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Comment by bhaavan | Hacker News Reader

My guess is one of the major reasons for having the exit nodes in the same geo location as entry nodes is to have continuous operations in China. Without this constraint, they would have allowed chinese consumers to access the free web, which would ban them instantaneously.

I don't think Apple cares as much about video content providers, though.

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That’s not the reason. In China, Myanmar, Egypt, and several other countries this service will not be available at all. Those customers will just have regular old iCloud.

A more likely reason is that video streaming services with georestrictions like Netflix, Amazon, or BBC would have lost their minds.

It wouldn't have been too hard to just implement this feature for chinese customers if that was the only driver.

But I agree that making the exit node in the same country probably goes beyond video content providers, it avoids all sorts of potential legal, diplomatic and practical issues.

> I don't think Apple cares as much about video content providers, though.

Not being able to watch Netflix, Amazon Video etc. in Safari seems like something Apple would in fact care about.

Not if it gets them banned in those countries.

HBO is blocking Private Relay regardless.

Only for now. When it rolls out widely, Apple's sheer scale will most likely force the issue.

I doubt it, unless HBO and Apple are able to come to some assurance on it.

I don’t think this service is being offered in China, period.

Apple also isn't in the business of people bypass region restrictions. This seems focused on privacy.

Apple has always given in to China's demands. A few years ago they even moved their entire Asian iCloud datacenter to the China mainland after the government issued some vague complaints about "nationalism" and "security".

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