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The relevant piece is this: "Apple is requesting that Telegram shut down three channels used in Belarus to expose the identities of individuals belonging to the
by tmp20201010 6y ago
The relevant piece is this: "Apple is requesting that Telegram shut down three channels used in Belarus to expose the identities of individuals belonging to the Belarusian authoritarian regime that may be oppressing civilians"
Exposing identities of individuals is problematic. There are examples of bad things happening when these kind of messages spread through messaging apps.
- Fnoord 6y agoApple is no relevant party in this conflict. This should be a case between the people who are allegedly being doxxed (who go to the police) and the alleged doxxers. This stuff Apple does is what happens when someone gets on a power trip. What they gonna do next, attemp to censor forums available in Safari?
- usrusr 6y agoExposing identities is indeed a very wide spectrum, ranging from identities of sentenced terrorists (nobody'd question that, usually the legalities revolve around the concept of "public figure" which greenlights a lot of publication that would not be allowed about just any random person) on one extreme to identities of people who were found voting for X in an illegal interception of mail ballots on the other extreme. It doesn't really matter where exactly Apple would draw a line, from absurd extremes like "you are free to talk about Roman officials infamous for sentencing innocents to the cross, but please do so without mentioning PII" when someone types in Pontius Pilate, to pragmatic, maybe even lazy "don't use the channel for illegal communications (but we can't really police them)". But they should at least try to be somewhat consistent about it and, even more importantly (but much easier!), by no means require secrecy. A secrecy requirement is just lame and reeks of foul play, horribly.