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Comment by PureParadigm | Hacker News Reader

This is a complete double-standard. Telegram messages are user-generated content. Is Apple going to start blocking websites in the Safari app? I'm sure one could find a lot worse things than doxxing by using Safari.

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If China would threaten to ban iPhones, surely Apple will block websites.

The difference is that governments can block websites without Apple approval. But governments can't block app content without blocking the entire AppStore, so they have to reach Apple.

This isn't how technology works. I feel weird saying something so obvious to me but-

Servers/databases have IP addresses that can be blocked just as easy to stop and App.

Well, in the case of Telegram they've already tried pretty hard with the servers and databases route (hasn't worked).

And most servers nowadays are behind CDNs, so blocking an IP might block more than you actually wanted. And with eSNI being pushed, that might become even more difficult to effectively filter a specific service.

Telegram uses advanced techniques to avoid blocking. You can't just block few IP addresses and call it a day. AFAIK Telegram servers deliver IP addresses of proxy servers via silent Apple Push Notification. Censors have no way of blocking or intercepting those messages. They can only block Apple servers thus disrupting the entire Apple ecosystem from work.

That really isn't an advanced technique, that's just hiding behind Apple's skirts. The govt is no doubt quite willing to block Apple notifications, and Apple is obviously willing and able to kick apps from its notifications platform.

Russia for example is blocking all ESNI traffic... You either downgrade or get blocked. Which makes the big services shutdown of domain fronting so inexcusable, just kowtowing to China and every other regime.

We browsers are specifically excepted from the App Store rules on content. That’s basically because browser vendors don’t have a direct relationship with web site publishers, the way that a service provider like Facebook or Telegram has a relationship with their users that post content. That relationship creates a chain of responsibility.

That may be, but it does not refute the accusation that this is a double standard.

Well, yes it does. If you have signed up users with accounts, and you own the infrastructure for disseminating the content they produce, youre responsible for their posts and presence on your platform, and the content you are disseminating. None of that applies to web browsers, or IRC clients, or RSS feed clients, or podcast apps, or plenty of other client apps on the App Store.

It's a double standard in that web browsers are not considered responsible for the content they display while chat apps are considered responsible. These are two different standards being applied just because of a technicality about whose servers the data is hosted on (whether app owner = server owner). Would Apple be okay with allowing a third-party front-end to the Telegram servers? Safari can be that if you use the web app version of Telegram.

Messaging and content apps that are decoupled from distributed back end infrastructure are ok - IRC, Mastodon, email and there are many others. It’s a clear and consistent principle.

Maybe we need a chat protocol that does the same decoupling, then.

Do you think Apple would approve a client app to such a chat network?

If web browsers weren't grandfathered in then they would definitely not be allowed on the App Store and the web probably wouldn't exist today.

Do they allow e-mail clients there?

They already do in the form of email clients, IRC clients, mastodon clients, etc, etc.

Just off the top of my head, Apple allows for apps supporting IRC, RSS and Mastodon protocols. The latter came about in 2016, when these topics were just as relevant as they are now. Adding another protocol doesn’t seem difficult.

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