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Comment by curt15 | Hacker News Reader

What prevents China from similarly demanding Apple to de-list apps from non-Chinese app stores that mention Tiananmen Square?

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Nothing prevents that now, other than corporations having a backbone and or China thinking it's outside of their influence to demand (for now).

China is already getting pretty busy at exerting its influence on foreign entities to do things like that. Things that relate to its perceived national interest and identity, censorship, etc. Such as the demands placed on airlines as it relates to Taiwan (which isn't a Chinese territory and is a free nation).

You won't see any Winnie the Pooh baby blimps floating over London on Xi's next visit. Iran isn't going to refuse to sell oil to China over Xinjiang. Germany isn't going to refuse a natural gas pipeline with Putin's Russia. All countries, and most corporations, compromise their supposed morals on a routine basis when it suits them. Nike, they of vast sweatshop labor, feel free to simultaneously run ads promoting moral enlightenment.

Sure. But if European countries can insist on globally de-indexing truthful information because they feel its continued propagation is harmful, that seriously undercuts any moral high ground available when China tries to do the same.

Nor would you, a few years back, see any demonstrators waving Tibetan flags and suchlike in Copenhagen during a Chinese state visit. Danish police saw to that, legal niceties be damned.

Up until recently, the Taiwanese flag emoji would crash Chinese iPhones[1].

> "Basically, Apple added some code to iOS with the goal that phones in China wouldn't display a Taiwanese flag," Wardle says, "and there was a bug in that code."

However, I don't believe it is fair to compare state censorship with an individual whose online reputation could prevent them from eating or having a roof over their head.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/apple-china-censorship-bug-iphon...

China is a nation. The particular instance of the law is designed to help (non-public important) individuals.

Various companies that built fortunes on easily collectible data, argue against the law with the "limiting free speech" line because they don't want to spend money on the data cleanup side.

The rest is propaganda.

And dismissing concerns about "memory hole"ing, by pandering to hatred of rich companies, isn't propaganda?

The NGO in question has a budget of 7 million pounds a year employing over 100 people to do, in their words: lobbying.

The actually law was put in place by representatives of the voting majority of EU.

Yes, you can inflammatorily impugn the motives of people arguing in favor of any side. That doesn't make the concerns about free speech invalid, it just means you're willing to resort to similar propagandistic tactics.

Edit: rewrite after understanding your point better.

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