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Reuters doesn't report this, but the government officials threatened the companies (Apple and Google) with jail time for their employees yesterday. After that t

Reuters doesn't report this, but the government officials threatened the companies (Apple and Google) with jail time for their employees yesterday. After that the companies finally conceded. There's a short video fragment from the meeting of the government officials and the companies representatives. It's worth watching, especially if you come from a democratic nation. Letting your Russian employees be persecuted don't amount to "doing the right thing".

lifty 5y ago
It's hard to maximise profit and have consistent internal moral principles. As the other child comment mentioned, I would have preferred if Apple doesn't collaborate with these regimes and build their systems in such a way that they can't stand in the way of people doing what they want. But when you try to maximise profit, you have to interpose yourself as the gatekeeper, so you can extract as much value from the flow. And that of course makes you vulnerable to these kind of regimes.
Wolfenstein98k 5y ago
Pull out of the countries then. Participating in dictatorship is barely better than refusing to do so if that dictatorship will falsely imprison your employees.
- joconde 5y ago
  That seems to achieve nothing in practice. If Google and Apple leave Russia, then whatever replaces them will probably be even more compliant with the government. Of course, working in the country means paying tax dollars and "participating in the dictatorship" in that way, but that's not linked to app store restrictions. It's not as if they needed to get ordered to remove that app to realize they were working in a dictatorship, they knew it beforehand.
  - lifty 5y ago
    I am sorry, but that's bullshit. Do you see Russia threatening Microsoft for not banning certain apps from Windows? No, because they can't. Apple and Google have build their ecosystem in such a way that they have full power over these decisions, and now they are forced to use that power. Edit: Google has a slight advantage here because people can still sideload apps on Android, but that's not possible on iOS.
    - pftburger 5y ago
      This, right here. Centralization is the danger. In whatever form. Even the web with single points of failure is prone to this.
    - joconde 5y ago
      > Apple and Google have build their ecosystem in such a way that they have full power over these decisions, and now they are forced to use that power. They made choices that put them in this situation, sure. But how does the fact that it's their fault change their situation now? Leaving still achieves nothing, and they certainly won't change their business model for that reason alone, so the logical choice is to stay and obey. If they left, I doubt they would be replaced by a Microsoft-like that has less control over their devices. More likely, the void would be filled by government-compliant companies.
    - fsociety 5y ago
      The real money comment in this entire thread. Corporate incentive structures are messed up. Why does a corporation sacrifice principles and values over money. If they really care about the people they serve they would consider this seriously. One of the first things I was told when I joined FB was that they were almost going to be decentralized and a non-profit. Who knows how much of that history is rewritten. I mention it because there are echoes that these big tech companies could have been non-profits. Google making information accessible. Apple making computers that enable people to learn and create. Facebook connecting people and creating community. Amazon to empower small businesses. They probably wouldn’t have succeeded as much as they did now. But they certainly deviated away from their original mission, or rather they have a history of compromising them for profit. We should be trying to create a world where they would have succeeded as a non-profit. Our incentive structures for corporations are so screwed up. But this is so complex. Probably the first step is improving the bottom line for everyone in the country, and then we can start tearing apart the incentive structures for businesses.
- simonh 5y ago
  Even Navalny and his supporters are not calling for foreign companies to all pull out of Russia. What makes you think you know better what is good for the Russian people and the opposition groups than Russians and the opposition groups themselves? How many of Russia's Apple employees think Apple is "participating in dictatorship" by employing them? How many Russian citizens, including the political opposition, do you think blame Apple or Google for participating in dictatorship by selling them phones and providing them with services? Maybe a few take such an extreme view, but it certainly doesn't seem to be a common attitude for Russian opponents of Putin.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > What makes you think you know better what is good for the Russian people and the opposition groups than Russians and the opposition groups themselves? Because if regime's economy collapses, the regime will collapse sooner.
    - Dah00n 5y ago
      And then we likely have a pure dictatorship with the worlds second biggest nuclear arsenal and thousands of Russians will likely die from things like starvation and being killed by the new regime (or the old while it dies). No-one wins by killing off a regime. That is "let's bomb this country into democracy" thinking.
      - varjag 5y ago
        It is a pure dictatorship for a while now.
    - simonh 5y ago
      Collapsing economies simply make autocrats double down even harder on autocracy. North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Zimbabwe. There are numerous examples of this. It simply multiplies the misery.
      - baybal2 5y ago
- oleganza 5y ago
  I'm no fan of political power in Russia (my home country) or anywhere else in the world, but come on with this double-standard bullshit. Every country does exactly the same thing. Just look at how much suppression of "alternative voices" happens in real time all over the world and what apps were banned, accounts closed etc. Jan 6 was painted as bad as 9/11, ffs. It may be staged differently so it's not the "government" directly steps onto your 1st amendment, but "private biz", but who are we kidding. When there are forbidden topics and forbidden people, it's the outcomes that matter, not specific mechanisms. Google and Apple are collaborating with all governments, and all governments are abusing their powers in someone's own interests, so calling for "pulling out" of a "misbehaving country" makes as much sense as asking for rain to drop upwards. I'd better explore how people could reduce their dependence on any giant corporation, regardless of it being a business or a government, from West or East.
  - hnlmorg 5y ago
    > Every country does exactly the same thing. They don't though. Sure, there is some level of corruption and media bias in every country but few countries have dictatorships which will threaten imprisonment (or worse) of anyone who speaks out against the current government. However I do agree with your secondary point that the solution isn't to create a tech vacuum, it's to create technology that can't be controlled by a single authority.
    - Dah00n 5y ago
      Now you are moving the discussion into Which country have actual free people though. Sure a dictatorship is worse than a "free" country where decades of propaganda has set the tone so people think they are free while they do what the government wants them to but are they really that much better off? That people chant USA! USA! USA! while doing something doesn't mean they are free. They are more free but way more indoctrinated. I'm not sure that is better than how it is in Russia. It does feel better, sure, but it doesn't give any less media bias at all. If anything US media is more biased than Russian or at least as bad - all done without obvious threats. That's worse in my opinion, way worse.
- throw_m239339 5y ago
  > Pull out of the countries then. Then why Apple hasn't pulled out of China? Like 2 decades ago? China was always a brutal dictatorship. Why would they pull out of anything? These company profit from bloody dictatorships, like the rest of the western economy. But somehow when it's about Russia it's a problem? The hypocrisy in the west must stop. The west and it's industry never stood for freedom abroad since it decided that business is more important than democracy in the rest of the world, basically when the west accepted China in the WTO. > Participating in dictatorship is barely better than refusing to do so if that dictatorship will falsely imprison your employees. Tell that to Apple in China, a country that is literally using slave workforce from concentration camps. But Russia is where people here start being outraged?
  - hnlmorg 5y ago
    In fairness, people have been asking Apple and Google (plus many other western businesses) to pull out of China for a long time. The point your making isn't something new nor overlooked.
    - gman83 5y ago
      But Google did pull out of China, did that improve the situation in China? Meanwhile Apple makes billions in China and barely anyone says anything. If you're Google you're looking at that like a raw deal.
      - hnlmorg 5y ago
        Google didn't entirely pull out of China, they just terminated their product lines that were unsuccessful in China. I was also just posting a fact that people have made the same calls for China, not my personal opinion about whether we "should" discontinue services with China. On that last point, I'm honestly undecided.
        jsnell 5y ago
        That's just an outright lie. The product they pulled was search. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China it had a 36% search market share.
- pndy 5y ago
  No company will pull out because there is money in these countries - what happens there in politics, social sphere doesn't actually matter as long their business isn't in any direct danger. And if there's some threat, their "values and moral spine" bends with ease; big corps have tools and means to do damage control if situation requires.
- emilsedgh 5y ago
  I come from a 3rd world dictatorship country. I don't really think that'd help. It'd further isolate those countries, making them more and more authoritarian and less and less educated. Google pulling out of any country for help democracy either.
  - tailspin2019 5y ago
    Interested in your thoughts on what would help? From your point of view?
    - emilsedgh 5y ago
      I'll try my best, but obviously these are just my thoughts and a lot of other people don't necessarily agree with me. I think all authoritarian governments rely on a chunk of their population to stay in power. This population can be very small, but sufficient. In order to maintain their popularity they rely on: 1. Lack of education 2. Strong propaganda 3. Poverty 4. Social welfare 5. Religion & ideology 6. Fear of enemy Within their target demographics. So, they will end up with chunks of population who are uneducated, poor, strongly reliant on government welfare that are actually thankful for the government for their social welfare and cultural/religious alignment. The pro-democracy people are usually middle class citizens. How do you fight uneducated, religiously/culturally motivated people with tame middle class citizens? It's not doable. That's why Taliban takes control of Afghanistan. The only thing that I've seen work is this: 1. You try to keep communications alive with population. Google leaving a country? There couldn't be anything worse. 2. You incentivize government/regimes to stay as open as possible. 3. You wait decades for paradigm shifts within populations. As for #1, let me give you an example. ~25 years ago I was 7. I lived in Iran. There was no internet. TV & Radio are government controlled and the country was too poor for people to travel abroad. The _only_ thing that kept us connected to the outside world was... soccer. Iranian state TV would broadcast a few soccer games a week (not live). For a massive chunk of the population, the only way to see there are _other_ type of people, not name Ali, Hussain, Muhammed, etc, and instead named Alessandro, Paolo, David, whatever, was soccer. Something simple like this can really keep the mind open. Allows you to realize there are other ways. Fast forward a few years, a "reform" government was in place. The regime was relatively incentivized to talk to the US. Thus, they allowed Internet. The reform government allowed music and film to flourish again. As a result of economic growth a lot of Iranians were traveling abroad (from Turkey and Dubai to all over Europe) and as a result the middle class got more and more "western". Fast forward to Donald Trump leaving the JCPOA, putting a "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran. The economy went to shit (it's really a humanitarian crisis now). The government, scared of riots, locked everything down. All European brands/companies have left the country and the government is pushing to close down internet altogether. A decade ago Iranians were pushing for democracy (Green Movement). Now, their only concern is survival. There is no hope anymore. The population is getting poorer and poorer, less and less educated. So my question after this story is, do you think Google leaving Russia will end up helping Russians get more educated, more wealthy, more connected to the free world? Or would it push them to the direction of poverty, isolation and disconnect? Iran 10 years ago (before maximum pressure campaign by the republicans) was on the path to be something like Turkey. Not totally free, but somewhat OK ish country. Now it's on the path to be another North Korea (if this direction continues for another 15-20 years) Sorry this wasn't a well written, well thought piece. It was an anecdotal dump of thoughts, but hopefully I managed to make a point.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  I would be cautious about that kind of statement. Moving out of their country is just what dictatorships want. To do their thing undisturbed.
- lotusmars 5y ago
  As a Russian, I agree. Boycott Putin, Lukashenko and other bloody murderers. Otherwise it's just talk. You can post whataboutism under this comment (e.g. "what about China?", "US is bloody too", "US always supports dictators" and other useful idiot[0] stuff). 0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
- smokey_circles 5y ago
  Nobody is going to do that so long as there is financial reason to not. Which is not to say Google and Apple don't care about their employees, clearly this article suggests otherwise. It's just not true that pulling out is a viable or even straight forward option. You could also make an argument for US government placing pressure on these companies to keep a presence in Russia so they (the US government) can have some kind of foothold to push soft pressure
amima 5y ago
The real threat came from the fine the government intended to impose on the companies. They threatened to fine not the fixed amount, as they did before, but to calculate it from the turnover values. Which could result in millions of dollars. The Russian government recently fined Booking with almost 18 million USD. For Google and Apple the fine could be even bigger. The threat to employees on the other hand was not real one, there is no one to legally procecute in the Russian subsidiaries of the companies.
- SergeAx 5y ago
  They don't need a legal ground to harm any Russian citizen. Last several years political repressions are gaining momentum and there's less and less care about keeping it in a legal field.
- serial_dev 5y ago
  Without knowing much about the specifics... A threat can be totally real, even if "there is no one to legally prosecute". In most countries (even in countries that most people would consider more democratic), if people in power want to "make a point", they will find a way. I'm an immigrant who moved from Hungary to Germany, lived in Spain and Mexico, and I know many examples from all countries where people in power got their way through various ways, even if they had no legal way to enforce their will on others. Also do not forget, if you control legislation, the judges, the constitution, the police, etc, what is legal one day, can become illegal and prosecuted and persecuted pretty quickly.
exizt88 5y ago
Care to provide a source for this?
- neonbones 5y ago
  This is shadier than it seems. The opposition organization FBK (ФБК) was just called out as "extremists," and with this government decision, they wrote mails to Google and Apple to block "extremists." There are published answers from Apple with details. https://twitter.com/ioannZH/status/1438750081402953728 https://twitter.com/ioannZH/status/1438750081402953728 Any government can easily classify any opposition as "extremists" now and Apple and Google will ban them.
- r721 5y ago
  >Google removed the app in Russia under pressure after officials threatened to imprison its local employees, a person close to the company said, speaking on condition of anonymity. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-16/russia-targets-google-apple-in-crackdown-before-elections https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-16/russia-ta... >Google removed the app Friday morning after the Russian authorities issued a direct threat of criminal prosecution against the company’s staff in the country, naming specific individuals, according to a person familiar with the company’s decision. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/world/europe/russia-navalny-app-election.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/world/europe/russia-naval...
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - exizt88 5y ago
    Incredible and horrifying at the same time. I think this is the final nail in the coffin for foreign investment in Russia.
ComodoHacker 5y ago
>It's worth watching Why haven't you provided a link then?
- viktorcode 5y ago
  It was published on a Telegram channel: https://t.me/A000MP97/93 https://t.me/A000MP97/93
  - lotusmars 5y ago
    Honestly Apple's Russian executives look very weak and unprepared in this video. I suspect they're just hired from some agency or consultancy as FAANG have very limited corporate presence in Russia. So they just keep being sheepish and stumbling because they have no incentive to stand their ground. Just hired guns.
    - viktorcode 5y ago
      From what I gather it was an unexpected invitation for the companies. They learned about it only a day before.
    - chupasaurus 5y ago
      Those are lawyers hired by Apple and Google, not employees.
      - lotusmars 5y ago
        They still looked unprepared. The inquirer asked basic questions like "who controls App Store" or "what is the relationship between local subsidiary and Apple Inc." They stumbled and mumbled looking lost. They looked like they didn't have clear defense line or strategy although the attack on Apple was absolutely on cards for years. I hope I'm wrong judging by a short video but it's a bad look for Apple. It's possible Apple is just giving in to Kremlin (or have an agreement already even) so they don't even bother or care to defend themselves.
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baybal2 5y ago
> Letting your Russian employees be persecuted don't amount to "doing the right thing". IT IS very much a right thing. Don't want to work for such company? Leave! It's not an indentured slavery! Fuck, You Sergei Brin! You just screwed the most monumental display of courage, and determination by employees of Google Russia with a single pen stroke.
- Ajef 5y ago
  It's something else to risk your own well being for a cause than to risk someone elses well being.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    It were 2, or 3 thousand Google Russia employees who signed on to adamantly oppose any attempt to block this app in the play store. Brin basically betrayed Google Russia, and its employees. Nobody had Sergei Brin call them, and tell to do that. It was an act 100% of their own volition.
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wwtrv 5y ago
Arbitrary imprisoning or harming the employees of Google or Apple would likely result in many other western IT firms closing their offices and leaving, that would be a very stupid thing to do for the Russian government. So I don’t think such threats could have been real (but I guess you can’t really count on authoritarian regimes not doing something completely irrational).
- r721 5y ago
  NYT and Bloomberg report that threats were real: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28563916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28563916
  - wwtrv 5y ago
    I’m not denying these threats were issued, but actually following them through would be a very irrational thing to do. So it’s probably just a bluff. Of course it doesn’t really matter that much since Google/Apple were going to comply with their requests anyway.
    - jgilias 5y ago
      Autocratic leaders can get pretty irrational in their quest of preserving power down to the point of harming what seems to be their interests in major ways.
- smokey_circles 5y ago
  Putin has attacked a good many political dissidents on foreign soil, is it really such an unbelievable claim? > likely result in many other western IT firms closing their offices and leaving That's just naive. Russia and China are huge markets. Apple and Google are not going anywhere unless their hands are forced.
  - wwtrv 5y ago
    It’s not an all or nothing outcome. And I’m not talking about Google or Apple leaving. There are many companies which have dev offices in Russia, they would be less likely to hire new employees in Russia if they believed they can be arbitrarily imprisoned for random reasons. Just look at what’s happening in Belarus in the last year (IT companies started fleeing to neighboring countries)
MichaelMoser123 5y ago
Here is an article that mentions the threat of jailing employees: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/09/17/apple-google-delete-navalny-app-on-day-of-russian-parliamentary-vote-a75069 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/09/17/apple-google-delet... It's all about Navalny's tactic of 'smart voting', where they are picking candidates from parties other than the 'United Russia' party of Putin, in an attempt to bring in members of parliament who would not be in exact alignment with the politics of Putin. These candidates are often not even in open opposition to Putin, and that is currently the worst opposition and nightmare of the Russian government... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Voting
tolmasky 5y ago
Allow side-loading so that you don’t leave yourself open to a situation where the only way your customers get access to a voting app is by having your employees jailed. The AppStore creates an easily exploitable bottleneck for governments to take advantage of. The hkmap.live situation during the protests in Hong Kong was similar.
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  As much as I like a lot of the benefits of the walled garden (from a consumer perspective, not necessarily as a developer), this is actually a very good argument for side-loading and one that I hadn't thought about before.
  - saurik 5y ago
    ~4 years ago I gave a talk at Mozilla Privacy Lab (perfected from a talk I gave at 360|iDev) that focused on these moral reasons for not having centralized systems, looking at everything from government control to the tyranny of the majority, that I called "That's How you Get a Dystopia". https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms As far as I am concerned, you absolutely cannot have centralized control over something like "all software distribution" without being actively complicit with such regimes, and that people working for Apple have chosen to normalize this is unconscionably immoral :(.
    - tailspin2019 5y ago
      > As far as I am concerned, you absolutely cannot have centralized control over something like "all software distribution" without being actively complicit with such regimes Yeah that seems to distil the problem down to the fundamentals. Will watch your talk, thanks!
- viktorcode 5y ago
  The app is still available in other countries, so in order to install it in Russia one just have to create another Apple account to install it from a foregn app store on the device.
oliwarner 5y ago
Except that by this point, all this is expected behaviour. If companies don't want to be complicit in these crimes, they need to extricate themselves from the country and cut all ties. If they do want to put profit ahead of everything else, then whatever, but you don't get to defend them as doing the right thing for their employees. They're enabling the whole situation. [Edit to bring in a sister question] "Why don't Apple pull out of China then?" - because they put profit and cheap manufacturing ahead of their morals. And apparently we don't care enough that China effected a genocide while we watched.
- travisgriggs 5y ago
  Where does that stop though? I agree with you, but I don’t see how the basic observe-eval-withdraw loop ever terminates. Or put from a flip side… Building apps in highly democratic Norway just for Norwegians to use because they’re the best democracy (for example) doesn’t make enough money to feed my family. So why do anything at all?
  - pigeonhole123 5y ago
    The fact that you have to draw the line somewhere is not an argument for not drawing a line somewhere.
    - travisgriggs 5y ago
      Indeed. Can you say that the parties involved do not have lines? Everyone has lines, they’re just not always visible. My point that the observe-eval-withdraw loop is difficult to terminate is not meant to argue we shouldn’t run the loop, but rather how difficult it is to code the withdraw conditions. As I tried to allude to in the second paragraph, you have to balance out the withdraw conditions with the pragmatic need to let the loop get some worthwhile work done.
      - oliwarner 5y ago
        How about using the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a score sheet? 30 Articles there. I doubt there are many countries that score a perfect-30 but is Russia even in double-figures? I agree, there's some arbitrary hand-wringing to be done to work out where to draw the line, but doing nothing while you're paralysed trying to decide what pencil to use, seems just as bad as going along with the acts in the first place. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
lupire 5y ago
These companies shouldn't have Russian employees in Russia.
api 5y ago
I don’t know what people expect here. Companies can’t really stand up to governments, especially autocratic ones overseas. Apple’s only option would be to leave Russia completely. That might be the right thing to do but it’s a tough sell to shareholders.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  This hurts Apple. Remember, Apple's entire argument for CSAM scanning is that they would resist pressure to modify the system. Obviously they won't if they fold this easy.
blago 5y ago
> Letting your Russian employees be persecuted don't amount to "doing the right thing". I disagree. Western companies have no moral obligation to bend their own ethics, help a tyrant, and harm a nation, in order to "save" one, or a handful, of employees from said tyrant. Quite the opposite, the right thing to do is to take a stand and force the tyrant out in broad daylight.
devwastaken 5y ago
So actual teeth (arrests) in policy works? U.S should make notes. We're due for new treason (aiding a foreign adversary) laws that cover global companies.
nullifidian 5y ago
As a Russian I say they should have hired "martyrs" from opposition onto the jailable positions. Not having "martyrs" on these positions saved Putin's regime a lot of face, of actually persecuting a famous companys' local division directors for not censoring the internet. Now they know how to force these companies to do what they want, and do it quickly.
- sterlind 5y ago
  that's really clever. Navalny himself shows that such martyrs exist, brave enough to return after being poisoned. But what if they arrest everyone and not just the martyrs?
envy2 5y ago
Companies shouldn't put themselves in this position: they should simply refuse to have a local presence or local employees in authoritarian-leaning countries.
- azov 5y ago
  There is a law in Russia (going into effect next year) that large IT companies must have local presence, otherwise they will be banned from operating in the country. I believe this is inspired by a similar law in China.
shadilay 5y ago
If you build tools of oppression (not making it easy to use alternate app stores) they will inevitably be abused by those wishing to oppress.
generationP 5y ago
It's one thing to flinch immediately, another to let this stand. By now there has been enough time for Mountain View to lock any Russian IPs out of Play Store moderation and to reinstate the apps unilaterally, with a clear statement that no one below the C-suite will be able to undo the decision. Otherwise, the org chart is clearly inverted.

lifty 5y ago

It's hard to maximise profit and have consistent internal moral principles. As the other child comment mentioned, I would have preferred if Apple doesn't collaborate with these regimes and build their systems in such a way that they can't stand in the way of people doing what they want. But when you try to maximise profit, you have to interpose yourself as the gatekeeper, so you can extract as much value from the flow. And that of course makes you vulnerable to these kind of regimes.

Wolfenstein98k 5y ago

Pull out of the countries then. Participating in dictatorship is barely better than refusing to do so if that dictatorship will falsely imprison your employees.

joconde 5y ago
That seems to achieve nothing in practice. If Google and Apple leave Russia, then whatever replaces them will probably be even more compliant with the government. Of course, working in the country means paying tax dollars and "participating in the dictatorship" in that way, but that's not linked to app store restrictions. It's not as if they needed to get ordered to remove that app to realize they were working in a dictatorship, they knew it beforehand.
- lifty 5y ago
  I am sorry, but that's bullshit. Do you see Russia threatening Microsoft for not banning certain apps from Windows? No, because they can't. Apple and Google have build their ecosystem in such a way that they have full power over these decisions, and now they are forced to use that power. Edit: Google has a slight advantage here because people can still sideload apps on Android, but that's not possible on iOS.
  - pftburger 5y ago
    This, right here. Centralization is the danger. In whatever form. Even the web with single points of failure is prone to this.
  - joconde 5y ago
    > Apple and Google have build their ecosystem in such a way that they have full power over these decisions, and now they are forced to use that power. They made choices that put them in this situation, sure. But how does the fact that it's their fault change their situation now? Leaving still achieves nothing, and they certainly won't change their business model for that reason alone, so the logical choice is to stay and obey. If they left, I doubt they would be replaced by a Microsoft-like that has less control over their devices. More likely, the void would be filled by government-compliant companies.
  - fsociety 5y ago
    The real money comment in this entire thread. Corporate incentive structures are messed up. Why does a corporation sacrifice principles and values over money. If they really care about the people they serve they would consider this seriously. One of the first things I was told when I joined FB was that they were almost going to be decentralized and a non-profit. Who knows how much of that history is rewritten. I mention it because there are echoes that these big tech companies could have been non-profits. Google making information accessible. Apple making computers that enable people to learn and create. Facebook connecting people and creating community. Amazon to empower small businesses. They probably wouldn’t have succeeded as much as they did now. But they certainly deviated away from their original mission, or rather they have a history of compromising them for profit. We should be trying to create a world where they would have succeeded as a non-profit. Our incentive structures for corporations are so screwed up. But this is so complex. Probably the first step is improving the bottom line for everyone in the country, and then we can start tearing apart the incentive structures for businesses.
simonh 5y ago
Even Navalny and his supporters are not calling for foreign companies to all pull out of Russia. What makes you think you know better what is good for the Russian people and the opposition groups than Russians and the opposition groups themselves? How many of Russia's Apple employees think Apple is "participating in dictatorship" by employing them? How many Russian citizens, including the political opposition, do you think blame Apple or Google for participating in dictatorship by selling them phones and providing them with services? Maybe a few take such an extreme view, but it certainly doesn't seem to be a common attitude for Russian opponents of Putin.
- baybal2 5y ago
  > What makes you think you know better what is good for the Russian people and the opposition groups than Russians and the opposition groups themselves? Because if regime's economy collapses, the regime will collapse sooner.
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    And then we likely have a pure dictatorship with the worlds second biggest nuclear arsenal and thousands of Russians will likely die from things like starvation and being killed by the new regime (or the old while it dies). No-one wins by killing off a regime. That is "let's bomb this country into democracy" thinking.
    - varjag 5y ago
      It is a pure dictatorship for a while now.
  - simonh 5y ago
    Collapsing economies simply make autocrats double down even harder on autocracy. North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Zimbabwe. There are numerous examples of this. It simply multiplies the misery.
    - baybal2 5y ago
oleganza 5y ago
I'm no fan of political power in Russia (my home country) or anywhere else in the world, but come on with this double-standard bullshit. Every country does exactly the same thing. Just look at how much suppression of "alternative voices" happens in real time all over the world and what apps were banned, accounts closed etc. Jan 6 was painted as bad as 9/11, ffs. It may be staged differently so it's not the "government" directly steps onto your 1st amendment, but "private biz", but who are we kidding. When there are forbidden topics and forbidden people, it's the outcomes that matter, not specific mechanisms. Google and Apple are collaborating with all governments, and all governments are abusing their powers in someone's own interests, so calling for "pulling out" of a "misbehaving country" makes as much sense as asking for rain to drop upwards. I'd better explore how people could reduce their dependence on any giant corporation, regardless of it being a business or a government, from West or East.
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  > Every country does exactly the same thing. They don't though. Sure, there is some level of corruption and media bias in every country but few countries have dictatorships which will threaten imprisonment (or worse) of anyone who speaks out against the current government. However I do agree with your secondary point that the solution isn't to create a tech vacuum, it's to create technology that can't be controlled by a single authority.
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    Now you are moving the discussion into Which country have actual free people though. Sure a dictatorship is worse than a "free" country where decades of propaganda has set the tone so people think they are free while they do what the government wants them to but are they really that much better off? That people chant USA! USA! USA! while doing something doesn't mean they are free. They are more free but way more indoctrinated. I'm not sure that is better than how it is in Russia. It does feel better, sure, but it doesn't give any less media bias at all. If anything US media is more biased than Russian or at least as bad - all done without obvious threats. That's worse in my opinion, way worse.
throw_m239339 5y ago
> Pull out of the countries then. Then why Apple hasn't pulled out of China? Like 2 decades ago? China was always a brutal dictatorship. Why would they pull out of anything? These company profit from bloody dictatorships, like the rest of the western economy. But somehow when it's about Russia it's a problem? The hypocrisy in the west must stop. The west and it's industry never stood for freedom abroad since it decided that business is more important than democracy in the rest of the world, basically when the west accepted China in the WTO. > Participating in dictatorship is barely better than refusing to do so if that dictatorship will falsely imprison your employees. Tell that to Apple in China, a country that is literally using slave workforce from concentration camps. But Russia is where people here start being outraged?
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  In fairness, people have been asking Apple and Google (plus many other western businesses) to pull out of China for a long time. The point your making isn't something new nor overlooked.
  - gman83 5y ago
    But Google did pull out of China, did that improve the situation in China? Meanwhile Apple makes billions in China and barely anyone says anything. If you're Google you're looking at that like a raw deal.
    - hnlmorg 5y ago
      Google didn't entirely pull out of China, they just terminated their product lines that were unsuccessful in China. I was also just posting a fact that people have made the same calls for China, not my personal opinion about whether we "should" discontinue services with China. On that last point, I'm honestly undecided.
      - jsnell 5y ago
        That's just an outright lie. The product they pulled was search. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China it had a 36% search market share.
pndy 5y ago
No company will pull out because there is money in these countries - what happens there in politics, social sphere doesn't actually matter as long their business isn't in any direct danger. And if there's some threat, their "values and moral spine" bends with ease; big corps have tools and means to do damage control if situation requires.
emilsedgh 5y ago
I come from a 3rd world dictatorship country. I don't really think that'd help. It'd further isolate those countries, making them more and more authoritarian and less and less educated. Google pulling out of any country for help democracy either.
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  Interested in your thoughts on what would help? From your point of view?
  - emilsedgh 5y ago
    I'll try my best, but obviously these are just my thoughts and a lot of other people don't necessarily agree with me. I think all authoritarian governments rely on a chunk of their population to stay in power. This population can be very small, but sufficient. In order to maintain their popularity they rely on: 1. Lack of education 2. Strong propaganda 3. Poverty 4. Social welfare 5. Religion & ideology 6. Fear of enemy Within their target demographics. So, they will end up with chunks of population who are uneducated, poor, strongly reliant on government welfare that are actually thankful for the government for their social welfare and cultural/religious alignment. The pro-democracy people are usually middle class citizens. How do you fight uneducated, religiously/culturally motivated people with tame middle class citizens? It's not doable. That's why Taliban takes control of Afghanistan. The only thing that I've seen work is this: 1. You try to keep communications alive with population. Google leaving a country? There couldn't be anything worse. 2. You incentivize government/regimes to stay as open as possible. 3. You wait decades for paradigm shifts within populations. As for #1, let me give you an example. ~25 years ago I was 7. I lived in Iran. There was no internet. TV & Radio are government controlled and the country was too poor for people to travel abroad. The _only_ thing that kept us connected to the outside world was... soccer. Iranian state TV would broadcast a few soccer games a week (not live). For a massive chunk of the population, the only way to see there are _other_ type of people, not name Ali, Hussain, Muhammed, etc, and instead named Alessandro, Paolo, David, whatever, was soccer. Something simple like this can really keep the mind open. Allows you to realize there are other ways. Fast forward a few years, a "reform" government was in place. The regime was relatively incentivized to talk to the US. Thus, they allowed Internet. The reform government allowed music and film to flourish again. As a result of economic growth a lot of Iranians were traveling abroad (from Turkey and Dubai to all over Europe) and as a result the middle class got more and more "western". Fast forward to Donald Trump leaving the JCPOA, putting a "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran. The economy went to shit (it's really a humanitarian crisis now). The government, scared of riots, locked everything down. All European brands/companies have left the country and the government is pushing to close down internet altogether. A decade ago Iranians were pushing for democracy (Green Movement). Now, their only concern is survival. There is no hope anymore. The population is getting poorer and poorer, less and less educated. So my question after this story is, do you think Google leaving Russia will end up helping Russians get more educated, more wealthy, more connected to the free world? Or would it push them to the direction of poverty, isolation and disconnect? Iran 10 years ago (before maximum pressure campaign by the republicans) was on the path to be something like Turkey. Not totally free, but somewhat OK ish country. Now it's on the path to be another North Korea (if this direction continues for another 15-20 years) Sorry this wasn't a well written, well thought piece. It was an anecdotal dump of thoughts, but hopefully I managed to make a point.
lmilcin 5y ago
I would be cautious about that kind of statement. Moving out of their country is just what dictatorships want. To do their thing undisturbed.
lotusmars 5y ago
As a Russian, I agree. Boycott Putin, Lukashenko and other bloody murderers. Otherwise it's just talk. You can post whataboutism under this comment (e.g. "what about China?", "US is bloody too", "US always supports dictators" and other useful idiot[0] stuff). 0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
smokey_circles 5y ago
Nobody is going to do that so long as there is financial reason to not. Which is not to say Google and Apple don't care about their employees, clearly this article suggests otherwise. It's just not true that pulling out is a viable or even straight forward option. You could also make an argument for US government placing pressure on these companies to keep a presence in Russia so they (the US government) can have some kind of foothold to push soft pressure

amima 5y ago

The real threat came from the fine the government intended to impose on the companies. They threatened to fine not the fixed amount, as they did before, but to calculate it from the turnover values. Which could result in millions of dollars. The Russian government recently fined Booking with almost 18 million USD. For Google and Apple the fine could be even bigger. The threat to employees on the other hand was not real one, there is no one to legally procecute in the Russian subsidiaries of the companies.

SergeAx 5y ago
They don't need a legal ground to harm any Russian citizen. Last several years political repressions are gaining momentum and there's less and less care about keeping it in a legal field.
serial_dev 5y ago
Without knowing much about the specifics... A threat can be totally real, even if "there is no one to legally prosecute". In most countries (even in countries that most people would consider more democratic), if people in power want to "make a point", they will find a way. I'm an immigrant who moved from Hungary to Germany, lived in Spain and Mexico, and I know many examples from all countries where people in power got their way through various ways, even if they had no legal way to enforce their will on others. Also do not forget, if you control legislation, the judges, the constitution, the police, etc, what is legal one day, can become illegal and prosecuted and persecuted pretty quickly.

exizt88 5y ago

Care to provide a source for this?

neonbones 5y ago
This is shadier than it seems. The opposition organization FBK (ФБК) was just called out as "extremists," and with this government decision, they wrote mails to Google and Apple to block "extremists." There are published answers from Apple with details. https://twitter.com/ioannZH/status/1438750081402953728 https://twitter.com/ioannZH/status/1438750081402953728 Any government can easily classify any opposition as "extremists" now and Apple and Google will ban them.
r721 5y ago
>Google removed the app in Russia under pressure after officials threatened to imprison its local employees, a person close to the company said, speaking on condition of anonymity. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-16/russia-targets-google-apple-in-crackdown-before-elections https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-16/russia-ta... >Google removed the app Friday morning after the Russian authorities issued a direct threat of criminal prosecution against the company’s staff in the country, naming specific individuals, according to a person familiar with the company’s decision. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/world/europe/russia-navalny-app-election.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/world/europe/russia-naval...
- deleted 5y ago
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- exizt88 5y ago
  Incredible and horrifying at the same time. I think this is the final nail in the coffin for foreign investment in Russia.

ComodoHacker 5y ago

>It's worth watching Why haven't you provided a link then?

viktorcode 5y ago
It was published on a Telegram channel: https://t.me/A000MP97/93 https://t.me/A000MP97/93
- lotusmars 5y ago
  Honestly Apple's Russian executives look very weak and unprepared in this video. I suspect they're just hired from some agency or consultancy as FAANG have very limited corporate presence in Russia. So they just keep being sheepish and stumbling because they have no incentive to stand their ground. Just hired guns.
  - viktorcode 5y ago
    From what I gather it was an unexpected invitation for the companies. They learned about it only a day before.
  - chupasaurus 5y ago
    Those are lawyers hired by Apple and Google, not employees.
    - lotusmars 5y ago
      They still looked unprepared. The inquirer asked basic questions like "who controls App Store" or "what is the relationship between local subsidiary and Apple Inc." They stumbled and mumbled looking lost. They looked like they didn't have clear defense line or strategy although the attack on Apple was absolutely on cards for years. I hope I'm wrong judging by a short video but it's a bad look for Apple. It's possible Apple is just giving in to Kremlin (or have an agreement already even) so they don't even bother or care to defend themselves.

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baybal2 5y ago

> Letting your Russian employees be persecuted don't amount to "doing the right thing". IT IS very much a right thing. Don't want to work for such company? Leave! It's not an indentured slavery! Fuck, You Sergei Brin! You just screwed the most monumental display of courage, and determination by employees of Google Russia with a single pen stroke.

Ajef 5y ago
It's something else to risk your own well being for a cause than to risk someone elses well being.
- baybal2 5y ago
  It were 2, or 3 thousand Google Russia employees who signed on to adamantly oppose any attempt to block this app in the play store. Brin basically betrayed Google Russia, and its employees. Nobody had Sergei Brin call them, and tell to do that. It was an act 100% of their own volition.

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wwtrv 5y ago

Arbitrary imprisoning or harming the employees of Google or Apple would likely result in many other western IT firms closing their offices and leaving, that would be a very stupid thing to do for the Russian government. So I don’t think such threats could have been real (but I guess you can’t really count on authoritarian regimes not doing something completely irrational).

r721 5y ago
NYT and Bloomberg report that threats were real: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28563916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28563916
- wwtrv 5y ago
  I’m not denying these threats were issued, but actually following them through would be a very irrational thing to do. So it’s probably just a bluff. Of course it doesn’t really matter that much since Google/Apple were going to comply with their requests anyway.
  - jgilias 5y ago
    Autocratic leaders can get pretty irrational in their quest of preserving power down to the point of harming what seems to be their interests in major ways.
smokey_circles 5y ago
Putin has attacked a good many political dissidents on foreign soil, is it really such an unbelievable claim? > likely result in many other western IT firms closing their offices and leaving That's just naive. Russia and China are huge markets. Apple and Google are not going anywhere unless their hands are forced.
- wwtrv 5y ago
  It’s not an all or nothing outcome. And I’m not talking about Google or Apple leaving. There are many companies which have dev offices in Russia, they would be less likely to hire new employees in Russia if they believed they can be arbitrarily imprisoned for random reasons. Just look at what’s happening in Belarus in the last year (IT companies started fleeing to neighboring countries)

MichaelMoser123 5y ago

Here is an article that mentions the threat of jailing employees: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/09/17/apple-google-delete-navalny-app-on-day-of-russian-parliamentary-vote-a75069 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/09/17/apple-google-delet... It's all about Navalny's tactic of 'smart voting', where they are picking candidates from parties other than the 'United Russia' party of Putin, in an attempt to bring in members of parliament who would not be in exact alignment with the politics of Putin. These candidates are often not even in open opposition to Putin, and that is currently the worst opposition and nightmare of the Russian government... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Voting

tolmasky 5y ago

Allow side-loading so that you don’t leave yourself open to a situation where the only way your customers get access to a voting app is by having your employees jailed. The AppStore creates an easily exploitable bottleneck for governments to take advantage of. The hkmap.live situation during the protests in Hong Kong was similar.

tailspin2019 5y ago
As much as I like a lot of the benefits of the walled garden (from a consumer perspective, not necessarily as a developer), this is actually a very good argument for side-loading and one that I hadn't thought about before.
- saurik 5y ago
  ~4 years ago I gave a talk at Mozilla Privacy Lab (perfected from a talk I gave at 360|iDev) that focused on these moral reasons for not having centralized systems, looking at everything from government control to the tyranny of the majority, that I called "That's How you Get a Dystopia". https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms As far as I am concerned, you absolutely cannot have centralized control over something like "all software distribution" without being actively complicit with such regimes, and that people working for Apple have chosen to normalize this is unconscionably immoral :(.
  - tailspin2019 5y ago
    > As far as I am concerned, you absolutely cannot have centralized control over something like "all software distribution" without being actively complicit with such regimes Yeah that seems to distil the problem down to the fundamentals. Will watch your talk, thanks!
viktorcode 5y ago
The app is still available in other countries, so in order to install it in Russia one just have to create another Apple account to install it from a foregn app store on the device.

oliwarner 5y ago

Except that by this point, all this is expected behaviour. If companies don't want to be complicit in these crimes, they need to extricate themselves from the country and cut all ties. If they do want to put profit ahead of everything else, then whatever, but you don't get to defend them as doing the right thing for their employees. They're enabling the whole situation. [Edit to bring in a sister question] "Why don't Apple pull out of China then?" - because they put profit and cheap manufacturing ahead of their morals. And apparently we don't care enough that China effected a genocide while we watched.

travisgriggs 5y ago
Where does that stop though? I agree with you, but I don’t see how the basic observe-eval-withdraw loop ever terminates. Or put from a flip side… Building apps in highly democratic Norway just for Norwegians to use because they’re the best democracy (for example) doesn’t make enough money to feed my family. So why do anything at all?
- pigeonhole123 5y ago
  The fact that you have to draw the line somewhere is not an argument for not drawing a line somewhere.
  - travisgriggs 5y ago
    Indeed. Can you say that the parties involved do not have lines? Everyone has lines, they’re just not always visible. My point that the observe-eval-withdraw loop is difficult to terminate is not meant to argue we shouldn’t run the loop, but rather how difficult it is to code the withdraw conditions. As I tried to allude to in the second paragraph, you have to balance out the withdraw conditions with the pragmatic need to let the loop get some worthwhile work done.
    - oliwarner 5y ago
      How about using the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a score sheet? 30 Articles there. I doubt there are many countries that score a perfect-30 but is Russia even in double-figures? I agree, there's some arbitrary hand-wringing to be done to work out where to draw the line, but doing nothing while you're paralysed trying to decide what pencil to use, seems just as bad as going along with the acts in the first place. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...

lupire 5y ago

These companies shouldn't have Russian employees in Russia.

api 5y ago

I don’t know what people expect here. Companies can’t really stand up to governments, especially autocratic ones overseas. Apple’s only option would be to leave Russia completely. That might be the right thing to do but it’s a tough sell to shareholders.

vorpalhex 5y ago
This hurts Apple. Remember, Apple's entire argument for CSAM scanning is that they would resist pressure to modify the system. Obviously they won't if they fold this easy.

blago 5y ago

> Letting your Russian employees be persecuted don't amount to "doing the right thing". I disagree. Western companies have no moral obligation to bend their own ethics, help a tyrant, and harm a nation, in order to "save" one, or a handful, of employees from said tyrant. Quite the opposite, the right thing to do is to take a stand and force the tyrant out in broad daylight.

devwastaken 5y ago

So actual teeth (arrests) in policy works? U.S should make notes. We're due for new treason (aiding a foreign adversary) laws that cover global companies.

nullifidian 5y ago

As a Russian I say they should have hired "martyrs" from opposition onto the jailable positions. Not having "martyrs" on these positions saved Putin's regime a lot of face, of actually persecuting a famous companys' local division directors for not censoring the internet. Now they know how to force these companies to do what they want, and do it quickly.

sterlind 5y ago
that's really clever. Navalny himself shows that such martyrs exist, brave enough to return after being poisoned. But what if they arrest everyone and not just the martyrs?

envy2 5y ago

Companies shouldn't put themselves in this position: they should simply refuse to have a local presence or local employees in authoritarian-leaning countries.

azov 5y ago
There is a law in Russia (going into effect next year) that large IT companies must have local presence, otherwise they will be banned from operating in the country. I believe this is inspired by a similar law in China.

shadilay 5y ago

If you build tools of oppression (not making it easy to use alternate app stores) they will inevitably be abused by those wishing to oppress.

generationP 5y ago

It's one thing to flinch immediately, another to let this stand. By now there has been enough time for Mountain View to lock any Russian IPs out of Play Store moderation and to reinstate the apps unilaterally, with a clear statement that no one below the C-suite will be able to undo the decision. Otherwise, the org chart is clearly inverted.