Apple Censoring the News App
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It's China that is censoring the news here. But for some reason we're mainly blaming Apple for it? It's makes no sense.
And what the heck does the API Apple uses to determine location have to do with it? If Apple had the choice, they would use no API to censor the news.
Anyway, for the people who really are worried about censorship (I am) it's worth understanding and acknowledging what's actually going on here. This problem is not an Apple problem and if you try to treat it like one, that's actually worse than doing nothing at all since it draws attention away from the actual problem.
(There are Apple problems, of course, but this isn't one of them.) This is a big China problem.
To say it another way, there are multiple parties doing multiple wrongs here.
Keep in mind that we're talking about China. If Apple pulls out, there's no shortage of Chinese companies that the Chinese government is buddy-buddy with who will happily go all-in on spying on consumers.
Apple obeys Chinese regulations, but it's reasonable to assume (based on their actions in the US) that they don't enjoy it. Which means they're not going to go out of their way to give the Chinese government more than they need to. This is potentially in contrast with the Chinese technology companies who would be more than happy to provide extra data to the government.
Apple is able to hold their position in China only because they comply with regulations, but in so doing they provide consumers with a better option than going through any of the Chinese government-friendly companies. Yes, it sucks that they have to comply, but in a scenario where Apple either chooses or is forced to withdraw from China it is the Chinese consumers who will suffer the most, because they will be left with only government-friendly alternatives.
But I don't have a problem with Apple here, because they did exactly that - they're not providing their News app/service in China at all, rather than providing a censored version where they would be implementing the censorship. Yes, this means that local competitors will offer their own apps, likely censored even more. And it's up to Chinese citizens to hold them to account. But when it comes to American companies, it's our job to do so.
Apple is going above and beyond China’s legal requirements in censorship, censoring news voluntarily in their News app on US phones with US SIM cards when used in China-phones that can access normal news websites without censorship just fine outside of the News app.
This is a behavior specific to Apple’s new product, which has not launched for Chinese users at all yet.
China doesn’t want certain information within its borders. If you could “smuggle” it via outside phone + outside SIM, it makes all protections worthless.
Same with Netflix: even though I pay with credit card from Europe, when physically (IP-wise) in US I can see the US catalog.
But Apple is censoring content on US phones with US SIM cards while they're physically located inside China, which is a huge departure from established practice, and isn't actually useful since the same non-Chinese phone can access all the same news sites via Safari.
The idea that Apple is controlling things here does not make sense. Obviously, if Apple had the choice they wouldn't censor Apple News at all.
We know Apple isn't blocking Apple news voluntarily in China because if they were, they would choose to block it other places too. In fact, blocking it everywhere would be trivially easy and very cheap: they would simply not have a News app at all.
If you don't like Apple's publishing standards, then by all means object as vociferously as you see fit. Just don't get that confused with the Chinese government's control of information.
This is exemplified by this above-and-beyond blocking, as well as their censorship of entirely legal content (e.g. nudity) in the US app store.
I would have much less issue with them if there were a setting to install an alternative app store on the iPhone; then it would simply be editorializing. As it stands there is no way for me to persist e.g. a gay porn app on my iPhone, and that crosses the line into voluntary censorship of legal content by Apple.
> ...censoring news voluntarily...
That just doesn't make sense. If Apple wanted to censor their News app, there's no reason they would restrict themselves to China. They could "block" it everywhere, if that's what they wanted to do -- by simply not having a News app at all.
Does anyone know if this claim is true? I would have assumed this is as simple as serving the not allowed response to any request from a Chinese address range, and it seems like it would be easy to test using a VPN.
(In general, while I don't approve of censorship this seems like an odd hill to die on — the problem is that a repressive government is still sovereign and there aren't exactly many options for a company with such extensive business ties other than complying with that government's laws within its borders)
>This censorship occurs despite the fact that when in China a cell phone using a foreign SIM is not subject to the firewall restrictions (all traffic is tunneled back to your provider first), so Google, Twitter, Facebook, et al all work fine on a non-mainland China SIM even though you’re connected via China Mobile or China Unicom’s network.
If you want low latency roaming in China, state owned China Mobile will sell you a solution for that:
https://www.larrysalibra.com/hop-over-the-great-firewall-with-government-help/For a moment, I thought you were claiming to be one of a group of Sims.
My limited understanding (from one uni course) is mobile devices get a secondary identifier that the networks use for the actual routing process. While a device may officially identify as having a US IP address, the cell carriers communicate a secondary, current IP address/identifier local to the device's current position.
It's much like how DNS works. You don't route all traffic through a DNS server. You send it a readable name, then communicated directly with the IP address that's returned.
In 3G/LTE network there are terms called Gn interface, Gi Interface, Gp interface and many others. Gn is to manage your mobility. From Gi you will get local ip address and internet access. From Gp you will be routed to you own cellular operator Gp interface.
When you are on your original cellular operator network, you will be served by Gn and Gi interface for your internet access. When you are roaming, you will be served by Gn and Gp interface of local cellular operator that will forward to your original cellular operator’s Gp. After that it will routed to Gi interface of your original cellular operator.
edited: Gn function
IIRC the carriers do this for billing/metering reasons; otherwise they wouldn't have any idea how much data you're using while roaming, and would have to blindly trust whatever the partner carrier tells them.
What I'd like to see is way for the visiting operator to charge little and route my packets directly to internet. I remember reading that this mode is also supported by the specs
iOS disables Apple news based on the mobile country code / network code and not on the name in my experience.
If your iOS device doesn’t have cellular capability or if it is in airplane mode, it uses Ip addresses. This means you can enable airplane mode and connect to a vpn over Wi-Fi and circumvent the censorship.
The mechanism that does this appears to be the same mechanism that disables “global” Apple maps and switches to Apple maps provided by Chinese map maker Autonavi.
I wrote this post at the time the explains the censorship behavior which hasn’t changed.
https://www.larrysalibra.com/how-apple-censors-news-in-china...
I always believed in absolute freedom of expression. I cheered Google when they prioritized values over revenues and abandoned mainland China because of censorship requirements.
But maybe I need to update my beliefs based on new evidence.
When free expression enables disinformation campaigns, when false rumors get amplified into mob violence, when stochastic terror organizes online, maybe the side effects of unlimited free expression are too severe for a modern civilization.
Is it completely unreasonable to think that there might be something to learn from China's policies of censorship and social control?
Society (and humanity) at large doesn't actually need the internet to do this. You already know about the LA riots in 1991 (and civil unrest before that); that wasn't organized over the Internet and yet was much more destructive than any riot in the US since then.
Cults (Jonestown, scientology), domestic terrorism (the Oklahoma City bombing, among others), and anti-woman violence (Polytechnique) all predate the rise of the mass-market Internet. Meanwhile, as opposed to the crime waves of the 80s and 90s the planet is a significantly safer place than it was then.
Contrast what China did 2 years earlier; they didn't need the Internet to murder hundreds of peaceful protestors in Tiananmen Square. Or the concentration camps jailing people simply for existing (and chopping them up for organs), or the Great Leap Forward that managed to kill more people through starvation than there were casualties in WW2 (and other disastrous and unprotestable policies).
That's what policies of censorship and social control get you- people who can't speak up or forget how to cause catastrophe after catastrophe. People who actually have to think once in a while perform better, and people who are better at that tend to bring prosperity wherever they go, so they concentrate in countries where that ability is rewarded the most. Even though members of a more tolerant society mess up, they don't tend to turn into institutional mass murder (whereas that's exactly what happens in unfree societies like China's).
>the side effects of unlimited free expression are too severe for a modern civilization.
This has some truth to it; the 24-hour news cycle should be regulated because the direct result of its existence deludes members of society into thinking it's more dangerous than ever before when the exact opposite is true. But that's about all the truth it has.
Luckily, we can read the articles written by people who investigate claims of vast online disinformation campaigns, and discover they are false. That's because there's not much censorship in the west. We can learn that the mainstream, 'official' narrative is false.
In China you'd never read about any claims that contradict the official narrative. You'd maybe suspect there was something wrong with it, but have no good way to prove it.
BTW I don't know what "stochastic terror" is. But you sound pretty scared. Maybe you've fallen victim to it ;)
Stochastic terror is the term for a situation where pro-violent rhetoric runs rampant in a community and occasionally one of its listeners "randomly" commits a violent physicial act.
Yes, it is completely unreasonable to think that there might be something to learn from the Chinese Communist Party's policies of censorship and social control.
That's not what I said. I said "there might be something to learn".
Maybe my belief in unlimited free expression at any cost isn't the best way.
Must we must allow terrorist recruiting and incitement to violence and state-sponsored disinformation campaigns and targeted intimidation?
It's a slippery slope fallacy to assume that any restriction inevitably leads to relinquishing "all freedoms".
(https://theintercept.com/2017/08/29/in-europe-hate-speech-la...)
The problem, as usual, is that there's no "we" in "must we allow". You're not actually the person who's going to be doing the allowing - best case, if you live in a non-corrupt democracy, you'll be voluntarily giving that authority to somebody else; and not even to a specific person, but a role. If the bounds of that authority are too specific, it becomes useless in practice because it's easy to avoid its scope. If they are too vague, and the precise bounds are left to the discretion of the enforcers, it just gives them another channel to manifest their biases.
Not that I agree with Chinese practices.
So should Apple News allow Nazi stories in Germany? Should they allow stories disparaging the Thai king in a Thailand? Should they allow speech that creates an immediate threat to a person in the US? Should Apple pay taxes? Should Apple prohibit child porn?
All of these are examples of “kowtowing” to governments. What’s the difference between kowtowing and following the law? How can someone expect Apple to pay a “fair share” of EU taxes but then expect them to not follow Chinese law? If a company boycotts countries based on ideology, pretty soon every country gets boycotted over something or another. There are exactly zero perfect countries.
> This censorship occurs despite the fact that when in China a cell phone using a foreign SIM is not subject to the firewall restrictions (all traffic is tunneled back to your provider first), so Google, Twitter, Facebook, et al all work fine on a non-mainland China SIM even though you’re connected via China Mobile or China Unicom’s network
Should they allow stories disparaging the Thai king in Thailand [or anywhere]? Yes.
Should they allow speech that creates an immediate threat to a person the the US [or anywhere]? No.
Should they pay taxes? Yes. (This isn't about principles; this is just about following local financial laws where you operate.)
Should they prohibit child porn? Yes.
Should they allow Nazi stories in Germany [or anywhere]? I'm actually not sure where I personally stand on this, but I imagine people with decision-making ability at Apple may have a strong stance on this, and they should decide for themselves.
Note that all of this is a reflection of my sense of morality and ethics. I don't expect everyone to share it; obviously my sense of right and wrong has been heavily influenced by where and how I've grown up. But I would like Apple (and all companies, really) to take a consistent, principled stance based on the values they want to display as a company. And if that closes some markets to them, then so be it.
I believe censorship is fundamentally abhorrent, China's example of it insidiously so.
Regardless of the merit of the argument of Apple censoring News in China, this is a stupid argument. For Apple, there is no private API: they wrote the thing themselves; for privacy they prevent third-party applications from accessing it. What would you like them to do, remove the API entirely or open it to third-party developers?
Instead, the author does some overly verbose and hot take dance to propagate clickbait, which is then shockingly submitted to HN. Call this garbage for what it is.
FTFY
I used to use News App with U.S. sim card, but the restriction got tighter and tighter.
In part, it's because Google's business practices involve collecting all the information they can on users. I don't spend much time worrying about China (or other governments for that matter), but if I did, Google and Facebook would top my list of companies that I would be critical of.
Same for Amazon, who runs a whole racist region (GovCloud) which only employs US citizens.
Do we really believe that the way to circumvent all of China's internal internet control is for someone to just buy an iPhone? There are Uighurs in Xingjiang who own iPhones right now. Should they believe that iMessage in China is end-to-end secure and not worry that the government can obtain access? Based on the assurances of Tim Cook?
The point is, Apple sells Privacy everywhere as their brand, but in China, has deprived their users of most means of attaining it, either by making their own offerings less secure, or by banning from their App Store, any third party apps that could let their users have privacy from the government.
And then Tim Cook went to China and praised the government for it's vision of an open internet: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/12/04...
A lot of excuses being made for Apple not living up to their principles in China and kowtowing to the almighty dollar (or renminbi in this circumstance)
But I agree that Apple seems to get a pass here and in the news coverage as well. Perhaps because Apple is more established or because Tim Cook has better connections with media and government? Or maybe they hire the best PR firms.
But rather than focusing on individual firms, I think we should be focusing on the monopolies these tech giants are creating and the dangerous it can be for society if they aren't "fair" actors. And if we want, we should expand it beyond tech to banking, agriculture, media, etc.
Just a few years ago we were worrying about "too-big-to-fail". And here we are with endless mergers and ever greater concentration of wealth and power and influence.
Whatever China wants includes concentration camps on the same order of magnitude as the Holocaust (they're not death camps, just imprison over 1 million people based on ethnicity alone.) It includes a social score that is similar to America's no fly list, except extending to rail and not restricted to a few thousand people. Simply mentioning the anniversary date of tiananman square over any chat network (such as whatsapp, or wechat) would get your Internet cut off immediately. Free speech is such that you cannot publish a childish caricature (of their president as a teddy bear). And Google says here is every query by every user, by phone number. Go wild.
On the outrage-o-meter Google's dragonfly is like a surprise thermonuclear strike against an unsuspecting populated city during peacetime. Apple not showing news is like a guy grimacing at you, shaking his head in disgust, and turning on his heels and walking away.
This article came up when I searched it:
https://theintercept.com/2018/09/14/google-china-prototype-l...
>GOOGLE CHINA PROTOTYPE LINKS SEARCHES TO PHONE NUMBERS
>GOOGLE BUILT A prototype of a censored search engine for China that links users’ searches to their personal phone numbers, thus making it easier for the Chinese government to monitor people’s queries, The Intercept can reveal.
...
>Sources familiar with the project said that prototypes of the search engine linked the search app on a user’s Android smartphone with their phone number.
...
>“Linking searches to a phone number would make it much harder for people to avoid the kind of overreaching government surveillance that is pervasive in China.”
...
>The search engine would be operated as part of a “joint venture” partnership with a company based in mainland China, according to sources familiar with the project.
--
The Guardian's article leads with these sentences: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/18/google-ch...
>Google's prototype Chinese search engine links searches to phone numbers
>Google’s secret prototype search engine for China reportedly links users’ mobile phone numbers to what search terms they’ve used.
>This feature would allow the Chinese government to simply associate searches with individuals, thereby putting Chinese citizens at increased risk of government repression if they search for topics that their government deems politically sensitive, according to the Intercept.
So Apple allowing China what is essentially unrestricted access to iCloud data is not[0,1]? For honesty's sake, let's not cherry-pick.
That high-horse you're on only works when applied evenly and without prejudice.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/04/apple-...
[1] https://qz.com/1176376/apples-icloud-service-in-china-will-b...
By the way, can you be more specific about iCloud? The Dragonfly claim is that Google would be sharing a list of search queries per telephone number with a state company, to use however they want. Can you be clear regarding the equivalent iCloud functionality? (I don't doubt you, just interested in where the abuse would happen.) Could you give an example?
They might be the same broad concept, but I think it’s a much larger conversation than just following orders.
I don’t agree with the decision to censor in China but it feels like an unrealistic comparison to make here.
Apple seems willing to disregard American laws regarding backdoors, national security, and access to device information.
I find it interesting that we're all proud that Apple will "stand up" to the US federal government and resist attacks on privacy and liberties, but then so many turn around justify them doing the exact opposite in China. "Well, when in Rome..." sounds like an awfully convenient rationalization as well.
Which American law did they disregard? Unilateral opinions from one branch of government are not "laws".
This isn't an Apples to apples comparison.
If you’re taking about the case with the San Bernadino shooter, they challenged the FBI in a court of law, which is exactly how something like that should be handled, is it not?
As for China, if it was my choice, I wouldn’t do any business in China if I was a company that stands up for privacy. But that’s probably why I don’t run a trillion dollar company.
It's not a good thing for Apple to be innovating on ways to enforce Chinese censorship (although if I understand correctly, it doesn't matter—China could already censor roaming cell traffic, they just choose not to).
Really? Travelers with a foreign cell phone and foreign SIM are excepted from Chinese censorship laws? I find this very difficult to believe. It's more likely that censorship laws are simply more difficult to enforce on travelers, which doesn't make it any more legal.
The reverse is also true: a Chinese mobile number, even while roaming in the US, will still be subject to the Great Firewall.