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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

#151

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> You'd better have concrete direction from the independent moral authority (i.e. God) if you're going to push your values on other people, because otherwise it's just intolerant. "I feel strongly about this" != "it's right"

Adding an objectively unverifiable external actor to whom you have ascribed the role a of moral arbiter and your belief that they feel strongly about a moral point to the equation doesn't really help anything compared to you feeling strongly about it yourself.

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

#152

Post by Jyaif »

MBCook wrote: post #55
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…

You're right. That's why neither iMessage nor FaceTime use encryption in china. Because they don't care. Oh wait, Apple still uses into end encryption in China for both of those so that the Government Camp spy on people. Getting rid of VPN apps is part of staying in China. So the question you have to ask is which is better for Apple to do: stay trying out without VPNs but keeping their consumer products encrypted whe…

Facetime is blocked in china, and I'm willing to bet that the non-sms part of iMessage is blocked as well...

But there's nothing wrong with staying in China to increase profits, it's their biggest market after all.

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

#153

Post by int_19h »

prewett wrote: post #93

Is this a news piece or an opinion piece? The article is terrible. Apple has two choices: comply with the laws of China when operating in China or not operate in China. They can refuse to comply on principle, get kicked out of China, and get sued by their shareholders for breach of fiduciary duty. They can use all available means (none) to fight it. Or they can obey the laws of the country they are operating in. I be…

It's not just about Apple. Apple is still headquartered in US. Thus, it's also a moral quandary for US, because American lawmakers can make it a more stark choice for Apple: they can pass a law saying that no American company can aid and abet human rights violations. Then the choice for Apple would be to operate in China and comply with laws of China, or operate in US and comply with laws of US.

Is that too extreme? In this case, perhaps (or perhaps not!), but where is the boundary? We all remember how IBM helped implement Holocaust. I don't think anyone would argue that if someone wanted to do something like that today (say, use machine learning to identify closet atheists and gays in Saudi Arabia?), we'd just say "Oh well, they're just operating under these laws, and who are we to judge? It's all culturally relative anyway."

So, at some point we draw a line and say, "no, you can't do this, not if you want to be present in our society". Where is that line? And why shouldn't it lie at authoritarian government censoring political speech?

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

#154

Post by RodericDay »

alacombe wrote: post #131
mtgx wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So pretending that the privacy issue is one of "morality" You lost me there. Privacy is a human right . Would Apple be silent if China tortured gay people, too, because of "cultural differences" and just because it's trying to add an extra billion dollar to its balance sheet? Now I can understand the argument that as a for-profit corporation Apple is "neutral" to the laws in various countries. But to take it much f…

> Would Apple be silent if China tortured gay people, too, because of "cultural differences" They do, in Saudi Arabia & Qatar.

I'm actually quite sympathetic to moral absolutism/moral arc arguments. I'm a moral realist.

What I find hilarious is people suggesting America or most american companies are in any position to export values to anybody.

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

#155

Post by dilemma »

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

What if you say that one culture is inferior to another? What's that called?

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

#156

Post by yorwba »

mike_h wrote: post #147
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 tech…

> China is planning to block VPN at the protocol level starting in February.

China has been banning various VPN protocols since forever, all working VPN software I'm aware of uses their own homegrown circumvention mechanism. However, these still work with the OS level VPN integration to reroute all traffic. (At least on Android, I assume it's similar for iOS.)

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

#157

Post by yorwba »

millstone wrote: post #134
csense wrote: post #61

This is only possible because Apple has a "walled garden" app store and doesn't let people install stuff from outside it. The solution is simple: Publish an official jailbreak allowing expert iPhone users to root their phones and use third-party app stores. Then Apple's not violating Chinese law by directly providing VPN's, instead they're removing themselves from a situation where they're in a position to be capable…

Is this actually necessary? You can install a VPN profile on your iPhone by manually typing in the settings, without going through the App Store.

If that VPN profile is limited to well-known VPN protocols, there is no possible combination of settings that gets you past the Great Firewall, a VPN app needs to add their own or it won't work.

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

#158

Post by Symbiote »

coldtea wrote: post #148
int_19h wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Western people object to a lot of that, too.

Here, we're objecting to Apple's behaviour.

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

#160

Post by dis-sys »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #27
hellbanner wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

how about stop selling your single sided story? Baidu's involvement in those healthcare scams got its reputation totally trashed, which in turn failed numerous Baidu products. As a direct consequence, Baidu is now considered a tier-2 Internet company with almost weekly news reports talking about company XYZ is replacing Baidu.

it is also highly laughable for your private health insurance joke. there is _no_ Chinese law requiring any company to provide _private_ health insurance to anyone. Public healthcare levy is required by the law, that is all.

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