Hacker News Reader

Comment by ThePhysicist | Hacker News Reader

The timing of the change seems quite conspicuous [1], and it's also weird that Apple would introduce this in China first and only roll it out to the rest of the world next year. The same article mentions that Apple blocks the Taiwanese flag emoji in China, for which it's hard to come up with an explanation other than bowing to censorship.

1: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/11/netizen-voices-apple-r...

View on HN

Apple certainly tailors the emojis available to the local political climate.

They don't, for instance, have the flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, instead using the flag of the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

I can still see the Iran flag in all of its unaltered glory here in the US. I guess they missed the memo?

Afghanistan =/= Iran

The parent poster was referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Afghanistan

Iran and Afghanistan are different countries.

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/person-lotus-position...

Here's a podcast interviewing someone who created an emoji

Truth. And it's not just apple, on android we (U.S.) get a "water gun" for gun and no emoji shows up when you search for rifle.

The gun emoji became a toy on all major platforms everywhere several years ago.

This is surely related to the political climate but I believe the entities involved applied that change worldwide.

I would love to learn more about backroom emoji politics. It sounds foolish on the surface but emojis have a big reach.

Here's some folks taking emojis very seriously. Including the poop emoji face. It's a good read - https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17393-wg2-emoji-feedback.pd... (pdf)

I watched this documentary https://www.dutch-core.com/programs/documentary/backlight-be...

This is a really good doc on it

https://www.theemojistory.com/

It became a toy because Apple unilaterally changed it, and then everyone had to follow because it would otherwise lead to things like this: https://blog.emojipedia.org/content/images/2016/08/emojipedi...

It was a unilateral Apple decision. Other platforms were forced to follow them over the next few years to avoid situations like kids texting each other "Can't want for our class trip to the water park tomorrow <insert squirt gun or real gun depending on font>"

Apple made that change around the same time as the Rio Olympics. In the leadup to the Olympics, there was a push to create an emoji for every event. Unicode 9 added emojis for handball, wrestling, water polo, fencing, etc.

However the almost comprehensive set still had some gaps, because Apple veto'd the marksmanship/air rifle and pentathlon emojis... but not in time to prevent the creation of the corresponding unicode glyphs

I found a summary on what motivated the change, I don't know how accurate that is, but sounds legit https://youtu.be/7SBJr3Zfgl8 - Why Apple removed the gun emoji

Well, yeah, US companies are more than happy to export the US political climate as long as it doesn't directly conflict with local laws.

That would be because IRA remains the sole government of Afghanistan recognized by relevant agencies such as UN. Which companies generally defer to when they came, because it cuts down on a lot of individual political decisions they'd have to make otherwise.

Yandex is an interesting showcase of how bad this can get - they literally dropped country borders from their maps last year "for better user experience". And I don't mean just lines that you normally see while browsing the map, but even when you ask for it deliberately. For example, if you look up a city, you get its territory highlighted on the map - but that's not the case for countries, it just puts a marker "somewhere in the middle".

They also removed administrative regional boundaries without announcing that change - probably because looking up regions at the border would have to include a part of said border into the displayed boundary, making it discoverable.

> That would be because IRA remains the sole government of Afghanistan recognized by relevant agencies such as UN. Which companies generally defer to when they came, because it cuts down on a lot of individual political decisions they'd have to make otherwise.

How does that standard apply to Taiwan?

In mainland China they don't support the Taiwanese flag emoji, presumably because that's the only country that would care or want to censor it.

Perhaps Yandex maps could be perceived as representing an ideal future devoid of essentially arbitrary political boundaries and silly notions of citizenship.

No matter how much you want such an utopia where everyone gets along, that is not the reality we are living in. Instead, borders are real and which country a particular location in matters in many contexts that involve looking at a map.

Google Maps also does this when the border is under contention. Selecting a country with a contested border like Ukraine or Russia will only highlight the country name, but selecting a country with uncontested borders like Poland or Germany will draw a red outline around the country.

Mapmakers have been doing this one for centuries. Contested borders often do not appear.

I heard Google also alters the drawn borders based on your IP (if you're in one with a contested border)

Yes they do - some examples:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/14/google-...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2016/aug/10...

https://www.wesa.fm/national-international-news/2014-04-12/w...

Nitpick: technically, the border between Germany and the Netherlands is semi-contested. The countries agreed to disagree about its exact location. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany–Netherlands_border#D...:

“The maritime border is disputed in a part of the Ems estuary outside the Dollart bay, where Germany has the view that the state border runs on the left bank of the Ems, while the Netherlands regards the Thalweg as its border.

[…]

In 2014 the two nations' foreign ministers met to put an end to the dispute. It was decided that the border should remain ambiguous and responsibility for the region in question shared”

More info (in German) at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch-Niederländische_Grenzf....

Bowing to censorship? Bowing isn't necessarily done happily.

Or maybe more ideas are also in play? Perhaps recognizing the existing power dynamics? Perhaps playing the game over a longer time frame?

Not all ethicists recommend "dying on your sword" so to speak. Sometimes it is useful to maintain influence and fight another day. These things are far from simple.

If you want Apple to push back on censorship in China, let's talk about the details. What would China likely do in return?

Hopefully, they (the CCP) will collapse.

Hmm, I see this sentiment often, but I am not entirely certain people go through it beyond the initial 'feels good' analysis. If there is one thing that US population probably should be aware of, it is that succeeding regime will not automatically be to one's advantage ( devil known kinda deal ). Say what you want about old age, but it does force you to recognize certain level of stability as desirable.

Taiwan made the transition to democracy. No reason why the mainlanders can't.

They could make that transition, of course. But look at all the countries that somehow got rid of dictators in this century. How many of those turned into stable, free, and democratic societies? Afghanistan? Iraq? Egypt? Lybia?

If you add ten more years, did it work out for Russia? Belarus? Ukraine? It did work out for Poland, Latvia and some others. But getting rid of an oppressive regime is the easy part of transforming an autocracy into democracy.

Take a look at Eastern Europe. Many countries were either directly or indirectly under the Soviet thumb, and dare I say, they are much better off now that they can rule themselves independently. At least any mess they make is of their own making, rather than centrally imposed.

I guess what parent is saying that for every Poland, we seem to have an Afghanistan ( the odds of favorable outcome are hit or miss ). One would hope people in charge in US are actually studying the whys behind the failures and successes, because even without access to privileged information one could infer some reasons for both. I would especially like to hope that we learn from our mistakes ( as those tend to result in much greater level of misery for all ; in the event of success everyone is just patting themselves on the back ).

If they do, it won’t be because of Apple.

Remember how Tim Cook’s Apple handled HKmap.live¹, Telegram², and the Navalny app³. Maybe you shouldn’t fight every battle, but he fights none. The richest company in the world has at the helm a person who quotes Martin Luther King Jr on the importance of doing something for others⁴ yet he always kowtows to authoritarian regimes. He’s in a stronger position than most people in the world to make a stand but he never does. At a certain point he’s out of excuses. He fights for money, nothing more.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HKmap.live

² https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/apple-telegram-belarus/

³ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/google-apple-remove-nav...

⁴ Check the bio: https://twitter.com/tim_cook

> Maybe you shouldn’t fight every battle, but he fights none.

All we know is what has been reported.

It would seem improbable what a multi trillion dollar company with it's manufacturing base in China wouldn't be dealing and negotiating with the Chinese authorities as part of day to day operations.

To say Tim Cook fights no battles seems unlikely. We cannot make that statement because the reality is that we just don't know what goes on behind closed doors!

Perhaps he dresses up as Batman and fights crime at night, I mean, who can say?

So basically your counterargument is a variation of the Conspiracy Fallacy. "The good actors are hiding the evidence for their goodness!"

(Or perhaps, that was your point!)

I think it's more that Tim Cook, and Apple, are innocent until proven guilty.

They are not 'hiding' anything, which implies they have more to hide.

Apple are a secretive company that does not tend to discuss their internal politics and supplier arrangements.

The internet could argue about this all day long, but my point stands that we just don't know!

But I get your point as well. Maybe I'm feeling generous towards Apple!

I'm not normally a fan of Mr Tim Cook! :-)

If you can point to a positive change that Apple have made, in this regard, under Cook's watch, then your argument has some merit.

If you can't then you'll have to rely on the "it would've been worse but for his efforts" but I doubt you're going to provide evidence for that.

What we do know is that Apple have repeatedly sided with censorship, I can certainly provide evidence of that.

Apple very publicly refused to unlock the phones of the San Berbardino shooters, and consistently refuses to back door their phones for law enforcement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...

In a country with strong rule of law, where it's quite clear where the legality of this rests, and where they had almost nothing to lose by refusing to unlock the phone.

Yet icloud is dencrypted in China as soon as that's what the authorities want.

Standing up for things doesn't really mean much when you have nothing to lose. It's like the world cup players talking about LGBT rights and then stopping it as soon as they are threatened with yellow cards. That's boring cowardly virtue signalling, it's not standing up for something regardless of consequences.

You know what? You've made a good point, and I'm now a little less positive on Apple and a little more critical of Spineless Tim Cook.

> Perhaps recognizing the existing power dynamics?

by "power dynamics", do you mean lies propagated by the CCP?

> Perhaps playing the game over a longer time frame?

Apple isn't a government. What do you mean here exactly? Money? That propagating lies for money is a legitimate way of doing business?

Hm.

Parent is likely referring to Apple's position in the market[1], where their profit - not revenue - alone ( 141b in 2021 ) dwarfs many nations' GDP[2] in the world.

I would not call it a lie.

[1]https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/gross-p... [2]https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?most_rec...

Considering that China has the ultimate power over apple with Foxconn manufacturing their device in China. Apple makes a lot of money because of China, China can have a lot of influence over Apple. I'm not pro-China, pro-America, pro-anything, just stating this fact.

Foxconn does assembly and that is not a big cost of an iphone [0]. Like literally just a fraction compared to American IP, Taiwan CPUs, or Japanese cameras and the latter are all much harder to move compared to assembly.

[0]: https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/apple-iphone-7-and-...

Whatever the case is, Apple took their sweet time making changes. Microsoft, Google and even Facebook pulled out of China years ago, and Apple is acting like a storied history of human rights abuses is news to them.

> [...], Google and even [...] pulled out of China years ago

Wasn't the Pixel 6 assembled by Foxconn? And the upcoming Pixel 7 / foldables apparently also going to be assembled by Foxconn? That's not pulling out...

[edit to clarify we're only talking about Google]

Foxconn isn’t even a Chinese company (unless you’re a “one China” person). They’ve been doing the assembly on the mainland and they have had to relocate a few times to keep labor costs low. The writing is on the wall for iPhone assembly in China and has been for some time.

it's hard to come up with an explanation other than bowing to censorship

If one believes Elon Musk's view of the Twitter situation with the app store, Apple seems to be for more censorship!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com