
Apple Is Said to Deactivate Its News App in China - JayXon
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/technology/apple-is-said-to-deactivate-its-news-app-in-china.html
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bigethan
The interesting bit to me: If you load the app with content before entering
China, when you are in China the app won't open. It seems to be deactivated if
your phone connects to any Chinese cell tower. This seems to be a bit heavy
handed, particularly for Apple, but also doesn't feel terribly surprising.

Also, the article seems to be based on some Reddit posts and no actual fact
checking, so the quality of the journalism here is pretty low for the NY
Times. I'd expect they could check with some of their staff in China rather
than write "it appears" and use an anonymous source.

~~~
yeldarb
I think it's actually using location services (GPS+wifi triangulation) to
determine where you are rather than traditional server-side inference from IP
address.

I'm on vacation in China right now and did some experimentation and even if I
have my VPN connected the app still says it's not supported in this region.

~~~
vbezhenar
China is an exception here. I live in Kazakhstan, News app is not available
here. But I just set my region to US and I have working News app without any
problems.

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DasIch
Interesting that this is news considering that the News app isn't even
available in Germany (among other countries?).

~~~
TillE
You might need to change the device's region, but it's certainly possible to
access English language news from within Germany.

~~~
DasIch
You're right. Changing the region and rebooting the device makes the app
appear. That's still anything but discoverable though.

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riskneural
Is this that thing that shows up when I swipe left on my work iphone with
vapid news about celebrities and poorly-targeted sport-related tales?

I'm unexpectedly finding XING's news stream peculiarly adequate these days.
Nice to see a bit of competition.

~~~
spike021
There is an actual News app, but yes the furthest panel to the left has an
embedded list of articles pulled from that app, which is curated based on
interests the user selects.

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spdegabrielle
it's not curated if you don't have the news app.

~~~
spike021
Oh I see.

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Intermernet
>"Beijing generally insists that companies are responsible for censoring
content inside China. In Apple’s case, that would mean it would probably have
to develop a censorship system"

Does this mean that Apple currently don't have a censorship system, or that
the censorship system they have is not nuanced enough to deal with the
requirements laid down by the Chinese Government?

Apple state at [http://www.apple.com/legal/internet-
services/terms/site.html](http://www.apple.com/legal/internet-
services/terms/site.html) that:

>"Apple reserves the right to limit, in its sole discretion, the provision and
quantity of any feature, product or service to any person or geographic area.
Any offer for any feature, product or service made on the Site is void where
prohibited. If you choose to access the Site from outside the United States,
you do so on your own initiative and you are solely responsible for complying
with applicable local laws."

So it seems that they _do_ do some vetting of information, and that this
applies to _everywhere_ , not just China. It's interesting that the _" you are
solely responsible for complying with applicable local laws"_ clause seems to
be the bit that's different in China's case.

Who is correct? Apple states "you are solely responsible" while the Chinese
government states "companies are responsible".

I presume this one of those grey areas in international law.

~~~
icebraining
Those are the rights to access Apple's site (hosted outside of China), not
their news app. And in any case, if the law says their are responsible, they
are, unless the law specifically says they can transfer that responsibility to
the user. The TOS is (usually, IANAL) worth nothing if the law conflicts with
it.

~~~
Intermernet
Thanks, it's the only TOS I could find relating to Apple's online services so
I assumed it applied to News, iTunes etc.

~~~
icebraining
In the preamble, it only seems to apply to the site itself. Since News is
included in iOS, I assume it's part of its 410 page TOS:
[http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/iOS9.pdf](http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/iOS9.pdf)

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TazeTSchnitzel
I suspect Apple's blocking the US News app in China preëmptively so that the
PRC Government don't get mad at them and use the Great Firewall to block the
News servers.

Consider many Chinese users might try to fool Apple into thinking they're U.S.
users. If you make sure that anyone in China – rather than anyone apparently
Chinese – can't access the app, then China won't cause Apple trouble.

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spike021
What kinds of ramifications would there be if Apple did nothing on its end to
"censor" (for lack of a better word) content from the News app?

~~~
fredoliveira
Chances are the content providers itself (or apple?) would be censored by
Golden Shield (great firewall of china).

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mirap
The real question should be: Is China a threat to future world?

