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Chinese iCloud accounts operate on Chinese infrastructure running Apple’s software managed by a Chinese entity. The arrangements are well documented and public, no need to speculate wildly.

> Google stuff does not. Draw your own conclusions.

It wasn't security related, they didn't filter search results for Winnie the Pooh.

> Non-Chinese Apple accounts also work perfectly well in China, which leads me to believe that the extent of data sharing is greater than has been disclosed (or dissidents could just use a foreign phone to avoid surveillance).

The Chinese state could make foreign iphones unattractive to dissidents fairly easily without needing to compromise icloud.

Simply discover the foreign iphones by a process of elimination, and make it clear that having one attracts much more surveillance.

I think you're being a bit unfair here. Apple does care about security and privacy. It's part of their culture.

The company culture is relatively malleable. Apple does probably care about security and privacy, but mainly because of profits. That does help in this case because they don't want leave themselves between two big portions of profits.

> Apple does care about security and privacy. It's part of their culture.

It is when it suits and/or benefits them.

I totally agree and disagree. Yes it’s their culture but it’s not unfair at all.

Its the only big tech company that sells privacy to consumers. They could do that because unlike the competition they weren’t an ad company and thus didn’t need to spy. (This is changing and no longer true, but that’s a different story).

This competitive advantage goes away if nobody can sell privacy because it’s illegal. A publicly traded corporation does not exit a large market because one of their products is banned, much less because of principles. Apple will comply just as they’ve done before, and while maintaining the blast radius to only introducing the backdoor on UK residents.

The article‘s author argues that this would be a slippery slope with secondary and tertiary effects that Apple might not be willing to risk.

I really hope so! I have no doubts they will fight hard, and that will be good for everyone. But going decentralized? No way. The motivation isn’t privacy for the sake of human rights, is what I’m saying. Heck, I’m happy as long as Apple thinks it still is valuable enough to keep selling in a world of omnipresent surveillance. But I’m not delusional about the ”values” of a public mega corporation.

You appear to have misspelt "marketing".

Both Apple and Microsoft do what the article suggests - they decentralize services in China and partner with a local company to operate in keeping with Chinese law. Google took the option of pulling out of China, because their incentives were different.

Why do you trust random open source developers?

> Non-Chinese Apple accounts also work perfectly well in China, which leads me to believe that the extent of data sharing is greater than has been disclosed

Yes because people just use VPNs to access overseas e.g. US iCloud servers.

That has nothing to do with whether Apple is sharing data with Chinese authorities or not.

Non-Chinese iCloud accounts seem to work fine in China without a VPN. (A VPN is needed for Google's services, though.)

My iCloud account worked fine in Pyongyang.