Reuters doesn't report this, but the government officials threatened the companies (Apple and Google) with jail time for their employees yesterday. After that the companies finally conceded. There's a short video fragment from the meeting of the government officials and the companies representatives. It's worth watching, especially if you come from a democratic nation.
Letting your Russian employees be persecuted don't amount to "doing the right thing".
Except that by this point, all this is expected behaviour.
If companies don't want to be complicit in these crimes, they need to extricate themselves from the country and cut all ties.
If they do want to put profit ahead of everything else, then whatever, but you don't get to defend them as doing the right thing for their employees. They're enabling the whole situation.
[Edit to bring in a sister question] "Why don't Apple pull out of China then?" - because they put profit and cheap manufacturing ahead of their morals. And apparently we don't care enough that China effected a genocide while we watched.
> If they do want to put profit ahead of everything else, then whatever, but you don't get to defend them as doing the right thing for their employees. They're enabling the whole situation.
IMHO, cooperating with an authoritarian regime in this way should be illegal, sort of like a sanctions violation. Cook and Pachai should go to jail for this. That consequence might clarify their thinking a little.
I have an easier solution that doesn’t require making a false moral choice.
Give your customers the ability to install their own software or app stores on the hardware that they own and paid for, without requiring a monopolistic walled garden. Of course, companies like Apple would never do this because they are far too greedy.
Some of Americas closest allies are authoritarian regimes. Why would anyone expect profit moticated companies like Google or Apple to have higher moral standards than the elected representative US goverment where it operates from itself?
Where does that stop though? I agree with you, but I don’t see how the basic observe-eval-withdraw loop ever terminates.
Or put from a flip side… Building apps in highly democratic Norway just for Norwegians to use because they’re the best democracy (for example) doesn’t make enough money to feed my family. So why do anything at all?
I would believe this is way more complicated, even if set the profit apart.
Arguably having access to technology is important for the regular citizen, even under less democratic countries. There is the privacy angle, and also if you have an Android monopoly it becomes easier for the government to exploit/enforce what they want. You don't help people to understands the benefits of participating on a democracy, or even fighting to have a democracy by withdrawing and hiding what democracies around the world are able to produce and manufacture. Withdrawing the apps as required by government censorship is just one of the battles lost, but not the entire benefit Apple presence has.
All this is certainly expected behavior. If companies don't want to be complicit in these crimes, then they need to remove themselves from keeping remote power over devices that are purportedly sold to end users. Dell doesn't get flack for what Debian chooses to put in their repositories. And when Debian itself gets bullied (eg decss and other video codecs), even-less-exposed organizations can create another repository that coexists with the main one.
This is the kind of moral framework that creates cancel culture. Pulling out from Russia will decrease many Russian's standard of living, but will have zero impact in stopping them from rigging elections. If everyone cuts trade for moral reasons, then there's no incentive for us not to point nukes at each other again.
It's all about Navalny's tactic of 'smart voting', where they are picking candidates from parties other than the 'United Russia' party of Putin, in an attempt to bring in members of parliament who would not be in exact alignment with the politics of Putin. These candidates are often not even in open opposition to Putin, and that is currently the worst opposition and nightmare of the Russian government...
Then why Apple hasn't pulled out of China? Like 2 decades ago? China was always a brutal dictatorship. Why would they pull out of anything? These company profit from bloody dictatorships, like the rest of the western economy. But somehow when it's about Russia it's a problem? The hypocrisy in the west must stop. The west and it's industry never stood for freedom abroad since it decided that business is more important than democracy in the rest of the world, basically when the west accepted China in the WTO.
> Participating in dictatorship is barely better than refusing to do so if that dictatorship will falsely imprison your employees.
Tell that to Apple in China, a country that is literally using slave workforce from concentration camps. But Russia is where people here start being outraged?
Even Navalny and his supporters are not calling for foreign companies to all pull out of Russia. What makes you think you know better what is good for the Russian people and the opposition groups than Russians and the opposition groups themselves?
How many of Russia's Apple employees think Apple is "participating in dictatorship" by employing them? How many Russian citizens, including the political opposition, do you think blame Apple or Google for participating in dictatorship by selling them phones and providing them with services? Maybe a few take such an extreme view, but it certainly doesn't seem to be a common attitude for Russian opponents of Putin.
That seems to achieve nothing in practice. If Google and Apple leave Russia, then whatever replaces them will probably be even more compliant with the government.
Of course, working in the country means paying tax dollars and "participating in the dictatorship" in that way, but that's not linked to app store restrictions. It's not as if they needed to get ordered to remove that app to realize they were working in a dictatorship, they knew it beforehand.
Nobody is going to do that so long as there is financial reason to not.
Which is not to say Google and Apple don't care about their employees, clearly this article suggests otherwise.
It's just not true that pulling out is a viable or even straight forward option.
You could also make an argument for US government placing pressure on these companies to keep a presence in Russia so they (the US government) can have some kind of foothold to push soft pressure
No company will pull out because there is money in these countries - what happens there in politics, social sphere doesn't actually matter as long their business isn't in any direct danger. And if there's some threat, their "values and moral spine" bends with ease; big corps have tools and means to do damage control if situation requires.
As a Russian, I agree. Boycott Putin, Lukashenko and other bloody murderers. Otherwise it's just talk.
You can post whataboutism under this comment (e.g. "what about China?", "US is bloody too", "US always supports dictators" and other useful idiot[0] stuff).
I'm no fan of political power in Russia (my home country) or anywhere else in the world, but come on with this double-standard bullshit.
Every country does exactly the same thing. Just look at how much suppression of "alternative voices" happens in real time all over the world and what apps were banned, accounts closed etc. Jan 6 was painted as bad as 9/11, ffs. It may be staged differently so it's not the "government" directly steps onto your 1st amendment, but "private biz", but who are we kidding. When there are forbidden topics and forbidden people, it's the outcomes that matter, not specific mechanisms.
Google and Apple are collaborating with all governments, and all governments are abusing their powers in someone's own interests, so calling for "pulling out" of a "misbehaving country" makes as much sense as asking for rain to drop upwards.
I'd better explore how people could reduce their dependence on any giant corporation, regardless of it being a business or a government, from West or East.
Allow side-loading so that you don’t leave yourself open to a situation where the only way your customers get access to a voting app is by having your employees jailed. The AppStore creates an easily exploitable bottleneck for governments to take advantage of. The hkmap.live situation during the protests in Hong Kong was similar.
As much as I like a lot of the benefits of the walled garden (from a consumer perspective, not necessarily as a developer), this is actually a very good argument for side-loading and one that I hadn't thought about before.
The app is still available in other countries, so in order to install it in Russia one just have to create another Apple account to install it from a foregn app store on the device.
It's hard to maximise profit and have consistent internal moral principles. As the other child comment mentioned, I would have preferred if Apple doesn't collaborate with these regimes and build their systems in such a way that they can't stand in the way of people doing what they want. But when you try to maximise profit, you have to interpose yourself as the gatekeeper, so you can extract as much value from the flow. And that of course makes you vulnerable to these kind of regimes.
Arbitrary imprisoning or harming the employees of Google or Apple would likely result in many other western IT firms closing their offices and leaving, that would be a very stupid thing to do for the Russian government. So I don’t think such threats could have been real (but I guess you can’t really count on authoritarian regimes not doing something completely irrational).
I don’t know what people expect here. Companies can’t really stand up to governments, especially autocratic ones overseas. Apple’s only option would be to leave Russia completely.
That might be the right thing to do but it’s a tough sell to shareholders.
>Google removed the app in Russia under pressure after officials threatened to imprison its local employees, a person close to the company said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
>Google removed the app Friday morning after the Russian authorities issued a direct threat of criminal prosecution against the company’s staff in the country, naming specific individuals, according to a person familiar with the company’s decision.
This is shadier than it seems. The opposition organization FBK (ФБК) was just called out as "extremists," and with this government decision, they wrote mails to Google and Apple to block "extremists."
There are published answers from Apple with details.
> Letting your Russian employees be persecuted don't amount to "doing the right thing".
I disagree. Western companies have no moral obligation to bend their own ethics, help a tyrant, and harm a nation, in order to "save" one, or a handful, of employees from said tyrant.
Quite the opposite, the right thing to do is to take a stand and force the tyrant out in broad daylight.
It's one thing to flinch immediately, another to let this stand. By now there has been enough time for Mountain View to lock any Russian IPs out of Play Store moderation and to reinstate the apps unilaterally, with a clear statement that no one below the C-suite will be able to undo the decision. Otherwise, the org chart is clearly inverted.
As a Russian I say they should have hired "martyrs" from opposition onto the jailable positions. Not having "martyrs" on these positions saved Putin's regime a lot of face, of actually persecuting a famous companys' local division directors for not censoring the internet. Now they know how to force these companies to do what they want, and do it quickly.
that's really clever. Navalny himself shows that such martyrs exist, brave enough to return after being poisoned. But what if they arrest everyone and not just the martyrs?
Companies shouldn't put themselves in this position: they should simply refuse to have a local presence or local employees in authoritarian-leaning countries.
There is a law in Russia (going into effect next year) that large IT companies must have local presence, otherwise they will be banned from operating in the country. I believe this is inspired by a similar law in China.
So actual teeth (arrests) in policy works? U.S should make notes. We're due for new treason (aiding a foreign adversary) laws that cover global companies.
> Letting your Russian employees be persecuted don't amount to "doing the right thing".
IT IS very much a right thing. Don't want to work for such company? Leave! It's not an indentured slavery!
Fuck, You Sergei Brin! You just screwed the most monumental display of courage, and determination by employees of Google Russia with a single pen stroke.
The real threat came from the fine the government intended to impose on the companies. They threatened to fine not the fixed amount, as they did before, but to calculate it from the turnover values. Which could result in millions of dollars. The Russian government recently fined Booking with almost 18 million USD. For Google and Apple the fine could be even bigger.
The threat to employees on the other hand was not real one, there is no one to legally procecute in the Russian subsidiaries of the companies.
Without knowing much about the specifics... A threat can be totally real, even if "there is no one to legally prosecute". In most countries (even in countries that most people would consider more democratic), if people in power want to "make a point", they will find a way.
I'm an immigrant who moved from Hungary to Germany, lived in Spain and Mexico, and I know many examples from all countries where people in power got their way through various ways, even if they had no legal way to enforce their will on others. Also do not forget, if you control legislation, the judges, the constitution, the police, etc, what is legal one day, can become illegal and prosecuted and persecuted pretty quickly.
They don't need a legal ground to harm any Russian citizen. Last several years political repressions are gaining momentum and there's less and less care about keeping it in a legal field.
Apple’s acquiescence to the Russian government’s demand to remove this app was predicted when it first came to light. Exactly at the same time as Apple was assuring world+dog that it would never acquiesce to governmental pressure to extend and expand the scope of its CSAM scanning tool on user’s devices.
Have they ever explained why the csam would be implemented?
Apple bends just fine if the government is powerful enough and the marketplace is big enough, see China.
In their defence (I say this with some trepidation), if they want to see their products in another country, then they need to play by that countries rules. Regardless of how we in the west feel about those rules.
If a Chinese company came to the US or EU and ignored US or EU rules and lawful directives from government, we would quite rightly be up in arms about that.
With regards to CSAM, I think the same applies. After all the CSAM issue only exists because the US government has decided that invasive monitoring is the only way to counter CSAM.
I note that no other western country takes such an authoritarian approach to CSAM, an approach that seems to be primarily driving by evangelist Christian keen on outlawing sex in general. As oppose to actually helping victims of CSAM.
The cynic in me believes this was either or both of these:
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- Marketing ploy. The new iMessages app allows for scanning of the sent and received pictures for nudity and notifies parents if parental controls are enabled.
This is supported by the very large order of iPhones apple made for this year, roughly 90 million iirc.
- Bending the definition of E2EE, that is, enabling them to bend to governments "without breaking" their privacy "stance". Meaning that it is entirely possible to scan for content provided the government targets without losing E2EE. Effectively creating a special class of back window, where one can take a peek without the ability to execute arbitrary code.
It should be noted that given that the model is fast and can run with minimal impact (thank god for accelerators on SOCs /s), it could in theory run in realtime as part of the display pipeline, further removing restrictions like requiring that the content is downloaded with the images and iCloud sync is enabled.
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But all of that is pure speculation from a random netizen.
They say it is their responsibility, they don't want to be hosting and serving this content. They have mentioned it's their moral obligation, and they're just playing catch up to other providers.
The story that keeps getting mentioned is that Facebook reports about 55k images a day, Google reports about 1500/day, whereas Apple was reporting 250 a year.
Thank you for this. I had a number of HN users insinuate that I was wrong to warn that Apple could expand beyond CSAM scanning and begin scanning for other material. People seemed to take a very firm stance that no, that could never ever ever happen and I'm wrong to even suggest the possibility.
This incident is more than enough for me to remain concerned that that will happen.
You are comparing ”apples” to oranges. App store apps are built by third parties whereas CSAM is Apple’s own code and design on OS level, applying on global level.
App store apps have been under removal threat in every country for many years if they can be considered as illegal.
So, same for Apple then, which would be under a threat from a government if they do not submit to whatever CSAM requirements, regardless of “pinky swear” promises?
Apparently, privacy is only a human right when your government considers you a human. Otherwise, Apple takes no issue enterprising on your lack of freedom.
The thing is, that it's all very time-sensitive. And I expect pressure was unreasonably high.
We have elections in Russia this weekend and Navalny app was used as a tool to coordinate protest voting. It is called "Smart Voting" by Navalny team and it is getting a lot of attention for upcomping elections.
If Apple and Google would just be a little bit slower and complied next Monday :)
Still there are more ways to coordinate Smart Voting. Google Docs with recommendations are published. There are youtube videos where Navalny team reads whole list aloud. There's a Telegram bot.
So I hope this action would just bring more attention to the matter.
It's voting for the candidate most likely to win against the main party's candidates. The app's purpose is to concentrate protest voters on one candidate without spreading them over all of them.
Given an address, the app provides the name of the suggested candidate in the corresponding voting district. The idea is to consolidate votes around only one candidate who does not belong to Putin's party.
In Russia, many potentially popular candidates are not allowed to run, were imprisoned, or otherwise persecuted, and in some cases killed. Those who remained are often spoilers or people you would not willfully vote for. So usually, people unhappy with the regime either did not show up for the election or spread their votes between many unpopular candidates. That is how Putin's party has support from 20-25% of the population according to various polls but commands 75% of the seats in the parliament. This, and election being rigged. So, the idea is to consolidate the votes of the people who are not happy with Putin's regime. If anything, just to send the message. And that's "protest voting".
The list of the candidates to support was published at the last moment to avoid the risk that they will be removed from the election. The app is the main channel to publish this list because it can auto-update and bypass Internet censorship. Normal websites are often inaccessible without a VPN. Google and Apple shut off this channel.
It is a simple list of candidates recommended to vote for that, according to Navalny team's research, have the highest chance of defeating the Putin's candidates.
The idea is that instead of spreading votes and allowing the baddies to get the highest percentage (but not even close to 50%) and win, people would concentrate their votes.
If you are still in disbelief, that Kremlin would apply such an enormous pressure just to ban a simple list of voting recommendations, I want to remind you that this is exactly what happened last night: the recommendations were posted on Google Docs and Russia decided to ban the whole Google Docs service for that.
Very sad when not even the massively rich will bother to do the right thing. "Sorry, need a few more billion, so we're going to side with an oppressive regime against Democracy."
Reminds me of a Dylan line "Will all the money you made buy back your soul?"
> Very sad when not even the massively rich will bother to do the right thing.
The issue is Google and Apple isn't owned by one massively rich person.
They are owned by tens of thousands of shareholders, many extremely wealthy but most small, including both individual investors but also pension funds and hedge funds, and the CEO & Board are legally obligated to act in their fiduciary interest.
> CEO & Board are legally obligated to act in their fiduciary interest.
Short or long term? Because shitting on democracy for money is potentially very damaging for brands in the long term, the market and especially future comptetitors will remember it.
I don't believe that for a second. Fiduciary duty prevents corporate officers from enriching themselves at the expense of the company. Fiduciary duty does not compel cooperation with dictators in the suppression of their people.
Can you provide a single example of a civil or criminal charge over something like this?
Usually, we would sanction countries that did this. Maybe time to sanction companies? Otherwise, why do anyone expect them to do anything other than what is the most profitable? Its even illegal not to.
> Usually, we would sanction countries that did this. Maybe time to sanction companies? Otherwise, why do anyone expect them to do anything other than what is the most profitable? Its even illegal not to.
Sanction for what exactly? Sanctions against nations don't work. USA has been sanctioning Cuba, Iran for half a century, no regime change whatsoever, it only hurt the population in these countries. USA are sanctioning Russia right now, is Putin gone? No.
And you want to sanction Apple or Google for what? under what law? Isn't the whole argument made all the time now that these "private companies" are free to censor whoever they want for whatever reasons and they don't have to respect the concept of freedom of speech on their platform?
> Very sad when not even the massively rich will bother to do the right thing.
This is so bizarre, what did people expect here? Apple has been complying with Chinese communist party demands for decades and who knows what Google did. But when it's the Russian government, it's where people on HN draw the line?
These companies certainly want their phones/ecosystem to be sold or used in Russia, they only care about whatever values you think they care about for PR reason in USA. Same for Twitter, Facebook and co.
They are rich for these very reasons, they were never champion of whatever ideals people here think they stand for. Especially Apple, which is a ruthless company with a well oiled marketing machine. People need to wake up to that fact. There is nothing "woke" with these companies other than their PR.
So I hear the argument "well Russia isn't that much of a big market for Apple, Google, and co...". These corporations don't want to make an enemy of the Russian government either.
edit: I'm not defending the actions of the Russian government or Google or Apple caving to their demands, I'd love Russia to be a free and open society. I'm just questioning why is China constantly let off the hook here or in other tech circles, when it always was a brutal dictatorship with no elections to begin with? Is it because westerners relate less to the Chinese because of their race or something? Or because they don't want to admit that THEY directly profit from China's dictatorship and its industry (and capital)? whereas nothing they use gets build in Russia?
We know one thing they did: withdrew from the Chinese market in 2010. Despite it being the second largest economy in the world, and them having an extremely successful search service there.
It is important to note, that in Apple's case the problem is made worse by the fact that on iOS there are no ways to install the app bypassing the appstore.
That makes Apple's cooperation with dictators and authocrats so much worse for their users. You know, the people Apple claims to care about and 'protect'.
They also care so much about the environment that they release almost identical phones each year with no ability to change batteries, plus make it as hard as possible to replace batteries. Any corporation which promises social Justice is a farce exploiting issues as pawns.
Apple itself is pretty much an autocratic company that believes it knows best what its customers should and should not be able to do with their products. So this is not really surprising.
To be pedantic, Apple does allow Progressive Web Apps which can bypass the App Store. (The Xbox cloud gaming app is a big one that goes down this path)
Note that I don’t support at all this decision to cooperate with an autocrat.
As I understand, PWAs are easy to block - you just need to block access to a web server. And native apps have more possibilities to evade blocking: they can use non-standard protocols, P2P protocols, receive data via pushes. So to block a native app one would have to block access to App Store.
PWAs are a market failure [1], and the deployment/utilization of them approximates 0%, including on Android where, the many comments tell us, it's a high power panacea.
[1] - Though it is astonishing how well the cloud gaming options work as PWAs. The one place where they've made any headway.
Previously, Google usually ignored such requests, but seems to have finally gave in. If they are willing to remove the app, what's next, disclosing personal information to help the regime with repressions, preventing access from Russia to other Google resources, removing YouTube videos? The "we comply with local laws" clause effectively puts citizens of opperssive regime at a disadvantage. It's not like I had an impression somebody else besides citizens of the country in question can help to fight the power, but sad news like this disillusion even more.
Google obeys Russian laws. Of course they'll disclose any information they have given proper police request. They did that many times in the past. With Russia and with other countries.
Do you expect Google to go partisan war against Russian government?
Google had also went back on their word on halting to provide information to the HK/Chinese government after the national security law has been enacted.
>If they are willing to remove the app, what's next, disclosing personal information
Both Apple and Google share all requested information in the US, so why is this any different? If Apple or Google should "do better" the change need to be made in the US at first. Pointing fingers while down in the mud doesn't really do any good.
When watching this week's iPhone keynote, it occurred to me that while they were showing all their environmental credentials, which seems to be given more prominence every time, what I'd really like to see is a slide on "supporting freedom and democracy".
Apple do have the resources, influence and brand equity to make some strides here and it doesn't have to be completely philanthropic either - it can make business sense to edge towards being better in some of these areas.
At the moment it feels a bit disingenuous to be so self-congratulatory on the environmental progress [1] when we're constantly reading articles about the conditions in their supply chain (which they do have responsibility for, despite the often touted excuse of "they're not their factories").
[1] I don't mean to talk down the importance of the environmental stuff - just that it's only one part of a wide spectrum of ethical areas that I think Apple could be addressing.
I liked how after showing all their environmental credentials, they released a phone which is basically the same thing as last year and none of their devices allow easy battery changes and they actively make it harder for third parties to do it.
Apple makes it easier to replace a battery than Samsung phones.
They only charge $69 for an out of warranty battery replacement. You can mail it in or go to an Apple store. Is there any modern (and waterproof) phone you can have a battery replaced easier or for less?
Readit News
Letting your Russian employees be persecuted don't amount to "doing the right thing".
If companies don't want to be complicit in these crimes, they need to extricate themselves from the country and cut all ties.
If they do want to put profit ahead of everything else, then whatever, but you don't get to defend them as doing the right thing for their employees. They're enabling the whole situation.
[Edit to bring in a sister question] "Why don't Apple pull out of China then?" - because they put profit and cheap manufacturing ahead of their morals. And apparently we don't care enough that China effected a genocide while we watched.
IMHO, cooperating with an authoritarian regime in this way should be illegal, sort of like a sanctions violation. Cook and Pachai should go to jail for this. That consequence might clarify their thinking a little.
Give your customers the ability to install their own software or app stores on the hardware that they own and paid for, without requiring a monopolistic walled garden. Of course, companies like Apple would never do this because they are far too greedy.
Or put from a flip side… Building apps in highly democratic Norway just for Norwegians to use because they’re the best democracy (for example) doesn’t make enough money to feed my family. So why do anything at all?
Arguably having access to technology is important for the regular citizen, even under less democratic countries. There is the privacy angle, and also if you have an Android monopoly it becomes easier for the government to exploit/enforce what they want. You don't help people to understands the benefits of participating on a democracy, or even fighting to have a democracy by withdrawing and hiding what democracies around the world are able to produce and manufacture. Withdrawing the apps as required by government censorship is just one of the battles lost, but not the entire benefit Apple presence has.
Dead Comment
It's all about Navalny's tactic of 'smart voting', where they are picking candidates from parties other than the 'United Russia' party of Putin, in an attempt to bring in members of parliament who would not be in exact alignment with the politics of Putin. These candidates are often not even in open opposition to Putin, and that is currently the worst opposition and nightmare of the Russian government...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Voting
Participating in dictatorship is barely better than refusing to do so if that dictatorship will falsely imprison your employees.
Then why Apple hasn't pulled out of China? Like 2 decades ago? China was always a brutal dictatorship. Why would they pull out of anything? These company profit from bloody dictatorships, like the rest of the western economy. But somehow when it's about Russia it's a problem? The hypocrisy in the west must stop. The west and it's industry never stood for freedom abroad since it decided that business is more important than democracy in the rest of the world, basically when the west accepted China in the WTO.
> Participating in dictatorship is barely better than refusing to do so if that dictatorship will falsely imprison your employees.
Tell that to Apple in China, a country that is literally using slave workforce from concentration camps. But Russia is where people here start being outraged?
How many of Russia's Apple employees think Apple is "participating in dictatorship" by employing them? How many Russian citizens, including the political opposition, do you think blame Apple or Google for participating in dictatorship by selling them phones and providing them with services? Maybe a few take such an extreme view, but it certainly doesn't seem to be a common attitude for Russian opponents of Putin.
I don't really think that'd help. It'd further isolate those countries, making them more and more authoritarian and less and less educated.
Google pulling out of any country for help democracy either.
Of course, working in the country means paying tax dollars and "participating in the dictatorship" in that way, but that's not linked to app store restrictions. It's not as if they needed to get ordered to remove that app to realize they were working in a dictatorship, they knew it beforehand.
Moving out of their country is just what dictatorships want. To do their thing undisturbed.
Which is not to say Google and Apple don't care about their employees, clearly this article suggests otherwise.
It's just not true that pulling out is a viable or even straight forward option.
You could also make an argument for US government placing pressure on these companies to keep a presence in Russia so they (the US government) can have some kind of foothold to push soft pressure
You can post whataboutism under this comment (e.g. "what about China?", "US is bloody too", "US always supports dictators" and other useful idiot[0] stuff).
0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
Every country does exactly the same thing. Just look at how much suppression of "alternative voices" happens in real time all over the world and what apps were banned, accounts closed etc. Jan 6 was painted as bad as 9/11, ffs. It may be staged differently so it's not the "government" directly steps onto your 1st amendment, but "private biz", but who are we kidding. When there are forbidden topics and forbidden people, it's the outcomes that matter, not specific mechanisms.
Google and Apple are collaborating with all governments, and all governments are abusing their powers in someone's own interests, so calling for "pulling out" of a "misbehaving country" makes as much sense as asking for rain to drop upwards.
I'd better explore how people could reduce their dependence on any giant corporation, regardless of it being a business or a government, from West or East.
> likely result in many other western IT firms closing their offices and leaving
That's just naive. Russia and China are huge markets. Apple and Google are not going anywhere unless their hands are forced.
That might be the right thing to do but it’s a tough sell to shareholders.
Obviously they won't if they fold this easy.
Why haven't you provided a link then?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-16/russia-ta...
>Google removed the app Friday morning after the Russian authorities issued a direct threat of criminal prosecution against the company’s staff in the country, naming specific individuals, according to a person familiar with the company’s decision.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/world/europe/russia-naval...
https://twitter.com/ioannZH/status/1438750081402953728
Any government can easily classify any opposition as "extremists" now and Apple and Google will ban them.
I disagree. Western companies have no moral obligation to bend their own ethics, help a tyrant, and harm a nation, in order to "save" one, or a handful, of employees from said tyrant.
Quite the opposite, the right thing to do is to take a stand and force the tyrant out in broad daylight.
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IT IS very much a right thing. Don't want to work for such company? Leave! It's not an indentured slavery!
Fuck, You Sergei Brin! You just screwed the most monumental display of courage, and determination by employees of Google Russia with a single pen stroke.
The threat to employees on the other hand was not real one, there is no one to legally procecute in the Russian subsidiaries of the companies.
I'm an immigrant who moved from Hungary to Germany, lived in Spain and Mexico, and I know many examples from all countries where people in power got their way through various ways, even if they had no legal way to enforce their will on others. Also do not forget, if you control legislation, the judges, the constitution, the police, etc, what is legal one day, can become illegal and prosecuted and persecuted pretty quickly.
If a Chinese company came to the US or EU and ignored US or EU rules and lawful directives from government, we would quite rightly be up in arms about that.
With regards to CSAM, I think the same applies. After all the CSAM issue only exists because the US government has decided that invasive monitoring is the only way to counter CSAM.
I note that no other western country takes such an authoritarian approach to CSAM, an approach that seems to be primarily driving by evangelist Christian keen on outlawing sex in general. As oppose to actually helping victims of CSAM.
The cynic in me believes this was either or both of these:
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- Marketing ploy. The new iMessages app allows for scanning of the sent and received pictures for nudity and notifies parents if parental controls are enabled.
This is supported by the very large order of iPhones apple made for this year, roughly 90 million iirc.
- Bending the definition of E2EE, that is, enabling them to bend to governments "without breaking" their privacy "stance". Meaning that it is entirely possible to scan for content provided the government targets without losing E2EE. Effectively creating a special class of back window, where one can take a peek without the ability to execute arbitrary code.
It should be noted that given that the model is fast and can run with minimal impact (thank god for accelerators on SOCs /s), it could in theory run in realtime as part of the display pipeline, further removing restrictions like requiring that the content is downloaded with the images and iCloud sync is enabled.
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But all of that is pure speculation from a random netizen.
The story that keeps getting mentioned is that Facebook reports about 55k images a day, Google reports about 1500/day, whereas Apple was reporting 250 a year.
This incident is more than enough for me to remain concerned that that will happen.
> “Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'” - MLK
Considering this, HKmap.live[2], and Telegram[3], he seems to be mighty confused about who “others” refers to in that quote.
[1]: https://twitter.com/tim_cook
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HKmap.live
[3]: https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/apple-telegram-belarus/
1. a shareholder or investor
2. a government entity whose favor you are economically dependent on.
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We have elections in Russia this weekend and Navalny app was used as a tool to coordinate protest voting. It is called "Smart Voting" by Navalny team and it is getting a lot of attention for upcomping elections.
If Apple and Google would just be a little bit slower and complied next Monday :)
Still there are more ways to coordinate Smart Voting. Google Docs with recommendations are published. There are youtube videos where Navalny team reads whole list aloud. There's a Telegram bot.
So I hope this action would just bring more attention to the matter.
In Russia, many potentially popular candidates are not allowed to run, were imprisoned, or otherwise persecuted, and in some cases killed. Those who remained are often spoilers or people you would not willfully vote for. So usually, people unhappy with the regime either did not show up for the election or spread their votes between many unpopular candidates. That is how Putin's party has support from 20-25% of the population according to various polls but commands 75% of the seats in the parliament. This, and election being rigged. So, the idea is to consolidate the votes of the people who are not happy with Putin's regime. If anything, just to send the message. And that's "protest voting".
The list of the candidates to support was published at the last moment to avoid the risk that they will be removed from the election. The app is the main channel to publish this list because it can auto-update and bypass Internet censorship. Normal websites are often inaccessible without a VPN. Google and Apple shut off this channel.
The idea is that instead of spreading votes and allowing the baddies to get the highest percentage (but not even close to 50%) and win, people would concentrate their votes.
If you are still in disbelief, that Kremlin would apply such an enormous pressure just to ban a simple list of voting recommendations, I want to remind you that this is exactly what happened last night: the recommendations were posted on Google Docs and Russia decided to ban the whole Google Docs service for that.
Pick your favourite animal:
A: Black horse
B: Brown horse
Z: Pony
Reminds me of a Dylan line "Will all the money you made buy back your soul?"
The issue is Google and Apple isn't owned by one massively rich person.
They are owned by tens of thousands of shareholders, many extremely wealthy but most small, including both individual investors but also pension funds and hedge funds, and the CEO & Board are legally obligated to act in their fiduciary interest.
Short or long term? Because shitting on democracy for money is potentially very damaging for brands in the long term, the market and especially future comptetitors will remember it.
Can you provide a citation of which law requires this?
Can you provide a single example of a civil or criminal charge over something like this?
Sanction for what exactly? Sanctions against nations don't work. USA has been sanctioning Cuba, Iran for half a century, no regime change whatsoever, it only hurt the population in these countries. USA are sanctioning Russia right now, is Putin gone? No.
And you want to sanction Apple or Google for what? under what law? Isn't the whole argument made all the time now that these "private companies" are free to censor whoever they want for whatever reasons and they don't have to respect the concept of freedom of speech on their platform?
This is so bizarre, what did people expect here? Apple has been complying with Chinese communist party demands for decades and who knows what Google did. But when it's the Russian government, it's where people on HN draw the line?
These companies certainly want their phones/ecosystem to be sold or used in Russia, they only care about whatever values you think they care about for PR reason in USA. Same for Twitter, Facebook and co.
They are rich for these very reasons, they were never champion of whatever ideals people here think they stand for. Especially Apple, which is a ruthless company with a well oiled marketing machine. People need to wake up to that fact. There is nothing "woke" with these companies other than their PR.
So I hear the argument "well Russia isn't that much of a big market for Apple, Google, and co...". These corporations don't want to make an enemy of the Russian government either.
edit: I'm not defending the actions of the Russian government or Google or Apple caving to their demands, I'd love Russia to be a free and open society. I'm just questioning why is China constantly let off the hook here or in other tech circles, when it always was a brutal dictatorship with no elections to begin with? Is it because westerners relate less to the Chinese because of their race or something? Or because they don't want to admit that THEY directly profit from China's dictatorship and its industry (and capital)? whereas nothing they use gets build in Russia?
We know one thing they did: withdrew from the Chinese market in 2010. Despite it being the second largest economy in the world, and them having an extremely successful search service there.
That makes Apple's cooperation with dictators and authocrats so much worse for their users. You know, the people Apple claims to care about and 'protect'.
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Dead Comment
Note that I don’t support at all this decision to cooperate with an autocrat.
Apple is the company that is actively sabotaging PWAs.
In my view the PWA route is pretty crippled on iOS compared to what's available on Android - so its usefulness as an alternative is extremely limited.
[1] - Though it is astonishing how well the cloud gaming options work as PWAs. The one place where they've made any headway.
As per my other comment, I don't tend to agree that PWA is a decent alternative but that's a different point altogether.
PWAs do exist on iOS, as you correctly point out.
Do you expect Google to go partisan war against Russian government?
Expect? To some degree, yes, for example they do not remove "illegal" YouTube videos yet. Would like to? Absolutely.
Google already does this. It promotes opposition and western propaganda in the search results and YouTube.
If you're Russian and just register on YouTube, for the first few weeks you'll be flooded with videos of Navalny and his cronies.
$100B/$60k USD = 1.6 million soldiers feed, and armed for a year.
If he is a patriotic Russia who he claims himself to be, he should do that instead.
Both Apple and Google share all requested information in the US, so why is this any different? If Apple or Google should "do better" the change need to be made in the US at first. Pointing fingers while down in the mud doesn't really do any good.
Apple do have the resources, influence and brand equity to make some strides here and it doesn't have to be completely philanthropic either - it can make business sense to edge towards being better in some of these areas.
At the moment it feels a bit disingenuous to be so self-congratulatory on the environmental progress [1] when we're constantly reading articles about the conditions in their supply chain (which they do have responsibility for, despite the often touted excuse of "they're not their factories").
[1] I don't mean to talk down the importance of the environmental stuff - just that it's only one part of a wide spectrum of ethical areas that I think Apple could be addressing.
They only charge $69 for an out of warranty battery replacement. You can mail it in or go to an Apple store. Is there any modern (and waterproof) phone you can have a battery replaced easier or for less?
https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/service/battery-powe...