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Comment by jeswin | Hacker News Reader

The bigger news to me was that Apple blocked AirDrop in China - specifically to limit dissent and for preventing people from organizing [1]. A company that misses no chance to showcase its liberal credentials, bending over backwards for perhaps the most dictatorial government in the world to suppress the most basic of freedoms.

To quote from Apple's article on racism [2], "With every breath we take, we must commit to being that change, and to creating a better, more just world for everyone." I guess according to Apple, Chinese people don't deserve any of what's written in their post.

[1]: https://qz.com/apple-airdrop-china-protest-tool-1849824435

[2]: https://www.apple.com/speaking-up-on-racism/

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Edit: argh - this story already had a major HN thread:

AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33778302 - Nov 2022 (692 comments)

, so https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33806401 is actually a dupe. I'm going to undo the change I just made and put everything back the way it originally was. It will take a few minutes. Sorry all!

--- original, now invalid comment: ---

This comment was originally posted in response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33803692 — hence the reference to "the bigger news". Since this topic deserves its own discussion, I've moved the comments about it to the thread that's actually about this. The other topic deserves its own discussion too.

Since Apple did not in fact “block AirDrop in China” this whole thing just feels like flame bait.

I haven't dived into the details but I assume there's a legitimate debate about why they did whatever they did.

From a moderation point of view, the issues are simply that (1) the Airdrop story is off topic in this thread, and (2) it already had a massive thread on HN.

Discussed 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33778302

Like any other commercial entity in the west, and especially in the US, it's a machine for making money. All other values are subjugated to that purpose. As long as some other value isn't hurting the bottom line, it'll be tolerated. Once it does, all those other values go out the window.

This is what makes these machines so effective. This is what makes liberal western values vulnerable.

Then why did they pull Twitter ads? Surely they're losing sales from that?

They could also be losing sales for having ads on Twitter.

Are there people who actually won’t buy an iPhone if they advertise on Twitter? That sounds so absurd, but I guess we’re talking about Twitter users

That’s a very limited point of view. Think of brand management. What if suddenly people start seeing tweets from very problematic people, and Apple ads next to that?

And imagine if that makes the news cycle after that?

Conversely, how effective are Apple advertisements on twitter anyway? At least half of the install base is probably already tweeting from an iPhone.

Apple was the largest ad-buyer on Twitter. Up until recently of course.

Biggest problem that my friends in marketing/sales explained to me - if there’s no proper conversion from ads to sales, huge problem with bots AND negative targeted ads, then it’s not worth it. Honestly, I have close to 0 knowledge in terms of marketing and advertisement, so mostly rely on others’ opinions and tactics.

"Brand safety". Apple cultivates their image and don't want it damaged. Twitter isn't valuable enough as an advertising space to take a risk for. That is, they pulled twitter ads because they think advertising on Twitter isn't worth the price and might reduce the value of their brand.

I think this is correct but I also think that means the US public has strange, contradictory values.

In what way contradictory?

How is it contradictory? You’re free to say what you want to. I’m free to go somewhere I can’t hear you if I want to.

The fact that Apple is more than willing to work with a violent repressive dictatorship is cool, but we won't advertise on Twitter because they are evil...

Brand protection isn’t a value judgement about the service. It’s the recognition that ad dollars are poorly spent if your ads end up next to damaging content.

That said, of course the us population has contradictory positions. It’s hundreds of millions of people.

We denounce dictators and oppression and champion human rights and democracy. Companies that work with oppressive rulers have tarnished brand names. For example: software companies that worked with the Saudis or CBP and ICE. Apple has determined that Twitter could cause brand reputation damage because Twitter is accused of having disinformation or hate speech on it.

On the other hand, Apple works cooperatively with the Chinese government to suppress human rights. The update to air drop and the separate icloud and app store as well as appearing to work closely with the CCP does not seem to be pro human rights.

So I think it's contradictory that there is no brand reputational damage for cooperation with a government accused of violations of human rights but there is for allowing Twitter on the App Store ostensibly because it is a threat to democracy. Maybe that changes as a result of people pointing this logic out, but I won't hold my breath. I don't think it's nuanced, I think it's straightforward. You can't be a champion of global human rights except where it is inconvenient. Or maybe the human rights and pro democracy stuff is all BS.

How does shameless hypocrisy help their brand-image?

It does not, but the calculation is that any loss in value of brand is sufficiently offset by profits in the Chinese market.

Assuming any of the claims are even true.

Their customers are hypocrites too.

I think it should be noted that "brand safety" is entirely theoretical. It doesn't necessarily mean that anything actually happens. What it means is that certain people in Apple's marketing department believe that their ads being pictured next to things that they think people might not approve of might harm their image and possibly lead to a loss in sales. There is no proof that this will actually happen though. For all we know, the only solid reason is that their trendy cocktail party friends won't approve of them if their ads are next to something they don't like.

You can "lose sales" and save money by spending less on marketing at the same time.

Twitter Ads really have low value and always did. The investments, relative to other social channels, are low and the ROAS is terrible. Brands were just there because they felt they had to cover the bases, not because they were truly having any impact.

Twitter has been dead on that front forever and El Musky is definitely not helping things.

Seems like Musk is focussed on cost reduction. Which might actually save a lot more than the ad losses. Or might not.

“Engagement” and “page views” and blah blah don’t pay the dividends, leftovers after expenses are paid do.

Advertising losses are not Musk's only financial concern.

FTC, EU commission and EU member states are all circling as a result of them losing trust in the companies ability to enforce previous agreements. And it's a legitimate concern since all of those employees responsible for this are all gone.

To add some context to this, I met a woman a few years back who worked in marketing for Kingsford Charcoal. Kingsford had something like 94% USA marketshare at the time, but they still spent millions on marketing. They already dominated their space, and I could totally see Kingsford blowing six or seven figures USD on Twitter advertising, just in case.

An aside, but if you like grilling with charcoal, chunk "natural" charcoal produces a hotter fire than briquettes like Kingsford.

Apple have issued guidance that they can’t make enough iphone 14s to meet demand. They likely don’t need to advertise on Twitter right now anyway and this way they get free PR advertising from news orgs covering the Twitter story instead.

If the marketing works, reducing it reduces their pricing power.

Lots of ways of doing that without raising list price (removing promos/discounts, keeping the price higher longer).

And an iPhone 14 ad still spills into other iPhone and apple product sales.

a) Widespread reports from the advertising industry that the Twitter ad engine is falling apart. ROAS and engagement have significantly dropped whilst inauthentic bot requests have significantly increased. And some are seeing data inconsistencies in the dashboard and so they are unable to effectively audit campaigns. So for many it is simply not worth the effort compared to investing in other channels.

b) Larger ad buyers depend on account managers being there to assist with getting the most out of the platform and helping to understand changes. They are all gone.

c) It is a proven fact that brand association matters. If your ad is next to CSAM people will remember that and de-value your brand. Given Musk has fired the entire Brand Safety team, hollowed out the Content Moderation team, empowered ultra-right-wing people like Andy Ngo to make moderation decisions and is now sole arbiter for all decisions companies are simply believing it is too risky to stay. And advertising groups like Omnicom, WPP, Publicis etc agree ranking the platform as "high-risk".

d) Apple wanted to send a message to Musk that this direction Twitter is going on is not going to end well. There is a risk, albeit small, that they can be held legally responsible for the behaviour of the applications on their store. Allowing apps that take no responsibility for content moderation is untenable for them.

> Then why did they pull Twitter ads? Surely they're losing sales from that?

Probably not really? Compared to Google, Facebook, and even traditional TV, Twitter is a drop in the advertising bucket.

What you say is true but did you didn't follow the logic all the way.

Apple doesn't care about it because their customers don't care about it. Stop buying and they start caring.

"Pecunia non olet".

The money is real, but the other important aspect is that any government can compel these companies to restrict free speech. One of the governments is the board of directors of the company itself. Unless you truly own your phone, the speech/software allowed on it is determined by the government. If you have complete control of the software running on it such as FOSS, then you own/control the phone. Otherwise you are basically renting a device that is controlled by government.

Google left China in 2010 and hasn't really gone back, other than some hardware manufacturing there. Bing on the other hand is available and fully complies with Chinese censorship.

Google was still collaborating with the CCP until early 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)

Did Google actually talk to the CCP about launching this, or was this just Google wondering how easy it would be to sell out on their values and reclaim all that revenue they gave away to Baido? My understanding was that this was more of the latter. Unsettling that they would even consider this, but still better than basically every other large tech firm.

Dragonfly was a prototype that never even left the design stage. How could they have been collaborating with the CCP with something that wasn't even released?

Until public companies aren't legally mandated to make money or get sued by shareholders, this will keep happening.

There needs to be a new model for public companies

> Apple blocked AirDrop in China

Just to be clear, it's still possible to use AirDrop in China — the change was that you can't set your device to receive from 'Everyone' indefinitely. It's now limited to 10 minutes. I don't support this change, but we shouldn't conflate it with blocking AirDrop entirely, which would be much worse.

Nevertheless,

- was this change in response to the protests?

- was this change only for Chinese users?

I'm sure it was in response to the protests. Apple said it's rolling out worldwide, but starting in China.

I've received random dick picks often enough on airdrop that I have turned it to contacts only, and so has every female friend of mine that I know of.

The primary usecase of allowing everyone to send at all times seems like mass organization

The timeline doesn't match up with it being in response to the protests.

Apple needs time to design, implement and test changes even small ones.

Yes, but they’re sure ;)

Despite your snark and the downvotes, I am still sure. It's a tiny change in the grand scheme, and it's pretty conveniently being rolled out in China first.

And the fact that the timelines mean Apple must have retroactively pushed code into the past. . . That doesn’t bother you at all?

Judging by the bugginess of recent iOS releases, I'm not sure they take too much time for testing.

This change landed in iOS 16 which launched a few months ago so was not rushed for these protests.

More precisely, 16.1, a month before the protests. Suspicious that it was China-only.

Also: why don't give users both options? Is up to the user to decide which to use. Make it 10 minutes the default but leave the unlimited option available.

That's not how apple works - they always pick one option(or a very small set of options) and basically tell the users these are the best options, if you don't like it you're welcome to leave.

This would mostly make sense for hardware options, but less so in this specific case of a software feature that previously was available.

Do They have access to who enables this setting frequently? If so, it does not seem harmless.

It's debatable that it is totally harmless if the measure was taken in response to the protests. It could prevent the free-flow of otherwise censored information that could be relevant to keeping protesters safe.

That distinction seems hugely important. This actually seems like a very reasonable feature change, even outside of China. The ability for the internet to overreact never ceases to amaze me.

I support this change. It's a simple but significant improvement to the basic usability of AirDrop. It's conceivable that Apple came up with this simple usability improvement, publicly announced it, then rolled it out deliberately to hamper the efforts of protesters in China, but I think it's more likely to be a coincidence.

How is it an improvement if it prevents users from doing what the service has allowed since day one? This is even worse than their disable-wifi setting, which (when toggled from the Control Center) only disables wifi until the end of the day. You have to go to the Settings app to disable wifi (and perhaps also Bluetooth?) permanently.

But the AirDrop change makes it even worse. There is nowhere you can go to make this setting stick. There is no reason to remove this option.

I’m not saying there aren’t use cases for both options (permanently opening AirDrop to everyone and opening AirDrop to everyone for 10 minutes). I’m just saying that the temporary option is a huge usability improvement and a very reasonable default.

And I think the exact same thing about the Wi-Fi setting. On the rare occasions that I want to turn Wi-Fi off I usually add a reminder to turn it back on when I get home.

Yes it’s very odd that people keep characterizing this as “blocking Airdrop in China”. Is it really that hard to understand the actual change?

Still fine to be angry at Apple about it, though this feels like the way it should always have worked. Remember all the “Apple is terrible because people airdrop unwanted nudes” articles decrying the previous setting?

> The bigger news to me was that Apple blocked AirDrop in China

The article you linked doesn't say anything about blocking. It just says that they changed the "Everyone" option to "Everyone up to 10 minutes." How is that blocking? Do you have any other source to support your assertion that they blocked it in China?

Because you can no longer keep it on everyone 24x7 to anonymously airdrop protest information without fear of being caught or tracked. You also can't use it to adhoc communicate when the internet is shut off. It's effectively blocked and rendered useless for those reasons.

You are underestimating how severely it cripples it for sharing of protest material, especially between people who may not formally know each other. It is a fatal blow, make no mistake.

Are they not bound by the local law and regulation as any corporation or individual is regardless of their moral point of view? You could argue they could be principled and withdraw from China because of policies they disagree with but are compelled to comply with. But given the economic structure of electronics manufacturing in todays world that seems like a suicidal task.

I’d argue a more effective route is to comply as minimally as possible while advocating for improvement in policy, law, and regulation. Practically speaking if apple were to self immolate on principle a more compliant competitor will fill their vacuum. How is that advancing any agenda?

I feel you can both comply with laws and regulations and take the stance they are wrong and publicly advocate to the extent you’re legally allowed for their reformation without moral hazard.

I agree with your stance. Lawlessness is rarely a convincing argument. There is also a moral basis for respecting the local laws and regulations; the debate over whether to follow so-called immoral laws is a complicated one, but the biblical stance is credible in the hearts of many people:

  Let everyone be subject to the governing
  authorities, for there is no authority
  except that which God has established.
  The authorities that exist have been
  established by God. [Romans 13:1]

This doesn't mean one should necessarily treat the law of the land as perfectly moral (eg MLK Jr), but lawfulness and a respect for order will serve to elevate arguments against the established practices. I believe that Apple has more influence in China when the Chinese authorities view their company as respectful and cooperative.

I think more than that they can’t operate in China against the law. The Chinese police have way more guns than the Genius Bar employees and have built more effective prisons - whether god sanctioned them or not. No company can operate outside the law of the land without being a criminal enterprise, and that’s not a great way to sell iPhones.

It's situations like this that show the truthfulness of these statements and the organizations that make them. Un this instance, it shows that Apple is only using privacy as an excuse to achieve whatever ends they're aiming for.

False. It can't be left open to Everyone for more than 10 minutes at a time. Frankly, from a security perspective cutting this off after a few minutes is preferable. You can turn it back on for another 10 minutes.

Pure conjecture on my part, but I wouldn't be surprised if China wanted them to block it entirely and Apple negotiated this compromise to try and appease officials while still allowing information sharing.

Your hyperbole is a massive exaggeration. They didn't "bend over backwards" to help China suppress freedom. They maintained as much usability as they could under almost certain direct legal pressure from the host country. If China says turn it off completely, that is what they would have to do if they want to operate in China. Apple must obey local laws.

Would the interests of freedom be served if Apple refused to obey local laws and there were no iPhones sold in China? Everyone running a Huawei phone. Would that advance the cause of freedom? Samsung, Google, everyone has to make these choices if they want to operate in China.

> I wouldn't be surprised if China wanted them to block it entirely and Apple negotiated this compromise to try and appease officials while still allowing information sharing.

My reading too, fwiw. If so, rather well done on Apple's part.

Samsung mostly pulled out of China back in 2019 -- except their NAND factory in Xi`an -- and Google opted out years ago. Apple went the other way -- Tim Apple went all-in in China with $270+B investment to train their young, unskilled, slave-wage laborers from rural China and, as recent as last month, made huge efforts to prop up China's domestic tech/chip industry (eg, YMTC).

- "Inside Tim Cook’s Secret $275 Billion Deal with Chinese Authorities," Wayne Ma, Dec. 7, 2021, the Information.

- "Apple Reportedly Helped China Chipmaker YMTC Hire US Engineers, Apple Reportedly Helped China Chipmaker YMTC Hire US Engineers," Tom's Hardware

As far as I’m aware Apple didn’t block access. They limited it to 10 minutes at a time. You can re-enable it manually every 10 mins.

This is obviously really bad but it doesn’t come close to what Huawei is doing.

> I guess according to Apple, Chinese people don't deserve any of what's written in their post.

Sometimes I find Apple's response to some of these issues cleverly passive-agressive. For example you can still use mass airdrop, you just have to keep enabling it. While, I assume, Google would simply have disabled the feature (does Android have a similar feature?). A related example is how they support you disabling face/finger authentication when you are afraid of the authorities.

N.B. This is not to defend or condemn Apple. They are simply a huge, largely incomprehensible steamship not deserving my adulation or scorn.

>A company that misses no chance to showcase its liberal credentials, bending over backwards for perhaps the most dictatorial government in the world to suppress the most basic of freedoms.

Anyone who claims they would act differently is either a fool or a liar.

Doubly so if the screen they're using to read this contains but a single IC made in China, while they let the self-righteously indignant stank of their own morality waft up into their nose.

This sucks, but as a decision maker who cares about privacy, and who believes your product on the whole improves users’ privacy: would you rather keep a hard line and lose market share, or give in on select things so that you can maintain and grow market share.

I don’t think there’s an obviously correct choice, but it’s very easy to criticise not taking the hard line. It’s possible that’s the wrong thing for overall privacy.

I built an iOS app for location-based sharing that that nobody uses lol. But it works in China too. So if anyone knows anyone over there, send them this:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/radius-report-news/id152474203...

Is it only available in the US? Can’t open it in the uk store.

Looks like this app is only available in the US and Canada app stores.

This link is leading to nowhere: https://apps.apple.com/cn/app/radius-report-news/id152474203...

> The bigger news to me was that Apple blocked AirDrop in China - specifically to limit dissent and for preventing people from organizing [1]. A company that misses no chance to showcase its liberal credentials, bending over backwards for perhaps the most dictatorial government in the world to suppress the most basic of freedoms.

It's a private corporation, which are known for manufacturing sweet-smelling lies. I mean, a "new an improved" label on a package often literally means they're just giving you less product. If they'll be that blatant, there's no limit to how low they'll go.

Short-sighted Western economic policy has allowed China to grab companies like Apple by the balls, which means the Chinese government is the one Apple ultimately is accountable to (with varying amounts of smoke-and-mirrors to obscure it). Tim Cook knows who his boss is.

Now that you know that Airdrop is not in fact blocked in China, has your opinion changed?

> Now that you know that Airdrop is not in fact blocked in China, has your opinion changed?

No, because it's a general statement that you can't trust marketing.

Also, looking around at sibling comments because you provided no source, it looks like you're splitting hairs. It may not be blocked, just crippled specifically in China in a way that thwarts how the protesters used it: https://twitter.com/tibor/status/1597296268275240960, https://www.macworld.com/article/1377200/apple-to-limit-aird...:

> By default, AirDrop is set to allow incoming connection requests from Contacts Only, but that setting can be changed to Everyone–popular among protesters and teens alike. Starting with iOS 16.1.1, users in China will find that the “Everyone” option has changed to “Everyone for 10 minutes.” Apple won’t admit why this change is being made in China, but the peer-to-peer nature of AirDrop has made it popular for spreading anti-government protest material, and hopping into your settings every 10 minutes to re-enable the ability to receive AirDrop from strangers makes it a lot less useful for that.

Framing an action that thwarts censorship circumvention as preventing "spam and abuse" is exactly the kind of sweet-smelling lie I was talking about.

It is kind of expected they would follow the rules and regulations of a country they are selling in. I would expect Tim Cook to be fired by the board if Apple was banned from the largest consumer market in the world.

> The bigger news to me was that Apple blocked AirDrop in China

Why is this bigger news? Seems equivalent to me.

Is it because Huawei is already seen as an adversary while folks persist in seeing Apple as somehow more benign?

To me I read this as Huawei is already a “state controlled” entity. So this is egregious but expected by them.

Apple however is two faced. Saying that they stand for bigger ideals but quietly supporting the communist party by disabling airdrop.

Edit: I know it’s more complicated than my comment indicates. But it’s still a weird response by Apple none the less.

Eh, it's only weird if you ever thought Apple wasn't two-faced, and nothing about their behaviour has ever suggested that to me. I've not once seen them make a business decision that was in line with some expressed set of ethics while damaging them financially, which to me is a key litmus test of whether a company actually lives by their stated values. Anything else is just lip service.

Apple did not block AirDrop in China. Apple made it harder to fingerprint protestors who forgot to turn off "Everyone" sharing.

$2+T market cap or karma? Why not both.

I dunno if, “use Apple AirDrop” is a “most basic freedom”.

Is it shitty and contrary to what they claim to support? Yeah. Does it merit this melodramatic response? Probably not.

The issue here is not "using Apple AirDrop", it's "hindering attempts to organize political resistance".

I don't think there's anything melodramatic about calling Apple out on it.

I think pretending AirDrop is the only way people can coordinate is weird.

What alternatives check off the following boxes?

* Can't be blocked or monitored by state-controlled Internet

* Is widely installed throughout the population already

* Existence of which is not evidence of anti-government organizing.

That's what made AirDrop sharing so powerful for protestors. They all already had it, having it is not suspicious, and using it doesn't rely on government internet filters allowing it.

Paper?

Protests have been around for far longer than AirDrop has existed. It seems AirDrop was being used to share posters and slogans and perhaps some basic information, not as some kind of instant messaging app. If Chinese iPhone users are anything like American iPhone users, I'd guess that most wouldn't want to receive a ton of iPhone notifications for unsolicited content.

I don't think anyone's claimed that was the case.

Apple isn't removing the only way to coordinate, but they are removing a mechanism which has reportedly been used by Chinese dissidents.

they aren't removing, they are limiting to 10mins.

Always-on is qualitatively different from "only on for 10 minutes".

Yes, until every spark of freedom has been irreversibly extinguished, we are blameless for helping in that process.

This is a form of whataboutism and distracts from this particular article. The Apple AirDrop change has its own thread with meaningful discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33778302

It's not 'whataboutism'. Two tech companies are adding comparable restrictions on their technologies to humor the political interests of a government.

a) Not comparable restrictions in the slightest.

b) Timeline doesn't match up that Apple did this in response to protests.

"Whataboutism" is when somebody or something else is brought up as a defense. It's common in HN threads about the Chinese Communist Party, but the grandparent doesn't seem like it. It reads more like, "Here's another company helping the CCP!"

It extends the shame and conversation instead of excusing it.

The definition of this term is a bit broader, from the British dictionary:

> the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue.

Article criticizes company A, and then a different issue about a different company is raised as a way to somehow minimize the original company A offense.

It’s basically saying, “if you think Huawei is bad, what about Apple?”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com