Apple has banned an app that allows people in Hong Kong to keep track of protests and police activity in the city state, claiming such information is illegal.
“Your app contains content – or facilitates, enables, and encourages an activity – that is not legal … specifically, the app allowed users to evade law enforcement,” the American tech giant told makers of the HKmap Live on Tuesday before pulling it.
[…]Apple has made defense of citizens’ rights a key differentiator in its technology and painted itself as a business that will stand up to unreasonable requests by the authorities who wish to use its technology to bypass current laws – in the US at least. That Cupertino chose to ban the app without discussing the issue with the app’s developers and has given a very limited, and quite possibly incorrect, explanation as to why, has infuriated many.
Is anybody really surprised by this? Apple is entirely beholden to the genocidal, oppressive, totalitarian Chinese regime, and they care more about money than they do about human lives, as was recently evidenced by their entirely tone-deaf response to the iPhone 0days that were used to aid in the Uighur genocide. Insular American and European media and Apple bloggers aid in maintaining this facade, and are complicit in Apple’s unwavering support of the murderous Chinese regime.
Day in day out, Apple shows its true face, and every single time, American and European media and westerners act all surprised. When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
I’ve made the argument many times. Allowing corporations to censor and control our devices grants state actors the same capabilities by extension. If we’re not vigilant (and we don’t particularly seem to be), the restrictions and corporate controls we’ve got now by way of private corporate greed may become a recipe for the totalitarian all-controlling governments depicted in 1984.
Of course we’re all conditioned to blame china (and to be sure they do deserve blame over humanitarian conditions and poor democracy), but even in the west we don’t have the luxury of non-interfering governments. The US has got secret courts designed to side step the constitution and they use secret gag orders to prevent the electorate and even legislators from being wise to their actions. Meanwhile the corporations are not too bothered so long as they’re making money.
Alfman
“Allowing corporations to censor and control our devices grants state actors the same capabilities by extension”
Is “Free Software”, as in FSF, a solution? Or do we have to regulate corporations not to censor? Which requires state action and of course they will not act against themselves. What is the solution? Competition and market forces are got getting us there. Consumers are effectively total collaboration with corporations via their purchasing choices. However they don’t really have a choice.
Most of the time its either “one product = hardware + software blessed with hardware manufacturer’s key” or “software communicates with vendor’s cloud”; where it makes no difference if the software itself is free.
If you force (real “brick and mortar” or online) shops to provide all possible products (and deny them the ability to only sell what they want to sell) it’d create a massive legal minefield.
The solution is to recognize that the peoples of one country (e.g. China or USA) has no fundamental right to directly interfere with any other country’s system of economics, government, or society. For example; it would be wrong for China (or any other country) to force the USA to stop marginalizing native American Indians, stop treating asylum seekers and immigrants in an inhumane manner, unwind the anti-competitive abuse of a lop-sided patent system, stop installing facial recognition (and other privacy violating) “citizen tracking” systems, switch to democracy (and abandon oligarchy), etc.
The only real options are slow indirect (and often futile) pressure, and war.
Brendan,
Well, in the context of apple banning apps from their store, the fundamental issue isn’t so much that apple bans apps from it’s own stores, but rather the fact that apple blocks users from going to other software channels.
The thing is, if apple didn’t lock owners out of their own hardware, authoritarian regimes including china wouldn’t have a viable way to enforce restrictions of its own. This problem is a rather direct consequence of the walled garden and apple is effectively enabling repression. I predict this will get worse in coming years, yet I also predict that apple will continue not to care, because money.
At least the risk is only proportional to the number of devices with these kinds of restrictions, but I am concerned with how quickly restricted platforms can displace open ones.
In this context; it’s the same issue – either you comply with the Chinese government’s rules (e.g. by blocking some kinds of third party apps) or your product gets banned in China (and the citizens of China have even less choice and still can’t use those third party apps). Of course it’s the same everywhere (e.g. companies censoring/restricting information to comply with EU’s new copyright laws).
In other contexts (e.g. for “free market capitalism”); yes, walled gardens and “content silos” are a double edge sword where one edge (the advantages for consumers) seems a lot smaller than the other edge.
Brendan,
Well that’s just it though, it wouldn’t be as big a deal that apple were forced to remove an app from their store if consumers weren’t locked into apple’s walled garden in the first place.
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I don’t want to let china off the hook, we absolutely need to blame china for it’s undemocratic actions, but the unbiased truth is that apple is enabling them by making IOS such a censorship-friendly platform. This gives governments capabilities they wouldn’t otherwise have if apple hadn’t locked down owner devices and held onto the keys.
No. You’re incorrectly assuming that if Apple didn’t have “walled garden” restrictions their phones would still be allowed in China.
The unbiased truth is that, for all countries (not just China), the only choices Apple have are “follow the country’s laws” or “sell nothing in that country”. For China specifically, the “sell nothing” option is not a better alternative.
Alfman,
So why do you assume china would block apple’s IOS platform for allowing sideloading when they haven’t blocked other platforms that allow sideloading? It doesn’t sound very plausible to me to say china coerced apple into building a walled garden in order to fulfill it’s censorship obligations in china. Apple built it first, and now governments can embrace the power it gives them.
Maybe apple didn’t intend for this to happen, but it was a foreseeable outcome and whether anyone likes it or not these kinds of walled gardens are going to become increasingly instrumental to governments with repressive agendas.
I don’t know why you’re obfuscating the option not to impose a walled garden on your own customers. Nobody, not china nor anyone else is making apple do that, it stems entirely from apple’s desire to lock down owners for apple’s own greedy reasons. So again, you can blame china for being repressive, but I don’t see the wisdom in giving companies a pass for essentially building the perfect censorship platforms where owners don’t have rights on their own devices. China is NOT the one doing that, in this case that lies entirely on apple.
The only phones that are sold in China are phones made by Chinese manufacturers and phones made by Apple. The phones from Chinese manufacturers don't support "out of the box side-loading" (there may be ways to hack them).
For Apple phones in other countries, yes, the walled garden is Apple’s fault and nobody else’s. For Apple phones in China, I’m surprised they haven’t been banned anyway (due to the trade war).
Brendan,
Most phones in the world are made in china, in apple’s case they’re manufactured by chinese manufacturer foxconn. I still don’t see evidence that apple only pushed a walled garden due to chinese pressure, but if you’ve got any direct evidence that apple got pressured then I’ll certainly look at it.
The problem going forward is that as companies normalize walled gardens, it may well come to the point where governments will impose similar restrictions. And while we’ll blame the governments for such regressive measures, the truth is that companies including apple were the ones most directly responsible for making restricted personal computing devices possible. True, they did it for corporate greed rather than government control, but logically it doesn’t make sense to dispute the fact that the same technology that enables corporations to control what end users can do is the same technology that enables governments to control what end users can do too. Companies pioneering user restriction mechanisms are directly responsible for the loss of user freedoms regardless of who ends up imposing the restrictions in the end. I understand some people may be uncomfortable with this, but apple was a leading pioneer on this front.
Well, that’s a different issue. The trade war keeps escalating and the next major hike is in the works for december – trump’s christmas tariffs. I think that most of the tariffs thus far have been aimed at manufacturing, this next round is taking aim at regular consumer goods. We’ll have to see how china officially responds.
https://www.piie.com/blogs/trade-and-investment-policy-watch/trumps-fall-2019-china-tariff-plan-five-things-you-need-know
lapx432,
Well, it doesn’t hurt, but it disturbs me to see FOSS that is nevertheless getting locked down in consumer products. We used to call it tivoization, but that was when it was the exception rather than the norm. I’m afraid tivoization has gotten way bigger than tivo, haha. This was predicted decades ago and was the motivation for GPL3, but linus was never on board and it failed to gain traction in the linux community.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization
At the time I think he was more focused on expanding the linux base, but now that it’s the most popular kernel for mobile, hosting, etc it makes me wonder if he personally has any regrets with the way it’s being locked down and inaccessible.
All good questions…
I think a key component of any solution will be getting rid of corruption, but here in the US corporate corruption is rampant with many laws being written and enforced by corporate insiders. I think the EU is delivering more meaningful legislation for consumers, but who really knows in the long term. Abuse is very hard to stop once it’s in full force since abusive incumbents don’t have many restraints.
Yeah, we’re often told “if you don’t like it don’t buy it”, which although sound advice, can be irritating because it often ignores the reality on the ground. I frequently find that my own buying options have been drastically curtailed by mass market trends. Openness in consumer products is a neglected niche whether I like it or not 🙁
Isn’t a simple solution: force companies to allow side loading by users.
On my Android phone I can install a apk file if I want to, Apple should do the same (possibly with big warnings: don’t do it ! it’s a terrible idea !)
The app in question, HKmap Live, has now been approved by Apple and is available in the App Store. Looks like the decision to block it was taken at a low level in the company by an app reviewer applying a set of written guidelines. In an ideal world Apple should be so in touch with all issues of political, cultural and social sensitivity, and have an app review system where all sensitive decisions are automatically overseen by senior management, such that decisions around apps such as HKmap Live cascade automatically up the management system and are dealt with appropriately. But in the real world of millions of apps and millions of decisions that is impossible. So what happens is that a media storm blows up around a particular app review decision, it comes to the attention of senior management who then intervene to correct the situation. Not ideal but probably the best that is actually possible.
Strossen,
Clearly not the best possible. Immediately above your post Lennie already mentioned a better solution: allow side loading.