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Apple forced to offer Russian iPhone users local apps at setup thanks to new law

26 points by prostoalex 6y ago

sneak 6y ago
Nationalistic crapware ads in Russia. No taiwanese flag or VPN apps in China. No warrant protections for stored data due to FISA in the USA, and potentially the censorship of foreign apps that the department of commerce can direct Apple to ban. This isn't the end, this is the beginning. At what point do corporations become obligated to ignore or break unjust laws? Google pulled out of China to not censor search, then tried to get back in with a custom-built censored search product. I think the lack of a moral compass in the face of ever-expanding authoritarian states is the biggest danger of corporations to our society: not the profit motive, the simple fact that all manner of totalitarian bullshit can be explained away by those doing the building as "well, we have to comply with the laws in the places we operate".
- calderwoodra 6y ago
  Is it possible that Apple and/or Google being the market leaders in China/Russia is better for the world than their foreign counter parts? If they're invested in these markets, could they influence them in more positive ways?
  - sneak 6y ago
    I think that hinges on the assumption that it is better for the world that US military (that has warrantless access to the huge amounts of non-e2e-encrypted-data that Apple and Google collect) becomes stronger and more powerful thereby (relative to the Chinese/Russian militaries). They can't be evaluated independently: a win for Apple/Google/AWS/Microsoft is a win for the CIA, NSA, and the US armed forces by providing access to the end-users' data to the US spying apparatus. I think the US military's record on human rights and violence is roughly equivalent to that of China or Russia (a view not widely shared within the US, but one that at least holds a little water in full view of the historical record, on balance) so I'm pretty skeptical of the "better for the world" claim. I'm also open to the idea that perhaps SV software (which, by circumstance, is subject to US military spying) is so much better and more efficient than that which is available elsewhere (this is certainly true wrt Free Software) that substituting authoritarian mass surveillance by a foreign national military (the US) for an equivalent authoritarian mass surveillance by a local national military (Russia/China) is basically identical on that scale, and that the whole world is better for iOS and Google Apps/Gmail due to the end-user lifestyle and efficiency benefits they provide and the essentially identical human rights bullshit that passes for "national security" in all major jurisdictions. That's also a reasonable argument. In any case I'm not looking forward to additional per-nation meddling in the UX of the major multi-billion-dollar mobile platforms. It's going to shit them up terribly (moreso than their owners are already doing with their services revenue models), and force people who want to avoid it to mobile software that has much, much, much less investment into it (such as Free Software).
- Proven 6y ago
  > At what point do corporations become obligated to ignore or break unjust laws? They don't, but they can exit a market. Vote with your wallet: don't buy their products, and minimize your taxes paid to the state.

26 points by prostoalex 6y ago

Nationalistic crapware ads in Russia. No taiwanese flag or VPN apps in China. No warrant protections for stored data due to FISA in the USA, and potentially the censorship of foreign apps that the department of commerce can direct Apple to ban. This isn't the end, this is the beginning. At what point do corporations become obligated to ignore or break unjust laws? Google pulled out of China to not censor search, then tried to get back in with a custom-built censored search product. I think the lack of a moral compass in the face of ever-expanding authoritarian states is the biggest danger of corporations to our society: not the profit motive, the simple fact that all manner of totalitarian bullshit can be explained away by those doing the building as "well, we have to comply with the laws in the places we operate".

calderwoodra 6y ago
Is it possible that Apple and/or Google being the market leaders in China/Russia is better for the world than their foreign counter parts? If they're invested in these markets, could they influence them in more positive ways?
- sneak 6y ago
  I think that hinges on the assumption that it is better for the world that US military (that has warrantless access to the huge amounts of non-e2e-encrypted-data that Apple and Google collect) becomes stronger and more powerful thereby (relative to the Chinese/Russian militaries). They can't be evaluated independently: a win for Apple/Google/AWS/Microsoft is a win for the CIA, NSA, and the US armed forces by providing access to the end-users' data to the US spying apparatus. I think the US military's record on human rights and violence is roughly equivalent to that of China or Russia (a view not widely shared within the US, but one that at least holds a little water in full view of the historical record, on balance) so I'm pretty skeptical of the "better for the world" claim. I'm also open to the idea that perhaps SV software (which, by circumstance, is subject to US military spying) is so much better and more efficient than that which is available elsewhere (this is certainly true wrt Free Software) that substituting authoritarian mass surveillance by a foreign national military (the US) for an equivalent authoritarian mass surveillance by a local national military (Russia/China) is basically identical on that scale, and that the whole world is better for iOS and Google Apps/Gmail due to the end-user lifestyle and efficiency benefits they provide and the essentially identical human rights bullshit that passes for "national security" in all major jurisdictions. That's also a reasonable argument. In any case I'm not looking forward to additional per-nation meddling in the UX of the major multi-billion-dollar mobile platforms. It's going to shit them up terribly (moreso than their owners are already doing with their services revenue models), and force people who want to avoid it to mobile software that has much, much, much less investment into it (such as Free Software).
Proven 6y ago
> At what point do corporations become obligated to ignore or break unjust laws? They don't, but they can exit a market. Vote with your wallet: don't buy their products, and minimize your taxes paid to the state.