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Apple's Cooperation with Authoritarian Governments

468 points by ig0r0 6y ago

oap_bram 6y ago
I mean capitalism goes together with authoritarianism pretty good. Just look at the companies that still exist today that helped the Third Reich. Perhaps it's time to want a different underlying system that wouldn't have a bottomline for profit maximization? idk
- arcticbull 6y ago
  IMO the best example is Chiquita -- they conspired with the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected government of Guatemala to secure their banana fields against the "godless communists." Naturally, they left Guatemala with a right-wing dictatorship. This kicked off a 46 year long civil war and the fallout has directly contributed to the migrant crisis at the border. They called it Operation PBSuccess. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZtAKHnqkf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZtAKHnqkf4
  - EdwardDiego 6y ago
    The phrase "Banana Republic" is entirely due to Chiquita/United Fruit Company. God bless America? (Also, wtf, Banana Republic is now an American fashion brand? Jesus Christ, way to have zero insight) Once again, really unsure why you're being downvoted for mentioning facts. Are you perhaps hurting some "invisible hand" idealists feelings? Who knows.
    - ic0n0cl4st 6y ago
      > Once again, really unsure why you're being downvoted for mentioning facts. > Are you perhaps hurting some "invisible hand" idealists feelings? Who knows. I’ve noticed that anything which questions capitalism, especially American capitalism gets rapidly downvoted. There seems to be a group of people, possibly even a bot network, which downvotes any and all such criticism. Randian ovjectivists have an outsized representation inside of YC as well as the HN community at large. I mean, why wouldn’t they? In a way YC is a successful cult which worships ar the alter of prosperity.
      - dang 6y ago
        > I’ve noticed that anything You're noticing, and then overgeneralizing, the data points you dislike (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). The overgeneralization comes because you don't notice (or underemphasize) the data points that don't make you angry. This is classic sample bias, as I believe I've pointed out to you under a different username in the past. Once people arrive at a spurious generalization like this, they imagine grandiose and sinister explanations for it. But the truth is quite boring: the community is divided the same way society at large is divided, the same way any large-enough population sample is. The only way HN is different is that we try to stop people from bashing each other with rhetorical two-by-fours about it. With limited success. Since you've continued to post flamewar comments and ignore our requests to stop, I've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with. For someone who purports to care about community, that's incongruent. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- liberatethemass 6y ago
  Lol, so does communism, monarchy, or when religion and politics merge (iran, ottoman empire etc).
  - EdwardDiego 6y ago
    I'm keen on your examples from Iran. Was it the time that the British asked the CIA to depose the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, and reinstall the Shah, for the benefit of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now a subsidiary of BP)?
    - ladyanita22 6y ago
      No, I think it was the time a civil unrest threw the Shah and put the ayatollahs in power with the help of the Soviet Union (which is suspiciously absent from your remarks) and now their women face jail for not wearing the veil or their homosexuals are hung by a crane
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        Both examples fit (one is monarchy—a stage managed abortive coup to justify an autocoup (the CIA directing both) by which a constitutional monarchy became a dictatorial one—the other a politics/religion merger.) If you are describing the problem the way it has upthread but only pointing to one or the other of the Iranian examples, it's pretty obviously being selective for dishonest purposes.
        ic0n0cl4st 6y ago
        Be careful. Here in HN it is not allowed to look at Iran’s situation objectively or holistically. It is allowable to spew hatred at Iran. Any discussion of the western meddling which destabilized Iran, embargoes which starves Iranians or the use of Iran as a political red herring is a hellbannable offense. (I will most probably be hellbanned for this comment). Edit: Told ya. @dang has decreed thou shalt not criticize capitalism and thou shalt not criticize american capitalism.
- EdwardDiego 6y ago
  Not sure why you've been downvoted, the list of complicit orgs is long. IBM, takes pride of place for their tabulation machines. Ford, and GM, for converting their German subsidiary factories to wartime usages, while declining to do the same in the USA. Nevermind Henry Ford's proclivity for funding anti-semitism. Then of course, all the German manufacturers of note. Krupp, Daimler, IG Farben, Hugo Boss... Actually, probably just quicker to link to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > I mean capitalism goes together with authoritarianism pretty good. Just look at the companies that still exist today that helped the Third Reich. The above sentence makes no sense: 1) The Third Reich no longer exists. 2) I think you're implying that companies that operated under the Third Reich should be punished, but that is orthogonal to capitalism and the Third Reich. It actually appears that you don't understand what the words "capitalism" and "authoritarianism" mean. But since you brought it up, note that the current owners of those companies are largely the grandchildren of Nazis (no exaggeration.) Hope that made your day! :)
- EvilEy3 6y ago
  > Just look at the companies that still exist today that helped the Third Reich. How dare they!
  - EdwardDiego 6y ago
    Here's a fun bit from an attempt to hold to account IG Farben, manufacturers of Zkylon B. > All defendants who were sentenced to prison received early release. Most were quickly restored to their directorships and other positions in post-war companies, and some were awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.
  - 2421n 6y ago
    You think it's funny or something that these companies were allowed to go unchecked?
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological arguments. It just leads to tedious, lame, and nasty flamewar—always the same—and those are off topic here. It's quite incredible how bad the internet is at discussing this stuff thoughtfully. It's clearly not the medium for it. It bonds with all its failure modes (e.g. snark, screaming, and paranoia) into one hell of a compound. We're trying for something different on HN, and for that to work we need users to be aware of this and not go there. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - La1n 6y ago
    Doesn't this thread already pose an ideological argument (e.g. country x and y are authoritarian/bad, while country z isn't)? I personally find it really hard to refrain from commenting when there is a very once sided view presented on a front-page topic. The issue I have is that some topics feel like they are either flamewar or a one-sided view where people feel like they can't comment because going against that view might start a flamewar. Neither promote curiosity edit: My comment isn't necessarily connected to that of parent, but more to your reply
    - Leary 6y ago
      This, this whole thread is both generic and ideological.
      - dang 6y ago
        I wouldn't say that about the OP. It obviously has political overlap, but it's not generic-ideological. That would be more like "all corporations always do what authoritarian governments say"—yet even such an article could conceivably be on topic here if it were substantive, went deeply into specific evidence, and wasn't primarily flamebait. What we don't want as an initial condition for a thread here is the unsubstantive sort of ideological article that hurls flameballs of snarky rhetoric. After that, it's the commenters' duty not to take thread further into flamewar, such as with generic ideological rhetoric. I know it's not easy but it's not as if the principle is hard to understand.
blue_box 6y ago
So even US and EU can't deal with Authoritarian Governments and they are closing their eyes, you are expecting Apple to do that? I wondering when we are going to start critize our governments before critizing the companies. You know, they are the ones that make law.
- cyrksoft 6y ago
  And you are the one voting for them. A government isn’t an isolated entity, people vote for them in democratic countries. However, it’s much easier for people to vote with their wallets in their everyday life (for ex. by buying from companies with certain environmental policies or labour policies) than to expect governments to change. You can choose to buy a phone or computer that is less involved in this type of behaviours.
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    What kind of phone would that be?
    - can16358p 6y ago
      While these phones exist, they are practically not much of a use for 99% of the population as many of the basic apps aren't available.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    > it’s much easier for people to vote with their wallets in their everyday life Except if you deal with a mono-/duopoly.
  - Angostura 6y ago
    What would you vote for? A complete, immediate cessation of economic activity involving mainland China?
    - ryandrake 6y ago
      Unfortunately, no electable party offers this choice, at least in the USA. Both major parties pay the bare minimum lip service to opposing authoritarian regimes, but neither of them actually do anything substantial. EDIT: That said, it’s hard for a country to unilaterally effect change in another sovereign country without going to war. Hell, how many countries embargo North Korea and it has no effect?
EdwardDiego 6y ago
I for one, am shocked and stunned, that John Gruber is defending Apple. After all, will you bite the hand that feeds you?
- viktorcode 6y ago
  What I like about his blog, is he makes it pretty clear why he's saying what's he's saying, both when defending and criticising Apple. You may disagree with him (I often do), but it would be nice to see you showing disagreement with Gruber's line of argument, rather than just TL;DR part. Makes the argument less tribal.
  - EdwardDiego 6y ago
    His _why_ is his beliefs. He doesn't _believe_ that Apple would do what was claimed. It's hard to rebut him when it's all the language of belief - I have no more facts about the situation than he does. That's the beauty of beliefs, facts are optional.
est 6y ago
> (Note: you may be wondering why I have included the US in a list of authoritarian governments. Let me remind you of the outrageous police brutality that we saw last summer. And let’s not forget the orange elephant in the room.) Okay then. OP seems to suggest that a private company should take the responsibility to defy government requirements and orders because the government is labeled bad? I don't think it's very practical. Besides, an OS or device vendor can arbitrarily dictate what kind of app a user can get, in my opinion, is the true elephant here.
- sneak 6y ago
  The alternative is even less practical in the long term.
  - est 6y ago
    what kind of alternative? IMHO free distribution of apps is the only viable alternative. Yes there will be scams and malwares but hey that's the price to pay to enter the Bazaar rather than the Church.
    - sneak 6y ago
      The alternative being not defying government requirements.
1cvmask 6y ago
Apple complies with all governments in markets that are sizeable to their business. Authoritarian governments that are into surveillance love looking into your icloud and itunes accounts. They use FISA and National Security Letters to pry into your and everyone elses life. https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-fbi-government-national-security-letters-orders-data-requests/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-fbi-government-national-secu...
stinos 6y ago
Anyone has examples of companies (big or small) who actively go against this and refuse to cooperate and thereby willingly give up the money?
- sneak 6y ago
  Google refused to censor search in China, and got the GFE blocked by the GFW. Later they bent over backwards to get back in with a special censored search (Project Dragonfly) which got "cancelled" due to western and employee backlash (but wasn't really), continued a bit in secret, then really cancelled (so it was reported). Also, Qwest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio
  - techrat 6y ago
    Google also allows app sideloading which is something that becomes critical during civil unrest in the countries mentioned in the article.
    - brorfred 6y ago
      Sideloading also allows authoritarian regimes to add apps to your phone. See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/02/chinese-border-guards-surveillance-app-tourists-phones?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/02/chinese-border...
      - ladyanita22 6y ago
        Yes, it's a double-edged knife, but let's keep in mind that the government actually has enough power to spy its citizens without tampering the devices, with the social networks, cell locations...
        brorfred 6y ago
        Very true but a side loaded app can do so much more. Possibly even act as a key logger. Definitely provide info about all your whereabouts during protests.
brainless 6y ago
The issue is not that this is happening with Apple products, the issue is that it is happening everywhere. What do I purchase? I want a device which puts my privacy first and one which my family members can operate too. Without me being on the line to teach them how. We simply have too little competition in the phone OS market from my point of view. Also web-first phone are pretty rare.
- brainless 6y ago
  BTW I do not mean there are no issues in the laptop/desktop OS market. But majority of people use the phone to store personal information now.
- fsflover 6y ago
  > I want a device which puts my privacy first. https://puri.sm/products https://puri.sm/products > and one which my family members can operate too. Without me being on the line to teach them how I am afraid that it is always necessary, even with Apple devices. My relatives use Linux just fine after I explained a couple of things.
  - brainless 6y ago
    Even my family uses Linux on laptops, have been using for a decade now. But that is exactly why I mentioned phone. The options are too few here.
  - em3rgent0rdr 6y ago
    I use librem labtop, but have been waiting a few years for a preordered phone from them.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      Same here. They have sound reasons for the delay though: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#87-why-has-the-time-to-release-the-librem-5-increased-from-17-to-39-months https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque....
marcus_holmes 6y ago
Which governments are "bad"? Who gets to make that decision? The UK government is defying international law in the Chagos Islands and has broken its treaty with the EU over checks to/from N. Ireland. Does that make it a "bad" government that private companies should not do business with? If the UK demands that an app is withdrawn from the app store, or that private communications should be turned over to government agents with no justification, should a private business refuse to do that? The same arguments can be made for the USA (as the article does). People generally get the government they deserve. If a country is authoritarian, then it's up to the people of that country to deal with that problem, not private companies. China's government is representative of the wishes of its people, and if it's not then China's people will deal with that. Contrast that with Myanmar: the democratically elected government has been overthrown by the military, who are in the process of killing anyone who protests about it. This is clearly different. There can clearly be no international co-operation with this regime, because it's obviously been taken over by bad people. There should be international outrage over this, and action from the international diplomatic community - part of which should be guidance to private companies about whether to co-operate with the military regime.
- simonh 6y ago
  Your attitude to Myanmar is directly at odds with your criticism that people deserve the government they get. There's no difference between what the junta in Myanmar is doing now and what the CCP did to reformist protesters in Tiananmen Square. You can't say the Chinese people deserve that, but the people of Myanmar don't. That's completely inconsistent. Belarus is still under the control of an autocratic dictator despite many months of protests, which will almost certainly fail. Do the people of Belarus deserve to lose?
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    This is a good point. I would say there is a difference of degree, but it's very debatable. My stance has been heavily influenced by my experience living in Cambodia. They have an authoritarian government. But they have also an authoritarian culture. Attempts to create a democratic government there haven't failed because the regime are a bunch of bastards (they are, but that's not the point), but because the people generally haven't supported it. Part of this, I'm sure, is their traumatic experience with the Khmer Rouge. I see so many parallels with what's going on with Myanmar. I don't see so many parallels with what's going on in China. Can we measure the legitimacy of a government by the number of protesters it has killed? Seems like a better measure that "compatibility with Western economic interests" which seems to be the current measure.
baybal2 6y ago
Things are a bit worse, Tim Cook may be a closet communist as suggested him hiring a lobbying firm to shield communists from forced labour bill https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-uighur/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u...
saagarjha 6y ago
With the App Store, Apple’s really brought this problem upon themselves whether they agree with what they are told to do or not. Any sort of centralized distribution mechanism is always going to be the first thing an authoritarian government targets when trying to take down content they don’t like. On iPhone it’s even worse because the App Store is not only a centralized distribution mechanism but the only distribution mechanism. If you want something gone, you can just force Apple and that’s that for iPhone.
- ben_w 6y ago
  I sort-of agree. Apple must be bound by the laws of each nation it operates in, but those laws can be in conflict, and even a company cannot be the servant of two masters [0]; the only solutions I can even imagine boil down to properly separate versions of — call it “Apple Software and Services Inc.” — in each jurisdiction. Same for Google. [0] It’s been annoying me for years that I, a British national living in Germany, have to tell the US federal government about all encryption I use in apps made solely for the German market. What happens if it starts annoying the EU, too, and they pass a law saying we can’t tell the US government anything about it?
  - leowbattle 6y ago
    "have to tell the US federal government about all encryption I use" Can you elaborate on that?
    - rahkiin 6y ago
      https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/complying_with_encryption_export_regulations https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/complying...
- curt15 6y ago
  This would also seem to be a vulnerability of Canonical's centralised snap store. Would they take down submissions containing content that the CCP objects to?
coldtea 6y ago
Could be summed up as "Company's cooperation with local government" period. Once you do business in a country, you follow the country's rules. Simple as that. You don't get to pick and chose or impose your own (and usually, your own culture's and governments and national interest's) ideas and laws. Unless of course the country is a banana republic, which China isn't.
- woutr_be 6y ago
  While I agree, I think in most cases there is a “morally right thing to do”. If the laws in certain countries go against the right thing, then maybe it’s time to go against those laws. Of course that’s easy to say as an individual. For a company it essentially means giving up your market in that country.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    On the other hand, who's to say? Your own country and ideas about the "morally right thing to do", or the locals?
    - woutr_be 6y ago
      I don’t think that matters, if you’re the CEO of a company, and are doing business in a country where you’re obliged to give up your morals, then it’s up to you to either throw away your sense of right or wrong, or give up the country and stand up for the right thing.
- pogorniy 6y ago
  > Once you do business in a country, you follow the country's rules. > Unless of course the country is a banana republic, Smelly-smelly. Don't pretend you're holding to a value of "rule of the law". You're holding to the rule of the strongest.
coldtea 6y ago
Most of this "X does Y with authoritarian government" is basically individuals picking up government signals (propagated through the media) for the new enemy of the day. That's why it gets increasingly more frequent at a particular time (whereas China has been authoritative for decades when the same now "indignant" people didn't write about it), uses the same talking points (often of some bad but useful source that's repeated as gospel, "orange revolution" style opposition, ex-pats with axes to grind, etc.), and is focused on the singled-out "enemy du jour" even if there are tons of allies doing the same or worse. Selective government talk points, "leaks" to the press, propaganda pieces, "exclusive access", etc, fuels this further. Until there's another enemy to focus on, when it all deflates.
- tchalla 6y ago
  Thnak you for outlining this. I’d even say the “enemy” is more often than not one that disturbs the established neo-colonial structure. The moment a “new player enters the chat” - countries start with the “enemy speak” that you talk about.
- Context_free 6y ago
  Yes. In the past year I have heard endless breathless "news reports" about how China supposedly manufactured Covid in a lab, to how they are committing genocide with Uighur muslims, to how they are not respecting the UK's continuing dominion over Hong Kong, to how they never innovate and only steal technology from the US, to how they are being aggressive in the east China sea, how they're threatening Taiwan, and on and on and on. Of course I have been hearing the same thing at various times about Cubans, Venezuelans, Russians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Syrians, Iranians, Libyans - Blinken just denounced the arrests of those involved in the post-coup massacre in Bolivia. And on and on. This piece is an example of the drive for ever expanding imperial policy under an authoritarian government.
  - infinity0 6y ago
    I am sorry some people downvoted you, this supposedly-rational forum is not immune from extreme anti-China prejudices either. Indeed these constantly-negative news reports are ridiculous and serve further to indoctrinate everyone that "China is evil". People should visit China for themselves and understand just how screwed the media portrayals are. Today's "free speech" media seem to think that their shit doesn't stink and everything they do is holy. They can't even write positively about China's successful lockdowns and somehow manage to blow up a single case of local authorities overstretching (then getting both politically and publicly reprimanded for it) into "China covered up covid". Absolutely ridiculous.
nromiun 6y ago
> July 2017, Apple removes VPN apps from China App Store This is the only thing keeping me from buying an iPhone. Their control on what apps you can run on your phone is absolute. This may not be a problem in liberal countries where pretty much every website is available. But in some places VPNs have become a necessity.
ismaildonmez 6y ago
It's easy to pick on Apple, when you don't know the history of these political issues. Not picking on Red Hat, but because I know this from the first hand it was 18 years ago that they removed the Taiwanese flag from KDE3 control center: https://redhat-list.redhat.narkive.com/b3p8HQaa/bug-70235 https://redhat-list.redhat.narkive.com/b3p8HQaa/bug-70235 Apple is not a government, it's a business. They'll either have to obey the local laws or they'll lose business. While we are here, checkout how Google Maps handles these issues: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/14/google-maps-political-borders/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/14/google-...
- throwaway2048 6y ago
  Is there any limit, in your opinion, to what a company should willingly comply with from a government?
  - avianlyric 6y ago
    Presumably not, as long as those government requests/demands are valid within the eyes of local law. To say otherwise is to suggest that companies should exist above the law, and ignore the rule of law where it’s inconvenient. I don’t think that’s a precedent you want to set. With regards to moral obligations of US companies seeking to do business in countries that don’t uphold the same standards as the US. I would argue a better place to have that conversation is in Congress, which could then seek to apply export controls to all companies. Rather than just relying on the good will and moral judgment of amoral companies. I would personally love to see restrictions on trade with China tied to their human rights violations. But don’t think right approach is campaigning individual companies.
    - phnofive 6y ago
      > I don’t think that’s a president you want to set. Typo?
      - avianlyric 6y ago
ceilingcorner 6y ago
I think people would have far less problems with tech companies selling to anyone if they didn’t push moral crusades themselves. Apple is clearly interested in pushing its own ethical views, but only when they don’t risk serious profits for it. It’s a special kind of self-serving hypocrisy; paint yourself as noble when nothing is on the line, but keep mum when you might lose something. If they stopped acting like moral crusaders and simply said, “We sell computers to anyone with money,” there would be much less of an issue.
- kinghtown 6y ago
  There are zero companies going to war with China. It is simply outside the sphere of their influence. I know you haven’t used the word war but the general and unwarranted disappointment with Apple for doing business with the people of China is deeply rooted in an unrealistic understanding of geopolitics. I think it would be great for Apple to openly denounce the PRC and defy them utterly but I also think it would be great if they would gift each citizen of the world a brand new iphone. Apple is trying to disentangle itself from China slowly, as are all the smart companies with labour investments in the country. Is Apppe supposed to be the only company willing to take a massive hit to their business by defying China? Almost all of their manufacturing is being held hostage in the country. I hate the PRC, extremely counter cultural, hate wealth disparity, all that but I can’t fault Apple for playing ball here.
  - ceilingcorner 6y ago
    I would rather Apple cease being a moral arbiter entirely. I don’t need a computer company in California telling me what I’m allowed to do, say, think, or read. That is the business of governments and individuals.
    - 3grdlurker 6y ago
      Apple is not a moral arbiter of anything lol you remain free to do, say, think, read whatever you want, even beyond the Apple ecosystem. Whatever you can’t do within theirs, however, is well within their right to constrain because businesses also have the right to design their platforms the way they want to. Anything else beyond their willful design is within the territory of government intervention, and strong proponents of free-market capitalism who want Apple to do something else should really rethink their philosophy on how the state and the economy should be designed.
hyko 6y ago
Capitalism is perfectly compatible with Authoritarianism, Fascism, and worse. We cannot rely on the agents of Mammon to rid the world of authoritarianism. That is a hopelessly naive approach. They’re just not that interested, and they’re a poor fit for the job. Capitalist companies are good at making things, they’re good at making profits, but by design they are useless for meaningful social change and increasing freedom, because they themselves require the maintenance of a world of peasants and kings.
maeln 6y ago
This should be in the mind of anybody using an Apple device for its privacy / security feature and not living in a democratic country and even in democratic country, but there is usually more safe-guard against police overreach in democratic country. Apple will "take a stand for their users" when they can do it with no consequence (for example when they refused to decrypt an iPhone for the FBI). But if the country can ban you from doing business for not "fully cooperating" with their law enforcement, they will abide (unless the country is irrelevant for their business). I won't say that it is any better than using a non-encrypted device, or less secured device, since, in a lot of cases, even Apple cannot "break-in" their own device. But don't think that Apple won't send everything they know about you to your local police. I don't think it should surprise most people (and in a way, don't you want company to comply with your laws ?). But when Apple talk about privacy, remember that it's privacy toward other company, not the government.
orbital-decay 6y ago
> March 2021, Apple reportedly agrees to preinstall Russian software Wait, this regulation is a result of an antitrust case against Google and Apple started by Yandex, as both were using their platforms against their direct competitor. The same thing that many people want to see in EU and US. Clearly it doesn't belong to the list and the author did zero research on this, but included anyway because it fits the bad guy narrative they are trying to push. What's even funnier is that Apple threatened to withdraw from the russian market rather than having to do this, so the question is who's the real bad guy here (how about "a tech giant threatens an unimportant country to be able to bully domestic competitors"?). I guess everybody is horrible in this story, because the government had to compromise and omit the requirement to be able to uninstall this software, and they also included many companies who were large enough to be able to lobby their interests, because obviously they didn't want to make a single company special. Now Samsung reportedly has a backdoor deal with Yandex to install their software as system on Samsung phones, so it's being shoved down customers' throats. Nice.
- lotusmars 6y ago
  I don’t care whether it was antitrust decision by (kangooroo) courts or not. As a Russian, I don’t want to use Yandex in any capacity since it’s complicit with oppressive regime and gradually becomes part of it, sharing data and targeting citizen with surveillance. One of the reasons I used Apple is because it was relatively free of Russian state-sponsored spyware.
  - orbital-decay 6y ago
    Trust me, I don't have a single illusion about Yandex or the government. Neither I say the solution was perfect (it's terrible and awkward like most regulations are). But I also don't have any illusions about any other company. Making it sound like Apple is cooperating with some nefarious plot is a stretch. They've been forced to back down in a fairly clear case. Dealing with Yandex own business ambitions or the government spyware or regulatory overreach are entirely different questions that are out of the scope of this case and should be solved in their specific ways.
paulcarroty 6y ago
Well, I'm not surprised - Belarus and China Apple experience was discussed on HN widely.
markvdb 6y ago
Just to give some perspective on how far things have changed since 1998, have a look at https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/17/world/apple-removes-the-dalai-lama-from-its-ads-in-hong-kong.html https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/17/world/apple-removes-the-d... .
betwixthewires 6y ago
I find the word "problematic" in the first paragraph. That's usually a sign, but it is a word that people use, so whatever, let's ignore it and continue. Sure enough, the article enters a tirade about the "human rights violator in chief." Draws motive from an advertisement with the then president of the US in it, and advertisement of an american company, the first trillion dollar company who reached that valuation under that president, and attributes it to the CEO. The CEO of apple will stoop to any level to garner favor, lower than cooperating with authoritarian dictators even, so says the article.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  The friends you keep says a lot about you. https://www.google.com/amp/s/english.alarabiya.net/amp/News/gulf/2018/04/07/Saudi-Crown-Prince-discusses-joint-projects-with-Apple-s-Tim-Cook- https://www.google.com/amp/s/english.alarabiya.net/amp/News/...
  - betwixthewires 6y ago
    Friends don't let friends share amp links. Do you have a direct link to the article?
    - judge2020 6y ago
      If you click it, the `referer: news.ycombinator.com` header tells Google to redirect to the website itself. https://english.alarabiya.net/News/gulf/2018/04/07/Saudi-Crown-Prince-discusses-joint-projects-with-Apple-s-Tim-Cook- https://english.alarabiya.net/News/gulf/2018/04/07/Saudi-Cro...
    - ketamine__ 6y ago
      Piss off. I'll link amp if I want.
ii550 6y ago
Am I the only one who thinks this story smells like smear campaign from facebook??
newbie578 6y ago
I am always amazed and surprised when reading comments on HN regarding Apple, even though I know what I will read. No matter what Apple does, the Apple apologists come out of the woods to defend their overlords. I always like to play a little game, which I believe could also be a nice browser extension. Read the comments and articles, but replace the word Apple with Microsoft. Opinions and stances would shift dramatically under a minute. I cannot fathom that there are adult educated people living in a free democracy defending a company which works with a authoritarian government which is involed in a GENOCIDE.
- latexr 6y ago
  Can we retire this argument already? Or at least show hard data to back up this tired claim—it’s been made so often, it should be doable by now. From anecdotal observation, any big company mentioned on HN will have critics, apologists, critics of the apologists, and (perhaps most relevant) fans of the company who criticise their behaviours. Apple isn’t special in that regard, except it seems to draw the most fervorous irrational hate towards its users. It reminds me of meat-eaters who won’t shut up about vegetarians being annoying, while remaining ironically oblivious that they’re far worse offenders of the behaviour they decry.
  - hu3 6y ago
    > From anecdotal observation, any big company mentioned on HN will have critics, apologists, critics of the apologists. "fanboyism" isn't a boolean value as you imply. Every company has it but where it sits between 0.0 and 1.0 varies wildly between companies. Your parent's argument is that when it comes to Apple on HN, their "fanboy rating" sits well beyond the bell curve peak.
    - latexr 6y ago
      > "fanboyism" isn't a boolean value Agreed. > Your parent's argument is that when it comes to Apple on HN, their "fanboy rating" sits well beyond the bell curve peak. And my argument is “let’s see the data”. Parent’s point is repeated ad nauseam yet I’ve never seen any evidence it’s not confirmation bias on the part of people who are anti-Apple. If this is such a glaring problem as cited, it should be provable. Either do it or please stop repeating an unsubstantiated unhelpful argument which only serves to divide further. Fanaticism doesn’t become OK when it’s anti something.
googledidtoo 6y ago
Apple fanatics- they are just following orders, Google does it too, it's no big deal Apple fanatics about any other company- privacy, security, lies. Off with their heads. I genuinely can't tell if Apple has been astroturfing for decades to create this kind of loyalty because their actions have been poor to customers and employees since the 2000s.
roenxi 6y ago
It is reasonably likely that, in a pinch, the US uses iPhones to target missile strikes. There is no way the iPhone isn't being used in cooperation with the NSA spying program either. It isn't new for corporations to cooperate with the ugly parts of government. I don't really understand why Apple is being singled out here. They are better than average because at least their abuses are fairly obvious and they don't make plays to control people's data like certain other companies.
abstractbarista 6y ago
I'm really happy to not own any Apple products. They cost too much while simultaneously limiting what I can do. I am happy they are popular, because I own stock in them. Other than that, they clearly have near zero patriotic morals.
- frusciante19 6y ago
  methinks thou hast a ginormous horse to sit upon!
latexr 6y ago
Reminder of Tim Cook’s twitter bio[1]: > “Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'” - MLK Maybe he should read it more often. [1]: https://twitter.com/tim_cook https://twitter.com/tim_cook
jmull 6y ago
I think it's pretty damn weird people think Apple should probably be solving the problem of authoritarian governments around the world. Apple isn't Superman. It's just a company selling phones and some other things. Their leverage over the legal and regulatory systems various countries is limited... a very good thing, BTW. If they had more, do you really think they would use it only for good?
collyw 6y ago
All of Europe at present.
chenzhekl 6y ago
The problem is not what Apple removes from the App Store. It is that they do not allow a third-party store to exist on their platform.
AcerbicZero 6y ago
This seems like it misses the point - American companies doing business with authoritarian regimes that don’t have American interests at heart, are inherently un-American and unworthy of American support. Either we’re in this together, or the invisible line in the dirt means nothing and I want my money back.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > authoritarian regimes that don’t have American interests at heart, are inherently un-American and unworthy of American support Foreign democracies don’t have American interests at heart. Should we cut trade ties with Germany as a result? Our power comes from trade. Backing up into ideological autarky would be self defeating. Similarly, asking individual companies to stop trading with countries their competitors may legally trade with is dumb. Convince your fellow voters to put on sensible, targeted tariffs and sanctions. Or accept that commerce plows wider fields than ideology.
  - DreamScatter 6y ago
    Did you read the sentence you quoted? It said "authoritarian government" and not "democratic government"
williesleg 6y ago
Of course
rgovostes 6y ago
The "Apple will preinstall apps for the Russian government" bit is untrue, and has spread around due to shoddy tech journalism. iMore, which repeats the falsehood in the article title[0], includes a translation of a Russian news article: > The agreements stipulate that the first time Apple is purchased in Russia, the user will see a dialog window when setting up, in which he will be asked to install applications from the government-approved list by default, Vedomosti said. It will be possible to refuse installation, removing ticks in front of certain applications, explains the source of the publication. So really it is an opt-out list of apps presented at setup, which are downloaded and installed after user confirmation. The apps are, presumably, still subject to iOS security policy. It's clearly not ideal, and reminds me of the dark years of trying to avoid accidentally installing the Yahoo Toolbar. But it's not as evil as it sounds from the headline, and it would be stupid of Apple to pull out of the Russian market over this (as iMore says they once threatened). Save your rage for when iMessage encryption is nerfed, and government-approved apps are no longer opt-out. 0: https://www.imore.com/apple-agrees-pre-install-apps-russian-devices https://www.imore.com/apple-agrees-pre-install-apps-russian-...
- tazjin 6y ago
  This doesn't sound particularly evil to me and seems perfectly in line with the Russian government's intention of reducing its reliance on American tech companies (by nudging consumers in the direction of their domestic alternatives). IMO, doing this would be a good idea for Europe, too. To some degree laws like the browser choice thing already go in this direction, but they still mostly present American alternatives.
emodendroket 6y ago
I think it is kind of an unreasonable expectation that businesses will flout the law of countries they operate in out of some sense of principle. There are plenty of unsavory actors right here at home Apple answers to, and I’m not sure that a world of sovereign corporations would be improvement anyway.
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
The author indirectly advocates sanctioning these regimes. If that is the case, their best path is through government. Playing whack-a-mole with individual companies is, while decent clickbait and PR fodder, useless with respect to real-world outcomes.
- spacebear 6y ago
  I think what the author is arguing for is allowing iOS users to install software without Apple’s permission.
fay59 6y ago
I don’t remember the exact controversy, but I remember some controversy during the Obama years where a prominent US company complied with some censorious Chinese requirements. Obama said something along the lines of “I wish you’d come to us before agreeing to this. We would have helped.” As these the list starts in 2017, I wonder how much of this is the result of the US’s decreased willingness to export its values abroad during the Trump years.
kstenerud 6y ago
> In Seattle, Apple has given the feds vital evidence from one of its iCloud users who was arrested for firebombing cop cars during the George Floyd protests in late May. > The case shows how Apple is willing to help even where the context of the crime is controversial, namely the Black Lives Matter protests. EXCUSE ME??? Are you saying that firebombing cars is somehow an acceptable act in the context of a protest, and that helping track down the perpetrator of such an act is a bad thing?
- TheNorthman 6y ago
  Nice faux outrage. Perhaps he is saying that utilitarianism is a race to the bottom and that our actions shouldn't be based on an evaluation of an actions consequences but rather on the universality of it, such that we act only according to that maxim by which we can also will it to become universal law?
  - sixstringtheory 6y ago
    This sounds like “the ends justify the means” dressed up in pseudo-intellectual verbiage.
    - TheNorthman 6y ago
      Whether I made it too `pseudo-intellectual' I don't know, or perhaps rather, I must have because the point went over your head. My point was exactly the opposite, there are no desirable ends: either Apple should be allowed to assist law enforcement or they shouldn't, regardless of what ends this might bring.
max_ 6y ago
I keep on telling my friends that there is a very hungry market for a new smartphone co. One, that doesn't participate in these primal endeavours of domination, manipulation & control. Its not complicated just allow users to install what they want. Allow people to distribute what they want. Apple & Google are at terminal phase of coperate Asperger's towards users at this point. Complaining is useless.
neonate 6y ago
I'd have more sympathy if he didn't include, in his primary examples, one that he himself admits there's no evidence for. there is little direct evidence to support this exact claim. While I am willing to give Apple the benefit of the doubt and consider this an inconvenient coincidence, I would not be surprised if this were a deliberate move. "I would not be surprised if" is not how honest argument works. On the other hand, at least he admits it. A hit piece would have insisted it's all true.
tomcam 6y ago
And Parler
summerlight 6y ago
Apple made this problem itself. They wanted to retain a full, complete control on what users can do with their product. This made their App Store a single point of failure. Coincidentally, those authoritarian governments want the exact same control on their people so it's perfectly natural to see their relentless attempts to control App Store. The solution is obvious, but I'm 100% sure that Apple won't take that path unless it's forced to do so.
researcher7 6y ago
It's not only apple. Almost all of the big tech doing that these days, either out of concern about their manufacturing resources, or other motives. Something I won't support, but can understand their motives behind. But I am trying to understand how this part fits in the list. "November 2019, Trump re-election campaign ad shot in Apple’s Mac Pro plant in Austin Given the context and the headline, Apple working with authoritarian governments. Unless the author thinks the US is authoritarian. I don't see any problems with any high tech executive supporting one politician or another, if the author is making the alleged Tim Cook's support for Trump the reason to include that in the list of incidents showing Apple working with authoritarian regimes.
EricE 6y ago
I once, naively, bought into the benevolent dictator spiel. The coordinated hit on Parlor dispelled my rose colored glasses respective to that narrative. It's all BS and past time for Apple (and Google for that matter) to be forced to open up and allow authorized alternatives to the "official" stores. And yes, while there is a generic open sourced version of Android, let's be honest - the one everyone wants is Android integrated with Google's services and for that one you have to go through the Play store.
ymolodtsov 6y ago
Apple definitely listens to China, since their entire manufacturing is there and it's a huge market for them, but the claim that Apple listens to Myanmar has no basis at all. Why would they care? And there's a ton of other VPN apps. It's an AppStore glitch and nothing more.

468 points by ig0r0 6y ago

I mean capitalism goes together with authoritarianism pretty good. Just look at the companies that still exist today that helped the Third Reich. Perhaps it's time to want a different underlying system that wouldn't have a bottomline for profit maximization? idk

arcticbull 6y ago
IMO the best example is Chiquita -- they conspired with the CIA to overthrow the democratically elected government of Guatemala to secure their banana fields against the "godless communists." Naturally, they left Guatemala with a right-wing dictatorship. This kicked off a 46 year long civil war and the fallout has directly contributed to the migrant crisis at the border. They called it Operation PBSuccess. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZtAKHnqkf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZtAKHnqkf4
- EdwardDiego 6y ago
  The phrase "Banana Republic" is entirely due to Chiquita/United Fruit Company. God bless America? (Also, wtf, Banana Republic is now an American fashion brand? Jesus Christ, way to have zero insight) Once again, really unsure why you're being downvoted for mentioning facts. Are you perhaps hurting some "invisible hand" idealists feelings? Who knows.
  - ic0n0cl4st 6y ago
    > Once again, really unsure why you're being downvoted for mentioning facts. > Are you perhaps hurting some "invisible hand" idealists feelings? Who knows. I’ve noticed that anything which questions capitalism, especially American capitalism gets rapidly downvoted. There seems to be a group of people, possibly even a bot network, which downvotes any and all such criticism. Randian ovjectivists have an outsized representation inside of YC as well as the HN community at large. I mean, why wouldn’t they? In a way YC is a successful cult which worships ar the alter of prosperity.
    - dang 6y ago
      > I’ve noticed that anything You're noticing, and then overgeneralizing, the data points you dislike (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20notice%20dislike&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). The overgeneralization comes because you don't notice (or underemphasize) the data points that don't make you angry. This is classic sample bias, as I believe I've pointed out to you under a different username in the past. Once people arrive at a spurious generalization like this, they imagine grandiose and sinister explanations for it. But the truth is quite boring: the community is divided the same way society at large is divided, the same way any large-enough population sample is. The only way HN is different is that we try to stop people from bashing each other with rhetorical two-by-fours about it. With limited success. Since you've continued to post flamewar comments and ignore our requests to stop, I've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with. For someone who purports to care about community, that's incongruent. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
liberatethemass 6y ago
Lol, so does communism, monarchy, or when religion and politics merge (iran, ottoman empire etc).
- EdwardDiego 6y ago
  I'm keen on your examples from Iran. Was it the time that the British asked the CIA to depose the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, and reinstall the Shah, for the benefit of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now a subsidiary of BP)?
  - ladyanita22 6y ago
    No, I think it was the time a civil unrest threw the Shah and put the ayatollahs in power with the help of the Soviet Union (which is suspiciously absent from your remarks) and now their women face jail for not wearing the veil or their homosexuals are hung by a crane
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      Both examples fit (one is monarchy—a stage managed abortive coup to justify an autocoup (the CIA directing both) by which a constitutional monarchy became a dictatorial one—the other a politics/religion merger.) If you are describing the problem the way it has upthread but only pointing to one or the other of the Iranian examples, it's pretty obviously being selective for dishonest purposes.
      - ic0n0cl4st 6y ago
        Be careful. Here in HN it is not allowed to look at Iran’s situation objectively or holistically. It is allowable to spew hatred at Iran. Any discussion of the western meddling which destabilized Iran, embargoes which starves Iranians or the use of Iran as a political red herring is a hellbannable offense. (I will most probably be hellbanned for this comment). Edit: Told ya. @dang has decreed thou shalt not criticize capitalism and thou shalt not criticize american capitalism.
EdwardDiego 6y ago
Not sure why you've been downvoted, the list of complicit orgs is long. IBM, takes pride of place for their tabulation machines. Ford, and GM, for converting their German subsidiary factories to wartime usages, while declining to do the same in the USA. Nevermind Henry Ford's proclivity for funding anti-semitism. Then of course, all the German manufacturers of note. Krupp, Daimler, IG Farben, Hugo Boss... Actually, probably just quicker to link to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...
redis_mlc 6y ago
> I mean capitalism goes together with authoritarianism pretty good. Just look at the companies that still exist today that helped the Third Reich. The above sentence makes no sense: 1) The Third Reich no longer exists. 2) I think you're implying that companies that operated under the Third Reich should be punished, but that is orthogonal to capitalism and the Third Reich. It actually appears that you don't understand what the words "capitalism" and "authoritarianism" mean. But since you brought it up, note that the current owners of those companies are largely the grandchildren of Nazis (no exaggeration.) Hope that made your day! :)
EvilEy3 6y ago
> Just look at the companies that still exist today that helped the Third Reich. How dare they!
- EdwardDiego 6y ago
  Here's a fun bit from an attempt to hold to account IG Farben, manufacturers of Zkylon B. > All defendants who were sentenced to prison received early release. Most were quickly restored to their directorships and other positions in post-war companies, and some were awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.
- 2421n 6y ago
  You think it's funny or something that these companies were allowed to go unchecked?
dang 6y ago
Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological arguments. It just leads to tedious, lame, and nasty flamewar—always the same—and those are off topic here. It's quite incredible how bad the internet is at discussing this stuff thoughtfully. It's clearly not the medium for it. It bonds with all its failure modes (e.g. snark, screaming, and paranoia) into one hell of a compound. We're trying for something different on HN, and for that to work we need users to be aware of this and not go there. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- La1n 6y ago
  Doesn't this thread already pose an ideological argument (e.g. country x and y are authoritarian/bad, while country z isn't)? I personally find it really hard to refrain from commenting when there is a very once sided view presented on a front-page topic. The issue I have is that some topics feel like they are either flamewar or a one-sided view where people feel like they can't comment because going against that view might start a flamewar. Neither promote curiosity edit: My comment isn't necessarily connected to that of parent, but more to your reply
  - Leary 6y ago
    This, this whole thread is both generic and ideological.
    - dang 6y ago
      I wouldn't say that about the OP. It obviously has political overlap, but it's not generic-ideological. That would be more like "all corporations always do what authoritarian governments say"—yet even such an article could conceivably be on topic here if it were substantive, went deeply into specific evidence, and wasn't primarily flamebait. What we don't want as an initial condition for a thread here is the unsubstantive sort of ideological article that hurls flameballs of snarky rhetoric. After that, it's the commenters' duty not to take thread further into flamewar, such as with generic ideological rhetoric. I know it's not easy but it's not as if the principle is hard to understand.

blue_box 6y ago

So even US and EU can't deal with Authoritarian Governments and they are closing their eyes, you are expecting Apple to do that? I wondering when we are going to start critize our governments before critizing the companies. You know, they are the ones that make law.

cyrksoft 6y ago
And you are the one voting for them. A government isn’t an isolated entity, people vote for them in democratic countries. However, it’s much easier for people to vote with their wallets in their everyday life (for ex. by buying from companies with certain environmental policies or labour policies) than to expect governments to change. You can choose to buy a phone or computer that is less involved in this type of behaviours.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  What kind of phone would that be?
  - can16358p 6y ago
    While these phones exist, they are practically not much of a use for 99% of the population as many of the basic apps aren't available.
- fsflover 6y ago
  > it’s much easier for people to vote with their wallets in their everyday life Except if you deal with a mono-/duopoly.
- Angostura 6y ago
  What would you vote for? A complete, immediate cessation of economic activity involving mainland China?
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    Unfortunately, no electable party offers this choice, at least in the USA. Both major parties pay the bare minimum lip service to opposing authoritarian regimes, but neither of them actually do anything substantial. EDIT: That said, it’s hard for a country to unilaterally effect change in another sovereign country without going to war. Hell, how many countries embargo North Korea and it has no effect?

EdwardDiego 6y ago

I for one, am shocked and stunned, that John Gruber is defending Apple. After all, will you bite the hand that feeds you?

viktorcode 6y ago
What I like about his blog, is he makes it pretty clear why he's saying what's he's saying, both when defending and criticising Apple. You may disagree with him (I often do), but it would be nice to see you showing disagreement with Gruber's line of argument, rather than just TL;DR part. Makes the argument less tribal.
- EdwardDiego 6y ago
  His _why_ is his beliefs. He doesn't _believe_ that Apple would do what was claimed. It's hard to rebut him when it's all the language of belief - I have no more facts about the situation than he does. That's the beauty of beliefs, facts are optional.

est 6y ago

> (Note: you may be wondering why I have included the US in a list of authoritarian governments. Let me remind you of the outrageous police brutality that we saw last summer. And let’s not forget the orange elephant in the room.) Okay then. OP seems to suggest that a private company should take the responsibility to defy government requirements and orders because the government is labeled bad? I don't think it's very practical. Besides, an OS or device vendor can arbitrarily dictate what kind of app a user can get, in my opinion, is the true elephant here.

sneak 6y ago
The alternative is even less practical in the long term.
- est 6y ago
  what kind of alternative? IMHO free distribution of apps is the only viable alternative. Yes there will be scams and malwares but hey that's the price to pay to enter the Bazaar rather than the Church.
  - sneak 6y ago
    The alternative being not defying government requirements.

1cvmask 6y ago

Apple complies with all governments in markets that are sizeable to their business. Authoritarian governments that are into surveillance love looking into your icloud and itunes accounts. They use FISA and National Security Letters to pry into your and everyone elses life. https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-fbi-government-national-security-letters-orders-data-requests/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-fbi-government-national-secu...

stinos 6y ago

Anyone has examples of companies (big or small) who actively go against this and refuse to cooperate and thereby willingly give up the money?

sneak 6y ago
Google refused to censor search in China, and got the GFE blocked by the GFW. Later they bent over backwards to get back in with a special censored search (Project Dragonfly) which got "cancelled" due to western and employee backlash (but wasn't really), continued a bit in secret, then really cancelled (so it was reported). Also, Qwest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio
- techrat 6y ago
  Google also allows app sideloading which is something that becomes critical during civil unrest in the countries mentioned in the article.
  - brorfred 6y ago
    Sideloading also allows authoritarian regimes to add apps to your phone. See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/02/chinese-border-guards-surveillance-app-tourists-phones?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/02/chinese-border...
    - ladyanita22 6y ago
      Yes, it's a double-edged knife, but let's keep in mind that the government actually has enough power to spy its citizens without tampering the devices, with the social networks, cell locations...
      - brorfred 6y ago
        Very true but a side loaded app can do so much more. Possibly even act as a key logger. Definitely provide info about all your whereabouts during protests.

brainless 6y ago

The issue is not that this is happening with Apple products, the issue is that it is happening everywhere. What do I purchase? I want a device which puts my privacy first and one which my family members can operate too. Without me being on the line to teach them how. We simply have too little competition in the phone OS market from my point of view. Also web-first phone are pretty rare.

brainless 6y ago
BTW I do not mean there are no issues in the laptop/desktop OS market. But majority of people use the phone to store personal information now.
fsflover 6y ago
> I want a device which puts my privacy first. https://puri.sm/products https://puri.sm/products > and one which my family members can operate too. Without me being on the line to teach them how I am afraid that it is always necessary, even with Apple devices. My relatives use Linux just fine after I explained a couple of things.
- brainless 6y ago
  Even my family uses Linux on laptops, have been using for a decade now. But that is exactly why I mentioned phone. The options are too few here.
- em3rgent0rdr 6y ago
  I use librem labtop, but have been waiting a few years for a preordered phone from them.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    Same here. They have sound reasons for the delay though: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#87-why-has-the-time-to-release-the-librem-5-increased-from-17-to-39-months https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque....

marcus_holmes 6y ago

Which governments are "bad"? Who gets to make that decision? The UK government is defying international law in the Chagos Islands and has broken its treaty with the EU over checks to/from N. Ireland. Does that make it a "bad" government that private companies should not do business with? If the UK demands that an app is withdrawn from the app store, or that private communications should be turned over to government agents with no justification, should a private business refuse to do that? The same arguments can be made for the USA (as the article does). People generally get the government they deserve. If a country is authoritarian, then it's up to the people of that country to deal with that problem, not private companies. China's government is representative of the wishes of its people, and if it's not then China's people will deal with that. Contrast that with Myanmar: the democratically elected government has been overthrown by the military, who are in the process of killing anyone who protests about it. This is clearly different. There can clearly be no international co-operation with this regime, because it's obviously been taken over by bad people. There should be international outrage over this, and action from the international diplomatic community - part of which should be guidance to private companies about whether to co-operate with the military regime.

simonh 6y ago
Your attitude to Myanmar is directly at odds with your criticism that people deserve the government they get. There's no difference between what the junta in Myanmar is doing now and what the CCP did to reformist protesters in Tiananmen Square. You can't say the Chinese people deserve that, but the people of Myanmar don't. That's completely inconsistent. Belarus is still under the control of an autocratic dictator despite many months of protests, which will almost certainly fail. Do the people of Belarus deserve to lose?
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  This is a good point. I would say there is a difference of degree, but it's very debatable. My stance has been heavily influenced by my experience living in Cambodia. They have an authoritarian government. But they have also an authoritarian culture. Attempts to create a democratic government there haven't failed because the regime are a bunch of bastards (they are, but that's not the point), but because the people generally haven't supported it. Part of this, I'm sure, is their traumatic experience with the Khmer Rouge. I see so many parallels with what's going on with Myanmar. I don't see so many parallels with what's going on in China. Can we measure the legitimacy of a government by the number of protesters it has killed? Seems like a better measure that "compatibility with Western economic interests" which seems to be the current measure.

baybal2 6y ago

Things are a bit worse, Tim Cook may be a closet communist as suggested him hiring a lobbying firm to shield communists from forced labour bill https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-uighur/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u...

saagarjha 6y ago

With the App Store, Apple’s really brought this problem upon themselves whether they agree with what they are told to do or not. Any sort of centralized distribution mechanism is always going to be the first thing an authoritarian government targets when trying to take down content they don’t like. On iPhone it’s even worse because the App Store is not only a centralized distribution mechanism but the only distribution mechanism. If you want something gone, you can just force Apple and that’s that for iPhone.

ben_w 6y ago
I sort-of agree. Apple must be bound by the laws of each nation it operates in, but those laws can be in conflict, and even a company cannot be the servant of two masters [0]; the only solutions I can even imagine boil down to properly separate versions of — call it “Apple Software and Services Inc.” — in each jurisdiction. Same for Google. [0] It’s been annoying me for years that I, a British national living in Germany, have to tell the US federal government about all encryption I use in apps made solely for the German market. What happens if it starts annoying the EU, too, and they pass a law saying we can’t tell the US government anything about it?
- leowbattle 6y ago
  "have to tell the US federal government about all encryption I use" Can you elaborate on that?
  - rahkiin 6y ago
    https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/complying_with_encryption_export_regulations https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/complying...
curt15 6y ago
This would also seem to be a vulnerability of Canonical's centralised snap store. Would they take down submissions containing content that the CCP objects to?

coldtea 6y ago

Could be summed up as "Company's cooperation with local government" period. Once you do business in a country, you follow the country's rules. Simple as that. You don't get to pick and chose or impose your own (and usually, your own culture's and governments and national interest's) ideas and laws. Unless of course the country is a banana republic, which China isn't.

woutr_be 6y ago
While I agree, I think in most cases there is a “morally right thing to do”. If the laws in certain countries go against the right thing, then maybe it’s time to go against those laws. Of course that’s easy to say as an individual. For a company it essentially means giving up your market in that country.
- coldtea 6y ago
  On the other hand, who's to say? Your own country and ideas about the "morally right thing to do", or the locals?
  - woutr_be 6y ago
    I don’t think that matters, if you’re the CEO of a company, and are doing business in a country where you’re obliged to give up your morals, then it’s up to you to either throw away your sense of right or wrong, or give up the country and stand up for the right thing.
pogorniy 6y ago
> Once you do business in a country, you follow the country's rules. > Unless of course the country is a banana republic, Smelly-smelly. Don't pretend you're holding to a value of "rule of the law". You're holding to the rule of the strongest.

coldtea 6y ago

Most of this "X does Y with authoritarian government" is basically individuals picking up government signals (propagated through the media) for the new enemy of the day. That's why it gets increasingly more frequent at a particular time (whereas China has been authoritative for decades when the same now "indignant" people didn't write about it), uses the same talking points (often of some bad but useful source that's repeated as gospel, "orange revolution" style opposition, ex-pats with axes to grind, etc.), and is focused on the singled-out "enemy du jour" even if there are tons of allies doing the same or worse. Selective government talk points, "leaks" to the press, propaganda pieces, "exclusive access", etc, fuels this further. Until there's another enemy to focus on, when it all deflates.

tchalla 6y ago
Thnak you for outlining this. I’d even say the “enemy” is more often than not one that disturbs the established neo-colonial structure. The moment a “new player enters the chat” - countries start with the “enemy speak” that you talk about.
Context_free 6y ago
Yes. In the past year I have heard endless breathless "news reports" about how China supposedly manufactured Covid in a lab, to how they are committing genocide with Uighur muslims, to how they are not respecting the UK's continuing dominion over Hong Kong, to how they never innovate and only steal technology from the US, to how they are being aggressive in the east China sea, how they're threatening Taiwan, and on and on and on. Of course I have been hearing the same thing at various times about Cubans, Venezuelans, Russians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Syrians, Iranians, Libyans - Blinken just denounced the arrests of those involved in the post-coup massacre in Bolivia. And on and on. This piece is an example of the drive for ever expanding imperial policy under an authoritarian government.
- infinity0 6y ago
  I am sorry some people downvoted you, this supposedly-rational forum is not immune from extreme anti-China prejudices either. Indeed these constantly-negative news reports are ridiculous and serve further to indoctrinate everyone that "China is evil". People should visit China for themselves and understand just how screwed the media portrayals are. Today's "free speech" media seem to think that their shit doesn't stink and everything they do is holy. They can't even write positively about China's successful lockdowns and somehow manage to blow up a single case of local authorities overstretching (then getting both politically and publicly reprimanded for it) into "China covered up covid". Absolutely ridiculous.

nromiun 6y ago

> July 2017, Apple removes VPN apps from China App Store This is the only thing keeping me from buying an iPhone. Their control on what apps you can run on your phone is absolute. This may not be a problem in liberal countries where pretty much every website is available. But in some places VPNs have become a necessity.

ismaildonmez 6y ago

It's easy to pick on Apple, when you don't know the history of these political issues. Not picking on Red Hat, but because I know this from the first hand it was 18 years ago that they removed the Taiwanese flag from KDE3 control center: https://redhat-list.redhat.narkive.com/b3p8HQaa/bug-70235 https://redhat-list.redhat.narkive.com/b3p8HQaa/bug-70235 Apple is not a government, it's a business. They'll either have to obey the local laws or they'll lose business. While we are here, checkout how Google Maps handles these issues: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/14/google-maps-political-borders/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/14/google-...

throwaway2048 6y ago
Is there any limit, in your opinion, to what a company should willingly comply with from a government?
- avianlyric 6y ago
  Presumably not, as long as those government requests/demands are valid within the eyes of local law. To say otherwise is to suggest that companies should exist above the law, and ignore the rule of law where it’s inconvenient. I don’t think that’s a precedent you want to set. With regards to moral obligations of US companies seeking to do business in countries that don’t uphold the same standards as the US. I would argue a better place to have that conversation is in Congress, which could then seek to apply export controls to all companies. Rather than just relying on the good will and moral judgment of amoral companies. I would personally love to see restrictions on trade with China tied to their human rights violations. But don’t think right approach is campaigning individual companies.
  - phnofive 6y ago
    > I don’t think that’s a president you want to set. Typo?
    - avianlyric 6y ago

ceilingcorner 6y ago

I think people would have far less problems with tech companies selling to anyone if they didn’t push moral crusades themselves. Apple is clearly interested in pushing its own ethical views, but only when they don’t risk serious profits for it. It’s a special kind of self-serving hypocrisy; paint yourself as noble when nothing is on the line, but keep mum when you might lose something. If they stopped acting like moral crusaders and simply said, “We sell computers to anyone with money,” there would be much less of an issue.

kinghtown 6y ago
There are zero companies going to war with China. It is simply outside the sphere of their influence. I know you haven’t used the word war but the general and unwarranted disappointment with Apple for doing business with the people of China is deeply rooted in an unrealistic understanding of geopolitics. I think it would be great for Apple to openly denounce the PRC and defy them utterly but I also think it would be great if they would gift each citizen of the world a brand new iphone. Apple is trying to disentangle itself from China slowly, as are all the smart companies with labour investments in the country. Is Apppe supposed to be the only company willing to take a massive hit to their business by defying China? Almost all of their manufacturing is being held hostage in the country. I hate the PRC, extremely counter cultural, hate wealth disparity, all that but I can’t fault Apple for playing ball here.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  I would rather Apple cease being a moral arbiter entirely. I don’t need a computer company in California telling me what I’m allowed to do, say, think, or read. That is the business of governments and individuals.
  - 3grdlurker 6y ago
    Apple is not a moral arbiter of anything lol you remain free to do, say, think, read whatever you want, even beyond the Apple ecosystem. Whatever you can’t do within theirs, however, is well within their right to constrain because businesses also have the right to design their platforms the way they want to. Anything else beyond their willful design is within the territory of government intervention, and strong proponents of free-market capitalism who want Apple to do something else should really rethink their philosophy on how the state and the economy should be designed.

hyko 6y ago

Capitalism is perfectly compatible with Authoritarianism, Fascism, and worse. We cannot rely on the agents of Mammon to rid the world of authoritarianism. That is a hopelessly naive approach. They’re just not that interested, and they’re a poor fit for the job. Capitalist companies are good at making things, they’re good at making profits, but by design they are useless for meaningful social change and increasing freedom, because they themselves require the maintenance of a world of peasants and kings.

maeln 6y ago

This should be in the mind of anybody using an Apple device for its privacy / security feature and not living in a democratic country and even in democratic country, but there is usually more safe-guard against police overreach in democratic country. Apple will "take a stand for their users" when they can do it with no consequence (for example when they refused to decrypt an iPhone for the FBI). But if the country can ban you from doing business for not "fully cooperating" with their law enforcement, they will abide (unless the country is irrelevant for their business). I won't say that it is any better than using a non-encrypted device, or less secured device, since, in a lot of cases, even Apple cannot "break-in" their own device. But don't think that Apple won't send everything they know about you to your local police. I don't think it should surprise most people (and in a way, don't you want company to comply with your laws ?). But when Apple talk about privacy, remember that it's privacy toward other company, not the government.

orbital-decay 6y ago

> March 2021, Apple reportedly agrees to preinstall Russian software Wait, this regulation is a result of an antitrust case against Google and Apple started by Yandex, as both were using their platforms against their direct competitor. The same thing that many people want to see in EU and US. Clearly it doesn't belong to the list and the author did zero research on this, but included anyway because it fits the bad guy narrative they are trying to push. What's even funnier is that Apple threatened to withdraw from the russian market rather than having to do this, so the question is who's the real bad guy here (how about "a tech giant threatens an unimportant country to be able to bully domestic competitors"?). I guess everybody is horrible in this story, because the government had to compromise and omit the requirement to be able to uninstall this software, and they also included many companies who were large enough to be able to lobby their interests, because obviously they didn't want to make a single company special. Now Samsung reportedly has a backdoor deal with Yandex to install their software as system on Samsung phones, so it's being shoved down customers' throats. Nice.

lotusmars 6y ago
I don’t care whether it was antitrust decision by (kangooroo) courts or not. As a Russian, I don’t want to use Yandex in any capacity since it’s complicit with oppressive regime and gradually becomes part of it, sharing data and targeting citizen with surveillance. One of the reasons I used Apple is because it was relatively free of Russian state-sponsored spyware.
- orbital-decay 6y ago
  Trust me, I don't have a single illusion about Yandex or the government. Neither I say the solution was perfect (it's terrible and awkward like most regulations are). But I also don't have any illusions about any other company. Making it sound like Apple is cooperating with some nefarious plot is a stretch. They've been forced to back down in a fairly clear case. Dealing with Yandex own business ambitions or the government spyware or regulatory overreach are entirely different questions that are out of the scope of this case and should be solved in their specific ways.

paulcarroty 6y ago

Well, I'm not surprised - Belarus and China Apple experience was discussed on HN widely.

markvdb 6y ago

Just to give some perspective on how far things have changed since 1998, have a look at https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/17/world/apple-removes-the-dalai-lama-from-its-ads-in-hong-kong.html https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/17/world/apple-removes-the-d... .

betwixthewires 6y ago

I find the word "problematic" in the first paragraph. That's usually a sign, but it is a word that people use, so whatever, let's ignore it and continue. Sure enough, the article enters a tirade about the "human rights violator in chief." Draws motive from an advertisement with the then president of the US in it, and advertisement of an american company, the first trillion dollar company who reached that valuation under that president, and attributes it to the CEO. The CEO of apple will stoop to any level to garner favor, lower than cooperating with authoritarian dictators even, so says the article.

ketamine__ 6y ago
The friends you keep says a lot about you. https://www.google.com/amp/s/english.alarabiya.net/amp/News/gulf/2018/04/07/Saudi-Crown-Prince-discusses-joint-projects-with-Apple-s-Tim-Cook- https://www.google.com/amp/s/english.alarabiya.net/amp/News/...
- betwixthewires 6y ago
  Friends don't let friends share amp links. Do you have a direct link to the article?
  - judge2020 6y ago
    If you click it, the `referer: news.ycombinator.com` header tells Google to redirect to the website itself. https://english.alarabiya.net/News/gulf/2018/04/07/Saudi-Crown-Prince-discusses-joint-projects-with-Apple-s-Tim-Cook- https://english.alarabiya.net/News/gulf/2018/04/07/Saudi-Cro...
  - ketamine__ 6y ago
    Piss off. I'll link amp if I want.

ii550 6y ago

Am I the only one who thinks this story smells like smear campaign from facebook??

newbie578 6y ago

I am always amazed and surprised when reading comments on HN regarding Apple, even though I know what I will read. No matter what Apple does, the Apple apologists come out of the woods to defend their overlords. I always like to play a little game, which I believe could also be a nice browser extension. Read the comments and articles, but replace the word Apple with Microsoft. Opinions and stances would shift dramatically under a minute. I cannot fathom that there are adult educated people living in a free democracy defending a company which works with a authoritarian government which is involed in a GENOCIDE.

latexr 6y ago
Can we retire this argument already? Or at least show hard data to back up this tired claim—it’s been made so often, it should be doable by now. From anecdotal observation, any big company mentioned on HN will have critics, apologists, critics of the apologists, and (perhaps most relevant) fans of the company who criticise their behaviours. Apple isn’t special in that regard, except it seems to draw the most fervorous irrational hate towards its users. It reminds me of meat-eaters who won’t shut up about vegetarians being annoying, while remaining ironically oblivious that they’re far worse offenders of the behaviour they decry.
- hu3 6y ago
  > From anecdotal observation, any big company mentioned on HN will have critics, apologists, critics of the apologists. "fanboyism" isn't a boolean value as you imply. Every company has it but where it sits between 0.0 and 1.0 varies wildly between companies. Your parent's argument is that when it comes to Apple on HN, their "fanboy rating" sits well beyond the bell curve peak.
  - latexr 6y ago
    > "fanboyism" isn't a boolean value Agreed. > Your parent's argument is that when it comes to Apple on HN, their "fanboy rating" sits well beyond the bell curve peak. And my argument is “let’s see the data”. Parent’s point is repeated ad nauseam yet I’ve never seen any evidence it’s not confirmation bias on the part of people who are anti-Apple. If this is such a glaring problem as cited, it should be provable. Either do it or please stop repeating an unsubstantiated unhelpful argument which only serves to divide further. Fanaticism doesn’t become OK when it’s anti something.

googledidtoo 6y ago

Apple fanatics- they are just following orders, Google does it too, it's no big deal Apple fanatics about any other company- privacy, security, lies. Off with their heads. I genuinely can't tell if Apple has been astroturfing for decades to create this kind of loyalty because their actions have been poor to customers and employees since the 2000s.

roenxi 6y ago

It is reasonably likely that, in a pinch, the US uses iPhones to target missile strikes. There is no way the iPhone isn't being used in cooperation with the NSA spying program either. It isn't new for corporations to cooperate with the ugly parts of government. I don't really understand why Apple is being singled out here. They are better than average because at least their abuses are fairly obvious and they don't make plays to control people's data like certain other companies.

abstractbarista 6y ago

I'm really happy to not own any Apple products. They cost too much while simultaneously limiting what I can do. I am happy they are popular, because I own stock in them. Other than that, they clearly have near zero patriotic morals.

frusciante19 6y ago
methinks thou hast a ginormous horse to sit upon!

latexr 6y ago

Reminder of Tim Cook’s twitter bio[1]: > “Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'” - MLK Maybe he should read it more often. [1]: https://twitter.com/tim_cook https://twitter.com/tim_cook

jmull 6y ago

I think it's pretty damn weird people think Apple should probably be solving the problem of authoritarian governments around the world. Apple isn't Superman. It's just a company selling phones and some other things. Their leverage over the legal and regulatory systems various countries is limited... a very good thing, BTW. If they had more, do you really think they would use it only for good?

collyw 6y ago

All of Europe at present.

chenzhekl 6y ago

The problem is not what Apple removes from the App Store. It is that they do not allow a third-party store to exist on their platform.

AcerbicZero 6y ago

This seems like it misses the point - American companies doing business with authoritarian regimes that don’t have American interests at heart, are inherently un-American and unworthy of American support. Either we’re in this together, or the invisible line in the dirt means nothing and I want my money back.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> authoritarian regimes that don’t have American interests at heart, are inherently un-American and unworthy of American support Foreign democracies don’t have American interests at heart. Should we cut trade ties with Germany as a result? Our power comes from trade. Backing up into ideological autarky would be self defeating. Similarly, asking individual companies to stop trading with countries their competitors may legally trade with is dumb. Convince your fellow voters to put on sensible, targeted tariffs and sanctions. Or accept that commerce plows wider fields than ideology.
- DreamScatter 6y ago
  Did you read the sentence you quoted? It said "authoritarian government" and not "democratic government"

williesleg 6y ago

Of course

rgovostes 6y ago

The "Apple will preinstall apps for the Russian government" bit is untrue, and has spread around due to shoddy tech journalism. iMore, which repeats the falsehood in the article title[0], includes a translation of a Russian news article: > The agreements stipulate that the first time Apple is purchased in Russia, the user will see a dialog window when setting up, in which he will be asked to install applications from the government-approved list by default, Vedomosti said. It will be possible to refuse installation, removing ticks in front of certain applications, explains the source of the publication. So really it is an opt-out list of apps presented at setup, which are downloaded and installed after user confirmation. The apps are, presumably, still subject to iOS security policy. It's clearly not ideal, and reminds me of the dark years of trying to avoid accidentally installing the Yahoo Toolbar. But it's not as evil as it sounds from the headline, and it would be stupid of Apple to pull out of the Russian market over this (as iMore says they once threatened). Save your rage for when iMessage encryption is nerfed, and government-approved apps are no longer opt-out. 0: https://www.imore.com/apple-agrees-pre-install-apps-russian-devices https://www.imore.com/apple-agrees-pre-install-apps-russian-...

tazjin 6y ago
This doesn't sound particularly evil to me and seems perfectly in line with the Russian government's intention of reducing its reliance on American tech companies (by nudging consumers in the direction of their domestic alternatives). IMO, doing this would be a good idea for Europe, too. To some degree laws like the browser choice thing already go in this direction, but they still mostly present American alternatives.

emodendroket 6y ago

I think it is kind of an unreasonable expectation that businesses will flout the law of countries they operate in out of some sense of principle. There are plenty of unsavory actors right here at home Apple answers to, and I’m not sure that a world of sovereign corporations would be improvement anyway.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

The author indirectly advocates sanctioning these regimes. If that is the case, their best path is through government. Playing whack-a-mole with individual companies is, while decent clickbait and PR fodder, useless with respect to real-world outcomes.

spacebear 6y ago
I think what the author is arguing for is allowing iOS users to install software without Apple’s permission.

fay59 6y ago

I don’t remember the exact controversy, but I remember some controversy during the Obama years where a prominent US company complied with some censorious Chinese requirements. Obama said something along the lines of “I wish you’d come to us before agreeing to this. We would have helped.” As these the list starts in 2017, I wonder how much of this is the result of the US’s decreased willingness to export its values abroad during the Trump years.

kstenerud 6y ago

> In Seattle, Apple has given the feds vital evidence from one of its iCloud users who was arrested for firebombing cop cars during the George Floyd protests in late May. > The case shows how Apple is willing to help even where the context of the crime is controversial, namely the Black Lives Matter protests. EXCUSE ME??? Are you saying that firebombing cars is somehow an acceptable act in the context of a protest, and that helping track down the perpetrator of such an act is a bad thing?

TheNorthman 6y ago
Nice faux outrage. Perhaps he is saying that utilitarianism is a race to the bottom and that our actions shouldn't be based on an evaluation of an actions consequences but rather on the universality of it, such that we act only according to that maxim by which we can also will it to become universal law?
- sixstringtheory 6y ago
  This sounds like “the ends justify the means” dressed up in pseudo-intellectual verbiage.
  - TheNorthman 6y ago
    Whether I made it too `pseudo-intellectual' I don't know, or perhaps rather, I must have because the point went over your head. My point was exactly the opposite, there are no desirable ends: either Apple should be allowed to assist law enforcement or they shouldn't, regardless of what ends this might bring.

max_ 6y ago

I keep on telling my friends that there is a very hungry market for a new smartphone co. One, that doesn't participate in these primal endeavours of domination, manipulation & control. Its not complicated just allow users to install what they want. Allow people to distribute what they want. Apple & Google are at terminal phase of coperate Asperger's towards users at this point. Complaining is useless.

neonate 6y ago

I'd have more sympathy if he didn't include, in his primary examples, one that he himself admits there's no evidence for. there is little direct evidence to support this exact claim. While I am willing to give Apple the benefit of the doubt and consider this an inconvenient coincidence, I would not be surprised if this were a deliberate move. "I would not be surprised if" is not how honest argument works. On the other hand, at least he admits it. A hit piece would have insisted it's all true.

tomcam 6y ago

And Parler

summerlight 6y ago

Apple made this problem itself. They wanted to retain a full, complete control on what users can do with their product. This made their App Store a single point of failure. Coincidentally, those authoritarian governments want the exact same control on their people so it's perfectly natural to see their relentless attempts to control App Store. The solution is obvious, but I'm 100% sure that Apple won't take that path unless it's forced to do so.

researcher7 6y ago

It's not only apple. Almost all of the big tech doing that these days, either out of concern about their manufacturing resources, or other motives. Something I won't support, but can understand their motives behind. But I am trying to understand how this part fits in the list. "November 2019, Trump re-election campaign ad shot in Apple’s Mac Pro plant in Austin Given the context and the headline, Apple working with authoritarian governments. Unless the author thinks the US is authoritarian. I don't see any problems with any high tech executive supporting one politician or another, if the author is making the alleged Tim Cook's support for Trump the reason to include that in the list of incidents showing Apple working with authoritarian regimes.

EricE 6y ago

I once, naively, bought into the benevolent dictator spiel. The coordinated hit on Parlor dispelled my rose colored glasses respective to that narrative. It's all BS and past time for Apple (and Google for that matter) to be forced to open up and allow authorized alternatives to the "official" stores. And yes, while there is a generic open sourced version of Android, let's be honest - the one everyone wants is Android integrated with Google's services and for that one you have to go through the Play store.

ymolodtsov 6y ago

Apple definitely listens to China, since their entire manufacturing is there and it's a huge market for them, but the claim that Apple listens to Myanmar has no basis at all. Why would they care? And there's a ton of other VPN apps. It's an AppStore glitch and nothing more.