Apple deletes WhatsApp, Threads from China app store on orders from Beijing
cnn.com
cnn.com
Apple is quite obedient in China.
That's because it doesn't want its executives in China to be disappeared, or denied an exit visa, or simply arrested arbitrarily.
Well, to be fair, there are also other more practical factors at play !
1. The sheer size of the market. Population of China is bigger than that of the US and the EU combined.
2. Although Apple are working on establishing manufacturing elsewhere, a large portion of their manufacturing still happens in China at the moment.
I suspect, if you were in Apple's shoes, loosing (1), (2) or both is a far worse position to be in than one or two executives "disappearing".
Executives "disappearing" is of course bad, but they are ultimately replaceable. Loosing the Chinese market or having constraints put on your manufacturing at short notice is a significantly bigger problem.
Its the same reason Microsoft famously had no choice but to show the Chinese the Windows source code.
I'm not defending China. I'm just saying, if you want to have business operations in a country (China or otherwise), you play by their rules. Being a large multi-national will only ultimately give you so much leeway with the authorities.
Wasn't really my point though.
> Reconsider travel to Mainland China due to the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, including in relation to exit bans, and the risk of wrongful detentions.
No justice system that's actually fair can have a 99.8% conviction rate at trial. It's a process designed to achieve convictions and punishment, not actually discover the truth.
1) China has demonstrated plenty of times that it is not to be messed with, while EU, if anything (especially with GDPR) has demonstrated that you can keep breaking the rules and even a history of obvious bad faith is not a problem.
2) China has a successful domestic smartphone/tech industry that can (and does) compete with Apple. The EU doesn’t. It’s a much easier decision for China to kick out Apple than for the EU to do so.
3) I believe Apple also depends on China for manufacturing, so pissing them off could go beyond a national ban on sales and even affect production of international devices.
* Amazon was fined $908 million in 2022.
* Google was fined $113 million in the same year.
* Instagram, owned by Meta was fined $506 million.
Each of these fines would be drastically increased with further non-compliance
> Each of these fines would be drastically increased with further non-compliance
Meta has a history of non-compliance, bad faith and obvious incentive to breach EU regulations given they are in direct opposition to their business model. It has been in breach of the GDPR since it went into effect in 2018 (after a 2-year grace period designed to give businesses time to get into compliance) and is in breach of it to this day. Is it even possible to be more non-compliant than that?
At this point Meta has made so much profit from breaching the GDPR that even actually being hit with the max fine would still not offset what they earned breaching the regulation over the last 6 years since the max fine only considers revenue over the last year.
The EU has repeatedly demonstrated it is incapable or unwilling to stand up to these companies and the companies know it, that's why Meta is still around doing business as usual, and Apple is messing around with malicious compliance and will keep doing so for the foreseeable future. That's why Microsoft is now back at anticompetitive shenanigans despite getting burnt previously - they (correctly) determined that whatever EU enforcement capability burned them before no longer exists.
From yet another perspective, all censorship is bad whether it's implicit or explicit. If Apple spends money fighting and lobbying against market protections while caving into surveillance demands abroad, it says a lot about the "spirit" in which they interpret legislation.
It’s not unethical to comply with the law in foreign countries and, while I obviously don’t agree with China’s censorship, they can point out lots of poor human rights abuses on our end yet Chinese companies are expected to follow our laws here too.
Apple is just doing what any rational actor would, obeying the laws of recognized governments, and I don’t think it’s fair to expect them to do more. If the American people care that much about the free speech of Chinese citizens it’s a matter for our government, not our corporations.
Our own legal system has plenty of ethical issues. We lock up almost 5x as many people per capita as China. Should they not do business with us?
If corporations stopped doing business with any country someone on HN found to be doing something unethical, we'd all go back to the economic stone age.
There's no real argument here, your sentiments are just "big company bad, China bad" with more words.
Compliance with laws is not ethically relevant. You are trying to justify unethical behavior with appeals to pragmatism or "fairness" with whatabout appeals to other countries.
Which maybe you believe, but it is cowardly and manipulative to imply that the behavior is not unethical because you think it should be done anyway.
That's just modern evil 101.
You believe that Apple should follow a law that is unethical.
evidence: > I obviously don’t agree with China’s censorship
You believe this is ok though because other countries have bad laws sometimes.
evidence: > they can point out lots of poor human rights abuses on our end yet Chinese companies are expected to follow our laws here too.
> Our own legal system has plenty of ethical issues. We lock up almost 5x as many people per capita as China. Should they not do business with us?
You also believe it's ok to do this because it's practical evidence: > Apple is just doing what any rational actor would, obeying the laws of recognized governments, and I don’t think it’s fair to expect them to do more. If the American people care that much about the free speech of Chinese citizens it’s a matter for our government, not our corporations.
> If corporations stopped doing business with any country someone on HN found to be doing something unethical, we'd all go back to the economic stone age.
pathetic
Every government requires corporations (and thus people) to do things I think are unethical. All of them. I still expect foreign ones to follow our laws, and us theirs, because to not do so is also unethical.
It’s not the role of a corporation to fight every battle. Apple shouldn’t tank a trillion dollar company (their profits come entirely from things manufactured in China) to fight removing two more apps. A lot of livelihoods in both countries might be lost over something that makes no difference, which itself could be considered ethical.
The world isn’t as simple as you are. And you’d remove those apps in two seconds if Apple were dumb enough to put you in charge.
Great, we agree you believe you should follow an unethical law.
> All of them. I still expect foreign ones to follow our laws, and us theirs, because to not do so is also unethical.
Great, we agree that you justify it as not unethical because its the law / practical / what others do.
You are justifying actions as something you think should be done, and reasoning that because you want it to be done, that it must not be unethical.
Justifying evil because you think it is worth it is one thing. Concluding that evil is not evil because you think it is worth it is the scum of society.
It’s neither ethical nor unethical, nor is it a corporation’s job to decide whether it is. That’s the role of government.
A system in which corporations can simply decide which laws they comply with would be totally broken, and so to not comply with the law is itself unethical. Apple made the ethical choice. I think our congress’s potential banning of TikTok is unethical, I don’t think Apple and Google will be when they comply.
What would you have them do? Sacrifice a trillion dollar business in token protest? You’re just a keyboard warrior with no point at all who would make the same choice and justify it the same way you imagine I do if you were ever in the position they are.
For the first time in 18 years I wish this site had a block feature. People like you ruin the internet. You can have the last word if you like, it won’t be worth reading Im sure, so I’m done with you. GFY.
The government does not define ethics. Abiding by laws does not factor into the ethics of a choice. It is up to everyone, including corporation leadership, to pursue ethical standards.
You do not seem capable of recognizing that you support unethical actions. You appear convinced that choices you support are de facto ethical because you've deemed them worthwhile. This is a cancerous worldview. It's ok to say that following a law is unethical but still worthwhile. It's deeply harmful to say that it is ethical because you think it is worthwhile.
Everything you're saying boils down to "I'm just following orders" or "I'm just a part of a system" as an argument that you have no culpability to your actions. Or perhaps much more toxically, "I'm a good person therefore my actions have been good".
I don't really care about banning whatsapp or tiktok personally. Your rhetoric is the disgusting thing here.
The governments of where these global digital infrastructure providers reside should sanction China. These global companies will then be forced to close their China businesses down just like what is happening right now in Europe with Russia at the US' request.
Of course this would mean that, unlike in banking where Europe is the biggest loser when liquidating their Russia business (see Austria and their RBI), this time the US would be the biggest loser. Ergo, the only way we'll ever see betterment is if someone else (i.e. the EU) sees these sanctions through.
Since the lobby building is right next to the EU's HQ in Brussels and they go partying together every Thursday, I highly doubt this will ever happen.
I’ve actually long thought we should create a global free trade regime among democratic nations, along with sanctions for the rest. Just set some basic standard of human rights (it’d have to be low so we can meet it despite our mass incarceration) and tariff the rest.
It is, when that very law itself is unethical.
> while I obviously don’t agree with China’s censorship
Oh? And why is that an "obvious disagreement" for you? Are you trying to say something like everyone has a right to freedom of expression? If so, then you should stand with companies that try to promote those rights, rather than those who help remove those rights at the expense of turning a profit.
Last I checked, Apple has plenty of money already. They could have done better, in this case, and set the moral example.
“Plenty of money already” doesn’t mean much when your entire business is selling hardware made in China. Are they supposed to bankrupt the company just because China doesn’t want Threads on people’s phones?
Great, so Apple should pull out of the US due to the TikTok ban.
> If so, then you should stand with companies that try to promote those rights, rather than those who help remove those rights at the expense of turning a profit.
Which mobile phone manufacturer am I going to do that by using. Samsung might not sell phones in China, but they've got the exploding batteries, photoshopped camera images, throttling of third party apps. Huawei and Xiaomi _are_ chinese, Motorola have consistently been in support of oppressive regimes, Google are in the midst of bad press for their handling of the protest this week.
My bank and workplace all but require a modern iOS or Android device to participate, and this is not a hill I'm going to die on against multiple bilino dollar companies.
There are no good options other than eschewing participation, and the consequences of that are incredibly broad.
There's no good option for you, there's no good option for Apple. You're supposed to what, not participate in the modern economy because Chinese citizens haven't had freedom of speech for 70 years? Apple's supposed to what, disrupt the manufacturing of the world's most profitable product because China added 2 apps to the list of a zillion they've banned?
This is a problem for governement, not corporations. The US and our democratic allies could exert slow, steady pressure on China, and in fact, that's exactly what we've been doing. It's building. We're re-shoring/near shoring at an increasing rate. Politicians in both parties in the US are now pro-tarriffs, which prior to 2016 both were against them.
In China there are no checks and balances and a law that essentially says: I do whatever I want. Laws can be created out of thin air since the communist party has ultimate authority over all government.
In the US bills fail to pass all of the time. People often complain that Congress can't agree or get anything done. Those hurdles.
For this issue specifically in the US, there is broad bipartisan support. There have been hearings, but very little debate.
And its not like anybody campaigned for this issue specifically! Like, I hear you, I get that this is good ole American democracy at work on some fundamental level, but I fail to see how it is really being an effective vehicle for this change specifically. And I am genuinely curious if we can see an actual distinction here given that!
In general, when it comes to issues specifically around the threshold between business and the state, one maybe benefits a little on not relying 100% on the nominative ideologies at play. Especially in a "properly" capitalist country. I don't want to dictate your heuristics, but I'm just saying you dont want to be on the side defending what businesses the US deals with or not simply because it is a democracy.
Parties, in order of importance: citizens, vendor, dictatorship.
[*] Examples should not include any that devolve into military conflict.
And ZA was not a dictatorship, so it did have the mechanism for change from within.
Dictatorships require dictators. PW Botha was a lot of bad things, but he was not a dictator. China is considered a dictatorship because Xi has dictatorial powers.
Anyway this is all just semantics. The more important point is probably that it corrupts corporations to do business in countries with repressive governments, and to follow their repressive laws.
China is further along the repressive-government scale than many of us would like. I believe that Apple management are among the truly bothered, but moral complications abound, and ultimately their fiduciary-duty options are limited.
And FWIW, only a minority of adult citizens could vote in the US until 1920. That was bad but it was not a dictatorship.
And the jury is still out on net "positive results", although there are a few clear successes!
I'd say net positive looking at the whole of the Eastern bloc.
We can go there and play. We just have to obey that same rules in China that Chinese companies have to obey there. The same applies in the US--foreign companies can operated here but have to obey the same rules here that US companies have to obey.
No. China and US are not the same.
from https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-chin...
> Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident--albeit a significant one--was something quite different.
> First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses--including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors--have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.
Is US government hacking Chinese companies operating in US?
That's false and widely known that China treats foreign companies unfairly.
https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/china-briefs/chinas-use-unoff...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...
I don't think it's that simple, at least with Google the phone seems to see the country code of the SIM card, or the mobile network it's connected to, to determine your "current country" for the Google Play Store. Maybe it will even ask you for a credit card number plus ZIP and country, that Google/Apple can confirm with your CC provider, if you say "Oh it's 90210 USA" and your CC billing address is 200000 Shanghai, your CC provider will say "verification failed".
I remember just downloading the APK of an app I needed which was not available for my Google Play country from apkmirror.com (thank Allah for sideloading).
It seems like the CCP asking Apple to ban these apps mean that they're getting more afraid about their leaky firewall, blocking them from being downloaded from the app store is another hurdle they've thought of for the Chinese citizenry.
eject your sim card then, or download an esim from another country and turn on airplane mode
>Maybe it will even ask you for a credit card number plus ZIP and country, that Google/Apple can confirm with your CC provider, if you say "Oh it's 90210 USA" and your CC billing address is 200000 Shanghai, your CC provider will say "verification failed".
apple explicitly has a "none" payment option[1]
[1] https://www.tuneskit.com/images/resource/no-none-option-for-...
>It seems like the CCP asking Apple to ban these apps mean that they're getting more afraid about their leaky firewall, blocking them from being downloaded from the app store is another hurdle they've thought of for the Chinese citizenry.
Their firewall tech is top notch[2]. Getting past it is non-trivial (ie. you can't just buy nordvpn subscription and be on your way). Compared to that creating an alt apple account is easy.
[2] https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity23/presentat...
This is for the EU compliance. But it is an example for the difficulty spoofing location
they literally block any discussion on things like... you know, democracy movements.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/south-bay/protests-exp...
Indeed, but why should Western countries allow Chinese companies access to our markets when China offers absolutely zero reciprocity?
It's one thing to operate in an economic/political sphere that shares a reasonable set of common political and economic values, and deal with the relatively tiny differences (tax codes, data protection laws, content moderation, advertising restrictions, ...). Hell even with larger differences (EU GDPR vs US laissez-faire), US megacorps can still freely operate in Europe.
In contrast, it's a completely different thing to operate in China - either you are outright banned (Meta, Twitter, Google, ...) or you have to have a corporate entity where the foreign party must be below 50% ownership, and in some cases you have to install a parallel governance structure of the CCP [1].
[1] https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-th...
Money.
China knows that the only thing the west (and arguably humanity) ultimately cares about is wealth, and so China's playing that game far better than anyone else. We are literally funding our own demise, hoisting our own petards, hitching our own nooses.
I find the coming Pax Sino era terrifying and how well they play the world like a flute astonishing.
And then there are others like BASF or Volkswagen, who already showed bad decisionmaking in Russia, who now double down on China. Complete and utter madness - it's time for politics to step in here.
[0] Nation-state Law Essentially Establishes Apartheid Regime - https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2020-12-22/ty-article-op...
If any company wants to do business in China they have to deal with strict CCP censorship.
Sure you could argue that Apple should SCT on principle and just leave the Chinese market, but play that strategy out to the end. We would have every company moving towards only doing business in their home country. I don't expect that's what most people in the west want and when anything related to tariffs, onshoring manufacturing, etc comes up it gets thrown out as nationalist BS (or MAGA if you're in the US).
https://m.163.com/dy/article/J04PDGQA055632BB.html?spss=adap...
https://support.huaweicloud.com/prepare-icp/icp_02_0049.html
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...
WhatsApp and Threads are just other instances of organisations without an ICP.
If Apple cannot innovate themselves into growth they will further slide down to #3 spot behind Google.
Apple has saturated its iPhone market and it shows.
Every time a country that is not the US enforces rules – be it the EU, Brazil, China or whomever else – HackerNews gets fired up for basically no reason. It's the price of doing cross-border business. Companies always have the option to pull out of the country if that's too much compromise.
My response to Moxie Marlinspike (founder of WhatsApp) a couple years ago about why decentralization truly matters, despite his critiques.
WhatsApp was founded by Brian Acton and Jan Koum.
Moxie co-founded Whisper Systems.
WhatsApp did not partner with Open Whisper Systems until 2014. And the partnership was solely for the Signal Protocol. The rest of the entire app has nothing to do with Moxie at all.
Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40083409
but which intentionally addictive and manipulative algorithms are you talking about?
wechat messaging is algorithm free, just like whatsapp or telegram. all messages from all contacts or groups are shown in chronological order.
lol