Apple bans accounts of developers from Belarus | Hacker News Reader

Apple bans accounts of developers from Belarus

developer.apple.com

191 pointsameshkov86 comments

Moreover, I’m citizen of Belarus, but living in Poland, tax resident of Poland. My developer account is tied with legal entity in Poland and bank account in Poland. I was banned too. :/

How were you linked to Belarus?

Initially my account was registered for sole proprietor in Belarus. I’ve changed linked legal entity when moved to Poland. That was almost a year ago.

That’s probably as a result of Apple’s compliance department action.

It’s technically Apple who bans the accounts but it’s the US government who makes them to do so.

Essentially, there are people and places that US government prohibits US companies to do business with. Not only US companies actually, anyone who wants to do business with US.

Syria, North Korea, Crimea, Belarus, Cuba etc. are terrible addresses to open an account with.

If you remember, Github banned Syrian developers.[0]

[0] : https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-coun...

I find it hard to believe that despite whatever sanctions may be in place, the official stance of the USG is that individual Belarusians should be targeted in this manner.

But there is no sanctions against all citizens of Belarus. Yes some companies that support regime of lukashenko are under sanctions. But not everyone. I moved from Belarus due to lawfulness in my country, living in Poland and now I’m under sanctions? That’s insane.

Are there sanctions against Belarusian banks or other institutions which are necessary to functionally do business with people in Belarus?

Insane probably, but there is always going to be some friction and gap between policy and implementation. It is good to inquire and understand where the gaps are. You are doing the right thing but shining the sun light and trying to recruit people to make your case is good.

Let's see how Apple reacts.

Could be specific address or name, we would not know since the match in the list is not disclosed.

It can also be false positive, the compliance departments use specialized software do a non-exact match since it’s not a straightforward process because countries use different alphabets, address systems, naming conventions etc. So they identify potential risky clients and someone does an assessment and if they think that it could be a real match they pull the trigger.

Sometimes your names is Ahmad, other times it’s Yuri and and the life is not easy for you.

To add, Apple got in trouble when it did only do an exact match: https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-settles-allegations-of-u-...

> On the day Mr. Stjepanovic and SIS were blacklisted, Apple ran the new designations against its app developer account holder names. But the company’s sanctions-screening tool failed to identify SIS as a blacklisted entity because Apple’s system listed the company as “SIS DOO,” rather than “SIS d.o.o” on OFAC’s list, according to the agreement.

The supreme irony is that these sanctions also apply to political dissidents than had to run away from Belarus. Corporate cost benefit analysis applied to shoddily written laws leads to unintended consequences.

This could be specific name.

Think in terms of apple employees.

If you over blacklist, then okay that is not ok. That is bad.

If you decide to under-blacklist, you might actually end up in jail for a long time.

So, over blacklisting it is.

There are both US and EU sanctions on Belarusian individuals and entities, but no broad sanctions that would apply to all developers in the country of which I'm aware. This seems like it might be an error.

Or calculation that it's cheaper to just get rid of Belarus-linked accounts than getting into trouble for a few that are linked to a sanctioned entity.

Yes, seems like it's a crackdown on Belorussians incorporating in Western Europe. My guess is that they looked at it and considered to be a risk. Maybe an incident like oligarch moving money through sham iAP drew attention to it? Who knows.

One of the games I made was hosted by my company, it’s sequel was on cloud.

Was annoying because Crimea was not allowed to connect to the cloud, but we sold our game there as it was part of Ukraine/Russia and there are no trade embargo’s from my publishers country to theirs.

So the situation was that people who were able to play the first game were able to buy but not play the sequel, which must have been frustrating as hell- and it’s not like the citizens did anything to warrant that.

That was annoying, we need European cloud providers really.

I have seen these kind of BS for years on HN now (admittedly most of them from Google). I have decoupled from all those big companies so they can't literally destroy me. I use some of their service but it would be of no consequence if they banned me (YouTube account for example).

I encourage you all to get back your freedom. It's not sexy or easy but it's better than loosing everything someday because a stupid law has been passed or on an AI whim.

If you've trained as a mobile developer, this is hard to execute. Apple and to a lesser extent Google control your life if you want to develop iOS/Android Apps.

You're right, but do people really make money with apps (except a few lucky ones that are "too big to ban" anyway)?

It's possible to build Android apps without having a Google account, but distribution (and getting money) is going to be difficult. For me it's not a problem I'm the sole user of the apps I made and I use a GrapheneOS phone without Google Play) but it's an unusual setup.

I have a feeling that if Belarus is part of a Ukraine invasion, this will just be a warmup. On the bright side, not having an Apple developer account won't make much difference when you can't purchase anything more advanced than a graphing calculator.

That being said, war is dumb and I sincerely hope cooler heads prevail.

This is a terrible, terrible idea. What percentage of these devs have anything at all to do with Lushenko?

That's the point. It's so they can pressure their government

I was on the receiving end of sanctions in Serbia during 90-ties. That felt very, very unfair, since they also affect people like me who were against government.

They're also countereffective, since dictatorship uses it to push story that "they are against out people, we all suffer but if we stand together (under our rule) we'll prevail". And from what I saw at that time, people redirected their hate from government to evil foreign enemies. This seems to be the pattern in other countries where sanctions are pushed. They really make life worse for ordinary people, not those in power, who even use it for their own benefit.

Let dictators push whatever story they want. Serbia was a belligerent pariah and suffered economically for it. When the dictator was ousted it stopped being a belligerent pariah and benefited economically from that. That's all that matters in the long run.

It's not like that, sanctions make it harder to overthrow a dictatorship.

On one hand, 90% of people can only hear official media. With sanctions, they have much easier job telling that someone else is to blame.

On the other hand it makes much much harder for political opposition to fight that narrative, to propose opening the country towards West when they're clearly acting against population through these sanctions.

That's why these sanctions benefit regime, and that's why they're double evil - hurt people + make it harder for opposition to fight the dictator.

In Serbia's case, sanctions didn't help at all with overthrowing Milosevic. They just brought misery to ordinary people and he remained in charge through the 90-ties.

It took loosing all the wars, getting country bombarded by NATO and de facto loosing control over Kosovo, getting entire opposition united, and massive protests to remove him from the power.

i agree the us policy in the balkans is an overwhelming success. bosnia and herzegovina prospers and is more stable than ever [1]. kosovo and serbia are best of friends [2]. there is almost zero corruption and gdp is through the roof [3]. there are no children being born with defects and there has been zero cancer cases due to nato dropping depleted uranium [4]. as far as former yugoslavia is concerned, only slovenia is dirt poor

[1] https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/bosnias-next-crisis/

[2] https://www.rferl.org/a/serbia-kosovo-dialogue-dead-selakovi...

[3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat...

[4] https://europeanwesternbalkans.com/2019/12/26/depleted-urani...

[5] https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/groups/Former-Yugo...

People who don't have to worry about feeding and sheltering their families are in a much better position to pressure their totalitarian governments.

Sure. Bunch of angry devs will pressure a lifelong dictator lol People living in a fairy land. What will happen is that ordinary people will suffer the most and loose whatever decoupling to government they have, and government will have the same power over people or even greater under pretense that they now have to do bunch of random horrendous things to fight evil foreign powers. And I speak from first hand experience. Yugoslavia in the 90ties.

That sounds suspiciously like Western logic.

If a random individual attempts to "pressure" an autocratic government, they will land in prison or fall out of their window.

"Terrorism, regime destabilization, and policy change related objectives are by far more often assessed as failed, as compared to the other policy objectives. Overall, the average success rate [of sanctions] of around 34% across different policy objectives is very much in line with the effectiveness rate of 34% that is reported in the analysis of Hufbauer et al. (2007) and falls in the middle of the success rates ranging between 27% and 37% form Threat and Imposition of Economic Sanctions (TIES) database of Morgan et al. (2014)."

The paper also notes that "the success rate of sanctions has gone up until 1995 and fallen since then."

http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~cas86/GSDB_FKSYY.pdf

20-35% success rate of sanctions has been replicated a bunch of times. Sanctions are the foreign policy experts form of collective punishment. It seems they largely exist to satisfy the bureaucrat's need to "do something."

This is very stupid. Those in Belarus who can make a living via AppStore are independent from Belarus government or state owned companies for their livelihood. Also they are typically younger and liberal minded.

Now the West has taken their livelihood from them, forcing them to depend more and work for Belarus state. Same stupid policy as with Crimea.

Now the West has taken their livelihood from them

That's the whole point, make the country poor.

That just unites more people around the dictator because now he is the one “feeding” them and they can’t make it without him.

Or a rebellion starts eventually, which is one of the objectives of these sanctions.

This approach worked fabulously in North Korea, Iran, Cuba.

Meantime, people close to Belarus gov have no problem buying real estate on London, Florida and California.

I think it was Samuel Huntington who said: "Development first, democracy later". Sanctions are the direct opposite of that.

Rebellion never happens because of sanctions. People who are too busy fighting for survival have zero interest in politics. That's why North Korea is still communist.

If you are looking for an example of the opposite: "Solidarity" movement in communist Poland happened in 1980, after a decade of relative prosperity, which fueled people's ambitions for better lives.

> I think it was Samuel Huntington who said: "Development first, democracy later".

Without commenting on the sanctions approach. This opposite approach has clearly not worked for China either.

[Maybe there isn't a magic democracy wand, alas?]

Maybe we just shouldn't try forcing political systems onto other countries?

Not yet anyway. Most Chinese are still very poor

I believe it was Xi Jinping who said "Development first, fuck off with your democracy later. But thanks for the IP".

It worked so well in Cuba, after all.

At this point I think it's safe to say that rebellion isn't even an objective of sanctions. Nobody anywhere in the world views that as a plausible outcome.

Sanctions leading to a regime change are exceedingly rare.

They might have helped to end the apartheid in South Africa. Other than that, zero successes.

Milosevic.

Serbia was heavily bombed in 1999. Regimes do regularly, though not always, collapse after military defeats. No one wants to be ruled by a loser.

You're right, the war was a major reason. But economic sanctions played a part too, by not allowing the dictatorship to continue being a menace to its neighbours and recover economically. No one wants to be ruled by an economic loser, and kicking the bum out hurts your ego a lot less when the reasons are economic, not a touchy subject like losing a war. After all, foreign policy wise most Serbians enthusiastically supported Milosevic.

> kicking the bum out hurts your ego a lot less when the reasons are economic, not a touchy subject like losing a war.

If you lost the war, it's generally not you kicking the bum out. The winners will handle it for you.

Sanctions from 1992-1995. were far heavier than one that existed in 1999. and 2000. and economy was in better shape in 2000. Yet he lost elections in 2000. while he easily won earlier elections (easily as in he stole some votes but his party would won majority anyway).

What was different after 1999 was big US effort for regime change - not just financing opposition and media (they did that before too) but forcing opposition to unite behind a single candidate and, most importantly, making deals with parts of regime to get rid of Milosevic. They were promised not to be touched after the change so most if them switched sides - parts of police, military and paramilitary forces along with influential people who made their fortune during the war.

Sanctions royally fucked ordinary people, but Milosevic was safe until his support infrastructure wasn't dismantled (brought).

Ah, the law of unintended consequences...

Or causes a brain drain.

That is the case with most US/Europe sanctions. They target ordinary people more than the super rich. Iran would be an example :).

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If they maintain ties it’s profiting from authoritarianism. If they cut ties it’s heartless.

We’re seeing a return to Cold War dynamics, with a schism between China, Russia, Iran and their satellites; and NATO, Japan, Australia and their satellites. It’s fair to assume that our lives will either involve massive wars or economic decoupling. To the extent we’re picking between worst options, the latter will do.

After MAD, Globalism is the best thing which happened for world peace.

If we see economic decoupling the wars will be much more likely.

Imagine if us oligarchs split into 2 factions and had a disagreement. Maybe 1 faction decided to go join Russia or Ukraine, secretly or not so secretly. I imagine real wars and real economic decoupling are both proxy fights between oligarchs. But it’s a necessary evil, because it keeps the oligarchs honest and limits their power.

I don't think we're seeing a return to cold war dynamics at all. There's no clear lines. You can see it in the French and German reaction to Russia right now that has very little in common with the US, the reluctance of Japanese firms to actually move out of China at all. Even the US went ahead and fast-tracked a trade-deal with China in 2019, don't remember that with the Soviet Union.

Two things are massively different compared to the cold war. One is that there's no ideological line between communism and capitalism, secondly there's no primacy of the state. Private actors carry significant weight and they have different interests.

The US signed trade agreements with the Soviet Union in 1935 and in 1972. The Soviet Union and the United States granted each other most favored nation status. Many other western countries signed trade agreements with the Soviet Union which included most favored nation status.

That one post-war trade agreement largely came down to Armand Hammer, a petroleum magnate having favourable personal relationships towards the Soviet Union. Overall trade between the Soviet Union and the US never exceeded 1% of the American GDP during the 70s and 80s and the countries where effectively decoupled. Obviously they weren't in any relationship one could legitimately call 'most favored' (which is a purely diplomatic term) given that we call the period the cold war for a reason.

The relationship with China today is entirely different. The countries are extensively linked, with China being America's largest single trade partner outside of North America. 20% of American imports today come out of China alone.

The statement by the original commenter was that a trade agreement was made between the US and China and he couldn't remember that happening with the Soviet Union during the cold war. It did in fact happen. Whether significant trade actually took place is not the point.

> You can see it in the French and German reaction to Russia right now that has very little in common with the US

That's because France and Germany are very dependent on Russia for energy, especially during the winter to heat homes, so they're playing the good cop. The UK isn't so, and is actually sending arms to Ukraine.

Or it causes a brain drain. That would certainly be a desirable outcome with Belarus.

> Belarus has temporarily banned most of its citizens from leaving, including many foreign residency permit holders.

> There are some exceptions, such as for Belarusian civil servants on official trips and state transport staff.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57316838

Yes, today many of developers received the mail about their account.

Sanctions against countries are sanctions against populations. It doesn't work.

Targeted sanctions have historically been shown to work.

And given that the alternative involves killing people it's probably the best path we have.

"Targeted sanctions have historically been shown to work."

I am not aware of any successful one?

"And given that the alternative involves killing people it's probably the best path we have. "

And why is that the only alternative?

How about targeted sanctions against actually responsible people with ties to the government?

> How about targeted sanctions against actually responsible people with ties to the government?

Funny thing is that local population usually does not like higher-ups and will welcome those sanctions.

> Targeted sanctions have historically been shown to work.

Do you mind providing an example or two, with a sentence about how they “worked?” I ask because I can’t think of any sanction that had any result besides further impoverishing the people while the leader stayed in power.

But I am a layman and I would be happy to be proven wrong.

The alternative is minding your own goddamn business if you’re not willing to commit to the necessary coercive steps.

Sanctions targeted at an individual are useless when they live in an unfriendly country. And sanctioning the whole country results in NK. Great, you’ve sent millions of people back to medieval life and dear leader still gets to hang out with Dennis Rodman when he wants. Very effective.

>And given that the alternative involves killing people it's probably the best path we have

This argument pretends sanctions don't kill people. Limiting trade with a country makes it difficult for people in that country to get access to affordable drugs, killing many people with treatable diseases. We have seen this in Iran, where people with diabetes struggle to get insulin, haemophiliacs die unable to find necessary medication, and treatable cancers kill victims of all ages.

Further, lowering the wealth of a nation will make it harder for the poor to get the basic necessities like food and shelter.

Targeted sanctions may work differently, but they're far less proven than you claim.

Are there actually such sanctions against Belarus?

Yes, the general list https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/...

Tbh I thought these sanctions are against govt officials and not the general population.

I did not know that the US had indiscriminate sanctions against Belarus.

Regarding [0], it's a pretty broad executive order and Apple might be making the hard decision to block anyone that could possibly have been been in violation of the EO. Some particularly hard things to enforce:

> the following persons are blocked...:

> (v) to be responsible for or complicit in, or to have directly or indirectly engaged or attempted to engage in, any of the following:

> (A) actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, or territorial integrity of Belarus; ... (E) public corruption related to Belarus

> (vi) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, any activity described in subsections (v)(A)–(E) of this section or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or

> (vii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the Government of Belarus or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.

So, i'm no expert in sanctions, but it seems that anyone who made an app used by Belarusian KGB or other government organization could be sanctioned.

0: https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/126/20210809_belarus_...

I’d prefer to remove my app from being used in Belarus than being banned myself.

Most here claim that sanctions don't work.

But capitalism has been the greatest reason why wars are at an all time low. Since there is another way to have a reasonable wage/getting wealthy.

Threatening with a war which is happening now, means you won't get the cake both ways.

People there could be victims, but people there are also aiding in the military.

Nope, it's not perfect. But it's a tool in the toolbox and one of the best that doesn't involve bullets and people getting killed en masse.

Note : probably not a popular opinion. But please suggest a better actual solution then that actually is proven to work without giving the bully all they want/threat.

Now might be a good time to go hiring remote workers from Belarus... I can imagine a lot looking for new jobs...

Oh that's a nice move from apple to bring developers from Belarus, Russia and China together...nothing better as having a common enemy....maybe one more day thinking about it Pentagon?

Surely anyone associated with this 'restricted party' should also be locked out of iCloud not just developer accounts.

Bricking half a country's phones might create some negative publicity.

I doubt iPhones are particularly prevalent in Belarus

If these stats are close to correct, then iPhones have a sizeable share of the market there

https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/belaru...

Right decision from Apple. Lukashenko may force any developer from Belarus to integrate a backdoor into any app (no matter if they want to do this). Lukashenko may even kill a developer and let his security agency to publish "modified" versions of the app to do some really bad stuff.

There are many dictators around the world. Why not apply that same logic for all other countries, why not also block Mali, Rwanda, China, Burkina Faso, etc etc etc?

This may be a (very sloppy) overfit or some other kind of error on Apple's part.

It is difficult to parse the official sanctions directives - but from my understanding they target only certain individuals and institutions - not the country (or its entire banking system) as a whole.

Or this could be an isolated incident where the developer is tied to oligarchs or the government. If you look at the sanctions list posted below there isn't anything that says "ban all developers".

Bit early to be jumping to conclusions either way.

There's three pages of other developers from Belarus who've suddenly experienced the exact same.

The developers must have realized that their income depends on devices controlled by a hostile regime.

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