Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship | Hacker News Reader

Apple Removes Apps from China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship

nytimes.com

433 pointsmcone424 comments

You cannot do business in China without doing what they tell you. Period. Either you do it or you leave. I work for a big company (you would all know) and we have a large business unit in China, they own 52% of it. They decide what goes in and how customers can use it. We don't get to decide anything without government approval. It's so easy to claim the West shouldn't do what the leadership of China wants in China, but in reality the only alternative is to abandon China to those who will do what they are ordered to. The market is too large to leave. If you don't agree to their rules you don't play in their sandbox.

> You cannot do business in China without doing what they tell you.

Of course, I get that. But it's always companies like Apple that make so much noise about social justice who don't stick to their guns when China's involved.

I don't get your complaint at all. What would you rather have them do? What would "sticking to their guns" involve?

Or would you rather have them not "make so much noise" about social justice?

Don't do business in china! It's that simple. If you can't do business in a local without getting blood on your hands, then don't do business there.

This. A market being large isn't an excuse for bloody hands.

Furthermore, don't let Chinese companies trade on US exchanges if they participate in human rights abuses.

Everyone knows what the Chinese government is doing strategically with leveraging access to their markets in exchange for control and forced tech transfer. Other countries are well within their moral rights to insist upon a quid pro quo... or else do the same to Chinese companies (who are just starting to reach scales where international expansion is as important to them as domestic).

Easy for a iphone tapper in to say until it affects you

This would harm Chinese people. If you lived in China, would you consider an iPhone or a Chinese phone to be more secure against intrusion?

They could always do what Google did and abandon China.

Google ended up losing the entire Chinese market to Baidu, who are going to end up being a global competitor, and the general population didn't even care that Google left. Apple learned from this that you could be a big deal in the West, but a nobody in the East.

Nah, they really can't. Apple's margins depend on Chinese labor to build their hardware.

The two companies are very different.

Google was aspirational in China when it left: they weren't making much money there...they hoped to in the future.

Apple is not aspirational in China today: they are already making a lot of money there. Leaving China would cause an immediate shock to its stock price as well as a huge cut in actual profits.

Google's phones aren't made in China? And is Google Play not in China? With Google I always wonder where the PR ends and the reality begins.

This is something I never understood. Google has this "do no evil" value and because staying in China involved compromising this value they left. The result is that the Chinese people are short one search engine as well as _any_ good that Google could have done. This seems ultimately more evil to me. It's good for Google because they can say they upheld their values, and it's good for the Chinese government because now they have one less external factor to manage in their control of information. Perhaps there is more to this picture than I am seeing but that has always been my view.

There's an ancient Chinese story where a farmer criticizes an official who exiled himself because the government is corrupt. As the fisherman departs he sings: "when the water of the river is clean I wash my hat in the river, when the waters are dirty I wash my feet in the river". What good can the virtuous official do living out in the mountains? Instead you should adapt your participation to the conditions of the playing field.

> What would "sticking to their guns" involve?

Leave the apps in the app store and make the government make the next move.

They're fucking Apple, they can do a lot to help finally topple that mess. It's something that needs to happen in my lifetime, and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a company who otherwise trumpets about social justice to be a part of it.

They can't do a lot if the resultant stock crash causes the board to fire the executives. Executives call the shots but in publicly traded companies their continued employment is decided by the board (who represent investors, who literally only care about stock prices).

Really the big problem here are the constraints imposed on publicly traded companies, which I think do more harm than good in many cases.

I would imagine Google thought the same. If this was five or more years ago and Xiaomi did not exist, there may be more pressure from the people. However there is a good alternative to the iPhone and the government would probably just say take it or leave it. It would give the government the perfect excuse to ban iPhone and have their citizens use a home grown phone that would be more compliant to the government's wishes.

Sanction based behavior is just another form a bullying. It's not much different than physical, psychological or social bullying.

Similar to bullying, it doesn't work when the target can fight back. Sanction based actions just seem like bullshit to me and is actually exactly what China wants. It gives space for domestic equivalents to grow. (the trick is to having your self created monopoly not rot is to keep it in its toes)

China for better or worse is becoming (is) a global power. It's the only country that is managing efficiently at its scale so criticisms fall flat. It's great for western indignation for them to feel-good about themselves. The realization that the previous bullying is no longer working creates the same sense of desperation and grasping for relevance that trump supporters have.

I'd rather the market make the decisions. Not because they don't have failure points but because they organically create understanding through mixing of values. The non-organic too down forcing of value systems doesn't work unless one party can effectively bully the other.

> What would you rather have them do? What would "sticking to their guns" involve?

Start building factories elsewhere. Help put together a similar manufacturing ecosystem in a different country. Automate their manufacture so much that it no longer matters if labor is done in China.

If Apple paid an extra 10-20% to locate factories elsewhere and started pulling out of China, it would be a gigantic hit to China while being only a 20% hit to Apple. And Apple could threaten China instead of China threatening Apple. And China wouldn't dream of making these kinds of requests again.

Apple has more leverage than they are willing to use.

> It's so easy to claim the West shouldn't do what the leadership of China wants in China, but in reality the only alternative is to abandon China to those who will do what they are ordered to.

That line of "reasoning" makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy, then.

(It additionally feels ethically unsound to me; the "if I don't do it, someone else will, therefore it's okay" — no, it's still not okay. And that's what people are upset about.)

Is there no chance whatsoever that large American companies could influence the Chinese government by establishing a market presence and then threatening to leave / alter it? This is what they do in the the US. I know that China is usually happy to just start their own Google/Facebook/Amazon/Netflix, so perhaps I'm being naive. As much as I cringe at American companies kowtowing to oppressive governments, it seems like exiting entirely is no strategy at all -- merely contrition in another form.

We've seen Chinese aspirational companies try and fail, eg: LeEco (Faraday Future, etc).

But Apple made it a company focus to court Chinese market. So they can't back down now. For some reason I've never really liked the Chinese government. They always come across as a benevolent dictator, they'll let you do business as long as you toe the line. Any inkling of freespeech or such ideas and you're out.

freedom of speech helps. where are grievances to this shitty policy aired to the govt by the public?

But it is still game-theoretically correct.

> If you don't agree to their rules you don't play in their sandbox.

And if you make choices they have consequences. Those consequences include that people in the west will lose respect for your company, complain about it, patronize competitors, propose laws to punish it, etc.

If that puts the company in a bind, good. They're a multi-billion dollar international corporation. They have to choose between morals and profits a thousand times a day. It should be as hard as possible for them to make the immoral choice. And if they make it anyway, it should cost them something.

Consequences and hypothetical punishments are not related to the actual behavior of the company but to its perception by the consumers. If the company can move the spotlight away or otherwise change the narrative, they can easily contain it. It has more to do with the limited amount of attention that can be given to any issue at any one time than with morals themselves.

You're arguing that from a realpolitik perspective, it may be more profitable for them to do the wrong thing and then spend money on PR.

What I'm saying is that that's the problem and what we should be doing is devising ways to thwart that outcome instead of forgiving them just because their betrayal was expected to be profitable.

You really think the mature thing to do is to cut off an entire country because you disagree with their political system? That seems very extreme to me.

You're proposing a false dichotomy. If the choice is to do evil or leave then they should leave, but is it? How sure are you that a company with thousands of employees and billions of dollars could not find a third way if sufficient pressure was applied on them to do so, instead of us excusing their defection as reasonable?

Nah, I don't think it is a false dichotomy in this case. It seems unlikely to me in the extreme that China is going to change its policies in response to pressure from some foreign company, even one as large as Apple.

More generally, I don't think describing countries & cultures that don't share your particular values as evil is reasonable or useful.

We need not cut them off. We behave ethically regardless, and if they choose to cut themselves off as a result that's on them.

>"The market is too large to leave."

Or stated another way "there's too much money involved to worry about ethics."

Yet Google left it and they seem to be doing OK. Apple could well afford to leave it too:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/02/apples-cash-hoard-swells-to-...

Google has to deal with some manufacturing issues related to their phones and tablets, but does not entirely depend on China for manufacturing.

Apple is overly-dependent upon Chinese manufacturing to have hardware at all. Leaves them beholden to Chinese rules, whereas, if they had manufactured elsewhere, China would have to deal with demand for a needed foreign product.

Now, however, if Apple pulled out, they would leave all that manufacturing expertise behind, and would face a lack of skilled labor elsewhere that they largely caused in the first place.

So, yes, ethics and money clash yet again, as money was designed to make happen. If they didn't pay people, a lot of dirty work wouldn't happen, and a lot of goods would be unavailable as a result.

If you tweet about ethics on a computer, chances are, that computer's hardware makes you complicit.

Yes, me too...

I didn't understand your Google hardware comment. Google search in China predates any hardware by years. Google search(Google China) is 2005 and the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 isn't until 2008.

Apple isn't dependent on the Chinese for manufacturing they are dependent on Foxconn, a Taiwanese company. And China wants Foxconn there. They greatly incentivized Foxconn to set up shop there.[1]

There's no reason Apple with its' hundreds of billions in cash reserves couldn't finance an "iPhone City" like China did in Zhengzhou and put it elsewhere.

And seeing how Foxconn is looking towards automation which isn't dependent on human labor, they could set it up an automated iPhone City anywhere, including the US.[2]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/technology/apple-iphone-c...

[2] http://fortune.com/2016/12/31/foxconn-iphone-automation-goal...

> Google has to deal with some manufacturing issues related to their phones and tablets,

No. It was way before phone manufacturing. China wanted to censor google searches but Google did not approve this so at the end they pulled out their servers from China and hosted it in Singapore.

The market is not "too large to leave". The company is making a choice to stay there because to them profit is more important than ethical considerations.

At the same time, the fact that the West generally doesn't care about ethics shows that the West is not necessarily a good model to follow. Maybe China has a better alternative.

Yuval Noah Harari wrote about this rather interesting theory that human rights only picked up steam all of a sudden because the industrial revolution created an economic need for a large class of educated and well-fed workers. We only value our current brand of ethics because it coincides with significant economic advantages. However, it's also important to look at the big picture behind your accusation. If the West truly did not value ethics, you would have been unlikely to have voiced your concerns in this way, since you would not have grown in a framework where these criticisms would be commonplace or even considered a worthy problem to investigate. The mere fact that you are making these observations means it's not so bad from an ethical standpoint. It shows there is already an ethical standard in place that is understood as a commendable ideal by most people, to the point where you can refer to it and expect people to know what you're talking about.

A company leaving a large market will be outcompeted by a company which doesn't; for companies, ignoring profits kills them. If it's anyone's job to respond to China's government, it's other governments', as they can take losses more easily but still not easily enough to get by without coordinated action (easier for governments than companies since there are fewer governments and new states don't form as quickly as new companies.)

I'd hardly claim China cares about ethics, either.

Yeah, that was really strange logic. A does unethical things, B doesn't prevent it therefore B is unethical... but hey maybe A is ethical?

Even if you do play by all the rules it seems likely that your business will be cloned by a local startup and then you'll get kicked out anyway.

The CPC is engaged in a very shortsighted strategy. They're doing everything they can to hang on to untenable growth numbers. When the chickens come home to roost there is going to be real trouble the likes of which we have not seen in living memory. The wealthy in China have seen the writing on the wall for a long time and are doing everything they can to exit before it's too late.

>They decide what goes in and how customers can use it. We don't get to decide anything without government approval.

Then how can anyone really say that they are doing business in china? When it's the government calling all the shots and taking the lion's share of profits?

What is a foreign business in china, besides a brand-on-loan-to-the-government (that they pay you for using)?

Of course you can leave China/choose not to enter China/be blocked from entering China and still be very successful, check what Google did 7-8 years ago. The same can be said for a long list of highly successfully American high tech and not that high tech companies, e.g. Facebook, SpaceX, Berkshire Hathaway etc.

The mentioned 52% or 51% ownership is nothing but protectionism. It is nothing different from Trump asking certain US products to be made in the US.

I suppose there are the questions of law and fiduciary duties.

If it's the law, it's the law. In China, it's the law to remove VPN apps. I suppose it's really not much different than the laws in the US that compel companies to give the government access to my information if they request such access. It's just the law, it's not really Facebook and Google trying to screw me.

All that said, I think what most posters are advocating is maybe for Apple to just leave China.

And, of course, that's where the other shoe drops...

with the question of fiduciary duties.

So yeah... I see your point... because of the legal issues involved, privacy and access can be tough problems. Not just in China or the US, but elsewhere in the world as well.

*EDITS for grammar

>I suppose it's really not much different than the laws in the US that compel companies to give the government access to my information if they request such access.

It is very different. Censorship with the main objective of keeping an unelected regime in power by suppressing free speech is not the same as any problematic side-effects of fighting crime and terrorism. Granted, there are some grey areas such as oppression of sexual minorities, but the distinction between political oppression and crime fighting should not be lost completely.

The least Apple could do is allow sideloading of apps.

Basically this. Apple's walled garden puts them in a position of power where their only choices are comply or leave. By contrast, Google could ship an Android phone in China with vpn features removed, ban vpn apps from the play store, and I would still be able to install a 3rd party vpn app.

"I suppose it's really not much different than the laws in the US that compel companies to give the government access to my information if they request such access."

No, in US the directive comes from court and even then the companies can deny the information if it is encrypted (e.g. like Apple did in San Bernardino).

I also do not understand the nonsensical argument everyday that if US does small x then it allows other countries to do big X along with big Y. What kind of logic is this?

A company cannot legally defy the court in the US.

They can only argue against a specific request it and appeal a ruling or an order.

As for the San Bernadino case it's not correct.

Apple has complied with the court order, they gave the FBI access to the iCloud Account. What they didn't do is to decrypt the phone but they were also not ordered too by the court.

If the court would have ordered them to develop a way to decrypt the device and they've lost all appeals they would've complied with that too.

For you the fact that something is law might tramp morality. Law vs morality is an ancient struggle[1].

[1] http://www.markedbyteachers.com/as-and-a-level/classics/anti...

> It's just the law, it's not really Facebook and Google trying to screw me.

There are bad laws, and then there are bad actors refusing to disobey bad laws, which is a quintessential civic obligation in the western tradition.

You can do buisness in china - and reinvest part of the profit via strawmans and donations into open source endavours to circumvent censorship, like meshnet endavours and TOR.

But of course, you could also just be a silent dictatorship supporter (seems like a natural view for a CEO) and hope that blind loyal fans & employees find good apologys for betrayal of core-western values.

And you dont get to pin this on cultural differences. Europe had 2000 years of kings, monarchs and other vermin- and after 2 WorldWars everybody basically had given up on democracy rooting anywhere there (maybe in britain). Its just european culture, to crawl under stomping boots. They need that!

Today, we got 60 years of peace and prosperity, with democracy and alot of freedom. So no- the partyline of ineveitability of itself, does not convince. Though im absolutly against violent unrest or violent transitions. I rather have china another 100 years under party rule, then supporting a violent uprising.

I'm so tired of the "if we don't do it someone else will" mentality. It's just flat out untrue. Not to mention you're basically supporting this type of government by doing business there.

I don't think apple leaving the market would have any impact on the Chinese government's decision process behind policies. There are plenty of Chinese brands that would love the decreased competition. The only effect it would have would be on Apple's sales numbers.

for large markets, it is true. the roles of google and amazon are being filled locally, in all their respective verticals.

for some niche market, maybe not.

>We don't get to decide anything without government approval

ELI5:

* How does the "decide" process and "approval" process work?

* Who is the decider? (What are their qualifications/bkgrd? (Are they ex workers of the tech sector in .CN that have xp in building all the things?

* What are the implications to cost/design/[whatever-i-dont-know-to-ask]?

* ELI5 'submission for approval' and 'time to approval'

* do .cn gov employees work/are-embedded-at any given company?

* is it as totalitarian as it sounds or is it efficient?

* what cut does the government take?

* Who is reputable in the US to ensure a product can get built in china?

Generally, doing business of any kind requires a license. At small scale, the rules aren't enforced very much, but when you get big or someone doesn't like you, they are. Since everything you do can be interpreted as illegal in some way, there's no defense, and there's no recourse, since the courts aren't independent.

About embedding of workers: local employees who are party members will organize a party branch inside the company. The more powerful internal party members you have, the easier it will be to be given permission to do things, get licenses, etc, so they'll gain committee seats and power. So you end up with an internal organization with power in your company whose allegiances are to an outside agency.

In my view something to consider is that the same large companies that are doing the Chinese government's bidding in China, are also free to do the Chinese government's bidding in the US. For instance they can buy political influence, manipulate markets, and so forth.

If they can't serve the interests of two societies at once, they will serve the society that exerts more oversight and control.

> You cannot do business in China without doing what they tell you.

Then

> in reality the only alternative is to abandon China to those who will do what they are ordered to

So the only alternative to doing business there - which requires doing as you're told - is leaving China to only businesses that will do what their told. I'm assuming you didn't mean to say that so can you explain?

If they somehow decided to stop doing business in China, would that be grounds for Apple investors to sue Apple?

What would the investors sue Apple for? Now, a majority of investors could always re-direct Apple by voting at a shareholder meeting.

> the only alternative is to abandon China to those who will do what they are ordered to

Sounds like the "well, if I don't do it, someone else will" justification. Not the first time that has been used to justify an unethical action.

"I am objecting to this on the basis of forcing me to violate Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Perhaps this greased handshake will help."

What happens in China now could happen in 5 years in the rest of the world.

For "security" reasons or "fight agains terrorism", while it's really a fight between those in power and those who want power :-(

The need for IPFS, webRTC and other non-centralized protocols becomes more pressing every day, to defend everyone who is stuck in between.

Governments can outlaw those too. We need a p2p internet before it's too late. It doesn't have to be the fastest or the best. It just has to work well enough to bootstrap free access to information whenever the government tries to snuff it out. In Cuba they use thumb drives but we can do better.

There's a fundamental limit to what is blockable. Even if all strong cryptography is prohibited and all that can legally be utilised is a backdoored version, a steganographic option can be encorporated in a way that is mathematically undetectable - albeit at rather low bit rates relative to the absolute rate of the stream.

The problem for censors is that there is not such thing as optimal compression for a given stream, since the optimality of a given compression codec is a probabilistic function of all data streams that could feasibly be compressed with the given codec.

What do I mean by this? Inoptimality is fundamentally immeasurable (even when a more optimal version is feasibly calculable, it may be inefficient to utilise it due to the increased complexity involved in encoding or decoding - and the possible reasons behind any given encoding choice are indistinguisable from each other), so a sliver of a data stream could potentially be utilised to package encrypted data in a manner that is fundamentally indistinguishable from encoding inoptimalities.

In a world where a huge amount of out data is ultra-high bandwidth multimedia content couple with personal super-computers, crytographically indistinguisable steganographic communication channels of a more than useful bandwidth are well within the realms of feasibility.

That's technically true but largely irrelevant because it ignores the hard problem: if you're a covert agent supported by a major power, sure, you may have the opsec training and resources needed for that to be relevant but in most cases the question is not crypto magic but how it handles discovery, trust, and individual compromises.

You can have perfect steganography but as soon as a government informant says they got contraband data from you people are going to jail or worse. Similarly, all of the plausible deniability in the world won't help if they compromise your system and record you accessing that data.

Among other things, this kills widespread underground media dissemination because as the number of people increases the odds approach certainty that state actors will learn how to access it, and the risk to users increases constantly – how well do you really know the person who hooked you up with an invite code? Is the P2P node you're connecting to anything other than a honeypot? The hottie you hooked up with last night – really into you or just installing malware on your computers and mapping out your social network?

(Lest you think that's a stretch, consider e.g. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29743857 and ask whether the Chinese government is more or less concerned with activists)

I'm a massive fan of decentralization and it seems that bittorrent has shown that it is resilient against oppression, while the magnet link hosting sites are regularly taken down, the protocol its self has shown that it can continue to thrive.

In this way it shows that decentralized networks are the way to circumvent oppressive people.

The on-going movement towards decentralisation is something to celebrate as is the transformation of users, slowly becoming peers.

The UK is already rolling out more and more censorship infrastructure for example. All ISPs have porn-filters enabled by default (which you can opt-out) and additional block lists that you have to circumvent through technical means (e.g. wikipedia was blocked due to the Scorpion's virgin killer album cover). Now they also want to expand those filters to cover "extremism".

+1 the USA and UK are definitely on the path of governmental control of content/privacy on the Internet.

A bit off topic: I am in the USA and it surprises be constantly how most of my friends and family buy into American exceptionalism. Mostly, they don't travel much to foreign countries so they don't realize that the USA is one of MANY great places to live. The world for the most part is an awesome place but the news media convinces people otherwise. Re: China: even though China has problems with internal ethnic violence (source: I took an online class in English covering history, economics, and politics taught by three professors in China) my impression of people in China when I was there is that they are generally happy with their society. It is not my place to tell other people what form of government they should have.

Just on a positive note - HTTPS has done wonders BC it destroys any granularity in censorship. For instance BC English Wikipedia isn't blocked you are able to look up any topic and authorities have no way of knowing which topic you've looked up.

They could block all of Wikipedia ofcourse, but it'd be overly draconian, hard to justify and people would be upset (though itll happen eventually. They're working on a wikipedia clone right now)

Wikipedia (also apparently expressvpn.com) is already blocked in Turkey, and I am indeed very upset about it, but there's nothing I can do about it and I think it'd be the same with the Chinese. Such oppressive governments really won't mind denying their citizens access to the single greatest source of information for their citizens if it plays into their hand.

could you please stop representing 1.4B Chinese? if the government is so bad, why there is no systematic resistance given the fact that Chinese people had a long history of fighting the repressive regimes?

Fear of the Government that is even in your pocket?!

As someone who grew up in the East Block, reading such naive comments as yours leaves me divided. It's good on one hand that you've never came even close to an oppressive government so not even your imagination allows you to grok. On the other hand facing the development in the world, it's quite concerning.

Well maybe you shouldn't use a locked system then. There are enough and better alternatives and always have been.

It's not like this is a surprise at all. People have warned about this for years but the fan base and the cool design were stronger. I'm pretty sure there will be no uprising in the western Apple community about that at all.

there isn't going to be a technical solution to the problem of terrible world governments, the only real solution is going to be to change the governments.

In democratic countries, at least you have that possibility. Elsewhere it might not be possible at all. Nationwide censorship and surveillance are probably pretty effective technical “solutions” for preventing change.

Why are they different things? Isn't, on some very fundamental level, the act of changing the governments a "technical solution"?

As corps/IC agencies/.mil's around the world tighten the nooses around the population, it will only empower people to engage in similar behaviors.

Who's to say one can't technically compromise and take advantage of AmaGoogAppBookWeiTenUbtakte infrastructure and use it for any ends, in similar ways corps/IC's agencies/.mil's do for their ends?

After all its still hardware and software with flaws like anything else.

Looks like I won't be owning any Apple products in 5 years then.

But they still have the built-in VPN client in iOS, don't they? As long as they don't block this particular feature in China, I don't see that as a big reason for panic.

PPTP and L2TP are blocked, we mainly use Shadowsocks. And what Apple did is removing apps that provide Shadowsocks local client. e.g. Surge, Shadowrocket, Potatso‏...

It should be noted that using a non-china based iTunes account still allows you to install vpn apps and run the app inside Chinese borders...

But The Great Firewall could and sometimes does already block all VPN traffic so it would not be any use.

If the VPN actually works the app might still be useful. It is a game of cat and mouse between the government and the VPN providers.

> What happens in China now could happen in 5 years in the rest of the world.

China? This has been happening in the US and Europe for years.

Look how heavily censored all social media is now.

I understand that we all at HN know about the media censorship, but when you are trying to convince someone who disagrees, some evidence would be very useful.

Depending where you live, there are likely laws prohibiting communication in public about sexuality (think graphically explicit pictures where accessible to children, think non-standard sexual expression), politics (think inciting hate against groups of humans and calls to kill them), culture (think sharing a song you really like with your peers), and many more.

You might say that these restrictions and censorship is okay because you agree with the given reason. But exactly like that, people in china might agree to the reasons their government is giving them for their censorship. Who is right?

Just common sense, given that the China gobertment has made usage of VPNs illegal.

What do you expect?

People in China could continue using app store accounts created in other countries as usual.

And most educated people continue using VPNs too. Normal people are becoming experts in encription, security...

It worries me more that countries like the UK and the US want to follow China, in that order.

I expect Apple to respect universal human rights regardless of the context. Freedom of speech is foundational.

And this isn't a China-vs-the-West thing. The idea that people deserve and need to be able to communicate freely predates the current governments of both China and the U.S.

Apple has never been pro-free-speech. They have historically censored people in their marketplace from distributing software that disagrees with their political views. For example, they would not allow software that provides factual information about abortions and where to get them in their marketplace -- while at the same time they would allow software from "crisis pregnancy centers"[1] that frequently lie to women and make incorrect claims about dangerous risks of abortions.

It boggles my mind that anyone could think Apple is somehow a vanguard of free speech. Their iThings are jails, they restrict what software you can run on them and they are the final arbiter on what software is allowed. What aspect of that is in keeping with free speech?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_pregnancy_center

It's been known for years that Apple is actively against freedom of speech when it comes to its marketplace. Why would you expect it to make an exception for China ?

Apple probably has more incentive to hold onto that fat margin China provides with their labor -- don't want to anger the Chinese gov't.

Freedom of speech only applies to the government. Apple can keep whatever they want out of their store.

Why is this downvoted? It’s a factual statement. Freedoms of speech (in the U.S.) is that Congress shall make no law..

A radio station that refuses to play my song or let me talk isn’t violating my freedom of speech.

Facebook censoring “hate speech” is not violating freedom of speech. Hate speech is protected speech under the U.S. constitution. (Before anyone brings up Schenck v. United States, that case ruled that speech that present imminent danger (yelling fire in a crowded theater) was not protected, but hate speech doesn’t generally reach a level of immediate danger.

So if we are to criticize Apple for curating their store, we must criticize Facebook for curating their platform. We must also crisis Google for their curation of advertising content as well. Because unless hate speech says “kill <some group> today at 5pm at the local market,” it’s broadly protected under the U.S. constitution. What that means that practically every single company in the U.S. is guilty of “violating free speech” – IF they were the government, but they are not and thus aren’t violating anyone’s right to free speech.

It's a business after all and China is a huge market for Apple.

No one ever said that capitalism was very aligned with human rights. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Why bring up capitalism here? The censorship isn't capitalist. Apple could be a non-profit employee cooperative and still be aiding in censorship to comply with local laws.

How exactly would they help respect it?

Their choices are, as far as I can tell, to either remove certain apps from app store, or to face the app store blocked entirely. I wonder what servers their customers best.

It's hard and unpleasant to conduct business in a place where laws are at odds with what you believe is right. But when it's lucrative enough, you may choose to shut up and comply.

They could stop blocking sideloading, for one. That way they could comply in name but keep the block ineffective.

> I wonder what servers their customers best.

It sounds like that point can be accurately rephrased as, "We're censoring you, but we did some soul searching and we think it's for your own good."

> "We're censoring you, but we did some soul searching and we think it's for your own good."

There certainly aren't any souls waiting to be found in the earnings report.

Not that I necessarily agree with this decision, but:

"The version of Article 19 in the ICCPR later amends this by stating that the exercise of these rights carries 'special duties and responsibilities' and may 'therefore be subject to certain restrictions' when necessary '[f]or respect of the rights or reputation of others' or '[f]or the protection of national security or of public order (order public), or of public health or morals'." (Wikipedia)

Freedom of speech can be limited even as a universal human right.

> Freedom of speech can be limited even as a universal human right.

They are inalienable rights because it's wrong to limit them, not because a group voted to recognize them. The ICCPR's position is interesting to compare and contrast to what is right, not because it's the authority on what is right.

In the end, any and all rights, inalienable or otherwise, are arrived at by consensus, not extracted from the binding fibers of the universe.

UK is the surveillance capital of this planet [1]. PM May expressed readiness to "tear up Human Rights"[2]. UK is the enabler of Chinese CP leadership, not a follower.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/19/extreme-survei...

[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/06/theresa-may...

The UK has been a leader in developing internet censorship for over 20 years; it's never been just one party or government.

When certain big network equipment companies (this was before Huawei cloned everything) responded to criticism for building the Great Firewall of China by saying they were only supplying off-the-shelf gear already in use in the West, they weren't lying.

Only the past 10, maybe 15 years - the worst damage has all been in the past 5 years - but you're right about it being both parties: under Labour we had RIPA and the wet-dreams of "Wacky Jacqui" Smith - which in turn enabled the the Tory gov's implementation of these regressive legislation.

The problem is how the UK cabinet is arranged and the politically powerful role of Home Secretary - where the job description is a license to dream up, campaign for, and implement the most effective means of "keeping the country safe". Quite unfortunate.

Long-term change would only be effected by having the role's description framed in the context of keeping the UK - and its freedoms - safe. It's a subtle change to the oath of office, but would hopefully prevent the recent abuses we've seen. Universal mass surveillance is fundamentally incompatible with our right to privacy.

No, more than 20. Sometimes, the slope actually is slippery.

http://www.liquisearch.com/internet_watch_foundation/history...

That is incredibly alarming. I follow UK news with great worries about internet freedom, freedom of speech and human rights in general. I don't understand how the population allows this??

Because no one cares. Or people who do are in minority. I've had discussions both in real life and online with people telling me they don't understand how I can be against surveillance, it's meant to fight pedophiles and terrorists, so of course it's good,right?

In general, in 7 years of living in the UK, it is definitely my observation that British people in general trust the government to do the right thing. They were not brought up with an ingrained distrust of authority like people from some other countries were - not everyone is happy with the government, but people in general belive that the law is the law and if something is illegal there is a good reason behind it and they don't need to get involved too much.

This level of political apathy and lack of interest in their own country is really shocking at times.

It's true that this seems to be the majority sentiment, in spite of things like a ban on completely harmless sex acts in porn (such as female ejaculation or spanking). This is clearly repressive government action against a sexual minority as we are talking about consenting adults here.

What surprises me more though is how people can be so confident that their data is safe with the government. There is a long list of failed IT projects and incompetent handling of computer security by public organisations.

Even if everything the government wants to do with our data was justified, there would still be a very valid concern about this data eventually ending up in the hands of organised criminals.

I wrote to my MP, switched ISPs to a (more expensive) one whose stance aligns with mine, and took up the other citizenship I have access to. I am deeply concerned about the views of some of my country's leaders. But ultimately, moving countries would be a big cost, and I don't think anywhere else is significantly better? The status quo here is: leaders talk an anti-free-speech game, propose outrageous unimplementable measures, what actually gets done is at most a trivial inconvenience. Where could I move that would have a firmer commitment to free speech, privacy and the like? US? Canada? I don't feel like I'd be a lot better off in any of those. Maybe Germany but I feel like they're drifting into the restriction-of-speech direction after their migrant issues.

What I expect them to do is this:

1) Put up as much of a fight as possible, just as they have done in the US.

2) Allow sideloading of apps.

Regarding 2)

Can't you install your own (self-compiled) apps on your own iDevice these days with a free apple developer account?

That could work with an open source iOS client that people compile themselves.

You don't even need that. I remember all you need was the source code and Xcode. Of course that's assuming if you're running open-source or your own solutions

Doesn't that require a Mac?

cydia impactor

"And most educated people continue using VPNs too. Normal people are becoming experts in encription, security..."

As I'm not familiar with China or its (native) people, I have no grounds to refute the statement above, but is it really true ?

My experience is that a large number of people in the West ("educated" or not) are barely interested even in the information and news that are readily available to them, and mostly concern themselves with sports, gossip and entertainment.

I find hard to believe that most people in China are using VPNs and taking risks on a daily basis to access "uncensored" information, I'm sure that there are quite a few that do, but I'd be surprised if it's not a relatively small minority.

There is no such mentioned risk for using VPN. I am posting here from Shanghai using my VPN. It has been going on for more than a decade and I couldn't name any single person who got arrested/charged/or even questioned for using so called "illegal" VPN.

It's well known that the government there is in the process of systematically blocking VPN usages. This is causing issues in academia at least, along with other segments of society that got used to"opting out" of the firewall and now find they cannot.

> gobertment

Curious and slightly off topic. Was this intentional or just a typo?

In Spanish it's more or less pronounced like this.

My business has an AWS China account and below is the email I received on Friday. It is definitely a crackdown year, on several fronts even other than the internet. Like this year I was forced to pay a $300 fine because I didn't report to the police station within 24-hrs of re-entry while living in my own leased home. Now, my company is not huge but I've employed +100 people and we pay a lot of taxes, social insurance, provide jobs for local families. They do not give a shit about that you will follow the laws of China to do business here or you will be thrown out.

Overall, this year has really chilled my enthusiasm for getting too comfortable with the thought of living here the rest of my working life. In this age with so many elite Chinese being trained and educated abroad, it is really hard to beleive things are going in this directon. I mean, IT Is already hard enough, we need a server in our office that is connected to another server in France, and we need it reliable and without issue. Making this type of stuff even harder on us as a business is really irritating. I really do tell myself every day "if it was easy everybody would be doing it".

"Dear Customer, According to the telecom regulations and the requirement of MIIT/MPS and Internet supervision agency, please check up two parts below. • The illegal “over the wall” proxy sites and provide hosting campaign service for illegal “over the wall” proxy sites. • All main domains which don’t have ICP recorded number via MIIT and All websites which have illegal content. We will continuously receive notification from the regulators to close such services or shut down server deployment immediately. In case your will be involved in any consequences of such violation, please stop immediately if you have such illegal services and deployment. Thanks for your understanding and cooperation.

Regards, AWS China (Beijing) Region operated by SINNET"

Hey Timmy, what was all that talk about customer security?

https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/

And here I was, almost believing you.

This is arguably worse than if they had done nothing at all to supposedly protect user privacy. Now it's clear that Apple was just playing the crowd to win sales.

Why should we even believe that they aren't covertly cooperating with the FBI?

That's hardly an Apple-specific issue though. I'd argue we shouldn't trust any corporation -- like Google, Amazon, Facebook as well -- and assume they are in bed with the agencies from the get go.

You don't need their closed app store. Free workaround:

• apply for a free Apple developer account,

• compile your own copy of https://github.com/mtigas/OnionBrowser or https://github.com/yuyao110120/ShadowVPN-iOS and

• install it on your own iDevice

You get 10 days before your app stops working and you have to do it again. It's a real pain in the butt.

Where do you get that from? Creating app with your own dev account can run on your device for more than 10 days...

[Update] ok I just checked the limitation of the free dev account, and yes because of certificates it is only valid for 7 days... I was thinking about the regular $$ account.

It is idiotic that you can't compile and install something on a device you own.

I would pay a large premium for an iPhone that came jailbroken.

But you can?

When it was first introduced it was longer. Apple then cracked down on that and made the limit more restrictive.

If you build in the ability to censor, you can't disclaim responsibility when a state makes you do it. We'll see the same sort of thing in Russia, the UK, and so on. Apple can still act, if they wish, by not locking down their users. I know that'd be a big step for them.

That is the most important comment here. Tim Cook, you have inherited the rules of the app store, but by now it's clear that with good sand-boxing, we wouldn't need any of your control mechanisms. If you would relinquish this control, one billion people could exercise their human rights. Mister Cook, tear down this app store wall!

To be clear, "ability to censor" is basically just having an app store. Companies can decide what they'll include in their store, which means governments can also regulate what they're allowed to sell (or block the app store altogether in that country).

That doesn't mean app stores are inherently evil; they still do a lot of good by making sure people can easily find and pay for high-quality apps.

As you say, a reasonable alternative would be to allow side loading of apps, so that people can find and load apps distributed via various peer-to-peer ways, without Apple being responsible.

To be clear, what you mean by "having an app store" is "reverting 40 years of established software usage best practice and downgrade to dictatorial way where a central company can control everything".

Words have power. "App store" sounds up-beat, friendly and inclusive. But the rules behind what Apple has established that "App store" actually means are anything but.

Apple didn't invent the app store and weren't many mobile phones before the iPhone (running J2ME or whatever) even more restrictive?

Also, Android doesn't restrict side-loading in this way so I disagree that restricting side-loading is an essential feature of an app store as commonly understood.

No, phones before the iPhone running J2ME had side-loading. Some carrier turned that off, but if you bought directly from the manufacturers you got a phone that you could control and do anything with by yourself, without any third party stopping you. Manufacturers felt confident that their J2ME sandboxing stopped apps from doing anything evil.

I feel like you didn't really answer my point, though. I criticize you for using an upbeat word to make a dictatorial system sound good. And you counter by talking about something entirely else, word definition and word history.

Yes, a curated app store is a great option to have.

It's been said that the app-store-only model is not basically different because you can still buy an unrestricted competing device. I kind of agree, but that's sort of like saying people in China can still decide to move to another country. The cheaper such options are, the more weight to give such an argument. Most people aren't going to carry two phones around.

What a despicable joke of a country. And shame on Apple for aiding them while they made such a massive deal of user rights in the US.

In America, they're still free to openly complain about American policies. Try that in China and you'll be gone before the week is over and a state-sponsored company will take your place

Complaining is the opiate of the masses.

> In America, they're still free to openly complain about American policies.

You can complain only about those, that are inconsequential, or won't change anyway. Otherwise you could be labeled with miscellaneous labels and maybe also beaten at someplaces.

Different countries, different laws... what did you expect?

Balls? Integrity?

Respect of inalienable rights.

They also require a paid developer subscription to get access to the Network Extensions capability (needed to build a VPN protocol extension) in order to make sure people who develop these apps can't just provide IPA files for normal users in China to "sideload" using tools such as my Cydia Impactor.

So they go out of their way to prevent users to avoid censorship by themselves on their devices?

This from the company that removed the headphone jack from their phones while crowing about the "courage" involved in making the decision.

I'm not going to pretend to believe that Tim Cook's letter (cited elsewhere) was much more than a PR move in a country they were unlikely to face any substantial consequences for (at least publicly) standing up to the government, or that I really believe that corporations have a responsibility to protect basic human rights (though it would be nice if they did). Still, it'd be nice if corporations didn't try to have it both ways and maintain an image as a courageous force for good when it was convenient while washing their hands of responsibility for any actual action when it became difficult.

Aren't they forced to follow Chinese laws when doing business there? Not saying what they did is moral but it seems the moral question here is whether they be doing business in China, not whether they should be following the laws while doing business their because they don't really have a choice once they decide to do business there. Google for example doesn't do business there so they don't have to respect censorship laws.

There is no such thing as "once they decide". Once you notice that what you are doing is immoral, you have to revise previous decisions.

Also, it's not that cut and dry: If your product actually contributes to the wealth of the country, they cannot just ban you without hurting themselves. Just because they legally can, does not mean you don't have any leverage.

Could Apple really ever decide to not do any business in China - could they extract their phone/computer business without affecting their manufacturing business?

Without access to Shenzhen and Foxconn, it seems like it would be a literal corporate suicide.

Well, I don't know--but given that Foxconn is apparently planning to open a factory in the US, I would suspect it shouldn't be all that impossible?

Also, do you think that China doesn't care about unemployment and exports? I mean, Foxconn is not a charity, they are effectively an exporter of a part of the value of Apple products, and they employ people building Apple products, if they kick out Apple, that money will most likely go elsewhere and employ people elsewhere.

How many of Apple's devices are manufactured in China? The Chinese Government could completely cripple Apple in a second. It really isn't Apple that has the leverage.

Censorship is fundamental to Chinese government policy. It's totally non-negotiable. You either do as they say, or you don't operate in China. No negotiation, no compromise. Given the manufacturing situation China has Apple by the short and curlies, and Cooke knows it.

So, you think china doesn't care about unemployment?

Also, there is no such thing as "non-negotiable". Everything is negotiable, if you are able to offer something of enough value in exchange.

Yet somehow Google manages to make phones and not cooperate with China.

Fyi, Google does do business in China. They have offices in Beijing and Shanghai at least. Their phones are most probably also manifactured in China which is pretty big business.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China

> unlikely to face any substantial consequences for (at least publicly) standing up to the government

Well, they could take a market hit if customers find out they've been acting contrary to their words.

The percentage of iPhone/Mac users that care enough about VPN in China to switch to Android/Windows wouldn't even be a rounding error.

But apparently there are enough people who care about privacy for Apple to market to them, and they could lose those as customers if it turns out that marketing consisted of empty words.

Apple follows the law while sending lawyers to do the work necessary to block censorship.

How do the law work in China? Is it even possible to block censorship?

A misconception about China is rule-of–law.

I bought my first iPhone this year. No headphone jack but the phone included very nice earphones than use the thunderbolt charging port.

Why hasn't iMessage been blocked in China? Does apple run a special compromised version of it there, or has China simply not made banning it a priority yet, or is iMessage simply not as secure as we have been told?

Most likely Apple cooperates with the respective agencies as requested by Chinese laws. If not yet, they will have to start very soon or iMessage will also be blocked.

Are there any signs of Censorship on iMessage so far? Are terms that are known to be blocked on WeChat, QQ etc (e.g. 法轮功 / Falun Gong) still working on iMessage?

That's why corporations will never help against dictatorship. They may do it if it's convenient but in the end they will prioritize money over everything else and fall in line with dictatorships. Happened during the Nazi time, it's happening in China now.

> That's why corporations will never help against dictatorship. They may do it if it's convenient but in the end they will prioritize money over everything else and fall in line with dictatorships. Happened during the Nazi time, it's happening in China now.

Well, if you want your government to be powerful enough to enforce laws against corporations, then corporations will not be powerful enough to defy your government.

You can't keep your cake and eat it too.

I don't necessarily blame corporations for this. My point is that we shouldn't look at corporations as agents for freedom. A lot of people seem to be doing this. In the end they will fall in line with whoever is running the country. As long as there is money to be made.

I think as individuals we can never look to either corporations or governments to protect our freedoms in general. We're going to have to look for alignment of interests depending on specific concerns.

In this particular case there is clearly an alignment of interests between users and some corporations - VPN providers. At the same time there is a divergence of interests between the same users and another corporation - Apple.

Similarly, Chinese citizens surely expect their government to protect them from some actions of corporations. For instance, the Chinese government recently banned a lot of health related advertising, because apparently there was too much snake oil salesmanship going on.

The case that triggered this intervention was a complaint by the relatives of a diceased cancer sufferer who had received ineffective treatment following an advert on Baidu. However, the clinic that had advertised that treatment was a government run hospital.

I think this affair shows how complex the alignment of interests can be, even in dictatorships.

> My point is that we shouldn't look at corporations as agents for freedom

It's mind-boggling that this even needs to be stated. Of course we should not. Anyone who does needs to step back and seriously re-examine how they look at the world, because this is an intensely false presupposition.

It's not that strange. The free market/market economy is used more or less as a synonym, albeit incorrectly imo, for freedom. Seemingly to try to make it true by repetition.

Look at any kind of right-wing politician whose random short bio contains "Loves freedom!" or similar. In practice it translates to "loves the market economy and property rights etc", while the same person seldom sympathize with ideas of a living wage, lowering working hours etc.

Who is doing that? Corporations exist only to generate profit for their shareholders and they aren't shy about admitting that

Anyone who takes part in proprietary products with network effects does that?

It's not the case. Show me the law that says that. You can't be there isn't one - it's perfectly possible for companies to take moral stands and many do.

Consider that both Google and Facebook have no presence in China.

Or perhaps corporations could have a little backbone. Perhaps in their mission statements say that they will prefer to lose profits if it means not trading in a country that performs (x)

Edit: (sametmax) I can't seem to reply - I think the chains too long ? Either way:

Doesn't that mean we should actually be a little upset ? Look I'm no sjw freaking out over everything, nor do I run around scrwing boycot, but perhaps just a little frustration and some constructive argument may lead someone to a better idea of how to handle/fox/or seeup with something.

God's know I don't have an answer, but it does worry me.

Those companies exist, but selection bias already excludes them from the countries in question; e.g. Google.

I wish.

But...

Most people don't have the guts. Why would you expect corporation to have it ? This is the reality of the world, most people don't care about making the moral choice and will choose short term benefits. Getting sick over this is like crying because the sky's color displeases you.

Spend your energy trying to improve things at your level. This is all you can do.

Well, our level includes working towards agreement in the HN community that aiding in censorship is bad.

What's the "x" though in this case ? Censorship ?

Because USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany etc all censor content on the internet.

In fact most of the world do to some extent.

X would be anything we disagree with. I'm an Aussie, living in Japan, mostly working for us companies (plus the occasional Indian company), I see many forms of censorship, under many different names.

I won't stand up and say I know the solution, but I certainly see the problems.

That's extremely disingenuous. Any profit left on the table will be exploited by the next corporation in line. The loop has to be closed by the people when they get mature enough... and if that's what they want: there are few things more bigot than someone measuring with the west meter other countries' success.

"If I'm not mugging the grandma, somebody else will" is the most disingenuous excuse of all.

In many places where companies are incorporated, that is likely an illegal decision to make for your company. Unless you can argue that the loss of sales in that jurisdiction will be less than the loss in sales abroad (from loss of consumer trust), you probably can't do it.

In addition, they likely have ongoing procurement contracts with some companies in China which they would need to continue honouring.

In principle I agree with you, but unless this is a founding policy of your company, your shareholders have every right to object.

Legality and morality are different things. Your shareholders may have the right to ask you to fire loads of people, or be a patent troll, but the choice is still yours.

But let's be fair, how many individuals, given the choice, would choose making a better world over money ? Probably not event most people in this thread. We are weak creatures.

Governments don't force Apple to allow installing apps only from App Store, it's their own decision.

You might not like the (totally valid) point this comment makes but that doesn't stop it being true. Stop with the downvotes.

No, it's a false dichotomy. People and corporations can contest laws without making them impossible to enforce.

This is the same reason why ~70% of US legislation is for benefits of corporations.

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...

Not sure why this is downvoted. We're in a era when the biggest companies have the same means than small to medium countries, this remark is perfectly valid.

I wouldn't call China a dictatorship... it's an authoritarian state, but calling Xi Jinping a dictator isn't really accurate.

What can a dictator do that Xi Jinping can't?

Exercise unilateral control of government policy. Chinese political power is vested through the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China. Although Jinping is first among equals, his exercise of political power is constrained by the other six committee members, all of whom exercise real political power themselves, and it is the Politburo, not Jinping himself, which controls China. Although Jinping has been consolidating power quite successfully, this does not qualify him to be a dictator quite yet.

> What can a dictator do that Xi Jinping can't?

Stay in power for as long as he wants, and then pass the leadership to his child.

It's unclear that Xi cannot pull that off.

This is simplistic and short term thinking.

Companies can help to progress the cause of free speech in oppressive lands over the long term. Yes, Apple is not going to facilitate VPN usage but the wealth of content and learning opportunities provided by mobile apps is also worth something.

> Companies can help to progress the cause of free speech in oppressive lands

Only if it makes business sense - i.e. changing government in that "oppressive lands" will lead to more business. If it would lead to less profit, or risk existing positions, nothing will be done.

Alternative title:

Apple complies with law in countries where it operates.

Saying that that it complies with the local laws is a weak argument. This is about moral and ethics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_legislation_in_pre...

The alternative is to stop doing business in China, is that what you want Apple to do?

I'm saying that this is a weak argument:

    Apple complies with law in countries where it operates.

Instead one should value the act itself:

    Is it right or wrong to aid in restricting ~1b people's access to knowledge and information 
    about their government's past deeds[1], current affairs[2], corruption[3], etc.

I think it's wrong, other may think it's right.

But saying they're following local laws is similar to saying that someone is just respecting German WW2-laws on Jews or apartheid in South Africa.

---

[1] Tiananmen Square

[2] Food safety (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal)

[3] High-official corruption (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/world/asia/china-blocks-we...)

The entire Apple platform is designed to restrict the user and prevent anything that Apple doesn't want to happen from happening. This is Apple's decision only and it's in line with all their other decisions that restrict a user's freedom on their closed, non free platform. If people wanted a platform that would run whatever software they wanted without restrictions, they shouldn't have bought Apple period. That's just dumb to expect a closed, non free platform that censors by default to suddenly do a 180 turn and become free. But hey, it's not like people haven't been saying this for decades now is it? Oh right, people like RMS have but most consumers are too stupid to listen. This is the outcome.

I see a lot of very cogent arguments defending Apple as only following the law when it comes to VPN laws of China.

I'm not old enough to know this first hand but I believe the anti-apartheid movement against South Africa was started by students and spread to the corporate world before world governments stepped up to ban doing business with South Africa.

This seems to be a specific example of corporate advocacy leading governmental policy.

If the Chinese government's rule over the Chinese people is so egregious to the world, I think Apple would be on solid ground if they refused to do business in China and also refused to do business with Chinese companies outside China.

>I think Apple would be on solid ground if they refused to do business in China

It's not about Apple being on solid ground with anyone. It's about wether Tim Cook can keep his job if shareholders flip their shit.

Their shareholders would flip out, no? Even the Chinese people who don’t support the govt would lament the loss of using the phone.

I doubt this very, very much.

It's a phone, not a body part.

They probably had to do it to keep the official store available in China, but this is why supporting side-loading of apps like Android does would be a good idea.

At what point does Apple itself bear some responsibility for censoring people?

EDIT: Would downvoters please explain their objection to the question? "Apple isn't to blame" and some thoughtful elaboration would be better than just downvoting.

As far as I've read, Apple have always censored what can appear in their App Store, and have never allowed ordinary users of their IOS devices to get software from any other source. At the same time they siphon off 30% of the revenues. I'm surprised that anyone accepts these terms, but in any case there doesn't seem to be anything new here.

You either follow local laws or you leave. How did it work out for Google? Google took a stand and now they’re going back.

Parent didn't suggest otherwise. Maybe it's better, i.e. the right thing to do, to leave a market in an oppressive land?

Personally I think more of Google for doing that.

Google went back to China. They have offices and employees.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/07/google-is-going-on-a-hiring-...

Those offices were never shutdown...well the one in wudaokou wasn't. They did leave the search market, and most of their services are blocked by the gfw, but google never "left china" completely.

To my knowledge, there are no Google services in China.

Are search, gmail, Play Store, etc working?

Those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

The USA is hardly a shining example of a country the rest of the world should be following right now. It is doing plenty of oppressive things that many of us in the rest of world don't agree with e.g. Paris accord, incarceration rates, threats against the press.

I don't agree with what China is doing but the "right thing to do" is never so simple.

The use of what aboutism and moral highground logical fallacies look extremely crass, especially on HN.

Nobody thinks the USA is perfect. But there is no comparison with China. Having a lot of violent crime and putting many people behind bars is nothing like mass executing prisoners to take their organs for profit. Openly arresting dissident jounalists is nothing like whatever imaginary 'threats' you're talking about. No country of size, diversity and importance has ever been or will ever be a moral utopia. Let's keep some perspective as we try to optimize within this reality.

What would you have us do, then? What would you have Apple, or the United States as a whole, to bring China's policies more in line with your preferences? You seem to have some opinions on this subject, after all. Perhaps you'd like to share them.

I don't think anyone from any country can honestly say their products are free, open and willing to push back against governments anymore (anyone with a correction though I would be more than happy to see, so that I can support that company.)

Edit:(quick -i wanted to follow up after hitting post)

We shouldn't ever make arguments such as 'well x is worse' because that just detracts from the issue.

The problem is a company voluntarily giving up a particular service(or disallowing in this case), due to local laws that we (I'm sure as a majority on hn) disagree with. This is the issue, not that any particular goverent or president/prime minister or whatever is wrong or an idiot.

How did that work out for IBM?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_during_World_War_II

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but didn't Google leave China primarily because of the Chinese hack/theft of their intellectual property? Not because of a local legal dispute..

"I was just following orders..."

Not appropriate. Apple is not directly killing people.

And in this case they are simply following the law.

What if killing people is "following the law"? It's happened a few times in history.

Or if that is too big a pill to swallow, what if collecting runaways is "following the law", when they are to be executed?

What about monitoring communication for death penalty offenses? (speaking against the state)

Isn't it wonderful that the iPhone is a walled garden, and with the flick of a switch, an entire category of software cannot be ran on it?

The fact that this switch exists is the real tragedy here - not the fact that Apple chose to use it.

Tech companies must play a long political game and spend their vast fortunes to lobby, to own media and influence policy and control the message.

Once they do this the will no longer be in conflict with governments and their policy.

Take note in coming years as the tech barons buy up media to control the message.

They will of course do this and then the real problem will not be uppity governments but mega tech corporations who semi covertly run the world.

I love this summary from n-gate.com about this thread

"Apple complies with the law. Hackernews experiences cognitive dissonance at the thought that there might be an organization capable of telling Apple what to do. Many thought experiments are performed to try to imagine a world where a corporation might give a shit about human rights. China's secret police show up incognito to explain that anyone who disapproves of Chinese law is probably a Nazi. The rest of the thread is fanfiction about Tim Cook personally exorcising the evil from Beijing."

Profits before people, the Apple motto.

To all in HN:

It is a huge market which helping the people in China break the GFW (Great Fire Wall). You can start a startup for that :)

This is awful, but in England and America, I foresee similar policies will come - in the name of law, safety, and security.

Neither America nor the U.K. have national firewalls in place.

Yet. Theresa May would build one right away if she could (and the first steps are being taken)

If she could. But they would need to build those first before considering the next step of blocking VPNs. See austrailia at risk also. I doubt it would ever happen in America, however.

And yet Apple already polices you for any kind of content you might deem offensive / objectionable or not "family friendly" enough on your iOS device.

Yes. But Apple is a private company, that is there prerogative.

The Digital Economy Bill in the UK is a first step towards a national firewall. There are also plenty of sites (torrent sites mostly) which ISP's are forced to prevent access to in the UK.

But with Windows/Linux its still possible to install apps on you own, unlike the locked down app store.

It's not very surprising considering that it's the local law and everyone will have to follow it or get out...

It isn't going to actually prevent anyone from tunneling past the great firewall of course, so it's more like a gesture than an actual effective decision from the government.

So much for 'Think Different', huh?

https://thisisnotadvertising.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/nel...

Doesn't iPhone supports native VPN in Settings ? How are they going to prevent users from using that ? I mean it's not as easy as downloading a dedicated app and logging in but using the Settings app is not much of a work.

Couldn't you just do this in China? https://www.imore.com/how-configure-vpn-access-your-iphone-o...

The problem is that none of the default protocols work in China. Either they are blocked via DPI in combination with techniques like TCP RST injection / null-routing of the destination IPs, or they are known to be insecure, like PPTP (which is why it is removed in iOS 10)

I was able to use gmail, skype, etc with some pretty basic vpn knowledge in China.

I always wonder about Hong Kong now that it is under the one country two systems - basically, I wonder if internet censorship will be lessened before HK internet openness disappears.

Apple is free to do what it wants, I'm free not to buy their stuff.

If you're going to take an "I'll not support Apple cause it complies with Chinese law" position, the ill respect your stance if you stop consuming all Chinese made products. Unless of course you're position is a deeply selective one.

I assume they are still allowing manual VPN configurations right? They are only removing apps that configure it automatically for you. Not downplaying the impact of this, just clarifying.

No, there are other apps that implemented other types of VPN using https://developer.apple.com/documentation/networkextension

There are many VPN apps that based on ShadowSocks.

Terrible news.

So lets start tackling the problem and figuring out ways to help the averave Chinese person evade censorhip without developer accounts and the knowledge to compile...

Apple tailors to countries. They made an iOS without facetime for Dubai specifically.

It's a good thing, however, that they are fighting for privacy where they can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I

Stallman was right.

Perhaps some free-speech provision should be part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 19 protects free expression.

so they just blithely ignore that, got it

Russia is next. They just have passed a law to ban VPNs and anonymous proxies.

I wonder what Orwell would have thought of modern China.

Seems that Apple is just following, with much delay, the law of People's Republic of China. I don't understand why some people think companies should be above the law.

> I don't understand why some people think companies should be above the law.

I think certain aspects of justice are above legal frameworks. For instance, slavery is wrong no matter what the law says. Companies like Apple, by lobbying the government for various non-business things (gay rights, climate change, etc.), recognize this.

I think wholesale restriction and manipulation of political speech is just wrong even if it is legally mandatory. And, while understandable, I'm not sure (still chewing it over) it's a valid excuse to say that we were just complying with the law.

> For instance, slavery is wrong no matter what the law says.

I hope you realize that you are only saying this because you happen to be born at this particular point in human civilization.

For a very long time, people thought slavery is right, including the people who wrote your constitution (assuming your are from US). It is easy to say that slavery is wrong now, but not in 18th century in the US. Think of China as the US, a few centuries ago, when human rights are still a concept being explored.

> I hope you realize that you are only saying this because you happen to be born at this particular point in human civilization.

And you're only saying that because you were born when and where you were. It's not universally accepted that ethics are relative like that.

Otherwise I'm not sure what you're saying. That slavery was relatively OK in the 18th century so Apple enforcing government censorship is now, too?

It's also worth pointing out that colonial contemporaries were appalled by slavery, though they didn't have the power to universally outlaw it.

Right, but nobody is saying we should force China to do anything, we are speaking about Apple, which is not a Chinese company.

> For instance, slavery is wrong no matter what the law says. Companies like Apple,

While FOXCONN is not slavery, outsourcing work to countries where you can pay incredibly poor people unethically low wages to create expensive products is hardly a good indicator that a company will stand up to laws that don't affect their bottom line.

Does Foxconn pay unethically low wages? The base pay for 40h/week is ~$400/month. In my Western European country, minimum wage is ~$660/month. The difference doesn't seem that much.

Gay rights/climate change aren't great examples. Those are areas Apple can lobby for change and make their own internal changes without breaking the law.

Take something Apple says it stands for - privacy. They will stand up for users to a point but they will not break the law. They will lobby and create technical solutions but they will not deny or disclose a national security letter no matter how BS or immoral the request may be. This is the same thing. By distributing VPN apps they break the law. They can still lobby for change or potentially come up with a technical solution that allows users to bypass the great firewall but does not break Chinese law (although I don't see how that's possible).

Apple regularly boast about how they are a privacy focused company and just want the best for their consumers by enforcing tight restrictions on all apps. You have no other possibility to install apps on an Apple device but the App Store. Now they effectively block privacy-focused tools in a country that is known to jail everyone that speaks against authorities. That doesn't line up with their rhetoric and people see the hypocrisy.

Because it's a very bad law by a single party government that is a bit notorious by now. Apple also is so big on freedom, rights, LGBT, etc. but at the same time deals with countries that respect none of that.

In any case, go to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14679276 and you'll see people calling for US companies to deny service to all Germans and overthrow their liberal democratic and otherwise stable government that way, all this for just wanting to ban online hate speech that is already illegal everywhere else in Germany.

Just don't say US companies shouldn't topple allied democratic liberal foreign governments that do little to no wrong on their citizens or you'll get downvoted like I did.

Is it reasonable to assume you're a citizen of the PRC?

Hey Timmy, what was all that talk about customer security?

https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/

And here I was, almost believing you.

You're a coward.

> You're a coward.

What are you talking about? Didn't they remove headphones hack in iPhone 7?

To nitpick your argument, this doesn't change customer security in the way that letter discusses. Apple is still protecting the devices they sell, it's just unfortunate thay China implements network-level controls at a national level, beyond the device.

This is just unfortunately a step in the wrong direction of free speech that Apple could have combated had they wanted. That said, the great firewall crushes VPNs fairly easy anyway, so I don't think it's as big a loss as people are making out.

>You're a coward.

While you're calling another man a coward for not living your values, I'm wondering what you've done to stand up against China that's so fucking brave.

> for not living your values

He is pointing out that they are supposedly cook's own values.

the point is the hypocrisy of Cook and Apple. It's valid criticism even if the poster hasn't been run over by a tank.

Me irl

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man

> While you're calling another man a coward for not living your values, I'm wondering what you've done to stand up against China that's so fucking brave.

Well for one thing, I didn't remove vpn apps from my app store.

> You're a coward.

No, he's a Chief Executive. If the Chief Executive can make more money by saying Apple is going to bat for gay people (in America, so bold! so brave! /s) or for your privacy, then the Chief is going to say it.

You're at fault for taking them on their word. What you needed was a contract, not an open letter.

I know how these things work note the almost.

I was ready to point that "coward" also should be prefixed with "almost" then, but then I read that link:

>We have great respect for the professionals at the FBI, and we believe their intentions are good. Up to this point, we have done everything that is both within our power and within the law to help them. But now the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone.

[emphasis mine]

I think you read what you wanted to read, not what was written. What exactly did you almost believe? There is no "we'll fight to death against all laws and leave markets on failure". There is respect to the agency and "please, no" to non-lawful demands. Maximizing this the other way to "I didn't believe anyway" is just a denial. They have mutually benefical intents, but they ain't no force against a man with a law in one hand and loaded gun in the other. They live in reality.

If we only stopped turn claims upside down, the world already would be much better place despite local goverment vectors.

What would Steve Jobs do?

The same. Disobey the government in china, stop making money.

This is horrible, but in England and America, I'm 100% certain that similar policies will be applied - in the name of law, and public security.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14880796

Deja vu?

I find all this outrage about Apple not taking a stand highly amusing.

Practically every single product used in the western world is made in China. Please report back if you can get rid of all those products at a _personal_ level. For a start, looks like I have throw this laptop away. Not going to happen.

The mere use of Chinese products is not the problem being discussed.

Next China will outlaw Linux for having an IPSec implementation in it, lol. What a sad country that believes liberty comes after wealth, and in relative terms may never have either.

GFW managed to screw IPSec ages ago. It is also worth pointing out that the GFW itself is built on top of Linux systems.

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