And in one fell swoop, Apple has made it effectively impossible to install this app on your phone. There's no realistic workaround. †
Apple should never have been capable of making such a drastic decision for all of their customers. It's one thing to make determinations about what products are allowed in your store, but quite another to unilaterally ban software from what is many people's primary computer. We live in a digital age, and software is a form of free expression. We wouldn't find this acceptable with eBooks, and we should not find it acceptable for applications.
---
† Unrealistic workarounds include paying $100 per year for a developer account, reinstalling the app once every seven days, or finding a shady, stolen enterprise certificate. These are not real alternatives for 99% of people.
>And in one fell swoop, Apple has made it effectively impossible to install this app on your phone. There's no realistic workaround.
Make the app a Web App and visit it in Safari.
Apple has banned it being notarized and distributed from their App Store but iPhones still have access to the conventional web which Apple has no control over.
Apple has been (I suspect purposefully!) dragging their feet on progressive web app support. There list of limitations is long, but most critically for this app (I would imagine), they can't send notifications and they can't work offline.
There are a number of interesting use cases for PWAs, but part of Apple's fear is (potentially) many of their clients will migrate to PWA only, reducing App Store revenue severely.
Apple also loses all code auditing and screening, meaning they can't ban GPL licensed PWAs like they ban alternative Linphone builds (as they are GPLv2), Signal Private Messenger builds (GPLv3) and only the official developer can build and submit these apps to the app store.
Apple's GPL ban also effiectively mandates these apps having broad CLAs to ensure they can relicense the code for use in the Apple App Store.
The business model is outdated, Safari purposefully being a laggard with no alternatives on iOS will eventually bite Apple in the butt, it is just a question of when.
Both the Music industry and Apple seek to maintain their control and thus their cash cows, but whether that will continue to work out for Apple remains to be seen...
SaaS and Entertainment as a service are the replacements, hence Apple Music and their new streaming service. This is also why AT&T, Verizon, Sinclair and Comcast have spent the last half decade buying media companies.
Why does there need to be a replacement? Apple already sells the hardware and their software (iOS and the preinstalled apps) and makes money off of that.
If I make my app available via my website as a PWA, and all the hosting costs are my own, and don't use any of the app store's services, why does Apple deserve a share of the in app (in PWA?) purchases?
Anyway, the message is pretty obvious: Apple won’t ship anything that’s licensed under GPL v3 on OS X. Now, why is that?
There are two big changes in GPL v3. The first is that it explicitly prohibits patent lawsuits against people for actually using the GPL-licensed software you ship. The second is that it carefully prevents TiVoization, locking down hardware so that people can’t actually run the software they want.
So, which of those things are they planning for OS X, eh?
I’m also intrigued to see how far they are prepared to go with this. They already annoyed and inconvenienced a lot of people with the Samba and GCC removal. Having wooed so many developers to the Mac in the last decade, are they really prepared to throw away all that goodwill by shipping obsolete tools and making it a pain in the ass to upgrade them?
The GPL v3 prevents things like the Novell/Microsoft deal to "patent license" Linux.
The consequence is that Apple can't merely settle to solve patent disputes for any included GPLv3 component, but has to find a way to have the upstream component (and all deviations) have free use of the patent.
VLC was removed because a VLC developer (copyrightholder) asked them to. Specifically, they alleged apple did not have the rights to distribute VLC unless they also allowed users to modify / recompile the software.
There is a way for end users to modify their software now, but I don’t know if it would satisfy that developer. VLC relicensed to make clear they don’t require distributors to do this.
I've used VLC on Apple products (phone, tablet, laptop) for years. I can't remember a time it wasn't available. Do you mean some VLC other than the video/media playing application?
If you have citations of GPLv2 or GPLv3 apps that are in the App Store, I would be highly interested.
As far as I can discern, Linphone is provided in the App Store under a proprietary license, VLC had to relicense as LGPL, and GNU Go is still not on the App Store.
My understanding is that Apple doesn't ban GPLvX code - that doesn't mean other people won't write Apple and ask the app to be removed, claiming the app developer did not have proper copyright license.
I don’t think anyone’s tried it, because it was certainly not allowed a couple of years ago. But the language that the FSF used to point to is no longer there, so I’d like to hope that it might be possible today.
It’s not so much that it’s banned; it’s that because the GPLv3 allows users to modify their software and Apple doesn’t without their developer licenses, you can’t give the user all the freedoms the license provides.
It's pitiful there hasn't been a widely adopted open source notification framework like linux is to OS. Apple and Google both implement their own and it gave them overwhelming power over the app developers. Ironically, this framework may start in China as while majority of the people use Android they have no access to G-suite, apps develop their own notifications and eats up tonnes of RAM, this will neatly solve that problem.
Apple is the one holding up Web Push on iOS at this point, Chrome, Firefox, Edge and a number of other browsers support it: https://caniuse.com/#search=push
The statement is referring to the user, there is no practical "work around" for getting their previously functioning, natively executing application operational again, on a computer they supposedly own.
Pointing out a "work around" for the developer is meaningless, in terms of "hey! they can reimplement it as a web app to bypass Apple's shitty walled garden!" is completely useless to these folks in HongKong right now.
I meant, there's no workaround for getting native software that has the capabilities of native software. If web apps were similarly capable I'd agree with you, but as it stands they aren't anywhere near equivalent.
I don't know why are people against your comment. What happened to "vote with your wallet?" it used to be the way Americans punished companies. What gives power to these companies to be evil is that we as a society keep giving them money. Just stop giving them money and they will change.
Part of these are social network effects (all my friends use it, plus the apps they use need you to use the same apps, meaning you have to use the same OS or one of the big ones, etc).
Part of them are actual network effects (you've already used the same g-suite or whatever apple provides, and moving to something else - if it exists at all - is either very difficult or impossible).
I'm sure there's others I am not thinking of right now.
But both leave only the "hardcore" privacy and open source activists as your only market - and that's so small that only others of similar persuasion even both to create and host those alternatives, if they exist at all. Since the market is small, and developers/time is lacking, UI and other parts of such apps/operating systems/ecospaces tend to be non-existant or suffer other oddities that keep them out of being adopted by the masses, unless those people get fed up enough with the existing products to be willing to put up with all the downsides of a more free and open system.
Which is kinda where Linux is today - a combination of becoming "good enough" - but also coupled with more than a bit of "corporate America" (and/or "corporate west") helping to make it just a tad better (for business use, for gaming, etc) - and the masses who are getting fed up with Apple and/or Microsoft - a few of them peel off to see what it's all about. Dual boot, or virtualization (and Microsoft has made that easier, too), they get a taste, and some think "hey this isn't really that bad - I can do almost everything" and some migrate over (with the big exception - games - but Valve and Steam are helping in that regard, too).
That's what is needed in the mobile realm, and nothing exists yet. Yes, there are alternatives, but the real bugger has been the hardware - which is very locked down, and only (again) the hardcore and activists are willing to go the extra mile to break open (root, jailbreak) consumer-available hardware, or purchase already "open" hardware, or go so far as to build their own hardware (I am contemplating this option, personally).
Until it gets easier for the "masses" to get a more open hardware mobile platform, the next step of an open ecosystem, operating systems, and apps is much for difficult to make happen. With Apple and Samsung being the main two hardware providers (for iOS and Android respectively), with the way both lock down their hardware, it will stay this way.
But really - for Android at least - Samsung does this mainly for the providers themselves. For instance (in my case), I have a G7 - but it's a T-Mobile version. I paid for it in full (I don't have a contract with T-Mobile, but they are my provider) - but Samsung provides a different version of the G7 (with a different processor and such) than they do outside the USA. That hardware is much easier to root, while the USA version is seemingly made to be as airtight as possible to root (with a constant back-and-forth game being played behind the scenes). It is strange - it's partly Samsung, partly the providers.
Ultimately, I'm just going to opt-out of this hardware game and build my own platform; I already have the 4G module to support phone and data (and I am planning on using it for data only, as I virtually never use my phone for voice calls). If I am lucky, it will be my winter project.
So true, which is why we need antitrust enforcement. If you run a platform or a service, you have to provide access to that platform or service to your competitors under the exact same terms as your customers. Anything less is the definition of anti-competitive.
It’s happened before, though of course it’d be much harder today. Interestingly, it seems like Apple keeps around a Linux devicetree for their processors, so it’s certainly not impossible…
China has state run Telecom companies providing all the eyeball access, so it's relatively straightforward to ensure outside connectivity goes through the great firewall.
Hong Kong has multiple private companies providing eyeball access. It would be far more difficult for the Chinese government to get all of their compliance. If they just wanted to get traffic information, it would be far easier to just collect a statistical sampling collected from flows data on core routers for general info or to monitor specific IP's using rulesets without the massive undertaking needed for always on firewall capabilities on every single packet.
Back in October the HK ISP association put this out [1] about how bad it would be for them to be moved towards a GFW model, so I guess they're somewhere closer to Western style access requests still: https://www.hkispa.org.hk/139-urgent-statement-of-hkispa-on-...
It isn't behind the Great Firewall, but it is behind an increasing number of government controlled boxes that could be turned into the Little Firewall. There are many direct fiber paths into HK that go directly to big companies and it would take time to bring them under control, but it would take only be a matter of time.
The other aspect of the Great Firewall is the alternative ecosystem inside it, and the censorship system embedded in weibo etc. It will be interesting to see if surveillance capitalism apps like Wepay and Alipay suffer a setback in HK in the wake of the protests. Cf
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-24/alipay-s-...
OR go to android that allows you to sideload apps from other sources. Of course, you run the risk of malware, then but at least if Google were to pull something like this you could just sideload it.
Converting an iOS app to "a web app" isn't exactly a trivial undertaking. Remember you're likely saying "Reimplement the app atop an entirely different family of libraries and APIs."
> And in one fell swoop, Apple has made it effectively impossible to install this app on your phone
You mean years ago?
Not that I support this move by Apple, but ... how is this different from them rejecting any application for any reason? We've had a ton of stories on HN of them doing that (for various different reasons)...
But isn't this all the same thing? Apple made a decision: "This form of speech is dangerous, so we're going to decide what our customers are allowed to see." And so Apple blocks both dangerous speech, and safe speech that could harm Apple's revenue, and safe speech that powerful individuals dislike.
People always seem to think of this as a false dichotomy, so I want to emphasize again that I think Apple's curated App Store is great. It just shouldn't be the only way to acquire software.
I don't think it's the same thing. Apple has at least three options:
- Have a store with, say, quality control, and the option to side-load
- Have a store with "quality control" (and, as I see it, some rather large levers to fight competition), no option to side-load, but don't bow to state actors
- same, but bow to state actors.
I wish it's the first, I thought it's the second, but we now see it's the third. I think the the third is worse than the second option.
Given time, the second option will always become the third.
Bowing to state actors is a decision individuals make.
If the platform gives specific people the ability to bow on behalf of everyone (as iOS does - reviewers have that power), eventually some of those people will do so.
A centralized app store must at least bow to the state actors where its business operations and servers live. Otherwise the state actors will take their hardware and remove the business from existence.
If the OS supports direct installation, then you avoid the inherent risks of centralized software.
Granted, you gain the risks of decentralized software.
This isn't new. Apple has always bowed to state actors in order to damage minorities, literally ever since the app store launched with it's censorship targeting sex workers and sexual minorities on behest of the US government.
But see, by saying "don't bow to state actors", you're making a moral judgement about when it is and is not okay to bow to pressure.
Was it okay when Apple got rid of Alex Jones's app? He was spreading misinformation about vaccines, that's pretty darn dangerous. I guess you could argue that wasn't due to a "state actor", but is anti-Hong-Kong pressure from Chinese citizens all that different?
And here's the thing—I do think platform holders sometimes need to make moral judgements, and I'm glad Alex Jones is banned from the App Store. I'm significantly less glad that it's completely impossible to install his app anymore. It's the difference between not actively giving someone a megaphone, and actually banning speech.
> I guess you could argue that wasn't due to a "state actor", but is anti-Hong-Kong pressure from Chinese citizens all that different?
The difference is between taking something down because you agree with the rationale the entity-that-wants-something-taken-down gives you, such that you'd do it even without that entity in existence as long as you knew the information they told you; vs. being intimidated by that entity into doing so, such that without the entity, you'd have never done anything.
I fully agree that solution 1 would be much, much better.
But I don't think I have to make a moral judgement when it is OK and when it is not OK: let's assume I think it's not OK in all cases, then it's still worse if they do it against Axel Jones AND HK than if they do it only against Axel Jones OR the HK.
In any case, I'm allowed to make a moral judgement. We do this all the time: Breaking the law is bad, but stealing is less "bad" than killing. And so on.
It's because the locked-down nature of the iPhone is always made out to be an all-or-nothing policy. I legitimately don't understand why.
There are real benefits to having a curated, sandboxed, and audited selection of safe, quality software. Most users should never need to leave such an environment
What is necessary is an escape hatch—one that doesn't involve continual software reinstalls, or outright buying new hardware. It's fine to hide the option away in settings, where most users won't find it. But in extraordinary circumstances—like when your city is rioting against your government—people will help each other locate the switch, and download what they need to stay safe.
I spoke with a former Apple dev on this topic once. He says that you can opt out of code signing and the App Store on Mac because that's a professional OS, but for iOS the security rationale for not allowing that is that it's geared for less tech-savvy users. Paraphrasing: "If there is a way to opt out, malicious apps and sites will con users into doing it to get malware on the phone."
I can't totally disagree. To have a completely secure device you have to lock out the user since the user is often the least secure component of the system.
I am sympathetic to the Dancing Bunnies Problem [1]. However, when I weigh the societal harm of (A) preventing people who are very dedicated to shooting themselves in the foot from shooting themselves in the foot, versus (B) protesters being unable to share and access important safety information, the choice is clear.
Personally I think the real problem is that the OS is fundamentally broken. All current OSes are fundamentally broken from a security point of view because they all pre-date the era when security was such a concern and are designed to run only de-facto trusted code. All the security we have including all iOS's security is a bolt-on afterthought.
A modern security and privacy conscious OS would be "principle of least privilege" from the ground up. It would be written into the DNA of the kernel and OS from the first line of code, not bolted on later via permission managers and leaky APIs and then mandatory notarization by a central authority to work around the fact that the whole mess is still insecure.
We do have something like that. It's called a web browser. A browser is a small VM that runs utterly untrusted code relatively safely. In many cases it's code from the sketchiest ad networks and other hellholes imaginable.
Imagine if your real OS were like that. Install anything even known malware with fairly strong confidence that you're safe and that it can't do anything you don't explicitly grant to it.
Modern OSes are designed to prevent users from attacking other users (or the system) with malicious code. They are not designed to protect the user from malicious code they themselves install.
> We do have something like that. It's called a web browser. A browser is a small VM that runs utterly untrusted code relatively safely. In many cases it's code from the sketchiest ad networks and other hellholes imaginable.
Given how many issues there are with ad tracking, fingerprinting, and other privacy related issues, I don't feel the web browser is particularly safer than an iOS app. What can an iOS app really do that a browser app cannot at this point?
This is what happens when you try to do that - you pop up so many prompts that everyone just clicks "Allow" out of frustration anyways, which defeats the purpose.
The UI for it may be the toughest unsolved problem. Something must be done to simplify and group concepts. You can't just give the user a barrage of micro-permission dialogs.
>He says that you can opt out of code signing and the App Store on Mac because that's a professional OS
And this is why he's wrong: it's NOT a "professional OS". My sister has a Macbook Air, running MacOS. She's not a professional (computer user). Mac computers aren't just for "professionals" (esp. software devs), they're sold to anyone who wants something with a bigger screen than a mobile phone or tablet, and wants a keyboard to type on and wants to be able to have a normal filesystem to work with. In short, anyone who still wants to be able to use a normal PC.
She uses her Mac for typing documents (she likes to write), watching movies, etc. She is absolutely NOT what I consider a "tech-savvy user". So why does she "need" to be able to opt out of code signing and the App Store?
So, no, he's completely wrong. If Apple only sold their computers to software devs, he'd have a good argument, but they don't, so he doesn't.
So where's the "professional" phone OS? It seems to me that if you want to stay in the Apple ecosystem you're stuck with iOS whether you know what you're doing or not.
Apple still provides a means for "professionals" to sign and run their own code on iOS devices, it just requires jumping through a few hoops. Pay a one-time $100 fee and you don't have to deal with re-signing your app every seven days. This is enough of a barrier to entry that I think it solves the "dancing bunnies" problem without making it impossible to run what I want. I do fully understand why some people think that this is still too extreme.
My two real beefs with this arrangement are the requirement of a Mac, and the potential use of the App Store curation to block apps for political reasons, as is happening with HKmap.live.
For the vast majority of people, protecting them from their own lack of willingness to educate themselves about data security and malware (a nontrivial time investment, let me tell you, having done it myself), is a feature, not a bug.
It's not that they're paying more for less; it's that they're paying more for a curated less. For the vast majority of Apple's customers, this works out great (provided they aren't ever going to engage in an antigovernment protest).
Please don't get it twisted. What Apple does has value to many people; it's not as black-and-white as you seem to make it out to be.
The website developers have already added a Javascript plugin that instructs visitors on how to add the app to their homescreen, after they visit the website in Safari, which gives presumably identical behavior to the app store app.
Hopefully this alleviates the immediate negative consequences of the removal.
iPhones, iPads and the whole mobile device segment is useless if a company can decide the content. It will never be your device.
Microsoft tried the same crap with their store, which was fortunately rejected to a large degree. The future of software shouldn't look so backwards. I can understand users being drawn in by accessibility, which is hard to realize for more open systems. But I don't really understand developers choosing Apple aside from monetary opportunities.
Macs try to go in a similar direction, so these comments saying I shouldn't care about app notarization are nothing but short sighted in my opinion. Because the security benefit is minuscule and new dangers like this pretty impalpable but nevertheless very real and the degree of enforcement of these mechanism will certainly increase as soon as Apple sees the opportunity.
>iPhones, iPads and the whole mobile device segment is useless if a company can decide the content. It will never be your device.
I don't like it either, but don't fool yourself: lots of people don't care. They don't care if it's "their device" or not. They're perfectly happy to pay $1200 for a high-end device they don't have full control of, because it signals wealth, and does what they want it to do.
Just look at how many people lease cars instead of buying them. It's not that different; they don't own those cars, they're really just renting them. They're not allowed to modify them, and can get in trouble if they don't follow the maintenance schedule or drive them too much. But for those people, they're fine with that.
>Microsoft tried the same crap with their store, which was fortunately rejected to a large degree.
This is probably for at least two reasons. 1) There was already a huge ecosystem of Windows software out there, long before MS tried to ape Apple. Those companies were already successful in selling their apps directly to customers, without having to give MS a 30% cut. Why would they want to adopt MS's new strategy? 2) MS being MS, they most likely bungled it in some way. This happens every time they try to ape Apple or someone else; the first few iterations are absolutely terrible and a big joke. Sometimes they persist and it finally works out for them, other times they finally give up (e.g., PlaysForSure, Zune).
I Jailbreak my own iPhone, and I'm personally delighted about checkm8. But for most people, this is yet another "unrealistic workaround".
Imagine you're a Hong Kong protester. You're spending a significant portion of your time in the streets, and the rest at work, or school, or whatever other life tasks you're responsible for. Do you really want to spend an hour reading up on how to Jailbreak your phone? And then, because this is a "tethered" Jailbreak, what happens if your phone reboots and you're not near a computer?
There is a balance to be struck here. Sideloading can't be too easy, lest people get tricked into doing it. But it shouldn't require more than five minutes, and it should be a one-time process. (Or at least nearly-one-time: making it annual might be reasonable.)
Yes, I certainly wasn't suggesting "just jailbreak lol" as an easy answer to the iOS problem. But it might be, at least, the least-unrealistic option right now, so it probably deserves a mention.
In principle code signing is a good idea, this way Apple can ensure an improved security standard over their competition.
But the downside is of course that Apple is in control, and like any corporation it will do things with that power that are unethical, immoral, anti-competitive, anti-consumer, etc. to the fullest possible imaginable degree.
Its like when you buy a DRM protected piece of content and that company revokes access in the future. Its entirely predictable and preventable.
Customers buy DRM content all the time and they buy Apple products instead of phones that give you freedom. Ignorance is not an excuse, I won't blame Apple, they aren't people, they just do what is natural in all corporations, I blame people/consumers, they deserve every single last bit of totalitarianism that is coming their way.
> In principle code signing is a good idea, this way Apple can ensure an improved security standard over their competition.
There is nothing wrong with code signing. There is everything wrong with making Apple the sole arbiter of mandatory code signing. It's the difference between being against locks, and being against someone else owning the keys to your house.
---
> I won't blame Apple, they aren't people [...] I blame people/consumers
No, you can't blame people. It isn't the individual consumer's job to consider the ins and outs of how they may be limiting their free expression in the future. That's not realistic.
Corporations are not robots; Apple is run by people, and specifically people who should be considerably more knowledgable on this subject than the average consumer. They should feel some level of social responsibility.
This will not be the last time Apple ends up in this type of situation. I hope we have the right conversations about them, and I hope they make Apple hurt. Because this was entirely predictable, and entirely of Apple's own making.
> Corporations are not robots. Apple is run by people, and specifically people who are much more knowledgable on this subject than the average consumer. They should feel some level of social responsibility.
Sometimes I wonder how many instances to the contrary people need to get this falsehood out of their heads. Corporations are only beholden to their shareholders, if any one person at Apple (including the CEO) is not at all times acting solely to maximize the profit to their shareholders they will be replaced by someone who will. The government has to force corporations to their will through tight regulations, consumer protection and anti-trust legislation. Why are all corporations spending this incredible amount on political corruption/"lobbying", its because all these things work.
This is a way of thinking that emerged within the past century. It was not always considered universally true, and I think it's harming society.
Why do we consider it acceptable for CEOs to shrug off any and all social consequences of their actions? We can and should outlaw actions that are socially harmful, but we shouldn't just shrug our shoulders when powerful people find ways to skirt those rules to enrich themselves.
They're really not. In court, it is sufficient to be able to argue that your actions are in the long-term interest of the company. In practice, CEOs are hard to replace, and it is easy for them to pack the board. Lots of companies have dual class shares so that a group of insiders can run the company however they see fit.
Anyway, even if it were true in practice, this is entirely the result of laws and court decisions. Governments could change it with the stroke of a pen.
> if any one person at Apple (including the CEO) is not at all times acting solely to maximize the profit to their shareholders they will be replaced by someone who will.
Looking right at Adobe with Venezuela, U.S based company is taking an executive order at face value and cut off anyone there to using their products. It's worse now since Creative Cloud must be active to use the core tools, at first they weren't even going to refund anyone that just paid a year but luckily due to the outcry they will now allow refunds at least.
Being a software engineer I side with consumers more as I use a ton of services, but that's the flip side to the convince the consumer has absolutely no ownership to anything.
You sure about that? I mean yeah, "we" as in at least you and I, but the general public... I still enjoy https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html as prophetic fiction and occasionally remember that around 10 years ago Amazon in reality remotely deleted copies of Orwell's 1984 from kindle devices when Amazon learned that version of the book was put on their kindle store without authorization. (But at least on the issue here Amazon does better, it's not hard to load your own mobis or convert things to mobi format. I suspect the kindle would still be very popular without such ease though.)
> You sure about that? I mean yeah, "we" as in at least you and I, but the general public...
...no, sadly I'm not sure. The point I wanted to make is that banning certain apps is no better than banning certain books.
I originally wanted to write something like "We wouldn't be okay if certain books were banned on certain brands of bookshelves", precisely for the reason you mention—but I decided the comparison would be too weird.
That said, I don't think it's a coincidence that every e-reader (as far as I'm aware?) allows sideloading, including the Kindle line, which Amazon sells at a loss. The optics of any company "banning books" would just be too poor. I wish the optics on "banning software" were equally poor.
It's not your iphone/ipad/Macbook, it's Tim's iphone/ipad/Macbook that he deigns to let you use, but only at his pleasure and only to do what he thinks is OK.
You’re being downvoted because you’re using Hacker News for your political battle, which is frowned upon: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Oh, and commenting on downvotes is also usually not rewarded either.
This is why Apple will always be a second-class citizen to Android.
If I have a good reason, I can toggle a setting and install APKs built by anyone. If I have a good reason, I can wipe my phone and unlock the bootloader to literally replace and de-Google the entire OS.
When I buy a phone, it's a hardware product I'm buying. Just like when you buy a PC/laptop, what you run on it is your business, not the manufacturers. It's certain nice that Dell pre-loads Windows 10 on their laptops, but if I want to run Linux, I can.
>but I want my phone to just work
You also have the freedom to stay in the walled garden. The difference is you have to option to run different software if you so choose, and having that freedom is so much more important to me than how slick the UI is or how good the ecosystem is.
I don't own any Apple products, although I was strongly considering switching to iPhone a few years back. These recent developments confirm that I definitely made the right choice staying with Android.
That's funny: "Apple will always be a second-class citizen to Android"
You don't hear about 14 million iPhones being infected by malware[0], do you? Or malware stealing users' bank credentials[1]? Heck, there are people whose brand new phone comes pre-loaded with malware[2]. Oh, this one was just posted five hours ago -- applications on the Google Play store load with trojans and spyware[3].
I can keep going, but the point is: if any platform is "second-class", it's Android by far. I'll pick the one that doesn't have apps on its official App Store rooting my phone and installing spyware.
This argument reminds me of the gun control argument.
People in favour of "more guns" are fully aware that more guns means a more dangerous society. But they consider the freedom to choose whether to own guns more important than living in a statistically safer society.
Whereas, people in favour of "gun control" consider the safety of society overall to be much more important than the freedom to own devices designed to kill people.
To me, that's what Android vs iPhone represents with respect to freedom. Android gives you more freedom to choose different devices, but at the cost of most devices not getting security and OS updates.
Likewise, Android gives you the freedom to side-load all kinds of things onto your devices, and of course the Android ecosystem is chock-full of malware.
The proponent of freedom says, "Yes, I understand that this is a much more dangerous ecosystem, but I value the freedom to defend myself."
The proponent of safety says, "There are some dangers that are best met by a centralized, platform defence, not by individuals."
Philosophically, I understand both arguments, even if I am very clearly in one of the two camps with no interest whatsoever in switching to the other.
It has nothing to do with gun control. An analogy isn't necessary to understand that one platform regularly has software that was vetted and released on its _official software distribution platform_ that contains malware/spyware and trojans. Here's one from last year[0].
I don't expect my smartphone to be "open" and fulfilling my principles of "freedom". I do expect that from my _computer_, but I don't carry my computer in my pocket and across borders and put it in other peoples' hands to show them photos (for example).
I also don't connect my computer to unknown wireless networks, whereas my smartphone has bluetooth enabled[1] and is basically constantly connected to unfamiliar wireless networks (work/hotel/cafe/library/neighbour/etc.), any of which may include malicious actors who are scanning for vulnerable devices. A pretty solid use case for which I'll choose the device that is far less likely to be owned.
The problem with guns is that it's mostly binary. Either you live in a society with guns, or without. You don't really have a choice once you're in that society: if you live in the US and don't like guns, that's too bad, because other people can have them, and they can shoot at you with them; you being anti-gun isn't going to help you much if some wacko decides to come to your school and shoot everyone. Or, if you live in Singapore and like guns, that's too bad, because you're not allowed to own one there at all, and if someone somehow manages to smuggle one in and shoot at you, you won't be able to shoot back.
>Android gives you more freedom to choose different devices, but at the cost of most devices not getting security and OS updates.
The key here is you have choice, and your choice completely changes your experience.
So if you get some crappy Android device from a mfgr that doesn't bother with security and OS updates, you could be infected with malware. Whereas if you get a good Android device from a mfgr that does regular updates, you're much less likely to be infected.
>Likewise, Android gives you the freedom to side-load all kinds of things onto your devices, and of course the Android ecosystem is chock-full of malware.
Again, your choice changes your experience. No one is forcing you to side-load apps. If you want to stick with the curated Google Play store (like 99% of users), you can do that. And even there, if you're careful about which apps you load, and stick only to well-known and reputable ones, then again you'll probably avoid any malware problems. No one is forcing you to install some random Chinese-made app that's obviously malware, even though those do exist on the Play store unfortunately. Unlike with guns, the fact that other people with other phones may be installing malware on their devices doesn't affect you: you're not going to get malware because some differnt mfgr doesn't do updates, or because some apps that you never install are malware and are available on the Play store.
This also mirrors Chinese vs. American values perfectly.
The Chinese believe in the Apple model of safety, greater good, social harmony, and the ends justifying the means over individual liberties. The concentration camps, great firewall, IP theft, everything we see as dysfunctional about China stems from this belief system.
Americans don't believe in the "greater good" or "the ends justify the means" and it results in uniquely American dysfunctions like mass shootings and homeless people shitting in the street in SF.
Still, like you, I have no interest in switching to the other camp. It is a basic value system ingrained in me.
This is a terrible generalization and greatly conflates the people and the government of China, which has been ignoring philosophers and politicians extolling such values for decades.
As the other responder says, this is a terrible generalization. Japan also has a society where the greater good and social harmony are highly valued, and they don't have things like concentration camps, a great firewall, IP theft, etc.
However, in the US, we do have concentration camps. We call them "migrant detention centers", and people are forced to drink water from the toilet there, and small children are forcibly separate from their mothers. It seems to me that the US is more similar to China than you think.
> This also mirrors Chinese vs. American values perfectly.
> The Chinese believe in the Apple model of safety, greater good, social harmony, and the ends justifying the means over individual liberties. The concentration camps, great firewall, IP theft, everything we see as dysfunctional about China stems from this belief system.
By "Chinese" do you mean the Chinese people, Chinese culture, of the Communist Party of China?
I'm technical so I like tinkering and don't care a whit for Apple's locked down ecosystem and it's cost of entry, so I avoid it. But I'm totally aware of the reasons Apple make their business decisions. Their loyal fan base and easy interoperability of their products is testament to this. It has brought many technological solutions into the hands of the non-technical consumer, which has benefitted us technical folks by bringing attention to what can be achieved by technology.
(I'm not crediting Apple with this in its entirety, far from it, but they brought non-technical attention to the technical arena)
Anyone on HN complaining that their iDevice doesn't give them sufficient 'freedom of ownership' is willfully ignorant of Apple's well publicized and infinitely discussed closed system strategy.
What an incredibly weak argument. Android absolutely destroys iOS in market share, it's not even a comparison. That's why it's targeted by malware writers. That doesn't mean it's any less secure than iOS. You have to try very hard to infect your phone.
I'd pick being able to run whatever I want over Apples choice of apps any day.
"Try very hard" == be on a wifi network, or download an app that appears to be completely legit from the vendor's own digital distribution platform? OK :)
> On the bright side, most of the harmful software appears to have been purged by Google. “If not all of these apps, then definitely most of them are not available on Google Play anymore,” Stefanko told TNW.
This is a trade off of having an open ecosystem. I only install well reviewed and well known, quality apps so I have never had any malware on the dozens of phones I have owned over the years. I prefer having a small chance of being infected by malware by my own actions over a closed ecosystem and only being able to install what Google deems worthy on my device any day.
> You don't hear about 14 million iPhones being infected by malware
No, but I have heard of 400 million iPhones being infected by malware via Xcodeghost. This is serious data exfiltrating malware, not simply ad popup malware, and this is on the official app store and legitimately sourced devices unlike the malware in your first three links.
> If I have a good reason, I can toggle a setting and install APKs built by anyone. If I have a good reason, I can wipe my phone and unlock the bootloader to literally replace and de-Google the entire OS.
This is not possible for many (and I suspect the majority of) android phones.
> This is not possible for many (and I suspect the majority of) android phones.
But it is.
You can install APKs from anyone on any phone. It's a feature of the OS.
> I can wipe my phone and unlock the bootloader to literally replace and de-Google the entire OS.
I've never had an Android phone I couldn't unlock and flash. From the original Evo to Pixel 2.
I have an iPhone as of two months ago. I just wanted to try something new. The amount of restricted access to things is boggling. I can't even download an mp3 on Safari or Chrome. I thought I was doing something wrong and spent 2 hours trying to figure out what. Then I learned it was just the phone.
I'm sorry, I quoted more than I meant to. I was exclusively talking about unlocking the bootloader.
> I've never had an Android phone I couldn't unlock and flash.
I've been using Android as long as I've had a smart phone, and I've never had a phone that I could flash. You should remember that most people don't have expensive flagship model phones.
We spent a good amount of time over a year keeping the Evo unlocked whenever HTC would try to patch things. I'd like to think that helped set the tone for bootloader unlockability going forward.
But to be honest, I've been in the Nexus and Pixel ecosystem since then so I haven't really seen how things have shaped up
This is possible for pretty much all android phones. What's not necessarily possible for all phones is to root the phone but yes most android phones allow you to install apks downloaded via the browser after toggling "allow installation of apps from unknown sources" in the settings.
That's probably also the reason why GNU and FSF should get new momentum. In the 90s/00s there was good reason to get away from Windows because it was really unstable - and Apple being expensive and niche. Now both are kind of viable options for most things but the freedom to use whatever application one wants to use is definitely becoming more important.
So you can of course side load apps more easily on Android, but it isn’t super easy. I guess that matters less when people are motivated.
But... if this statement were true in spirit as well then why don’t we see google seizing this PR opportunity and making statements about the superiority of their App Store’s more liberal model? Why do we instead see Google quietly removing HK-protest related apps too?
I guess the moral is that both Apple and Google will kowtow to the desires of the Chinese government in these cases and it’s mostly circumstantial that Google cannot so thoroughly lock down their systems
In settings, enable "allow installation of apps from unknown sources". Then download the .apk file from your web browser / dropbox / whatever, and tap to install. It's literally a single-setting toggle to let you install any apk from anywhere.
Though I concede that this app is more objectively pro-protestor (rather than general public safety) and the statements from google feel more like generic policy than obvious bowing to pressure.
> A Google spokesman said that “The Revolution Of Our Times” app, which lets users role-play as Hong Kong protesters, violated a long-standing policy “prohibiting developers from capitalizing on sensitive events, such as attempting to make money from serious ongoing conflicts or tragedies through a game”.
It's pretty easy, in fact when I got a new phone and tried to install the f-droid apk, android took me directly to the setting to toggle side loading apps. The permissions seemed even a little more fine grained than before with a seperate one to allow f-droid to install apps also, but still only one tap away once I actually tried to do it.
I don’t disagree that you found it easy. I’ve done this in the past and found it easy too. But the things that you or I may find easy are not necessarily easy to the large fraction of the population who are not particularly good with technology.
I’m not sure how I found F-droid. I think it was from knowing I wanted free software, finding myself overwhelmed with crap in the regular App Store and some combination of luck/determination.
In the case of the protests in Hong Kong I think there is sufficient motivation to go through these potentially tricky/scary steps and there would, if necessary, surely be resources on how to do it.
But that’s also a situation where following instructions from some crowd to download some apps from some non-google source is risky. It seems that if people were doing this then it wouldn’t be long until there was a reasonable chance of being tricked into downloading CCP-sponsored malware
I'm not sure if you actually read most of what I said or are just responding to the part where I said it was easy, but, at least on android 9, it automatically takes you to the setting as soon as you try to open an apk, acquiring which, is pretty much exactly the same as downloading an .exe file on a computer. Depending on your browser, it will even ask if you want to open the file upon completion, thereby taking you to the 'enable apps from unknown sources' option without even leaving your web browser. I like to have faith that most people capable of downloading and opening a file from the internet, should be able to read a message pop up and tap a toggle button.
> mostly circumstantial that Google cannot so thoroughly lock down their systems
You can say the same about any end to end encrypted service. Setting yourself up to not be able to bow to unreasonable request is the best defense and can be quite the extra effort. And I'm thankful for companies doing so.
Thing I don't understand why Apple made that decision. In their position I'd would have fought very hard to get gov (preferably HK) order the removal and then just "having to comply". But it's probably the natural consequence of wanting to curate entire availability beyond just in-store generate content (e.g. advertising, search ranking and so on). Again, it matters what you set yourself up to be.
Yeah I agree that it’s a bit nuanced but I’m not convinced that the reason for it was a moral stance about user liberty. I think it was more straightforward: this was how non-Apple phones worked and it was how computers worked, so it possibly didn’t require much effort to think to lock down the OS. Of course I think many people at google at the time would have been in favour of that decision. I wonder if google would make the same decision today, and I wonder who would argue for which sides about it.
> So you can of course side load apps more easily on Android, but it isn’t super easy. I guess that matters less when people are motivated.
Well, there's a balance here. If it's too easy, some users will be tricked into installing malware.
I think Android is a good compromise. If you're even a tiny bit technically inclined, you can enable sideloading in a couple of minutes at most, and it's a one-time process.
>you can enable sideloading in a couple of minutes at most
How does that not fit your definition of "too easy"? If it can be disabled in minutes and any attempt to install an unauthorized APK takes you right to the screen, it seems completely pointless.
Taking users right to the screen in settings strikes me as a less-than-ideal decision—is that true in the most recent version of stock Android? I recall having to navigate there myself, but I could be wrong.
Regardless, I think there's a world of difference between "Tap an app to install and run" and "tap an app and move through several dialogue boxes, which include a scary security warning." It's not perfect, but it's leagues better than Apple's alternative...
How did you just turn this against Google? Google still has kept the app in the android app store. It's Apple that removed it at the first sign of pressure from China because Apple has no spine.
This is where the comment goes into “my opinion is fact and dissenting opinions are wrong.” There are millions of Apple customers who get their preferred OS by buying hardware directly from the OS developer. This has been a viable business model for Apple for long enough to just laugh at that sentence. Hating Apple is an identity, like a political party, and some are too invested for their ego to allow for simple factual observations.
I'm not sure I follow you. I was just providing a data point that says some people don't care about the hardware - just like how I buy a car, I don't really care about the details and being able to 'drop in' a replacement HVAC or 'add on' features like neon lights/headers/whatever because those features are not important to me.
I honestly don't care about the hardware at all. The hardware/camera/storage/whatever has been good enough for years. I care about the customer support, service, and overall UX of using the device. The fact that I can't side load apks or ipas is a feature to me.
Why does it have to be Android? It's another commercial closed-source OS and therefore the business interests controlling it will at some point conflict with a user's definition of freedom. There are FOSS alternatives easily found by searching.
Cool. The question still stands, how does that make AOSP useless? For the vast majority of applications, I can find reasonable FOSS equivalents in F-Droid.
"This is why Apple will always be a second-class citizen to Android."
Android wouldn't allow an app to be installed on official phones if Google didn't want so, and unofficial ones are built in China anyway plus often already ridden with spyware. The only workaround would be a 100% FOSS phone where the user is king and decides what would run or not.
Android has no way to prevent an APK from being installed. The only thing they can do is add the signature to Play Protect, which will just prompt you that the app may be unsafe, and you can disable it.
Google bans developers from the Play store all the time. As a developer who builds D2C products - Good luck getting your average person installing an APK.
The problem with Android is its mostly closed nature, so there are multiple places where malicious software could be placed by design, system apps and to a greater degree device drivers being the first obvious choice. By malicious I mean software that limits or acts against the user choices, not necessarily behaving like a virus.
AOSP, which is hardly ever run on its own, is open source.
Things like the Play store are entirely closed source. A majority of the API shipped by the Play store are closed source. Many hardware drivers are closed source. The majority of the operating system is Apache licensed, allowing a handset maker to ship modified components without publishing their changes.
Many vendors also prevent the user from installing their own custom ROMs, so even a sophisticated user may not be able to run AOSP on an arbitrary device.
Google Play store is a very small part of Android. Just the fact that vendors can ship modified components is a testament to Android being open. Even Huawei shipped a modified version of Android with Google services such as the Play store removed due to sanctions.
Also in comparison to iOS, Android is a heck of a lot more open. Apple can ship whatever they want and no one would be none the wiser. Plus you can't install whatever software you want on an Apple device, and are restricted to what Apple thinks is acceptable.
It's not really politics, cutting kidneys out of people isn't really politics. Ignoring human rights violations because it's "Just internal politics" is crazy. Is it a family matter if the father is abusing his kids? The same goes for countries.
Likewise, letting Hong Kong go back to that fucked up dystopia by hampering their ability to organize is messed up.
I think this is very serious and it should be a wake-up call.
As simple citizens we don't have much choices but vote with our wallets and use social networks to attack the most valuable asset of those companies, their reputation.
That’s not how this works. Apple is one of the wealthiest companies in the world, and saying “just don’t spend money there” is a bit reductionist and trivializes the problem of corporations with more power than nation-states.
You need to fight fire with fire: governments of the world (especially the US government) need to create laws that restrict and punish this kind of behavior. Otherwise, I sincerely doubt Apple’s going to even notice the missing couple hundred thousand dollars of revenue because of principled “voting with your wallet”.
> “just don’t spend money there” is a bit reductionist and trivializes the problem of corporations with more power than nation-states.
You're totally mistaken if you believe that boycotts and the like aren't taken seriously by big companies, especially companies like Apple where the brand is more important than the product. Of course, it all depends on the size of the boycott, but it doesn't have to cost them millions to become a major problem.
China, through its own behavior in situations like these, makes its own market less attractive for companies and investors, though. You'd have to be crazy to see what is going on right now, and go all-in in with the market in China. The arbitrary power of the CPC over market access is a huge liability.
Big companies may still want to do business in China, but they need stronger footholds in other markets to offset the risk.
Things aren't so black and white behind the scenes. Whether or not a boycott is "minuscule" isn't measured in dollars, it's how the brand is perceived and the second-order effects that perception creates.
It is certainly conceivable that people could make a different choice next time they decide to buy a phone. Others that feel more strongly could switch right away.
Maybe, if it were convenient to switch. But I've given up on believing in boycotts. E.g. People kept buying video games, no matter how shitty the business practice. Preoders, Lootboxes, Season Passes, Pay2Skip... all seemed to have made a ton of cash.
Homegrown sentiment against Apple will very quickly turn the company in the right direction. None of these large companies can afford to completely neglect their home territories.
Most people don’t actually care about this issue, though. Whether or not they should is a different debate, but at the end of the day, people want a solid laptop that works, and even if people did care, I don’t blame them for valuing more short-term things like “I need a MacBook for my job” vs. more long-term, abstract things like “we shouldn’t import autocratic Chinese censorship”.
We can have a world where companies produce good products and act in accordance with democratic, liberal ideology.
How does that play out? The US and China would pass contradictory laws and then companies would have to choose which to follow. They will follow the money and we may not like the result.
Apples marketing claim in the recent years has been users privacy concerns. So why shouldn't such a move be also just as relevant as the marketing in the recent years?
I find it interesting how the blame shifting works these days. While with Blizzard, all the hate goes to Blizzard, with Apple there seem to be at least two fronts. One blaming Apple, the other aiming away from them towards China.
Apple is one of the wealthiest because people buy their products. No other reason. Before people started buying iphones, Apple had near to zero power. If they stop doing that, they'd not have power to restrict people's choices again. Hong Kong people are risking lives for freedom. Are US people ready to risk not having the latest greatest iphone, or maybe they don't need that damn freedom that much?
And we already see what government with laws created to restrict and punish behavior can do. Of course, our government will never do that, we know they'd always use their immense powers responsibly and for the good of the people, right? Right?!
I am almost always against more government regulation and firmly believe in the power of our collective wallets.
That being said, I try to hear out other viewpoints because it’s entirely possible that I am wrong. So, tell me, what law would fix this situation? A law that forces tech corporations to allow free speech? Or a law that forces companies to put ethics before profits? I genuinely don’t know what law we could make that would address the issue while also being fair and enforceable. It seems a lot easier to get the people to rally behind a boycott than to get legislators to have a good idea and actually act upon it.
> You need to fight fire with fire: governments of the world (especially the US government) need to create laws that restrict and punish this kind of behavior. Otherwise, I sincerely doubt Apple’s going to even notice the missing couple hundred thousand dollars of revenue because of principled “voting with your wallet”.
and as we all know, governments are becoming a thing of the past. too slow too bad. I welcome our technotopia overlords
> trivializes the problem of corporations with more power than nation-states.
But they don't have more power than nation states. Last I checked nation states had guns, and guns are still very much the real source of all power in this world.
Apple has a lot of money. That makes them economically dependent on a larger surface area of not only nation states but other corporations. In a way it gives them less power.
A more personal analogy: a regular old Joe or Jane can say anything they want on social media with little fear of anything bad happening because their economic dependency surface area is small. A corporate CEO must watch what they say much more carefully, as Elon Musk learned with his various stupid tweets. A government official on the other hand, like Trump, can say asinine provocative things all day with little consequence because he's in a high position in an organization with guns. Xi Jinpeng is even more immune as his government has fewer checks and balances.
In terms of practical freedom of speech and political/social action, being rich outside the protection of the state is probably the least powerful position you can be in.
> In terms of practical freedom of speech and political/social action, being rich outside the protection of the state is probably the least powerful position you can be in.
The wealthy can hire armies of lobbyists, lawyers, and in some countries mercenaries. A regular old Joe can say anything, sure, but if they're in the wrong country when they do they might end up in prison or just disappear. If you're rich and "economically dependent" the worst that generally happens is your ROI goes down. The horror!
There are lawmakers - both GOP and Democrat - who are in favor of recognizing social and app platforms as public squares. Such regulation would limit arbitrary corporate deplatforming.
How is a legal process a coup? For readers which aren't sure of the definition of coup, "a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government."
I don't see how an impeachment inquiry (even if legally a bit vague) as "violent", "sudden", or "illegal", nor is it a seizure of power, since it is just an inquiry.
If you want to argue that ordering witnesses for investigations without first declaring a formal vote on an impeachment inquiry is illegal, you won't find the Constitution or CRS reports state that a vote must be held for such orders to be valid.
I think that more effective than voting with your wallet is voting in your elections and communicating with your politicians. Even voting with your wallet by donating to support political action.
Collective action is more effective when it's done via law because that removes the incentive to defect for personal gain. It means that people not paying attention aren't accidentally contributing to immoral causes.
In a case like this collective action means things like putting tarrifs on goods from China, so that their workforce isn't important, and banning exports to China, so that their market isn't important. More direct laws like "no censoring what China wants you to censor" are problematic because it's hard to detect in most cases, and it often violates freedom of speech.
And yes, I'm suggesting a very painful thing to do economically.
I've been using Android since the beginning, and I think Google is making it worse and worse with each passing day. I was thinking of switching to Apple. I really like where they're going with this privacy stuff. But, no, not a chance. Fuck Apple forever over this decision. I will never buy an Apple product in my life unless they make this right.
On my Google Pixel 3a, I can download AOSP to my own computer, modify it how I wish, scrape the vendor dependencies I need[1], compile it myself, sign it myself, and use my own key to control what OS gets installed, then relock the bootloader so it only trusts updates using my key! I can choose not to use Google Play and then install whatever App I want on it.
I wish I could not have to use any proprietaryy binaries, but this is as close to an open device that you can get today [2].
[1] This is where the quasi defense comes in. AOSP has no official process to install all of the vendor binaries needed to support carriers. If you don't include this process you get broken SMS, Calling, WiFi Calling. This script helps you do it:
https://github.com/GrapheneOS/android-prepare-vendor
[2] Yes I know of the Librem 5. I am a day one backer and have yet to get a shipping notification despite shipping starting in Sept. I also know of the Pinephone, it is not publically available. I await the day those types of products are viable.
Also in quasi defense of Google (note that I work there), it almost do no business in China. So it doesn't bend over to The CCP.
Moving forward, my biggest purchasing decision as a consumer is going to be based on how much ties a company has to The CCP. I feel like my freedom is under direct threat from The CCP more than anything else, and I'll treat it accordingly when making purchasing decisions moving forward.
> ...I think Google is making it worse and worse with each passing day. I was thinking of switching to Apple...
As you have noticed, neither one really have consumer and citizen interests at heart.
I'm planning on taking the step of opting out completely. I plan to build my own "phone". I recently purchased a low-cost Mini-PCIe 4G module, antennas, and a USB adapter. I should be able to tether it to a RasPi.
My "phone" won't actually look like a phone; it's going to be more of a "data terminal" - something to hack on, send/receive data, and have SMS texting capabilities. I pretty much never use voice calling anyway.
Everything I plan on doing, others have already done in various forms. You can find Raspberry Pi based homebrew "cell phones". People have also made similar phones using the Arduino and the ESP microcontrollers (8266, 12, 32, etc), among others (there are probably PIC and Propellor based phones, too - heck, I wouldn't be surprised if someone repurposed a modern 8051 or 52, or Z80 core controller for such a device). Some of these phones are purely basic - make and take calls, maybe some stored phone numbers. Other run entire operating systems under-the-hood.
I guess what I am saying here is that if you have electronics hacking skills, consider a homebrew phone an option. It may not be pretty, it may not be svelte, it may not even be 4G (2 and 3G modules are cheaper and more common) - but it will be (mostly - unless you have your own mad skills at FPGA design and more) yours.
Bonus points if you make it run on TempleOS!
If you don't have those skills? Well - it wouldn't be a bad project to work towards. Don't take it on as your "first project" though - instead, build up to it, then when you think you have enough experience to take it on, go thru your idea, break it down into manageable parts, and work on those individually for small successes, and later, start merging them together - just like any large project, success is more a matter of "divide and conquer", as looking at it as a whole can lead to feeling inadequate, or being demoralized at finishing, etc...
Apple is pulling an app that's available online as a web site. Google assists the Chinese military in developing AI to round up muslims for organ harvesting.
No, this is companies betting that the few percent of the American market they are losing by behaving this way will be outweighed by getting access to the Chinese market.
If this was a straight-up choice between only the US market or only the Chinese market, they would be picking the US.
Depending on the year either the EU or the USA are the biggest economy with China being either second or third. So long as 'the west' sticks together (which we haven't for the past few years) there is nothing that can break that hegemony. Whether that's a good thing depends largely on where you live.
So far no one has had to choose. If the US started sanctioning US companies that took these kinds of actions, then we'd find out as companies either reversed their decisions or fled the US.
It's not "now" Apple. Apple has been serving the criminal Chinese government for years now. Even Facebook and Google have been doing so, even going so far as to build censorship into their products specifically for the Chinese government.
The only thing that gives me pause is thinking would the Chinese be better off without access to any Apple or Blizzard products at all? Because I think that is ultimately the threat of not following the mandates.
That is unfortunately the essence of the issue surfacing with South Park, Blizzard, NBA, & now Apple. The Chinese market is the "wallet" and China is "voting" with it.
They have the ability to almost instantly evaporate a multi-billion dollar market. That is the kind of "wallet power" (somewhat idealistic) democratic-capitalist consumers like to think they have, but never really execute on with the same impact. This isn't defeatism on my part - things could be different - but they aren't for now.
I think you're getting downvoted because you forgot to label your post as sarcasm with an "/s" at the end.
You might get downvoted anyway, but this seems to be the HN equivalent of clown makeup, and will encourage some of the srs bsns police to overlook your post.
As someone who has appreciated the privacy stance Apple has had and the privacy assisting steps it has taken for a long time (long before iPhone), I believe Apple is coming out to be completely hypocritical and anti-privacy/anti-freedom on this app. I cannot believe that Tim Cook and other senior executives haven't examined this deeper and taken a bold stance to let the app stay! Shame on you, Apple!
Even John Gruber agrees: [1]
> I still haven’t seen which local laws it violates, other than the unwritten law of pissing off Beijing.
> This is a bad look for Apple, if you think capitulation is a bad look.
Apple only cares about privacy because it's a threat to Google and Facebook's business model. They don't care about privacy, they only care about "caring about privacy" when it is good for their business.
Well the same can be said about human rights, they only care about it when it affects their business model in a positive way. if it cost them money they are very willing to turn their backs on it.
privacy is not possible in a world where governments are free to suppress the speech and will of the people. any company claiming otherwise simply sees their bottom line as more important than people, whether they are employees or customers.
To me Apple is the worst here because Tim and team have no shame, they will strut upon their stage at their own conferences about how they stand for rights but when the show lights are off they act completely different.
At a more basic level, apple doesnt see people as customers. They have already maxed out thier target market. Expansion now turns on access to new markets: the will of governments. Governments are now the customer. Any app that angers them is for the block.
Right, and in marketing-speak it's called positioning. Taking a privacy stance allowed Apple to differentiate against their competitors without actually innovating.
If I took a slightly less black and white stance, I would say that totally stand for privacy and human rights, in the United States.
Isn't is possible (yes) for people to care about principles in their homeland, where it matters to them more and impacts them more? I care a lot more about my hometown than BFE Chinese countryside, even though in principle I want them to have a living wage, decent time off, and good health care.
I am still angry at Apple, the NBA, Blizzard and the rest. I think this is a darker shade of grey, though.
Privacy is cheap to engineer because it involves not doing things or hiring more people. They won't allow actions, won't sync data, won't pursue advanced ML, etc etc. It's a clever way to say, "Keeping up with Chrome/Android is hard".
This is the worst take here. Whether Apple is sincere or not about privacy long term, they've created dedicated hardware IPs for doing ML on-phone to get around doing it in the cloud. This is not easier than just shipping all the data to AWS.
I can tell you from the inside that everything I've seen is genuine, even though it makes doing ML-based projects very difficult. That said, I'm very disappointed in this removal as to me it flies against the value.
Privacy is good. By being better for privacy than the worlds largest advertising company/consumer spy agency, Apple announced its intent to be for all that is good in the world. That it's a shining beacon of morality. Protector of Italian virginity.
China is bad. By capitulating to them after having declared themselves the enforcer of all that is good and holy, Apple has thus committed hypocrisy.
There's that and then there's being minimally consistent in one's efforts.
Kind of like someone who would make a fuss about not using plastic straws but systematically takes their car for <500 meters trips and washes their pants 5 times a week.
It's not a bad idea to remind people that if they make the effort of not using online services which compromise for China, they also should make the similar effort of reducing their physical Made in China goods consumption.
It might be a bit much to require employees to break a law as it might expose individual employees to some legal consequences. But there are plenty of laws that are immoral. There are a number of good examples in the peer comments (some of the laws of Hitler's Germany for example). Any company manager or officer that insists on enforcing such laws is themself immoral. But it takes some skill to craft a company policy that could address the situation adequately.
I think you're being a bit cavalier with the distinction between complying with a law and enforcing it. If complying with a law is morally equivalent with enforcing it, you're tarring a lot of Jews in Nazi Germany with a very nasty smelling brush.
I really don't get this. Apple has done far more than any other company in the whole industry to fight for privacy rights. They have gone right up against the legal limits every time, while all the other vendors rolled over belly up at the slightest chance.
iMessage is one of the most secure messaging systems available anywhere and is very widely used in China. For most Chinese it's the only practical secure communications system they can buy. It puts industrial strength end to end encryption in the hands of millions of Chinese.
So I get you're angry about china, that's fine. I have family over there, so I know what it's like. But going after Apple, of all the companies doing business in China you could go after, just makes no sense to me whatever.
I was trying draw the distinction between being forced to comply and enforcing, but I guess I did not get it right, or maybe I can't really get it right. I feel like enforcing is making someone else do something, while complying is doing it personally yourself, perhaps wilfully, perhaps not. So the managers are enforcing by coercing their employees to comply with immoral laws, and I think that is immoral.
> Do you think it is ethical for a company to require it's employees to break the law?
Unless Apple happened to be a Chinese company I'm having a trouble at finding the law that Apple is breaking. I'm sure the customers can decide if a shiny iPhone produced by an company subject to Chinese law is worth it and employees can decide if they want to be employed by a Chinese company.
"Compromising the security of our personal information can ultimately put our personal safety at risk. That is why encryption has become so important to all of us."
While there are privacy concerns from the precedent it sets (can a journalist trust Apple not to bend to CPP information requests?), I agree that this seems to conflate privacy with an only indirectly-related subject.
Agreed! If Apple caves in to Chinese pressure on this, what else will they do? Does Xi Jinping's brutal authoritarian regime now effectively make decisions for Apple abroad, since they can always threaten to cut Apple out of the lucrative mainland market?
They are fine to piss off US government, because they know US government will play by the rules and let them do it. China won't, so as soon as China gives them a dirty look, they wet their pants and bend over.
Nothing in Twitter photo statement talks about privacy. It's clear why the app is problematic: It's being used to target law enforcement, putting those people into danger. The debate here should be between the tradeoff of said danger versus the dangers to the protesters, factoring in the standing-up-to-China.
The privacy stance is just marketing. They have handed over iCloud keys and data to the state in China already. If they cared about privacy over market dominance that wouldn’t have happened.
Unfortunately as an iOS user tied to the ecosystem this puts me in a difficult situation ethically speaking. I am sponsoring this.
Perhaps I should stop buying into corporate marketing ideologies. Got burned by that before (Microsoft))
It's really not a matter of ideology, it's a matter of law. They either comply with Chinese law, or they risk their employees being arrested for breaking the law, or they stop doing business in China.
I think they would argue that, given that all phones are subject to state surveillance, iPhone users in China are no worse off than if they were using another phone. Also since iPhones are generally a lot more secure than other phones against non-state attacks, they are actually better off than they would otherwise be.
That's a tough call. I have family in China, since my wife is Chinese, and they have iPhones. Would they be better off if Apple pulled out of Chine or worse off?
Well, they chose iPhones and they are more secure so isn't it up to them? They wouldn't thank me if I took their iPhones away. On the other hand, if Apple pulled out of China on privacy grounds, it would be massive news. It would not be something the Chinese government could ignore, and might conceivably raise awareness of pervasive state surveillance in China.
But people in China are already very much aware of pervasive state surveillance. They even have a social credit system based on watching everything they do. Chinese state control of public narratives is so total, I actually doubt it would make any difference.
There's a fatal flaw to this approach though. The world is regressing into surveillance because quite frankly the mechanisms are already there and it's easy. What happens if someone in the US or the UK start using the justification of "well you did this in China so we'll legislate so you do that here". Someone has to make a stand and the people running the apparatus purposed to make this possible are morally culpable for the outcome to some degree for making it technically possible to do so.
The world is not that a big place. It doesn't take a lot for this to end up on everyone's laps and then it's too late to say I told you so.
Apple don't run the apparatus in China, they refused to do so. iCloud services in China are run by a Chinese company.
We can't outsource our responsibility as citizens of democracies to a corporation. Apple has done a heck of a lot more than most of us on HN in this fight, by standing up to unreasonable law enforcement requests for access to iPhone data, when the other phone companies rolled over. How much have you done on that front recently? A heck of a lot less than Apple, I'm willing to wager.
I'm finding it difficult to parse what you mean here.
In that case Apple successfully fought the FBI demand, within the law. Had the law required them to render assistance I'm sure they would have done so, otherwise they would have been requiring their employees to break the law.
Under what circumstances do you think it is acceptable for a company to require it's employees to incriminate themselves?
Apple has not handed over the iCloud keys and has testified in the US under penalty of perjury that they have not done this and not made an exception for China. Repeating this is dangerous because it’ll cause people to take different (probably less safe and private) actions based on incorrect information.
> has testified in the US under penalty of perjury that they have not done this
Craig Federighi testified that he’s not aware of them doing it. That doesn’t preclude the possibility that it has been done by someone else in the company without his knowledge.
The possibility that someone in the company is secretly (how!?) providing the Chinese government access to the encryption keys is a wildly different claim. There is no evidence that Apple has done it, and an important executive has testified that they have not, and they've publicly stated they haven't, even if you want to speculate that it has happened.
It's not a secret. Apple even made a statement to reuters at the start of the migration process where they tried to get iCloud as an exception but failed - "“While we advocated against iCloud being subject to these laws, we were ultimately unsuccessful,”
In early 2018, Apple forced their users to opt-in to migrating iCloud encryption keys and data to Chinese data centers:
Chinese government nationalized the data centers six months later, gaining access to all the encryption keys and user iCloud data at rest. Apple complied:
No, they still don't have access to the encryption keys, as reported after those articles you post:
"Encryption for us is the same in every country in the world...We worked with a Chinese company to provide iCloud, but the keys [...] are ours...I wouldn't get caught up in 'where's the location of it,' I mean we have servers located in many different countries in the world. They're not easier to get data from being in one country versus the next...The key question is how does the encryption process work, and who owns the keys — if anyone. In most cases for us, you and the receiver [of a message] own the keys." - Tim Cook
Tim Cook is describing how encryption works - he is not saying that the Chinese government doesn't have access to the data at rest with the iCloud encryption keys. Amnesty International [1] sums it up:
>“By handing over its China iCloud service to a local company without sufficient safeguards, the Chinese authorities now have potentially unfettered access to all Apple’s Chinese customers’ iCloud data. Apple knows it, yet has not warned its customers in China of the risks.”
They raised this issue three full months before the Chinese government went ahead and nationalized all of the Apple user data and encryption keys.
I agree there are reasons to be concerned overall, but Tim Cook is very clearly stating in this interview, which happened after the nationalization, that 1) China doesn’t have access to the encryption keys themselves and 2) for much of the data (like messages) not even Apple has the keys, 3)
China is not able to access the data any more easily than any other country.
If you are targeted by the CCP, then yes, they can make a “legal” request for the data of an individual that Apple is able the decrypt (which isn’t all of it), but they aren’t able to apply mass surveillance to the iCloud data.
Where does Tim Cook specifically say that? What you quoted does not support that.
The encryption keys are for iCloud backups at rest, for which a copy of the keys are stored serverside. This can decrypt all iCloud data, including messages, pics, videos, documents, etc. Tim only described E2E message encryption between users, not encrypted iCloud backups.
Again, Tim isn't saying what you think he's saying. He's intentionally not answering that question or misdirecting - he's doing it all over again here:
That link does not show that they've given control over encryption to the CCP. Apple is on record stating that they have not done this.
"Encryption for us is the same in every country in the world...We worked with a Chinese company to provide iCloud, but the keys [...] are ours...I wouldn't get caught up in 'where's the location of it,' I mean we have servers located in many different countries in the world. They're not easier to get data from being in one country versus the next...The key question is how does the encryption process work, and who owns the keys — if anyone. In most cases for us, you and the receiver [of a message] own the keys." - Tim Cook
The article is misleading. Apple has not given the iCloud encryption keys to the Chinese government. As far as I'm aware, there is currently no evidence that the Chinese government is any more capable of accessing iCloud data than any other government.
From a later article from the same source, Apple states: "Apple has not created nor were we requested to create any backdoors and Apple will continue to retain control over the encryption keys to iCloud data"
GCBD, a state-owned company, certainly gives the Chinese government the ability to see all iCloud data. It is technically true that if the Chinese government sends a data request to Apple, Apple can try to push back within the legal system, but why would they send a data request to Apple when they can get unfettered access from GCBD?
As far as who controls the keys for decrypting iCloud data at rest, I cannot believe that Chinese iCloud data would be sent encrypted to Apple's servers outside of China to be encrypted for rest with Apple-controlled keys and sent back to GCBD servers for storage and then sent to Apple's servers outside of China for decryption after verifying it is a user authorized request and back encrypted for the user when the user requests the data (and the same for all operations on the data like indexing). The keys absolutely must exist in China under GCBD's control.
They did it in two steps. Apple forced users to opt into storing iCloud data in Chinese data centers, and then the Chinese Government nationalized the data centers six month later.
> They have handed over iCloud keys and data to the state in China already.
Have they not regularly done so in the U.S. too? I thought the recent-ish drama with them refusing to unlock phones was that they were being asked to break into their own secure enclave system, taking an unreasonable amount of effort and permanently making their own product less secure?
They're a big company but they're still a company. They have to abide by the laws of whatever countries they're operating in.
It's time that North Americans take a stand and use economic power for something other than furthering that goal. There are so many places where a simple refusal to kowtow/censor or technical attack on censorship infrastructure could help so many that don't have the luxury of living in our world.
If we're not going to use all this economic power for good, what's the point?
America and other classical democracies are in a phase of aging where a decline in prosperity combined with a die-hard (unthinking) application of absolute freedom of speech are paralyzing action. Everyone is disagreeing with each other over a shrinking pie, pitting demographic against demographic, and not only that, any genuine disagreement and decision making is muddied by agents trying to confuse people.
There is no prioritization or restriction on who may say what, how loudly, or regardless of how harmful or counter to the public good it is. And, may I add, most democratic governments do not have a strong enough perspective (in this period) on what the public good is.
As a result, those places that have harnessed the power of demographics while also controlling the message are gaining power. Obviously I mean China. Yes they have anti-absolute-free-speech restrictions that are repugnant to us. But you're damn sure they stay on message as a country/government.
Unfortunately this situation is also to the benefit of chaotic actors like Russia, where they benefit from just other countries being paralyzed and them being able to do what they want.
In the absence of government leadership, corporations had the chance of filling in the role. But now we see that in the face of power, they recoil as well. We did this to ourselves, by letting our priorities get muddled as we got richer. We didn't "stay hungry", my friends.
Monocultures are a weakness and not a strength when it comes to technological innovation, physical/information security and foreign policy. From my perspective, the pie is continuing to grow and the disagreement is who takes the bigger slices from the ever growing pie.
Corporations never had a chance of filling the role because they are very undemocratic, even in the United States. Things need to get bad enough for the only democratic system we have to take action. We aren't there yet.
If inaction due to inability to decipher signal from noise is the consequence of a more absolute definition of free speech, it's an acceptable trade off. Too often not accepting the good with the bad results in attempts to correct the bad but instead "corrects" the good. Not every problem requires a proactive, legislative solution.
In these cases I fear, in the long term, we just have to count on the human nature to want to be able to make noise.
I guess I have a historical enough view that I'm not so unshakably sure that the good old USA is absolutely right in every policy. Which from your tone, you sound like you are. I'm not pro China. But I'm not die hard pro USA either.
For example, I'm not sure that the US approach to free speech or commercial regulation is the most reasonable, or even the most representative. Plenty of other countries that you probably don't criticize in general impose forms of restriction on free speech that you'd object to (if you knew).
Germany has strict censorship laws on several kinds of racially oriented speech. Singapore does too, regarding religion. Yet those are admired democracies.
And while we criticize China here for imposing restrictions that impact US companies, I might ask, where were you (or HN) when it had to do with Chinese companies? Where are all the stories about those infringements, which go on every day?
So, is the principle here that you truly object to China imposing speech regulations? Or just when it extends to an American company?
Hence my philosophical ambivalence about whether we have the right to be so indignant after becoming 10 minute experts on the subject...
Because they were touting the strength of staying on message as if it actually was a beneficial thing (which it isn't). It leads to very dangerous failures in society when people cannot talk about unpopular problems. It leads to them fumbling and missing obvious truths.
You realize that you're criticizing someone right now for having a take on relative weaknesses of the US system? Going so far as to immediately accuse them of loyalty to another country?
Not to snark too hard, but 'physician, heal thyself' comes to mind.
Yes let’s meddle with the sovereign affairs of other countries and use military force to impose our values and democracy just like we used to in the good old days of the 2000s!
Those heathen commies don’t know what’s good for them as much as I, an ill-informed American, do. I must dictate to them what laws they can or cannot have after briefly hearing about their society in the news!
- To protect the world from devastation
- To unite all peoples within our nation
- To denounce the evils of truth and love
- To extend our reach to the stars above
USA
Canada
Mexico
Guatemala
Belize
Honduras
El Salvador
Nicaragua
Costa Rica
Panama
Bahamas
Cuba
Jamaica
Haiti
Dominican Rep.
St. Kits and Nevis
Antigua and Barbuda
Dominica
Saint Lucia
Barbados
St. Vincent and the Grenadines
Grenada
Trinidad and Tobago
Central America isn't a continent. It's a political designation that simply exists for Americans to "other" neighbors. (When not meddling in their politics.)
There are 7 continents: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia. Central America and the Caribbean are regions of North America.
Agreed. It’s so easy and convenient to stay in our day/to-day patterns (e.g. gaming after work for a bit), but the level of absurdity of their actions really needs to be met with protest. We need to send a symbol to other companies that this won’t stand.
“We created the App Store to be a safe and trusted place to discover apps. We have learned that an app, HKmap.live, has been used in ways that endanger law enforcement and residents in Hong Kong. Many concerned customers in Hong Kong have contacted us about this app and we immediately began investigating it. The app displays police locations and we have verified with the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau that the app has been used to target and ambush police, threaten public safety, and criminals have used it to victimize residents in areas where they know there is no law enforcement. This app violates our guidelines and local laws, and we have removed it from the App Store.”
This rationale focuses on how the app has been used, rather than what it does, which could apply equally well to any text messaging or web browser app that is used illegally.
Imagine if this said:
> We have learned that an app, iMessage, has been used in ways that endanger law enforcement and residents in Hong Kong. Many concerned customers in Hong Kong have contacted us about this app and we immediately began investigating it. The app displays police locations that people send via text message and we have verified with the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau that the app has been used to target and ambush police, threaten public safety, and criminals have used it to victimize residents in areas where they know there is no law enforcement. This app violates our guidelines and local laws, and we have removed it from the App Store.
This kind of reasoning is applied everywhere, all the time. It seems the majority opinion is that the "bannable" property of a tool depends on the ratio of good vs. evil usage of the tool, with time weakening the effect of evil.
So a tool that's mostly used for evil shortly after it's created is worthy of a ban (e. g. 8chan [1], Gab). But a tool which started with a more favorable ratio and slowly drifted into mostly evil-use territory (e.g. Tor, prepaid phones) isn't seen as being inherently evil and thus gets a pass. Tools that are overwhelmingly used for good will even have negative bannability (they will be actively protected and a ban will be seen as an offense) regardless of them being sometimes used for particularly evil purposes (e.g. Google, Twitter, cash).
In the present case, HKmap.live is mostly used by protesters (good usage as seen from an HN crowd PoV), so Apple's decision is seen as unjust here. But had it been mostly used by criminals early on, the consensus opinion would certainly be different.
There's a lesson for app builders: if your tool is vulnerable to bans by centralized/mob entities, it's especially important to attract enough good usage (as judged by the enforcer) early on in the history of your service.
People only use it because it's enabled by default and takes over from SMS with minimal intervention. There's no point using it when there's also WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal/etc. The competition are largely cross-platform. I'm surprised Apple even bothered to make it in the first place. They could have saved themselves the effort and not got into that market, rather than making an app that makes them look bad.
How does it make them look bad? In any case when it was developed WhatsApp was still early days (and supposed to eventually charge fees), and neither Messenger nor the others existed.
It succeeded well enough that in very iPhone-heavy markets WhatsApp never really became a thing.
iMessage is successful as in it makes Android users look bad. It extends and overtakes the SMS standard in such a way that anyone not in the circle appears to be disfunctional. A lock-in situation passing as the new normal for uninformed Apple users.
As someone who has lived under a dictatorship this messaging has a familiar feel. As the now late dictator was clamping (beating and killing) down on opposition parties the press statements would always say something along the lines of, "we are protecting the rights of law abiding citizens". He never ever said I do not like anyone disagreeing with me.
> we are protecting the rights of law abiding citizens
I find it very interesting when people say they only protect the rights of "law abiding citizens", since this is usually just a veiled excuse for "we don't think people who break the law should have rights, actually, you shouldn't have rights because you might break the law too".
I fully agree with you, that is actually the trick being pulled. The words used make it harder for people on the outside to decide who is actually the villain and who the good guys are.
This sounds like a template blurb, not an actual stance. I wonder why Apple didn't remove WhatsApp from the App Store in India, since it was the platform used to lynch several people in the last few years. Local law in India prohibits people killing people.
This is a slippery slope, and Apple fell right into it quickly instead of being cautious and fighting for what's right!
I'm as sympathetic to the protests as anyone and I'm definitely not used to defending Apple's behavior, but are we sure that this is spin? Undoubtedly the app is being used for more than just "ambushing and attacking police". But absent a firm belief that this reason from the Chinese government is bullshit, it's actually a pretty tall order (and questionably ethical) for a corporation to push back against a govt demand to remove a tool ostensibly being used to attack police forces.
My views on computing freedom generally skew towards the Stallman side of the spectrum, so I'd actually be fine with a stronger norm that Apple could tell govts to screw off[1]. But I'm very aware that I'm an outlier in this sense, and expecting Apple to push back in the face of a demand like this seems well beyond consistency with the norms that currently exist around tech companies' responsiveness expect to govt demands, on grounds of what the power relationship should be between governmental and corporate entities.
[1] (and ideally stop being so heavy-handed about their own enforcement of App Store apps...but that's another story)
The point is the app is not being used for ambushing and attacking police at all, because there have been no such ambushes in Hong Kong.
The few situations where Hong Kong police have been in danger have come when a small group splits off and is isolated during a protest. In no case have protesters caught the police unawares in an ambush, let alone off-duty police.
By its nature, the app shows large concentrations of police forces. The argument is ridiculous on its face, even if you don't know the situation on the ground in Hong Kong well.
No one has been able to point to a single Hong Kong law this app violates, or to any example of it being misused in the way the statement alleges.
> The point is the app is not being used for ambushing and attacking police at all, because there have been no such ambushes in Hong Kong.
> In no case have protesters caught the police unawares in an ambush, let alone off-duty police.
Right, this is what my questions were conditioned on. It's hard to get a complete picture of what's going on in situations like this when the government is so famously fond of misinformation and control of the press, but there's at least claims out there
[1] that this has happened, along with plenty more examples of more general violence from sources that are not credibly controlled by China.
I don't pretend to know that this claim is true, but it's surprising to me that you are so confident that no such incidents have happened, even in the face of (even possibly false) news reports that it has happened.
More importantly, you're free to make whatever wild guesses that the official story is a lie in a way that Apple perhaps isn't: if the reports of ambushes are even somewhat credible, it's not clear to me how they could push back against a gov't claiming that an app is facilitating attacks on police.
Note that I'm not saying that their hands are definitely tied here, my model of this isn't high-confidence and I'd personally be opposed to the takedown of a communications app in most situations (including this one). I'm just trying to reconcile the reactions here to the norms we currently have around corporations' power relative to gov't.
> or to any example of it being misused in the way the statement alleges.
This is fair; I am filling in the blanks with assumptions a little here: namely, that Apple's statement reflects the pretext of the govt's demand for removal. I also figure that isolated incidents of violence are far from difficult to come by in riots as intense as the ones in question (the Wikipedia page for the protests has a handful of examples). But it seems to me that this context in, say, the US, would be such that Apple would be criticized for refusal to remove the app, with plenty of takes about how irresponsible the decision is (it certainly stands on firmer ground than the new consensus that eg platforms are responsible for cracking down on "hate speech"). The difference here seems to be the legitimacy people grant to the gov't being resisted, and it's again not clear to me that that's a call that a company like Apple could or should be making (beyond broad decisions like whether or not to operate in the country).
Thanks for the thoughtful response by the way: my comment doesn't have a strong position but is exploring some nuance I have questions about, and I know HN isn't really the forum for posting anything but the kinds of neatly-wrapped takes that can be swallowed (or rejected) whole by simpletons. It's always nice to get some engagement with the content of the comment instead of the usual mindless pattern-matching + upvote/downvote that most here are limited to.
The protestors always try to find away to ambushes the police. There is a case that the protesters try to burn a police alive.
The protester definitely monitoring the police movement to vandalize the train stations and the shops
To prevent the protestor to use the app for guerilla tactic. The protestor are known to ambush police if their number is small. And to play cat and mouse with the police to vandalize
This [1] is the video of the first shooting in the Hong Kong protests - reasonably safe for life for anybody who has not seen it. Something I didn't understand when I first saw the video is how the protesters were able to do what they do. An armed group of protesters moved rapidly towards their target, and manage to ambush him around a blind corner. Their target was a single police officer that seems to have temporarily become separated from other officers. The protesters seemed to know this and all immediately set upon him.
You could make an argument that somehow they used some other technology to carry out their attack, but I'm not sure how much weight it'd have beyond the fact that no we don't have video (to my knowledge) of one of those guys explicitly opening and looking at the app to find the target. In any case, it certainly refutes the argument that no protesters have managed to catch the police by surprise or ambush them - because that is exactly what happened.
Just look at the app. It doesn't have the spatial resolution to do this, nor does it identify individual officers, and it's got a considerable lag in real time.
Or look at the video preceding this incident, and you'll see that the officers ran ahead of their group, and the kids confronting them were not looking at their phones because they were busy trying not to get shot.
Or come and see for yourself.
Or rely on the eyewitness testimony of hundreds of journalists in Hong Kong who have seen this same situation play out—cops run out too far, get isolated, get scared, draw a sidearm.
Or figure it out from first principles on a message board.
> Or look at the video preceding this incident, and you'll see that the officers ran ahead of their group, and the kids confronting them were not looking at their phones because they were busy trying not to get shot.
Are you saying this video is taken out of context? Please do share any available video evidence. I assure you I tried quite hard to try to find more and this all I came up with! This is the thing that most confuses me about these protests. They are, by far, the most widely recorded protests in a developed nation - yet lengthy in context footage of the critical events events is surprisingly difficult to come by. Instead we just get snippets taken out of context that can be framed to show anything you want to show.
For instance this [1] is Reuters reporting of this video entitled "Dramatic footage captures moment when Hong Kong protester was shot." It strips out absolutely all context and splices the video together in a way that even makes it seem like it's an officer charging a protester who is simply trying to defend himself from an officer drawing a gun. It then includes clips from a police statement which, without the context of what that conflict was about, paired with the selected footage they provided sounds comically absurd.
This is absolutely propaganda, and quite ham handed propaganda at that. But of course there is also extensive propaganda coming from the Chinese side as well. It makes it all extremely difficult to have any clue of what is really happening. If you have any recommendations whatsoever on lengthy uninterrupted film footage on these events, I am absolutely all ears.
There are a number of people livestreaming all the protests, including setups where you can watch multiple streams on a page. One of the streamers is a hero who rolls up to protests in a wheelchair.
There's also lots and lots of long-form protest footage available, but you need a Chinese speaker to help you Google your way to it.
And how exactly would you know that? There is a great deal of animosity towards police right now in HK. A very small minority of protestors have demonstrated willingness to apply violence, and police (including off-duty officers) have been attacked in the open on more than one occasion. So I don’t think it’s inconceivable that the availability of a crowdsourced map might increase such incidents.
Of course, this is going to end up being a pretext to ban the website too, which is going to introduce China-style internet censorship to HK. Nobody wants that. The way things are going, though, I don’t see how else this can go.
One of the problems being faced in HK is that there are times when it's difficult to identify when the police are HK police, or when the police are actually Chinese military in HK uniform.
One of the signs (as it always is) is the footwear used by the officers differs between actual HK police and Chinese military forces in HK police uniform.
Another problem is that there are times when it's difficult to identify when the protestors are HK citizens, or when the protestors are Chinese military in plain clothes.
There was an incident a few weeks back where a fire was set outside Central MTR station which was reported to have been set by HK protestors. There was graffiti on the wall to this effect. The graffiti was written in simplified Chinese, which is used in the mainland. In Hong Kong, they use traditional Chinese in written communications.
The difficulty is in accurate attribution. Terrorist groups will take credit for atrocities they didn't commit because it's beneficial for them and their cause. Which then leads down the rabbit hole of asking who benefits from violence in HK? It's also worth looking at the history of protests in HK, how frequently they have occurred, and how often violence has actually erupted.
It's a country that successfully peacefully protested numerous times, to great effect.
> The way things are going, though, I don’t see how else this can go.
Fortunately, the people in HK don't share this view, and continue to protest for their rights and their freedoms. They're not giving up, they're not giving in. It's easy to be this pessimistic when you live in a western country, where peaceful protests in recent history (~20 years or so) are almost completely ineffective. When you've lived in a place where peaceful protests have historically been effective, it's a different story. Especially when it's literally your own life on the line.
There is zero evidence of covert mainland Chinese participation in the protests on either side, although as you demonstrate the rumors about it are nonstop.
I did not say that attacks on police were common. Indeed, I believe that any such attacks should be the work of a very small minority of protestors who would definitely not represent the whole.
It’s clear that attacks against off-duty police officers have happened in the past, so I included that aside as an example of the threats that police face. Of course those attacks predate the map app. Those are also the kinds of attacks that tend to make news, because they’re essentially attacks against civilians (similarly, this is why news of police attacks against civilians make news).
Then by the same logic, WeChat should be banned since it's clearly documented to be used by Chinese Trolls to attack protesters in Australia and Canada.
If WeChat’s primary purpose was to track protestors overseas, then yeah, it should be banned. But that’s not what the app does.
I want to be clear that I’m not trying to side with anyone here - I’m just calling out a knee-jerk response that I don’t believe is actually based in fact. If there’s good evidence that Apple or the HK government is inventing evidence of misuse, I’ll happily take back what I’ve said.
My east european country has been governed by authoritarian rule which was 95% dependent on a totalitarian foreign nation state. You either don't understand what this means or are actively protecting a totalitarian dictatorship.
> A very small minority of protestors have demonstrated willingness to apply violence, and police (including off-duty officers) have been attacked in the open on more than one occasion
Haven't the police being doing the very same thing to protestors and innocent civilians?
This move comes after Apple re-instated the app into the app store under public pressure. This comes after Apple told Senator Howley that the decision to block the app had been a mistake:
It's important for the discussion that this app does not violate any local laws in Hong Kong. It is a safety tool. You can check out the web version here (click icons and paste text into Google translate if you can't read Chinese) https://hkmap.live/
In a nutshell, it shows where police are (puppy icons), police vehicles, concentrations of demonstrators (construction worker icon), sightings of the special riot squad called the raptors (dinosaur icon), and places where demonstrators can find safe transport (house icon).
There's a lot of rumor flying around Hong Kong that selective website blocking will be the next emergency measure after the mask ban, so it's very important to have a backup version of this site on the app store (and Google store) in addition to the web version.
Using a dog icon for the police isn’t exactly a great look if you’re trying to be neutral. It’s roughly equivalent to using a pig to represent the police in the US. I don’t see why they couldn’t have just used one of the standard emoji for police there - it’d be a lot less likely to offend.
“It’s totally ok, dogs are police too” doesn’t quite work in a culture where dogs are often invoked as insult words. There’s a different cultural context here that you need to be aware of. As I said, the American equivalent would probably be to use a little pig emoji for a police officer, which I doubt would go over well here.
It’s not by a stretch the most controversial aspect of the app, but it doesn’t really help their case much.
Ben Thompson of Stratechery talks about this a lot. Apple always says they want to own the most important pieces of their products but then Tim Cook when he was COO made the decision to be completely beholden to China for their manufacturing. I hope that Apple is seriously trying to diversify their supply chain out of China. It can be done at scale - Samsung moved all of their manufacturing out of Chins.
China is a big growing market and the CCP cleverly share a huge piece of the pie with Western companies. Western Democracies are growth addict and China is their dealer.
Another "problem" is that despite its corruption and autocracy, the CCP still manages to make life better for the average Chinese. On the street it is not a hopeless hell, so right now giving up some of their freedom looks like a good deal to them.
So even if Apple manage to break free from its manufacturing lock in, that's a lot of general inertia to go against. Also, considering that Apple approach to privacy is more and more at odd in the Western World, they have enough on their plate already.
As much as this seems like a foreign concept to westerners, most Chinese citizens (outside of the European provinces) simply do not care about it the way westerners do.
To GP's point, their lives have and continue to improve, with the fastest growing middle class this decade. And before you project western ideals on China and start doomsaying about their impending economic collapse, understand that people have been saying that for a decade too.
Yeah, that's human nature. A lot of people were fairly satisfied even behind the Iron Curtain for a time before the economic dysfunction became too apparent.
Yet even then as now, we have every right to project and even attempt to impose these "western" ideals of individual human rights on systems that try to deny them from any one individual.
The only "western" thing about them is that the particular framework of discourse we currently use to describe these values was born here. Yet those values are, or should be, universal. I refuse to take any bullshit claiming otherwise from any collectivist ideology, with or without Chinese characteristics. They have no legitimacy in overriding the rights of an individual based on any braindead ideology or concept of an essence of a society or culture, historical dialectics or whatever.
Right, but it will be several generations before that even becomes a possibility. Right now you have the famine generation who remembers how terrible things used to be, and will be content as long as things are and continue to improve.
Perhaps. Then again, people don't often get, for example, how brutish even Western Europe was pre-1945. But realistically, yeah, not during the current generation of people in power.
The next generation looks worrying, too, and authoritarian systems certainly can persist and are able to adapt over time. Yet they are always brittle in many ways. It sure looks like Chinese leaders know this, too.
I was not aware the desire for freedom (of speech, and otherwise) was such a uniquely Western ideal.
And it's easy not to care about it - until its absence is used against you. At that point, it changes from an ideal, to a very pragmatic matter (ask the Uyghurs or Tibetans). But by then it's too late.
Another "problem" is that despite its corruption and autocracy, the CCP still manages to make life better for the average Chinese. On the street it is not a hopeless hell, so right now giving up some of their freedom looks like a good deal to them.
With the caveat that people are essentially forced to conform to the model of "average Chinese." I would conjecture that many Chinese do not know what regional, cultural, or ethnic indigenous groups they belong to because the pressure to conform to the Han majority is so great that their parents or grandparents self-censored when talking to their children.
It's also been repeated many times but it bears repeating that in Xinjiang China is attempting to erase the culture of ethnic Uighur people on a mass scale. China previously did a similar attack on Tibetan culture. This is not good. It is a terrible crime.
> the CCP still manages to make life better for the average Chinese
Only if you are an average Chinese that toes the party line, and even then you've got to be careful. Otherwise, if you are Christian, Muslim, Falun Gong, Tibetan Buddhist, or any other ideology that threatens the communist monopoly on authority then you are 'disappeared' and your organs end up in some rich Westerner or a research lab.
It is a false comparison to look at whom tyranny benefits. Tyranny always benefits someone, else there wouldn't be a tyrant. The real question is who does the tyranny harm.
Not quite all of it, just the mobile manufacturing with a statement about losing local market share. They still have 2 semiconductor plants in China[0].
It may be worthwhile to examine that belief. If someone cares about X because of Y, then maybe that person cares about Y and not X. If X is no longer a precondition for Y, then that person might drop X without a thought.
It's also with the understanding that that person has a consistent set of values, and wouldn't just drop all their values for a few million more dollars.
Does this app signal where there's police activity? Yes
Could it be used with intent to avoid police? Yes
Does it mean that it's only used with criminal intent? I don't believe so. I personally use it to avoid protests and go through my daily life.
Should you now remove Safari because it allows you to access data that would potentially help with criminal intent? What about the twitter app, lot's of messages related to protests there.
And this reinforces my decision not to switch back to ios and instead stick with Android. I don't necessarily trust Google with my privacy and I have my own reservations but at least with Android my phone is my own. I can install what I want. Even a working firewall (I like little snitch on my mac, no reason I shouldn't have something similar on my phone).
For a site like Gab, I always wondered if having a massive amount of users posting messages making fun of the alt right movement, painting neo nazies like the idiots they are and criticizing the site user base wouldn't have been a better way than outright censorship.
It would have really tested the supposedly pro free speech stance of that site.
I mean I'm being a bit tongue in cheek there but I'm really not sure if censorship doesn't further radicalize those people by letting them rally around a "Us against Them" mentality. Wouldn't interacting with those people be better?
For the most part the far right doesn't engage in good faith. They're not just operating from a different set of opinions, they target people based on who they are for violence and ultimately their elimination. They are not a political movement, they're a death cult.
It's not unheard of to de-radicalize some in the far right, but it's incredibly difficult work that takes a special familiarity and skillset.
Bang for buck, deplatforming is far more effective. It's hard for them to build their movement when they can't easily access vulnerable minds.
> For a site like Gab, I always wondered if having a massive amount of users posting messages making fun of the alt right movement, painting neo nazies like the idiots they are and criticizing the site user base wouldn't have been a better way than outright censorship.
No, both are the wrong approach, in my opinion.
If you "deplatform" and censor nazis, then all you do is fuel their victimhood which will only enforce their believes, and worse, people on the brink of sympathizing with them will see them as the victims and underdogs too, pushing those people further in their direction.
Now, if you just ridicule the nazis just for the sake of it, you essentially achieve the same result: nazis can again declare themselves the victims.
What you got to do is debunk their falsehoods, outline their hypocrisies, highlight the stuff they do not want the general public (especially those people who are on the brink of joining their "movement") to know. Of course, humor and satire and even ridicule are very potent ways to then get your information across, but you have to actually say something/show something with it. You probably won't influence them, they already made up their minds and run their cognitive dissonance in overdrive, but putting this information out there, especially in entertaining way, denying them plain victimhood, showing how they are the bullies and denying them the prerogative of interpretation (they often have because we're too lazy to actually argue against them and resort to idle insults instead) is what can and does make "undecided" people think twice before joining their movement.
I saw that with Hilary and her "basket of deplorables". This kind of insult and ridicule drove quite a few undecided people right into the arms of Trump. I believe this is actually the single event that won Trump his presidency (it just just my belief based on what I saw, not something I claim is a verified fact). The Rust Belters who secured his success didn't give much fucks about email servers, "BENGHAZI!!!" or the Russian trolls claiming Hilary's people run a pedo ring in a pizza shop, but they did mind being called "deplorable" because they were concerned about their blue collar jobs in the context of immigration and globalization. This is further evidenced by Trump's targeted (facebook) ads hitting on those topics and how Hilary is a "stooge" for the globalists and Goldman Sachs ("Crooked Hilary", "drain the swamp").
I can see that a lot with the AfD party in Germany, which isn't exactly alt-right, but sure has a lot of alt-right members, including some rather prominent ones like "Bernd" Höcke, and uses quite a bit of alt-right/identitarian/ethno-centrism/"supremacy" ideology as well (they also e.g. deny climate change, think women belong in the kitchen, really do not like homosexuals - even tho one of ther party co-chairs is openly lesbian, but all this is rarely talked about).
They have a tendency to portrait themselves as the victimized underdog, and it works, works extremely well.
Even works with me sometimes, subconsciously at least, and I despise them politically and ideologically, and find most their policies outright abhorrent.
Every time I see stories about antifa attacking AfD events or AfD people, I sympathize with them for being the victims of violence.
Every time the other parties fuck with them not on merits but just to fuck with them, like in a recent state election when the election commission tried to reject the vast majority of their candidates on a technicality, I fear for democracy and I sympathize with them to a degree.
Every time I read a comment saying something like "every nazi/AfD/alt-right/white supremacist is a cunt" or even "...has to die" or "out to collect some nazi scalps", I sympathize a little with them, because they are people after all (with some very vile idea, misguided and indoctrinated, but still), as I find this kind of violence and dehumanizing rhetoric very problematic, same as as I find the way they usually try to dehumanize other people or are openly violent evil and disgusting.
However, when I see satire and cabaretists make fun of them, not just because, but outlining the evils hit they say and do and debunking the falsehoods they spew, that's something that resonates with me, and not just me.
In Germany, you got a slew of programs and prominent comedians that do that, from heute show, extra 3 and Die Anstalt, over to Böhmermann and Sonneborn.
The US has quite a few of those, too, like Real Time, Last Week Tonight, The Daily Show (that I know of and regularly consume), but comparing both countries styles, I find the US stuff often lacking in substance underneath, going just for cheap shots, unrelated jokes and outraged rhetoric instead, in particular when it comes to John Oliver (tho he has his moments, too)
I dare you to make an account on gab.com and TRY to find a neo-nazi on there. There are certainly a lot of conservative and right-wing opinions on there, but I've yet to see a neo-nazi. You're believing what your left-wing social media stream is telling you instead of thinking for yourself.
This is an app protestors use to protect themselves from police. There is no legitimate business reason to remove this app, except for making it easier for police to hurt protestors. That makes Apple complicit in any harm that results. (You can sell guns or poisonous chemicals that have legitimate uses, but you can’t sell them to someone you know will use them to commit crimes.)
Imagine if we had apps during the Holocaust, and Apple removed an app being used by Jewish hideaways to communicate. We’re dangerously close to that.
What's weird is that if you google: "Hong Kong" "Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau" -apple
You come up with surprisingly little. Basically two stories. One about preventing scams in Hong Kong, and one about fake checks. I was expecting tens of thousands of results.
Is there a more common name that's used in English for this entity? I'd like to research more about who they are other than the generality of a wing of the police force.
They mostly deal with investigating the crime of "Accessing a Computer with Dishonest Intent" which is a catch all law which can apply to completely non-computer related crimes.
I think Apple's action here provides a good case for breaking up platforms. If the App Store were decoupled from the main hardware-making and hardware-selling part of Apple, then there wouldn't be a conflict of interest between providing a neutral app-selling platform and retaining access to foreign markets.
I don't think I see how merely separating the App Store from the hardware division provides that benefit, unless you're meaning something different than the way I'm reading it (that is, just making the App Store the responsibility of a separate App Store Company but changing nothing else).
Allowing iOS to sideload apps would be a more direct cure for this, because Apple's decisions about what belongs in the App Store wouldn't necessarily translate to decisions about what belongs on the platform. That would solve a fair number of problems for other developers, actually -- and in the long run would probably benefit Apple, too, by virtue of improving the overall health of the iPhone/iPad platform.
Right now, it seems that Apple has a lot to lose if the CCP were to suddenly cut off access to China -- both in terms of supply chain and in terms of market access. With an independent App Store, the CCP would have less leverage over the platform, since as a services-only company, it would be far less dependent on China. (In this scenario however, the Apple hardware division as a separate entity will still be very beholden to the whims of the CCP as they still depend on China for its supply chain and market access.)
If you look at Google right now, their Play Store still has the app available, mostly I believe, because the CCP has little or no leverage over Google to force their hand.
I do agree, tho that allowing side loading apps would also sidestep this issue altogether.
Something like the "browser choice" that the EU forced Microsoft to implement for a while would do the trick. During initial iOS setup you'd have to choose which app store to use (from the currently most popular choices).
The law suit that resulted in "browser choice" started in 1993 and "browser choice" was started 2010, so this may happen "soon".
In this scenario, I was thinking the federal government either through legislation, or executive action.
However, I'm not trying to push any political agenda, I just thought it was interesting that this was a good example of tech platforms being too powerful.
It seems that many here would want Apply to defy China. This will result in Apple's expulsion from China/HK. Those users will then move to other phone mfgs/services providers, with higher probability that it will be Chinese, thereby granting the PRC even more power over HK'ers.
Contrarily is the "seat at the table" approach. Apple could comply with China, while continually introducing features/functionality that fundamentally block them (Apple) from complying with PRC demands (encryption, privacy, etc etc). Apple would not be able to announce this, and it might ruin their reputation in the meantime. It also allows Apple to continue hoovering up that sweet, sweet China/HK cash.
What is the best approach? Most of the comments here are signficantly oversimplifying the options available to Apple and the calculus that goes into making those decisions. Additionally, most opinions being posted are heavily centered on Western values/viewpoints.
There is 0% chance of this happening. Right now the PRC is heavily relying on the majority of the mainland China population not looking too closely at what's happening in HK, and just considering it "a few students making trouble". But if all Apple services suddenly stop working, there's going to be a huge "hang on a sec, what's going on again?" reaction, which will lead to an incredible amount of trouble for the PRC.
I agree with you that it is more complicated than just leaving or not. Plus, Apple is currently dependent on Chinese manufacturing (a problem of Apples own making for sure). I would love to know what the conversations are between Apple and China right now. IMO, Apple has to be working towards removing their dependence on Chinese manufacturing, if for nothing else for business risk mitigation.
The single most overlooked aspect of this is how many Chinese are employed as part of Apple’s supply chain. It is not in CCP interest to destroy millions of Chinese citizens’ incomes.
Privacy and freedom don't necessarily intersect. You could have a lot of privacy but no freedom in a windowless prison cell, or a lot of freedom but no privacy being homeless in the street.
(not that Apple's privacy spiel ever really meant anything as a company selling internet-connected black boxes)
You're right, but the dialogue should change from "Apple respects your privacy" to "Yeah maybe Apple respects your privacy but they don't respect your freedom".
Also they host all their Chinese iCloud data on Chinese servers now. So the "privacy" marketing is pretty bullshit anyway. At best it should be "Apple respects the privacy of some of it's users at the current time, probably".
>Yesterday, English-language state media outlet China Daily blasted Apple’s decision to allow HKmap.live onto the App Store. “Providing a gateway for ‘toxic apps’ is hurting the feelings of the Chinese people, twisting the facts of Hong Kong affairs, and against the views and principles of the Chinese people,” the op-ed argued.
Wow...this type of language - "toxic apps," "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people," etc. - sounds disturbingly similar to SJW rhetoric in the States.
EDIT: In case it's not obvious - I am against censoring apps & speech.
When have "SJWs" ever lobbied to pull maps or other public information or safety resources? Can you come up with one example?
The language is only one component in a given scenario. What the language is being deployed to do is very important. Murderers can use the same language in their court defenses as innocent people.
Cancel culture is not remotely related to Apple pulling a maps application off the app store. No one has been cancelled here, unless you count government suppression of speech as "cancel culture".
I don’t know, they seem relatively related. Both are actions / attempts to silence opposing ideas by putting pressure on businesses and consumers.
Calling for someone to be silenced (cancel culture) is closer to actual censorship than the classic “I disagree with what you say but will fight for your right to say it.”
Of course that's in part because China pays attention to what happens in the US, and they try to frame their message in such a way that is more palatable for Westerners.
Apple also recently pulled the app of the American news organization Quartz from the App Store in China. Quartz has been covering the Hong Kong protests.
> Basically by buying whatever you are shoving money in to this regime. No matter what and where you buy.
Your other option is...what?
You can't buy anything electronic anymore solely "Made in America"; that is, where all the parts, design, assembly, casing, etc - are all done here. Outside of maybe a few select items (and probably certain military stuff - but that isn't available to consumers anyhow) - it just doesn't exist. And it won't likely ever exist, as it would be suicide for a business to go that route.
Anything made in other SEA countries likely use parts sourced from China. I am not sure what you are suggesting, except that we stop purchasing new electronics, and hope and pray that (somehow) our electronics manufacturing systems from the 1950s-70s magically return back to our country.
I was commenting to the parent comment which suggested to buy android phones instead of iPhones to tackle that problem, which is not going to solve anything. As you’ve stated so nicely, because everything is basically dependent on China.
Banning sideloading forced China to use iOS exploits, which are ephemeral and not consistently effective.
Installing apps outside a repository (like on most Linux distros) is a dual edged sword, Apple and Google are poor stewards of their software repositories compared to Debian or OpenSuse.
It seems like this app is also ephemeral? you just uninstall it after they've ripped all your data. So as usual you should cross borders with an empty phone, no?
Fengcai is the app your original article talked about, which the police install when you enter Xinjiang. It does not try to get root access.
MFsocket is a separate app that has both an iPhone and Android version that police in Beijing use that does attempt to gain root on both platforms. It is unlikely to actually get root on an Android phone that a technologist would use.
> Banning sideloading forced China to use iOS exploits, which are ephemeral and not consistently effective.
But that's just it, China found their own way in! I don't think it's obvious which method is less effective. iPhones were compromised until reboot, and became reinfected as soon as the user next visited the malicious website—which a government can compel people to do frequently. That's still better than Android, but on Android, users knew they were being tracked. iOS users did not. (And of course, because iOS is locked down, it's harder to inspect your phone for signs it's compromised.)
If China hadn't found an exploit, do you think they would have given up? I think they would have required iOS users to carry dedicated trackers. Or just surveilled them more heavily.
Software restrictions don't impact the powerful, who have access to alternatives. They impact the average user, who has limited reserves of money, knowledge, and time.
There is a huge practical difference between being temporarily infected and permanently having malware embedded in your phone.
The former is fixable with a software uodate from a company that actively looks to secure your phone, while in the latter case the device is hopelessly compromised.
I love sideloading, but if I were a target of interest then iOS is the only reasonable choice.
They would just not allow you in if you don't hand over your contacts. Similarly, if I have an Android phone, they won't be able to install the app without my permission. At that point, they can not allow me in.
It’s extremely worrying how far Apple bends over to appease China. First censoring the Taiwan flag, now deliberately removing this app after initially refusing it.
Right, but I'm asking if this article is outdated already?
Often a story gets held up while being written and doesn't account for developments in last few days. It is just confusing as they don't state that this would be Apple undoing a previous reversal in the fate of this app.
Update: ok, Apple did initial reinstated it and has removed it again.
The article is from today and references tweets made today (10/10) and dates the removal to late 10/9... There's no evidence that this is an out of date article. Apple caved, uncaved, then recaved again.
Technically can pony up for a Enterprise account ($200/yr?) and have protestors install the app after trusting the Enterprise org. You just have to host the IPA on a site somewhere.
If you want to build the source code and install the app to a device, you still need at least a Dev account ($99/yr) and macOS+Xcode. Without an account you won't have the provisioning and certificates to install on a "Dev" device. You are also limited to just 100 test devices I think under a regular dev account.
Another option is to crack the phone, then you can just go through third party repos to fetch the app.
Another reminder that you don't own anything in this new "appstore" and "cloud" services world. You have no right to choose what to watch, what to listen or what app to use. Don't be surprised to have your device /app disabled one day(i.e Adobe/Venezuela case)
Very exciting to see momentum gathering against Apple's walled garden. checkm8, AltStore. You should be allowed to install any app you want, take any drugs you want, and people who can't use this power responsibly be pwnd
Tim purportedly sent this out today, found it on reddit:
You have likely seen the news that we made the decision to remove an app from the App Store entitled HKmap.live. These decisions are never easy, and it is harder still to discuss these topics during moments of furious public debate. It's out of my great respect for the work you do every day that I want to share the way we went about making this decision.
It is no secret that technology can be used for good or for ill. This case is no different. The app in question allowed for the crowdsourced reporting and mapping of police checkpoints, protest hotspots, and other information. On its own, this information is benign. However, over the past several days we received credible information, from the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau, as well as from users in Hong Kong, that the app was being used maliciously to target individual officers for violence and to victimize individuals and property where no police are present. This use put the app in violation of Hong Kong law. Similarly, widespread abuse clearly violates our App Store guidelines barring personal harm.
We built the App Store to be a safe and trusted place for every user. It's a responsibility that we take very seriously, and it's one that we aim to preserve. National and international debates will outlive us all, and, while important, they do not govern the facts. In this case, we thoroughly reviewed them, and we believe this decision best protects our users.
Nothing much, which some people argue is additional justification for Apple removing it - one of their rules is that apps have to use native iOS features, and can't just be glorified webapps.
"Apps must comply with all legal requirements in any location where you make them available (if you’re not sure, check with a lawyer). We know this stuff is complicated, but it is your responsibility to understand and make sure your app conforms with all local laws, not just the guidelines below. And of course, apps that solicit, promote, or encourage criminal or clearly reckless behavior will be rejected. In extreme cases, such as apps that are found to facilitate human trafficking and/or the exploitation of children, appropriate authorities will be notified."
There is also a sub-section, which states:
"(iii) Apps should not attempt to surreptitiously build a user profile based on collected data and may not attempt, facilitate, or encourage others to identify anonymous users or reconstruct user profiles based on data collected from Apple-provided APIs or any data that you say has been collected in an “anonymized,” “aggregated,” or otherwise non-identifiable way."
Obviously, with HK and China, the stringency of Apple adhering to their guidelines on decisioning is politically contentious.
From a broader perspective though, there is something about this type of app functionality that is interesting for other cases - What are Apple's rules about app users tracking other people without their knowledge/consent, and then sharing that information with others?
This is also important because it influences levels of privacy protection.
As a low-level example, Waze tracks locations of police, cameras, roadwork, etc., which helps drivers avoid tickets for speeding (generally, this seems pretty accepted and I don't know of any major complaints).
However, say I have an app that tracks celebrities, musicians, businesspeople, athletes, etc., and I share that location data on a live map for others to see, and also contribute to. I imagine that would not go over too well with the people being tracked, even if they were being tracked out of admiration. This presents its own set of problems too for app abilities.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but this is a difficult call, and we should think about both sides of Apple's decision. If the app really is being used to target, and thus endanger, certain individuals, whether or not they're law enforcement, that is problematic, and makes unclear what the right decision is.
If we change the circumstances, imagine there is a new Uber-like group transportation app that helps people get around safely in the US. But it enables racist groups to systematically harm civilian groups, and is actively being used to do so. Would the US ask Apple to shut them down? Should Apple shut them down?
You could say the same about Google Maps completely revolutionizing the burglary "industry" with its satellite imagery and escape route calculations.
Or about Telegram/WhatsApp offering end-to-end encryption to child pornographers.
Etc. etc. - just because an app can be used to do harm should not mean it should be pulled. I think Apple's policy until now has made sense - they've pulled apps that break local laws or that are specifically designed to endanger or harm individuals. This app does neither (unlike Quartz, by the way - once China censored them, Apple needed to comply based on their own policy).
It won't bother Apple in the slightest, but I need a new laptop in the New Year, and after seeing this I can say it won't be a Mac.
I'm going to hold out for one of the 7nm AMD laptops when they're released. It will have to run Ubuntu, which is a bit sad, but at least I took a stand with my spending vote.
This is nothing new, in the Tim Cook era they've been overly eager to shout loudly about social issues on stage and in the press.
Yet when it comes down to rich markets like this situation, the Taiwan's flag emoji being disabled or disabling the pride flag/watch face in Russia and the Middle East, these ideals go right out the window.
Only happy to shout loud on these issues when there are zero repercussions about them, second it could possibly mean a dip in profits they roll over in an instant.
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Your use (and thorough butchering) of Franklin's quote in this context is especially hilarious because Franklin, in the letter from the Pennsylvania Assembly, was lobbying for Britain to appoint its own governor for Pennsylvania instead of the governor set by the Penn family, the owner of most land in the state. And then to tax the Penn family to fund ongoing conflicts in other colonies. Which proposition made Franklin unpopular in Pennsylvania, so he was soon booted from the Assembly.
Let me explain how Chinese people think about HK, since none of them ever seem to explain it on a site like this.
Imagine you are a middle class American. Maybe you are but if not, just imagine, tech city on the east or west coast. You're pretty invested in being an American, skin in the game, manifest destiny etc. Very good. They call this tianxia by the way, basically Chinese manifest destiny.
Let's say one day some stupid little state that you don't care about and vaguely resent decides it wants to secede, wants all these rights others don't have, wants to be able to marry its cousins or make nukes at home or whatever. Alabama, say. Alabama wants to secede and they have some demonstrations. You think: "hahahaha no"
They keep demonstrating. The larger country talks about sending in the national guard or something. "Good, who do they think they are" you say.
Some alabamans post an app on the app store so they can avoid the national guard. It's linked to secessionist alabamans avoiding and even attacking the guard. Apple takes it down, then puts it back up, then takes it back down
"Good" you say.
This is how, conservatively, 90%+ of Chinese think. For them, HK is a tiny little past-glory city who thinks it's better than everyone else and is just causing trouble. They will eventually be brought into line, hopefully without too much bloodshed, just like Alabama. It's not really malicious. It's a province of China - it's misbehaving, and it will be brought into line in due course. Nothing more, nothing less.
I expect someone explained these truths to Apple, they saw the futility of taking some hopeless, simplistic, you-don't-even-live-here side, decided this was not the hill they wanted to die on, and pulled the app. I don't blame them.
I'd like to note that I do not support the Chinese Govt in any way and think the world would be a better place with an independent, democratic HK - a city I genuinely love. The Chinese have about as much chance agreeing with that as Americans would about an independent Alabama. Not going to happen.
> You're pretty invested in being an American, skin in the game, manifest destiny etc.
Huh? You just described maybe 1 in 10 Americans. We genuinely do not care about "manifest destiny" and many of us don't put much value in being American either. I'm not even sure what you mean by "skin in the game"
> Let's say one day some stupid little state that you don't care about and vaguely resent decides it wants to secede, wants all these rights others don't have, wants to be able to marry its cousins or make nukes at home or whatever. Alabama, go with them. Alabama wants to secede and they have some demonstrations. You think: "hahahaha no"
But Hong Kong doesn't want to secede. They want to keep the freedoms they've had for decades and prevent an oppressive government from restricting those freedoms. Your example is entirely different and opposite sides of the spectrum.
A more apt example would be the Occupy protests that happened throughout the western world close to a decade ago. Those were about returning the status quo to what it was before greed took it too far from the middle class. Looking back, it was highly ineffective. But those were months-long protests that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people took part in and for the most part, every day citizens who were not taking part in the protests supported them (or were at least indifferent). Tools were built to help these protesters find where to go and where to avoid (as with all large scale protests) and they were never an issue.
Heck, one of the most widely used apps in the US is Waze and one of the primary appeals of it is the crowd sourced police location data. Law enforcement has complained about it, but no actions have been taken against it and no one seems to have any real issue with it.
Those aren’t middle class tech coastal people though, more like older middle Americans who get all their news from the TV
I expect old Chinese people to be jingoistic but if educated young people are that’s just a sad testament to how little creative/critical thinking is encouraged in China
>Didn’t Americans freak out over a few players kneeling for the anthem?
Looks like you fell exactly for the Trump propaganda. Saying "Americans" "freaked out" over the kneeling thing is so ridiculous I don't even know where to start. Trump tried to make it a big deal, and probably 0.0001% of his stupid supporters like /r/the_donald try to make it a big deal so that someone like you thinks it's a big deal.
Trump has been extremely effective at some things, I'll give him that.....
That’s the big difference between the west and mainland China. We are used to criticize the government in the west, nationalism is just normal in mainland China.
This is exactly how the United States is setup. Notice how pot is legal in some states and not others? I don't see the National Guard marching on Colorado.
Because it's the DEA that does that, not the national guard. The feds have the authority to come in to any state at any moment and shut down any marijuana operations. They did do this for a while until the the DOJ decided to ease enforcement policy under the Obama administration.
Show me a state that wants this type of sex on public TV at 9pm? Many think the public decency laws are outdated, but see little point in fighting them since going on the internet is perfectly legal for anything you want to see.
> like you can in europe
Europe is not an homogeneous place. Some parts of Europe are just as if not more conservative than the most conservative parts of the US. Europe in fact proves my point if we think of Europe (the EU) as a collection of nation states each with their own local laws. BTW, where in Europe is full penetration shown on a public TV at 9pm?
Yes, a psychoactive drug with a longstanding and controversial social history having substantial legal differences state-to-state is VERY significant and representative of what statehood represents in the US. Are you from the US? Based on your OP I'm not sure how much you understand mechanics of the federation. And TBH I'm not sure how much you understand China--personally I think 1930s era fascism is a better analogy.
The Supremacy clause of the Constitution really has gutted the original premise of states rights. The only reason that the Federal government doesn't send in the DEA to Oregon/WA/Colorado much anymore is due to politics and culture, not legal mechanisms.
> is VERY significant and representative of what statehood represents in the US
Not really. It's frigging pot. It's been de-facto legal for decades.
Show me a state doing something serious, like banning guns, reversing roe v wade, changing the state language, change the voting age. Difference-between-country stuff. I should have thought of something like that for my initial post; would have reduced this silly nitpicking.
And thanks, I'm not from the USA but I'm from a federation too so yeah, I have some idea. As for the China knowledge - looking forward to your cogent, evidenced retort. 请说普通话。
I get what you're trying to say, but this comment is really far off of the mark. It's good to care about Chinese culture, but it's another thing entirely to elevate culture over human rights.
What does it matter what the average Chinese citizen thinks about this? By pulling the app, Apple is taking the side of an oppressive regime against Hong Kong. Whether or not 90% of Chinese citizens agree with Hong Kong is utterly irrelevant to the conversation. They're not the people being oppressed.
I don't care if the average Chinese citizen likes Hong Kong, any more than I care about whether the average Chinese citizen likes Muslims, or any more than I care about whether the average US citizen likes immigrants or LGBQT+ citizens.
The opinions of the oppressed matter, the opinions of unaffected third-party observers do not, in except that their opinions spur them to action to help the oppressed.
If 90% of the Chinese population thinks that HK is just a misbehaving tiny city that needs to be brought into line, then 90% of the Chinese population is wrong, and Apple is wrong to side with them. Human rights are not a cultural artifact, they're not decided by majority. They're recognized, not granted.
Even if you ignore the particular "special right" Hong Kong was arguing for (like, the right not to be extradited and disappeared for disagreeing with the government), it's still part of an existing system and series of agreements that are now being violated.
It's closer to if the UK tried to disband the Scottish parliament, because those damn Scots get special privileges and still protest and whine all day about secession, and then started moving troops in and brutalizing student protesters.
And, yes, everyone here would side with Scotland over the UK.
This is not an argument in good faith. Alabama has no precedence of self governance, and that precedence is not being actively threatened by the US government. The thought that HK protesters (or Alabamians) just want to “marry their cousins or something” is icing on the cake. Just because some people think it is so does not make it so.
Oh come on I was trying to illustrate a feeling, not make a watertight legal argument.
If you want to talk about precedent - how about polygamy in Utah? There was a long precedent of that. Substitute that if you like. I was trying to convey a feeling.
As a Mormon I still think this might be a reasonable case to use for the basis of comparison. (Alas I don't speak for any other Mormons, who will probably disagree with me.)
User 'sho' wants to present Hong Kong's efforts to preserve their rights in a way that the USA would understand.
When Utah wanted to become a state, they obviously would have liked to preserve their polygamy practice. It took a long time before things settled down and Utah became a state.
In a sense, that's where Hong Kong is right now. "One country, two systems." They aren't a fully-integrated part of the country, though I don't want to delegitimize them by calling them a "territory," maybe the comparison isn't so bad.
There's pressure from the mainland to conform. Just like there was lots of pressure put on Utah to conform.
Yes, it does (assuming you mean precedent). Alabama was one of the initial members of the Confederacy, which it created/joined on March 13, 1861.
Now, this might sound like I'm disagreeing, but I would say, consider the outcome of the next several years. It is true that the United States fought this out to the n'th degree, and self-governance lost.
One relevant difference is that there is a fairly solid case that Alabama joined the United States of its own free will. (Whether they realized it was inherently a one-way trip, well, that's another discussion.) I'm not sure if I agree that Hong Kong was quite so free. But it was certainly legal.
"Well, what's the point of having individual states if they can't control their own destiny. But marrying cousins? A federal issue? Let me chew on that."
Some alabamans post an app on the app store so they can avoid the national guard.
"An app? Cool, plods have mass surveillance, the protestors have it now, too. Oh, you thought the 2nd Amendment was just about guns?" you say.
I see what you're saying, but I will still disagree with the "90%+ of Chinese", and with the CCP's handling of the issue. Your hypothetical had me cheering for the Alabaman's, because frankly, I don't think we protest enough around here.
Using Alabama is a flawed analogy. Hong Kong has always enjoyed greater autonomy than other Chinese cities. A better analogy would be Puerto Rico citizens aggressively protesting their lack of rights electing members to congress in the federal government. Do you think the US would react the same way as China?
Biased much? And why are you assuming that everyone here isn't familiar with the dynamics of China and Hong Kong? Maybe you just want to repeat the Chinese propaganda/rhetoric in hope of swaying some minds?
You haven't even provided a single shred of evidence to support the beliefs you are attributing to the vast number of Chinese people. Hacker news is a site of logic and evidence based reasoning, not for propagating senseless propaganda.
Obviously I can't provide evidence supporting my understandings gained from personal relationships and private conversations. No, I haven't conducted some large-scale peer-reviewed survey. Of course they don't exist.
I don't know what you imagine I might have to gain from "spreading propaganda". I'm simply trying to explain, from my understanding, how "the other side" often feels. I don't know where you think "bias" enters into it. I've even explicitly said I totally disagree. I don't know what else to say?
> Some alabamans post an app on the app store so they can avoid the national guard. It's linked to secessionist alabamans avoiding and even attacking the guard.
What's your evidence that the app is being used to attack the police? And how are you drawing the parallel with the national guard? The things you are posting here are false and dishonest. You haven't provided any evidence to suggest otherwise.
You can literally say anything you want and just say that it's a thought experiment. Thought experiments are not exempt from providing evidence where you can, especially when you are making sweeping, stereotypical statements that are clearly biased against Hong Kong and trying to sway the opinion in China's favor.
> You can literally say anything you want and just say that it's a thought experiment
My fucking post started with "Imagine you are...."
> clearly biased against Hong Kong and trying to sway the opinion in China's favor
An explanation of something is NOT the same thing as an endorsement of it. I literally said I totally disagree with them:
>> I'd like to note that I do not support the Chinese Govt in any way and think the world would be a better place with an independent, democratic HK - a city I genuinely love.
If you still don't understand I'm sorry but I'll have to leave it there.
>You're pretty invested in being an American, skin in the game, manifest destiny etc.
That's probably where you lose most of the US audience. One of the biggest differences between American and Chinese culture is that manifest destiny is mostly dead in America, but it isn't in China. Of course America has multinationals jockeying for global power, but that doesn't reflect how the voters think.
True, but I think GP is arguing that in America, if there was a state that wanted to secede, there would be a pretty lively debate about the idea; it would not be a matter with a 90% opposition consensus as has been conjectured for the Chinese people with respect to Hong Kong.
I can say as one data point if Alabama wanted to secede, I would probably be indifferent. I would likely be of the mind: "If that's what they want, fine."
Edit: Also, a bit of a distinction that undercuts the premise of Hong Kong being similar to a US state secession: We've not onboarded any new states as recently as Hong Kong being reunified (to a limited degree) with China. We have used Alabama in this thread, but perhaps a better metaphor is Guam wanting to be free of American entanglements. Again, I would be indifferent.
American exceptionalism isn't the same thing as manifest destiny. Republicans might be patriotic but most do not support wars of conquest or global expansionism. In fact, the "America first" slogan that recently helped win an election has been attacked as isolationist.
> American exceptionalism isn't the same thing as manifest destiny
Sorry, you're probably right. I confess I'm not really aware of the exact difference. I meant the general feeling of "America is the best", which I think is pretty undeniable, at least as the rest of the world experiences it. My point was to contrast it with the Chinese, who have the exact same feeling.
You're right. I read 'manifest destiny' as short hand for "USA USA!" boosterism. China obviously isn't an expansionist colonial power either. But I concede the point that Manifest Destiny really hasn't been an active doctrine in our lifetime.
Maaaaybe if you look at the Project for the New American Century with the right lens.
>Manifest destiny was a widely held belief in the 19th century United States that its settlers were destined to expand across North America.
The average American does not think that America should expand any further throughout the world, nor do they think that America has an irresistible duty to remake the world in its image. The theme of "the special virtues of the American people and their institutions" is only one part of the definition of manifest destiny.
Also, if you've ever read an HN thread on public mass transit, I think there is evidence against the claim that Americans think that all of their institutions are the best in the world.
A thread on HN is a far cry from what a typical American thinks. America doesn’t need to take over other nations in the parochial sense. Rather the number of bases the US has established throughout the world accomplish manifest destiny in a modern fashion. No other country has or has ever had this level or scale of military deployment.
I didn’t think I was bashing or portraying a negative statement, rather shedding light on an objective truth. I can understand that Americans don’t know much at all about those bases. But they do know how much their military is costing (in broad terms) and are happy to continue supporting that.
Much evidence points to the sentiment that the US behaves like a modern-day Rome and has attempted (or is attempting) to achieve “Pax Americana” globally. Again, not necessarily a bad concept as the world could always use more stability.
I didn't really want to bash on the US too hard but yeah. America has over five hundred overseas military bases. To say no other country even comes close is an understatement.
I'm not even saying the US overseas forces are bad. They've been misused, yes, but I don't want to argue about that - it's complicated. To disclaim America's outsize global ambitions, however - for whatever purpose - is just laughable.
I think maybe not everyone outside the US thinks of "manifest destiny" the same way? In the US we learned "Manifest Destiny" as a part of US history, and very specific time in our country's history. It's the name of a time period, not just someone thinking about "manifest destiny".
(at least that's the feeling I get from reading the comments here, I could be wrong, just hoping to clarify)
At least in North American high schools we are taught pretty thoroughly that Nationalism was the root cause of both WW1 and WW2.
I’m Canadian and while we are proud to be Canadian, Nationalism is looked at very skeptically and Nationalism for its own sake would make me think the person preaching it is uneducated.
It's much different that that, as Alabama isn't a recently acquired former colony of an old empire, that have been enjoying an autonamous status due to that.
The biggest different in metaphor is:
-> state/city want something
vs
-> State/city doesn't want something removed.
The origin of the manifest is due to HK losing some of its autonomy, it was a condition unique to it, it's not someone wanting to be special, it's someone special not wanting to be normal. There is a very huge difference in mental state.
> You're pretty invested in being an American, skin in the game, manifest destiny etc. Very good.
No, I'm definitely not. Manifest destiny is just colonialism fueled by racism
>Some alabamans post an app on the app store so they can avoid the national guard. It's linked to secessionist alabamans avoiding and even attacking the guard. Apple takes it down, then puts it back up, then takes it back down
Puerto Rico is a 'foreign colony', so to speak, that the US 'acquired' in the first place following the war against Spain in 1898. Hongkong is a core part of China that was wrestled away by a foreign power.
There is no analogy within the US for Hongkong because the US have always been sucking in territory since they were founded, and never had any territory taken away.
A similar situation would be if the Japanese Navy had forced the US to sign the Cape Cod area, or parts of Long Island over to Japan, and then imagine what Americans would think of that.
China, like every single country in the world, does not have an inherent "core". All its territory was acquired by war, expansion, colonization, and settling. China simply has a couple thousand year head start on the new world.
And if we go far enough in the past no current country even existed... That's true, and that also completely irrelevant, and may even be disingenuous rhetoric.
No, it is disingenuous to say that China has some inherent claim on places like Tibet because they may have occupied it at some point in the past. China's borders, like most countries, have changed over time and doesn't validate any present day claim.
I've commented about valid American analogies to what Hongkong is to China and you're accusing me of claiming that China has an "inherent claim over Tibet"? Right... I've nothing more to add.
You're ascribing motives to the Hong Kong protesters that they don't have. This is not a separatist movement, even though the Chinese government insists on characterizing it as such.
Public opinion surveys in Hong Kong show the overwhelming majority of respondents aren't asking for independence. The five demands that are the crux of the current protests don't involve independence. They center on China holding up its end of the "One Country, Two Systems" arrangement by allowing genuine democratic elections in Hong Kong, as guaranteed to them under the Basic Law.
The fact that Chinese authorities are lying to their own people about the nature of the protests in Hong Kong is significant. They are terrified of 'contagion'. But since we're discussing this on an American site, we can state the plain facts of the matter, too.
You ignored the very reason for OP's comment: its the perspective of chinese citizens outside of hong kong Who's only knowledge of the situation comes from state media and what those who really care can glean from censored social media.
> they saw the futility of taking some hopeless, simplistic, you-don't-even-live-here side, decided this was not the hill they wanted to die on, and pulled the app
This is the problem though, that the CCP can strongarm corporations into these decisions. China poses a huge risk to any company that does a lot of business or does production there. Today it's just pulling an App, but what is it tomorrow?
In the states this risk is predictable: The FBI can demand what it wants, and Apple refuses when they can, because they know they can weather a legal challenge. The risk is NOT predictable in the case of China: the government can demand what they want, and Apple's only choices are to play along or run home and tank the company. If things sour between nations, who knows what ultimatum is next.
Moreover this unpredictable risk spills over into a chilling effect: to avoid even receiving an ultimatum, Apple and any other company will bend over backwards to always be in the good graces of the government.
There's also the risk that the US President might unilaterally ban American corporations from doing any business with you. Through secondary sanctions, that ban will extend to corporations around the world. The US has arbitrarily cut off entire countries from the world market, including Iran and Venezuela, and it has cut off individual corporations as well, including Huawei and ZTE.
Everyone here seems to be up in arms about an NBA exec having to retract a tweet, but the US is throwing its weight around in much more damaging ways at the moment. The entire country of Iran is being economically strangled at the moment, based on the sole, arbitrary decision of the US President, but nobody seems to care too much.
No, I don't think there's any risk to Americans or American corporations that the president will unilaterally ban American corporations from doing business with me, an American
There is a very real risk to me, an American, that the products or services sold to me by an American corporation will be degraded or changed at the request of the CCP in exchange for that corporations continued access to the Chinese market
But they may very well ban you from doing business with a foreign company, for completely arbitrary and opaque reasons. You may be suddenly told that you have to break off relations with your largest customer, or a product you own may suddenly lose important functionality.
Millions of Europeans are now affected by the American Huawei ban, which risks degrading the phones that they bought. This is far more serious than any impact China's actions with regards to the NBA, Apple, etc. have had. How anyone can say that an NBA exec having to retract a tweet is more serious than Huawei's CFO being imprisoned and the company cut off from virtually all their international suppliers is beyond me.
I explained this is because Americans doing business with American companies are not affected by the things you describe. you're the only one ascribing values like "is more serious than Huaweis CEO being imprisoned", I never said that and I didn't see anybody else in this thread even mention Huawei
Chinese people doing business with Chinese companies aren't affected by these sorts of things either. By restricting the discussion in that way, you're evading what you must know is the main point of what I'm saying: people doing business have been much more heavily affected, so far in this trade war, by arbitrary actions of the US President than of the Chinese government. This applies equally to American businesspeople. The ban on doing business with Huawei, for example, has wiped out billions of dollars in revenue from the balance sheets of American companies.
So while these threads on China regularly draw huge numbers of comments all but calling for war with China, the much more serious, arbitrary actions by the sitting US President are met mostly with approval in these forums.
> people doing business have been much more heavily affected, so far in this trade war, by arbitrary actions of the US President than of the Chinese government.
I don't really know how that's related at all to my original post, but sure the trade war has massively affected the worldwide economy, and business leaders are well aware (watch the stock market jump and dive every time big T reaches for his phone)
My original post is just adding that business leaders need to also be aware that China is more than willing to put companies between a rock and a hard place - stick with your morals and risk your China business, or give up your values and risk a PR disaster (see Blizzard). Business leaders need to price in this risk, much as they already price in the risk of tariffs, sanctions, etc. If US customers start to care about HK or Taiwan or Tibet or Xinjiang, that's an immediate and new risk to companies that feel pressured to censor themselves
To put it another way - when gay marriage became popular in the states, companies began to proudly advertise rainbow branded products. What happens if support for HK protests reaches that level of popularity? Companies with mainland presence get dabbed on
Your original comment set up a dichotomy between China and the US: businesses have to be wary of arbitrary Chinese government actions, but can count on predictable, fair treatment in the US.
That dichotomy is not borne out by the facts. So far in this trade war, capricious actions by the US government have done far more damage to businesses than such actions by the Chinese government. China has yet to pull anything of the magnitude of the Huawei ban. That's not to say they definitely won't in the future, but so far, they've held back, so as not to scare off foreign businesses.
If you want to make an American analogy, it's more like if Puerto Rico wanted independence from the US. Because the US kept violating it's citizens human rights.
That said Hong Kong is a fairly unique situation that doesn't accurately compare to any others in recent history.
I know it wasn't a good analogy; I couldn't think of a better one.
Puerto Rico is not a better analogy. It's never been America proper and it's not even connected to the mainland.
HK was China, it was occupied by force for a hundred years and now China has got it back. As far as China is concerned HK is China and that's the end of it.
My analogy was flawed, yes, but nitpicking it doesn't really change the basic facts. I note that no-one is arguing that the Chinese don't think like I said.
The reason is because for the vast majority of Chinese, they are as likely to end up in a re-education camp as an American is to end up at a Chicago black site prison.
...and the only reason why that's true is because (1) the "vast majority" are not Uyghurs and (2) (rightfully) fear their tyrannical government and take care to not offend it. If you changed the criterion to "likely to end up in [bad place] if they said stuff their government didn't like", the likelihood for Chinese citizens would be multiple orders of magnitude higher than for Americans.
this is a very interesting comment here because it exposes how different the chinese and american polities really are.
america is not a unified bloc, internally. nor does it aspire to be. the differences between a city in massachusetts and a city in louisiana are greater than the differences between a city in massachusetts and a city in ontario -- and ontario's in a different country altogether. in other words, social and cultural distance between two regions in the US can be significantly higher than the cultural distance from one region in the US to another country. i do not think the same principle applies to china. for china, its neighbors are decidedly alien, so the cultural distance between regions within china seems very small in comparison, even if in reality it is substantial.
to return to the OP's example: if alabama tried to secede, i'd be fine with letting them go. heck, i'd be glad they even tried to leave, because it would make a credible threat to the federal government that other states would follow along and also secede if things didn't improve promptly.
i wouldn't wish them success though, because knowing that it's alabama, i would assume that their reasons for secession were incompatible with my vision for the country. in other words, if a state liek alabama really tried to secede, my position would be that they probably weren't going to be compatible with the best iteration of america anyway -- perhaps because they'd come off as a neo-confederate or something similarly regrettable.
but in principle, i don't think i would support efforts to stop them leaving or claiming more rights. i'd prefer apple to not handicap them to appease the federal government, even if i don't like the alabamans or their values very much. why?
because i understand that a restriction targeting them today will be used against me tomorrow. and i resent the idea that a private company can dictate what my hardware runs, especially retroactively.
There's no confusion about what most mainlanders think about the protesters. Most protests in the US are also unpopular.
The confusion is why the party is so insecure about their position that they need to lash out in seemingly childish ways like this. I think the difference is cultural here.
This analogy would only make sense if you used 'Puerto Rico' as an example instead of 'Alabama'. And then the argument completely falls apart; if Puerto Rico decided it wanted to be a separate country, the US (government and popular sentiment) would allow it.
I'm just some guy who has, or think I have, a little more access to "chinese thought" than I commonly see around here. I thought it would be useful or at least interesting to bring up a perspective I don't see commonly shared, not endorsing it, just tabling it for consideration. Answering questions such as yours is above my pay grade.
The United States has asked Puerto Rico if they want to be in or out and if they had massively wanted out would have politely negotiated an exit. We gave up the Philippeans a bit later then planned, but there was a war on.
The parallels you are drawing aren't even close to being realistic. Hong Kong protesters want accountability for police brutality. You are twisting the truth.
Apple should never have been capable of making such a drastic decision for all of their customers. It's one thing to make determinations about what products are allowed in your store, but quite another to unilaterally ban software from what is many people's primary computer. We live in a digital age, and software is a form of free expression. We wouldn't find this acceptable with eBooks, and we should not find it acceptable for applications.
---
† Unrealistic workarounds include paying $100 per year for a developer account, reinstalling the app once every seven days, or finding a shady, stolen enterprise certificate. These are not real alternatives for 99% of people.