Pakistan's laws are clearly wrong, but Apple and Google do not and should not have the authority to bypass any country's laws.
Also, I found it disingenuous that Google plays "it's the law card" when it spends millions of dollars a year lobbying in the United States to get laws changed. Now, it may be much harder to get the Pakistan government to change its mind around the inclusion of "Muslim" for online content for this group - but I doubt Google has bothered to try...
There is more than a country's law to consider, there is international law and war crimes tribunals. Nothing maybe for Google to worry about yet, but what if Pakistan passes a law is passed that requires Google to give up all search data on this minority population in order that the government can monitor, imprison or kill them? I'd like to see how Google's legal team would respond to that. I'm guessing comply and cover-up, but I'd like to be wrong.
Note it doesn't even have to be an international law, it can be a better, future Pakistan, perhaps one with an Ahmadiyya leader - as inconceivable as that seems now. Germany for example, is charging an old lady with aiding and abetting murder (10,000 times!) for her secretarial work as a minor in a concentration camp. Pakistan is bigger than Germany and Google is good at doing things at scale... so let's hope Google leadership leads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...
In that case Apple broke no laws. The FBI very likely did not have the legal power to compel Apple to break the phone’s encryption. The FBI issued orders to Apple, Apple legally disputed the orders. Apple's actions in disputing unjust orders is allowed under US law.
Versus this case where the Pakistani government does, unfortunately, have full authority to pass and enforce this law as harshly as it wants.
If they were giving the FBI backdoors but not the UK or Pakistan, then it would be a different story.
That's society. We shouldn't throw our hands in the air and blindly follow all laws just because there's no objective truth.
The course of action they followed implicitly supports human rights violations, in order to continue operating within a given country. Note that I am not saying the action itself is a human rights violation. They certainly have the right to choose what to publish and they are limiting the scope of their actions to the laws of the country question. The decision is entirely reasonable if the context of those laws is ignored. The decision is also entirely reasonable when you consider that Apple and Google are large enough entities that not operating within that country or doing so in violation of their laws could rightfully be considered as exerting political pressure.
I doubt that there is actually a good answer to the question. There is only a lesser-of-evils answer, where they probably made the right choice even though I find their profiting from that choice disgusting.
No, they really don't. If they 'chose' to publish an app that is banned by Pakistan, the ultimate end-move would be for Pakistan to simply disable the app stores completely.
If Google or Apple wanted to squeeze Pakistan or any other country such that they would simply stop providing any services there or to any phone that has been located in Pakistan at any point. Within weeks, the app stores would be restored.
To comply with the law.
No, I don't like it either, but I also don't like the idea of corporations having the ability to flout the laws of sovereign nations because they disagree with them.
> The course of action they followed implicitly supports human rights violations
This is not a "course of action" anymore than not committing a crime is a public service. Enforcing human rights laws is not Apple or Google's job, full stop. They are corporations who's goal is to make money, and that's it. Enforcing human rights is what Governments are for.
Instead of asking "why aren't Apple and Google helping activists in Pakistan?" ask "why is Pakistan allowed to abuse it's citizenry in 2021?"
I mean, they're going to do that anyway. They will enter all markets they are able to, and profit as much as they can. That's the entire point of their existence: generate value for shareholders.
I'm not saying I disagree that this situation should be avoided, and in fact super agree with you saying that this moment in history is a consequence of earlier ones more than anything else. However, there's a reflexive action where people are like "$corporation needs to make more ethical decisions" and I cannot overemphasize how ridiculous this view is. Corporations are not even unethical, they're aethical. Their decision making is entirely focused on maximum profit generation.
Now occasionally they'll do something ethical, but oftentimes this is solely because the negative PR from doing something else, or doing nothing, would cause too much damage to the bottom line, however relying solely on this mechanism to illicit change in said corporations is optimistic at best. Instead, legislate what must happen. If you don't want corporations to use child labor to mine minerals, then make that practice incredibly illegal, and make sure the costs to do it anyway are sky high compared to the ones to not. And do it with law, not protest.
They do every day when it's in their interest...