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Apple’s Silence in China Sets a Dangerous Precedent

nytimes.com

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Re: Apple’s Silence in China Sets a Dangerous Precedent

#21

Post by jakelazaroff »

bmc7505 wrote: post #7

As much as I dislike Apple, they made the right choice here. While it may be easy to praise Apple's stance against FBI backdooring the iPhone's secure boot and condemn their compliance with removing VPN apps from the Chinese app store, the latter policy is completely unlike the former for several good reasons. With the Chinese market, you need to choose your battles. Removing VPN apps from the Appstore does not compr…

Agreed. I'll venture that it's still wrong to prevent access to VPNs (divide the blame up however you'd like) but likening this to the FBI backdoor request is an enormous false equivalence.

Re: Apple’s Silence in China Sets a Dangerous Precedent

#22

Post by rtpg »

mikestew wrote: post #16
IBM wrote: post #6

I'll repost my comment from the other thread that got flagged for being a dupe: They absolutely stake out moral positions on issues like this all the time. The difference is they only do it in the West where rule of law prevails and they can actually exert influence. They've done it with various anti-LGBT efforts that have taken place around the US, they've done it with the fight with the FBI and they're doing it rig…

Apple has most certainly taken a moral stance in the past as you point out. The galling part of the article to me was "The company has not fully tested its political and economic leverage in China." It is not Apple's job to take a political stance. They can if they want, as evidenced by the examples you laid out, but there is no requirement. If the NYT wants to talk politics and precedence, perhaps they should direct…

it's not their job to do it.

It's nobody's job to do it.

They still potentially can fix the problem. Wouldn't it be great if they used their influence to help fix things?

I agree that there's a "choose your battles" aspect to this. Considering what Apple did with the San Bernandino case, this seems (ideologically) right, but the potential losses are pretty high.

Re: Apple’s Silence in China Sets a Dangerous Precedent

#23

Post by adventured »

justicezyx wrote: post #11
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big issue is that they'd actually have to shoot themselves in the head: they can't exist in China without giving into things like this. And Tim Cook can't keep his job if he decides to leave his 1st (or 2nd, depending on the quarter) largest market for moral reasons. I'm not really sure if its a rule of law issue (though China definitely has problems there). One problem is that western companies generally must fo…

> Chinese companies, however, have no such limitations, and will bend the rules all the time, often with minimal consequences. Do you mind point some examples?

Jack Ma stealing tens of billions of dollars from Softbank and Yahoo by giving himself a very large stake in Ant Financial (completely unsupported by his ownership % in Alibaba), divesting it out of Alibaba without proper compensation.

Something like that is nearly unthinkable in the US or Western Europe. It would be equivalent to Jeff Bezos spinning off AWS and giving himself 2/3 ownership of it, without approval from AMZN shareholders.

Re: Apple’s Silence in China Sets a Dangerous Precedent

#24

Post by hellbanner »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #19
justicezyx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chinese companies, however, have no such limitations, and will bend the rules all the time, often with minimal consequences. Do you mind point some examples?

Ya, for the big one, Baidu is the ultimate search engine for porn and health care scams, where they used to derive most of their revenue. Compared to Chinese Bing which is pretty clean with pretty effective porn filters (but also makes almost no money). Payments via AliPay and WePay were technically illegal before they were legalized post facto after they became popular. A western company could have never gone near t…

I'm familiar with users searching for porn but not health care scams.

Are you saying that Baidu was directing traffic to health care scams willingly?

Interesting remark on AliPay & WePay. I wonder what kind of agreements Chinese gov made with those companies after the fact.

Here's as good as any point to remember that a warrant canary disappeared from Apple's privacy text about a year ago. Before it was about "we will protect user's privacy".. then there was a big "privacy" announcement that had text about following the law etc. IMHO gov got to them and it's understandable - companies exist in frameworks set by governments. It's in Apple's best interest to comply with them. To suggest otherwise is a political stance, not an economic one.

Re: Apple’s Silence in China Sets a Dangerous Precedent

#26

Post by _ptgt »

sriku wrote: post #12

Apple stood for privacy in the US where privacy is part of law. It didn't stand by privacy in China where privacy in some forms is prohibited as part of law. Asserting the US law in China would discount China's sovereignty, implicitly declaring "your principles are inferior to ours". A global company needs to be sensitive to these political/cultural differences and accommodate them. Even in the US where "privacy" is…

This amount of cultural relativism is silly and frankly just plain ignorant. China doesn't restrict free speech for cultural reasons. The CCP restricts free speech because it fears losing its ruling status.

Re: Apple’s Silence in China Sets a Dangerous Precedent

#27

Post by seanmcdirmid »

hellbanner wrote: post #24
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, for the big one, Baidu is the ultimate search engine for porn and health care scams, where they used to derive most of their revenue. Compared to Chinese Bing which is pretty clean with pretty effective porn filters (but also makes almost no money). Payments via AliPay and WePay were technically illegal before they were legalized post facto after they became popular. A western company could have never gone near t…

I'm familiar with users searching for porn but not health care scams. Are you saying that Baidu was directing traffic to health care scams willingly? Interesting remark on AliPay & WePay. I wonder what kind of agreements Chinese gov made with those companies after the fact. Here's as good as any point to remember that a warrant canary disappeared from Apple's privacy text about a year ago. Before it was about "we wil…

Ya, Baidu got caught last year and got a slap on the wrist. Oddly enough, they were in it with a military hospital for that case, which should raise a lot of other eye brows.

China doesn't have rule of law, so everything is illegal but nothing is, if you can navigate that contradiction, then you just have to make sure your context isn't bad enough to be cracked down on. The same was true with Didi and anti-black cab laws (but Uber operates in the gray margins of those laws all the time, so there was no point in mentioning that).

China doesn't really care about your idealism. If you go against the government's interests, they will beat you down. This is one thing the Chinese companies get really well and allow them to play fast and lose with the law as long as they adhere to that one principal.

Re: Apple’s Silence in China Sets a Dangerous Precedent

#28

Post by cbhl »

rtpg wrote: post #22
mikestew wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has most certainly taken a moral stance in the past as you point out. The galling part of the article to me was "The company has not fully tested its political and economic leverage in China." It is not Apple's job to take a political stance. They can if they want, as evidenced by the examples you laid out, but there is no requirement. If the NYT wants to talk politics and precedence, perhaps they should direct…

it's not their job to do it. It's nobody's job to do it. They still potentially can fix the problem. Wouldn't it be great if they used their influence to help fix things? I agree that there's a "choose your battles" aspect to this. Considering what Apple did with the San Bernandino case, this seems (ideologically) right, but the potential losses are pretty high.

Google and Facebook took this stance and look where it got us? China just made their own bloody search engine and social network.

We need to stop looking to corporations as doing the jobs our government should be doing.

Re: Apple’s Silence in China Sets a Dangerous Precedent

#29

Post by virtuabhi »

cbhl wrote: post #28
rtpg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not their job to do it. It's nobody's job to do it. They still potentially can fix the problem. Wouldn't it be great if they used their influence to help fix things? I agree that there's a "choose your battles" aspect to this. Considering what Apple did with the San Bernandino case, this seems (ideologically) right, but the potential losses are pretty high.

Google and Facebook took this stance and look where it got us? China just made their own bloody search engine and social network. We need to stop looking to corporations as doing the jobs our government should be doing.

Let us keep passing the buck... We need to stop looking to governments as doing the jobs United Nations should be doing.

"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does."

Re: Apple’s Silence in China Sets a Dangerous Precedent

#30

Post by madeofpalk »

ariwilson wrote: post #13
IBM wrote: post #6

I'll repost my comment from the other thread that got flagged for being a dupe: They absolutely stake out moral positions on issues like this all the time. The difference is they only do it in the West where rule of law prevails and they can actually exert influence. They've done it with various anti-LGBT efforts that have taken place around the US, they've done it with the fight with the FBI and they're doing it rig…

Why does Apple get a free pass on this when Google has such a clear stance for free expression? [1] https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-chin...

(keep in mind that was 7 years ago. Google's role in China has been always been varying)
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