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Comment by fnordprefect | Hacker News Reader

This all comes down to the statement near the end: "I believe Apple should simply refuse to cooperate with oppressive governments"

Which is another way of saying "I believe Apple should either not operate in certain countries, or should try to operate in those countries in defiance of the laws of those countries."

The beef is primarily with the government. Companies are stuck in the middle -- either operate in compliance with local laws (even if they believe those laws are wrong) or don't operate there at all (since the third option of operating in contravention of local laws doesn't usually last long, and has painful consequences).

It would be interesting to know what the people who live in the countries think -- would they prefer not to have Apple products (or any other company's products) unavailable to them?

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> Which is another way of saying "I believe Apple should either not operate in certain countries, or should try to operate in those countries in defiance of the laws of those countries."

That's true, but it doesn't mean your beef is only with the governments, in exactly the same way that IBM's collusion during WWII can't be pinned solely on the German government. They can choose not to do business in that country, or to be as subversive as they can until they get kicked out. Not doing so is a choice.

And that choice has implications for the company in other countries, when they become dependent on the countries they do business in, which then start making demands of the company's behavior globally.

In this case it is largely an issue for governments.

Because what Apple is doing is not immoral or unethical but completely standard business practice. Every company who runs a marketplace sets its terms and distorts competition to benefit them.

In this case the author et al are arguing that Apple should be regulated differently and forced to operate a "level playing field" marketplace.

> Because what Apple is doing is not immoral or unethical

Prohibiting anti-censorship apps and content-based censorship of apps at the behest of undemocratic governments is not immoral or unethical?

> Every company who runs a marketplace sets its terms and distorts competition to benefit them.

Not every company monopolizes the distribution of a third party product to an identifiable discrete set of customers.

> In this case the author et al are arguing that Apple should be regulated differently and forced to operate a "level playing field" marketplace.

That would be a valid way to remove the moral issue by taking the ability to impose censorship out of the corporation's hands.

>That's true, but it doesn't mean your beef is only with the governments, in exactly the same way that IBM's collusion during WWII can't be pinned solely on the German government. They can choose not to do business in that country, or to be as subversive as they can until they get kicked out. Not doing so is a choice.

Same with South Africa and IBM during apartheid.

> Same with South Africa and IBM during apartheid.

And same thing with the U.S.A. today! How do you think that this war-mongering country will be seen a few decades from now? My guess is that it will be seen in the same light as the British Empire of a century ago. True, they had very nice things "inside", but they were totally callous on the countries that they controlled for economical interests (e.g., India, South Africa).

I wonder if one day we'll be regularly adding GitHub+ICE to this list.

I think the point is when it comes to censorship, taking the high road of refusing to collude with the government and ceasing to operate in the country (whether willingly or by non-compliance leading to being banned yourself) has ultimately the same effect as following the law. The communication which the govt wants to censor gets censored.

Taking that argument to its extreme, if someone hands you a gun and says "shoot this person for $100 or I'll do it myself", whether you do the shooting has "ultimately the same effect" of that person dying. Still, most people wouldn't.

> The communication which the govt wants to censor gets censored

Only if social dynamics evaluate as a zero sum game. Which is the exception, not the rule.

Law making is really a modelling exercise. The proof of the validity of a model is measured via the success of it's implementation. The extent of that success is a function of the ability of an authority to enforce those rules.

At surface level, centralizing mass media into a handful of channels - whether it's public broadcasting or market dominance through a single private actor - seems like a boon for authoritarians when it comes to censorship. But what censorship really accomplishes is just stripping away the convenience with which undesirable information is spread. It doesn't necessarily strip the wholesale spread of information.

History is rife with examples. In the 20th century there were clandestine newspapers (French newspaper La Libération for example) and pamphlets, or listening in on the BBC via longwave. In modern times, there's sneakernets, streetnets (Cuba, even North Korea), datacasting,... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_circumvent...)

When a big corporation doesn't play ball and seizes operating in a country, it only moves the needle in one direction, but never quite entirely to the end.

"Someone else will do it if I don't so I might as well get paid for assisting evil."

It's a common enough point of view. I disagree with it myself. There's plenty to discuss about just how evil it has to be before you can't live with it anymore. Those are interesting discussion. Binary discussions based on purity are usually pretty dull.

So do you also agree with sanctions against the population? In a sense, censorship is an inaction for a communications company, not a positive act of assistance. Apple doesn't get paid for actually censoring anything. They get paid for whatever legal services they can still sell to innocent civilians. Suppose they were selling food and the govt insists they refuse to sell food to an opposition group. Taking the high road and refusing to play ball is to starve everyone, not just the people the govt wants to starve.

> Apple doesn't get paid for actually censoring anything.

Yep they do. They don't do it they don't get paid. They decide to do it, they get paid. They can count the difference in revenue and profit from those two alternatives. It is literally one of the things they are getting paid to do. Can you live with doing that for monetary profit? You can certainly make arguments both ways.

This is not "sanctions against a population." Sanctions against a population is something more like blockading medical aid to Iraq through law for years prior to the invasion. Now Iran. It's certainly worthwhile weighing up the ethics of that, and there are dead bodies to count and trade off that decision, which obviously makes it a pretty unpleasant thing to consider, but that isn't what is under discussion here.

If apple refuse to do it, someone else will, to be sure. That's not a reason that should influence whether you can live with doing it or whether it's something you refuse.

> Yep they do. They don't do it they don't get paid. They decide to do it, they get paid. They can count the difference in revenue and profit from those two alternatives. I

I happily censor everything the government demands. Yet I do not get paid anything. Hence your logic is proven to be false. Specifically you have made a fallacy of omission.

Your perspective on what a sanction is indeed is too narrow to be very relevant. But you didn't answer, anyway. I guess you're against them as long as you can make the choice easy for yourself? But now stop dancing around and consider sanctions which restrict other forms of trade besides medical supplies.

I know that if Apple did not offer products in some of the countries I live(d), many more citizens would be using spyware-loaded phones—because they don’t have the skills or dedication to use a PinePhone (or even to clear their Android devices of preinstalled malware and maintain them in that state), because it’s infeasible for them to purchase an Apple device overseas, or because they just don’t know better—which would lower the bar for propaganda and censorship, ensuring people with inconvenient opinions are fewer and farther between.

It seems highly unlikely that oppressive governments would be compelled to stop being such if Apple decided to withdraw from their countries’ markets. Yes, it is profitable to allow and tax Apple’s sales, but by my reckoning not nearly enough to pursue through a fundamental shift in political climate. (Yes, some citizens will wonder what happened, but considering Apple’s minor market share and domestic media’s capability to spin the story in favour of the leading party, public opinion would hardly be a factor either.)

To allude to an essay I read recently, a withdrawal in this context would be somewhat akin to Apple acting like Star Trek Federation (first do no harm, avoid mistakes at all costs), while remaining engaged, preserving the opportunity to enact a positive change laterally through non-obvious implications of attractive technology with superior security, would be them acting more like Culture.

Apple could have avoided this entire issue by not forcefully inserting itself between the app developers and their users.

The solution is incredibly simple.

Allow the iPhone to be fully unlocked, which makes it possible to install any software.

Then, Apple isn't in the position to apply the censorship to begin with, and it can both allow for a way to install these apps, and follow local rules.

It's not some issue that everyone else has to contend with. You can buy a Pixel or an LG in China and install anything you want on it. It's only Apple that has this issue.

> Allow the iPhone to be fully unlocked, which makes it possible to install any software.

There isn't a disclaimer in the world that would make this worth it. If someone bricks their phone with a dodgy app after "fully unlocking", they WILL be going after Apple, not the app developer.

I consider the locked nature of Apple devices a feature and an useful at that.

We've had unlocked desktop PCs for decades and the only "bricking" you can imagine is BIOS updates going wrong, and even that is nowadays going away with things like fallback BIOSes.

It's perfectly possible to allow arbitrary third-party software without exposing the device to a risk of bricking.

It’s possible to compromise a device at the firmware level - as evidenced by the recent UEFI attacks in the wild - but the better comparison would be ransomeware. That’s shut down businesses, school systems, hospitals, etc. and is completely prevented by the iOS security model. Whether or not I like the impact on flexibility, there are inarguable benefits to the users from having devices which cannot be resold, permanently compromised, etc.

Whether or not the uefi allows you to boot custom code has no impact on whether or not permanently compromising the uefi is possible.

Apple doesn’t lawfully sell in Iran; Its products are still ubiquitous in the upper middle class.

Aside, OT: Cool username, fnordprefect. It's so clever I wish I had thought of it.

Except for the prescedent set by the Nuremberg trials.

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