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Comment by bramhaag | Hacker News Reader

Unlike a certain big tech giant who pretends to care about privacy until it cuts into their profits.

All of them?

Well, only some claim to "remain committed to offering our users the highest level of security for their personal data" while turning off E2EE cloud storage for an entire country.

What else could they have done?

Not put absolute profit over principles? Or at least don't advertise they do?

No, what specific action would you have had them do?

> Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

I don't know... what else could Apple have done? Hard to determine what else they could have done besides turn off the feature in a thread on another company not just turning off a feature, but leaving a country entirely.

Who would make that decision? What would happen next after they did?

That's beside the point. The question was what else could they have done. My comment is 100% correct. For some reason, people dislike facts.

I think the only way to change the decision a person or entity makes is to first understand what they are asking that person to do, and the consequences of that action.

Being unwilling to do that simply has no impact on the real world. You scream into the void.

They could have done like Telegram in Russia and said that they will not care about that and work on ways to bypass any firewall that could setup the authority to block it.

Are we talking about Apple? How can they operate in a country they are banned in? They are predominantly a hardware company.

As Signal are doing here, they could have refused to do business (at least, with iCloud) in that country. That's a far bigger pushback than simply capitulating to removing a relatively unknown feature.

To be clear, if they did this and the UK gov called their bluff, it'd affect me personally, but I'd rather that than swinging open the backdoors

You believe that the Apple Board of Directors would allow their CEO to do that? Who do you think would make that decision?

If it's the board that makes that decision, it's the board that holds responsibility for it. Nobody said anything about a specific person at Apple doing anything, just Apple as a company.

Would they? Of course not, but the question was what else could they do, and this is something they could (and if their fundamental motive wasn't purely profit above all else, perhaps should) do.

The board can't make a decision like that. They would be ousted by activist shareholders.

I'm trying to help people understand that there is no actor that can make these decisions they want them to.

What other choice did Apple have? To ignore the law of a country where you operate just because you don't agree with the law is a terrible standard to set.

Terrible yes, but given Musk-X-Brazil, at this point the Rubicon of "setting" such standards has already been crossed.

(Even if the result was Musk being humiliated).

> Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes

Apple already did set that precedent during last year with their responses to the EU DMA.

In fact I find the difference in how they handle the two very telling.

No, some of them don't even bother pretending they care about your privacy.

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