> Apple says it didn’t require any channels to be removed. But they demanded to immediately remove any information that discloses someone's data on the Internet without the consent of these persons, as well as content aimed at specific people in accordance with the rules of the App Store.
This refers to the efforts of the Belorussian opposition to 'unmask' members of the riot police by posting their personal details online. Without going into the moral weeds, from the terms-of-service point of view that's basically griefing, no?
So this is a very curious quandary Apple finds itself in. Let's assume that griefing Belorussian law enforcement is a good thing. But at the same time griefing people (regardless of whether they are bad/good/chaotic neutral) is against the TOS.
So what do you do if you are Apple?
[0] https://tjournal.ru/tech/221326-apple-zayavila-chto-ne-trebo...
In this specific situation there’s a pretty obvious power imbalance where the public do not wear masks and the authorities would be able to track them down and oppress them later (or just do what they currently do and grab them from the streets at the time). The threat of unmasking is one of the few things the people have to use against the authorities: when a policeman has his mask removed he will typically run away for fear of being identified. (The only other things they have are sheer numbers and the moral superiority of being basically peaceful against a violent government).
A similar argument about law enforcement safety was used by Apple to remove a map app in Hong Kong which showed people where large groups of police (and eg tear gas releases or which small coloured banners announcing illegal assemblies had been raised). The claim was that the app could be used to target individual policemen even though it only showed larger units and mainly helped people to get around the city without getting gassed by the police. Meanwhile the Chinese government were funding a site offering money for doxxing protestors but it wasn’t in the App Store so I guess it was ok.
Applying "doxxing" rules to police on the job in public must be the most absurd perversion of the term ever. Why on earth would we grant privacy to public servants entrusted with the force monopoly?
We're talking about a brutal police force serving a corrupt and delegitimized regime, that is involved in extrajudicial detention, torture, and murder of peaceful protesters. This unit, the OMON, was specifically established to serve as Lukashenko's beatstick against the opposition. Now, the overwhelmingly peaceful protest movement in Belarus has turned towards intimidation (no actual violence has been reported, afaik) against these people specifically, as a way of fighting back.
And then you see people on HN referring to this as "doxxing", as if this was some kind of pithy Twitter fight. I understand that Twitter fights are what people around here can more easily relate to their own life experience than what is currently going on in Belarus, but for Christ's sake, let's try and put things in perspective here.
I don't see any part of the comment doing that. Can you quote it?
I see internet terms being applied to the actions against the police, and those actions aren't brutal at all.
Apple could do something really simple if they wanted to not interfeer with how people organize their fight: allow to install apps outside of the app store. This would force law enforcement to deal with Telegram directly rather than being able to take advantage of apple's own authoritarian way to run its platform.
Now it's a question of what's apple highest priority, people freedom or profit.
They are already requiring entitlements to develop things that use the network extension framework (no sideload for VPNs and proxies bypassing the Chinese firewall).
This is just them being forced (again) to make visible the negative sides of such a centralized platform.
It’s not simple.
Police officers must not be able to act anonymously. This is not like "doxxing" anonymous Internet trolls or forum users or whatever.
> Apple says it didn’t require any channels to be removed. But they demanded to immediately remove any information
If they don't like published information, they are welcome to sue the people who published it. That is, if they are in cahoots with the US government's foreign meddling initiatives.
> that discloses someone's data on the Internet without the consent of these persons, as well as content aimed at specific people in accordance with the rules of the App Store.
Can't break the rules of the all-powerful Apple app store, now can we? Tsk tsk tsk.
> This refers to the efforts of the Belorussian opposition to 'unmask' members of the riot police by posting their personal details online.
> So what do you do if you are Apple?
Exploit my users, perform mass surveillance for the US government, breath down the neck of app makers, produce cheaply with poor employment conditions in China, and manipulate the media to fawn over me. That is, if I were Apple.
Luckily I'm not Apple and neither are you, so don't think about what you would do in a place in which you should never get to.
Belarus is on the brink of civil war.
Doxxing regime supporters can easily end up as a "murder todo list" if things heat up.
This is just one tool, and there will be killing with or without it.
Do you give an innuendo that this is somehow wrong?
At least being transparent and willing to take a part of responsibility of this action?
> (google translate)
DeepL is a much better translator, at least for the languages I know and according to all comparisons I’ve heard others make, btw (though I don’t know if Yandex Translate is better for Russian).
"I cannot believe you would say that to me."
It came up with:
私にそんなことを言うなんて信じられないわ
Holy crap, complete with a disparaging なんて, and a nice わ sentence-ender to make it a feminine sounding complaint.
I'm almost sensing like the thing is tying to tell me, "here is how your boring English sounds if it is turned into line from a J-drama."
Was this trained using subtitle databases, I wonder. It's as if a mediocre English subtitle was found, similar to my text, and the corresponding original line had been retrieved.
Nothing because Apple has ZERO, no place meddling in this business.
Just hear yourself, "it's against the TOS" versus people on the streets trying to save their own country from a stolen election and a dictator??
OF COURSE the TOS of a tech company is completely irrelevant in this situation.
TOS aren't even laws, they were just created by a profit driven corporation for legal protection. Of course they aren't relevant here.
Just because Apple can say this, and can pressure Telegram, doesn't mean they aren't absolutely in the wrong here.
I don't agree that you should be allowed to post people's private, identifying data to a public forum without consent.
This HAS to apply equally, because the idea that there is a universal set of right and wrong is incredibly naive.
A better argument here is how the laws aren't applied equally.
TrueCaller was used by the Chinese to harass and attack human rights activists, and it is essentially an index of everyone's contact list.
Yet, somehow, this doesn't bother Apple. 100% financially motivated.
But my point stands. These telegram channels that exist to distribute public data of people merely accused of being involved with the regime should be shutdown. The term here is witch hunt and I'll take a lot of convincing that innocent people haven't already been falsely accused
This is literally the "just comply with the police and you'll be fine" argument.
Yes, we KNOW everyone clicked through the ToS, but it _completely_ misses the point of the discussion.
Not meddling means enforcing its TOS in an evenhanded way. Otherwise it's playing favorites.
Would people object if Apple told Telegram they had to remove a channel that was being used by white supremacists to coordinate terrorist attacks?
The answer to that question matters, because if users in this thread succeed in making iPhones less of a walled garden, terrorists will be able to use their iPhones to coordinate terror repeatedly on a large scale, and there won't be anything Apple can do about it. Is that really the world you want to live in? Personally, 2020 has satiated my appetite for craziness, and I'm ready for a little stability.
And? If they're using (say) Signal or even Messages, it's already end-to-end encrypted and there's nothing Apple can do about it.
> Is that really the world you want to live in?
You mean like they're able to use GPG/PGP, Tor browser, and Tails Linux distribution to potentially have secure encrypted communications now? Terrorists, drug dealers, pedophiles, and organized crime have been the boogeymen against strong crypto for decades:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
We've been through this before in the 1990s, and the techies (who tend to often lean libertarian) have generally sided with opening things up even if that meant the baddies also got the same capabilities:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars
Coming at it form the opposite end: should the IETF weaken TLS with backdoors so the government agencies can monitor the bad people? Is that really the world you want to live in?
I don't want white supremacists being able to carry out terror attacks, but I want people to be able to coordinate demonstrations and civil resistance, and I'm not aware of a way to do this without also enabling white supremacists, and I think that's a valid tradeoff.
I can't judge you personally, but history will.
Those are very different things, and it is necessary to differentiate between the two.
I dont think that is an accurate analogy. It would more accurate to describe AWS / GCP asking Twitter to take down a tweet. Because Apple in your example Apple should be replaced with Telegram.
No, this is Microsoft telling Twitter to take down that tweet, because they have a Windows app. Or threatening to block access to the app or twitter.com.
And why Telegram in particular? Why doesn't Apple give the same ultimatum to Facebook to pressure them to block access to militant ethnonationalist groups - or for a more-fair comparison: Awful groups on WhatsApp.
If there's one thing worse than burdensome walled-garden rules, it's inconsistent enforcement of them.
It ended up as the main way Belarussian protesters organize themselves. TG is a huge target for their government and I would not be surprised if Apple is being pressured by them.
Exactly! If they want to start policing all content generated through apps that can be installed on iOS... they'll start getting millions of takedown requests from governments around the world.
Very weird decision strategically, and ofc very questionable morally.
So what???
Protestors are being imprisoned and tortured, they actually hanged protest organizers from trees, as a scare tactic, does Apple really want to go on public record as an enabler of this?
It is ethically abhorrent, disgusting and beyond terrifying.
If the team responsible for this at Apple is reading this thread, you should know you have blood on your hands.
Because they are usually pretty aggressive about acting on inciteful content.
Plus they make and sell communication apps subject to carrying the exact same sentiments. Content policing a chat app is asinine.
I imagine that it's through the terms of the contract signed by Telegram to be allowed into the App Store.
That Apple is flexing its market share (and walled garden) to enforce those terms on Telegram isn't even unusual.
But that doesn't make it ethical or right.
The App Store is theirs and they will kick you out if they don't like you. Isn't that good enough?
Are you sure? I remember people backing Apple when they were protecting users phones from FBI hacking.
There has to be limits on freedom, you can't just be allowed to post bomb making plans on the internet or yelling fire in a crowded theatre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
> Holmes, writing for a unanimous Court, ruled that it was a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917 (amended by the Sedition Act of 1918), to distribute flyers opposing the draft during World War I. Holmes argued this abridgment of free speech was permissible because it presented a "clear and present danger" to the government's recruitment efforts for the war. Holmes wrote:
>> The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.
one is very different from the other. I agree yelling fire in a crowded place can't be allowed - causes people to panic, because it's not possible to 'unhear' a sound.
But posting bomb-making information (or really, any information) should be allowed. This information is voluntarily consumed, so it has no danger of causing harm without a person acting on said information (in which case, it's not the information but the person acting on it that is the problem). This applies to _any_ information, not just bomb making information.
So what? Freedom of speech isn't meant to be just free speech as long as it's approved by some government.
>There has to be limits on freedom, you can't just be allowed to post bomb making plans on the internet or yelling fire in a crowded theatre
One of those things is not like the other.
From an ethical standpoint, the only limits on freedom should be those that infringe on the rights of others.
As in, "Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins."
> Previously, when removing posts at Apple’s request, Telegram replaced those posts with a notice that cited the exact rule limiting such content for iOS users. However, Apple reached out to us a while ago and said our app is not allowed to show users such notices because they were “irrelevant”.
Fucking hell, Apple.
----
cough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Ministry_...
They've kicked us out of open computing by locking down the only computer a lot of folks own (iPhone). And now look what kind of shit they can pull because they own the entire stack! This shouldn't be possible!
We really have to push against this and hope the DOJ forces all phone providers to allow "side-loading" (what a bizarre term!)
The iPhone is a computer, not some gaming console. It has to be free for freedom. You should be able to install straight off the web.
And before you downvote me, please look again how much Apple gives a damn about democracy in the world. And look what it's doing because of its power. Double plus ungood.
It's an American device. It should act like it!
Still, free-as-in-freedom iPhones? Hell no! I give them money because they are not free-as-in-freedom, but provide a walled garden and defend it for me. I don't think I could do this myself; I know lots and lots of people absolutely certainly couldn't in the same way that I couldn't perform open-heart surgery. On iOS right now it's really, really hard to inadvertently give one's data, money or identity to any random app, and even for people who are not in the cohort that somehow always accumulates browser toolbars, the security measures by device/OS and browser vendors are the only thing that keeps them safe. This is an absolutely huge thing. If they break that, it'll wipe out their mobile products.
I do wholeheartedly agree that they lock down too much and too hard. I get that it shouldn't be easy to side-load software, but making it utterly impossible is a bit too advanced-user-hostile. And this particular action of theirs is wayyy over any line one could draw, and I absolutely think their brand should suffer big time for this.
But taking things to the other extreme – free as in freedom – I really don't see how that could end well. Give the big app vendors easy, convenient ways to bypass all restrictions and they'll make use of it, if only to make development cheaper, and then the small vendors and eventually the shady vendors will follow suit, and we're essentially back at the Windows 95 security model with some permission nag screens that no one really cares about anyway, and then everyone gets scammed and flocks to whatever vendor still has a properly secured walled garden. If there is a way to open things up completely while keeping the platform safe and usable for absolute laypeople, I haven't read or heard of it. Right now, I vastly prefer a locked-down but completely usable platform to some abstract notion of freedom.
But I think with the current high bar for anti-trust, it can be argued that Apple is "hurting consumers" through the lock-down of their platform.
It's fine that Apple should offer a safe, curated experience of using their devices through the App Store. I'm even fine with the App Store having some OS-level integrations which would not be available to 3rd parties. But the App Store should have to compete on its own merits for how it delivers value to the customer - it should not be the only option by fiat. Maybe at the beginning, but not when smartphones are the dominant computing platform and the main way people use software on a daily basis.
The 30% cut which Apple requires is simply not justified for how much value Apple offers to businesses which drive revenue through the App Store. Again, maybe at the beginning, but the App Store no longer offers any meaningful benefit in terms of discoverability. Losing almost 1/3 of revenue out of the gate can make the difference between viability and not for a lot of companies at the margins, meaning this policy costs the user access to all those products which might be able to exist were it not for the "apple tax".
Even under the current legal framework, I just don't see how it's justified.
Source: The people he engages with as he attempts to increase Apple's market cap.
https://vid.alarabiya.net/images/2018/04/07/6f86bd65-aefa-4a...
I don't think what the USA is doing is something that should be followed. See anything privacy endangering in the US.
That's a really random nitpick though and I get what you meant.
> It's an American device. It should act like it!
I’m guessing you’re speaking about the “freedom” meme but there’s nothing uniquely American about freedom. If anything, capitalism tends to trump “freedom” and any pressures to equal the balance (like government oversight) almost always gets heavily condemned. So from that regard, iPhones (and Apple in general) are very much American entities. Not that I have anything against iPhones (I have one myself) but this is “just business”, as they say.
Just go buy a phone running the market leading OS, Android.
This is worthy of the Ministry of Truth
> Apple released a statement saying they didn't want us to take down the 3 channels run by the Belarusian protestors, but just specific posts "disclosing personal information."
> This sly wording ignores the fact that channels like @karatelibelarusi and @belarusassholes consist entirely of personal information of violent oppressors and those who helped rig the elections – because that is why those channels exist.
So wait, the issue foremost is the doxing. Doxing is against the clearly stated rules of their platform, so they don’t want you doxing people in apps on their platform. Which is okay with me, because the mob (The “majority”, note Durov even cites a very high consensus percentage for us to feel good about it) deciding who is ok to dox and who is not ok to dox is always dangerous for humanity.
Now, Belarus is without doubt (in my view) run by “violent oppressors”, and there is no rule of law by which protestors can seek redress, but the notion that it’s okay to dox people because you took a poll somewhere that included some percentage of Belarusians is downright naive and scary, and doesn’t smell much better at all than the government itself, however true it may be.
That Apple steps in and micromanages at this level is the disturbing element in my opinion, because certainly they’re only doing it because they were notified by Belarusian authorities, but to me the greater issue is the mob justice, against which there is also no appeal or redress, which to me is very scary, even if in this instance it is correct.
Having said this, you can still use Telegram Web on Safari to bypass these restrictions.
Here is the link to one group that uses ML to de-anonymize people: https://youtu.be/FAJIrnphTFg
On the other hand... that AI/ML looks like it has immense potential for wrongful identification.
"AI hallucinating" the wrong person's face into the scene using totally convincing feature interpolation.
In a high stakes scene where people feel the need to fight back, it's not hard to imagine such false positives ruining an innocent person's life.
Edit: If the other comment about people being killed as a result of identification videos is true, "ruining" only scratches the surface. Getting people killed due to an algorithm false positive would be a terrible thing to facilitate. We are talking about an algorithm where the "recognise face" part is known to make errors as well as subject to many kinds of bias (and that's even without a mask); and the "project the face into the video part" is optimised for making the most convincing deep fakes. Especially in the most high stakes scenes, somebody will inevitably convince themselves or others that the interpolated face is really the person who was there behind that mask. Heck, even experts misjudge pattern-matching evidence: https://www.cebm.ox.ac.uk/news/views/the-prosecutors-fallacy "The Prosecutor’s Fallacy is most often associated with miscarriages of justice."
Apple has handed over the entire operation of iCloud in China to a regime owned company, including all user data and keys (they did warn users that they were going to do that though).
At the same time they do not permit side-loading, thereby handing complete control over what users are allowed to install on their devices to authoritarian regimes.
This is not simply "complying with local laws" as they like to present it.
Apple customers do not care. There is a small minority of people who care (like people on this site) but I bet even they will continue to buy Apple products.
We are talking about a mind bogglingly rich company with arrogance to match. Even if this gets them bad PR, it will be forgotten in a few minutes.
I mean huge. Outdoor posters and slogans. TV shows.
I mean, this is truly Orwellian stuff, but in real world. Old uncharismatic dictator recruits huge soulless machine of most powerful corporation in the world to rule small poor country. I know this is not entirely true, but people will love this.
Wonderful!
At least with most androids you can unlock the bootloader and install something like linageos and remove google services to stop their ability to spy on you.
This is exactly what those free speech advocates meant when talking about slippery slopes: you either support free speech or censure. There is no middle ground.
Disclaimer: I think Infowars is pure, evil sh*t.
Pause this slippery slope argument for a second.
The current situation in Belarus:
- Protestors are being imprisoned by unidentified agents in unidentified vehicles
- Protestors are being _tortured_ throughout nightly interrogations
- Protest _organizers_ have been kidnapped overnight and hanged from trees to get the OMON's point across.
This isn't a US politics disinformation twitter ping-ball discussion of who gets to sound the smartest in logical argumentation.
This is an actual dictatorship, with real people and real blood.
Similar to poker, it rarely goes all the way to showdown. But the possibility of showdown still shapes everything.
In this case, they're policing user generated content on a platform.
The equivalent would be if they asked telegram to block infowars channels, or asked VPN providers to block the infowars website.
I had literally just started to defend/advocate-for apple after trash talking it for a while, but clearly I was extremely wrong.
App stores must not be political, even if the politics agree with you.
Some particular country does not allow books promoting religions other than their official religion. What am I supposed to do? Refuse to sell books on pet care or calculus or gardening in that country because I can't sell books about Druidism?
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrazine
A later study, funded by Syngenta itself, essentially said “nothing to see here, move along”.
Endocrine disruptors can cause changes in sexual behaviours and expression of primary and secondary sexual characteristics in animals (including humans).
Not exactly the same thing but this is the grain of truth in what seems like an entirely absurd idea.
Apparently, whilst the quandary is real, apple is either living on a different planet than I am, or doesn't care, and decided to pepper in something that the vast majority (I would assume) find distasteful 1984 stuff.
```
Apple released a statement saying they didn't want us to take down the 3 channels run by the Belarusian protestors, but just specific posts "disclosing personal information."
This sly wording ignores the fact that channels like @karatelibelarusi and @belarusassholes consist entirely of personal information of violent oppressors and those who helped rig the elections – because that is why those channels exist.
By hiding their demands with vague language, Apple is trying to avoid the responsibility of enforcing their own rules. It is understandable: according to this poll, over 94% of Belarusian users think the channels that made Apple worry should be left alone.
Previously, when removing posts at Apple’s request, Telegram replaced those posts with a notice that cited the exact rule limiting such content for iOS users. However, Apple reached out to us a while ago and said our app is not allowed to show users such notices because they were “irrelevant”.
Similarly, when Facebook wanted to inform its users that 30% of the fees users were paying for online events went to Apple, Apple didn’t let Facebook do it saying this information was (once more) “irrelevant”.
I strongly disagree with Apple’s definition of “irrelevant”. I think the reason certain content was censored or why the price is 30% higher is the opposite of irrelevant.
Apple has the right to be greedy and formalistic (or maybe not – that’s something for the courts and regulators to decide). But it’s time Apple learned to assume responsibility for their policy instead of trying to hide it from users – they deserve to know.
```
Fwiw, t.me is banned on HN because the vast majority of submissions don't show anything unless you install their app. It seems some posts are also display actual content, but they're rare, and it would require writing some special-case code to whitelist them.
Even going by metrics like cultural significance, there are large regional differences. It's a little unfair to call them smaller, even if they don't quite have the same level of political and social clout in the US.
If you let a communication app onto your platform, you are letting people use that to communicate. It is not up to apple to moderate telegram. It is up to telegram.
If apple wanted to, they could argue "Telegram is so badly moderated we want them off our platform". But that is very different from saying "If you do not take these specific moderation actions, we will kick you off our platform". Unless telegram was already on very thin ice with Apple, this is a massive over-reach by Apple.
> “Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'” - MLK
Considering this and the HKmap.live[2] situations, I’d say that in his case the answer to that question is “not much”.
The difference is that governments can block websites without Apple approval. But governments can't block app content without blocking the entire AppStore, so they have to reach Apple.
Servers/databases have IP addresses that can be blocked just as easy to stop and App.
https://tjournal.ru/tech/221326-apple-zayavila-chto-ne-trebo...
>Apple released a statement saying they didn't want us to take down the 3 channels run by the Belarusian protestors, but just specific posts "disclosing personal information."
>This sly wording ignores the fact that channels like @karatelibelarusi and @belarusassholes consist entirely of personal information of violent oppressors and those who helped rig the elections – because that is why those channels exist.
These channels are not about a platform for freedom of speech and rallying for peaceful demonstrations.
Nope. It’s about exposing PII of public officials; names and home addresses? Take pause to appreciate the possible consequences of this. What could possibly go wrong?
Now I agree that Belarus officials are complicit or actively engaging in violations of personal freedom, violence and persecution.
But calling out individuals with the not-so-subtle encouragement for personal confrontation and violent retribution is illegal and frowned upon in all democratic societies.
“The only way to stop violence is to pull off the masks, in both the literal and metaphorical sense. An officer who is no longer anonymous will think twice before he grabs, beats or kidnaps someone,"
Why should official working for public money be anonymous? If they have the power to apply force to public, it will not end well (and this is what is happening).
>The size limit is 150 members.
The affected channels on Telegram have tens of thousands of members and it's not possible to directly post to the timeline.
Apple monopoly on iOS platform must be broken, and Apple should be forced to allow third party appstores and third party push notifications.
The phone makers will either have to comply or leave that country. Either way, the people in that country do not get the app.
I think that the authorities cannot be expected to solve every problem in society there is. A better approach may be to educate people about the alternatives.
What Apple primarily wants, in my opinion, is to keep their users and their profits. Currently, it seems like they can take down apps for almost any reason, restrict independent repair of their devices by making the replacement parts and chips unavailable, force many simple-to-repair devices to be recycled instead of repaired, take huge cuts from the in-app purchase prices and more, with little to no impact on their sales or number of users.
I am wondering why is that the case. But apparently, most people do not care.
I've been following the news out of Belarus even if there isn't much hope at least the world has been witnessing.
How dare they. This is just appalling.
They have used proprietary devices, banned apps, and worked with governments against their customers.
I can only suggest that either you or your wife takes a marketing class to defend yourself from Apple and other companies.
Part IV, Chapter 1: Winston could hear the birds through the open window. Julia already had the kettle on, bubbling quietly, and she spoke as she rummaged for the tea tin. "Sleepyhead, you shouldn't fall asleep while reading. Not only did I have to replace your book in the bookshelf this morning, but you woke me up twice, whimpering during the night. Did you have a bad dream, darling?" ...
[1] Compare ancient Theban warnings about regurgitating a media line without double checking its claims: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737221
[2] One of the drones from Sector 7G of MiniTru. They all went to Nottingham, York, etc., so they're certainly not given any important tasks which could be screwed up, but since they do have degrees they still must be given some kind of make work, and (as someone in the work assignment ministry had only skimmed Smith's dossier, putting it down immediately the tea lady came by, and so hadn't realised the effect the nature of this position might have on his innate shaky grip on reality) they are charged with correcting errors in automatically generated transcripts (given the awful state of their cigarette machines is it any wonder the translation machine is so off base so frequently?), which somehow Smith has managed to Mitty up into a fantasy of rewriting, in the grand manner, truth.
[3] Of course Syme isn't listed in the rota on the office bulletin board any longer. He hasn't been disappeared. He's been promoted and now works at MiniPlen, so his name now appears on their office rotas.
[4] What kind of adult male would run to a woman to whom he hasn't been introduced, whose notion of flirting and courtship reduces entirely to exploiting an (alleged) injury in making a drop, as if she were not a lover but a dealer? One would have to be both immature and pretty full of oneself to not run away from that one, double time.
[5] Goldstein does leave us with the question of "why should human equality be averted?" and so Freud might say that Smith's dreams correspond to his subconscious attempting to answer that question. In this case, Smith's id dreams up an insidious totalitarian grand conspiracy theory (paralleling Smith's waking fantasies about his job) in which the Inner Party (which he failed to join entirely due to his poor A-level marks) is motivated exactly like the bullying teenage (they are from the cream of society: both rich and thick) schoolboys of his author's own experience, as a swotter on scholarship at a second-rate boarding school. This motive really consists...
With all the talk about how Apple cares about human rights, the CEO and senior management seem to be there as bystanders.
Provide the users with choices! You own the hardware, not the company!
Case in point: digital fundraisers on Facebook are not subject to Apple’s 30% tax, via a special COVID exemption until the end of the year.
Exposing identities of individuals is problematic. There are examples of bad things happening when these kind of messages spread through messaging apps.
It doesn't really matter where exactly Apple would draw a line, from absurd extremes like "you are free to talk about Roman officials infamous for sentencing innocents to the cross, but please do so without mentioning PII" when someone types in Pontius Pilate, to pragmatic, maybe even lazy "don't use the channel for illegal communications (but we can't really police them)". But they should at least try to be somewhat consistent about it and, even more importantly (but much easier!), by no means require secrecy. A secrecy requirement is just lame and reeks of foul play, horribly.
This stuff Apple does is what happens when someone gets on a power trip. What they gonna do next, attemp to censor forums available in Safari?
If you're doing something that hurts their bottom line, don't be surprised when they take measures to curtail those actions. They're a company.
If you don't want to support their actions, don't buy their products. It's that simple. Maybe the Belarussians concerned by this can now actually get rid of their Apple products and buy something else.
Does the desktop app support groups? If it does, then get the desktop app.
Why should one product be the answer to all situations? You know that apple is a walled garden. You know that walled gardens have their limits of usage. How does that mean that walls must be destroyed? It is non-sequitur.
Saying that apple interferes with your freedom is like saying a kitchen glove interferes with your right to defend against a knife. It is just an instrument with a narrow usage area, which may or may not fit your current needs.
Let's suppose that I don't support apple's political stances on many things for various reasons, but I will buy new iphone once it is out, because I see value in it. Not surprised if it fails at uprisings, not a problem, that simple. Where the flaw is?
First, yes, buying iOS is a partial lock-in. But so is almost every other consumer choice: only if you stick to FOSS and open document formats, and are technical enough to convert your own documents once your apps are no longer supported, you may consider yourself free. Otherwise, lock-in is a given.
The lock-in isn't full, either: pictures, email, videos, bookmarks, etc. can be exported to other devices.
Second: if you buy Apple, you don't give up the right to protest them. Since the company depends on its customers, pressure can be effective. This is in contrast with free products, where customer pressure can turn counter-productive.
Actually I was surprised this morning to see Apple criticized on HN (40% of HN visitors use Apple devices, Windows 21 %, Linux 8% and Android 15% ) as it is rarely the case, the explanation is simple, Apple fanboys were sleeping
I made a post about this. Looks like some filter is taking down all t.me links.
It's unclear why they would demand this, given that Google seems to not need to make similar demands.
This also seems like it encourages repressive governments to cajole Apple to pressure apps to remove user content in the future.
Telegram not complying means it gets banned from the App Store.
Shame on Apple really. Shame on them for creating a walled garden that has become a liability for multiple parties even those unconnected to the iOS ecosystem.
“Irrelevant” could turn into the mother of all class action lawsuits.
Saying “we don’t feel like we have much choice” is a cop out.
For those that say Apple is morally compromised for collaborating with the oppressors, why is the same not true for Telegram complying with Apple (the oppressor in this case)?
Yes, Apple could remove Telegram from the store in Belarus, but that would definitely be a disproportionate response, and would have much more of an impact on Apple.
Stand up and do what's right. You're an American company doing the bidding of a corrupt organization that's not even as big as you are. Grow a pair.
Would you be surprised if it devolved into threats, intimidations and people getting shot?
Not for me, I use a Linux phone (Sailfish OS) with no Google. Not for real activists (criminals in the eyes es of oppressive governments like Chaina, Belarus, Russia, Iran, Turkey, ...) who will always find their way. But for 98% of any population.
https://www.change.org/p/apple-asking-apple-to-not-block-tel...
Yesterday's discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24722130
Telegram has been used to share some very bad COVID disinformation.
My father who is older and lives in Iran shared with me this video about how to treat COVID. It was produced really nicely in the Farsi (Persian) language.
Anyone who has ever read the book "Made to Stick" (highly recommended) would immediately that this video was designed to be a viral disinformation campaign.
The video started so credibility talking about the virus, the family of virus it belongs to, it talked about genetics similarities, etc. All seem very credible. Then it comes the disinformation gotcha:
To defeat COVID (with some beautiful inside the lungs animation ) talking about alveoli and how they function, when you are indoor you need to laugh deeply and very hard. This laughing hard gets rid of the virus, etc. etc.
Great idea, right? Seems like a way to exacerbate the spread of a deadly virus.
To me the quality of video made me think it was probably produce by a state or entity working for a state with budget.
If that is so I considered this incident as one of the first examples of using disinformation to commit genocide.
The problem with Telegram team working from the United Arab Emirates, it's unclear to me if it's being used to weaponize disinformation for evil means or not. From what I have seen, I believe, Telegram is being misused and it needs to be removed from the App Store.
If tiktok refused to take down doxing of officials in US, it would get banned.
Once again we are reminded that power inevitably corrupts and must have limits. What a sad state to find Steve's scrappy underdog company in.
That's a very dangerous path Apple is taking, caving to the demands of dictatorial and corrupt governments.
I'm hoping that this move will put Apple in hot waters, at least it should come under scrutiny.
But I'm not naive enough to believe that this sort of action will not become more prevalent.
Or maybe, who knows, the violence is being caused by an opressive regime. Since Apple feels it as the right to interveen is it also taking actions agains the Belarus government?
Apple please let me know to which mail should I start sending the mail messages I send from my macbook, so I can get your approval.
Make no mistake, Apple is a very powerful company.
I have admired this company as an aspiring kid growing up in a city in India. It had stories, dreamy stories, things I believed in.
Now it's all money and absolute control. The very things I consider harmful to society. This is no longer that Apple. And, yes 1984.
As we keep on seeing time, and time, and time again.
Add this incident to the rapidly growing body of evidence proving every privacy advocate's arguments against centralized systems. Some time soon I hope the tech community finds its way back to federated/p2p modes of distribution and communication so we can make this kind of censorship -- and the companies which enforce it -- a thing of the past.
What serves the people of Belarus at the moment (and I know some people on the ground there that have had terrible things done to them at the hands of the governments goons) does not serve Apple because their terms of service did not in any way foresee the kind of situation that Belarus finds itself in.
As soon as you step in to an argument like that you may find that your precious principles are going to be tested like they have never been tested before. And Apple just came up wanting, the Belarus authorities are a criminal bunch and do not deserve the protections normally afforded to individuals acting on behalf of the state. They are facing off with the population from the comfort of anonymity, beat them, rape them and sometimes even kill them. Having them identified makes them at least moderately responsible for their actions, and Apple has absolutely no business interfering in this.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/30/apple-removes-two-rss-feed...
In belarus it’s about 3 to 1. Globally it’s about 10 to 1.
This isn’t to say any of this is good, but I wonder if Telegram can behave differently by platform (ex. A blacklist of channels on iOS).
But what do I know
Using these platforms is responsible, if it doesn't affect you it will affect vulnerable people.
And another very interesting question is: who complained to Apple? Obviously it is not Apple itself monitored these channels.
Using the App Store, Apple is making the Belarus' dictatorship's censorship apply even in democracies.
The curve favors the individual not the corporation or the state.
You would think Apple would be content with its billions and could care less whether authoritarians are mad it them because protesters are evading abuse in prisons.
To understand the situation in Belarus by example, imagine former Nazi concentration camp guards, protesting against exposing their identities, because Israeli security forces may come after them. Crazy analogy you would say, but Belarusian people call their police and KGB Nazis.
This is part of the 2020 Belarusian Protests [4]. Three Telegram accounts, dedicated to doxing police officers associated with the authoritarian regime of Alexander Lukashenko, have been requested to be taken down by Apple.
Durov is politically libertarian and is in self-imposed exile after his own struggle with the regime in his Russian homeland.
Both track your every move/conversation and share ALL your data with government agencies via the PRISM surveillance program led by the NSA (Google joined PRISM in 2009; Apple in 2012).[1] These BigTech companies/PRISM members are beyond the law because they are defacto extensions of Big Brother Surveillance. If Apple were to make a PRISM break from membership, then it would likely receive lawsuits for tax evasion and monopoly behavior (antitrust). Understand the game?
Consider This About Apple:
• Apple uses offshore quasi-indentured-servant labor to bypass labor- and wage-laws;
• The rotten fruit evades the spirit of taxation by setting up shell companies in Ireland, tiny islands, Nevada, etc. to hoard billions of un-taxed dollars in these vehicles;
• The BigTech Global Company uses monopoly-like power to control its users behavior and even inserts forms of malware to make the OS perform slower and/or drain the battery to encourage users to upgrade their phone! . . .
>> Remember, freedom (Liberty) requires continual effort lest one becomes enslaved.
Google, to its credit, still provides open source software of the Android OS for anyone to port and modify. It’s called Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Anyone who makes a modest effort can install AOSP on a non-apple device – even many older phones.
There are a myriad of open-source and partial open-source custom ROMs that are often built using AOSP, but not exclusively – Ubuntu Touch, Replicant, Resurrection Remix, PureOS, LineageOS, TizenOS, ParanoidAndroid, KaiOS, PostmarketOS, etc.[2]
One may simply flash a custom ROM on their used or new non-Apple device. Take 30 minutes to read instructions on any number of tech forums such as xda-developers.com, for one example. What you will realize is stable custom ROMS are more secure than native stock OS by Apple and Google. And, one may modify the custom ROMS as any lover of freedom chooses.
There are also devices coming to market that have kill switches that disable cellular tracking by PRISM, etc.: Purism’s Librem 5, Pine64's PinePhone, OpenPandora’s DragonBox, etc. And, these organizations are honorable and community-driven, either partly or entirely.
So, just because a lot of people won’t make the tiny effort to liberate themselves from evil (and continue to justify a “walled garden” implemented by said evil rotten fruit), doesn’t mean the small number of people who choose liberty over security should be sacrificed at the alter of evil.
No laws or regulations are necessary. Vote with your dollars and actions.
Wake the Flock Up, People!
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_custom_Android_distrib...
And, they used craptacular Telegram instead of Signal. Dumb.
