Comment by pgeorgi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pgeorgi | Hacker News Reader

The "gov app tracking women" angle is a PR stunt by international advocacy groups and it points at the wrong problem.

The app provides various official services, among them a digitized version of the "yellow sheet" a legal guardian has to fill out for a woman to be able to leave the country. (https://www.rt.com/news/women-tracking-saudi-arabia-359/ from 2012 describes this particular system, the app apparently integrates it with more digital services).

The alternative isn't freedom of movement, it's having to get a signature on paper and potentially personal appearance of the legal guardian, which is harder to get (this includes: forge) than a button click on a website. As a remedy for that reduced trust in the system, it sends an SMS - to the very same device.

There are activists in Saudi Arabia (see for example https://twitter.com/monaeltahawy/status/1095360734798721025) who see value in that type of app because the degree of automation it brings makes it easier to leave the country without supervision (e.g. by stealing the legal guardian's phone).

I do think that this is worth noting, however, I still think Google should not be hosting it as it's still facilitating an immoral action (running an oppressive government that doesn't respect freedom of movement). I guess it's kind of a deontologist/consequentialist thing.

If you are going that path then why not tell Google stop hosting other immoral project like news apps that publish pro war on drugs stories and misinformation about the drugs, preventing people from making informed decisions and causing deaths indirectly? That's more serious than women's tracking app.

No, I think that offensive opinions are an order of magnitude LESS serious than a women's tracking app.

Are you serious? Publishing misinformation about drugs is more serious than the handmaiden app?

Saudi Arabia only freed their African slaves in 1962. What if a new king re-enslaved them? I guess Google would be fine with hosting slave auction apps then, by this logic.

I am so disgusted with the den of cowards and hypocrites at Google.

Supercilious Google developers would condescend to us with platitudes of "Black lives matter" while literally hosting an enslavement app. It really would happen that way.

Google would censor someone who makes fun of feminism with extreme prejudice, but will not lift a finger for this actual handmaiden app.

They removed the Gab app at the drop of a hat because they claim to be against white supremacy, but they tacitly endorse the far more dangerous Chinese ethnostate to round up minorities into actual camps. The Chinese government forces Uyghurs in some regions to install apks on their android phones, and Google will NOT interfere, even though it would be easy to blacklist them. Maybe it would be ineffective, but it would be doing something. I don't want to hear that cooperating with oppression is somehow for the greater good. This is not who we are.

There are actual people who are suffering as a direct result of Google's refusal to take a stand about who uses their platform. They are clearly willing to remove apps that displease them for arbitrary reasons, so they have no excuse not to act.

I'd encourage you to read this tweet[0] and this article[1]. They provide perspectives from Saudi women. To do my best to summarize:

Indeed, the app is bad. That it exists or needs to exist is a bad thing. But given the Saudi government and Saudi law, the opinion of many women in Saudi Arabia is that scrapping the app would hurt their agency, not help it. They need male approval to travel either way, and by making it easier to get, the app, in practice, gives women more agency by lowering the bureaucratic barriers to travel.

The best way I can put it is that the app here doesn't really particularly help the oppressors. Like maybe, in a contrived way, you can argue that by making the oppression lighter weight you're less likely to have a full on revolution or something. But then, you've still lessened the oppression. That's not a bad thing.

But if removing the app from the store makes the experience of women in Saudi Arabia worse, which is exactly what many of those women are saying, then removing it doesn't do anything. You're just asking to have the Saudi society regress even further to a position where in practice women had even less agency.

Is that better?

[0]: https://twitter.com/monaeltahawy/status/1095360734798721025 an

[1]: http://time.com/5532221/absher-saudi-arabia-what-to-know/

I think that American corporations should not facilitate evil.

You might be 100% right, I certainly don't know the perspectives of Saudi women, but I will take your word for it.

But if Google resisting evil means that the Saudi government punishes Saudi women, then that is the fault of the Saudi government.

Should Google accede to every despotic government that threatens its people? I wrote in a previous comment about how Google does nothing to prevent China from using its technology to put innocent people in camps. Perhaps China will be even more brutal if Google tries to thwart them. But I still think Google has an obligation not to cooperate.

I sympathize with what you are saying. And if I were a woman in Saudi Arabia, I would probably not want the app banned too.

How is loosening the restriction on freedom of movement for women evil?

That's what this app does.

I'm also confused by the china comparison. I'm not aware of any google tech China is using to oppress, but even if that is true, your China example is technology causing more oppression. This is the opposite. The technology reduces the oppression.

You're presenting a very weird moral arfument. If you thought that not supporting this app would accelerate the fall of the Saudi regime, I'd say you're naive, but ok. But you're not saying that, you're saying that American companies shouldn't work with groups you don't like, even when the result is objectively good, because, for lack of a better term, virtue signalling. Why?

Some interesting arguments, and if this does genuinely increase freedom of movement, that's good.

But do you see any risk that this could set in motion different, more controlling behaviors for the men who authorize women's movement?

It's presumably a click or two in an app - maybe that will lead to better outcomes for women, or perhaps not? Would they have more or less empathy for the situations involved, for example?

I don't claim by any means to be an expert here, far from it, but I think there's a deeper discussion here and you may be brushing it aside; it feels like there's evidence missing that the app will definitely lead to better outcomes.

My understanding is that the reality of the situation is that Saudi Arabia is extremely patriarchal by law. Women need men's permission to do anything. By reducing the friction for men to approve women's activities, you make men more likely to let women do stuff.

Now the man doesn't need to go to a government office to let his wife travel, he just taps some stuff in an app. Like I mentioned, there's an argument to be made (that I personally disagree with) that this increased friction will somehow accelerate change in saudi society or something. But the argument there is that by inconveniencing oppressors you'll somehow make them more empathetic to the oppressed. History says that doesn't usually happen. You just annoy the men and then don't help the women. Change comes slowly and incrementally, not all at once in an avalanche.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. -- Goethe

> I'm also confused by the china comparison. I'm not aware of any google tech China is using to oppress, but even if that is true, your China example is technology causing more oppression. This is the opposite. The technology reduces the oppression.

Google could very easily prevent China from using Android phones to oppress people. China is forcing people to install well known .apk files on their phones. Google has a very well developed infrastructure for blacklisting malware from their devices. But they refuse to life a finger.

> You're presenting a very weird moral arfument. If you thought that not supporting this app would accelerate the fall of the Saudi regime, I'd say you're naive, but ok. But you're not saying that, you're saying that American companies shouldn't work with groups you don't like, even when the result is objectively good, because, for lack of a better term, virtue signalling. Why?

In the short term it may be objectively good, sure. But no, I still don't like them working with groups "I don't like". I don't like American corporations legitimizing oppressive regimes. And what you are essentially saying is that if an oppressive regime threatens to hold a population hostage, then we must work with them.

>Google could very easily prevent China from using Android phones to oppress people. China is forcing people to install well known .apk files on their phones. Google has a very well developed infrastructure for blacklisting malware from their devices. But they refuse to life a finger.

As far as I know, Google has very little control over devices in China. They're almost all developed by other manufacturers (Huawei for example), and don't use Google Apps or Vanilla android, but instead use Huawei or OnePlus or Oppo's flavor of android, and use one of these[1] app stores.

So Google could add code to blacklist these apks to android source, and then Chinese manufacturers could remove it. Or they could have GMSCore do it, and since that's blocked in china, it wouldn't do anything.

So, not to get too sidetracked here, but I'd be curious to know what actions Google could take to do this, short of relicensing Android (which also wouldn't actually fix the underlying issue here, it would just cut Google's connection).

>And what you are essentially saying is that if an oppressive regime threatens to hold a population hostage, then we must work with them.

No, I'm saying we should work to improve the lives of people under oppressive governments, even if that requires working with the oppressive governments. Should the US Government not provide humanitarian aid to North Korea? Is letting people starve worth being able to say that NK isn't "legitimate"?

[1]: https://www.appinchina.co/market/app-stores/

Could you provide more references backing up the 'opinion of many women in Saudi Arabia ...' part of your comment?

The tweet seems to reference a single anecdote received in a text message, and the article mentions "... many Absher users within Saudi Arabia have come to its defense", without mentioning any particular supportive groups (or providing numbers).

Unfortunately it's particularly difficult to hear the voices of an oppressed group, especially one where the majority of the commentary is going to be in another language.

So no. You're probably stuck trusting time on this one.

>Saudi Arabia only freed their African slaves in 1962.

Do you have any further reading on this?

> it's still facilitating an immoral action (running an oppressive government that doesn't respect freedom of movement)

In that case, Google and Apple should completely withdraw from Saudi Arabia: no iPhones, no appstore, no AdSense, ... Any of these lead to tax revenue which facilitates running that oppressive government.

That's not what people are demanding though: they want some inconsequential app removed to demonstrate that they can coerce big tech companies to do their bidding.

The icing on the cake is that they essentially work with strategies straight from the "fake news" handbook, by making it sound as if the app provides a new means of control ("government app which lets men track women and control their travel", straight from the title of the linked article).

Even more annoying to me is that one of these campaigners is D-CA representative Jackie Speier who promotes herself on Twitter (https://twitter.com/repspeier) as "Fearless Fighter for women’s equality, LGBTQ rights & the disenfranchised."

Given that women who demand equality, LGBTQ folks and the disenfranchised (e.g. Filipino immigrants) still have to fear for their lives in Saudi Arabia, where's the house bill to setup a full blown embargo until human rights are universally respected? _That_ would be fearless.

Demanding removal of that app? That's merely flexing their muscles in a US domestic political battle. Human rights don't deserve to be abused like that.

> In that case, Google and Apple should completely withdraw from Saudi Arabia: no iPhones, no appstore, no AdSense, ... Any of these lead to tax revenue which facilitates running that oppressive government.

> That's not what people are demanding though: they want some inconsequential app removed to demonstrate that they can coerce big tech companies to do their bidding.

Actually, I kind of am demanding that they not do business with oppressive regimes. You make it sounds like some huge sacrifice. It is not. And it would give them a shred of moral credibility.

Or, on the other hand, if Google must do business with Saudi Arabia, I expect them to shut up and never again speak of virtue again. I expect them to let neo-nazi apps trend on the front page of their app store. Because they have no moral authority any more.

Slavery too is a 'process'. And creating an app will no doubt make it more 'efficient' for slave owners and slaves and maybe even provide the one off opportunity for one to escape.

So let's forget about the slavery and focus on the 'modernization' of this 'activity' and maybe even celebrate the off chance some slaves scramble to freedom. For 'technical folks' this makes sense.

Even if loopholes like this can be used to enable emancipation in the short-term, the longer the functionality exists, the more likely it is that its security will be tightened down, to the point at which those thefts - which likely have serious consequences themselves, if discovered - will no longer be possible.

It becomes a question of whether you support the principles behind the functionality provided, rather than whether you support the ability for a few people to escape thanks to bugs/exploits in the software.

> It becomes a question of whether you support the principles behind the functionality provided

I prefer to listen to voices of people directly affected rather than organizations operating on the other side of the world.

As soon as women living in Saudi Arabia are saying that having this app is harmful, I'm all for having it gone. Right now what I hear is that the system is harmful (I think we're in violent agreement about that) and that the app helps in some cases while not making anything worse in all other situations.

When it comes to "supporting the principles":

I'd rather have them keep apps in the stores that aren't harmful (as said: I believe that this app doesn't make anything worse, in some cases it may even make things better) and stay out of morality based decisions, because at some point their morality will not agree with mine.

Apparently Google and Apple aren't too hot on unionization (at least there don't seem to be unions in either company). Should they remove apps by unions from their stores because they don't support the principle?

(but for the record: I'm not a fan of app stores as only, or even just primary application distribution channel. IMHO there should be no such curator who has to make this type of call)

> thanks to bugs/exploits in the software

It's not bugs in the software that enable leaving the country without physical presence and signature of a legal guardian. It's that these (hard to forge) factors were replaced by (easy to forge) phone ownership.

By removing the app they'd go a long way to fix that "bug".

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