Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
blog.emojipedia.org
blog.emojipedia.org
I live in Hong Kong and have the latest iOS updates. I still have the Taiwanese flag... same for all my colleagues, both on personal and work phones.
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/10/05/taiwan-flag-emoji-disa...
It is also limited to just the keyboard and not enforced in 3rd party apps or websites:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20903613/apple-hiding-tai...
https://www.cnet.com/news/how-eight-pixels-cost-microsoft-mi...
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=42...
It makes me uncomfortable to have China be able to influence all these other global countries into global (or in this case localized) censorship. Hollywood, News Companies, anything else that China invests heavily has no choice but to fall in line with the censorship.
On another note, it was refreshing to see South Park creators giving some love to Chinese censorship.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2019-10-...
Free economics tends to promote liberal democracy.
This is debatable of course. Historical patterns are complex:
https://www.economist.com/buttonwoods-notebook/2017/11/06/wh...
Of course, when I set my region to Israel, the Palestine flag is still available. Likewise for Serbia and Kosovo.
On a related note, now you have movies with different scenes in China.
https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the_extra_looper_scenes_y
https://kotaku.com/why-many-in-china-hate-iron-man-3s-chines...
This later led to Poland going Atlantis, when MS removed its timezone instead of moving it to another timezone.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20061027-00/?p=29...
https://content.spiceworksstatic.com/service.community/p/pos...
Taipei,
According to the article, even this is still 'out of compliance,' because it should say 'Taipei, Taiwan China,' blown away this is how the booking page appears on the Delta website when loaded from the United States.
Makes me worry, localization takes effort, and effort often leads to blanket solutions that 'check everyone's boxes.' The most worrying examples of this in my opinion have been the superhero movies of the past decade. These blockbuster franchises were all written to accommodate distribution in China (and worldwide for that matter) as a goal. This led to simplified dialogues for translation, story lines that avoided pushing controversial buttons, and the result was a decade of moderately entertaining and decidedly safe cinema. Sure, blockbusters are not the best barometer for a nation's ability to push artistic boundaries, but they have historically spoken to the sentiments, dreams, and challenges of a time. Unfortunately with the sequels and superheros era, it seems the tone has been one of risk-averse idealism, which strikes me as a particularly low form of entertainment, entertainment that is truly disposable, unable and unwilling to stand the test of time. Possibly straying into problems with corporate consolidations, but I think it's all related as larger corporations tend to take smaller risks in efforts to appeal to broader audiences. If very few companies are able/willing to tell China no, censorship features become acceptable, and then they become normal, and then maintaining two branches becomes burdensome, so then censorship becomes the compliant option, and at that point the dream of technology empowering regular people to do amazing things, to become real superheros, fighting corruption, injustice and oppression, that dream will be truly dead. Think about how much things have changed since the Arab spring... it happens quickly.
https://qz.com/224821/see-how-borders-change-on-google-maps-...
The U.S. has no laws requiring specific depictions, nor does its government cajole movie producers to depict regions in certain ways. Many countries are similar. Map makers choose borders largely based on what they expect their audience wants or needs.
'South Park' Scrubbed From Chinese Internet After Critical Episode https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/south-park-banned-chi...
[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/de...
Since I assume there is no recourse for these users on a censorship level, is there such a thing as a class action lawsuit for removing a feature in Hong Kong?
Nonsense. The existence of proprietary platforms in no way reduces the possibility of free and open platforms. Using iMessage or Facebook Messenger or any other closed communication platform is a choice you can opt out of right now.
Sometimes I wonder if this all-too-common "the open Internet is dead" defeatism isn't some kind of false flag to make people think the open Internet is actually dead so they don't try to leave their walled garden. That is absolutely not the case and people need to stop saying it.
Yea they want to head back (now that they realize nobody cared), but they pulled out of China entirely back in 2011 over censorship.
For-profit corporations are systemically unfit to solve this problem on their own. We should stop wishing for them to be something they cannot consistently be.
I bet people have already begun weaning themselves off Apple products!
Just kidding. Most people expect others to do something, but take no direct action themselves. Pity.
Every country imposes requirements on manufacturers of devices or service providers that some person(s) might object to.
If you choose to do business in that country, you play ball, or you leave. How you pick which ones that are tolerable enough to live with is the question -- and don't imagine that it's moral principles that define it. It's how much a company wants to stomach the loss of that business.
Saudi Arabia (and many others) prevent the installation of Whats App, etc. on phones activated there.
Israel (and the US by the way) censor imagery of certain places on the maps shown in those countries.
Japan for chrissake even forces devices to emit a camera shutter sound when a picture is taken.
And you're singling out China for censoring the Taiwan flag emoji?
How about those other cases? Where does it start / end? Are you saying engineers should quit over every one of these infringements?
Do you have anything more I can read about the Isrealy/USA map censorship?
Source?
This is actually pretty cool, I'm always paranoid that I'll end up on someone else's photo without knowing.
But yes, any true moral posturing they make is baloney.
This seems to suggest the populace is at fault, wanting and buying cheap gadgets no matter what the consequences are?
In truth, I think most people are simply unaware of the many problems caused both by consumerism, and the moral spinelessness of pretty much all large corporations and how that is brought about by market forces. Even in politics I'd say that there is, besides some malfeasance, also limited understanding of complicated issues. (Remember the congressman asking Zuckerberg how Facebook made any money?)
China is extremely attractive to businesses because of its gigantic market. There are tons of cars to be sold in a country with over one billion people. Tons of phones. There are tons of chinese hotel guests, chinese search requests, etc.
It's completely reasonable for larger countries with different values to expect customization that comport to local markets. At the end of the day China isn't forcing Apple or any other companies to make changes in global markets.
All I know is that I'm glad the TPP is dead and I'll be happy if nobody with the last names Clinton or Bush ever sits in the White House again.
I say this as someone who leans more toward the 'woke' side of the present culture wars.
At the same time it's a good gauge for them to figure out what else they can do.
Start with "hey man don't show that one pic" and the company figures "it's one pic, whatever we're not really compromising our values".
A few more steps and then it seems less dramatic when it comes to "give us that information on that one user"... and so on.
Personally I would expect an external social credit score coming soon too. It doesn't have to be all encompassing like the social credit score, but good luck getting a job with a company who wants to work with China if you're on the list...
That has already happened. Only instead of handing over data on specific users upon request, Apple has simply handed over all iCloud data of all its (mainland) Chinese users to a government owned company:
The frog, in reality, just jumps out of the pot when the water gets too hot.
If one would never hear about Taiwan, would we really "know" it exists?
It's a sort of reverse branding exercise. If you can reduce exposure as much as possible there's not going to be a lot of sentiment for supporting the cause. What would be of Palestine today without the exposure that has been directed at it.
I frequently come across, in America, people who are genuinely surprised that Taiwan is a sovereign state.
Most countries have petty border disputes.
A famous country occupies territory in Cuba where it built a military prison. Cuba claims that the military presence is occupation of territory it rightfully owns. The famous country refuses to leave; it claims it only leases it based on a hundred-year-old document, and sends $4k checks yearly. Cuba denies, and refuses to cash the checks.
Famous country also blacklisted Cuba from trade and uses the prison for illegal detentions. Talk about bullying.
Cuba started a war for independence. The US sunk their own ship, the USS Maine to get an excuse to go to war (according to the Northwoods document declassified in 1998). This kicks off the Spanish-American war where Teddy Roosevelt rises to prominence (the perhaps biggest point of note was the butchering of whole villages, mass rapes, and what were essentially concentration camps in the Philippines).
After liberating Cuba, the US government drafted the Platt Amendment as conditions for giving up the Cuban territory they had won from Spain. There were 7 conditions and one of those was the establishment of Guantanamo Bay. Fidel Castro and his chief gestapo butcher Che Guevara overthrow the previous government and then proceed to break most of the other conditions (though it could be argued that the US should have exercised article 3 and prevented the coup).
Cuba later argues that the Vienna convention on treaties overrules the previous agreement, but the Vienna convention is explicitly non-retroactive (and more to the point, agreements due to a war are by their very nature coercive). It could be argued that the US created an excuse for war isn't very savory and most Americans of the time would have opposed involvement if an honest case had been made (I agree with this). If they had not, it's most likely that Cuba would have remained a Spanish colony and that point is immaterial.
International law doesn't leave room for "pettiness" in this case. If the US were trying to pretend the Cuban government didn't exist and was trying to force non-US entities to comply with that non-reality, that go far beyond petty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_Naval_Base#Guan...
Instead, I think China does this sort of thing to control discourse and/or to send constant reminders that certain lines should not be crossed or there will be consequences.
Both are bad things, but they are different types of bad thing.
Often because it’s the only power some groups can exert on others (in this case China's gov to western companies) so they push it as far as they can into the realm of ridiculousness. Plus people get job promotions or feel-good emotions about "doing something".
Eventually you run out of legitimate things to ban so you expand the scope. Then you can start banning people who complain about bannings, which naturally generating groups with victim complexes warranting more bannings, etc.
This is not unique to China.
That means little. The US has de-facto diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and has made official commitments to its defense against threats (which realistically could only ever come from the PRC), such as selling it arms. The weirdness and official ambiguity here are driven by the PRC's sensitivities, and do not represent any real commitment to the PRC's position.
Obviously, at some point realpolitik caught up and they reversed their stance, though they continue to help Taiwan because... more realpolitik.
The only newsworthy thing is that China's a big enough market that it can compel vendors to comply.
We would never be like that.. I mean, we're better than them. We're number one.
Taiwan is the result of a civil war. No one says Americans are petty when they try to remove Confederate flags or when Germany bans the Nazi flag.
The PRC is the result of the civil war. The ROC never stopped existing nor did it start to exist as the result of the civil war.
How would we feel, in that world, if the US government wanted to censor people mentioning Florida? Of course there would be complicated questions about whether that censorship was ethical or helpful, and about the government's real motivations for proposing it. But I think it would be clear to everyone involved that "kindergarten levels of pettiness" wasn't the right starting point for understanding those motivations.
A much simpler real world analogy would be the DPRK forcing censorship of the South Korean flag, or the ROK doing the same to North Korea. Or something involving Israel and Iran. Or India and Pakistan.
These are all real things. There shouldn't ever be a reason to hide the fact that they exist no matter if todays reality wasn't todays reality.
They had a civil war and the other side fled to Taiwan. This is a major issue for China.
From: https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-taiwan/
Why should Apple be expected to take a political stance at odds with the official Chinese and US government policies?
Taiwan is not part of China. Period.
“The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.”
1. US sells $8B of fighter jets to Taiwan (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/08/approves-8bn-sale-66-...)
2. US passes the TAIPEI act, which outlines the US's strategy in dissuading Taiwan's few remaining diplomatic allies from switching recognition to China. (https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/340...)
3. Visa free travel in the US for Taiwanese citizens (https://www.export.gov/article?id=Taiwan-Visa-Requirements)
The US might officially not recognize Taiwan as a country, but would it sell $8B of military equipment to a country it truly believed to be China?
I'll put the emphasis on "Chinese position"
It is really a political stance to have Unicode Emoji 1.0 as a feature?
This is scarey.
Yes. While seemly small, removing the emoji is an instance of political censorship.
I'm not supporting any political stance here, but just saying that it's a bit weird to ban a symbol that was part of the mainland's history as well, and on its own, carries more historical significance than just Taiwan independence.
But according to the PRC the ROC no longer exists (that's what they mean by "Taiwan is part of China" and I'm guessing that they see the flag used by people opposing the (PRC) government, so the standard procedure is to ban it.
I'm curious, though, if this comes from a specific demand or if, for example Apple has moved to releasing the same version of iOS in HK and the mainland (I'm guessing that the flag isn't in the mainland's version of iOS here, but I don't know for a fact).
Germany bans the swastika.
I do think it is well within the sovereign right of a nation to ban symbols of a competing government. In Taiwan’s case it is claiming itself as a rightful government to China, which is actually somewhat different than simply a historical symbol. Allowing it can be a tacit acknowledgement of legitimacy.
It is of increasing relevancy as imperialist governments around the world put pressure on minority populations. Just yesterday the Trump admin opened the doors to Turkish expansion into a Kurdish region of northern Syria.
1. http://www.unthinkingly.com/2006/12/07/ubuntu-in-kurdish/
Now they're aiding the repression of an entire nation trying to defy a much more tyrannical government?
Regarding Taiwan, I haven't been there, but from what I've seen/read about the country and spoken to the people from there, their situation seems like such a shame too. They deserve better recognition. China has long been acting like a petty schoolyard bully, "If you're their friend you can't be our friend!"
I know I shouldn't be feeling this way about an entire people, but this whole situation is making me cold towards Chinese people in general, for letting such a government carry on like this for so long.
Taiwan’s partial recognition is due to pressure from China, not any logical impossibility of recognizing two different countries that officially claim to be one.
-Order of Malta. De Jure recognition, no territory or population to speak of. Basically a forgotten joke country left over from a bygone era.
-Trasnistaria. Has population, land, flag, collects taxes. Only recognized by Russia. There's a few Russian backed puppets like this, I won't name them all.
-Taiwan. Already discussed.
-Hong Kong. Mainland Chinese media calls the protestors terrorists. Yet another example of "terrorist" meaning simply "whoever the establishment wants to de-legitimize". If you follow the CCP narrative, the thing they care about isn't Democracy but separatism. "One China" is about not recognizing Taiwan and HK as a matter of ethno-nationalist principal.
-Palestine. Recognized by majority of UN countries. Still not recognized by US, Israel, and associated power block. Why? Because of the stupid belief that recognition will somehow legitimate it.
-ISIS. At their peak they had a sizeable chunk of land, a flag, a capital, civic functions like a court system, an oil industry, handed out passports, were fighting a conventional land war using conventional (not terrorist/guerilla) tactics, had a uniformed army, and the word "state" was right there in the name. But don't you dare call them a state lest someone mistake you for a terrorist sympathizer.
This is why I subscribe to De Facto nationhood instead. A nation is a nation when it satisfies the following properties:
-A plot of land with well defined borders.
-A permanent population on said land.
-A Monopoly on violence over said land.
-An organization capable of credibly making peace, declaring war, and otherwise accepting agreements with other nations.
The last one is tricky as it only specifies the capability not the actualization. For example, if the organization agrees to peace but the individual factions of the army keep fighting then this condition is not satisfied and what you have is a stateless warlord situation. For another example, the ISIS situation clearly had an organization which was capable of agreeing to a surrender or appointing an ambassador, but they never wanted to or were allowed to. The condition is still satisfied even though they never did it.
Almost no one, including the Order itself, considers the Sovereign Military Order of Malta a country; it's the usual textbook example of a sovereign entity that is not a state/country by those who see it as sovereign (a point on which there is considerable dispute, despite the claim in its name and it's wide diplomatic interactions and grants of extraterritoriality, and, for it's headquarters, concurrent sovereignty with Italy.)
It's basically a NGO with a sui generis diplomatic status and disputed (among scholars) international legal status.
That's playing a bit fast and loose with the facts there. ISIS conducted public executions, crucifixions, desecration of cultural sites and enslaved people for a labor force. That's textbook asymmetric warfare/terrorism.
Edit: if you look at the font in question, it does have flags for England and Aruba, for example, so offering the flags doesn't imply that you are recognizing the places as sovereign states.
Really? Does your government officially call Taiwan "a country"? Show us the proof. Considering only 15 countries in this universe still do this, it's almost safe to guess NO.
(Beijing won the civil war in 1950.)
Today, in 2019, Taiwan still does not recognize China.
Recognition is a chip in the game of geopolitics.
China—the people and country—are spectacular. China—the Party—is an malevolent force obsessed with self-preservation. Such is the nature of autocratic regimes.
A quote from Czech dissident Václav Havel bears repeating:
> The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies. Depriving people of information is called making it available...the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.
It's probably somewhat risky strategically, but they likely realize they're now strong enough to do such things with absolute impunity, and it will make their eventual victory that much sweeter.
But the US has some confusing things too going on, like people from American Samoa are considered US nationals but they aren't US Citizens. They still get US passports, but can't vote, etc. I guess they aren't technically citizens of any country then but aren't completely stateless since still considered a national. It's like they aren't really citizens anywhere but are kinda like a half citizen in a way since they still get a passport. John Oliver did a segment on this, https://youtu.be/CesHr99ezWE
Same identical country, different rules.
Just a very odd concept to someone from North America. If you fly to Miami you are allowed to visit New York or Seattle all the way across the country. Same with Canada.
I know Mexico has some odd things like that too though, you can visit border towns or cruise ports but if you want to go so much more inland you need a Visitor Permit called a FMM, or tourist card some refer to it as. Read conflicting amount of miles, seems about 12 miles though in. So seems like if your cruise final departure was in Mexico and you flew back home you might need to worry about it, but a port of call at the beach seems like most wouldn't need it. However read also flights and cruises will also include it with your ticket, but if you were taking a road trip across Mexico you'd for sure need to get one yourself it seems. But seems more like a tax than anything, since not the same as a visa.
For the one China thing, see Wikipedia[1]. Essentially, China split into the PRC (mainland China, referred to as just "China") and the ROC (referred to as "Taiwan"). The split was caused by civil war[2]; each side essentially views themselves as "China", the other side being a rebellion. (Though I think Taiwan is split on this, and I believe some of the politics there acknowledges the more defacto reality of two countries.)
Mainland China (the PRC), AFAICT, in propaganda really, really wants you to believe that there is really only one China (them), and that Taiwan is part of that. Hence why they would want the removal of the Taiwan flag emoji. I think to anyone with their eyes open, the de facto state of things is that there exists two countries. But b/c mainland China has a lot of political weight, and only wants everyone else to not recognize Taiwan as a real, independent nation, there is a lot of political dancing-about-the-point to maintain relations with two countries but without outright calling it as it is.
Hong Kong is weird. It used to be a British territory[3]:
> Hong Kong became a colony of the British Empire after Qing China ceded Hong Kong Island at the end of the First Opium War in 1842. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War, and was further extended when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898. The territory was transferred to China in 1997.
As you see, that "99-year lease" expired, and it's now part of China again. Hong Kong has operated sort of (but not fully) separately from China, see "One country, two systems"[4]. Then we come to the recent Hong Kong protests[5], in particular:
> The inclusion of mainland China in the amendment is of concern to different sectors of Hong Kong society. Pro-democracy advocates fear the removal of the separation of the region's jurisdiction from mainland Chinese laws administered by the Communist Party, thereby eroding the "one country, two systems" principle in practice since the 1997 handover.
Hence, I think, the rebellions. They (Hong Kong) are worried (I believe rightly) that they'll lose what freedoms they have.
> US has some confusing things too going on, like people from American Samoa are considered US nationals but they aren't US Citizens. They still get US passports, but can't vote, etc. I guess they aren't technically citizens of any country then but aren't completely stateless since still considered a national.
Yep. This never really made sense to me, since supposedly one of the reasons we fought for independence in the first place was things like "taxation without representation". I think you have it mostly correct: they are technically "US nationals", not "citizens". It doesn't make "sense" to me, in that it seems against the principles on which we were founded.
These sort of apply here: "The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is a matter of perspective: it all depends on the observer and the verdict of history." "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." You have to view this with the context of history, and that there are multiple entities trying to write very different histories if they emerge the victor.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-China_policy
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong
edit: I just checked, it's accessible from mainland China, though quite slow.
The ROC government has for some time used some variation of "Taiwan (Republic of China)" when using English - passports, visa entry stamps, embassies, etc.
Status re Taiwan is unlikely to radically change in near future, as far as my understanding of the situation goes.
As an aside, while in times like these any information may turn out to be propaganda, this looks like a thoughtful analysis of the current situation in Hong Kong (Google Translate works adequately with it): https://gateway.pinata.cloud/ipfs/QmUg7C7s7umWp24Qr9x9kc68zE...
https://twitter.com/markmackinnon/status/1152241649893945346
I doubt it. The PRC is far more important to Apple than Apple is to the PRC. If I had to guess, I'd say the government didn't talk to Apple at all, but Apple has a department whose tasks is to proactively ensure their products do not offend Chinese government sensitivities.
That’s just the great power of influence over an American company, in spite of the clear position from its own government regarding Taiwan.
Say goodbye to all those ideals of universal rights and freedom in the cyber world as it was once long ago theorized. Somehow what sci-fi cyberpunk became almost true without bionic implants nor anarchy in the streets.
It's a really difficult problem. The world can be rightfully indignant at America's post-war history of barely paying attention to the mess it makes. From the inside, foreign policy has all this classist baggage that makes it really had to touch from the left.
Censoring an emoji is just insane.
The story also reminds me of one dev's solution to conflicting instructions on how he was to label a button. So, he hard-coded special rules for each individual boss and both thought they got what they wanted.
In practice, their official policy lets Taiwan exist as an independently governed region more than the US even allows Hawaii or Cuba to be independent. Even Canada has more of a attachment to the US and its laws than Taiwan does.
This is probably a fact lost on most foreigners unaware of the situation.
If China really wanted to assimilate Taiwan they would not have such deeply connected bilateral trade, cross-border tourism, or give access to their market by Taiwanese companies like Foxconn, HTC, Asus, and hundreds more.
China does impose tourism restrictions to pressure Taiwan, but if they really wanted to crush Taiwan they can easily do so without raising so much as a hand gun.
The funny thing is armchair Chinese nationalists (people on the other side of the planet reading hacker news) are more up in arms about this than actual Taiwanese people because the de-jure stance has always been like this, and the de-facto independence of Taiwan has been pretty stable.
To the point that the last US president is from there.
Professionally and philosophically it's another interesting wrinkle in the implications of the emoji technology.
It reminded of something we saw a couple years ago when Apple changed the depiction of the gun emoji [0]. Interestingly, that blog post's proposed solution (note: same author as the OP article):
> Hide it.
This speaks to how fragile Unicode is, that things that were written in the past may so easily be changed in the future (like the replacement for Taiwan in China) or hidden in various ways. Another article mentions how emoji might be used by e.g. fascists to minimize uncomfortable concepts [1]. Even after you apply Hanlon's razor, there's still opportunity for good old-fashioned miscommunication [2].
[1] specifically mentions the mosquito emoji being introduced for health awareness, but what if we eradicate Malaria or even the mosquito as a whole, and then the irrelevant emoji is replaced with something not widely feared or hated, or maybe even beloved (like another social awareness campaign)? Then there'd be a lot of "Man I hate :positive-thing:" messages out there.
I'm not saying let's ban emoji, it's just interesting to think about. Still, I hope the whitewashing effect mentioned in [1] doesn't gain more ground, here or otherwise.
[0]: https://blog.emojipedia.org/apple-and-the-gun-emoji/ (discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12240386)
[1]: https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2018/07/the-absolute-denial-of-... (discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17552067)
[2]: https://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-m... (discussed briefly, couldn't find a better thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11446047)
Unicode does not define code points for individual country flags. It defines 26 code points "Regional Indicator Symbol Letter A" through "Regional Indicator Symbol Letter Z" and implementations use that to represent two-letter ISO codes as the region or country's flag. To use a more neutral example, one implementation might recognize the combination of SU to represent the Soviet flag while another might not.
This is more than a political dodge by the Unicode Consortium (though it is that too), it also uses fewer code points than the 200+ that would be needed for all countries, plus it allows new countries to be represented without a new Unicode version.
Two days later: Apple reinstates ROC flag emoji in HK apps just like the U-turn they did with HKmap.live
The situation is markedly different from Hong Kong.
This is from people that actively try to avoid being insensitive. But it means there are always limitations in perspective. It requires that any one person represent the 'truth' for an entire group of people, and never understanding if that 'truth' has consensus. Cohesion in American society means never challenging the consensus of someone representing a group that you aren't a part of.
TIL, is it really called tofu?
(Taiwan should change their flag to �. Checkmate, CCP!)
* https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thewholeview
* https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=surajama
* https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thrwy_01
* https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=7u5432throw
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.
Edit: see reply below.
The game is rigged.
Maybe it would be possible to flag shill accounts?
If my boss/product manager wanted me to do something like this, I'd be calling them out for shitty politics, and telling them they need to find a new engineer because I'd quit immediately - and likely incite others to come with me.
Maybe I have a higher sense of morality than others, but I'm no shill for China's power over Taiwan. I can use my entitlement/privilege as an engineer to say "fuck off" to anyone who wants me to do things I find immoral. Furthering the needs of a power hungry regime looking to assert dominance over others? Nope. I spend all my day working to further democracy and freedom, not to enable free thought and self-determination to be squashed.
Whoever coded this change and approved this PR, shame on you.
I'd probably have made the same decision as you (I'm fortunate to have a safety net), but many people don't have that luxury.
Getting fired for not acceding to a demand like this isn't the result of an individual manager making a decision but the entire apparatus of corporate governance coming to bear on the person. It can be only be meaningfully resisted and fought with an equally organized group of engineers.
If you're on Hacker News, and our industry's willingness to compromise on fundamental values to maintain access to "the world's largest market" upsets you -
Join or start a union.
Disclaimer: I work for Apple, but I don't work on iOS.
For engineer it’s just another rule, they get update like “locale X passed the law to do Y, update software to comply”. It’s not their job to do legal or ethical evaluations, and it’s unreasonable to expect it from them.
If you think it’s obvious, and any engineer should be well-equipped to do so, there is a story from inside the Big G. When Google employees had a protest-du-jour about Google planning to implement restricted version of search in China, it turned out that many Google employees of Chinese descent actually supported implemented restricted search in China arguing that restricted search is better than no search. Now, if you were an internatialization engineer working on restricting features, how would you evaluate claims of both groups and is it your responsibility to do so?
Edit: latest demographic data from Wiki, from 2010, says 63% Asian and 26% Chinese
What makes you think that it was an engineer in the US who made the change? Apple's got employees all over the world, including in China. If anything, my first guess was the update was made from a team based in shanghai or shenzhen, since the emoji is already banned there.
And therein lies the problem. We want to blame a programmer, or a flack. But it's never one or two people.
The real issue is a bureaucratic system or corporate culture that allows things like this to happen. Everyone can point fingers at someone else and absolve themselves internally of blame.
Taiwan should block shipments to Apple of whatever parts are made there that Apple needs. And I say this as a shareholder.
That is extremely viable how this could of played out in a tech firm. From there, such actions are in management hands. Management have a predisposition towards company loyalty and head nodding over morals and ethics - not all obviously, just from my experience - more inclined over engineers. When you have such a facility, then if management misuse it, is that the engineers fault all the time?
Let's not presume shame upon some engineer(s) who may of done such a change for other morally good reasons only to see their work abused for something they would never of intended their work to be used for. Then imagine that person reading presumptions that it was coded solely for this in mind and the hate bestowed upon them, with them already feeling bad about such abuse (as they will probably see it) and perversion of their good intentioned work.
There might have been several resignations over this change - you do not have the full picture. However, any number of resignations would not impact this directive being implemented.
The one to implement it - yes, they are anti-democratic. But we also need to acknowledge that one of the richest, most influential institutions on the planet is also anti-democratic...
Or, hell, maybe the person is an American citizen, not even of Chinese descent, and agrees with the PRC's stance on Taiwan.
(Frankly I probably wouldn't get along with someone like this, but at a company the size of Apple, there are bound to be more than a few.)
If it's your company, maybe you have that privelege. But in the USA you're probably an "at will" employee. I would admire your moral stance but you'd probably get fired.
Refusing to do work you're asked of will probably only get the company to find someone who is willing.
So you're better off complying and using your talents to find other ways to allow users to circumvent this issue if they really wanted to.
Really, the pressures should be on Apple and on China, not some low level engineer who had to write the code for this.
You want to ensure your design team and product matches the demographic you're trying to target so you can choose which ones are approved for that area. Completely reasonable, not a malicious feature to build either.
Except when it prevents you from selling your device in China.
It could be configuration. Emoji settings are configured by region. So maybe someone with no dev experience could go into the iOS deployment package and simply change some config files around.
The same that made Adobe cancel Venezuelans accounts today: the power of government and regulation.
According to the book "Bullshit Jobs" [1] there are quite some people around the world -especially in FIRE and IT- who (partly) perform useless or downright harmful jobs.
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
This seems to be US policy since Nixon's visit to China. The difference is now we're just more open about it.
China is actual, undisputed world leader. They don't tolerate other nations telling them what to do on their land, and like economical expansion to neighbor states. They can afford it.
I don't see parallels.
I am confused tho, as an NBA fan, should I support the Rockets now that the Chinese are boycotting it. Or should I boycott them cause they bowed down to Chinese pressure?
If you didn't intend a parallel between 1930s Germany and 2019 China, there is, again in my opinion only, probably a better way of making your point.
You're comparing this to an official policy of appeasing German and Italy's annexation of territory (and various other violations of the treaty), in an era of raising fascism and communism? Really?
It's fine if you want to say that this is bad, worrisome or even evil, but lets call it what it is: the strong bully the weak. This is how the world works.
So far China has largely been about flexing its economic power. This seems completely reasonable; why shouldn't they negotiate hard? I agree it's terrifying for those in the region that they could flex their military..but that's what superpowers do.
It's a political issue. As far as I can tell, the sitting US President has, at least, identified the issue.
When that happens you don’t want to be on the PRC’s most wanted list.
The policy did fail because Hitler was going to go to war no matter what but that is only with 20/20 hindsight.
Appeasement wasn't the right policy, it was literally the only policy available to the UK at the time.
I agree that we need to take a hard line with China though, I can't see how this is going to end given their massive increase in military size and technology plus we are all so tied together financially that we could cripple each other long before a shot is fired.
My friends seem to think that war is the only way this will end and I've got a young son so I sincerely hope not.
This also means that you cannot easily add non-existent countries. They do not have country codes
I’d prefer that they altered the flags of despotic countries in some way that indicated their inferior ruling system.