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Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

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Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#131

Post by saagarjha »

_tik_ wrote: post #122
idlewords wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is the app is not being used for ambushing and attacking police at all, because there have been no such ambushes in Hong Kong. The few situations where Hong Kong police have been in danger have come when a small group splits off and is isolated during a protest. In no case have protesters caught the police unawares in an ambush, let alone off-duty police. By its nature, the app shows large concentrations of…

The protestors always try to find away to ambushes the police. There is a case that the protesters try to burn a police alive. The protester definitely monitoring the police movement to vandalize the train stations and the shops

> The protestors always try to find away to ambushes the police.

So then why ban the app?

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#132

Post by lord_erasmus »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #37

To recap: - Oct 6th: Apple first rejected the app [0], - Oct 8th: Apple then approved it after criticism for rejection [1] - Oct 9th: Apple removed it after criticism from the CPC (this story) [0]: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-hk-protest-map... [1]: https://www.scmp.com/tech/apps-social/article/3032001/apple-...

Your dates are off, as per [1]

"HKmap.live, [...], received approval from Apple on October 4 and was made available for download on October 5, according to the developer"

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#133

Post by saagarjha »

Fnoord wrote: post #121
nneonneo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had to guess, the mods are bending the scoring to avoid controversial topics again. They’ve done it before with US politics. Lately there’s been a slew of China news and some of the comments have been incredibly vitriolic. I for one would support this - I like HN being a hacker’s paradise. People grousing over the latest insanity in world news can always find somewhere else to comment.

> I for one would support this - I like HN being a hacker’s paradise. People grousing over the latest insanity in world news can always find somewhere else to comment. As long as the insanity is technology or hacker-related it is fine for you? Saying you do not want to see anything political, is apathic and shows you lean towards whatever the status quo is. It is also dishonest (because politics is everywhere). In fa…

> Saying you do not want to see anything political, is apathic and shows you lean towards whatever the status quo is.

That's not what they're saying: they just don't want it on Hacker News.

> Here's how to deal with the issue instead: upvote stories you enjoyed and/or press hide on the links you do not want to read.

This is coincidentally how you deal with spam without a spam filter. At some point, it's not very productive to have to wade through a content stream that's 50% chaff.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#134

Post by mmsimanga »

saagarjha wrote: post #129
mmsimanga wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has lived under a dictatorship this messaging has a familiar feel. As the now late dictator was clamping (beating and killing) down on opposition parties the press statements would always say something along the lines of, "we are protecting the rights of law abiding citizens". He never ever said I do not like anyone disagreeing with me.

> we are protecting the rights of law abiding citizens I find it very interesting when people say they only protect the rights of "law abiding citizens", since this is usually just a veiled excuse for "we don't think people who break the law should have rights, actually, you shouldn't have rights because you might break the law too".

I fully agree with you, that is actually the trick being pulled. The words used make it harder for people on the outside to decide who is actually the villain and who the good guys are.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#135

Post by saagarjha »

edvinasbartkus wrote: post #43

When the app is removed from the App Store, does it mean that it disappears from all phones, or it means that the new sales of the app are not possible?

When Apple removes an app from the App Store, you cannot download it anymore but it will continue to run on your device if you had it already. Apple also has the power to "blacklist" applications and prevent them from running on your device even if you've installed them (https://iphone-services.apple.com/clbl/unauthorizedApps), but this list looks empty for now. Usually what happens in the latter case is that the violation is so egregious that they will instead terminate the developer's Apple Developer account, which will have the same effect.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#137

Post by dang »

idlewords wrote: post #113
dang wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't put it that way. It has more to do with avoiding too much repetition and making sure the front page isn't completely dominated by hot controversies, which would defeat the purpose of the site. (I hope everyone remembers what the purpose is: intellectual curiosity. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html .) Here are some recent explanations I've written about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/…

I think when the story is a suppression campaign, where you see the world's most powerful company do an about-face twice in three days because of political pressure, you should think carefully about the implications of your own decision to suppress coverage and discussion of the event (which I understand is done from unrelated motives). By your own logic, if China (god forbid) invades Hong Kong, there would be even m…

I appreciate the good faith in your comment!

The point you're making about escalating crises seems to me to be covered by the 'significant new information' test that I've described elsewhere (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). In the case of the current story, we're not suppressing coverage of it or discussion of it; it's the other way around. What is true, though, is that it sometimes takes time to figure out, from the flurry of stories, which are the submissions that best represent new developments. My first impression on this one was "oh, another HKMap.live story"; because there had already been a prominent thread about this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21159872), it seemed to go in the follow-up bucket. This is a good example of how moderation is guesswork and we often guess wrong. Closer inspection revealed otherwise. User feedback, especially from users who know about the situation, helps us a lot to make better calls. But I think the principle itself is solid.

By the way we came up with the significant-new-information thing after the Snowden avalanche of summer 2013, when users legitimately complained that too many stories on HN's front page were only repeating what had already been said before, rather than reporting anything new. Discussion quality tends to get worse on such stories, too, which makes sense because there isn't new information to sink mind-teeth into. In any case, our goal is not to suppress coverage of these important stories (as anyone who's been reading HN in the last week should know). It's to keep the proportions balanced. Unfortunately for us, one consequence of the proportions being balanced is that nobody's happy with them. C'est le HN.

If there's something I'm still missing, I'd be happy to hear about it and do more reflecting. It will have to be tomorrow though (here) as I'm getting mushy.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#138

Post by m0xte »

simonh wrote: post #117
m0xte wrote: post #104

The privacy stance is just marketing. They have handed over iCloud keys and data to the state in China already. If they cared about privacy over market dominance that wouldn’t have happened. Unfortunately as an iOS user tied to the ecosystem this puts me in a difficult situation ethically speaking. I am sponsoring this. Perhaps I should stop buying into corporate marketing ideologies. Got burned by that before (Micro…

It's really not a matter of ideology, it's a matter of law. They either comply with Chinese law, or they risk their employees being arrested for breaking the law, or they stop doing business in China. I think they would argue that, given that all phones are subject to state surveillance, iPhone users in China are no worse off than if they were using another phone. Also since iPhones are generally a lot more secure th…

There's a fatal flaw to this approach though. The world is regressing into surveillance because quite frankly the mechanisms are already there and it's easy. What happens if someone in the US or the UK start using the justification of "well you did this in China so we'll legislate so you do that here". Someone has to make a stand and the people running the apparatus purposed to make this possible are morally culpable for the outcome to some degree for making it technically possible to do so.

The world is not that a big place. It doesn't take a lot for this to end up on everyone's laps and then it's too late to say I told you so.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#139

Post by nneonneo »

frankacter wrote: post #115
nneonneo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a dog icon for the police isn’t exactly a great look if you’re trying to be neutral. It’s roughly equivalent to using a pig to represent the police in the US. I don’t see why they couldn’t have just used one of the standard emoji for police there - it’d be a lot less likely to offend.

As a counterpoint, I grew up with McGruff the Crime Dog, which is still used today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGruff_the_Crime_Dog Also worth noting that K9 Units are heavily utilized by police https://www.police.gov.hk/ppp_en/11_useful_info/pdu/index.ht... There is a historical precedent of that association.

“It’s totally ok, dogs are police too” doesn’t quite work in a culture where dogs are often invoked as insult words. There’s a different cultural context here that you need to be aware of. As I said, the American equivalent would probably be to use a little pig emoji for a police officer, which I doubt would go over well here.

It’s not by a stretch the most controversial aspect of the app, but it doesn’t really help their case much.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#140

Post by m0xte »

simonh wrote: post #118
austhrow743 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy is good. By being better for privacy than the worlds largest advertising company/consumer spy agency, Apple announced its intent to be for all that is good in the world. That it's a shining beacon of morality. Protector of Italian virginity. China is bad. By capitulating to them after having declared themselves the enforcer of all that is good and holy, Apple has thus committed hypocrisy.

Apple has simply said it will pursue user privacy and security to the limits of what the law will allow. That is all.

What's the point when the world is legislating our privacy away? It's a pointless self-defeating marketing ploy then and nothing more.
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