Just another reason why you don't want companies like Apple and Google to be the gatekeepers. Technology can set you free, but only if you let it. If you don't, it can easily become a new tool of oppression.
The problem here lies with Pakistan, not Apple and Google.
An alternate App Store operating in Pakistan would be subject to the same unjust laws as them. The most Apple and Google can do is leave the market. There's an argument for that, but that doesn't make those apps available in Pakistan, and, more importantly, doesn't end the oppression of Ahmadiyya Muslims in Pakistan.
There are arguments against gatekeeping tech companies, but this isn't one of them.
From the article:
> The PTA also ordered shut a US-based Ahmadi site, TrueIslam.com, threatening its administrators with criminal charges that carry a $3 million fine. The decision may not be enforceable, since the people who run the site, including Zafar, do not live in Pakistan.
I don't think so. Why wouldn't Pakistan simply require them to block it anyway?
> ...since the people who run the site, including Zafar, do not live in Pakistan
Not relevant. In this case, Apple and Google do business in Pakistan. You can argue they need to leave the market. If so, let's hear it. (Personally, I don't think that would have an impact or be the right way to go even if it did.)
The Pakistani government can require that Apple and Google block certain apps and require that they maintain their ability to do so.
I don't dispute that Apple and Google do gatekeeping. They do. We can discuss the pros and cons of it. But that is simply not issue here.
In general, we do not see governments doing this, no.
For example, I am sure that some people in Pakistan own intel/windows computers.
But Pakistan is not making laws that require every single intel/windows computer to block certain content, at the hardware level of the PC.
That is something that seems pretty difficult to enforce on all PCs.
If phones worked more like PCs, then it is likely that they would enjoy similar benefits.
Android already allows side loading apps which don't have to come from an app store.
Would they, though? How can you stop arbitrary APK downloads from the internet? Or a site that constantly changes its domain? Look at how blocking places like The Pirate Bay goes.
I think there is more to be said for the impact of Apple and Google leaving the Pakistani market than you grant.
Google is willing to leave the Australian market because they don't want to share revenues with the newspapers they skim for headlines, but they will suppress religious minorities to comply with theocratic governments.
These Western companies do not hold any values.
You might as well be talking about any of a zillion laws within 195 different countries that one might find objectionable, it's exactly the same 'problem.'
What's the premise? Pakistan doesn't get to decide their own laws? That's identical to saying that Pakistan shouldn't get to decide how networks operate in their territory.
And if we're going there, no nations in Europe should be allowed to determine their own speech laws or restrictions because I largely disagree with them, and they also shouldn't be allowed to control or restrict any networks that operate within their borders under any circumstances, and that includes barring them from limiting any content for any reason. Fun game.
There are a lot of really bad nations and a lot of really, really bad laws out there. What's the plan for all of that? Because the Internet is a tiny little fraction of that problem and it's tied up in the fact that people outside of a nation generally don't get to dictate what happens inside of that nations, that goes for trade / culture / laws / religion / et al.
Is the problem Pakistan's culture? Government? Religion? What's the plan for dealing with the first order problem there, given the restrictions on the Internet are distant down the line from that. Bar Pakistan from dictating their own culture? Invade Pakistan and re-orient their government?
I don't expect anyone will dare to go anywhere near any of this intellectually. The easy thing is to just say: but Pakistan shouldn't do a thing regarding the Internet. Cool, now what? You've said it, now what do you plan to do about the way the nation of Pakistan operates, because that's actually the central matter here. They are de facto the gatekeeper for the Internet within their sovereign territory, period. See: China and how they operate the Internet within their territory. Would anyone confuse whether China is the gatekeeper there? Of course not.
An extension of all of this is: companies and individuals should never trade with bad nations, because they have to comply with local laws to do so typically (and that can facilitate oppression and tyranny in such nations). That's identical to Google & Co. complying with what Pakistan tells them to, in order to operate within Pakistan's sovereign territory. So, what's a bad nation? Which ones go on the list? What kind of trade is acceptable? Who decides that? More fun.
Of course, a nation state that's truly committed to the warpath can always escalate and ban more stuff, but that's a costly activity and there's a lot of friction associated with doing so
This attitude pervades tech-inclined folk's discussions of politics, as if the Internet is somehow above the laws and culture of the places where it operates, especially with regard to the global south. Just because you either don't comprehend or don't respect a given culture enough to learn about it, doesn't mean it no longer applies to you.
I of course disagree with what's happening here, but nothing Pakistan is doing here is illegal or surprising.
I understand the point you're trying to make: technologists undervalue national sovereignty when it's from a non-Western / less-democratic country.
But try to appreciate parent's point as well: that there are technical qualities about the internet that make it censorship-resistant.
Yes, you do. Because within the borders of that republic, regardless of how banana it might be, it is the Government and it has power. I feel like this is the penultimate expression of privilege for Westerners, to find out that the madman running around in tanks and aviator sunglasses in that part of the world, you know, over there, actually does have direct and indisputable power over MILLIONS of people and in all likelihood, is probably killing tons of them. Like, we know that, but we don't understand what that means, not really. How could we? I find it hard to conceive of something further from my reality.
And ultimately, for all the legitimate strengths the Internet has to fulfill the dream of these folks, in terms of speaking truth to power, ultimately, Governments can turn it off if needed, as we've seen, if it becomes too much of a problem.
You're absolutely right in that companies, as legal entities, have to obey laws in whatever jurisdiction they operate.
But the "internet routes around censorship" folks are usually talking about company-less code (or information), in its pure sense.
That is effectively influenced by only two variables: the cost of copying and distributing it.
Digital technology has driven that number far lower than it's historically existed. And in that, it's a fundamental change.
To cast into concrete terms, we're talking about Facebook (company example) vs DeCSS (code).
Facebook cares if Pakistan or the US says something must be so. DeCSS doesn't.
Is it company-less, though? Code is useless without the silicon that brings it to life, without the people that maintain that silicon, without the power grid that energizes it, and without the data links that connect it. Like I understand what you're saying, you're saying that the pure technology itself is the liberating part, and I agree with that about halfway. But code doesn't run on nothing. To run your code, you'll need a computer, either in your home or business. That computer is sold to you by a vendor, and it's connected to internet sold to you by a different vendor, and is powered by electricity sold to you by a different vendor. Ergo, your code is dependent upon the infrastructure to which you are in turn beholden to. And none of this changes if you use AWS or whatever, you're just adding more vendors and more middlemen, who in turn are buying the needed things from whomever else, etc. Ultimately, if whatever authority decides you must not proceed with what you're doing, that can be enforced in numerous ways, all of which mean that you will not proceed. Or at the very least, will make it much harder.
We saw this recently with the Parler fiasco.
> To cast into concrete terms, we're talking about Facebook (company example) vs DeCSS (code).
But DeCSS only works with DVD drives sold to you by manufacturers in PC's sold to you by manufacturers, running on electricity sold to you by a utility. The code, the information, that's free. But taking it and doing something useful with it, in this case decrypting DVD's, requires hardware, and if for whatever odd reason the U.S. State Department decided that nobody was ever going to use it in the States again, maybe they couldn't stop it entirely, sure, but they can make it infinitely more difficult to do so.
Given the current state of technology, and the diversity of vendors at every level, there is no way any country could impinge on an individual's ability to access general purpose computing.
For example, that the US has the power to ban optical disk drives that don't scan for and prohibit certain contents? Ha!
Among the ridiculous points this is not reality, in no particular order. (A) General purpose computing would have to be banned. (B) This hasn't even broached the topic of content encryption. (C) The level of control over imports would have to be completely overhauled to something approaching North Korea. (D) Domestic manufacturers would have to be banned from producing programmable processors.
This is literally not the world we live in. Even in China.
It's not a game of qualified answers. If (1) I have a general purpose computer & (2) I have code that can accomplish the intended activity on that general purpose computer, then (3) no one can stop me from executing that code.
The closest example is metadata tracking artifacts in printer documents [0], and previous efforts to technically prohibit currency counterfeiting on then-new color printers.
But that's fundamentally different than what we're talking about here: there are a limited number of manufacturers, in a low margin business, that's highly specialized.
A company like Google might not have the power to say no to censorship in China, but they're a lot more likely to have considerable heft against a nation that can't credibly mount a replacement for something like Google. Laws aren't absolute - like all other human institutions, they're subject to pressure. Put enough pressure on and they can switch from something being forbidden to being allowed. (In the past, corporate pressure has been "up to and including outright overthrow of a government", in the case of what was done to the Honduras on behalf of the United Fruit Company, so ... some options are off the table because they're immoral, but corporate pressure don't have any hard ceiling on what it can theoretically accomplish.)
And my point isn't to denigrate those efforts as they are, merely to point out that the fact you're permitted to engage in those efforts is contingent on those efforts remaining ineffective. Those in power will never concede power to those without peacefully, this is a lesson history teaches us all the way back to the city state of Ur. If you ever were to engage in efforts that caused legitimate destabilization of the power structures above you, those efforts would be put down. Probably legally, possibly violently, but they will be put down.
The fact that some Governments are quicker to pull the metaphorical triggers, doesn't mean the others are therefore not armed.
> A company like Google might not have the power to say no to censorship in China, but they're a lot more likely to have considerable heft against a nation that can't credibly mount a replacement for something like Google.
This presumes the Government in question sees value in a thing it is trying to actively remove. Like I'm not trying to be rude, but do you think it's a major concern of Pakistan's leadership that their people have ready access to Stadia and Chrome? Or the search engine itself, for that matter?
This isn't really supported by how other similar devices are treated.
We aren't seeing all PCs having hardware level censorship functionality inserted into it, as the behest of governments.
The idea that a country would stop all phones from being purchased, if phones simply worked similarly to PCs, sounds about as unlikely as a country blocking the purchase of "unlocked" PCs, which we see is not currently happening.
I mean, that literally did almost happen once, right here in the US of A. And sure, points to you, no country has yet attempted it since then, but also, China has locked onto a much more productive and efficient model; controlling the flow of information itself, rather than the client devices at hand.
And yeah, that's circumvent-able by users of sufficient tech literacy and bravery, but also, that fact has not presented an issue yet for China's Communist Party in their efforts to keep a stranglehold on the culture of their country, apart from perhaps Hong Kong.
> controlling the flow of information itself, rather than the client devices at hand.
It is still significantly harder to enact censorship on a wide scale as china is trying to do, than it is to simply change 2 app stores.
The stuff that china is doing, is much more difficult. It uses a lot of resources, and is not perfect.
I would rather more barriers be put up, so as to make censorship more difficult, wherever possible.
And making phones more open is another such barrier, that makes censorship more difficult.
Rights are not binary. Oppression and censorship is a spectrum, and taking actions against such oppression makes the oppression less effective, even if some oppression still happens.
So in such countries the movements with banned apps should post step by step guides for their followers of how they can enable sideloading and install the banned app.
On iPhone you have to root your phone for sideloading, so that is a closed system for the average user, but on Android there is an option for that, so no rooting is required:
https://www.howtogeek.com/313433/how-to-sideload-apps-on-and...
If anything, Google and Apple have more leverage than F-Droid or similar because Pakistan can't block them without significant backlash, and needs their cooperation, which is at least debated ( point in case, the article says a few of the apps weren't blocked by Google).
And furthermore, anyone can install any apk or app store serving apks on Android devices.
If users could load any apps they want outside of the google and apple stores there would be many gates that countries like Pakistan would need to close. Not only more gates but new gates opening every day. Basically, it would be the old internet model, which is very difficult to control.
If your app requires some sort of background functionality (it is a messenger, or anything) you would have to run through some ugly hoops to keep it running, or you have to rely on push notifications. And push notifications are not available for sideloaded apps.
Say Israel makes a law that Arab citizens should be tracked through a digital symbol to identify that they are of the non-Jewish subset of the population — should US companies comply? And I specifically choose Israel because it has a history of discrimination against its Arab population.
The major notable case of non compliance has been Google not entering China, which I argue has been more to do with internal activism than the company's preferences. Would also say that it is harder to leave a country once you're in it than not entering in the first place, so I think Google might not have left China if that were the case.
Apple happily conducts business in China and I am absolutely certain allows backdoor access to the Chinese Government. Arguably, the US getting backdoor access is almost as bad so we should already be up in arms about this, but I don't see a protest anywhere.
Hope the new privacy and decentralization wave makes it very hard to spy on people.
There are basic human rights, that when breached by a law, make the law a crime.
Sure its fuzzy around the edges but like the pamous supreme court case with porn: "i know it when i see it"
But a legal entity in Pakistan have to obide by those rules. And if it's profitable - they will.
Replace Pakistan with any other country name, the argument doesn't change. It's the law in that jurisdiction.
You can't really mix and match the legislation you like and don't like.
No idea if the particular law is just, but that's not the question. The question is - is it profitable to abide by it?
The 'problem' here - is that outside actors are forced to become 'complicit' with all sorts of laws that are potentially an objectively 'bad'.
By removing app restrictions by Apple and Google - we remove the complicity, making the issue squarely one of Pakistani authoritarianism.
With Google, at least there are ways to install apps without their app store, with Apple, obviously not.
If someone was hosting a website outside of Pakistan, it would be much harder to take down than just petitioning Google or Apple.
Wordpress powers 40% of all such websites. But for Web 2.0 where are the open source alternatives? Discourse? We need something that can handle chatrooms, videoconferencing and more, and can be hosted anywhere.
All around the world, we need such web based tools.
ISPs are still in Pakistan, so if the country wants, there are a myriad of ways to block a website. Most are preventable, but for the majority of people the site will be effectively blocked.