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Apple bans accounts of developers from Belarus
- aritmo 5y agoAre there actually such sanctions against Belarus?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- judge2020 5y agoYes, the general list https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/sanctions-programs-and-country-information https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/...
- ameshkov 5y agoTbh I thought these sanctions are against govt officials and not the general population.
- aritmo 5y agoI did not know that the US had indiscriminate sanctions against Belarus.
- judge2020 5y agoRegarding [0], it's a pretty broad executive order and Apple might be making the hard decision to block anyone that could possibly have been been in violation of the EO. Some particularly hard things to enforce: > the following persons are blocked...: > (v) to be responsible for or complicit in, or to have directly or indirectly engaged or attempted to engage in, any of the following: > (A) actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, or territorial integrity of Belarus; ... (E) public corruption related to Belarus > (vi) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, any activity described in subsections (v)(A)–(E) of this section or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or > (vii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the Government of Belarus or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order. So, i'm no expert in sanctions, but it seems that anyone who made an app used by Belarusian KGB or other government organization could be sanctioned. 0: https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/126/20210809_belarus_eo.pdf https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/126/20210809_belarus_...
- molind 5y agoI’d prefer to remove my app from being used in Belarus than being banned myself.
- qualifiedai 5y agoThis is very stupid. Those in Belarus who can make a living via AppStore are independent from Belarus government or state owned companies for their livelihood. Also they are typically younger and liberal minded. Now the West has taken their livelihood from them, forcing them to depend more and work for Belarus state. Same stupid policy as with Crimea.
- ithrow 5y agoNow the West has taken their livelihood from them That's the whole point, make the country poor.
- option 5y agoThat just unites more people around the dictator because now he is the one “feeding” them and they can’t make it without him.
- ithrow 5y agoOr a rebellion starts eventually, which is one of the objectives of these sanctions.
- option 5y agoThis approach worked fabulously in North Korea, Iran, Cuba. Meantime, people close to Belarus gov have no problem buying real estate on London, Florida and California.
- 988747 5y agoI think it was Samuel Huntington who said: "Development first, democracy later". Sanctions are the direct opposite of that. Rebellion never happens because of sanctions. People who are too busy fighting for survival have zero interest in politics. That's why North Korea is still communist. If you are looking for an example of the opposite: "Solidarity" movement in communist Poland happened in 1980, after a decade of relative prosperity, which fueled people's ambitions for better lives.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- vanusa 5y agoThis may be a (very sloppy) overfit or some other kind of error on Apple's part. It is difficult to parse the official sanctions directives - but from my understanding they target only certain individuals and institutions - not the country (or its entire banking system) as a whole.
- threeseed 5y agoOr this could be an isolated incident where the developer is tied to oligarchs or the government. If you look at the sanctions list posted below there isn't anything that says "ban all developers". Bit early to be jumping to conclusions either way.
- breakingcups 5y agoThere's three pages of other developers from Belarus who've suddenly experienced the exact same.
- mullingitover 5y agoI have a feeling that if Belarus is part of a Ukraine invasion, this will just be a warmup. On the bright side, not having an Apple developer account won't make much difference when you can't purchase anything more advanced than a graphing calculator. That being said, war is dumb and I sincerely hope cooler heads prevail.
- rendall 5y agoThis is a terrible, terrible idea. What percentage of these devs have anything at all to do with Lushenko?
- surfer7837 5y agoThat's the point. It's so they can pressure their government
- grujicd 5y agoI was on the receiving end of sanctions in Serbia during 90-ties. That felt very, very unfair, since they also affect people like me who were against government. They're also countereffective, since dictatorship uses it to push story that "they are against out people, we all suffer but if we stand together (under our rule) we'll prevail". And from what I saw at that time, people redirected their hate from government to evil foreign enemies. This seems to be the pattern in other countries where sanctions are pushed. They really make life worse for ordinary people, not those in power, who even use it for their own benefit.
- kspacewalk2 5y agoLet dictators push whatever story they want. Serbia was a belligerent pariah and suffered economically for it. When the dictator was ousted it stopped being a belligerent pariah and benefited economically from that. That's all that matters in the long run.
- grujicd 5y agoIt's not like that, sanctions make it harder to overthrow a dictatorship. On one hand, 90% of people can only hear official media. With sanctions, they have much easier job telling that someone else is to blame. On the other hand it makes much much harder for political opposition to fight that narrative, to propose opening the country towards West when they're clearly acting against population through these sanctions. That's why these sanctions benefit regime, and that's why they're double evil - hurt people + make it harder for opposition to fight the dictator. In Serbia's case, sanctions didn't help at all with overthrowing Milosevic. They just brought misery to ordinary people and he remained in charge through the 90-ties. It took loosing all the wars, getting country bombarded by NATO and de facto loosing control over Kosovo, getting entire opposition united, and massive protests to remove him from the power.
- cabirum 5y agoThe developers must have realized that their income depends on devices controlled by a hostile regime.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rocketChair 5y agoSanctions against countries are sanctions against populations. It doesn't work.
- threeseed 5y agoTargeted sanctions have historically been shown to work. And given that the alternative involves killing people it's probably the best path we have.
- hutzlibu 5y ago"Targeted sanctions have historically been shown to work." I am not aware of any successful one? "And given that the alternative involves killing people it's probably the best path we have. " And why is that the only alternative? How about targeted sanctions against actually responsible people with ties to the government?
- vbezhenar 5y ago> How about targeted sanctions against actually responsible people with ties to the government? Funny thing is that local population usually does not like higher-ups and will welcome those sanctions.
- iworshipfaangs2 5y ago> Targeted sanctions have historically been shown to work. Do you mind providing an example or two, with a sentence about how they “worked?” I ask because I can’t think of any sanction that had any result besides further impoverishing the people while the leader stayed in power. But I am a layman and I would be happy to be proven wrong.
- wonnage 5y agoThe alternative is minding your own goddamn business if you’re not willing to commit to the necessary coercive steps. Sanctions targeted at an individual are useless when they live in an unfriendly country. And sanctioning the whole country results in NK. Great, you’ve sent millions of people back to medieval life and dear leader still gets to hang out with Dennis Rodman when he wants. Very effective.
- molind 5y agoMoreover, I’m citizen of Belarus, but living in Poland, tax resident of Poland. My developer account is tied with legal entity in Poland and bank account in Poland. I was banned too. :/
- mrtksn 5y agoThat’s probably as a result of Apple’s compliance department action. It’s technically Apple who bans the accounts but it’s the US government who makes them to do so. Essentially, there are people and places that US government prohibits US companies to do business with. Not only US companies actually, anyone who wants to do business with US. Syria, North Korea, Crimea, Belarus, Cuba etc. are terrible addresses to open an account with. If you remember, Github banned Syrian developers.[0] [0] : https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-countries https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-coun...
- pc86 5y agoI find it hard to believe that despite whatever sanctions may be in place, the official stance of the USG is that individual Belarusians should be targeted in this manner.
- molind 5y agoBut there is no sanctions against all citizens of Belarus. Yes some companies that support regime of lukashenko are under sanctions. But not everyone. I moved from Belarus due to lawfulness in my country, living in Poland and now I’m under sanctions? That’s insane.
- kube-system 5y agoAre there sanctions against Belarusian banks or other institutions which are necessary to functionally do business with people in Belarus?
- sremani 5y agoInsane probably, but there is always going to be some friction and gap between policy and implementation. It is good to inquire and understand where the gaps are. You are doing the right thing but shining the sun light and trying to recruit people to make your case is good. Let's see how Apple reacts.
- mrtksn 5y agoCould be specific address or name, we would not know since the match in the list is not disclosed. It can also be false positive, the compliance departments use specialized software do a non-exact match since it’s not a straightforward process because countries use different alphabets, address systems, naming conventions etc. So they identify potential risky clients and someone does an assessment and if they think that it could be a real match they pull the trigger. Sometimes your names is Ahmad, other times it’s Yuri and and the life is not easy for you.
- RychardM 5y agoYes, today many of developers received the mail about their account.
- nix23 5y agoOh that's a nice move from apple to bring developers from Belarus, Russia and China together...nothing better as having a common enemy....maybe one more day thinking about it Pentagon?
- jmnicolas 5y agoI have seen these kind of BS for years on HN now (admittedly most of them from Google). I have decoupled from all those big companies so they can't literally destroy me. I use some of their service but it would be of no consequence if they banned me (YouTube account for example). I encourage you all to get back your freedom. It's not sexy or easy but it's better than loosing everything someday because a stupid law has been passed or on an AI whim.
- vertis 5y agoIf you've trained as a mobile developer, this is hard to execute. Apple and to a lesser extent Google control your life if you want to develop iOS/Android Apps.
- jmnicolas 5y agoYou're right, but do people really make money with apps (except a few lucky ones that are "too big to ban" anyway)? It's possible to build Android apps without having a Google account, but distribution (and getting money) is going to be difficult. For me it's not a problem I'm the sole user of the apps I made and I use a GrapheneOS phone without Google Play) but it's an unusual setup.
- theginger 5y agoSurely anyone associated with this 'restricted party' should also be locked out of iCloud not just developer accounts. Bricking half a country's phones might create some negative publicity.
- ewjij23oijOIJ 5y agoRight decision from Apple. Lukashenko may force any developer from Belarus to integrate a backdoor into any app (no matter if they want to do this). Lukashenko may even kill a developer and let his security agency to publish "modified" versions of the app to do some really bad stuff.
- sofixa 5y agoThere are many dictators around the world. Why not apply that same logic for all other countries, why not also block Mali, Rwanda, China, Burkina Faso, etc etc etc?
- londons_explore 5y agoNow might be a good time to go hiring remote workers from Belarus... I can imagine a lot looking for new jobs...
- NicoJuicy 5y agoMost here claim that sanctions don't work. But capitalism has been the greatest reason why wars are at an all time low. Since there is another way to have a reasonable wage/getting wealthy. Threatening with a war which is happening now, means you won't get the cake both ways. People there could be victims, but people there are also aiding in the military. Nope, it's not perfect. But it's a tool in the toolbox and one of the best that doesn't involve bullets and people getting killed en masse. Note : probably not a popular opinion. But please suggest a better actual solution then that actually is proven to work without giving the bully all they want/threat.