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Comment by caymanjim | Hacker News Reader

I'm so sick of this story. Essentially the same story comes around once a month. Apple is following the laws of a country they do business in. Full stop. They are not censoring anything. The Chinese government is censoring.

There are plenty of things that the US government wouldn't let Apple publish. We may all agree that they shouldn't be allowed to publish those things, but it's not like China is the only country with laws.

It's naive and childish to expect a corporation to ignore the laws of a country they operate in and forego a billion-person market over something as petty as this. It's not Apple's job to fight your social justice battles. Quit whining and take China on directly.

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> Quit whining and take China on directly.

What if shaming US companies doing business in China is the most efficient approach? Who cares if it is indirect - if it puts any kind of pressure on the censorship system, it's worth it.

Besides, companies like Apple talk a big game about privacy and democracy. It is only fair to point out when they don't walk the walk.

> Who cares if it is indirect - if it puts any kind of pressure on the censorship system, it's worth it

Determining whether an action is is "worth it" requires a cost-benefit analysis. You've merely listed a single benefit.

There's a lot of grumbling in this thread about "holding Apple to its word." Okay, fair enough, consistency is a good thing, and we should hold each other to that standard. But in the face of mass censorship in China, ignoring the bigger picture in order to myopically focus on Apple's consistency seems suspicious.

It reminds me of a thread here a few months back, where world leaders took private jets to a meeting on climate change. And of course people complained about the hypocrisy. But do those complainers really care about the environment? I'd argue no, or at least not as much as they care about virtue signaling, or about putting rich people in their place. Otherwise they'd do the very simple math to determine that the environmental impact of these flights are negligible, and they'd redirect their attention to efforts that actually matter.

This Apple/China stuff feels similar. Great, Apple is somewhat hypocritical. Who cares? This is standard gossip and moral shaming. I can get that anywhere. I'd like to see a deeper level of discussion on Hacker News, especially from those with strong opinions on this issue.

What's the bigger picture? What does the situation look like holistically?

If Apple pulls out of China due to a principled moral stand, what will that accomplish? How will things change if those dollars go elsewhere? What are the second- and third-order effects?

> What's the bigger picture? What does the situation look like holistically?

I argue in another comment in alignment with your suspicions that the bigger picture is conditionally in support of Apple in China, and in support of Dragonfly in China. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19656849

The Chinese government does not give companies a list of things to censor, they rely on “censor the right things or else” so that companies involved actually have to be proactive about what might offend the government.

It gets worse because the censorship law is incredibly vague and China practices rule by law rather than rule of law.

I do agree that Apple isn’t necessarily the party to go after here, but their predicament isn’t a simple matter of following the law.

>Apple is following the laws of a country they do business in.

They are of course free do that, but that certainly reduces their standing if they try to preach privacy. The most revealing test of a company's principles is when they have to make inconvenient choices.

On the other hand, Apple devices in China still offer more privacy than most alternatives, so is it really better for Chinese users if Apple walks away?

What I don’t get is why everyone gives a pass to companies which censor in a way that conforms to the norms of western society.

How much hardcore pornography is available on any of these stores? None! How many of you are up in arms about this? Same answer!

I don’t mean to defend Chinese censorship here. But I am always amazed at how completely blind people are to the pervasive censorship in many other countries.

That's a choice of Apple's though, not the US government. If Apple wanted to host a bunch of porn, they could.

But freedom goes both ways. You can't force another group to view and host porn just because you want to see it.

The outrage here is specifically that Apple is taking this action. If they do it by their own choice, doesn’t that make it even worse?

The wider discussion about corporate censorship involves lots of examples that aren’t compelled by law. And people get upset about some but completely ignore others.

The discussion is about Apple being forced to take an action.

If it's their choice, then so be it. But that's very different than censorship.

If you really can't see the difference, then let me ask: Is it censorship that you personally don't host porn?

You're either engaged in the same "censorship".. or it's not censorship at all, but rather the free choices of another human being.

The outrage is mostly focused on Apple complying with this law rather than resisting.

Censorship doesn’t have to be governmental. When the comics code ruled the comics industry, that was censorship. When movies with excessive amounts of explicit sex get an automatic X rating which excludes them from being shown in mainstream theaters regardless of their artistic merit, that’s censorship.

Is it censorship if I personally don’t host porn? If I make a business out of hosting videos, then yes. And that’s ok. I’m not saying that the pervasive censorship of things like hardcore pornography in western countries is necessarily bad, I just wonder why people act like it doesn’t happen, that censorship is something that only happens in other countries, or in rare circumstances when a big company oversteps their bounds.

Apple is especially complicit when they sell devices locked to their app store. They built this machinery of censorship; when states make Apple use it on their behalf, it's a predictable development.

Apple can still decide to sell devices that aren't so locked. It'd be a great answer to this criticism.

They don't HAVE to do business in China, do they? Who's holding the gun to their head?

The manufacturing

Could they not close iTunes to China while doing their manufacturing there?

You'd have to convince Apple's shareholders and board.

> The manufacturing

It would be smart for them to move a significant fraction of their manufacturing out of China. They have the money to do it, and do it successfully, and it would reduce their geopolitical risks.

Putting all their eggs in one authoritarian basket was a dumb idea.

They sure do have the money, but it would affect prices. Things aren’t made in China for no reason; it’s because it’s cheaper than everywhere else

The US has the first amendment. Can you give an example of something the US government wouldn't let Apple publish?

Trade secrets of other companies. HIPAA protected medical information. Classified information. Information related to the location of a person in the Witness Protection Program.

Classified information, threats, bomb making instructions (borderline), categories of pornography, pirated media, libelous statements, trade secrets. Like I said, we may all agree that those things shouldn't be published--almost the entire world would--but some of them may be legal in some jurisdictions and not others, and there's a whole lot of grey area around the edges.

Classified information is regularly published in the news media, including through Apple News.

Bomb making instructions are available in books on the iTunes Store. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/u-s-army-special-forces-gui...

In general you can legally publish pretty much anything in the USA besides child porn or copyright infringement, everywhere else has stricter laws though.

National security letters. And anything covered by an NDA we're including civil law.

There are numerous examples that have been given and I think all of them are disingenuous. Every single one of the examples harms people directly in some way. Burying a countries history intentionally is far different than censoring information that can harm people. Even under the 1st amendment we can actually get some of those examples. For example the media can publish classified but leaked material. The act of obtaining it without permission and releasing it to the public is illegal, but journalist are protected when reporting whistle blowing.

America is far from perfect, case in point the Red Scare, Japanese interment, civil rights atrocities. But that's not the issue. The issue is the tech companies specifically are forces that span the globe and those decisions and the ethical stances WILL and DO spill over into all societies they are apart of. Just look at oil companies, our desire for cheap oil and their desire for our money has driven wars, exploitation, corruption, etc.

It's easy for first world countries to ignore that because it happened else where, with tech companies though, those decisions leak into every country. Those policies are applied across the world. Apple's and other tech giants' stances on following the law regardless of morals and rights is applied everywhere. If that same law was here, they'd do it here.

That's the issue, not whether or not someone is putting medical information or classified information up for sale.

About 9% of Lebanon's parliament is the political party Hezbollah. They have a satellite TV station, Al-Manar. Americans hooking up satellite dishes to be able to watch it have been jailed, like Javed Iqbal.

As far as what the specific question is - what has Apple tried to publish that the US tried to publish, the answer is the same with regards to any of the PRC's giant domestic corporations vis a vis China. None of them tried to publish things blocked by their governments.

It's an odd thing to say amidst Assange's extradition, to bipartisan celebration. Of course they will get him for some technicality, as opposed to the attack on WikiLeaks - China is just less hypocritical about such things.

Also, if the US government doesn't want stuff available, they don't stop at pressuring Apple, Google or whatever. They get sites taken down. And they extradite or kidnap operators, and prosecute them. For example: DPR, Variety Jones, Kim Dotcom, DPR2 and Julian Assange. With a little research, I could list hundreds of them.

As far as I know, China has never done that, except for Chinese citizens that they find in ~friendly places. They did mount quite an attack on the Dalai Lama's organization. But that didn't include physical violence, to my knowledge.

Are you serious. They have detention camps for Muslims as we speak. The well known artist Ai Weiwei was imprisoned for his views. The very article we are talking about is buried history of a massacre committed by the Chinese government on 10000 of their own people.

Again as I have said before, doesn't mean america hasn't done/isn't doing wrong, but I think you should look more into Chinese policy and history.

Yes, you're right. I was focusing too much on censorship.

Edit: And with Assange and DPR2 in the news, I got triggered. Mea culpa.

Apple shouldn't be allowed to do business in China, because of their attrocious human rights record.

"Apple is following the laws of a country they do business in. Full stop. They are not censoring anything. The Chinese government is censoring."

This is not a reasonable argument when the basis of the issue is the nature of the governments filtering.

What's 'naive and childish' is making morally relative arguments as though US and China regulations are merely different on a few things and that's that.

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