganda coming from the Chinese side as well. It makes it all extremely difficult to have any clue of what is really happening. If you have any recommendations whatsoever on lengthy uninterrupted film footage on these events, I am absolutely all ears. [1] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-anniversary-hongkong-shooting-idUSKBN1WG46G https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-anniversary-hongkon...
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    > The point is the app is not being used for ambushing and attacking police at all, because there have been no such ambushes in Hong Kong. > In no case have protesters caught the police unawares in an ambush, let alone off-duty police. Right, this is what my questions were conditioned on. It's hard to get a complete picture of what's going on in situations like this when the government is so famously fond of misinformation and control of the press, but there's at least claims out there [1] that this has happened, along with plenty more examples of more general violence from sources that are not credibly controlled by China. I don't pretend to know that this claim is true, but it's surprising to me that you are so confident that no such incidents have happened, even in the face of (even possibly false) news reports that it has happened. More importantly, you're free to make whatever wild guesses that the official story is a lie in a way that Apple perhaps isn't: if the reports of ambushes are even somewhat credible, it's not clear to me how they could push back against a gov't claiming that an app is facilitating attacks on police. Note that I'm not saying that their hands are definitely tied here, my model of this isn't high-confidence and I'd personally be opposed to the takedown of a communications app in most situations (including this one). I'm just trying to reconcile the reactions here to the norms we currently have around corporations' power relative to gov't. > or to any example of it being misused in the way the statement alleges. This is fair; I am filling in the blanks with assumptions a little here: namely, that Apple's statement reflects the pretext of the govt's demand for removal. I also figure that isolated incidents of violence are far from difficult to come by in riots as intense as the ones in question (the Wikipedia page for the protests has a handful of examples). But it seems to me that this context in, say, the US, would be such that Apple would be criticized for refusal to remove the app, with plenty of takes about how irresponsible the decision is (it certainly stands on firmer ground than the new consensus that eg platforms are responsible for cracking down on "hate speech"). The difference here seems to be the legitimacy people grant to the gov't being resisted, and it's again not clear to me that that's a call that a company like Apple could or should be making (beyond broad decisions like whether or not to operate in the country). Thanks for the thoughtful response by the way: my comment doesn't have a strong position but is exploring some nuance I have questions about, and I know HN isn't really the forum for posting anything but the kinds of neatly-wrapped takes that can be swallowed (or rejected) whole by simpletons. It's always nice to get some engagement with the content of the comment instead of the usual mindless pattern-matching + upvote/downvote that most here are limited to. [1] https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/3025175/duty-hong-kong-police-officer-stabbed-three-men-after https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/30...
- tyfon 7y ago
  They might as well remove the web browser and any other form of communication capable apps then since they might be used for the same purposes. Apple has shown incredible little spine in relation to china, probably because they are 100% dependent on them to make their phones.

I'm as sympathetic to the protests as anyone and I'm definitely not used to defending Apple's behavior, but are we sure that this is spin? Undoubtedly the app is being used for more than just "ambushing and attacking police". But absent a firm belief that this reason from the Chinese government is bullshit, it's actually a pretty tall order (and questionably ethical) for a corporation to push back against a govt demand to remove a tool ostensibly being used to attack police forces. My views on computing freedom generally skew towards the Stallman side of the spectrum, so I'd actually be fine with a stronger norm that Apple could tell govts to screw off[1]. But I'm very aware that I'm an outlier in this sense, and expecting Apple to push back in the face of a demand like this seems well beyond consistency with the norms that currently exist around tech companies' responsiveness expect to govt demands, on grounds of what the power relationship should be between governmental and corporate entities. [1] (and ideally stop being so heavy-handed about their own enforcement of App Store apps...but that's another story)

idlewords 7y ago
The point is the app is not being used for ambushing and attacking police at all, because there have been no such ambushes in Hong Kong. The few situations where Hong Kong police have been in danger have come when a small group splits off and is isolated during a protest. In no case have protesters caught the police unawares in an ambush, let alone off-duty police. By its nature, the app shows large concentrations of police forces. The argument is ridiculous on its face, even if you don't know the situation on the ground in Hong Kong well. No one has been able to point to a single Hong Kong law this app violates, or to any example of it being misused in the way the statement alleges.
- _tik_ 7y ago
  The protestors always try to find away to ambushes the police. There is a case that the protesters try to burn a police alive. The protester definitely monitoring the police movement to vandalize the train stations and the shops
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    > The protestors always try to find away to ambushes the police. So then why ban the app?
    - _tik_ 7y ago
      To prevent the protestor to use the app for guerilla tactic. The protestor are known to ambush police if their number is small. And to play cat and mouse with the police to vandalize
- rjf72 7y ago
  This [1] is the video of the first shooting in the Hong Kong protests - reasonably safe for life for anybody who has not seen it. Something I didn't understand when I first saw the video is how the protesters were able to do what they do. An armed group of protesters moved rapidly towards their target, and manage to ambush him around a blind corner. Their target was a single police officer that seems to have temporarily become separated from other officers. The protesters seemed to know this and all immediately set upon him. You could make an argument that somehow they used some other technology to carry out their attack, but I'm not sure how much weight it'd have beyond the fact that no we don't have video (to my knowledge) of one of those guys explicitly opening and looking at the app to find the target. In any case, it certainly refutes the argument that no protesters have managed to catch the police by surprise or ambush them - because that is exactly what happened. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN4MvOrPotk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN4MvOrPotk
  - idlewords 7y ago
    Just look at the app. It doesn't have the spatial resolution to do this, nor does it identify individual officers, and it's got a considerable lag in real time. Or look at the video preceding this incident, and you'll see that the officers ran ahead of their group, and the kids confronting them were not looking at their phones because they were busy trying not to get shot. Or come and see for yourself. Or rely on the eyewitness testimony of hundreds of journalists in Hong Kong who have seen this same situation play out—cops run out too far, get isolated, get scared, draw a sidearm. Or figure it out from first principles on a message board.
    - rjf72 7y ago
      > Or look at the video preceding this incident, and you'll see that the officers ran ahead of their group, and the kids confronting them were not looking at their phones because they were busy trying not to get shot. Are you saying this video is taken out of context? Please do share any available video evidence. I assure you I tried quite hard to try to find more and this all I came up with! This is the thing that most confuses me about these protests. They are, by far, the most widely recorded protests in a developed nation - yet lengthy in context footage of the critical events events is surprisingly difficult to come by. Instead we just get snippets taken out of context that can be framed to show anything you want to show. For instance this [1] is Reuters reporting of this video entitled "Dramatic footage captures moment when Hong Kong protester was shot." It strips out absolutely all context and splices the video together in a way that even makes it seem like it's an officer charging a protester who is simply trying to defend himself from an officer drawing a gun. It then includes clips from a police statement which, without the context of what that conflict was about, paired with the selected footage they provided sounds comically absurd. This is absolutely propaganda, and quite ham handed propaganda at that. But of course there is also extensive propaganda coming from the Chinese side as well. It makes it all extremely difficult to have any clue of what is really happening. If you have any recommendations whatsoever on lengthy uninterrupted film footage on these events, I am absolutely all ears. [1] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-anniversary-hongkong-shooting-idUSKBN1WG46G https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-anniversary-hongkon...
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  > The point is the app is not being used for ambushing and attacking police at all, because there have been no such ambushes in Hong Kong. > In no case have protesters caught the police unawares in an ambush, let alone off-duty police. Right, this is what my questions were conditioned on. It's hard to get a complete picture of what's going on in situations like this when the government is so famously fond of misinformation and control of the press, but there's at least claims out there [1] that this has happened, along with plenty more examples of more general violence from sources that are not credibly controlled by China. I don't pretend to know that this claim is true, but it's surprising to me that you are so confident that no such incidents have happened, even in the face of (even possibly false) news reports that it has happened. More importantly, you're free to make whatever wild guesses that the official story is a lie in a way that Apple perhaps isn't: if the reports of ambushes are even somewhat credible, it's not clear to me how they could push back against a gov't claiming that an app is facilitating attacks on police. Note that I'm not saying that their hands are definitely tied here, my model of this isn't high-confidence and I'd personally be opposed to the takedown of a communications app in most situations (including this one). I'm just trying to reconcile the reactions here to the norms we currently have around corporations' power relative to gov't. > or to any example of it being misused in the way the statement alleges. This is fair; I am filling in the blanks with assumptions a little here: namely, that Apple's statement reflects the pretext of the govt's demand for removal. I also figure that isolated incidents of violence are far from difficult to come by in riots as intense as the ones in question (the Wikipedia page for the protests has a handful of examples). But it seems to me that this context in, say, the US, would be such that Apple would be criticized for refusal to remove the app, with plenty of takes about how irresponsible the decision is (it certainly stands on firmer ground than the new consensus that eg platforms are responsible for cracking down on "hate speech"). The difference here seems to be the legitimacy people grant to the gov't being resisted, and it's again not clear to me that that's a call that a company like Apple could or should be making (beyond broad decisions like whether or not to operate in the country). Thanks for the thoughtful response by the way: my comment doesn't have a strong position but is exploring some nuance I have questions about, and I know HN isn't really the forum for posting anything but the kinds of neatly-wrapped takes that can be swallowed (or rejected) whole by simpletons. It's always nice to get some engagement with the content of the comment instead of the usual mindless pattern-matching + upvote/downvote that most here are limited to. [1] https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/3025175/duty-hong-kong-police-officer-stabbed-three-men-after https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/30...
tyfon 7y ago
They might as well remove the web browser and any other form of communication capable apps then since they might be used for the same purposes. Apple has shown incredible little spine in relation to china, probably because they are 100% dependent on them to make their phones.