Apple's Cooperation with Authoritarian Governments
jessesquires.com
jessesquires.com
Wait, this regulation is a result of an antitrust case against Google and Apple started by Yandex, as both were using their platforms against their direct competitor. The same thing that many people want to see in EU and US. Clearly it doesn't belong to the list and the author did zero research on this, but included anyway because it fits the bad guy narrative they are trying to push.
What's even funnier is that Apple threatened to withdraw from the russian market rather than having to do this, so the question is who's the real bad guy here (how about "a tech giant threatens an unimportant country to be able to bully domestic competitors"?). I guess everybody is horrible in this story, because the government had to compromise and omit the requirement to be able to uninstall this software, and they also included many companies who were large enough to be able to lobby their interests, because obviously they didn't want to make a single company special. Now Samsung reportedly has a backdoor deal with Yandex to install their software as system on Samsung phones, so it's being shoved down customers' throats. Nice.
Apple will help advertisers and spammers target you.
Russian corporations will help thugs, racketeers and corrupt police target you and government will sell your data on the black market.
So no, it’s a question of personal security, not of simple annoyance.
I would much prefered if Apple left Russian market and we had to import iPhones via backchannels. That’s how bad privacy situation here is.
There is no nefarious plot. Apple just gave us and our data to criminals to keep small insignificant market.
Besides, can you not simply uninstall or not use Yandex or Mail.ru?
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/22/22244848/us-intelligence-...
And I know about this from outside of the verge, I just believe in providing citations.
Buying a full truck of these - sure.
There's so many feelings in this statement, but so little substance.
This illustrates the how governments are using tech companies to do their dirty work. They are the velvet glove over the iron hand of the state. They conceal and enable that which would otherwise be an obvious authoritarian grab prevented by civil liberties providing a convenient fig leaf over over otherwise naked government power.
I would expect this to be the case in all jurisdictions these companies operate in.
What are you talking about?
Apple are generally known for doing the opposite.
Really? So the USA and it’s allies don’t spy, and aren’t oppressive? What do you do with the information revealed by Snowden (about the NSA and Prism), Assange, and with the Crypto AG story?
I’m curious if you see those those things as less severe than Russia’s oppression/corruption?
Yandex cooperates with the Russian state, which sends people to (horrendous, torturous) prisons for, among other things, reposting a meme critical of its hard line of oppressing LGBT people. It assassinates domestic political opponents. It snoops on, disrupts and if necessary curtails any serious efforts at political organizing. No comparison can be made with the US government.
Yep, the difference is amazing.
Your critique misses the vastness of the violent capitalist system that exists and operates today:
"Place Silicon Valley in its proper historical context and you see that, despite its mythology, it’s far from unique. Rather, it fits into a pattern of rapid technological change which has shaped recent centuries. In this case, advances in information technology have unleashed a wave of new capabilities. Just as the internal combustion engine and the growth of the railroads created Rockefeller, and the telecommunications boom created AT&T, this breakthrough enabled a few well-placed corporations to reap the rewards. By capitalising on network effects, early mover advantage, and near-zero marginal costs of production, they have positioned themselves as gateways to information, giving them the power to extract rent from every transaction.
Undergirding this state of affairs is a set of intellectual property rights explicitly designed to favour corporations. This system — the flip side of globalisation — is propagated by various trade agreements and global institutions at the behest of the nation states who benefit from it the most. It’s no accident that Silicon Valley is a uniquely American phenomenon; not only does it owe its success to the United States’ exceptionally high defence spending — the source of its research funding and foundational technological breakthroughs — that very military might is itself what implicitly secures the intellectual property regime." [1]
Can you show me a critique that is more clear and true than this? I have quoted it a million times and that's because I just haven't heard a better explanation.
An area where capitalist firms are doing a lot of damage using their IP system is in the global south:
"The possibility of a handful corporations monopolizing healthcare and agriculture in the developing world is a very real risk today. Closely associated with these corporations, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) - the richest and the most powerful philanthropic foundation shaping these sectors globally - aids them in the process of monopolization by granting huge funds to its network of NGOs to carry out activities which mainly benefit these selected corporations, in many of which the foundation has considerable financial stakes.
Apart from making such grants, through the vehicle of Public Private Partnerships (PPP), the foundation also has been facilitating the flow of millions of dollars of taxpayer money into what are essentially private projects.
The foundation also plays a crucial role in lobbying for stronger IPR regimes which oblige developing countries to grant long patent periods for drugs which are only minor alterations of already existing, off-patent drugs. In Africa, this foundation is one of the most powerful forces that is arm-twisting governments to gradually rewrite seed laws to provide patent protection for commercial seeds, which would eventually require criminalization of all non-certified seeds.
[...]
Far from aiding the production of cheap drugs by generic pharma through means such as technology transfers, the corporate giants, including Bill Gates’ Microsoft, “lobbied vociferously” for acceptance of TRIPS agreement, which obliged member countries to agree to grant patents to pharmaceutical companies for a minimum period of 20 years. Microsoft again lobbied the G8 in 2007 to strengthen the protection of global Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), which, Oxfam warned, is bound to “worsen the health crisis in developing countries”, the New Internationalist reported.
Stifling the development of generic pharma by lobbying for stronger Intellectual Property Rights regime (which, contrary to incentivizing innovation as is widely claimed, has the opposite effect as demonstrated by many empirical studies including one by U.S government ); facilitating a flow of enormous subsidies into private projects of closely associated pharmaceutical companies, not only by making philanthropic grants but also by channelizing through GAVI alliance the public money granted by various states; and protecting selected corporations from potential competition in the market by locking countries receiving assistance through this programme into long-term commitments to buy vaccinations they manufacture - all appear to be a multi-pronged strategy to monopolize the global healthcare industry. And being “the single most influential voice in global health”, Bill Gates is more than well-qualified to be at the helm of this machine." [2]
People like Gates grew up with access to an immense amount of privileged high quality knowledge, theories and pedagogical material available to them - access to the immense inheritance of humanity's scientific explorations. Yet what makes them powerful is that they have kicked away the ladders they themselves used to climb up in the first place.
The US and it's capitalist allies are powerful because they have created one big corrupt intellectual property system that favors the already powerful capitalists. There is no opting out of it. Through IP laws this system criminalizes sharing and turns inventions and science into commodities to be bought and sold. Helping ourselves and other humans is criminalized.
If the boy geniuses of Silicon Valley are so genius, why do they need to turn something that is not scarce (knowledge/science/inventions) into something scarce, and lock it away as a trade secret? How can we speak about egalitarianism when this system is so clearly the opposite of that? This system is not democratic, it's a bourgeois run prison.
> Literally most countries on Earth do orders of magnitude of worse stuff on a daily basis than US.
The reason there is violence in other countries is exactly because people in these countries are deeply implicated and entangled in the global capitalist production system, which is being led and directed by global north capitalists.
[1] https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley
[2] https://grain.org/en/article/5910-under-the-cover-of-philant...
These things are vastly less severe than anything going on in Russia (am Russian). In the US there is at least due process, public scrutiny, and the US government doesn't generally torture or murder its citizens(on its soil). Comparing the situations in these two countries is like comparing current protest killings in Myanmar, and police shootings in the US with the words "see, in the US the police also kill citizens", i.e. it's dropping 99% of the context and of the cultural situation/differences/beliefs.
You may search for "icloud servers Russia", it is likely the same deal as with China, people's iCloud data accessible by state agencies.
What I'm curious about, is how it applies to people with dual citizenship, living in another country for decades?
You can bring a lot of “Apple is just as bad” outsider evidence, but I don’t know anyone who had their data leaked by Apple.
Yet I have dozens of anecdotal cases of people harrassed and targeted by using Russian networks. I mean you can basically buy my phone call history and parking surveillance for a few bucks online.
The only difference is that while US law enforcement can read Facebook messages, it has no interest in Ivan from Samara. But have no illusion: every government wants as much access to data as it can, and will use it against you.
> Yet I have dozens of anecdotal cases
Still anecdotal.
They will be offered to be installed immediately, but not preinstalled.
Maybe not great, but certainly better than preinstalled.
Yandex CEO says there is no backdoor deal, just misunderstanding of the law by Samsung, and they asked Samsung to make those apps uninstallable: https://www.facebook.com/tigrankh/posts/10157500257791403
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/apple-bent-its-rules...
Problem is that Apple for years claims moral high ground, while they’re happily cooperating with authoritarian governments around the world. They can claim moral high ground if they leave after threatening, not just for threatening.
You have to put your money where your mouth is. Like Facebook did with China (not saying they have moral high ground, but that’s an example of company losing tons of profits and helping competition grow, to avoid bending to authoritarian government).
Had Apple never claimed moral high ground, they would then have the benefit of doubt. And increasingly there are more and more evidence their words and actions differs.
Apple is not a government, it's a business. They'll either have to obey the local laws or they'll lose business.
While we are here, checkout how Google Maps handles these issues: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/14/google-...
To say otherwise is to suggest that companies should exist above the law, and ignore the rule of law where it’s inconvenient. I don’t think that’s a precedent you want to set.
With regards to moral obligations of US companies seeking to do business in countries that don’t uphold the same standards as the US. I would argue a better place to have that conversation is in Congress, which could then seek to apply export controls to all companies. Rather than just relying on the good will and moral judgment of amoral companies.
I would personally love to see restrictions on trade with China tied to their human rights violations. But don’t think right approach is campaigning individual companies.
Typo?
This is a straw man. Most people recognize a company can't ignore Chinese law and do business in China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...
Either a company has some sort of conscience or not. I know that companies are created to make profit but there is a certain boundary after which it's fair that they are under public scrutiny, even if there is no government embargo on China.
But this goes into a bit of a policy/morality/philosophy question: should companies have high moral standards, and give up market share in places where they are unable to adhere to those standards? The stock capitalist answer is probably "no, gaining market share and increasing profits is more important". Personally I think that's a fundamental problem with capitalism.
Companies have no moral compass, and we should never expect the to behave in any moral way, unless someone thinks it’ll create more stockholder value than acting immorally.
I can’t help but feel that all this hand wringing about what Apple (or any other large company) should or should not be doing is a waste of time. Time that would be better spent trying to build consensus around what principles we as a society care about, and wish to project into the world. Then we should just write laws and regulation to make it happen, and to force the hands of companies.
Anything else strikes me as futile and pointless. A distraction from achieving real meaningful change.
The answer IMO has to be regulation. We have to cut off the incentives companies have to act immorally. The problem of course is that this could then make the economy as a whole uncompetitive so politicians are equally unlikely to take action.
Not to be a doomer, but on the issue of China the West has probably waited too long to take action at this point. This would have been easier in the past, but now China has become so dominant, and with Western companies and economies being so dependant on China for labour and manufacturing it's hard to imagine any significant business or political intervention happening.
In fact, this is likely just the beginning, in the future when China is the core market for most multinational companies political intervention basically becomes impossible. No company is going to pull out of their largest market (especially if it's growing faster than the US).
(1) Apple publicly supports everything in the bill. That's their PR.
(2) Apple wants to water down key provisions of the bill, which would hold U.S. companies accountable for using Uighur forced labor, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u...
>“What Apple would like is we all just sit and talk and not have any real consequences,”
The bill is not about Apple. If Apple is doing everything right, their costs may increase marginally. The bill would force US companies that don't have as good human rights records to comply. Apple lobbying against the bill is enabling this.
Summary: Apple wants to save little money. Result of that would be that unethical US based companies could continue their unethical business in China.
That's not the situation though. They already have a forced labour policy, already do supply chain audits and have even already dumped suppliers for violating these policies. Their actual proposed changes really are just to make the legislation clearer and more enforceable. The reason is because then everybody else would also have to do what Apple already does, and face the costs and accountability the same way Apple does. This legislation is a windfall for them because it creates an expensive moat that it's hard for their competitors to cross.
Any source for that.
Link? The reports I've seen (like the WaPo article above) are about what Apple has requested in closed door meetings.
I don't know whose word I trust less, anonymous congressional staffers talking to the post, or the pr department of the richest company in the world.
I’m not certain what “strong” means here. If it meant principled or effective they wouldn’t need deadlines extended because they would already not be slavery adjacent.
The legislation introduced additional requirements that it would take time to comply with. Note they didn't object to complying, only asking for more time to implement it.
It is a de facto government with assets and income that dwarf most U.S. states, as well as most foreign countries and many multinational companies.
Calling their legal compliance obedient is a cruel disservice to the facts of their constant political maneuvering.
Say you're a US citizen. You can choose not to buy an Apple product. You cannot chose to not pay your taxes.
This is just one of many distinctions between a government and a corporation.
But you can move to another state/country. They aren't claiming it is apples to apples but claiming apples to oranges is disingenuous at best.
I can't understand why you'd think that.
What characteristics of a government do you think it has? Assets and income? A government is something that 'governs', not something that has assets and income.
Apple does not have tax authority over you.
Apple does not have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in any geographic region.
Apple does not pass or enforce laws or have citizens.
It is big and rich and powerful, and like all big and rich things with that much reach, literally cannot do anything without making someone angry.
This does not make it a government, and pretending it is one is a silly distraction from holding it to account when it does something bad.
[0] It’s been annoying me for years that I, a British national living in Germany, have to tell the US federal government about all encryption I use in apps made solely for the German market. What happens if it starts annoying the EU, too, and they pass a law saying we can’t tell the US government anything about it?
Can you elaborate on that?
> The agreements stipulate that the first time Apple is purchased in Russia, the user will see a dialog window when setting up, in which he will be asked to install applications from the government-approved list by default, Vedomosti said. It will be possible to refuse installation, removing ticks in front of certain applications, explains the source of the publication.
So really it is an opt-out list of apps presented at setup, which are downloaded and installed after user confirmation. The apps are, presumably, still subject to iOS security policy.
It's clearly not ideal, and reminds me of the dark years of trying to avoid accidentally installing the Yahoo Toolbar. But it's not as evil as it sounds from the headline, and it would be stupid of Apple to pull out of the Russian market over this (as iMore says they once threatened).
Save your rage for when iMessage encryption is nerfed, and government-approved apps are no longer opt-out.
0: https://www.imore.com/apple-agrees-pre-install-apps-russian-...
IMO, doing this would be a good idea for Europe, too. To some degree laws like the browser choice thing already go in this direction, but they still mostly present American alternatives.
That's why it gets increasingly more frequent at a particular time (whereas China has been authoritative for decades when the same now "indignant" people didn't write about it), uses the same talking points (often of some bad but useful source that's repeated as gospel, "orange revolution" style opposition, ex-pats with axes to grind, etc.), and is focused on the singled-out "enemy du jour" even if there are tons of allies doing the same or worse.
Selective government talk points, "leaks" to the press, propaganda pieces, "exclusive access", etc, fuels this further.
Until there's another enemy to focus on, when it all deflates.
Of course I have been hearing the same thing at various times about Cubans, Venezuelans, Russians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Syrians, Iranians, Libyans - Blinken just denounced the arrests of those involved in the post-coup massacre in Bolivia. And on and on. This piece is an example of the drive for ever expanding imperial policy under an authoritarian government.
Jesse Squires is quite prominent contributor to the Apple's macOS/iOS development ecosystem and he definitely cares about Apple's reputation and the future. Apple is his bread and butter and if he's concerned with what's going on on this front there is something to think about...
Apple will "take a stand for their users" when they can do it with no consequence (for example when they refused to decrypt an iPhone for the FBI). But if the country can ban you from doing business for not "fully cooperating" with their law enforcement, they will abide (unless the country is irrelevant for their business).
I won't say that it is any better than using a non-encrypted device, or less secured device, since, in a lot of cases, even Apple cannot "break-in" their own device. But don't think that Apple won't send everything they know about you to your local police.
I don't think it should surprise most people (and in a way, don't you want company to comply with your laws ?). But when Apple talk about privacy, remember that it's privacy toward other company, not the government.
The UK government is defying international law in the Chagos Islands and has broken its treaty with the EU over checks to/from N. Ireland. Does that make it a "bad" government that private companies should not do business with? If the UK demands that an app is withdrawn from the app store, or that private communications should be turned over to government agents with no justification, should a private business refuse to do that? The same arguments can be made for the USA (as the article does).
People generally get the government they deserve. If a country is authoritarian, then it's up to the people of that country to deal with that problem, not private companies. China's government is representative of the wishes of its people, and if it's not then China's people will deal with that.
Contrast that with Myanmar: the democratically elected government has been overthrown by the military, who are in the process of killing anyone who protests about it. This is clearly different. There can clearly be no international co-operation with this regime, because it's obviously been taken over by bad people. There should be international outrage over this, and action from the international diplomatic community - part of which should be guidance to private companies about whether to co-operate with the military regime.
My stance has been heavily influenced by my experience living in Cambodia. They have an authoritarian government. But they have also an authoritarian culture. Attempts to create a democratic government there haven't failed because the regime are a bunch of bastards (they are, but that's not the point), but because the people generally haven't supported it. Part of this, I'm sure, is their traumatic experience with the Khmer Rouge. I see so many parallels with what's going on with Myanmar. I don't see so many parallels with what's going on in China.
Can we measure the legitimacy of a government by the number of protesters it has killed? Seems like a better measure that "compatibility with Western economic interests" which seems to be the current measure.
I think really all they’ve said is that different countries has different cultures, and that in turn result in different types of government being acceptable.
I’m not going to get involved in the details here, because there are many countries and governments out there, and everyone has different views on which is “best”.
Outsider does not give a shit how well western countries treat their own citizens. If one comes home and starts picking up bits and pieces of their family members in the rubble that used to be their house they might hold very different opinion.
I'm saying the Chinese people have the right to determine what government they should have. No-one else gets to decide that for them.
But saying that one government is "better" than another can be seen as imposing your standards of "better" on another culture. Especially if you choose to ignore some criteria and select others - the USA has by far the highest percentage of its population in prison in the entire world[0], so yes you can make a serious claim that China "protects its citizens" better than the USA.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
As you say, "no-one else gets to decide that for them" - which also includes all the non-democratic regimes currently clinging to power after losing the consent of the governed. For example, look at Belarus - other countries don't have the right to unilaterally determine what government Belarusians should have, but, crucially, Lukashenka also does not have that right, he does not get to decide that for them.
But I see Westerners go to places that are culturally different, and ignore all those differences, and assume that the only reason the government isn't "non-authoritarian" is because the population need help deposing a despot. Sometimes it's not that. In Myanmar it is totally that, and we should be doing something, because the army are shooting civilians every day. In Cambodia at the moment, not. In China, probably not.
In Cambodia I was a CEO. Khmer culture means that you never contradict your boss. I had some really candid conversations with colleagues that I knew well, and who knew me well, I'd call them friends. They would still never contradict me, even if they knew I was wrong, and knew that I knew I was wrong. It's a different culture. You do not question authority there. That's not because authority will punish you, but because (as far as I get it as an outsider) social harmony depends on social stratification, and social stratification means not questioning those above you. It all sounds problematic to westerners, who go there and try and impose western ideas of justice, free thought and free speech. But they just come off as White Saviours, tone deaf to thousands of years of Khmer culture.
In Cambodia all this lead to the Khmer Rouge and a genocide. I see lots of parallels with what's happening in Myanmar. I think there comes a point where we do have to step in and say "I know you are an authoritarian culture, but this is too far, you're shooting civilians". Don't forget, this is Myanmar people enlisted in the military who are shooting other Myanmar people. The same was true in Cambodia - a lot of the trauma of the genocide was "how could we do this to ourselves?". It's a very complex situation. There's a huge difference between this and China.
I don't know enough about the situation in Belarus to comment. I don't trust Western media enough to present an unbiased view of it, and I don't know any Belarus folks to give me their view. I'd like to go visit - I hear it's beautiful there. But pandemic.
Not in the orientalist sense of being incomprehensible, but by just by understanding the political history and hence the intuitive sensibilities of what is understood to be a just way of running a government being quite different.
This is not to claim democracy would not fit all, but rather, it is quite a different thing to introduce it to an environment which already accepts as its philosophical inheritance the democracy of Athens, the Republic of Rome, the Magna Carta, and so on, to one for whom these are exotic and foreign historical references.
And frankly, a stable government - no matter how legalistic or authoritarian - is almost always better than no government at all (ref. all the areas with failed states and ruled by warlords).
In a political environment that has never known anything but authoritarian rule, it is actually quite safe bet that any destabilizing forces are not trying to "improve peoples lives" but actually just to replace the existing authoritarian power structure with a one of their own.
So... while mistreating demonstrator is reprhensible ... the situation is not necessarily about "good v.s bad" but actually about "stability vs. chaos" and in both situations there are losers - only in the "chaos" case the number of losers is larger.
"The proper way to cure the ills of industrial societies is not to impose the terror of a police state but to emphasize ethical education, give high regard to spiritual values, and promote high standards in culture and the arts."
So no, authoritarian government does not lead to stability and democratic government does not lead to chaos. You get stability by educating the next generation and promoting the culture.
That's a beautiful quote.
Cambodian education at the moment is corrupt. You bribe the educator to get into a course. You bribe the examiner to pass an exam. If your family is rich enough, you never need to even attend a class.
Changing this is not going to be possible from outside. The Khmer people will need to want to change. I don't think that's true at the moment. I hope they'll get it eventually.
Is Culture Destiny? The Myth of Asia's Anti-Democratic Values (Kim Dae Jung, 1994)
He went on to "write" an even better rebuttal by being elected in 1998 and building the foundation of South Korea as a fully functioning democracy in his term. Now the result speaks for itself.
I heard this from several Khmer acquaintances - they're fed up of Westerners coming to Cambodia and trying to enforce Western ideas of democracy and "freedom" on them. There are a shit-tonne of White Saviours running around Phnom Penh trying to "save" Cambodia, so I totally get this.
A home-grown idea of Cambodian democracy, from Khmer people who are actually interested in what Khmer democracy would look like, is a totally different thing. If that's what happened in South Korea, then that's fantastic.
The difference with CCP and Tatmadaw (Myanmar army) generals, is that the CCP actually understands how to govern.
Tatmadaw is making things objectively worse for everyone economically, while CCP has succeeded in improving the lives of Chinese people. (Yes, and it is authoritarian and suppresses ethnic minorities but these qualities do not signify it as inept).
Or in DD terms, Tatmadaw is borderline chaotic evil while CCP is lawful evil.
Chaotic Evil is selfish anarchy. The Tatmadaw doesn't want anarchy, they want highly regularised, conformant subservience to their rules. If anything they find democracy too chaotic for them to stomach.
The soldiers in Myanmar shooting protestors are also Myanmar citizens after all- an inconvenient truth nobody ever brings up in their news reports.
China’s elected national congress that includes easy recall and competence-based civil servant positions doesn’t seem any less democratic.
https://freedomhouse.org/country/china/freedom-world/2021
Some highlights for China:
* There are no direct or competitive elections for national executive leaders. * Elections are not administered by an independent body. * China’s one-party system rigorously suppresses the development of any organized political opposition * The political system is dominated in practice by ethnic Han Chinese men. Societal groups such as women, ethnic and religious minorities, and LGBT+ people have no opportunity to gain meaningful political representation * China is home to one of the world’s most restrictive media environments and its most sophisticated system of censorship, particularly online. * None of China’s national leaders are freely elected, and the legislature plays a minimal role in policymaking and the development of new laws. * The CCP regime has established a multifaceted apparatus to control all aspects of religious activity
It goes on and on. All of this seems pretty tangible to me? Again please let me know what I'm missing.
The NPC has a higher percentage of women than the US Congress (exceeding the world average).
Ethnic minorities make up 8% of China's overall population, but they make up 14.7% of the seats of the NPC. They also make up 7.3% of the more than 90 million members of the Communist Party of China (which also consists of 27.2% women). Ethnic minorities make up 39% of the overall population of the US, but only 25% of the US Congress.
A study by the Harvard Kennedy School found 93.1% satisfaction with the central government in China in 2016. US Congress currently has a 29.3% approval rating, but has been hovering below 20% for most of the last decade.
The two viable US political parties are overwhelmingly funded by billionaires and large corporations. Those two parties decide the criteria for acceptance into the presidential debates which prevents minority parties from gaining national prominence. Billionaires and large corporations also own all the major media outlets and platforms, and they use that power to control narratives and deplatform inconvenient political figures and ideas.
Therefore China is more democratic than the US. See how easy that is?
Yes, China fixes a 1-party state, but how does that differ from fixing e.g. the judicial branch in the US system which also cannot be elected?
The minorities angle is just weird and shows you have no understanding about China - minorities generally have preferential policies in many aspects of law, e.g. the One-Child policy (now Two-Child policy). That's more than you can say for the US.
China's censorship system is not that sophisticated it's just large scale. The purpose is more to ensure large-scale stability, and they don't care about small-scale private conversations between individuals. The US is currently grappling difficult questions about how to moderate fake news, large corporations are stuck in a difficult place - on one hand they are accused of promoting fake news, on the other hand they are accused of suppressing free speech. So just because China took a strong stance on this, does not mean they are "evil" for doing so.
Again, you need to have some cultural background of China before judging it, rather than judging it based on western preconceptions of how a democracy "must" work like.
Who wrote that index? Where are they from? What interests do they have? How do they show up high in search results?
> favouring or enforcing strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom
This currently describes a lot of European countries. The proponents will make the argument that this is only "temporary authoritarianism" in the pursuit of "safety", but we've seen how that works out before.
Authoritarian governments that are into surveillance love looking into your icloud and itunes accounts. They use FISA and National Security Letters to pry into your and everyone elses life.
https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-fbi-government-national-secu...
This is the only thing keeping me from buying an iPhone. Their control on what apps you can run on your phone is absolute. This may not be a problem in liberal countries where pretty much every website is available. But in some places VPNs have become a necessity.
I wondering when we are going to start critize our governments before critizing the companies. You know, they are the ones that make law.
However, it’s much easier for people to vote with their wallets in their everyday life (for ex. by buying from companies with certain environmental policies or labour policies) than to expect governments to change.
You can choose to buy a phone or computer that is less involved in this type of behaviours.
Except if you deal with a mono-/duopoly.
EDIT: That said, it’s hard for a country to unilaterally effect change in another sovereign country without going to war. Hell, how many countries embargo North Korea and it has no effect?
Pretty much all they can do short of starting a war.
US government imposed sanctions on 17 Saudi officials who were connected with the killing.
They couldn't punish Prince Mohammed bin Salman because he is expected to be King at some point soon which means any sanctions would be nonsensical. How does a travel ban for example work against the leader of any country let alone an (unfortunate) ally.
There simply isn't any good options for punishing world leaders.
When an individual is promoting itself as a green tree lover person on social media to score points and then you find he is a fake because money is more important, then IMO is fair to call on the hypocrisy/facade.
from the scandal where the whole world found that Apple tracks you each time you open an app I personally concluded that privacy is an after-thought at Apple. The entire thing would have been designed different if the developers at Apple were competent and at the same time care for privacy (so either they don't care about privacy or they are incompetent but care a lot)
Just say you don't like them.
Once you do business in a country, you follow the country's rules.
Simple as that.
You don't get to pick and chose or impose your own (and usually, your own culture's and governments and national interest's) ideas and laws.
Unless of course the country is a banana republic, which China isn't.
Smelly-smelly. Don't pretend you're holding to a value of "rule of the law". You're holding to the rule of the strongest.
Sure enough, the article enters a tirade about the "human rights violator in chief." Draws motive from an advertisement with the then president of the US in it, and advertisement of an american company, the first trillion dollar company who reached that valuation under that president, and attributes it to the CEO. The CEO of apple will stoop to any level to garner favor, lower than cooperating with authoritarian dictators even, so says the article.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/english.alarabiya.net/amp/News/...
https://english.alarabiya.net/News/gulf/2018/04/07/Saudi-Cro...
Later they bent over backwards to get back in with a special censored search (Project Dragonfly) which got "cancelled" due to western and employee backlash (but wasn't really), continued a bit in secret, then really cancelled (so it was reported).
Also, Qwest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio
Something Apple still doesn't let you do.
Certainly, once a device enters into China, it should be considered breached and insecure.
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/03/16/apple-to-offer-governme...
It isn’t that surprising that an authoritarian power structure whose sole purpose is to create wealth for the owners of the structure would ally themselves with... an authoritarian power structure whose sole purpose is to create wealth for the owners of the structure.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/252187/sales-of-the-hund...
I don't think that's a credible statement.
They have been subjected to pretty harsh treatment from China including their online stores being disabled, frozen out of third party stores, supply chain disruptions and lots of critical media stories from government mouthpieces.
Okay then. OP seems to suggest that a private company should take the responsibility to defy government requirements and orders because the government is labeled bad?
I don't think it's very practical.
Besides, an OS or device vendor can arbitrarily dictate what kind of app a user can get, in my opinion, is the true elephant here.
IMHO free distribution of apps is the only viable alternative.
Yes there will be scams and malwares but hey that's the price to pay to enter the Bazaar rather than the Church.
I want a device which puts my privacy first and one which my family members can operate too. Without me being on the line to teach them how.
We simply have too little competition in the phone OS market from my point of view. Also web-first phone are pretty rare.
> and one which my family members can operate too. Without me being on the line to teach them how
I am afraid that it is always necessary, even with Apple devices. My relatives use Linux just fine after I explained a couple of things.
Disillusionment with the way things are going is the reason I've kinda decided to step away from tech. I will miss the income, but I won't miss the dystopian hellscape. I'm buying a farm. Gonna raise chickens. Will automate as much of it as I can with non-cloud FLOSS and my own code and sweat. I will not try to grow it to billions, I will prioritize my time.
This is the biggest trouble we face. If we, as users, do not care enough, companies have no reason to change anything.
People care about privacy. They don't understand how their data is used and believe they can't do anything about it.[1]
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/11/15/americans-an...
I want a device which puts me first. As opposed to the vendor of the device.
I am happy they are popular, because I own stock in them. Other than that, they clearly have near zero patriotic morals.
If they stopped acting like moral crusaders and simply said, “We sell computers to anyone with money,” there would be much less of an issue.
Apple is trying to disentangle itself from China slowly, as are all the smart companies with labour investments in the country. Is Apppe supposed to be the only company willing to take a massive hit to their business by defying China? Almost all of their manufacturing is being held hostage in the country.
I hate the PRC, extremely counter cultural, hate wealth disparity, all that but I can’t fault Apple for playing ball here.
Do you really though? There are a handful of major competitors and they're all acting in coercion with similar ideology. So, no you're really not free to say or read what you want without shunning big tech entirely and hoping you find some other platform they haven't stomped out yet.
The question is not Apple's right to control speech on their platform. It is their hypocrisy in wanting to control speech in free countries and at the same time cozying up and doing the bidding of authoritarian states. You cannot have it both ways with out looking the fool. Impose ethical standards in all cases or none.
Another country could be fully authoritarian. If I can’t do X in China but I can do it within the legal framework in the US, how is that hypocrisy?
Where does this line of thinking come from? Why do you think Apple has this power over you? Does anyone else feel this way?
The worst is that it is successful with newer generations, and they divert their attention to anglo issues instead of local ones.
I'm not so sure. There are (a loud minority?) of "woke" software developers now that will try to drum up pressure on your company from within and without if you sell to "anyone with money" (see: GitHub selling to ICE). Google frequently has to deal with this, I'm sure Apple does too.
Maybe mitigating/ignoring woke outrage is preferable to the corporate ethical schizophrenia you described (it's certainly simpler), but I don't think the issue would go away.
You or I don’t have to agree with Apples policies or public statements on these matters, and we certainly don’t have to buy their products.
Companies or their founders pushing certain policies is nothing new. In my opinion, there’s an unreasonable standard tech companies are held to. At the end of the day, their job is to make money for their stakeholders, for better or worse.
there is little direct evidence to support this exact claim. While I am willing to give Apple the benefit of the doubt and consider this an inconvenient coincidence, I would not be surprised if this were a deliberate move.
"I would not be surprised if" is not how honest argument works. On the other hand, at least he admits it. A hit piece would have insisted it's all true.
It isn't new for corporations to cooperate with the ugly parts of government. I don't really understand why Apple is being singled out here. They are better than average because at least their abuses are fairly obvious and they don't make plays to control people's data like certain other companies.
Either we’re in this together, or the invisible line in the dirt means nothing and I want my money back.
Foreign democracies don’t have American interests at heart. Should we cut trade ties with Germany as a result?
Our power comes from trade. Backing up into ideological autarky would be self defeating. Similarly, asking individual companies to stop trading with countries their competitors may legally trade with is dumb.
Convince your fellow voters to put on sensible, targeted tariffs and sanctions. Or accept that commerce plows wider fields than ideology.
> “Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'” - MLK
Maybe he should read it more often.
Apple isn't Superman. It's just a company selling phones and some other things. Their leverage over the legal and regulatory systems various countries is limited... a very good thing, BTW. If they had more, do you really think they would use it only for good?
It's an AppStore glitch and nothing more.
> The case shows how Apple is willing to help even where the context of the crime is controversial, namely the Black Lives Matter protests.
EXCUSE ME??? Are you saying that firebombing cars is somehow an acceptable act in the context of a protest, and that helping track down the perpetrator of such an act is a bad thing?
"November 2019, Trump re-election campaign ad shot in Apple’s Mac Pro plant in Austin
Given the context and the headline, Apple working with authoritarian governments. Unless the author thinks the US is authoritarian.
I don't see any problems with any high tech executive supporting one politician or another, if the author is making the alleged Tim Cook's support for Trump the reason to include that in the list of incidents showing Apple working with authoritarian regimes.
As these the list starts in 2017, I wonder how much of this is the result of the US’s decreased willingness to export its values abroad during the Trump years.
After all, will you bite the hand that feeds you?
It's hard to rebut him when it's all the language of belief - I have no more facts about the situation than he does. That's the beauty of beliefs, facts are optional.
We cannot rely on the agents of Mammon to rid the world of authoritarianism. That is a hopelessly naive approach. They’re just not that interested, and they’re a poor fit for the job.
Capitalist companies are good at making things, they’re good at making profits, but by design they are useless for meaningful social change and increasing freedom, because they themselves require the maintenance of a world of peasants and kings.
No matter what Apple does, the Apple apologists come out of the woods to defend their overlords.
I always like to play a little game, which I believe could also be a nice browser extension.
Read the comments and articles, but replace the word Apple with Microsoft. Opinions and stances would shift dramatically under a minute.
I cannot fathom that there are adult educated people living in a free democracy defending a company which works with a authoritarian government which is involed in a GENOCIDE.
From anecdotal observation, any big company mentioned on HN will have critics, apologists, critics of the apologists, and (perhaps most relevant) fans of the company who criticise their behaviours. Apple isn’t special in that regard, except it seems to draw the most fervorous irrational hate towards its users. It reminds me of meat-eaters who won’t shut up about vegetarians being annoying, while remaining ironically oblivious that they’re far worse offenders of the behaviour they decry.
"fanboyism" isn't a boolean value as you imply. Every company has it but where it sits between 0.0 and 1.0 varies wildly between companies.
Your parent's argument is that when it comes to Apple on HN, their "fanboy rating" sits well beyond the bell curve peak.
Agreed.
> Your parent's argument is that when it comes to Apple on HN, their "fanboy rating" sits well beyond the bell curve peak.
And my argument is “let’s see the data”. Parent’s point is repeated ad nauseam yet I’ve never seen any evidence it’s not confirmation bias on the part of people who are anti-Apple. If this is such a glaring problem as cited, it should be provable. Either do it or please stop repeating an unsubstantiated unhelpful argument which only serves to divide further. Fanaticism doesn’t become OK when it’s anti something.
The onus of proof falls on whoever makes the claim. I’m not the one making unsubstantiated assertions.
> If not then your take is just another opinion
And I readily made that clear, by calling it anecdotal observation. All I’m asking is for the same courtesy and honesty.
> calling for censorship on either is futile.
Comparing a direct polite request to rethink if one’s opinions are based in fact or bias to “calling for censorship” is an absurd argumentative leap. It makes me wonder if you’re trolling.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...
God bless America?
(Also, wtf, Banana Republic is now an American fashion brand? Jesus Christ, way to have zero insight)
Once again, really unsure why you're being downvoted for mentioning facts.
Are you perhaps hurting some "invisible hand" idealists feelings? Who knows.
If you are describing the problem the way it has upthread but only pointing to one or the other of the Iranian examples, it's pretty obviously being selective for dishonest purposes.
Not sure why you find it suspicious that I wouldn't label actors who didn't really come on stage for 26 years, and who came to prominence because of the unpopularity of the Padishah installed at the behest of American and British corporate interests.
In fact, they were entirely irrelevant. Why did you feel the need to invoke them?
...the GOP, etc.
IBM, takes pride of place for their tabulation machines. Ford, and GM, for converting their German subsidiary factories to wartime usages, while declining to do the same in the USA. Nevermind Henry Ford's proclivity for funding anti-semitism. Then of course, all the German manufacturers of note. Krupp, Daimler, IG Farben, Hugo Boss...
Actually, probably just quicker to link to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...
How dare they!
> All defendants who were sentenced to prison received early release. Most were quickly restored to their directorships and other positions in post-war companies, and some were awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.
It's quite incredible how bad the internet is at discussing this stuff thoughtfully. It's clearly not the medium for it. It bonds with all its failure modes (e.g. snark, screaming, and paranoia) into one hell of a compound. We're trying for something different on HN, and for that to work we need users to be aware of this and not go there.
I personally find it really hard to refrain from commenting when there is a very once sided view presented on a front-page topic.
The issue I have is that some topics feel like they are either flamewar or a one-sided view where people feel like they can't comment because going against that view might start a flamewar. Neither promote curiosity
edit: My comment isn't necessarily connected to that of parent, but more to your reply
After that, it's the commenters' duty not to take thread further into flamewar, such as with generic ideological rhetoric. I know it's not easy but it's not as if the principle is hard to understand.
People sometimes imagine that the rules say that political threads are off topic, but that's not so at all. Stories with political overlap are inevitable here, and not a bad thing (as long as they don't get too dominant in the overall mix). They only become a bad thing when people descend into name-calling, flamewar, and the rest of the above list.
Does that make sense? If not, there are many past explanations here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... Some good threads to start with might be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22902490. If you or anyone still has a question that hasn't been answered there, I'd like to know what it is, and if you know a better way for HN to relate to political topics while fulfilling its mandate of curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), I'd really like to know what it is. Just please familiarize yourself with the past material first, because if it's something simple like "just ban politics" or "just allow everything", I've answered many times already why it won't work.
It's all BS and past time for Apple (and Google for that matter) to be forced to open up and allow authorized alternatives to the "official" stores. And yes, while there is a generic open sourced version of Android, let's be honest - the one everyone wants is Android integrated with Google's services and for that one you have to go through the Play store.