Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple’s Silence in China Sets a Dangerous Precedent

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 209 posts

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

#141

Post by coldtea »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #94
smallnamespace wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you may be right about the CCP's motives, China has its own long history of political thought, including the correct role of the State and public dissent. Guess what? For the vast majority of Chinese history, rulers viewed public dissent as tantamount to open rebellion and reacted accordingly. Political systems are in part products of their culture. Free speech is not part of the cultural or political history o…

>Free speech is not part of the cultural or political history of China And that has absolutely no impact on whether or not free speech is a fundamental human right. There's many examples of cultures with abhorrent traditions. It doesn't make them just and that's why many of those cultures reject those traditions today.

>And that has absolutely no impact on whether or not free speech is a fundamental human right.

Only you don't get to decide what's a "fundamental human right" for others (something that's based on one's own culture and, when intervened and enforced, is often interpreted by their own national interests -- like "bringing democracy").

Not to mention that what's "free speech" is not clear cut, most EU countries for example have totally different laws than the US, and you can land in jail or be hit with a hefty fine for stuff that's considered as protected by "free speech" in the US, and they consider it totally fine.

>There's many examples of cultures with abhorrent traditions. It doesn't make them just and that's why many of those cultures reject those traditions today.

Well, until China rejects their traditions, it's not for other countries to dictate it to them.

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

#142

Post by coldtea »

option wrote: post #91
smallnamespace wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you may be right about the CCP's motives, China has its own long history of political thought, including the correct role of the State and public dissent. Guess what? For the vast majority of Chinese history, rulers viewed public dissent as tantamount to open rebellion and reacted accordingly. Political systems are in part products of their culture. Free speech is not part of the cultural or political history o…

This is called culturalism. Saying X is not for race Y is racism. Saying that X is not for culture Y is culturalism. There is really not that much difference here. Because I am Chinese/Saudi/Russian etc. in no way implies that I, or my culture, does not value such a basic right as free speech

>This is called culturalism. Saying X is not for race Y is racism. Saying that X is not for culture Y is culturalism.

You can give a name to anything, and call it a no-no, but that doesn't make it wrong. There are nuances, and there's also the matter of who gives the name, and under what premises.

>Because I am Chinese/Saudi/Russian etc. in no way implies that I, or my culture, does not value such a basic right as free speech

Actually it does. Many cultures value other things over and above free speech or individual freedom, like cooperation and social cohesion. Try selling the Japanese your "universal idea" of free speech in social situations for example...

It's funny how the "fundamental" rights projected to others as "universal" are often the rights and cultural preferences that are characterizing and championed by one's own culture.

"Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature." (G. Bernard Shaw, Julius Caesar)

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

#143

Post by euyyn »

smallnamespace wrote: post #85
_ptgt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While you may be right about the CCP's motives, China has its own long history of political thought, including the correct role of the State and public dissent. Guess what? For the vast majority of Chinese history, rulers viewed public dissent as tantamount to open rebellion and reacted accordingly. Political systems are in part products of their culture. Free speech is not part of the cultural or political history o…

For the vast majority of Spanish history, rulers viewed public dissent as tantamount to open rebellion and reacted accordingly. Same with most European countries, if not all.

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

#144

Post by PakG1 »

coldtea wrote: post #139
_ptgt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The CCP restricts free speech because it fears losing its ruling status. And that's China's own problem (or lack thereof) as a sovereign nation, not something for Apple or the US to decide. Not every country wants (or even works better) with a US style system, and interventionism has led to disastrous results in the not that far past.

Yup. https://gwydionwilliams.com/99-problems-magazine/why-chinas-...

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

#145

Post by pharrington »

icelancer wrote: post #116
pharrington wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument isn't that the lack of political freedom in China is tolerable because that's just how Chinese culture is, but rather that corporations must not be the ones deciding which laws are applicable where.

>corporations must not be the ones deciding which laws are applicable where. This is literally restating this: >the lack of political freedom in China is tolerable because that's just how Chinese culture is Who decides when and where it is okay to disobey laws that restrict freedom/privacy? If not the modern day multi-nation states of corporations, who? Serfs?

In this case, literally the Chinese people.

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

#146

Post by int_19h »

coldtea wrote: post #139
_ptgt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The CCP restricts free speech because it fears losing its ruling status. And that's China's own problem (or lack thereof) as a sovereign nation, not something for Apple or the US to decide. Not every country wants (or even works better) with a US style system, and interventionism has led to disastrous results in the not that far past.

Apple is still a US company at the end of the day. If it makes profits from supporting censorship in China, that makes it a US problem.

One way to not have that problem is to let China has its own Apple - how's that for non-interventionism and non-colonialism?

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

#147

Post by mike_h »

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…

It also doesn't prevent people from using VPNs: the apps are just a convenient interface, Apple hasn't removed the ability to manually add your own.

More importantly, China is planning to block VPN at the protocol level starting in February. Apple can't do anything about that, and if all the other reasons against taking a stand here didn't make sense on their own, consider how silly it'd be to take a stand for a technology that's about to stop working anyway.

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

#148

Post by coldtea »

int_19h wrote: post #146
coldtea wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The CCP restricts free speech because it fears losing its ruling status. And that's China's own problem (or lack thereof) as a sovereign nation, not something for Apple or the US to decide. Not every country wants (or even works better) with a US style system, and interventionism has led to disastrous results in the not that far past.

Apple is still a US company at the end of the day. If it makes profits from supporting censorship in China, that makes it a US problem. One way to not have that problem is to let China has its own Apple - how's that for non-interventionism and non-colonialism?

>Apple is still a US company at the end of the day. If it makes profits from supporting censorship in China, that makes it a US problem.

In what possible way does it make it a US problem?

Besides, western companies make tons of money by selling arms, doing deals, and supporting all kinds of regimes, including the most abhorrent ones, from Pinochet's Chile to S.A.

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

#149

Post by int_19h »

prewett wrote: post #89
rayiner wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A global company needs to be sensitive to these political/cultural differences and accommodate them. Global companies are instrumental in transmitting western values to the rest of the world. You can't antagonize host countries but at the same time you can't ignore the arc of the moral universe. Domestically, a great example is the economic repercussion for southern states that tried to pass trans bathroom laws. Co…

So by that logic, Chinese companies should push Chinese values on the rest of the world. Are you okay with that? And if not, what makes Western values special? Absent an independent moral authority (i.e. God of some sort), there's no way to say that Western values even should be spread. Absent an independent moral authority, pushing your values on everyone else is exactly what the Chinese government is doing. The tra…

Some values are better than other. It's not a popular statement when phrased that way, but every person in the world effectively asserts that every time they judge someone - you can't judge unless you apply some standards, and even when they're not own (e.g. "dura lex sed lex"), you're still exercising judgment in adopting them.

If you're still uncomfortable with this notion, ask yourself if you're okay with punishing (or deterring, or rehabilitating) murderers. If you answered "yes", then you believe that "murder is okay" is not a good value proposition, and "murder is wrong" is strictly better.

And no, you don't need a God for that. You can just say "I believe these values are better, as a matter of faith". You don't need to believe God or any other supernatural entities to have some moral axioms - case in point is The Satanic Temple, which has its tenets: https://thesatanictemple.com/about-us/tenets/ - but doesn't believe in supernatural.

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

#150

Post by dragonwriter »

chii wrote: post #135
dragonwriter wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A “moral agent” is not “an agent that acts according to correct moral principles” but “an agent with the appropriate facilties that morality or immorality can be attributed to it”. Apple certainly does have agents that are not moral agents (e.g., automatons like Siri), but for a different reason than you suggest.

> the appropriate facilties that morality or immorality can be attributed to it i m saying that the top brass making decisions are not acting as moral agents, because they don't feel the responsibility of any of the choices insofar as it increases the profit of the company.

Not feeling responsibility doesn't make you not a moral agent (whether you feel responsible is a separate issue from whether you have the capacity which makes it sensible for moral responsibility to be assigned to you), and adopting “advancing the profit of the company” as a value that overrides all other concerns (and that one is responsible for), in any case, is making a moral decision (that is, one about morality, whether or not any other observer or any objective morality that may or may not exist would paint it as a morally correct.)
Post reply on HN