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.
The timing of the change seems quite conspicuous [1], and it's also weird that Apple would introduce this in China first and only roll it out to the rest of the world next year. The same article mentions that Apple blocks the Taiwanese flag emoji in China, for which it's hard to come up with an explanation other than bowing to censorship.
Bowing to censorship? Bowing isn't necessarily done happily.
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?
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>.
To be fair: (1) it seems like the update landed recently, and (2) the article you linked does cite the same reasoning as the Twitter posts. Even if was a little ahead of the more recent Zero Covid protests, it seems like AirDrop's been a known vector in China to share government criticism, which is why Apple's cracking down.
That's interesting that this was rolled out a few weeks ago, however the article also says:
> 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.
Looking at it from a users perspective, people constantly trying to airdrop me stuff is not something I want, even though I want to use “everyone” at times. I’ve had this happen in public before and it’s annoying but maybe it’s become so widespread that it’s a UX issue in China?
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.
Why does it seem "the right thing"? I mean, it's pretty stupid to actually keep it open for everyone forever, but if I want that (and I don't know why it was even an option, but I assume somebody wants that) — that's my business, it doesn't hurt anyone. Also, limiting it to 10 minutes doesn't help, since I just can keep turning it on and on it seems.
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.
A setting with 10 minutes default would be reasonable change for users sake, in case they forget to turn it off.
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.
It's because recently there's report on the internet that some people are receiving nude photos from random guys over AirDrop (*on subways), and the fact that sexual harassment charges in China are pressed rather weakly.
I legitimately don't understand how this has been spun into some sort of pro-censorship move. Leaving your phone open to getting AirDrop-ed by anyone in the vicinity just seems like a terrible idea in general, but especially in China. Apple is helping the authoritarian dictatorship by checks notes not having your phone advertise to everyone nearby that it can receive files from anyone?
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.
Because people sending dick pics and spam had been a known issue for ages, yet this change came soon after China complaining about people sending protest flyers, rolled out in China first, and with no option to leave your phone open.
One can argue whether it's Apple's job to fight censorship (and I might agree that it's not), but you have to willfully blind say this is not pro-censorship.
For context: AirDrop was one of the only ways protesters had to communicate en-masse.
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.
Note: AirDrop is unsafe for broadcasting message anonymously. It will also broadcast your hashed phone number and email[1], which can be reversed by rainbow table.
True, but invalidated by burner and jailbroken phones which are widespread in China. They can definitely catch somebody with a concerted effort but I'd be surprised if the average Chinese teenager couldnt figure out how to make a burner email
Signal can't be used at all in China anyway since the verification texts are blocked. I've tried contacting Signal support about this (I live in China and want to use Signal) but as soon as I tell them I love in China and have a Chinese phone number they stop replying :)
To be fair, it's the only real solution anywhere, and it's just us who is playing dumb and pretending SMS verification is absolutely fine and totally acceptable for a "secure messenger" in our free and happy democratic society. Jesus, the level of absurdity here...
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.
I have to admit that when you actually look at the details this is a rather perplexing change. Ditto for reading the comments here.
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.
At the risk of being an Apple apologist, their manufacturing is effectively held hostage by China. Yes Apple is taking the "make more profit" choice, but the alternative is pretty devastating to the company. Long term, Apple needs to diversify their manufacturing footprint.
(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.)
Because China told them to after protests last month or so. This did not just happen in the last two days.
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.
Also, anyone who rides public transportation in a major metropolitan area has probably experienced perverts airdropping them pornography, and this would fix that issue.
Do you ride public transportation in a major metropolitan area? This is not a thing I've ever even heard of happening (I'm sure someone has done it) in the real world
I'm a little confused by the "Apple's doing bad here" sentiment. The easier to implement, and definitely more effective solution would have been to just disable the Everyone feature completely. Just remove it from the menu. This would have been something like
action.isEnabled = self.isInChina
Instead, they went through the effort to actually make it still there, but time bombed. They had to add a timeout function, and record the time it was enabled, etc. And at the end of the day, the activist/protestor at a street gathering now has the inconvenience of re-enabling "everyone" 6 times an hour.
For me, this basically feels like lip service to the Chinese government, but otherwise a finger. Maybe I'm beeing too myopic.
Yeah, I quite agree. Reposting my comment from above here because this makes a better thread ... I think this 10 minute delay might actually be intended to be protective for the protestors. Any radio transmitter is a beacon that can be localized and destroyed. In serious warfare this is a major issue. "I'm up, they see me, I'm down" is drilled into military operators early and often.
I guess it works both ways though. If everyone had it on, you can't easily arrest every iPhone user. And people could spread information really quickly. Now you have to turn it on for 10 minutes at a time so you aren't organising that mass protest as fast.
No one can explain the confidential-NDA internal workings of Apple in this forum, but here’s a constructed, plausible, scenario that contradicts the claim “Apple implemented this for China”:
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.)
I realize apple hates options, but adding a 4th option to leave it as everyone indefinitely would have been sooo easy. And I see people were commenting about the protests as a motivating factor 2 weeks ago in that story.
When the CCP says “take that option off phones in China”, you do. Because if you don’t those hundreds of millions of devices they produce for you every year may stop being produced. Or find a new $500/each tariff on them. Or some other company killing thing.
Apple should have hedged years ago, now they’re stuck.
I'm not an expert on China, but my understanding is that there has been a wave of protests over the past several months/weeks in which Airdrop has been used to disseminate protest materials. The intensity of the protests has ebbed/flowed, and they are happening in many different locations. Even "the current protest" is not well defined: there are currently many different protests that share a common grievance, happening in different cities across China.
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.
Did it? OK. I don't keep up with the release dates anymore. But I just got the notifications on my iPhone and iPad literally last week. I've only been on 16 for a few days.
Any Apple employee (or really, any large-company employee) would agree that this change is months of work. From the original problem statement (people get spammed when they leave AirDrop set to Everyone), to many strongly-opinionated discussions on how to solve (There's not a problem; Pop up a reminder to disable after an hour; Enable only for some period of time [5 minutes, 10 minutes, 1 hour, user-configured]), and then arguments about how to phrase the UI (yes, even for something this small) and mock-ups and product reviews, and then development + QA and internal/Livability testing, and then coordinating for the actual iOS release.
It's a mountain of work, which would have kicked off a long time before any of these protests.
Normally it would be several months of work, but if it was a top level company directive (e.g. from the CEO) it would probably take 3-4 weeks at minimum. Note that protests have been going on sporadically for this entire year.
And is it standard procedure for Apple to release these kinds of changes only in China? They're clearly putting massive priority on this change launching in that geography ASAP (for one reason or another), so it doesn't seem hard to believe that this bypassed most of their other process as well.
Sooner or later Apple will have to losen its grip on the device because if they not, counties will simply try to use Apple as enforcer. Just as with privacy the best road being "We don't have that data", the best road with this is to be able to say "We don't have control over it".
it already has in China. I don't know how much is known to the public but in order to do business in China, Apple has created a parallel Chinese app store/icloud/etc.[1][2] I imagine even the operating systems and possibly hardware differ from what they sell elsewhere.
I'm aware. My guess is, it mostly flies under the radar because this is not happening in Europe or the USA but for how long? What happens when Italy&Hungary starts demanding modifications to protect their citizens against godlessness, abortion, sex out of wedlock, political organisations against them or whatever agenda the far right has?
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).
I don't know if a third-party app might be able to duplicate this functionality, but even if so the problem is third party apps can be banned, and can be seen on phones by authorities and used as a reason for suspicion. People have to be bold enough to install it to receive messages too.
Readit News
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.
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?
Dead Comment
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.
> 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.
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
Dead Comment
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.
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...
[1]: https://privatedrop.github.io/
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.
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.)
Dead Comment
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.
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.
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).