For those defending this practice, consider carefully the implications of what you are advocating.
On one hand you have a government deciding who can and cannot refer to themselves as adherents of a particular religion (by declaring that Ahamadis cannot call themselves Muslim).
On another hand you have Google and Apple, yet again, being the complicit chokepoints of “free speech”, with regard to app developers.
These may seem fair to you, but that may be because these practices have not negatively affected you...yet.
But consider: Would it be fair if England declared Catholics “unChristian” and banned their use if the term? Or what if the USA declared hasidic jews “Unjewish” and banned their use of the term. Or what if Apple caved to pressure theoretical from Israel to ban Jehovah’s Witnesses from using the term “Jehovah”?
What next? Government declaring who is and is not “white”?
You make a great argument for Governments that support religious freedom. Not sure I follow your logic to a conclusion that makes Apple and Google the villains here though.
A&G have a binary choice - serve users in (Oppressive Country X) or not. There is no choice that involves serving those users but not following the oppressive laws of said country.
> A&G have a binary choice - serve users in (Oppressive Country X) or not
I've said this before, but if you only do the ethical thing when it doesn't cost you anything, you aren't actually an ethical person. You're just an opportunist.
Companies that say they have to do the unethical thing because otherwise shareholders will get mad or fire them, well they're doing the same thing, but it's avoiding personal costs (risking their cushy job) by doing the unethical thing. Doing the wrong thing because your boss will fire you if you don't doesn't mean you didn't do the wrong thing.
Notice that Debian wasn't forced to take down any apps, which shows choice 3: Do not place themselves in the position of arbiters of what apps their users may run (either by technical locks, such as Apple, or by making alternatives extremely inconvenient, such as Google).
Apple is in a self imposed category of only legit legal way to install software on users devices and is thus morally keeping users from practicing their religion.
The logical thing is to make Apple decide between servicing the entire American and European market and caving to repressive regimes.
Apple Google are villains because they control what and how app installs by having the app store. If it was like Windows pc it wouldn't be like this. They chose this method, in applied case a walled garden that only they can control, so must be responsible.
So american companies will compromise on their own freedom, an important american value and principle, for the sake of pursuing profit in foreign countries. They'd rather obey a foreign dictator than lose their business.
french secularism is beautiful. all are equal under law. and freedom FROM religion. if your friend and his friends had this thing where they chopped of skin from their babies genitals. would you be ok with that? why is it ok when religious people do it? clearly following dogma in this case over reason is the symptom of mental illness or damage. religions are much more oppressive if you ask me. they function without a state or government. they are a low evolved form of government used to gain power.
Actually there is. Don't set up physical presences in oppressive countries. Architect your software to not rely on singular chokepoints like centralized servers.
We've seem to have forgotten this, because it's not economically expedient. But we shouldn't give these companies a pass for having set themselves up to be instruments of totalitarianism.
The (rather massive) flaw in your reasoning is the idea that Google and Apple are the solution to the problem.
If you live in a society without religious freedom, that's a big problem, but Apple and Google can't fix it.
If you care about the problem, it's important to understand this. If you succeed in getting people to focus on symptom of the problem and not the cause, you will help prevent it from being addressed.
Apple and Google put themselves in a position where they became a part of the problem. If they ran open platforms where they don't have to power to ban apps this would never have happened.
>The (rather massive) flaw in your reasoning is the idea that Google and Apple are the solution to the problem.
What makes you say that?
I see nothing in their comment which implies Google and Apple could or should solve the problems of oppressive countries.
If a criminal who wants to commit murder asks me to sell them a gun and I decline, it would be absurd to think that implied I thought I could solve the problem of murder.
Rather, I would simply be refusing to be a conscious, direct enabler of murder. It would be nakedly malicious for me to reason "well, if I don't sell them this gun, someone else will, so I might as well make some money."
Leave out the word religious. Lack of religious freedom usually comes along with a lot of other rights being trampled on.
We must admit that there are people in this world who do and say things we do not agree with. However the same system which expands from trampling on religious rights to other rights is no different than a system which tramples on another right and eventually tramples religion.
Corporations have little choice when faced with government intervention and we cannot seriously hold these corporations accountable for bowing down to political pressure elsewhere when we allow our own government a free pass for doing the same or turning a blind eye to it.
To change how businesses operate abroad we must change how our government operates. We should hold both to the same standard but government must lead because it has the courts, the arms, and the laws, to pressure one but the other has little it can do to pressure it
And the (rather massive) flaw in yours is the idea that "fixing" and "not fixing" a problem are the only two possible outcomes.
Would Apple and Google condemning this policy and refusing to comply "fix" the problem? Probably not. Is it the right thing to do? Of course! One certainly shouldn't help enforce an unjust law. This action lends a huge amount of credibility to an immoral policy.
We're focusing on this mere "symptom" of the problem because it's Apple and Google. Our laws govern those companies. Our (seemingly theoretical) ability to control them means we are partially responsible when they do bad things.
> The (rather massive) flaw in your reasoning is the idea that Google and Apple are the solution to the problem.
Nor should they even attempt to, because the moment they get involved in policy making you have an army of HNs complaining how large corporations influence politics.
I wouldn’t say that I’m defending the practice. It’s a bad decision and I wish Pakistan wouldn’t censor these apps.
But it really does seem like the responsibility lies with Pakistan here. The article suggests Google’s trying hard to keep these apps up, and has indeed kept some up despite government pressure. At the end of the day, their options to resist legal demands are limited, and it’s hard for me to see an argument that this relatively small instance of censorship is so important they should shut down operations in Pakistan over it.
> At the end of the day, their options to resist legal demands are limited
They're really not. Google is not based in Pakistan, and they don't have offices or datacenters in Pakistan.
Why should they take _global_ action against developers who are _located in the US_ on the request of someone who does not have jurisdiction over them?
It's interesting how this plays out in reverse to the typical copyright fights - people violating US intellectual property law in Pakistan (or wherever) are often litigated under those US laws; here they're litigating against Americans based on Pakistani laws.
>"Would it be fair if England declared Catholics “unChristian” and banned their use if the term?"
I assume you know that happened all the time during the Reformation period with Henry the Eighth starting it, with a contrasting bit in the middle where Bloody Mary persecuted non-Catholics instead.
They were bored and the internet hadn't been invented yet.
Once kings and queens weren't in charge, things got a lot more relaxed in that area.
> Would it be fair if England declared Catholics "unChristian" and banned their use if the term?
I think it's slightly more nuanced than that. For example, England should be able to declare whether a given group of people are members of the Church of England (organization). Wherever a centralized authority exists, that authority should have the power to declare whether or not someone is a member of the organization. The Catholic church should absolutely be able to declare some rogue sect that claims to be Catholic "unCatholic".
However, you are absolutely right, where no centralized authority exists no one should be able to classify others' high level beliefs. Whether someone is Jewish, Christian, Islam, Atheist, etc. is not up to anyone but the individual adherent. If you believe in Jesus Christ and believe you are following his teachings, you are a Christian and no government or conglomerate of sects should be able to say otherwise. If you believe in Mohammed and the tenets of Islam, no government or conglomerate of sects should be able to say you are not a Muslim.
Not everyone agrees with any given central authority. In religion especially this is often over relatively complex reasons that outsiders probably aren't in a position to try and navigate. You need only to refer to religious history and it's many wars to see this: the tri-part nature of Christ, the exact date of Easter, the shaving of heads in early English history, etc.
Nor should we start allowing the Church of England to press Google into service putting it's agenda forward. We recognize that dissent is an important part of free speech!
> England should be able to declare whether a given group of people are members of the Church of England (organization). Wherever a centralized authority exists, that authority should have the power to declare whether or not someone is a member of the organization. The Catholic church should absolutely be able to declare some rogue sect that claims to be Catholic "unCatholic".
They should have the power to declare whether or not they consider someone to be a member of an organization. Nothing more. This goes beyond simply declaring whether or not they consider Ahmadis to be Muslims. The Pakistani government is using "anti-blasphemy" laws to silence anyone who objects to their declaration.
The fundamental issue with the argument you're presenting is that Pakistan is not a secular country, unlike England or the USA. An example of a country that bases their government on a particular religion allowing citizens to freely declare whether they're adherents of that religion even if their practice differs significantly compared to established orthodoxy would significantly strengthen this assertion.
> Pakistan is not a secular country, unlike England or the USA
It's a minor quibble, but England does have an established national Church, so it's not entirely secular in the way the US is. 26 CofE Bishops sit in the House of Lords, the Lords Spiritual. The head of state is also the head of the Church.
Is it ok to sell weapons of war to a country engaging in ethnic cleansing, and if not - why not?
After all, the country is allowed to decide it's own rules and laws. If it decides ethnic cleansing is allowable, we should follow that right?
Of course not! Just because a country decides some action is legal doesn't make it moral or ethical - and knowingly aiding an unethical act is itself unethical! We do and should absolutely shun and punish countries engaging in things like ethnic cleansing - even if they're assisting a country that has deemed it legal.
Why in the world would religious prosecution be some kind of special case?
> On another hand you have Google and Apple, yet again, being the complicit chokepoints of “free speech”, with regard to app developers.
And how is that detail is pertinent to this discussion?
If it wasn't Google or Apple it would be other companies. Even if it wasn't large companies it would be 100 smaller companies and all those 100 smaller companies would have to comply (even more so because they have fewer resources to fight a government deciding things in their own country).
Smaller companies might not have as much commercial exposure in Pakistan - i.e. if they have no formal business presence there, what would be the consequences for them not complying? For example, if these "apps" were traditional Windows executables instead who would the government on Pakistan lean on to get them blocked? The best they could do is attempt a "great firewall of China" style block on internet traffic itself.
The PTA isn't stopping at walled-garden App Stores; Google and Apple are just one of the few countries large enough to have a physical presence Pakistan can threaten. They also threatened a handful of US-based web hosts who are basically prohibited from seeing their families until they censor this sect.
(And yes, I'm using the word 'censor' here. It is entirely appropriate under even the narrowest definitions of the word, as the decision to remove content was made with the force of law. The US has similar provisions known as the 'state actors doctrine'.)
It took me a second to get this argument, but it’s a good one. If there were thousands of marketplaces on iOS and Android, then Pakistan would have to negotiate the removal on all of this platforms, as opposed to only two.
Spelling it out clearly like that, it makes me wonder if there are many governments that prefer to have monopolies to deal with, rather than many companies. It certainly makes regulation simpler.
Seems you have no understanding what Ahmadiyya standing for, let's clarify something first, one morning an Orange start calling herself Apple, should we start calling this Orange apple? should to Orange get offended if we still call it Apple? well we have to call the Orange Orange based on our well established understanding of the characteristics of a na orange and what makes it different, Ahmadiyya is widely considered non longer muslims amount the islamic world and islamic scholars, same fore Durouz in Lebanon for example, Ahmadiyya is against one of the main pillars of islam that prophet Mohamed is the last one but this movement founder declared himself a prophet and that god talks to him in english, this was established in 1889 during the British colonialism to India, islam consider people from other religions as infidel and it dose not seem to be an issue to christians or Jews how they are being seen by islam, and same thing goes to Christianity it dose not consider muslims as christians and I am sure muslims are happy not getting offended by not being Christians so I don't get it why this definitions are an issue while it comes to Ahmadyya, also I don't get your point of free speech while Ahmadyya are free to call themselves what they want and Muslims are also free to describe Ahmadyya the way they considered it right
Funnily enough the Ahamdis don't consider normal Muslims to be Muslims too!
Statements of Mirza Basheer-ud-Din, Ghulam Ahmad’s son and successor, including what he wrote in his book Ayena-e-Sadaaqat (p.35):
“Verily, every Muslim who does not pledge allegiance to the Promised Messiah (Mirza Ghulam Ahmad), whether he heard of his name or not, is a disbeliever and outside the fold of Islam!”
He is also quoted in the Qadiani periodical, Al-Fazl (30th July 1931) as reporting from his father, Ghulam Ahmad himself that he said:
“We disagree with the Muslims in everything: concerning God, the Messenger, the Qur’aan, prayer, fasting, hajj and zakaah. There is a fundamental difference of opinion between us in all of these things!”
I keep thinking about infamous Telegram 'war' with russian cenrosship agency, RosKomNadzor. Telegram was blocked via russian ISPs, but was never removed from Russian sections of Google Play and Apple Appstore.
We now see that Apple and Google, time after time, easily submit to the will of local governments and remove questionable apps. Yet, Telegram was NOT removed. Russian media agencies claim that RosKomNadzor asked Google&Apple to suspend the app, but the source for all media publications was always the same press-release by RKN. So it keeps me thinking: what if the world was played and all this 'blocking' scandal was just a publicity stunt to raise Telegram's profile as a service that does not give up data to authorities?
Does anyone know if we can confirm via Google & Apple that they were asked to remove Telegram from play stores (and refused), or... they weren't really asked at all?
A country's law can be bypassed by not doing business there, an option that Google is already familiar from its 2010 decision regarding China. Pakistan is a large country, but I don't think it is a big market for Google - certainly much smaller than China.
Also, I found it disingenuous that Google plays "it's the law card" when it spends millions of dollars a year lobbying in the United States to get laws changed. Now, it may be much harder to get the Pakistan government to change its mind around the inclusion of "Muslim" for online content for this group - but I doubt Google has bothered to try...
There is more than a country's law to consider, there is international law and war crimes tribunals. Nothing maybe for Google to worry about yet, but what if Pakistan passes a law is passed that requires Google to give up all search data on this minority population in order that the government can monitor, imprison or kill them? I'd like to see how Google's legal team would respond to that. I'm guessing comply and cover-up, but I'd like to be wrong.
Note it doesn't even have to be an international law, it can be a better, future Pakistan, perhaps one with an Ahmadiyya leader - as inconceivable as that seems now. Germany for example, is charging an old lady with aiding and abetting murder (10,000 times!) for her secretarial work as a minor in a concentration camp. Pakistan is bigger than Germany and Google is good at doing things at scale... so let's hope Google leadership leads.
I'm not sure exactly what the correct set of actions for Apple is in the Pakistan case, but I don't feel these two are all that similar.
In that case Apple broke no laws. The FBI very likely did not have the legal power to compel Apple to break the phone’s encryption. The FBI issued orders to Apple, Apple legally disputed the orders. Apple's actions in disputing unjust orders is allowed under US law.
Versus this case where the Pakistani government does, unfortunately, have full authority to pass and enforce this law as harshly as it wants.
Providing tools (strong encryption) isn't really the same as managing a whole market and dictating who can and cannot participate based on random whims.
If they were giving the FBI backdoors but not the UK or Pakistan, then it would be a different story.
I would argue that Google, Apple, and any other group or individual should have the choice to ignore laws. When immoral laws are flaunted to promote the common good, it's called civil disobedience. Likewise, governments are free to investigate and punish those people. Also likewise, the population is free to form their own opinions about the "criminals" and government.
That's society. We shouldn't throw our hands in the air and blindly follow all laws just because there's no objective truth.
I don't think FAANGM having control is a technical solution -- it's a political solution too, albeit with a (semi-) public company in the position of power.
Agreed, but this also raises the question: what should their course of action be?
The course of action they followed implicitly supports human rights violations, in order to continue operating within a given country. Note that I am not saying the action itself is a human rights violation. They certainly have the right to choose what to publish and they are limiting the scope of their actions to the laws of the country question. The decision is entirely reasonable if the context of those laws is ignored. The decision is also entirely reasonable when you consider that Apple and Google are large enough entities that not operating within that country or doing so in violation of their laws could rightfully be considered as exerting political pressure.
I doubt that there is actually a good answer to the question. There is only a lesser-of-evils answer, where they probably made the right choice even though I find their profiting from that choice disgusting.
> They certainly have the right to choose what to publish
No, they really don't. If they 'chose' to publish an app that is banned by Pakistan, the ultimate end-move would be for Pakistan to simply disable the app stores completely.
> Agreed, but this also raises the question: what should their course of action be?
To comply with the law.
No, I don't like it either, but I also don't like the idea of corporations having the ability to flout the laws of sovereign nations because they disagree with them.
> The course of action they followed implicitly supports human rights violations
This is not a "course of action" anymore than not committing a crime is a public service. Enforcing human rights laws is not Apple or Google's job, full stop. They are corporations who's goal is to make money, and that's it. Enforcing human rights is what Governments are for.
Instead of asking "why aren't Apple and Google helping activists in Pakistan?" ask "why is Pakistan allowed to abuse it's citizenry in 2021?"
Easy solution is to not have monolithic gatekeepers like Apple or Google that can be pressured into doing stuff like this. A website is way harder to shut down than an appstore app, so normalizing appstores is a huge problem.
Of course I disagree with religious or any other intolerance, but, if you want to do business in Pakistan, you have to follow their rules.
It isn't a case of 'caving to pressure', but of 'complying with the law', since the apps are available in other countries, just not in Pakistan, where they are deemed blasphemous, according to their laws.
Perhaps is more companies refused to do business in a country due to diabolical laws, people would start voting against politicians that create diabolical laws.
So it's up to Google and other international companies to decide which laws are diabolical, which laws are bad and which can be tolerable? Why not going all the way down and let those companies write beautiful laws and also enforce them, everywhere in the world?
There are basic human rights, that when breached by a law, make the law a crime. 2010 Google left China for those reasons. Much have changed since then.
It's always worth remembering: Google couched leaving China in 2010 in humanitarian / ethical terms, but the reason they left was extremely clear: they got hacked internally by Chinese agents using physical access to the intranet. While Google got their security house in order, the most prudent course of action to protect their own company (including their employees) was to cut that physical access.
Google restarted business in China around the same time it was able to bring the BeyondCorp initiative online.
I agree that Google needs to follow the law where they operate. I do think they should have challenged the demand in court, however. That would show that they at least tried to stand up for their app developers.
Sure, but if the users could side load applications then even if the government would demand the giants to remove X app or book the user could find a way. People were listening to forbidden radio stations in secret and this was possible because DRM did not exist on the radio and TV equipment.
I'm worried about the future of computing devices. With Apple and Google going with the walled garden approach, What's to stop any government from telling Apple and Google that an app is illegal?
Governments have mostly failed to stop websites. Moving from websites to appstore apps gives governments more power. It also gives giant corporations more power. So it is a bad development if you fear giant corporations or governments.
Nothing to stop any government. This has already happened in a few countries, especially with banning apps of a certain kind or apps from certain countries.
You speak as if the same isn't in effect everywhere else. Sure the example here is more stark, but look at the sacrifice of environment and warmongering the US does for the oil industry, or look at any number of moves China makes to benefit members of CCP party members over it's populace.
It is sad and despicable and entirely human nature.
We have been seeing deplatforming happen more and more these last few months. Seems like this is going to accelerate a decentralized Internet.
It's going to be exciting times with a lot of societal questions and problems to be answered as these new technologies take off and the old model of advertising and free services for personal data get replaced with a new model.
Pakistan's attitude towards Ahmadiyya is trash. It's ridiculous to me as a Pakistani that a country born to counter the persecution of minorities should so blatantly persecute them itself. I genuinely cannot process the hypocrisy.
The Ahmadiyya movement is seen also as a cult. As someone who resisted the idea of discrimination for some random accusatory beliefs, I later realized the group does not reciprocate non discrimination but discriminates even harder.
Some of this can be understood. Because intra support is a characteristic along minorities. But the level is not just support but also active hate and cult like behavior.
You're not wrong, but tightening the screws on them (Ahmedis) is only going to make them burrow further in. Does anything in Khatm-e-Nubuwwat and the like's behavior seem to you like on average they're interested in conversion?
People say the same about Muslims in general in the west and we get pretty outraged. Why don't we get outraged when Muslims do the same to their minorities?
Readit News
On one hand you have a government deciding who can and cannot refer to themselves as adherents of a particular religion (by declaring that Ahamadis cannot call themselves Muslim).
On another hand you have Google and Apple, yet again, being the complicit chokepoints of “free speech”, with regard to app developers.
These may seem fair to you, but that may be because these practices have not negatively affected you...yet.
But consider: Would it be fair if England declared Catholics “unChristian” and banned their use if the term? Or what if the USA declared hasidic jews “Unjewish” and banned their use of the term. Or what if Apple caved to pressure theoretical from Israel to ban Jehovah’s Witnesses from using the term “Jehovah”?
What next? Government declaring who is and is not “white”?
Oh wait......
A&G have a binary choice - serve users in (Oppressive Country X) or not. There is no choice that involves serving those users but not following the oppressive laws of said country.
I've said this before, but if you only do the ethical thing when it doesn't cost you anything, you aren't actually an ethical person. You're just an opportunist.
Companies that say they have to do the unethical thing because otherwise shareholders will get mad or fire them, well they're doing the same thing, but it's avoiding personal costs (risking their cushy job) by doing the unethical thing. Doing the wrong thing because your boss will fire you if you don't doesn't mean you didn't do the wrong thing.
The logical thing is to make Apple decide between servicing the entire American and European market and caving to repressive regimes.
We've seem to have forgotten this, because it's not economically expedient. But we shouldn't give these companies a pass for having set themselves up to be instruments of totalitarianism.
If you live in a society without religious freedom, that's a big problem, but Apple and Google can't fix it.
If you care about the problem, it's important to understand this. If you succeed in getting people to focus on symptom of the problem and not the cause, you will help prevent it from being addressed.
What makes you say that?
I see nothing in their comment which implies Google and Apple could or should solve the problems of oppressive countries.
If a criminal who wants to commit murder asks me to sell them a gun and I decline, it would be absurd to think that implied I thought I could solve the problem of murder.
Rather, I would simply be refusing to be a conscious, direct enabler of murder. It would be nakedly malicious for me to reason "well, if I don't sell them this gun, someone else will, so I might as well make some money."
We must admit that there are people in this world who do and say things we do not agree with. However the same system which expands from trampling on religious rights to other rights is no different than a system which tramples on another right and eventually tramples religion.
Corporations have little choice when faced with government intervention and we cannot seriously hold these corporations accountable for bowing down to political pressure elsewhere when we allow our own government a free pass for doing the same or turning a blind eye to it.
To change how businesses operate abroad we must change how our government operates. We should hold both to the same standard but government must lead because it has the courts, the arms, and the laws, to pressure one but the other has little it can do to pressure it
Would Apple and Google condemning this policy and refusing to comply "fix" the problem? Probably not. Is it the right thing to do? Of course! One certainly shouldn't help enforce an unjust law. This action lends a huge amount of credibility to an immoral policy.
We're focusing on this mere "symptom" of the problem because it's Apple and Google. Our laws govern those companies. Our (seemingly theoretical) ability to control them means we are partially responsible when they do bad things.
Nor should they even attempt to, because the moment they get involved in policy making you have an army of HNs complaining how large corporations influence politics.
Appstores operate in Pakistan and comply with their government.
There is no free speech analogy to countries with a different constitution.
You use the phrase "free speech" as if it referred only to a legal requirement, and not also an ethical principle.
But it really does seem like the responsibility lies with Pakistan here. The article suggests Google’s trying hard to keep these apps up, and has indeed kept some up despite government pressure. At the end of the day, their options to resist legal demands are limited, and it’s hard for me to see an argument that this relatively small instance of censorship is so important they should shut down operations in Pakistan over it.
They're really not. Google is not based in Pakistan, and they don't have offices or datacenters in Pakistan.
Why should they take _global_ action against developers who are _located in the US_ on the request of someone who does not have jurisdiction over them?
It's interesting how this plays out in reverse to the typical copyright fights - people violating US intellectual property law in Pakistan (or wherever) are often litigated under those US laws; here they're litigating against Americans based on Pakistani laws.
I assume you know that happened all the time during the Reformation period with Henry the Eighth starting it, with a contrasting bit in the middle where Bloody Mary persecuted non-Catholics instead. They were bored and the internet hadn't been invented yet.
Once kings and queens weren't in charge, things got a lot more relaxed in that area.
I think it's slightly more nuanced than that. For example, England should be able to declare whether a given group of people are members of the Church of England (organization). Wherever a centralized authority exists, that authority should have the power to declare whether or not someone is a member of the organization. The Catholic church should absolutely be able to declare some rogue sect that claims to be Catholic "unCatholic".
However, you are absolutely right, where no centralized authority exists no one should be able to classify others' high level beliefs. Whether someone is Jewish, Christian, Islam, Atheist, etc. is not up to anyone but the individual adherent. If you believe in Jesus Christ and believe you are following his teachings, you are a Christian and no government or conglomerate of sects should be able to say otherwise. If you believe in Mohammed and the tenets of Islam, no government or conglomerate of sects should be able to say you are not a Muslim.
Nor should we start allowing the Church of England to press Google into service putting it's agenda forward. We recognize that dissent is an important part of free speech!
Hence why the RC primate of England is the Archbishop of Westminster, not a dual RC Archbishop of Canterbury.
They should have the power to declare whether or not they consider someone to be a member of an organization. Nothing more. This goes beyond simply declaring whether or not they consider Ahmadis to be Muslims. The Pakistani government is using "anti-blasphemy" laws to silence anyone who objects to their declaration.
It's a minor quibble, but England does have an established national Church, so it's not entirely secular in the way the US is. 26 CofE Bishops sit in the House of Lords, the Lords Spiritual. The head of state is also the head of the Church.
After all, the country is allowed to decide it's own rules and laws. If it decides ethnic cleansing is allowable, we should follow that right?
Of course not! Just because a country decides some action is legal doesn't make it moral or ethical - and knowingly aiding an unethical act is itself unethical! We do and should absolutely shun and punish countries engaging in things like ethnic cleansing - even if they're assisting a country that has deemed it legal.
Why in the world would religious prosecution be some kind of special case?
Anyway ... if
- a home entity is operating in a foreign realm,
- obeys the laws of the foreign realm,
- brings back money to the home realm,
- doesn't try to turn the home realm into the foreign realm.
what is the problem?
Just because a company operates in a foreign realm under their laws doesn't mean it's trying to turn its home realm into the foreign realm.
Now, if the entity is partially owned by the foreign realm ... then we can question motives, of course.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
And how is that detail is pertinent to this discussion?
If it wasn't Google or Apple it would be other companies. Even if it wasn't large companies it would be 100 smaller companies and all those 100 smaller companies would have to comply (even more so because they have fewer resources to fight a government deciding things in their own country).
Dead Comment
I don't see 'seeming fair' to most people.
This is just yet another example of Google and Apple's monopoly preferences being leveraged by entities that have more leverage than them.
It has to stop.
Free The Apps.
(And yes, I'm using the word 'censor' here. It is entirely appropriate under even the narrowest definitions of the word, as the decision to remove content was made with the force of law. The US has similar provisions known as the 'state actors doctrine'.)
Spelling it out clearly like that, it makes me wonder if there are many governments that prefer to have monopolies to deal with, rather than many companies. It certainly makes regulation simpler.
Statements of Mirza Basheer-ud-Din, Ghulam Ahmad’s son and successor, including what he wrote in his book Ayena-e-Sadaaqat (p.35):
“Verily, every Muslim who does not pledge allegiance to the Promised Messiah (Mirza Ghulam Ahmad), whether he heard of his name or not, is a disbeliever and outside the fold of Islam!” He is also quoted in the Qadiani periodical, Al-Fazl (30th July 1931) as reporting from his father, Ghulam Ahmad himself that he said:
“We disagree with the Muslims in everything: concerning God, the Messenger, the Qur’aan, prayer, fasting, hajj and zakaah. There is a fundamental difference of opinion between us in all of these things!”
https://www.masjidattaqwa.co.nz/ahmadiyya/
We now see that Apple and Google, time after time, easily submit to the will of local governments and remove questionable apps. Yet, Telegram was NOT removed. Russian media agencies claim that RosKomNadzor asked Google&Apple to suspend the app, but the source for all media publications was always the same press-release by RKN. So it keeps me thinking: what if the world was played and all this 'blocking' scandal was just a publicity stunt to raise Telegram's profile as a service that does not give up data to authorities?
Does anyone know if we can confirm via Google & Apple that they were asked to remove Telegram from play stores (and refused), or... they weren't really asked at all?
Also, I found it disingenuous that Google plays "it's the law card" when it spends millions of dollars a year lobbying in the United States to get laws changed. Now, it may be much harder to get the Pakistan government to change its mind around the inclusion of "Muslim" for online content for this group - but I doubt Google has bothered to try...
There is more than a country's law to consider, there is international law and war crimes tribunals. Nothing maybe for Google to worry about yet, but what if Pakistan passes a law is passed that requires Google to give up all search data on this minority population in order that the government can monitor, imprison or kill them? I'd like to see how Google's legal team would respond to that. I'm guessing comply and cover-up, but I'd like to be wrong.
Note it doesn't even have to be an international law, it can be a better, future Pakistan, perhaps one with an Ahmadiyya leader - as inconceivable as that seems now. Germany for example, is charging an old lady with aiding and abetting murder (10,000 times!) for her secretarial work as a minor in a concentration camp. Pakistan is bigger than Germany and Google is good at doing things at scale... so let's hope Google leadership leads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...
In that case Apple broke no laws. The FBI very likely did not have the legal power to compel Apple to break the phone’s encryption. The FBI issued orders to Apple, Apple legally disputed the orders. Apple's actions in disputing unjust orders is allowed under US law.
Versus this case where the Pakistani government does, unfortunately, have full authority to pass and enforce this law as harshly as it wants.
If they were giving the FBI backdoors but not the UK or Pakistan, then it would be a different story.
That's society. We shouldn't throw our hands in the air and blindly follow all laws just because there's no objective truth.
The course of action they followed implicitly supports human rights violations, in order to continue operating within a given country. Note that I am not saying the action itself is a human rights violation. They certainly have the right to choose what to publish and they are limiting the scope of their actions to the laws of the country question. The decision is entirely reasonable if the context of those laws is ignored. The decision is also entirely reasonable when you consider that Apple and Google are large enough entities that not operating within that country or doing so in violation of their laws could rightfully be considered as exerting political pressure.
I doubt that there is actually a good answer to the question. There is only a lesser-of-evils answer, where they probably made the right choice even though I find their profiting from that choice disgusting.
No, they really don't. If they 'chose' to publish an app that is banned by Pakistan, the ultimate end-move would be for Pakistan to simply disable the app stores completely.
To comply with the law.
No, I don't like it either, but I also don't like the idea of corporations having the ability to flout the laws of sovereign nations because they disagree with them.
> The course of action they followed implicitly supports human rights violations
This is not a "course of action" anymore than not committing a crime is a public service. Enforcing human rights laws is not Apple or Google's job, full stop. They are corporations who's goal is to make money, and that's it. Enforcing human rights is what Governments are for.
Instead of asking "why aren't Apple and Google helping activists in Pakistan?" ask "why is Pakistan allowed to abuse it's citizenry in 2021?"
They do every day when it's in their interest...
It isn't a case of 'caving to pressure', but of 'complying with the law', since the apps are available in other countries, just not in Pakistan, where they are deemed blasphemous, according to their laws.
Google restarted business in China around the same time it was able to bring the BeyondCorp initiative online.
Nothing; that's most of the idea of a government.
So, to answer your question that starts with "What's to stop any government", the answer is : nothing.
Pakistan will literally sacrifice its economy for the sake of keeping Mullahs happy. It's sad and despicable.
It is sad and despicable and entirely human nature.
It's going to be exciting times with a lot of societal questions and problems to be answered as these new technologies take off and the old model of advertising and free services for personal data get replaced with a new model.
Some of this can be understood. Because intra support is a characteristic along minorities. But the level is not just support but also active hate and cult like behavior.
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