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Apple tells Telegram to take down protestor channels in Belarus

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Re: Apple tells Telegram to take down protestor channels in Belarus

#541

Post by zelon88 »

hu3 wrote: post #483
zelon88 wrote: post #446

I don't get why American companies seem to regularly align themselves with authority like this. Apple has more yearly profits than the GDP of Belarus. Why does Apple play by the rules of Belarus. Honestly, if I had the power and influence of Apple I'd run my business in these third world sections of the world just like I run them in America. Arguably Apple has more weight on people in these regions than local governm…

This specific censorship probably has the weight if Russia behind it. Not just Belarus.

Still play hard ball. Apple built the largest corporate entity on Earth guided by capitalism and the rule and spirit of American law.

In the absence of local rule of law, or local laws which are incompatible with the American moral outlook on human rights and civil liberties I would instruct my company to observe American laws. If Iran doesn't like that let Iran figure out a way to stop me locally. I am under no pressure to implement immoral company policies to support something which ultimately goes against the system which enabled my business to thrive.

Apple is big enough to completely disregard an authoritarian regimes wishes and get away with it.

Imagine a world where the big tech companies actually has morals that they upheld. The cost of doing business in China is they're going to steal your proprietary tech. Everyone accepts that cost and still does business with China. Imagine if American companies enforced human rights with the same viritol. The world would be positively incentivized to adopt legitimate democracy or fall by the technological wayside.

Re: Apple tells Telegram to take down protestor channels in Belarus

#542

Post by Causality1 »

djhn wrote: post #511
Causality1 wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram is small enough for Apple to bully. Imagine if Apple tried to force Twitter to censor every "cancel crusade" or be removed from the App Store.

Telegram has more monthly active users than Twitter (400 million vs 360 million, according to Statista) Even going by metrics like cultural significance, there are large regional differences. It's a little unfair to call them smaller, even if they don't quite have the same level of political and social clout in the US.

User numbers don't matter if you're not making money off them. Telegram is privately funded by Pavel Durov. Twitter's yearly revenue is equal to Durov's entire net work. Twitter's market cap is 250 times higher than Telegram's.

Re: Apple tells Telegram to take down protestor channels in Belarus

#543

Post by fsflover »

dikaio wrote: post #500

We need a better OS, similar to Ubuntu and Firefox models... an OS developed and maintained by the community that won’t do what every the government asks them to do because it’s in the governments or corporations best interest and not the people’s. I often hear the phrase “we are many” but many means nothing if you use tools that the people in control, control.

Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5 and https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/.

Re: Apple tells Telegram to take down protestor channels in Belarus

#544

Post by fsflover »

eecc wrote: post #250

Hold on... it’s not quite as clear-cut as the Apple-haters that joyously jumped in put it. These channels are not about a platform for freedom of speech and rallying for peaceful demonstrations. Nope. It’s about exposing PII of public officials; names and home addresses? Take pause to appreciate the possible consequences of this. What could possibly go wrong? Now I agree that Belarus officials are complicit or active…

> It’s about exposing PII of public officials; names and home addresses? Take pause to appreciate the possible consequences of this. What could possibly go wrong?

Why should official working for public money be anonymous? If they have the power to apply force to public, it will not end well (and this is what is happening).

Re: Apple tells Telegram to take down protestor channels in Belarus

#545

Post by fsflover »

eecc wrote: post #416
Kelamir wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoting https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/17/the-only-way-t... : “The only way to stop violence is to pull off the masks, in both the literal and metaphorical sense. An officer who is no longer anonymous will think twice before he grabs, beats or kidnaps someone,"

That’s true, and I’m all for mandatory identification badges when doing crowd control, but you have to realize the context in which the identity is revealed: in a democratic country it’s meant as a mechanism to correct violent (hopefully) outliers. But unmasking violent agents of a violent state won’t do anything except provide the excuse to repress even harder... you’ll just end up with riot police firing live ammo…

> in a democratic country it’s meant as a mechanism to correct violent (hopefully) outliers. But unmasking violent agents of a violent state won’t do anything except provide the excuse to repress even harder...

Knowing who breaks the law and applies violence to civil protesters will allow to have a fair trial later.

Re: Apple tells Telegram to take down protestor channels in Belarus

#546

Post by PureParadigm »

simonh wrote: post #196
snoshy wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be, but it does not refute the accusation that this is a double standard.

Well, yes it does. If you have signed up users with accounts, and you own the infrastructure for disseminating the content they produce, youre responsible for their posts and presence on your platform, and the content you are disseminating. None of that applies to web browsers, or IRC clients, or RSS feed clients, or podcast apps, or plenty of other client apps on the App Store.

It's a double standard in that web browsers are not considered responsible for the content they display while chat apps are considered responsible. These are two different standards being applied just because of a technicality about whose servers the data is hosted on (whether app owner = server owner). Would Apple be okay with allowing a third-party front-end to the Telegram servers? Safari can be that if you use the web app version of Telegram.

Re: Apple tells Telegram to take down protestor channels in Belarus

#547

Post by dan-robertson »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #299
dan-robertson wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case it is telegram which the government ought to need to compel. Or they could make Apple remove the telegram app. But that hasn’t happened

> Or they could make Apple remove the telegram app. Which is effective primarily because there’s no (practical) way to sideload on iOS! This is why I’ve always seen the locked-down nature of the iPhone as a threat to free expression first and foremost. Apple is responsible for setting the system up this way.

Can’t telegram be accessed through a website?

Re: Apple tells Telegram to take down protestor channels in Belarus

#548

Post by 188201 »

powerapple wrote: post #538
188201 wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be realistic here. Why Liang would fund a site like that. Either one of the reason: CCP ordered that, or he wants to show loyalty and earn credit to CCP. Either case, it was as good as funding by CCP because CCP liked that to happened and didn't ban it. And Liang is vice-chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. What it means is he is not officially CCP but a…

I don't think I like the argument of "it was as good as funding by CCP because CCP liked that to happened". CCP is a party with 90 million members, so if you argue Liang act as a member of CCP, I think I am okay with that. I don't know should we be 'realistic' or should we be 'accurate' when we make a point. This is a strange time.

It is an interesting point so I can discuss a little bit. Seems people didn't understand the implication of an autocratic government.

When people tried to avoid government funded software, let say a communication app, what is the reason? Because we want to avoid state-owned software violating user privacy and sent all my personal data for their profiling database.

You will trust a private company for that more, why? Because even a private company have to obey court order to disclose personal information to law enforcement, they usually have the right to deny it before the issue escalated to the court.

Now what is the case for autocratic government? Are there any real private company? Using China as an example, any person have to right to inform the government about secret information obtained, so China government have the right to get any information obtained from any Chinese private company without court order. In addition, any large organization including public company have to setup a party branch and have CCP member to oversee the organization. Including Huawei, claiming to be a private company.

So, using any product from any private Chinese company has equivalent disadvantage to a 3-letter agency funded VPN network.

Now back to the issue of if Liang is CCP or not. I won't quote unconfirmed source about Liang is a hidden CCP member. Just use the opened fact, Liang is a formal governor of Hong Kong, which means Liang has taking oath to CCP and CCP trusted this person to rule HK. Liang is currently a decision maker inside CCP's committee, and if Liang has conduct issue from CCP's point of view, then Liang can be secretly prosecuted by party order and put in jail in China.

Another example is Teresa Cheng, Hong Kong Secretary for Justice. For some reason she has been to UK but being taken back to China for investigating her conduct and possibility for applying political asylum by party secret police. She was then released and continued her work in Hong Kong. Detailed is not confirmed, but one thing is clear. Any Hong Kong official can be threatened by party secret police and they must do their job according to CCP plan.

Re: Apple tells Telegram to take down protestor channels in Belarus

#550

Post by Wowfunhappy »

dan-robertson wrote: post #547
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or they could make Apple remove the telegram app. Which is effective primarily because there’s no (practical) way to sideload on iOS! This is why I’ve always seen the locked-down nature of the iPhone as a threat to free expression first and foremost. Apple is responsible for setting the system up this way.

Can’t telegram be accessed through a website?

No push notifications, among other limitations.
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