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Daring Fireball [1] has another passage from the article which is illuminating with regards to any promises Apple makes about how it will resist governmental pr

Daring Fireball [1] has another passage from the article which is illuminating with regards to any promises Apple makes about how it will resist governmental pressure to compromise its products, vis-à-vis Apple's CSAM scanning tool. "Sometime in 2014 or early 2015, China’s State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping told members of the Apple Maps team to make the Diaoyu Islands, the objects of a long-running territorial dispute between China and Japan, appear large even when users zoomed out from them. Chinese regulators also threatened to withhold approval of the first Apple Watch, scheduled for release in 2015, if Apple didn’t comply with the unusual request, according to internal documents. Some members of the team back at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., initially balked at the demand. But the Maps app had become a priority for Apple, so eventually the company complied. The Diaoyu Islands, when viewed in Apple Maps in mainland China, continue to appear on a larger scale than surrounding territories." Apple has, and will, fold to government pressure faster than a lawn chair. 1. https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/12/08/the-information-apple-china https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/12/08/the-information...

qeternity 5y ago
I totally get that people want companies to act with dignity, but the idea that a company, even one as large as Apple, is going to make any sort of difference with respect to China's oddities is wishful thinking. Apple has a business to run. They abide by all sorts of requests in various countries in which they operate. Of course there has to be a line somewhere, I'm just not sure this is it.
- gonehome 5y ago
  I think these things have a corrupting influence on the principles of the company over time: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html It's better to figure out an exit (imo) than continue to capitulate on these kinds of things, particularly in a country that is hostile to foreign companies and IP (and particularly if one of your company values is the privacy of your users). --- >>Peter Thiel: Well I think, again those aren’t the only two possibilities, I don’t think they created very much, I think a lot of it was just handed over from the west so it wasn’t even stolen. You know, I criticized Google a few years ago for refusing to work on its AI technology on Project Maven with the U.S. military, but working with Chinese universities and Chinese researchers. And since everything in China is a civilian- military fusion, Google was effectively working with the Chinese military, not with the American military. And there was sort of this question, “Why Google was doing this?” And one of the things that I was sort of told by some of the insiders at Google was they figured they might as well give the technology out through the front door, because if they didn’t give it – it would get stolen anyway. >>Peter Thiel: I had a set of conversations with some of the Google people in the deep mind AI technology, “is your AI being used to run the concentration camps in Xinjiang?” and “Well, We don’t know and don’t ask any questions.” You have this almost magical thinking that by pretending that everything is fine, that’s how you engage and have a conversation. And you make the world better. And it’s some combination of wishful thinking. It’s useful idiots, you know, it’s CCP fifth columnist collaborators. So it’s some super position of all these things. But I think if you think of it ideologically or in terms of human rights or something like that, I’m tempted to say it’s just profoundly racist. It’s like saying that because they look different, they’re not white people, they don’t have the same rights. It’s something super wrong. But I don’t quite know how you unlock that. https://nixonseminar.com/2021/04/the-nixon-seminar-april-6-2021-transcript/ https://nixonseminar.com/2021/04/the-nixon-seminar-april-6-2...
  - kelnos 5y ago
    Not disagreeing with what Thiel is saying here, but it's pretty hypocritical for him to be criticizing here considering he's the co-founder of Palantir, a company that feeds some tasty tasty morsels to the surveillance state and military-industrial complex.
    - gonehome 5y ago
      I can’t go into it, but this is a misunderstanding of what Palantir does.
      - wolverine876 5y ago
        I can't go into it, but ...
    - brandall10 5y ago
      It seems he's drawing a distinction at domestic vs. foreign actors. The criticism at Google here is against working to enable the US military vs. what is a thin veil of enabling the Chinese military hiding behind a veil.
      - gonehome 5y ago
        It’s also about a defense of the west and western liberalism over China and the CCP authoritarianism. It’s Google leadership capitulating to the (imo naive) politics of its workforce to not work with the USG, while continuing to support the governments of adversaries (because largely American politics ignores the plight of people in places like KSA and China under a weak kind of moral relativism).
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      Pointing out someone else's hypocrisy isn't an inconsistency. If someone says doing business with a military is unacceptable and then proceeds to do business with a military, they're a hypocrite. That's still true even if the person telling you this does business with a military.
- kelnos 5y ago
  I know this would never happen, but I wish companies would just default to not doing business in China, unless they are able to sell their product, uncompromised. I wouldn't mind legislation to that effect, though I'm sure that would come with a ton of unintended consequences. If China (and similar repressive regimes) wants these sorts of products with onerous restrictions built in, they should have to build them themselves. Of course, I do recognize that this is perhaps somewhat hypocritical: the OFAC list in the US comes to mind (which makes it illegal for US entities to do business with entities in certain "bad" countries). I'm reminded of GitHub's fight to allow people from Iran to use GitHub. I get the purpose of sanctions on Iran, but hurting regular Iranian citizens with these sorts of bans does nothing to punish or put pressure on the people who are actually the targets of sanctions.
  - vmception 5y ago
    When I see state capital or communist societies, I see "single whale that has to purchase at inflated prices" I'll spin up a British Virgin Islands company or buy another passport first in response to any legislation aimed at preventing business with those whales Others are already 5 steps ahead of me
    - ShroudedNight 5y ago
      Why not simply renounce your citizenship now if you feel you should owe no duty to maintain any kind of national security policy?
      - vmception 5y ago
        Private citizens don’t maintain the US’ national security policy, as this article clearly shows, but you are commenting on a theoretical reality that has lacked consensus or wasnt even on the table during every administration of the same country. Alternatively, US citizenship doesn't guarantee any beneficiary of national security or evacuation from another place when shit hits the fan. So before I answer your question, what did you mean specifically?
  - 5y ago
- ipv6ipv4 5y ago
  We can have a very long debate about that but I think it's beside the point with regards to Apple's CSAM effort. The point is that Apple is inventing a tool that is very amenable to being wielded as a weapon of mass surveillance, and oppression. The maps analogy is that it's one thing for the Chinese government to tell Apple to implement a mapping app from scratch so that it can be used to display bogus mapping data. It's quite another for the Chinese government to tell Apple to modify its existing Maps app data. In light of the inherent amorality of companies that you are pointing out, the people working in these companies should be smart enough not to go out of their way to place themselves in situations with such moral hazards. Apple shouldn't be building weapons.
  - simonh 5y ago
    We’ll, what Apple built with CSAM checking is a tool that checks images uploaded to their servers, and only those images, against a digital fingerprint. There is no novel technology in this. It’s very basic stuff doing a specific thing. It’s in no way a meaningful stepping stone to doing anything else. If you’re against Apple scanning images uploaded to iCloud for CSAM that’s fine, say that, but it’s no stepping stone. If you’re not against Apple scanning CSAM uploaded to their servers, as they are actually required to do by law, then it’s a non-issue.
    - ipv6ipv4 5y ago
      > We’ll, what Apple built with CSAM checking is a tool that checks images uploaded to their servers, and only those images, against a digital fingerprint. No, that's not how any of it works. Apple scans and matches your photos, on your device, against a list of hashes that represent government provided images that Apple has no knowledge of. The stipulation that images are only scanned when uploaded to Apple servers is a courtesy, not a technical limitation. The exact courtesy that would be rescinded by pressure from the Chinese government. > If you’re not against Apple scanning CSAM uploaded to their servers, as they are actually required to do by law, then it’s a non-issue. The law explicitly stipulates that Apple is _not_ required to scan photos for CSAM. The text of the law [1] explicitly protects people's privacy in the section titled "Protection of Privacy". [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > Apple has a business to run. They abide by all sorts of requests in various countries in which they operate. And then people rightly condemn them for it. Because not getting a pass even when the pressure is strong -- especially when the pressure is strong -- is the only incentive we can give them to even try to resist that pressure. That sucks for them. It puts them between a rock and a hard place. Too bad. Because the alternative is that nobody fights against wrong.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > Too bad. Also, too bad because they are hardly orphan children caught on a battlefield. They are among the most power actors out there. I'd say, 'deal with it', but they don't complain.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Ironically the same people that at the end of the day might have plenty of "made-in-china" products at home.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  It seems fashionable to preach helplessness. Apple can't change China by themselves, but they are not by themselves. If we all follow that reasoning, then nothing ever happens. To surrender and retreat from the field of battle is a sure way to lose. Despair is a leading psyops tactic - targeted at enemies; let's not help them. It would be interesting to talk about what organizations like Apple can and cannot do; what is effective and what isn't. Is there any research? Apple should not be deceiving people outside China with CCP propaganda, which is what the maps are.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Well, everyone could start by avoid buying "made-in-china" as much as possible, yet I see exactly the opposite. Lots of moral on the Internet, but then when it touches getting the next gadget, or saving some bucks...
  - misnome 5y ago
    How are they deceiving people outside China when only showing the difference inside China?
    - joakleaf 5y ago
      Well, for one thing because we outside China would automatically assume they are showing the same thing inside China as we see. Now we know that is not true. That is deceptive. ... And a a shareholder, I was also kept in the dark -- Which is actually also pretty problematic and deceptive.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - Sebb767 5y ago
        > Well, for one thing because we outside China would automatically assume they are showing the same thing inside China as we see. Now we know that is not true. That is deceptive. Would you expect a big pop "WARNING: THIS CONTENT IS SHOWN DIFFERENTLY IN MAINLAND CHINA DUE TO REGULATIONS!"? Also, this will mostly yield a well-duh response. The only "appropriate" option in scale would be to put it somewhere in the fine print (IMO), but this is so close to not mentioning it at all that they might as well not. Also, I don't think there's a general expectation for website to be the same everywhere. If you open google.com from Germany, would you be suprised to see Google in German? Project Gutenberg also was unavailable in Germany for quite some time; I don't think they informed every non-German reader about it. > ... And a[s] a shareholder, I was also kept in the dark -- Which is actually also pretty problematic and deceptive. I'm pretty sure they don't inform shareholders over standard legal requests. They probably didn't ping you about FCC restricted radio frequencies either. It's not that I generally agree with censoring, but I don't think Apple acted unreasonably here.
- burntoutfire 5y ago
  > Apple has a business to run. "Apple" is not some abstract entity. There are people behind Apple (the shareholders, the managers, the employees). Real people, with real morals and values. I don't think that the only thing all of them care about is "running a business" and that all of them feel it absolves them from acting humanly. It's more complicated than that. (having said that, of course, greed is always strong).
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Apple has an actual fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. And via survival bias, companies that act purely morally simply cease to exist as they are out competed by companies that focus on profit instead. Such entities simply can't survive via capitalism without, perhaps, government regulation that ensures everyone is playing with the same set of rules.
    - Eelongate 5y ago
      > Apple has an actual fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. That fiduciary responsibility meme needs to die already. The flimsiest business justification is enough to cover company leadership's ass. Instead of "We refuse to do business with China because it's immoral" they need merely say "because we believe it's in the long term strategic interests of the company."
      - ShroudedNight 5y ago
        Furthermore, this has already come up in the past for Apple: When pressed about the financial prudence of prioritizing environmental outcomes Tim Cook snapped: "When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don't consider the bloody ROI." It was also not limited to accessibility, but applicable to many areas Apple desires to lead. The conclusion is that Apple is explicitly not interested in prioritizing individual liberty.
      - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        > That fiduciary responsibility meme needs to die already. Again, stop it. The companies you want exist, they just go insolvent before you ever notice them. If you want to change the way the companies operate, you have to change the system, you can't just expect companies to "do the right thing" in an environment that penalizes them for that. You can't have the free market cake and eat the ideological high ground at the same time.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  I was at a company that defied the 1980s business embargo in South Africa. They said similar things at the time. The government of South Africa did fall, and most of the world applauded if I recall. The net effect for this business was, that they earned more money by ignoring the embargo, whatever the outcome. There are insulting names in most languages for this kind of behavior, it is not new.
  - girvo 5y ago
    There is no embargo on China (in this context) though. The world has not agreed to not do business with them.
    - FpUser 5y ago
      The world as a whole never will. If Western powers try and sanction non compliant countries this will effectively split the world into 2 parts and it is not going to end well. I think this would be total disaster.
- Dma54rhs 5y ago
  IBM, Hugo Boss etc also had business to run. But for the western people Apple taking out the rainbow flag and talking about their social responsibility I'd enough.
- ksec 5y ago
  I dont have a problem with your narrative. Actually I agree with your narrative. Every companies has business to run. I just have a problem with Apple suggesting they are doing "good" with X, promising "good" with Y, with a big smile on its face in marketing, pumping up PR to the maximum. But every time you scrutinize the details they just dont hold up. BTW people may want to look at Samsung's market share in China. Hint: it is a single digit number.
- eloisius 5y ago
  That’s all op said. Regardless of the moralizing, if you buy into apple because they market themselves as the company who will stand up for your privacy, remember that it’s just marketing. Apple has a business to run, and they’ll fold to government pressure like a lawn chair.
- quitit 5y ago
  That is a good question about why there is more emphasis on companies doing political advocacy rather than one's own government. It seems too weighted in companies doing the heavy lifting when this is likely to interfere with business objectives. Local investment requests however aren't novel - India have made similar requests which Apple have also fulfilled. China is only notable here because they have consistent human rights abuse issues, and with that there is a certain idealism that any kind of interaction with such a country is a form of consent. While Apple's situation here isn't particularly noteworthy, it's a good proxy for a wider question about US companies reliance on China. Also those with a keen eye would notice that China hasn't given Apple much here - they are still regularly admonished by the state-run press and Apple have only a handful of their most basic services available in the country.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > That is a good question about why there is more emphasis on companies doing political advocacy rather than one's own government. Great point. Some movements are so anxious to minimize (or undermine) goverment that people get carried away, and forget all the things democracies can do and have done. We simply have to decide to do things as a people. China, for sure, is happy to see us divided.
- felipelemos 5y ago
  > but the idea that a company, even one as large as Apple, is going to make any sort of difference with respect to China's oddities is wishful thinking. They don't need and shouldn't make any difference at all. They could actually leave the Chinese market and make a difference for the rest of the world. They don't have and shouldn't have this responsibility anyway. And they have the money, market share, and power to ignore China and not only survive it but continue to generate a lot of wealth for the shareholders.
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  I somewhat agree, I’m not saying it would be the right or intelligent thing to do, but if we as a country collectively feel that we should not do business with China in certain fields, the only answer with teeth is an embargo. Even then the risk of Apple sales to China doesn’t go to zero, everyone remembers IBM selling typewriters to the Nazis. Do we think companies today are less greedy than IBM?
  - landemva 5y ago
    Consider removing MFN trade status from China. Back in 1993, Clinton and Pelosi supported MFN status for China. Just undo it. https://china.usc.edu/statement-president-clinton-most-favored-nation-status-china-1993 https://china.usc.edu/statement-president-clinton-most-favor...
- arvinsim 5y ago
  Don't be an apologists for these companies. These megacorps have a big influence on the fabric of society. They must be held to a higher standard.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Each should start by their own circle of influence by not buying products made against their morals.
ryandrake 5y ago
Anyone who has worked in mapping/GIS at a company that sells in China has seen this in action. The "display these islands larger" requests, the obfuscated coordinate system for geo-aligning maps, and other map content regulatory issues[1] all need to be dealt with if you want your map product available in the country. Not excusing it, but every company with maps there is required to do this, not just Apple. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...
- junon 5y ago
  This is a mind boggling realization. Is OSM data also compromised in the same way?
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    OpenStreetMap has a page[1] on this. TLDR: Private individuals surveying is illegal in China, which seems to outlaw the entire OSM project and any participation or contribution. I am not a lawyer or expert on Chinese law so who knows. 1: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/China https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/China
    - javajosh 5y ago
      That is rather chilling, is it not? That a nation would prevent its citizens from looking around and measuring what they see? I can't help but wonder how the chickens will come home to roost.
      - foota 5y ago
        That's the chilling thing about Chinese censorship?
        Eelongate 5y ago
        > "the chilling thing" Your comment implies a singular chilling thing, while his does not.
i_have_an_idea 5y ago
> Apple has, and will, fold to government pressure faster than a lawn chair. So will any company, when threatened by China. And, btw, so will most countries. Yes, Apple has a lot of money, but they're in no position to resist a powerful country. I don't think it's fair to expect that of them.
- ipv6ipv4 5y ago
  So Apple shouldn't build a mass surveillance tool that it knows it will be coerced to misuse.
  - i_have_an_idea 5y ago
    If you know anything about China, then you know they have more than an abundant supply of mass surveillance tools. If Apple doesn't play ball with the local government, what do you think will happen? They'll ban them and the new market leader will be some Chinese company that probably copied a bunch of their designs and is more than happy to preinstall the govt rootkit.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  > So will any company, when threatened by China Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, Twitch, Dropbox, Medium, Wikipedia, DuckDuckGo? https://en.greatfire.org/search/alexa-top-1000-domains https://en.greatfire.org/search/alexa-top-1000-domains
  - i_have_an_idea 5y ago
    You are making a very good point. There's no Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat etc in China. But there are WeChat, Baidu, Weibo, QQ, etc. China is more than capable to clone and/or make its own version of these companies. And these companies will do as the government says. So, I think that's an excellent example to show that tech "boycotting" China does nothing to change them. Separately, you should also keep in mind that a bunch of these companies didn't even have a choice, since they were considered a threat to national security by the state.
ge96 5y ago
> CSAM Thinking about this other than things like existing social media, satellites... I've recently seen ads where it's like "get paid to take pictures of your neighborhood". Was wondering about that as a means to export out high res images of locations through an app.
davesque 5y ago
This level of pretense is really mind boggling to me. It underscores how certain regimes/people fear objective reality more than anything. And it's a very inconvenient position to take since objective reality is everywhere.
- deleted 5y ago
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tene 5y ago
Does anyone have any insight into the motivation behind making the islands appear larger? I haven't been able to come up with any plausible guesses about what "make the islands look big" would be helpful in achieving.
- martythemaniak 5y ago
  It's pretty simple, China claims large parts of the south China sea, parts that extend far, far out of their maritime bounds and go into other countries' territories. They have a variety of justifications, one of which is they they dredge some reefs and make them into islands which they then claim. This particular instance is not in the south China sea, but it's all the same.
  - upwardbound 5y ago
    It might also be to get Chinese citizens to care more about having sovereignty over those islands. Laypeople in China might care more about the issue if the islands look big rather than looking like "oh who cares about that mound of dirt anyways".
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      This is mostly strategic: China is effectively hemmed in by Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and a bunch of SE Asian countries. They simply don't have easy access to the ocean from a military point of view (they are easily cut off during a war). They are trying to claim the whole of the SCS to fortify it and ensure open routes in case of a war. It does seem awfully unfair looking at a map though, basically China's claim comes without 10 miles of other country land borders. Nobody but the Chinese would think these claims are fair.
- discordance 5y ago
  The “Mine is bigger than yours” decree
SN76477 5y ago
ever get involved in a land war in Asia
TheTon 5y ago
Apple Maps is operated by AutoNavi (a Chinese company) in China [1]. It doesn’t really make sense that the Chinese government would be pressuring Apple directly to make political changes to the map provided by AutoNavi. If they wanted the map drawn differently they could just pass a law requiring it or go straight to AutoNavi with the request. Of course the story could still be true (I have no idea), but not mentioning AutoNavi kind of strains its credibility. 1. https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-maps/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-maps/
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
"Apple has, and will, fold to government pressure faster than a lawn chair." As a publicly-traded, trillion dollar company, where profits are at stake, this would seem to make sense. What does not seem to make sense is why anyone would believe Apple might ignore its own financial interests and those of its shareholders and deliberately sacrifice a major opportunity^1 in order to resist government pressure based on some political issue. Why would anyone hold such an assumption. There is nothing to support it^2 and it does not seem to make any sense. 1. That includes the opportunity for Chinese customers to purchase the Apple Watch, albeit with a disproportional size representation of some geographical aspect in the Maps application 2. NB. If resisting government pressure resulted in an increase or no change in profits then that is a different situation. In that case, resisting, or even appearing to resist governmental pressure, would seem to make sense. To put it another way, no one should be surprised by decisions like this one, whereas some of us should be surprised if we ever learn that a publicly-traded company with the market cap of Apple deliberately sacrificed an opportunity like selling to the Chinese market^3 because of a political issue. It is doubtful we would ever learn about such a decision, for various reasons. 3. Or using Chinese manufacturing facilities "But the Maps app had become a priority for Apple..." Apple acts in its own interests. It seems strange that anyone would believe that it acts in someone else's. Unless it increases profits, that would not make any sense. Generally, large companies do not protect citizens from abuses of government. It is supposed to the the other way around. Governments are supposed to protect citizens from abuses of large corporations.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  Apple shouldn't have to. There should be laws that US companies can only cowtoe to the US government WRT free speech. In this case - it appears to only be happening in China - which I guess is fair game. But the line should be drawn at China being able to use its market to force US companies to censor people outside of China.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    > it appears to only be happening in China - which I guess is fair game. I'd say that depends on whether the subsidiary in China is financially independent from the mothership. If Apple in US profits from censorship in China or subsidizes it, it's not unreasonable for US to interfere with that.
deleted 5y ago
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mensetmanusman 5y ago
Hard for me to imagine the mindset of a bureaucratic drone who demands that people change the definition of physical reality.
- FpUser 5y ago
  On a contrary. Many of them are totally dumb and things like common logic and compassion are a foreign subject to them. Here is cherry on the cake from the Australian PM: "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia."
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Well, you don't have accept the laws of nature and humanity is resisting a great deal, luckily, so that isn't necessarily something indicting. Depends on the context.
    - FpUser 5y ago
      Context maters but that was pretty dumb thing to say regardless.
Spooky23 5y ago
The CSAM controversy is dumb. The real “folding under pressure” example is the neutering of iMessage. Notice the FBI doesn’t whine about iPhones anymore.
- gonehome 5y ago
  The irony is the CSAM measures they were doing may have enabled them to encrypt the iCloud iMessage backups since they’d still be able to help the feds with CSAM. Instead everything remains unencrypted.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    Agreed. Frankly it makes me doubt the veracity of some of the activists who go off the handle when these types of controversies pop up. Literally every online storage service is analyzing user content for various reasons, but I don’t see any hue and cry over it. The Apple approach was a novel take imo.
    - gonehome 5y ago
      Yeah - it's quite frustrating because dumb knee-jerk responses like what we saw on HN make it harder to push back on actual bad policy. Another recent one was the Covid bluetooth exposure notifications that were cleverly designed in a way that preserved privacy. People on HN with no understanding of how it worked freaked out and as a result instead of that smart privacy preserving approach governments just bought location data or implemented other centralized information systems that are much worse for privacy. If I worked in policy it'd be hard not to roll eyes at the privacy people and just ignore them - which is definitely not what we want.
  - Siira 5y ago
    You can use another messaging app that supports encryption. Some of us don’t want your laziness resulting in local scanners on devices that we have paid for.
    - 5y ago
intricatedetail 5y ago
Apple did all of this because they couldn't stand paying decent wages to US workers, so they outsourced Labour to China. Why people stand by this company...
leptoniscool 5y ago
During the height of the Cold War, the US required maps and textbooks to show only portions of the USSR and never show US and USSR next to each other.
bayindirh 5y ago
While tangential, when I last visited South Korea, only local mapping companies were able to offer maps of the country. Apple / Google maps were so bare, even the proverbial crickets were missing from the maps. When looked from my desk, Seoul's map is as detailed as any other big city now, I wonder whether it was geofenced or something. I installed a suite of apps made by local software houses to be able to navigate the city.
allenleee 5y ago
Actually, the Diaoyu Islands belong to Taiwan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senkaku_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senkaku_Islands
- vanusa 5y ago
  Actually, that article describes the islands' status as disputed.
  - allenleee 5y ago
    False information.
errcorrectcode 5y ago
FAANG and other megacorps enable China from doctoring maps to censoring movies.
BobbyJo 5y ago
Legal obligation to maximize shareholder value + fiat money = anything you want daddy Xi
deleted 5y ago
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muddi900 5y ago
I don't doubt it, as far as mapping propaganda is concerned, India is the worst offender. See Kashmir and Askai Chin.

qeternity 5y ago

I totally get that people want companies to act with dignity, but the idea that a company, even one as large as Apple, is going to make any sort of difference with respect to China's oddities is wishful thinking. Apple has a business to run. They abide by all sorts of requests in various countries in which they operate. Of course there has to be a line somewhere, I'm just not sure this is it.

gonehome 5y ago
I think these things have a corrupting influence on the principles of the company over time: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html It's better to figure out an exit (imo) than continue to capitulate on these kinds of things, particularly in a country that is hostile to foreign companies and IP (and particularly if one of your company values is the privacy of your users). --- >>Peter Thiel: Well I think, again those aren’t the only two possibilities, I don’t think they created very much, I think a lot of it was just handed over from the west so it wasn’t even stolen. You know, I criticized Google a few years ago for refusing to work on its AI technology on Project Maven with the U.S. military, but working with Chinese universities and Chinese researchers. And since everything in China is a civilian- military fusion, Google was effectively working with the Chinese military, not with the American military. And there was sort of this question, “Why Google was doing this?” And one of the things that I was sort of told by some of the insiders at Google was they figured they might as well give the technology out through the front door, because if they didn’t give it – it would get stolen anyway. >>Peter Thiel: I had a set of conversations with some of the Google people in the deep mind AI technology, “is your AI being used to run the concentration camps in Xinjiang?” and “Well, We don’t know and don’t ask any questions.” You have this almost magical thinking that by pretending that everything is fine, that’s how you engage and have a conversation. And you make the world better. And it’s some combination of wishful thinking. It’s useful idiots, you know, it’s CCP fifth columnist collaborators. So it’s some super position of all these things. But I think if you think of it ideologically or in terms of human rights or something like that, I’m tempted to say it’s just profoundly racist. It’s like saying that because they look different, they’re not white people, they don’t have the same rights. It’s something super wrong. But I don’t quite know how you unlock that. https://nixonseminar.com/2021/04/the-nixon-seminar-april-6-2021-transcript/ https://nixonseminar.com/2021/04/the-nixon-seminar-april-6-2...
- kelnos 5y ago
  Not disagreeing with what Thiel is saying here, but it's pretty hypocritical for him to be criticizing here considering he's the co-founder of Palantir, a company that feeds some tasty tasty morsels to the surveillance state and military-industrial complex.
  - gonehome 5y ago
    I can’t go into it, but this is a misunderstanding of what Palantir does.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      I can't go into it, but ...
  - brandall10 5y ago
    It seems he's drawing a distinction at domestic vs. foreign actors. The criticism at Google here is against working to enable the US military vs. what is a thin veil of enabling the Chinese military hiding behind a veil.
    - gonehome 5y ago
      It’s also about a defense of the west and western liberalism over China and the CCP authoritarianism. It’s Google leadership capitulating to the (imo naive) politics of its workforce to not work with the USG, while continuing to support the governments of adversaries (because largely American politics ignores the plight of people in places like KSA and China under a weak kind of moral relativism).
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    Pointing out someone else's hypocrisy isn't an inconsistency. If someone says doing business with a military is unacceptable and then proceeds to do business with a military, they're a hypocrite. That's still true even if the person telling you this does business with a military.
kelnos 5y ago
I know this would never happen, but I wish companies would just default to not doing business in China, unless they are able to sell their product, uncompromised. I wouldn't mind legislation to that effect, though I'm sure that would come with a ton of unintended consequences. If China (and similar repressive regimes) wants these sorts of products with onerous restrictions built in, they should have to build them themselves. Of course, I do recognize that this is perhaps somewhat hypocritical: the OFAC list in the US comes to mind (which makes it illegal for US entities to do business with entities in certain "bad" countries). I'm reminded of GitHub's fight to allow people from Iran to use GitHub. I get the purpose of sanctions on Iran, but hurting regular Iranian citizens with these sorts of bans does nothing to punish or put pressure on the people who are actually the targets of sanctions.
- vmception 5y ago
  When I see state capital or communist societies, I see "single whale that has to purchase at inflated prices" I'll spin up a British Virgin Islands company or buy another passport first in response to any legislation aimed at preventing business with those whales Others are already 5 steps ahead of me
  - ShroudedNight 5y ago
    Why not simply renounce your citizenship now if you feel you should owe no duty to maintain any kind of national security policy?
    - vmception 5y ago
      Private citizens don’t maintain the US’ national security policy, as this article clearly shows, but you are commenting on a theoretical reality that has lacked consensus or wasnt even on the table during every administration of the same country. Alternatively, US citizenship doesn't guarantee any beneficiary of national security or evacuation from another place when shit hits the fan. So before I answer your question, what did you mean specifically?
- 5y ago
ipv6ipv4 5y ago
We can have a very long debate about that but I think it's beside the point with regards to Apple's CSAM effort. The point is that Apple is inventing a tool that is very amenable to being wielded as a weapon of mass surveillance, and oppression. The maps analogy is that it's one thing for the Chinese government to tell Apple to implement a mapping app from scratch so that it can be used to display bogus mapping data. It's quite another for the Chinese government to tell Apple to modify its existing Maps app data. In light of the inherent amorality of companies that you are pointing out, the people working in these companies should be smart enough not to go out of their way to place themselves in situations with such moral hazards. Apple shouldn't be building weapons.
- simonh 5y ago
  We’ll, what Apple built with CSAM checking is a tool that checks images uploaded to their servers, and only those images, against a digital fingerprint. There is no novel technology in this. It’s very basic stuff doing a specific thing. It’s in no way a meaningful stepping stone to doing anything else. If you’re against Apple scanning images uploaded to iCloud for CSAM that’s fine, say that, but it’s no stepping stone. If you’re not against Apple scanning CSAM uploaded to their servers, as they are actually required to do by law, then it’s a non-issue.
  - ipv6ipv4 5y ago
    > We’ll, what Apple built with CSAM checking is a tool that checks images uploaded to their servers, and only those images, against a digital fingerprint. No, that's not how any of it works. Apple scans and matches your photos, on your device, against a list of hashes that represent government provided images that Apple has no knowledge of. The stipulation that images are only scanned when uploaded to Apple servers is a courtesy, not a technical limitation. The exact courtesy that would be rescinded by pressure from the Chinese government. > If you’re not against Apple scanning CSAM uploaded to their servers, as they are actually required to do by law, then it’s a non-issue. The law explicitly stipulates that Apple is _not_ required to scan photos for CSAM. The text of the law [1] explicitly protects people's privacy in the section titled "Protection of Privacy". [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2258A
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> Apple has a business to run. They abide by all sorts of requests in various countries in which they operate. And then people rightly condemn them for it. Because not getting a pass even when the pressure is strong -- especially when the pressure is strong -- is the only incentive we can give them to even try to resist that pressure. That sucks for them. It puts them between a rock and a hard place. Too bad. Because the alternative is that nobody fights against wrong.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > Too bad. Also, too bad because they are hardly orphan children caught on a battlefield. They are among the most power actors out there. I'd say, 'deal with it', but they don't complain.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Ironically the same people that at the end of the day might have plenty of "made-in-china" products at home.
wolverine876 5y ago
It seems fashionable to preach helplessness. Apple can't change China by themselves, but they are not by themselves. If we all follow that reasoning, then nothing ever happens. To surrender and retreat from the field of battle is a sure way to lose. Despair is a leading psyops tactic - targeted at enemies; let's not help them. It would be interesting to talk about what organizations like Apple can and cannot do; what is effective and what isn't. Is there any research? Apple should not be deceiving people outside China with CCP propaganda, which is what the maps are.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Well, everyone could start by avoid buying "made-in-china" as much as possible, yet I see exactly the opposite. Lots of moral on the Internet, but then when it touches getting the next gadget, or saving some bucks...
- misnome 5y ago
  How are they deceiving people outside China when only showing the difference inside China?
  - joakleaf 5y ago
    Well, for one thing because we outside China would automatically assume they are showing the same thing inside China as we see. Now we know that is not true. That is deceptive. ... And a a shareholder, I was also kept in the dark -- Which is actually also pretty problematic and deceptive.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Sebb767 5y ago
      > Well, for one thing because we outside China would automatically assume they are showing the same thing inside China as we see. Now we know that is not true. That is deceptive. Would you expect a big pop "WARNING: THIS CONTENT IS SHOWN DIFFERENTLY IN MAINLAND CHINA DUE TO REGULATIONS!"? Also, this will mostly yield a well-duh response. The only "appropriate" option in scale would be to put it somewhere in the fine print (IMO), but this is so close to not mentioning it at all that they might as well not. Also, I don't think there's a general expectation for website to be the same everywhere. If you open google.com from Germany, would you be suprised to see Google in German? Project Gutenberg also was unavailable in Germany for quite some time; I don't think they informed every non-German reader about it. > ... And a[s] a shareholder, I was also kept in the dark -- Which is actually also pretty problematic and deceptive. I'm pretty sure they don't inform shareholders over standard legal requests. They probably didn't ping you about FCC restricted radio frequencies either. It's not that I generally agree with censoring, but I don't think Apple acted unreasonably here.
burntoutfire 5y ago
> Apple has a business to run. "Apple" is not some abstract entity. There are people behind Apple (the shareholders, the managers, the employees). Real people, with real morals and values. I don't think that the only thing all of them care about is "running a business" and that all of them feel it absolves them from acting humanly. It's more complicated than that. (having said that, of course, greed is always strong).
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Apple has an actual fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. And via survival bias, companies that act purely morally simply cease to exist as they are out competed by companies that focus on profit instead. Such entities simply can't survive via capitalism without, perhaps, government regulation that ensures everyone is playing with the same set of rules.
  - Eelongate 5y ago
    > Apple has an actual fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. That fiduciary responsibility meme needs to die already. The flimsiest business justification is enough to cover company leadership's ass. Instead of "We refuse to do business with China because it's immoral" they need merely say "because we believe it's in the long term strategic interests of the company."
    - ShroudedNight 5y ago
      Furthermore, this has already come up in the past for Apple: When pressed about the financial prudence of prioritizing environmental outcomes Tim Cook snapped: "When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don't consider the bloody ROI." It was also not limited to accessibility, but applicable to many areas Apple desires to lead. The conclusion is that Apple is explicitly not interested in prioritizing individual liberty.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      > That fiduciary responsibility meme needs to die already. Again, stop it. The companies you want exist, they just go insolvent before you ever notice them. If you want to change the way the companies operate, you have to change the system, you can't just expect companies to "do the right thing" in an environment that penalizes them for that. You can't have the free market cake and eat the ideological high ground at the same time.
mistrial9 5y ago
I was at a company that defied the 1980s business embargo in South Africa. They said similar things at the time. The government of South Africa did fall, and most of the world applauded if I recall. The net effect for this business was, that they earned more money by ignoring the embargo, whatever the outcome. There are insulting names in most languages for this kind of behavior, it is not new.
- girvo 5y ago
  There is no embargo on China (in this context) though. The world has not agreed to not do business with them.
  - FpUser 5y ago
    The world as a whole never will. If Western powers try and sanction non compliant countries this will effectively split the world into 2 parts and it is not going to end well. I think this would be total disaster.
Dma54rhs 5y ago
IBM, Hugo Boss etc also had business to run. But for the western people Apple taking out the rainbow flag and talking about their social responsibility I'd enough.
ksec 5y ago
I dont have a problem with your narrative. Actually I agree with your narrative. Every companies has business to run. I just have a problem with Apple suggesting they are doing "good" with X, promising "good" with Y, with a big smile on its face in marketing, pumping up PR to the maximum. But every time you scrutinize the details they just dont hold up. BTW people may want to look at Samsung's market share in China. Hint: it is a single digit number.
eloisius 5y ago
That’s all op said. Regardless of the moralizing, if you buy into apple because they market themselves as the company who will stand up for your privacy, remember that it’s just marketing. Apple has a business to run, and they’ll fold to government pressure like a lawn chair.
quitit 5y ago
That is a good question about why there is more emphasis on companies doing political advocacy rather than one's own government. It seems too weighted in companies doing the heavy lifting when this is likely to interfere with business objectives. Local investment requests however aren't novel - India have made similar requests which Apple have also fulfilled. China is only notable here because they have consistent human rights abuse issues, and with that there is a certain idealism that any kind of interaction with such a country is a form of consent. While Apple's situation here isn't particularly noteworthy, it's a good proxy for a wider question about US companies reliance on China. Also those with a keen eye would notice that China hasn't given Apple much here - they are still regularly admonished by the state-run press and Apple have only a handful of their most basic services available in the country.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > That is a good question about why there is more emphasis on companies doing political advocacy rather than one's own government. Great point. Some movements are so anxious to minimize (or undermine) goverment that people get carried away, and forget all the things democracies can do and have done. We simply have to decide to do things as a people. China, for sure, is happy to see us divided.
felipelemos 5y ago
> but the idea that a company, even one as large as Apple, is going to make any sort of difference with respect to China's oddities is wishful thinking. They don't need and shouldn't make any difference at all. They could actually leave the Chinese market and make a difference for the rest of the world. They don't have and shouldn't have this responsibility anyway. And they have the money, market share, and power to ignore China and not only survive it but continue to generate a lot of wealth for the shareholders.
twobitshifter 5y ago
I somewhat agree, I’m not saying it would be the right or intelligent thing to do, but if we as a country collectively feel that we should not do business with China in certain fields, the only answer with teeth is an embargo. Even then the risk of Apple sales to China doesn’t go to zero, everyone remembers IBM selling typewriters to the Nazis. Do we think companies today are less greedy than IBM?
- landemva 5y ago
  Consider removing MFN trade status from China. Back in 1993, Clinton and Pelosi supported MFN status for China. Just undo it. https://china.usc.edu/statement-president-clinton-most-favored-nation-status-china-1993 https://china.usc.edu/statement-president-clinton-most-favor...
arvinsim 5y ago
Don't be an apologists for these companies. These megacorps have a big influence on the fabric of society. They must be held to a higher standard.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Each should start by their own circle of influence by not buying products made against their morals.

ryandrake 5y ago

Anyone who has worked in mapping/GIS at a company that sells in China has seen this in action. The "display these islands larger" requests, the obfuscated coordinate system for geo-aligning maps, and other map content regulatory issues[1] all need to be dealt with if you want your map product available in the country. Not excusing it, but every company with maps there is required to do this, not just Apple. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...

junon 5y ago
This is a mind boggling realization. Is OSM data also compromised in the same way?
- ryandrake 5y ago
  OpenStreetMap has a page[1] on this. TLDR: Private individuals surveying is illegal in China, which seems to outlaw the entire OSM project and any participation or contribution. I am not a lawyer or expert on Chinese law so who knows. 1: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/China https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/China
  - javajosh 5y ago
    That is rather chilling, is it not? That a nation would prevent its citizens from looking around and measuring what they see? I can't help but wonder how the chickens will come home to roost.
    - foota 5y ago
      That's the chilling thing about Chinese censorship?
      - Eelongate 5y ago
        > "the chilling thing" Your comment implies a singular chilling thing, while his does not.

i_have_an_idea 5y ago

> Apple has, and will, fold to government pressure faster than a lawn chair. So will any company, when threatened by China. And, btw, so will most countries. Yes, Apple has a lot of money, but they're in no position to resist a powerful country. I don't think it's fair to expect that of them.

ipv6ipv4 5y ago
So Apple shouldn't build a mass surveillance tool that it knows it will be coerced to misuse.
- i_have_an_idea 5y ago
  If you know anything about China, then you know they have more than an abundant supply of mass surveillance tools. If Apple doesn't play ball with the local government, what do you think will happen? They'll ban them and the new market leader will be some Chinese company that probably copied a bunch of their designs and is more than happy to preinstall the govt rootkit.
ethbr0 5y ago
> So will any company, when threatened by China Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, Twitch, Dropbox, Medium, Wikipedia, DuckDuckGo? https://en.greatfire.org/search/alexa-top-1000-domains https://en.greatfire.org/search/alexa-top-1000-domains
- i_have_an_idea 5y ago
  You are making a very good point. There's no Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat etc in China. But there are WeChat, Baidu, Weibo, QQ, etc. China is more than capable to clone and/or make its own version of these companies. And these companies will do as the government says. So, I think that's an excellent example to show that tech "boycotting" China does nothing to change them. Separately, you should also keep in mind that a bunch of these companies didn't even have a choice, since they were considered a threat to national security by the state.

ge96 5y ago

> CSAM Thinking about this other than things like existing social media, satellites... I've recently seen ads where it's like "get paid to take pictures of your neighborhood". Was wondering about that as a means to export out high res images of locations through an app.

davesque 5y ago

This level of pretense is really mind boggling to me. It underscores how certain regimes/people fear objective reality more than anything. And it's a very inconvenient position to take since objective reality is everywhere.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

tene 5y ago

Does anyone have any insight into the motivation behind making the islands appear larger? I haven't been able to come up with any plausible guesses about what "make the islands look big" would be helpful in achieving.

martythemaniak 5y ago
It's pretty simple, China claims large parts of the south China sea, parts that extend far, far out of their maritime bounds and go into other countries' territories. They have a variety of justifications, one of which is they they dredge some reefs and make them into islands which they then claim. This particular instance is not in the south China sea, but it's all the same.
- upwardbound 5y ago
  It might also be to get Chinese citizens to care more about having sovereignty over those islands. Laypeople in China might care more about the issue if the islands look big rather than looking like "oh who cares about that mound of dirt anyways".
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    This is mostly strategic: China is effectively hemmed in by Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and a bunch of SE Asian countries. They simply don't have easy access to the ocean from a military point of view (they are easily cut off during a war). They are trying to claim the whole of the SCS to fortify it and ensure open routes in case of a war. It does seem awfully unfair looking at a map though, basically China's claim comes without 10 miles of other country land borders. Nobody but the Chinese would think these claims are fair.
discordance 5y ago
The “Mine is bigger than yours” decree

SN76477 5y ago

ever get involved in a land war in Asia

TheTon 5y ago

Apple Maps is operated by AutoNavi (a Chinese company) in China [1]. It doesn’t really make sense that the Chinese government would be pressuring Apple directly to make political changes to the map provided by AutoNavi. If they wanted the map drawn differently they could just pass a law requiring it or go straight to AutoNavi with the request. Of course the story could still be true (I have no idea), but not mentioning AutoNavi kind of strains its credibility. 1. https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-maps/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-maps/

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

"Apple has, and will, fold to government pressure faster than a lawn chair." As a publicly-traded, trillion dollar company, where profits are at stake, this would seem to make sense. What does not seem to make sense is why anyone would believe Apple might ignore its own financial interests and those of its shareholders and deliberately sacrifice a major opportunity^1 in order to resist government pressure based on some political issue. Why would anyone hold such an assumption. There is nothing to support it^2 and it does not seem to make any sense. 1. That includes the opportunity for Chinese customers to purchase the Apple Watch, albeit with a disproportional size representation of some geographical aspect in the Maps application 2. NB. If resisting government pressure resulted in an increase or no change in profits then that is a different situation. In that case, resisting, or even appearing to resist governmental pressure, would seem to make sense. To put it another way, no one should be surprised by decisions like this one, whereas some of us should be surprised if we ever learn that a publicly-traded company with the market cap of Apple deliberately sacrificed an opportunity like selling to the Chinese market^3 because of a political issue. It is doubtful we would ever learn about such a decision, for various reasons. 3. Or using Chinese manufacturing facilities "But the Maps app had become a priority for Apple..." Apple acts in its own interests. It seems strange that anyone would believe that it acts in someone else's. Unless it increases profits, that would not make any sense. Generally, large companies do not protect citizens from abuses of government. It is supposed to the the other way around. Governments are supposed to protect citizens from abuses of large corporations.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
Apple shouldn't have to. There should be laws that US companies can only cowtoe to the US government WRT free speech. In this case - it appears to only be happening in China - which I guess is fair game. But the line should be drawn at China being able to use its market to force US companies to censor people outside of China.
- int_19h 5y ago
  > it appears to only be happening in China - which I guess is fair game. I'd say that depends on whether the subsidiary in China is financially independent from the mothership. If Apple in US profits from censorship in China or subsidizes it, it's not unreasonable for US to interfere with that.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Hard for me to imagine the mindset of a bureaucratic drone who demands that people change the definition of physical reality.

FpUser 5y ago
On a contrary. Many of them are totally dumb and things like common logic and compassion are a foreign subject to them. Here is cherry on the cake from the Australian PM: "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia."
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Well, you don't have accept the laws of nature and humanity is resisting a great deal, luckily, so that isn't necessarily something indicting. Depends on the context.
  - FpUser 5y ago
    Context maters but that was pretty dumb thing to say regardless.

Spooky23 5y ago

The CSAM controversy is dumb. The real “folding under pressure” example is the neutering of iMessage. Notice the FBI doesn’t whine about iPhones anymore.

gonehome 5y ago
The irony is the CSAM measures they were doing may have enabled them to encrypt the iCloud iMessage backups since they’d still be able to help the feds with CSAM. Instead everything remains unencrypted.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  Agreed. Frankly it makes me doubt the veracity of some of the activists who go off the handle when these types of controversies pop up. Literally every online storage service is analyzing user content for various reasons, but I don’t see any hue and cry over it. The Apple approach was a novel take imo.
  - gonehome 5y ago
    Yeah - it's quite frustrating because dumb knee-jerk responses like what we saw on HN make it harder to push back on actual bad policy. Another recent one was the Covid bluetooth exposure notifications that were cleverly designed in a way that preserved privacy. People on HN with no understanding of how it worked freaked out and as a result instead of that smart privacy preserving approach governments just bought location data or implemented other centralized information systems that are much worse for privacy. If I worked in policy it'd be hard not to roll eyes at the privacy people and just ignore them - which is definitely not what we want.
- Siira 5y ago
  You can use another messaging app that supports encryption. Some of us don’t want your laziness resulting in local scanners on devices that we have paid for.
  - 5y ago

intricatedetail 5y ago

Apple did all of this because they couldn't stand paying decent wages to US workers, so they outsourced Labour to China. Why people stand by this company...

leptoniscool 5y ago

During the height of the Cold War, the US required maps and textbooks to show only portions of the USSR and never show US and USSR next to each other.

bayindirh 5y ago

While tangential, when I last visited South Korea, only local mapping companies were able to offer maps of the country. Apple / Google maps were so bare, even the proverbial crickets were missing from the maps. When looked from my desk, Seoul's map is as detailed as any other big city now, I wonder whether it was geofenced or something. I installed a suite of apps made by local software houses to be able to navigate the city.

allenleee 5y ago

Actually, the Diaoyu Islands belong to Taiwan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senkaku_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senkaku_Islands

vanusa 5y ago
Actually, that article describes the islands' status as disputed.
- allenleee 5y ago
  False information.

errcorrectcode 5y ago

FAANG and other megacorps enable China from doctoring maps to censoring movies.

BobbyJo 5y ago

Legal obligation to maximize shareholder value + fiat money = anything you want daddy Xi

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

muddi900 5y ago

I don't doubt it, as far as mapping propaganda is concerned, India is the worst offender. See Kashmir and Askai Chin.