Apple Says It Will Exit the UK Market If Government Passes Online Safety Bill | Hacker News Reader

Apple Says It Will Exit the UK Market If Government Passes Online Safety Bill

techdirt.com

72 pointsintunderflow45 comments

Perhaps the UK has to descend further towards third-world country status before its citizens will be prepared to stand up and take charge of their governance instead of allowing small groups of narrow-minded do-gooder elites to do so.

Presumably—if they bother to so act at all—that will be after just about every high-tech company has left for more fertile grounds.

> instead of allowing small groups of narrow-minded do-gooder elites to do so.

Isn’t that the entire history of UK governance? They literally have something called the House of Lords.

The House of Lords are usually the sane and reasonable ones that block abusive legislation created by those in the House of Commons. The latter are far more political, and almost all the scandals, drama, grifting, public lies and human rights abusive legislation originates in the Commons.

It's a strange thing that the "lords" protect individual freedom and democracy of the common person more than the "commons" but that's how it often appears to be.

Case in point: The legislation this article is about. If it passes the Commons it is quite likely to be bounced back by the Lords following a more human rights focused debate there.

The House of Lords can't block legislation though, they can only amend it and send it back, and only a limited number of times...and the amendments they propose are only advisory and can be ignored.

The UK has a long tradition of reusing outdated institutions. If the only thing you know about the House of Lords is its name, you'll be very surprised about who's in it and what they do.

Enlighten me

Bishops, hereditary peers, and the friends of ex prime ministers. It's great though.

But except for who practically creates life peers, that’s the same as it has always been; not really a reuse, or surprising given the name.

They have less substantive power, now, to be sure, but that's not what you seemed to be suggesting.

As a commoner I’d trust the elites far more than the “commoners”. Populist stuff is invariably short sighted and historically doomed and only works to dislodge an unbearable incumbent, not realistically implement effective governance after the fact.

Grant you, 'elites' should have been in quotes—and I wasn't referring to populist stuff but rather to those who are sufficiently powerful enough to launch influential memes that become part of the dominant discourse whether their effects are beneficial for society or not—society doesn't have effective filters against such discourses.

Also, look at the facts, commoners have had precious little say yet the slide downwards has occurred anyway.

> do-gooder

Hmm..... so we don't want people in governance positions trying governance to do good?

Is that your position?

Because if not I question why you included that term....

I thought that stuff just worked to strengthen authoritarian government's ?

Seemingly so. On the one hand I'm into wishful thinking, on the other, cynical me says 'if they bother to so act at all'. implying SFA good will come out of it.

History bears this out, take the Russian Revolution/uprising of 1905 and the authoritarian crackdown, it erupted again in 1917 and was successful that time but quickly went pear-shaped a few years later and fell back into totalitarianism. That lasted until 1991 when there was a minor reprieve. Now it's pear-shaped again—totalitarianism again reigns supreme.

No wonder it's so difficult to shake off one's pessimism.

The headline is misleading. e2e encryption features, like facetime, imessage and some chat AppStore apps, would be pulled from the UK.

IDK where TechDirt got "exit the UK market" from.

They got it from the same playbook that they think will keep people engaged and drive traffic.

apple will declare war on the uk

With $250B in cash (or whatever it is right now), they could raise a hell of an Army.

The way its portrayed, Apple constantly comes out like the most powerless $trillion company. Its always, oh the government is gonna veto this or make Apple do that.

How is that never the case when it comes to money or taxes or labor issues or any number of other things they have remarkable control over, but whenever its something good that helps or is valuable to the regular individual they are so impotent or the result is so arbitrarily contingent?

The government is making us take this off the App Store and since we're the only app store, unfortunately this will be the end of whatever for you. Gosh, we're so sad the government will make us do this and we have like zero access to courts or lobbying agencies or god forbid we engage in any dirty tricks like we do everywhere else like everyone else.

Could they? Realistically, how powerful of a mercenary army would $250B buy, going from 0 to deployable?

Supply lines are expensive. Feeding an army is hard.

Would an Apple army be competitive in a war lasting months, not to mention years, with a mid-level average country’s army?

The uk military budget is something like US$55b/y

So presumably something comparable for a few years of conflict, not that I think this is even remotely probable

That's a PEACETIME budget. If UK feels threatened they will make military spending a priority, and in such case they can easily throw like $500b on weapons. And they have an advantage, because they have a lot of military production happening right there in UK, so they can just nationalize the factories and have the weapons delivered at manufacturing cost, without any markup.

So far there's no way an international corporation could win a war against a country. Give it a hundred more years though, and things might change.

The East India Company would like a word.

Win a war against the UK != win a war against any country.

To share my ignorant thoughts on the topic....

It would be an entirely unconventional war.(I imagine) I suppose it would have to start with an extensive legal investigation to map out what kind of public attack apple can get away with without jeopardizing their revenue/breaking to many laws in other countries. A secret attack would be more of a finance question (I imagine) but if that can be arranged they can field their own political options or support opposing parties. Farages brexit project only cost a few million.[0] It was poorly hidden and not punished.

(I imagine) Apple could quite legitimately bid on things related to their business model (that they can always modify) and drive up prices, render more than just apple products unavailable and hinder technology companies in the UK sufficiently to make them leave. As long as the effort enjoys plausible deniability anything goes.

After project brexit an attempt to disrupt UK/US relations could also be quite effective (I imagine)

The long game (I imagine) could be to dramatically lower prices of apple products in the UK so that everyone buys them. Then argue the encryption thing doesn't sit well with their agenda and switch everything off and on again and off again. Perhaps something more subtitle, no IOS updates as the update has encryption and no apps for the current OS. They can do that as often as they like.

Investment funds are happy to kill everyone in whatever way possible as long as it makes money.[1](no imagination required)

It's a rather fascinating topic that I should study further (without imagining so much)

[0] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/10/nigel-farage-s...

[1] - https://www.investorsagainstgenocide.org/about/resources/vot...

That's on top of what they already have.

You know who's arguably the best supply chain mind on the planet? Tim Cook.

There’s a fun book called Jennifer Government by Max Barry about corporations fielding their own armies and directly controlling countries.

Wow yeah kind of a far cry from the headline..

[dupe]

Tons of conversation about this a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36800297

-- Related --

Apple says it'll remove iMessage and FaceTime in UK rather than break encryption : https://9to5mac.com/2023/07/20/apple-imessage-facetime-remov...

HN Discussion: (784-comments - 2023-07-20) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36800297

While I’m happy that Apple are standing their ground I don’t know of a single person who uses FaceTime or iMessage over WhatsApp here

Where is 'here'? I know several people 'here' that admirably use iMessage exclusively over the equally less private WhatsApp.

So you don’t know many people, thanks for noting it but not sure how relevant it is to the conversation.

It seems a third of users use iMessage [0].

You not knowing one of 20 million people in your country seems more like a curiosity of why your social circle is so similar.

[0] https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1328650/imessage-messenge...

Your comment is needlessly snarky and patronising.

Your link would have been sufficient.

Perhaps I was too snarky, but I also wanted to help change a perspective that it’s not just important what I experience but to check that against others.

I struggle with thinking “I don’t see it, so it must be so” and wish others would point this out more for me.

Also, I kind of like snarky as it is closer to authenticity, I think, than always saying “good job, did you think of it this way…”

Meta will almost certainly pull out rather than break encryption. The only important part of the UK market for them is the advertising agencies.

There are tons of WhatsApp encryption commercials going on at the moment here

If this passes and non-App Store app downloads take off, then the biggest hit could be taken by Apple’s App Store revenues… and the UK gov will loose even more control when people start downloading properly encrypted software off platform from the open internet.

If the law makes apple ban 3d party e2e encrypted apps along with its own, UK sales of iphones will be a good test of society's current values.

Domain matches content I guess

It is funny as Apple no longer use Fundamental Human Rights as reason or excuses.

I guess they do constantly read some press / Twitter and forum to adjust their PR strategy.

> Apple no longer use Fundamental Human Rights as reason

The term has been driven to overinclusive uselessness. When every personal grievance is seriously launched as an attack on human rights, the term loses meaning.

That isn't true whatsoever. I large number of people who enjoy the status quo would like us to think so, however.

> When every personal grievance is seriously launched…

That is quite a statement that I think you need to back up. How about you link to 3 examples. Remember, they have to be personal, and they have to be serious.

Good. They don’t need tech anyway.

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