12 ms·

This seems to have been announced a couple of weeks ago, so we don't need to just trust the tweet: https://www.macworld.com/article/1377200/apple-to-limit-airdr

by jsnell 4y ago

This seems to have been announced a couple of weeks ago, so we don't need to just trust the tweet: https://www.macworld.com/article/1377200/apple-to-limit-airdrop-everyone-setting-to-10-minutes.html https://www.macworld.com/article/1377200/apple-to-limit-aird... Having it open to everyone for only a limited amount of time actually kind of seems like the right thing, but it's hard to come up with a legit explanation for why they rushed that change to China first.

brandur 4y ago
To be fair: (1) it seems like the update landed recently, and (2) the article you linked does cite the same reasoning as the Twitter posts. Even if was a little ahead of the more recent Zero Covid protests, it seems like AirDrop's been a known vector in China to share government criticism, which is why Apple's cracking down.
- jsnell 4y ago
  Sure, I didn't mean this in the "this is old news" sense, but in the "this has been verified by Apple themselves, not just a random Twitter account".
- snoot 4y ago
  > which is why Apple's cracking down. This is absurd. Apple is doing this because of government pressure, not because of their own desire to crack down.
  - johnbellone 4y ago
    You're both saying the same thing.
    - snoot 4y ago
      Nope. They were taking about Apple cracking down. That’s not the same as being forced to make a software change at the governments demand.
      - kelnos 4y ago
        That doesn't make it better, though. Plenty of companies have decided not to do business in China on ethical grounds. Hell, even Google pulled out of China way back when, a company I certainly don't think all that highly of. Yes, not doing business in China means less revenue, and unhappy shareholders. This is why capitalism sucks: it more or less requires companies do unethical things, when not doing those things means much less money.
        throwawaymaths 4y ago
        Wait what? How can you claim that capitalism requires a company do unethical things while in the same comment giving an example of a company that chose not to do an unethical things?
        s3p 4y ago
        IMO it does. I would rather have a generally good product with concessions as opposed to no product at all. If apple, google, everyone exits out of protest, what is left? Chinese-developed tech that is 100,000% susceptible to the same government orders. At least with apple they know what they're getting.
        oceanplexian 4y ago
        I know it’s in vogue to blame capitalism, like our economic system is a faceless AI that decides things in a perfectly efficient market (It’s not). Behind the curtain there are humans making decisions. They may be hedge funds, investors, board members, etc. There are humans that deliberately want to do business with China and know exactly what is happening with those workers. It wasn’t capitalism that outsourced iPhone production to a sweat shop, it was a group of real people who are morally bankrupt.
        account42 4y ago
        Capitalism is blamed because it is the system that lets those morally bankrupt people get rich of those decisions without any real consequences.
  - rurp 4y ago
    Apple is literally the group implementing the change, it's accurate to say "Apple is cracking down". You're trying to paint Apple as a helpless victim here, but they didn't get blindsided by CCP tyranny. The company has spent years developing this exact situation and repeatedly choose to do the bidding of the Chinese government. "Just following orders" is a pitiful excuse, and even worse when the orders are coming from an oppressive foreign government.
    - nomel 4y ago
      > Apple is literally the group implementing the change, it's accurate to say "Apple is cracking down". I think it would be more accurate to say that the CCP is cracking down, and Apple is one target of that push. I don't think it's completely accurate to say that Apple can "choose" these things. There's no "choosing" with the CCP, and there's no "choosing" to manufacture outside of China, at this point [1]. This isn't an Apple problem, it's a worldwide supply chain problem, that all tech companies are stuck in [2]. They're choosing to continue business in China. They're choosing to continue to manufacture in China. Like everyone else, they're choosing to leave China, with manufacturing being pushed to India, Taiwan, Vietnam, and S.Korea. But, in the short term, there's exactly one choice, for both, for them and the rest of the tech sector, that keeps the bills paid. This is a systemic problem, not an Apple problem. It's good to see the world is, finally, waking up to this, beginning the transition, and I think the beginnings of the transition should be celebrated. 1. https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/28/tech/apple-china-manufacturing-sales/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/28/tech/apple-china-manufacturin... 2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/timbajarin/2022/08/30/shifting-tech-manufacturing-out-of-chinaa-critical-imperative-for-tech/?sh=3e0e11610522 https://www.forbes.com/sites/timbajarin/2022/08/30/shifting-...
      - fomine3 4y ago
        Google is successfully ignored China's request even though their Pixel uses many Chinese parts and some are made in China, because they don't service in China.
        nomel 4y ago
  - Covzire 4y ago
    They may not desire to crack down, but they desire to crack down to preserve profits, which means they still end up desiring to crack down.
Maximus9000 4y ago
That's interesting that this was rolled out a few weeks ago, however the article also says: > Apple won’t admit why this change is being made in China, but the peer-to-peer nature of AirDrop has made it popular for spreading anti-government protest material, and hopping into your settings every 10 minutes to re-enable the ability to receive AirDrop from strangers makes it a lot less useful for that.
- andreysolsty 4y ago
  Looking at it from a users perspective, people constantly trying to airdrop me stuff is not something I want, even though I want to use “everyone” at times. I’ve had this happen in public before and it’s annoying but maybe it’s become so widespread that it’s a UX issue in China?
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The fix for your use case is an easy to enable "next hour/ten minutes/whatever" from the control center buttons. Then it can be default "contacts only" and you can turn to everyone with a single press, and it turns itself back off.
    - unraveller 4y ago
      you're thinking differently, don't expect any apple job offers.
ThePhysicist 4y ago
The timing of the change seems quite conspicuous [1], and it's also weird that Apple would introduce this in China first and only roll it out to the rest of the world next year. The same article mentions that Apple blocks the Taiwanese flag emoji in China, for which it's hard to come up with an explanation other than bowing to censorship. 1: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/11/netizen-voices-apple-restricts-airdrop-in-china-after-sitong-bridge-protest/ https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/11/netizen-voices-apple-r...
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  Apple certainly tailors the emojis available to the local political climate. They don't, for instance, have the flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, instead using the flag of the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
  - mmmpop 4y ago
    I can still see the Iran flag in all of its unaltered glory here in the US. I guess they missed the memo?
    - gruez 4y ago
      Afghanistan =/= Iran The parent poster was referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Afghanistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Afghanistan
      - mmmpop 4y ago
        ithkuil 4y ago
        Not everybody knows everything. Would you be so kind to share what's up with the Iranian flag? It's seems interesting. I happen to not know much about it and I love when people bring up some interesting curiosities here (sometimes unfortunately obscured by sarcasm or other convolutions)
standardUser 4y ago
You know what actually makes sense? Creating a setting that the user can change as they see fit.
- cosmojg 4y ago
  Customization? On an Apple device? Are you out of your mind?
  - bell-cot 4y ago
    Have you looked at how much stuff there is under Settings on a recent version of iOS? Admittedly it's not the Windows Registry, but...
    - TylerE 4y ago
      Sadly it's missing a few things that would be really nice, like being able to turn off the %*(% home bar.
      - chrisseaton 4y ago
        What's the beef with the home bar? Seems pretty innocent?
        TylerE 4y ago
        Because I absolutey do not need it, and it's infuriating to have a high contrast item in view when using a dark app (Like, say, a video player...)
        interpol_p 4y ago
        There is an API for developers to use to signal that a view should hide the home indicator [1]. It doesn't guarantee that it will be hidden (the user may have accessibility or other options enabled which take precedence and prefer to display it) When playing fullscreen video on my phone, I do not see the home indicator, as it hides after a short delay due to most developers adopting this API. Just tested in VLC and the home indicator is hidden after about 3 seconds of fullscreen video playback [1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiviewcontroller/2887510-prefershomeindicatorautohidden https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiviewcontro...
wonnage 4y ago
I legitimately don't understand how this has been spun into some sort of pro-censorship move. Leaving your phone open to getting AirDrop-ed by anyone in the vicinity just seems like a terrible idea in general, but especially in China. Apple is helping the authoritarian dictatorship by checks notes not having your phone advertise to everyone nearby that it can receive files from anyone? The ability for dissidents to airdrop messages to passers-by seems silly as well. All of a sudden spamming people is good due to the content of the message? Never mind that there's nothing stopping the other side from doing the same thing. It ultimately feels to me like the country that's always in the news for hackers and ubiquitous surveillance should be the last place in the world you want to have AirDrop on, period. Even the contacts-only mode has leaked personal information in the past.
- expensive_news 4y ago
  I agree with all of your points. To me this seems like correcting an oversight in Apple’s original implementation vs Apple taking away a ‘feature’. I’ve gotten AirDrop spam here in America and welcome this change.
  - cmeacham98 4y ago
    You've always been able to change AirDrop to contacts only. This "feature" just makes it harder to send AirDrops to people who want to receive them.
    - wonnage 4y ago
      Assuming that anyone with airdrop set to everyone wants to receive your files is just wrong
      - cmeacham98 4y ago
        What else would be the interpretation of the "Everything" setting, especially at a large gathering like a protest? Also, it's not like they just receive the file without consent, last I used an iPhone there was a popup allowing the other user to accept/decline the file. So it's less like "anyone with airdop set to everyone wants to receive your file" and more like "anyone with airdop set to everyone wants to be asked if they want to receive your file".
rosywoozlechan 4y ago
so the title of this post is incorrect, this setting was not enabled due to the protests
GekkePrutser 4y ago
Of course the zero-covid protests were also around a couple weeks ago..
- noncoml 4y ago
  But it wasn’t until today that Musk decide to start a propaganda war against Apple.
  - StanislavPetrov 4y ago
    It wasn't until Apple (apparently) threatened to withdraw Twitter from the app store.
    - noncoml 4y ago
      - StanislavPetrov 4y ago
        >So you agree with me that this is propaganda by Musk. I neither agree or disagree as I'm in no position to know if Musk if lying about Apple's threats. I trust Musk exactly as much as I trust Apple or any other big corporation - not at all. However, as an older person who remembers the Microsoft/Netscape episode, I do believe that companies with massive market shares like Apple should be prevented from using their monopolistic power to shut out competitors. This isn't limited to tech (a perfect example being Ticketmaster).
  - concordDance 4y ago
    Which was very foolish given he's already in a propaganda war with most of the news media and an entire political movement.
noncoml 4y ago
- ketzo 4y ago
  I know airdrop was pretty big in U.S. protests in summer 2020, and reportedly in Hong Kong as well. Obviously not very helpful for pre-planning an event, but good to change plans in the moment.
  - noncoml 4y ago
    In US iPhone has something like 50% market share, while in China is 10% if I’m not wrong.
- concinds 4y ago
  See this article from November 10th, from the China Digital Times, a news website which is considered trustworthy. https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/11/netizen-voices-apple-restricts-airdrop-in-china-after-sitong-bridge-protest/?amp https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/11/netizen-voices-apple-r...
freefruit 4y ago
https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/23450967/apple-airdrop-limited-china-goverment-protests https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/23450967/apple-airdrop-l... It was brought in because of protests in mainland China. Just not because of the current ones, but previous ones.
ilyt 4y ago
A setting with 10 minutes default would be reasonable change for users sake, in case they forget to turn it off. Force 10 minutes with no optoon to turn it back? Yeah... > but it's hard to come up with a legit explanation for why they rushed that change to China first. The China told them to and they complied. They have every interest in China's government keeping their people in check so the Apple factory production continues without problems. Follow the money and all that
riobard 4y ago
> hard to come up with a legit explanation for why they rushed that change to China first. Not hard at all. On Oct 13, 2022 this protest happened (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Sitong_Bridge_protest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Sitong_Bridge_protest), which the CCP considered a serious offense, potentially on the same level of the 1989 protest. At the time people, especially college students around that area (lots of universities nearby), were using AirDrop to share photos of the protest, because social medium was heavily censored. University administrators were tasked to make sure iPhone-carrying students to disable allowing AirDrop from everyone to stop the spread of the images. A few weeks later, iOS public betas were found to come with the change to limiting AirDrop to 10 minutes, and nothing about it was ever mentioned in release note. Was Apple pressured by the CCP to rush this? I don't know. Look at the evidence and judge by yourself. But there's a more nuanced perspective. It is rumored that CCP has the ability to actually track and uncover the identity of iOS devices sending AirDrop. Think about it: how else AirDrop can limit to receive from contacts only? If so, AirDrop would provide a false sense of anonymity and deniability, and Apple would put some of its customers in jeopardy if they do nothing. By limiting AirDrop from everyone to 10 minutes, Apple achieved three objectives: 1. They showed compliance (they have to, if they want to keep the business in China); 2. They avoided the potential reputation damage in the scenario where protesters are caught AirDropping offensive materials (e.g. “iPhones aren't as secure as Apple advertises after all”); 3. They closed a loophole in which people get spammed (yes, allowing AirDrop from everyone gets you mostly spams anyway). The “mistake” Apple made was that it did not a) rush the change to all regions, and b) mention it explicitly in release note, therefore completely exposed them to the first objective and failed to convey the nuances.
krick 4y ago
Why does it seem "the right thing"? I mean, it's pretty stupid to actually keep it open for everyone forever, but if I want that (and I don't know why it was even an option, but I assume somebody wants that) — that's my business, it doesn't hurt anyone. Also, limiting it to 10 minutes doesn't help, since I just can keep turning it on and on it seems. Adding one more option could make some sense, but it's weird anyways. Why arbitrary 10 minutes? How turning it for 10 minutes in a crowded place is better than turning it on for an hour? It's silly.
WiSaGaN 4y ago
The AirDrop spam has been a headache in China for sometime: https://www.pingwest.com/a/256995 https://www.pingwest.com/a/256995
yangvz 4y ago
It's because recently there's report on the internet that some people are receiving nude photos from random guys over AirDrop (*on subways), and the fact that sexual harassment charges in China are pressed rather weakly.

by jsnell 4y ago

brandur 4y ago

To be fair: (1) it seems like the update landed recently, and (2) the article you linked does cite the same reasoning as the Twitter posts. Even if was a little ahead of the more recent Zero Covid protests, it seems like AirDrop's been a known vector in China to share government criticism, which is why Apple's cracking down.

jsnell 4y ago
Sure, I didn't mean this in the "this is old news" sense, but in the "this has been verified by Apple themselves, not just a random Twitter account".
snoot 4y ago
> which is why Apple's cracking down. This is absurd. Apple is doing this because of government pressure, not because of their own desire to crack down.
- johnbellone 4y ago
  You're both saying the same thing.
  - snoot 4y ago
    Nope. They were taking about Apple cracking down. That’s not the same as being forced to make a software change at the governments demand.
    - kelnos 4y ago
      That doesn't make it better, though. Plenty of companies have decided not to do business in China on ethical grounds. Hell, even Google pulled out of China way back when, a company I certainly don't think all that highly of. Yes, not doing business in China means less revenue, and unhappy shareholders. This is why capitalism sucks: it more or less requires companies do unethical things, when not doing those things means much less money.
      - throwawaymaths 4y ago
        Wait what? How can you claim that capitalism requires a company do unethical things while in the same comment giving an example of a company that chose not to do an unethical things?
      - s3p 4y ago
        IMO it does. I would rather have a generally good product with concessions as opposed to no product at all. If apple, google, everyone exits out of protest, what is left? Chinese-developed tech that is 100,000% susceptible to the same government orders. At least with apple they know what they're getting.
      - oceanplexian 4y ago
        I know it’s in vogue to blame capitalism, like our economic system is a faceless AI that decides things in a perfectly efficient market (It’s not). Behind the curtain there are humans making decisions. They may be hedge funds, investors, board members, etc. There are humans that deliberately want to do business with China and know exactly what is happening with those workers. It wasn’t capitalism that outsourced iPhone production to a sweat shop, it was a group of real people who are morally bankrupt.
        account42 4y ago
        Capitalism is blamed because it is the system that lets those morally bankrupt people get rich of those decisions without any real consequences.
- rurp 4y ago
  Apple is literally the group implementing the change, it's accurate to say "Apple is cracking down". You're trying to paint Apple as a helpless victim here, but they didn't get blindsided by CCP tyranny. The company has spent years developing this exact situation and repeatedly choose to do the bidding of the Chinese government. "Just following orders" is a pitiful excuse, and even worse when the orders are coming from an oppressive foreign government.
  - nomel 4y ago
    > Apple is literally the group implementing the change, it's accurate to say "Apple is cracking down". I think it would be more accurate to say that the CCP is cracking down, and Apple is one target of that push. I don't think it's completely accurate to say that Apple can "choose" these things. There's no "choosing" with the CCP, and there's no "choosing" to manufacture outside of China, at this point [1]. This isn't an Apple problem, it's a worldwide supply chain problem, that all tech companies are stuck in [2]. They're choosing to continue business in China. They're choosing to continue to manufacture in China. Like everyone else, they're choosing to leave China, with manufacturing being pushed to India, Taiwan, Vietnam, and S.Korea. But, in the short term, there's exactly one choice, for both, for them and the rest of the tech sector, that keeps the bills paid. This is a systemic problem, not an Apple problem. It's good to see the world is, finally, waking up to this, beginning the transition, and I think the beginnings of the transition should be celebrated. 1. https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/28/tech/apple-china-manufacturing-sales/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/28/tech/apple-china-manufacturin... 2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/timbajarin/2022/08/30/shifting-tech-manufacturing-out-of-chinaa-critical-imperative-for-tech/?sh=3e0e11610522 https://www.forbes.com/sites/timbajarin/2022/08/30/shifting-...
    - fomine3 4y ago
      Google is successfully ignored China's request even though their Pixel uses many Chinese parts and some are made in China, because they don't service in China.
      - nomel 4y ago
- Covzire 4y ago
  They may not desire to crack down, but they desire to crack down to preserve profits, which means they still end up desiring to crack down.

Maximus9000 4y ago

That's interesting that this was rolled out a few weeks ago, however the article also says: > Apple won’t admit why this change is being made in China, but the peer-to-peer nature of AirDrop has made it popular for spreading anti-government protest material, and hopping into your settings every 10 minutes to re-enable the ability to receive AirDrop from strangers makes it a lot less useful for that.

andreysolsty 4y ago
Looking at it from a users perspective, people constantly trying to airdrop me stuff is not something I want, even though I want to use “everyone” at times. I’ve had this happen in public before and it’s annoying but maybe it’s become so widespread that it’s a UX issue in China?
- bombcar 4y ago
  The fix for your use case is an easy to enable "next hour/ten minutes/whatever" from the control center buttons. Then it can be default "contacts only" and you can turn to everyone with a single press, and it turns itself back off.
  - unraveller 4y ago
    you're thinking differently, don't expect any apple job offers.

ThePhysicist 4y ago

The timing of the change seems quite conspicuous [1], and it's also weird that Apple would introduce this in China first and only roll it out to the rest of the world next year. The same article mentions that Apple blocks the Taiwanese flag emoji in China, for which it's hard to come up with an explanation other than bowing to censorship. 1: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/11/netizen-voices-apple-restricts-airdrop-in-china-after-sitong-bridge-protest/ https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/11/netizen-voices-apple-r...

whimsicalism 4y ago
Apple certainly tailors the emojis available to the local political climate. They don't, for instance, have the flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, instead using the flag of the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
- mmmpop 4y ago
  I can still see the Iran flag in all of its unaltered glory here in the US. I guess they missed the memo?
  - gruez 4y ago
    Afghanistan =/= Iran The parent poster was referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Afghanistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Afghanistan
    - mmmpop 4y ago
      - ithkuil 4y ago
        Not everybody knows everything. Would you be so kind to share what's up with the Iranian flag? It's seems interesting. I happen to not know much about it and I love when people bring up some interesting curiosities here (sometimes unfortunately obscured by sarcasm or other convolutions)

standardUser 4y ago

You know what actually makes sense? Creating a setting that the user can change as they see fit.

cosmojg 4y ago
Customization? On an Apple device? Are you out of your mind?
- bell-cot 4y ago
  Have you looked at how much stuff there is under Settings on a recent version of iOS? Admittedly it's not the Windows Registry, but...
  - TylerE 4y ago
    Sadly it's missing a few things that would be really nice, like being able to turn off the %*(% home bar.
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      What's the beef with the home bar? Seems pretty innocent?
      - TylerE 4y ago
        Because I absolutey do not need it, and it's infuriating to have a high contrast item in view when using a dark app (Like, say, a video player...)
        interpol_p 4y ago
        There is an API for developers to use to signal that a view should hide the home indicator [1]. It doesn't guarantee that it will be hidden (the user may have accessibility or other options enabled which take precedence and prefer to display it) When playing fullscreen video on my phone, I do not see the home indicator, as it hides after a short delay due to most developers adopting this API. Just tested in VLC and the home indicator is hidden after about 3 seconds of fullscreen video playback [1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiviewcontroller/2887510-prefershomeindicatorautohidden https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiviewcontro...

wonnage 4y ago

I legitimately don't understand how this has been spun into some sort of pro-censorship move. Leaving your phone open to getting AirDrop-ed by anyone in the vicinity just seems like a terrible idea in general, but especially in China. Apple is helping the authoritarian dictatorship by checks notes not having your phone advertise to everyone nearby that it can receive files from anyone? The ability for dissidents to airdrop messages to passers-by seems silly as well. All of a sudden spamming people is good due to the content of the message? Never mind that there's nothing stopping the other side from doing the same thing. It ultimately feels to me like the country that's always in the news for hackers and ubiquitous surveillance should be the last place in the world you want to have AirDrop on, period. Even the contacts-only mode has leaked personal information in the past.

expensive_news 4y ago
I agree with all of your points. To me this seems like correcting an oversight in Apple’s original implementation vs Apple taking away a ‘feature’. I’ve gotten AirDrop spam here in America and welcome this change.
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  You've always been able to change AirDrop to contacts only. This "feature" just makes it harder to send AirDrops to people who want to receive them.
  - wonnage 4y ago
    Assuming that anyone with airdrop set to everyone wants to receive your files is just wrong
    - cmeacham98 4y ago
      What else would be the interpretation of the "Everything" setting, especially at a large gathering like a protest? Also, it's not like they just receive the file without consent, last I used an iPhone there was a popup allowing the other user to accept/decline the file. So it's less like "anyone with airdop set to everyone wants to receive your file" and more like "anyone with airdop set to everyone wants to be asked if they want to receive your file".

rosywoozlechan 4y ago

so the title of this post is incorrect, this setting was not enabled due to the protests

GekkePrutser 4y ago

Of course the zero-covid protests were also around a couple weeks ago..

noncoml 4y ago
But it wasn’t until today that Musk decide to start a propaganda war against Apple.
- StanislavPetrov 4y ago
  It wasn't until Apple (apparently) threatened to withdraw Twitter from the app store.
  - noncoml 4y ago
    - StanislavPetrov 4y ago
      >So you agree with me that this is propaganda by Musk. I neither agree or disagree as I'm in no position to know if Musk if lying about Apple's threats. I trust Musk exactly as much as I trust Apple or any other big corporation - not at all. However, as an older person who remembers the Microsoft/Netscape episode, I do believe that companies with massive market shares like Apple should be prevented from using their monopolistic power to shut out competitors. This isn't limited to tech (a perfect example being Ticketmaster).
- concordDance 4y ago
  Which was very foolish given he's already in a propaganda war with most of the news media and an entire political movement.

noncoml 4y ago

ketzo 4y ago
I know airdrop was pretty big in U.S. protests in summer 2020, and reportedly in Hong Kong as well. Obviously not very helpful for pre-planning an event, but good to change plans in the moment.
- noncoml 4y ago
  In US iPhone has something like 50% market share, while in China is 10% if I’m not wrong.
concinds 4y ago
See this article from November 10th, from the China Digital Times, a news website which is considered trustworthy. https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/11/netizen-voices-apple-restricts-airdrop-in-china-after-sitong-bridge-protest/?amp https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/11/netizen-voices-apple-r...

freefruit 4y ago

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/23450967/apple-airdrop-limited-china-goverment-protests https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/23450967/apple-airdrop-l... It was brought in because of protests in mainland China. Just not because of the current ones, but previous ones.

ilyt 4y ago

A setting with 10 minutes default would be reasonable change for users sake, in case they forget to turn it off. Force 10 minutes with no optoon to turn it back? Yeah... > but it's hard to come up with a legit explanation for why they rushed that change to China first. The China told them to and they complied. They have every interest in China's government keeping their people in check so the Apple factory production continues without problems. Follow the money and all that

riobard 4y ago

> hard to come up with a legit explanation for why they rushed that change to China first. Not hard at all. On Oct 13, 2022 this protest happened (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Sitong_Bridge_protest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Sitong_Bridge_protest), which the CCP considered a serious offense, potentially on the same level of the 1989 protest. At the time people, especially college students around that area (lots of universities nearby), were using AirDrop to share photos of the protest, because social medium was heavily censored. University administrators were tasked to make sure iPhone-carrying students to disable allowing AirDrop from everyone to stop the spread of the images. A few weeks later, iOS public betas were found to come with the change to limiting AirDrop to 10 minutes, and nothing about it was ever mentioned in release note. Was Apple pressured by the CCP to rush this? I don't know. Look at the evidence and judge by yourself. But there's a more nuanced perspective. It is rumored that CCP has the ability to actually track and uncover the identity of iOS devices sending AirDrop. Think about it: how else AirDrop can limit to receive from contacts only? If so, AirDrop would provide a false sense of anonymity and deniability, and Apple would put some of its customers in jeopardy if they do nothing. By limiting AirDrop from everyone to 10 minutes, Apple achieved three objectives: 1. They showed compliance (they have to, if they want to keep the business in China); 2. They avoided the potential reputation damage in the scenario where protesters are caught AirDropping offensive materials (e.g. “iPhones aren't as secure as Apple advertises after all”); 3. They closed a loophole in which people get spammed (yes, allowing AirDrop from everyone gets you mostly spams anyway). The “mistake” Apple made was that it did not a) rush the change to all regions, and b) mention it explicitly in release note, therefore completely exposed them to the first objective and failed to convey the nuances.

krick 4y ago

Why does it seem "the right thing"? I mean, it's pretty stupid to actually keep it open for everyone forever, but if I want that (and I don't know why it was even an option, but I assume somebody wants that) — that's my business, it doesn't hurt anyone. Also, limiting it to 10 minutes doesn't help, since I just can keep turning it on and on it seems. Adding one more option could make some sense, but it's weird anyways. Why arbitrary 10 minutes? How turning it for 10 minutes in a crowded place is better than turning it on for an hour? It's silly.

WiSaGaN 4y ago

The AirDrop spam has been a headache in China for sometime: https://www.pingwest.com/a/256995 https://www.pingwest.com/a/256995

yangvz 4y ago

It's because recently there's report on the internet that some people are receiving nude photos from random guys over AirDrop (*on subways), and the fact that sexual harassment charges in China are pressed rather weakly.