AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes
twitter.com
twitter.com
Having it open to everyone for only a limited amount of time actually kind of seems like the right thing, but it's hard to come up with a legit explanation for why they rushed that change to China first.
1: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/11/netizen-voices-apple-r...
They don't, for instance, have the flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, instead using the flag of the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
Yandex is an interesting showcase of how bad this can get - they literally dropped country borders from their maps last year "for better user experience". And I don't mean just lines that you normally see while browsing the map, but even when you ask for it deliberately. For example, if you look up a city, you get its territory highlighted on the map - but that's not the case for countries, it just puts a marker "somewhere in the middle".
They also removed administrative regional boundaries without announcing that change - probably because looking up regions at the border would have to include a part of said border into the displayed boundary, making it discoverable.
Or maybe more ideas are also in play? Perhaps recognizing the existing power dynamics? Perhaps playing the game over a longer time frame?
Not all ethicists recommend "dying on your sword" so to speak. Sometimes it is useful to maintain influence and fight another day. These things are far from simple.
If you want Apple to push back on censorship in China, let's talk about the details. What would China likely do in return?
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HKmap.live
² https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/apple-telegram-belarus/
³ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/google-apple-remove-nav...
⁴ Check the bio: https://twitter.com/tim_cook
by "power dynamics", do you mean lies propagated by the CCP?
> Perhaps playing the game over a longer time frame?
Apple isn't a government. What do you mean here exactly? Money? That propagating lies for money is a legitimate way of doing business?
If one believes Elon Musk's view of the Twitter situation with the app store, Apple seems to be for more censorship!
Unfortunately, <queue some made up story from Apple's PR team about how some soldier's lives were saved by limiting AirDrop time to exactly 10 minutes>.
This is absurd. Apple is doing this because of government pressure, not because of their own desire to crack down.
You're trying to paint Apple as a helpless victim here, but they didn't get blindsided by CCP tyranny. The company has spent years developing this exact situation and repeatedly choose to do the bidding of the Chinese government.
"Just following orders" is a pitiful excuse, and even worse when the orders are coming from an oppressive foreign government.
> Apple won’t admit why this change is being made in China, but the peer-to-peer nature of AirDrop has made it popular for spreading anti-government protest material, and hopping into your settings every 10 minutes to re-enable the ability to receive AirDrop from strangers makes it a lot less useful for that.
Then it can be default "contacts only" and you can turn to everyone with a single press, and it turns itself back off.
It was brought in because of protests in mainland China. Just not because of the current ones, but previous ones.
Not hard at all.
On Oct 13, 2022 this protest happened (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Sitong_Bridge_protest), which the CCP considered a serious offense, potentially on the same level of the 1989 protest.
At the time people, especially college students around that area (lots of universities nearby), were using AirDrop to share photos of the protest, because social medium was heavily censored. University administrators were tasked to make sure iPhone-carrying students to disable allowing AirDrop from everyone to stop the spread of the images.
A few weeks later, iOS public betas were found to come with the change to limiting AirDrop to 10 minutes, and nothing about it was ever mentioned in release note.
Was Apple pressured by the CCP to rush this? I don't know. Look at the evidence and judge by yourself.
But there's a more nuanced perspective.
It is rumored that CCP has the ability to actually track and uncover the identity of iOS devices sending AirDrop. Think about it: how else AirDrop can limit to receive from contacts only? If so, AirDrop would provide a false sense of anonymity and deniability, and Apple would put some of its customers in jeopardy if they do nothing.
By limiting AirDrop from everyone to 10 minutes, Apple achieved three objectives:
1. They showed compliance (they have to, if they want to keep the business in China); 2. They avoided the potential reputation damage in the scenario where protesters are caught AirDropping offensive materials (e.g. “iPhones aren't as secure as Apple advertises after all”); 3. They closed a loophole in which people get spammed (yes, allowing AirDrop from everyone gets you mostly spams anyway).
The “mistake” Apple made was that it did not a) rush the change to all regions, and b) mention it explicitly in release note, therefore completely exposed them to the first objective and failed to convey the nuances.
Adding one more option could make some sense, but it's weird anyways. Why arbitrary 10 minutes? How turning it for 10 minutes in a crowded place is better than turning it on for an hour? It's silly.
Force 10 minutes with no optoon to turn it back? Yeah...
> but it's hard to come up with a legit explanation for why they rushed that change to China first.
The China told them to and they complied. They have every interest in China's government keeping their people in check so the Apple factory production continues without problems.
Follow the money and all that
The ability for dissidents to airdrop messages to passers-by seems silly as well. All of a sudden spamming people is good due to the content of the message? Never mind that there's nothing stopping the other side from doing the same thing.
It ultimately feels to me like the country that's always in the news for hackers and ubiquitous surveillance should be the last place in the world you want to have AirDrop on, period. Even the contacts-only mode has leaked personal information in the past.
I’ve gotten AirDrop spam here in America and welcome this change.
There's nothing you can do to keep it working as it did, due to iOS being so incredibly locked down. Because this has been used as a free-speech feature whether you like it or not, this makes it a very questionable thing to do whether it was done for good causes or bad.
All they would have needed to do was to introduce a new 10 minute option along with the other existing options, and leave the forever option available for those who wanted to keep it and didn't care about spam.
They can easily add a ‘temporary everyone’ button for people that want to use that.
Signal is unsafe for Chinese protesters, since it requires SMS verification upon signup and is therefore linked to your identity.[0] Mesh networks are the only real solution there, and AirDrop is about the only mainstream one. AirDrop has been used by Asian protesters for years.[1] I highly recomment you read the full China Digital Times article, which gives excellent context, and lets these protesters explain the value of AirDrop in their own words.[1]
Apple's timing is unmistakeably suspicious; keep in mind that there have been protests for weeks, which preceded the iOS update.
It must also be pointed out that Apple issued an official statement to Western media outlets that the goal was to prevent spam.[2] At no point did Apple ever admit that this was done to follow any government demand. It's unknown whether Apple could be under a Chinese gag-order, but we shouldn't speculate that it's the case unless experts say it's likely. If Apple is complying with a Chinese government orders, then it has an ethical duty to make that public, and again, we have, as of yet, no reason to assume there are gag orders related to this. Apple deserves criticism for the update, and for trying to hide its true purpose.
[0]: https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/159707255662827929...
[1]: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/11/netizen-voices-apple-r...
[2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-10/apple-lim...
There are gag orders in the US and UK too, which companies have to follow or they are breaking the law. Are they unethical too?
Or do you mean, it is unethical for apple to not tell Americans what the Chinese government has asked them to do within China, to Chinese citizens, in order to benefit from being legally in good standing and able to continue to do commerce within China?
If so, then is it unethical for them to follow US gag orders and not tell the Chinese public?
> If Apple is complying with a Chinese government orders, then it has an ethical duty to make that public, and again, we have, as of yet, no reason to assume there are gag orders related to this.
I am saying that if there's no gag order, they have an ethical duty to reveal why they're doing this.
Considering we live in a world of constantly updating SaaS, where is the ethical obligation to explain changes?
I'm happy to receive a change log that says 10% of what has changed, and generally expect to not get a reason.
How many entire products has Google killed with no explanation?
I have a feeling this is only become a question of "ethics" because this change tangentially touches protests & CCP.
Is Apple being Pro-CCP with this change? If you open airdrop to everyone, your device can be tracked and identified individually. When this setting is disabled, this becomes far harder.
I'm of the opinion that this change is good and actually increases security across the board, including for the people who are using it to exchange information during protests since it disables a vector for tracking devices.
I don't think Apple is Pro-CCP, Apple is Pro-Being-Able-To-Do-Business-In-China, which means doing whatever the CCP tells you to do, even if it means compromising your ethics.
My more cynical view is that there are no ethics to compromise. The ethic is make money. Any appearance of ethics is there as a marketing gimmick.
(Note that I still think Apple would adhere to the CCP's requests/laws just to be able to sell in China. China would ban Apple products if they believed Apple was not cooperative.)
Is disabling a feature for all citizens within a geographical region "compromising your ethics" I would argue not. Different countries have different laws, including what kind of radio spectrum a phone is able to use. These have to be respected. As distasteful as it is, "respecting" the laws of an autocratic country.
Now if Apple was handing over geolocation information for apple users on bulk to the CCP, or compiling lists of "likely" dissidents or <insert-minority-group> then I think we are at least knee-deep in unethical waters. But they'll probably be some people out there who say Apple-the-company is completely ethical unless they themselves are the ones pulling the trigger. I kind of disagree on this outlook, but legally again they might be right. (If you take your ethical/moral bases on that of current law.)
That can already be done using cell towers (especially with 5G) and GPS enabled state-supervised apps like WeChat, etc. So that's not a good reason.
This is arguably a good setting too, as there are plenty of stories of people in other parts of the world who AirDrop lewd/violent/disgusting pictures to anyone around with their phone set to “allow anyone”. It’s happened on planes, for example.
But this is a tool people figured out they could use for a different purpose: spreading info during protests. So now it’s caught up in politics.
For all the “evil Apple”, they’ve been better than others. But they are a total hostage. The vast majority of the stuff is in China. Piss off the CCP and the company practically dies overnight.
Yes, they should have fixed that long ago. But here we are.
action.isEnabled = self.isInChina
For me, this basically feels like lip service to the Chinese government, but otherwise a finger. Maybe I'm beeing too myopic.
Do you know which country manufactures the iPhone?
Apple is not suicidal.
Plus they led everyone know about China in rolling the feature change there first.
This is not in response to this particular protest. iOS16 just dropped, so the timing was coincidental I guess.
If Apple was planning to release this in a point release of iOS 16, and then the Chinese government asked them to do something, then they could have said: “We have a feature in testing that we’d planned to ship later this cycle, so we’ll push that up and soft launch it in China first and then roll it out worldwide once any bugs are hammered out.”
This constructed example both satisfies the condition “why China first?” and also contradicts the assertion “it is certain that Apple implemented this at China’s request”. It is not known whether or not, and to what degree, that Apple considered and/or acted upon a request from China.
(It is also very unlikely that China requested this “after 10 minutes” option specifically. China would rather not have unmonitored peer-to-peer communications, and Apple tends to include temporary timers in their UI for RF/GPS features.)
This already existed. They did not see the current protest and then suddenly released it.
There have been protests via airdrop in china for months.
"The setting was reportedly added after protesters in the country used AirDrop to spread anti-government material."
Most other articles also mention this. I'm not unconvinced this had nothing to do with the feature. I'm just pointing out that this was already in the works. This was not a fast reaction to the current protests.
I don't think this is good. But Apple didn't just roll this out at a whim.
Apple should have hedged years ago, now they’re stuck.
But it gets far more clicks today than weeks ago.
Being pedantic about whether this was was a response to "a previous protest" is like arguing about which specific mosquito caused you to put on bug spray.
It's a mountain of work, which would have kicked off a long time before any of these protests.
See this article about a protest from Peking university from May 2022: https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-shanghai-china-cbcac...
and Shanghai in April 2022: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/shanghai-videos-residents...
And in Henan in June 2022: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-61793149
Maybe even less than that. I can't imagine the prototype would take longer than a day.
If it is low risk, it could make it into a dot release with minimal effort.
But yes, minimum time frame a month standard, maybe a couple weeks if it came from high up (which it did) and was time sensitive.
[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351
[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-ce...
You might say its the same about the "woke culture censorship" but it is not, in the case of the trends that are in mission to design society those people don't shame people out of society or they don't boycott - they physically target people. Many people lost their lives since 2016(The year of Brexit&Trump).
Apple, Google, Samsung, Huawei: they all exist at the pleasure of the state. Please ignore their glitzy PR-laden presentations about protecting people's privacy and upholding human rights. They will sell you out in a second if it's convenient.
On the mobile side of things, we need, at the barest minimum:
- a web based OS with granular permissions for any application that needs to access hardware APIs (just like a web browser)
- a general-purpose mobile SOC that hasn't hitched its wagon to Samsung/Apple/Huawei orders.
- FairPhone style modular, user replaceable parts, and to encourage an interest in self-repair.
- no native-app lock-ins. it's not 2007, the majority of apps people use run fine on a mobile web browser.
- significant efforts to fund tech literacy. More than a billion people have smartphones as their first computing device. They don't have the benefit of past knowledge, so they simply accept the locked-down nature of smartphones without question. Meanwhile in 2011, we could openly port Windows Phone 7, Android OS and the original Windows Mobile 6.5 on the same phone.
The missing part of the puzzle is that phones are much more than an OS. To get a phone, you need an SOC, baseband, drivers, regulatory approval, manufacturing, etc. Those are the missing parts.
I think it's a pretty futile effort to make a completely open phone. Even the richest companies on the planet outsource much of the above. Pretty much every previous effort to make an open phone has failed to make much of anything open beyond the OS, let alone all of it.
No, it's not: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5.
So far, there has only been 3G-ish experimental SDR-based true open hardware, but it's the size of a shoebox, not a phone.
The Librem 5 is the best effort to this date, but the wifi, bluetooth, and baseband software are proprietary, as well as much of the silicon, and part of the boot chain.
There simply aren't any open source options that exist for these components, and due to regulatory constraints, it's unlikely that an open source baseband will exist any time soon.
In my opinion LineageOS should ditch the neverending cycle of trying to keep up with Google's increasingly useless Android releases, just pick a branch point and leave Google behind. It's the only way to implement OS features and be able to maintain them going forward. Then they should focus on features users actually want and that Google would never implement, for example OS level adblock and firewalls.
Instead of other existing attempts that focus on nebulous privacy and security, things that users don't really care about, the focus should be on giving users back the control that Google and Apple have taken away from us. Note that user-control and security can often be seen as being at odds. An OS that chooses user-control could be a strong differentiator that would set it apart from Google/Apple, who always frame their removal of user-control as a security/privacy feature.
But still, the tricky bit is figuring out a funding model.
- The ability to send push notifications without replying on GCM/APN
- Support for mesh networking (multiple low power peer connections)
- Convenient "lockdown" mode that encrypts your phone's contents for international travel
- Included hardware wallet/keystore for signing all data that you upload to social media
(Please, no 'blockchain will solve this' answers!)
What happens when China invades Taiwan? Will they aid our enemy?
I consider decent battery life and a low-latency interface table stakes for a mobile OS. I'd regard the floor for this as Android, though I'm only setting it that low to avoid charges of being contrary (I'm not happy with how much iOS has slipped on this, even, especially latency/responsiveness). It would be billionaire-mintingly novel if a team managed to clear that bar with webtech.
* Apple is not a free speech advocate
* Apple builds their products with unethical labor
My point? Don't oversimplify. Few (any?) people here are claiming that ethics are the key driver. We know the PR and ads are a veneer. But there is no need to exaggerate.
It is clear that in addition to making money, Apple wants to project a certain brand and ethos, not to mention a penchant for big moves. At times, they are willing to risk some profit in order to invest in, say, a new processor technology.
WRT "explanation" / ie interpreting the why behind actions ... Not all large companies make those kind of investments or take these kind of risks. Saying "money" is the only driver fails to account for much of Apple's storied history.
Not to mention prediction... Saying that the profit motive is the best or only way to explain Apple (and many other companies) defies multivariate statistics and won't serve well to predict the future.
Musk does not give a shit about the free speech of left-wingers. Tesla's also even more in bed with China than Apple is; both in terms of exploitative labor practices and China owning their demand. And electric vehicles are just a way to greenwash suburbs.
EDIT: Nevermind, I got confused with another thread that was talking about Tesla. Leaving this comment up for posterity.
There are few if any places capable of manufacturing the amount of products China does for Apple, especially at the price. China is also an enormous market to Apple.
I don't agree with the treatment of protestors or the use of technology to surveil its citizens, but the bottom line is that in China, China calls the shots. Apple can either get in line or manufacture its phones elsewhere.
And maybe they should not take the high moral ground on other issues, telling others how to think and behave, when they themselves are happy to accept filthy lucre in return for compromising their own ethics.
I personally cannot stand these sleazy companies, happy to "take a stand" when it costs them nothing (cheap public relations!!!) but it's a "complicated world" and these issues are not simple, when they themselves bear the cost.
Seriously, they can go F themselves.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/07/apple-chi...
But never mind, they have rainbow hashtags and censor pepe memes so they are the good guys...
Silicon valley people are not our friends.
> I guess this is the kind of blind obedience to an authoritarian regime that 275 billion dollars gets you https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/07/apple-chi... But never mind, they have rainbow hashtags and censor pepe memes so they are the good guys...
Speaking for myself (no comment on if I downvoted or not), I tend to not value exaggerations such as "blind obedience". That is not what is happening here. We are seeing parts of a complex power dynamic between a superpower and supercorporation. Dumbing it down is insulting to this audience.
Doesn't seem to be such a "complex power dynamic" at all maybe?
Maybe some "dumbing down" might be useful to a crowd that is disconnected from reality and likes to hide behind language?
Plus, it’s notable that apple didn’t use the same 1 hour / end of day / forever system that they use for location sharing.
But rolling it out to China first is pretty damn suspicious of what their "true" motives were too.
Sure the timing of this tweet is weird, as people pointed out, that the change actually happened a few weeks ago (there were tweets about it then, but those are mainly in Chinese). But protesting via airdrop has been happening in China for months before this change.
Even if we give Apple the benefit of doubt, that they actually planned this change long time ago unrelated to any protests (spams maybe), and the plan is to roll it out to a market for testing before roll out to all markets, with the protests they _should_ change the market for the test. Not changing the plan (that's _assuming_ they really have good intention aka fight spams behind it) will make themselves look bad and they have no one else to blame.
Airdrop is based on proximity as measured by NFC and/or Bluetooth (?), and you can't use it as an ad hoc network mesh to route messages across it.(?)
So Activist Organizer 1 can't coordinate with Activist Organizer 2 3 km away using Airdrop unless activists in the space between forwards / routes messages in the right physical direction.
If they are well organized from the beginning, then each person (node) can forward each message to 3 - 5 contacts but that requires them to maintain physical formation during the activities.
I am not an expert on AirDrop, I am just trying to figure out how it helps out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat
Sessions is better than Signal since it doesn't require a phone number. IYAM, it should add Android + iOS serverless&internetless BT support.
For what it's worth, Apple also took down a crowdsourced map from the app store that helped people avoid areas with tear gas and heavy police activity, on the grounds that it was somehow endangering the cops. Very shady stuff.
It's not painful at all to drop Apple phones. And the only thing which is constantly bugging me on NixOS desktop is totally inconsistent hotkeys system. So, it's not that hard drop Apple, just do it.
What does this have to do with the quality of their products?
Apple is an artificial entity, a corporation and it's only loyalty by design is with the wallets of it's shareholders.
What's surprising about this?
(A) keep buying and criticize
(B) stop buying
Correct?
What am I missing here? (B) has a bigger impact and sends a bigger signal. Right? Talk is cheap. Leaving the Apple ecosystem is hard and demonstrates a very serious complaint.
B. Criticize and stop buying
The lesson here is not finger point "someone evil" but finger point the use of proprietary software and services. Theater like "Apple do not decrypt phones for FBI" or "Apple censor Chinese Citizens" etc are theater. The reality is that IF you are a company you comply with local laws. If you just publish free software, NOT services, the end user must, formally, comply with local laws.
Sorry for my poor English, not my mother tongue, but I think the concept is pretty simple and anyone with a bit of IT knowledge must know that AND HAVE ALREADY accepted such reality.
For Democracy we can't allow proprietary software nor black boxes. No matter if domestically made or not. Is someone with an IT background do find this as extreme and even criticize Apple for it's choice must stop and think a bit: it's an hypocritical behavior even if genuine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIE-5hg7FoA
Apple is not the same company it claimed to be back then. Dare I say Apple today is now the company they were against back then.
But cause and effect and consequence is for other people to jabber about.
I’m not some massive hypocrite like others here. I have Apple products, I don’t need to love Apple. I think the alternative is worse, but that doesn’t mean I need to get into an off-topic rant about how Elon is being mean… because somehow that organically keeps coming up.
I would Apple to act in the best interest of their customers. This move is at least some percentage that.
0. https://jezebel.com/passengers-keep-airdropping-nudes-and-ai...
The energy and anger should (as per usual) be directed at China and the Chinese communist party to a much greater degree than Apple.
I'm assuming, of course, that Apple was forced to make this update. Hard for me to believe they proactively made this freedom-violating, protest-suppressing change.
Apple, of all companies, can probably afford to do that though.
But they keep on doing business there. That’s a bit depressing.
(Written on my iPhone)
Here’s the first one:
It's cheap.
Cheap labor, few/no penalties for pollution, abundant cheap electricity, inexpensive labor safety, etc.
It's the dream of outsourcing realized.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u...
We need govt action.
Those calls have mostly gone unanswered and Apple in particular has repeatedly gone out of its way to double down on its China relationship over that same time period.
I’ve lost count of how many scandals have come out of their relationship with China from the suicide nets to the repeated investigations showing their supply chain was riddled with slave labor that they would later campaign against protections that would prevent it. Now this. They are fucked as a company, I can’t get out of their ecosystem fast enough.
I assume this is about Foxconn. Does that mean you'll be boycotting other companies that also work with them, like Amazon, Dell, Google, HP, Intel, Microsoft, Vizio, Acer, Lenovo, Nintendo, and Sony?
I'm genuinely asking. It's a tough pill to swallow to learn all our tech stuff we all enjoy is built on the backs of poor people on the other side of the planet.
Counterpoint:
They could have just rolled out the feature change globally. Instead Apple makes it clear with singling out China, that this change was demanded by the CCP.
You need to pick your battles instead of being idealist. Look at Russia. There was an opposition back in the day, but they couldn't agree between each other because of smaller differences. And now we have a complete dictatorship.
The most private digital world — one in which everything is e2e encrypted — is arguably totally ethical (impossible for anybody to infringe on your personal rights) or the least ethical state of affairs imaginable (free for all for criminals, terrorists, etc…).
> the suicide nets
I know this was painted as a scandal, but was it actually?
First, at the time Foxconn — or rather more specifically, Longhua Science and Technology Park, which was the site of the suicides that got in the news — was employing approximately 50-80% the population of Wyoming at the time depending on who you ask. For reference, there were 170 deaths by suicide in Wyoming in 2019.
Second, I've seen anti-fall nets on the inside of the Galeria department store in Alexanderplatz Berlin, which has no relevant reputation I've ever heard of, and therefore seems like a straightforward health and safety measure.
If there was ever a time companies were good stewards to the world - that time ended before I was born.
Yes, Apple is not doing the right thing.
Show me any fortune 100 company in the world that would do the right thing...
What's frustrating - I think - in this case, is the amount of Apple fanboys who insist that Apple is literally the incarnation of God as a company, existing solely to bring about harmony and make the world better through the iPhone, not to take your money and put it in their shareholders' pockets.
It is easy to criticize an organizations' behavior.
It is easy to criticize someone else's ethics.
What are your ethics? What would you do if you were in Tim Cook's position?
Why? I'd like to see how you perceive the options available.
As for me, the following is an open question: can organizations have something analogous to a conscience? How does it work?
Like the ones installed all over Europe and the US?
Netherlands for example also does suicide nets, here's one in a small town city hall https://www.tubantia.nl/almelo/anti-zelfmoordnetten-geplaats...
They champion them here in the USA where saying so is good for business.
They champion censorship in China because it's good for business.
They'll champion whatever it takes for them to break into a lucrative market.
I don't know if you mean this literally but to me it was very simple. Just stopped buying their products. I am still alive, productive and with a clearer consciousness.
Does anyone seriously think that Jobs cared even the slightest about the Foxconn/Hon Hai Precision Industry factory workers? Or anything else other than the bottom line?
Hundreds of such anecodotes from hundreds of people. What do you expect from the corporate culture established by such a person?
Beyond that is there a better company that operates in China that is doing better?
Their profit margin would suggest otherwise.
2. The supply chain is not riddled with slave labor.
3. The chance to airdrop was made weeks before the protest.
You might not be basing your evaluation of Apple’s behavior on reality.
Just like how last week he made that ridiculous claim about the promises he thought brand safety groups had made to him and then everybody else who was in the meeting said he was making shit up. Again.
Has this actually happened, or is just another attention-seeking rumor being misrepresented as fact?
The fact is that we are all in China's pocket to some extent. We are addicted to cheap Chinese labor.
(I don't know the set of all such)
Or pretending to care about the environment, then forcing people to buy new devices (with packaging) instead of repairing the ones they already own
Or pretending to care about privacy, then scanning local files for "undesirable content" (it doesn't matter what the content is, once the infra is there, it's there to stay)
If there's one thing I've learned, it's that whenever a corporation says something that sounds good, it's probably a lie.
The only thing that will ever force Apple's hand with regard to this human rights issue is legislation, they've lost the right to trust long ago
Thus, previously, users in China could set their phone to be able to receive airdrops from anybody, all the time.
But, problem! Now they can receive information antithetical to CCP propaganda, anywhere they go. On a bus, on a train, at the supermarket, at a grocery store, literally anywhere, they could be exposed to ad-hoc free thought via airdrop. Perhaps something like: "protest tonight at the grocery store! They can't arrest all of us!"
In response, now iPhone users in China can still choose to receive airdrops from anybody, preserving the valid use case, but only for 10 minutes after pressing the button. They are now safe from uncensored information for the rest of the day. Train, bus, supermarket, etc. The airdrop protest invite is now dead.
A complete ban of receiving airdrops from anyone would cause outrage - it would be removing a useful feature entirely. But the timer is a clever way to neuter its position as a social communication platform without taking the useful feature away.
This is how effective social control works - you can't just shackle everyone, you have to give them the impression of freedom.
That pretty much kills Airdrop as an open P2P communication channel (the "undesired" usage) while still enabling one off intentional file transfers (the primary Airdrop use case).
So a 10 minute limit easily kills 99% of "bad" usage without impacting common usage, leading to less resistance/complaints from average users. Killing Airdrop full stop would have greater push back/outrage, with only marginal improvement against the undesired usage.
Q: How does 10 min limit kill the P2P communciation usage?
A: Imagine your cell phone could only receive calls from non-contacts for 10 min. After which you had to remember to push a button to re-allow calls for another 10m, rinse/repeat. With that UX, the chance you ever successfully call or be called by a non-contact is near zero. People wouldn't opt-in frequently enough to have a reliable network.