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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

#601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more, Apple has assigned itself powers that in most (sane) countries are a strict monopoly of governments (and preferably only after going through a legal system/process and strictly regulated). Especially Apple's attempt/request/demand to remove things silently goes way beyond what any company (or citizen) should ever be allowed to do to speech of others. Whether this doxxing is justified or not, that's up to c…

By telling Apple they can’t control others’ speech on their platform, you are in effect controlling Apple’s speech, forcing them to host or be associated with material they don’t want.

> By telling Apple they can’t control others’ speech on their platform, you are in effect controlling Apple’s speech

Since when is control, or censorship, of what someone else says speech in it's own right? If Apple wanted a disclaimer next to a message, or something along those lines, you might still remotely have somewhat of a point.

Following your contrived line of "reasoning", any TV producer should have a right to decide what viewers can (and can not) watch on their hardware.

Last time I checked, companies that make product for a consumer market explicitly do NOT have a right to decide what consumers can do with it.

Somehow, software producers already got way more leeway with that than the probably ever should have in the first place (in accordance with the law). But to argue that they should because it's about the free speech of companies, is absolutely bunkers.

I'm aware that the USA made the rather mind boggling decision that companies are people to them (though arguably only so politics could be even more corrupted with corporate money), giving rise to the lunacy of a company having something as free speech. But even accepting that as a (dismal) fact of reality (in the USA), controlling the speech of others just isn't speech itself. More importantly, such control is explicitly forbidden by law (even as per the UDHR).

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

#602
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

They should not do anything inside the apps on Appstore. If you make a claim, you have to back it up with reasons. Your statement is not self-evident.

The reason is simple. They should not try to moderate things unrelated to them.

Imagine if Chrome decides to stop connecting to a site because the Govt asks Google to do it. They can do it. But they shouldn't

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

#603
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because whatever they do , Apple's actions or inactions will have an effect on people in the real world. In the case of videos which might get people beaten or killed or other things, you can argue that Apple shouldn't act to take those down due to anti-censorship principles, or you can argue that Apple should act due to anti-beating-and-killing-or-other principles. What you can't correctly argue is that Apple should…

> What you can't correctly argue is that Apple should avoid getting involved.

It is not possible for Apple to start moderating all user generated content in all apps. They shouldn't do it.

I gave another example below-

Imagine if Chrome decides to stop connecting to a site because the Govt asks Google to do it. They can do it. But they shouldn't

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

#604
post #102

Here is a source in Russian [0] saying that Apple is asking Telegram to remove messages that de-anonymize Belorussian police members, rather than blocking channels outright. I don't know whether their source is reliable, but here is the relevant snippet (google translate): > Apple says it didn’t require any channels to be removed. But they demanded to immediately remove any information that discloses someone's data o…

Yeah, I don't see how this is different from Twitter taking down a tweet which doxxes someone. Would people object if Apple told Telegram they had to remove a channel that was being used by white supremacists to coordinate terrorist attacks? The answer to that question matters, because if users in this thread succeed in making iPhones less of a walled garden, terrorists will be able to use their iPhones to coordinate…

>Yeah, I don't see how this is different from Twitter taking down a tweet which doxxes someone.

I dont think that is an accurate analogy. It would more accurate to describe AWS / GCP asking Twitter to take down a tweet. Because Apple in your example Apple should be replaced with Telegram.

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

#605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noone was killed. They are safe. We have peaceful protests. Noone even using something like a bat and we don't have weapons in the arms of regular people

Fair enough. Based on news I completely agree with you. I found no evidence online of any Belarus police being killed or even harmed. (I'd edit my GP message to clarify that if I could but the time limit has passed.) In referring to identified people being killed I contemplated a worst case scenario, following up on comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737255 "in Hong Kong similar channels were used to kill…

>In referring to identified people being killed I contemplated a worst case scenario, following up on comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24737255 "in Hong Kong similar channels were used to kill police"

That is some biggest BS right there. Luckily that comment was flagged.

>Only death threats to them...

Alleged.

>and their children (which is pretty bad in its way)

There were never any, alleged or not death threat to their Children. But there were definately peer pressure and bullying. ( Which is pretty bad as it causes mental health issues )

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

#606
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Messaging and content apps that are decoupled from distributed back end infrastructure are ok - IRC, Mastodon, email and there are many others. It’s a clear and consistent principle.

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

#607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter's yearly revenue is equal to Durov's entire net work. Twitter's market cap is 250 times higher than Telegram's. Contrary to your goal you actually made Durov sound much more impressive.

Durov's an extremely impressive individual. It doesn't change the fact that kicking Twitter off the app store could put a dent in Apple's iPhone sales and would almost certainly generate a lot of negative Western press. Telegram getting the boot wouldn't.

It would destroy sales in large parts of the world where it's the default messaging app, similar to how kicking off WhatsApp would in other parts of the world.

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

#608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody wants to remove all security policies etc from iOS. I'm not sure what gave you that idea in this thread. I think you misunderstood me there. Of course permission systems are going to stay, who in their right mind would give up this crucial innovation? But free-as-in-freedom implies that I, the owner and user, can do whatever I want, including triggering all sorts of footguns – if I get tricked into installin…

> if I get tricked into installing Do you think that people are incapable of using personal computers then? Just the regular old PC. This argument falls flat on its face, because it is blatantly obvious, that, for some reason, people are capable of using PCs, and don't explode from the confusion of doing so. Every single argument that you are making, could apply to the PC. But people still do alright using PCs. Phone…

> How are they doing that on the PC? PCs work fine.

> Just make the iPhone the same as modern day PCs. Which people are already capable of using just fine.

Ransomware attacks are absolutely rampant, though you'll never hear about the vast majority of incidents of course, and pretty much all of those start with someone running thingycorp_salaries_full_list.xlsx.exe, enabling macros for a fishy .docx, opening an infected .pdf, downloading and running infected installers, plugging in random USB keys, and so on. Then there's lots and lots of phishing attacks going on, and that's with most companies already clamping down on attack vectors really hard — if people used private PCs as much as they use their private smartphones, for sensitive things like banking, without an IT department to shield them from the worst of it, I guess consumer Windows would get a lot more locked down really quickly.

> people are capable of using PCs, and don't explode from the confusion of doing so.

People may not explode from confusion, but if they had a better idea of how complex IT security has become, they might at least feel somewhat uneasy. Even people in IT roles screw up and get pwned, or build systems in a way that lets them get pwned easily, all the time really. Bad actors have become pretty sophisticated over the last decade as well, and Covid-19 is only making things worse as lots of unsavory individuals with money and resources find that real-world crime doesn't quite deliver the returns it used to, and everyone and their mother now conduct large parts of their lives through their smartphone and move lots of money through those devices. Personally, I've definitely noticed both attack volume and sophistication going up few notches already.

> How does a lawyer use a PC, right now? So thats how they'll do it.

The vast majoriy will depend on IT people to keep them safe, and their devices will be quite thoroughly locked down, and their email pretty aggressively filtered. Incidents definitely still happen, though. Same with medicine.

I really don't think it's a stretch to imagine people getting socially engineered en masse to install shady apps in a world where each app store and each app requires an entirely new security assessment on little to no data by end users, or apps getting compromised and not get pulled, or whatever. It's possible to solve that quandary, but it's not going to be as easy as just throwing out all restrictions without devising some other mechanism to take their place in protecting users.

> Because PCs work, right now, and society is not falling apart.

Society isn't falling apart from lots and lots of issues I'd consider quite severe. I'd rather not let anything get to that point if it can be prevented.

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

#609
post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually did explain: Here’s a real quote from my comment, rather than a few words out of context in quote marks: “That seems like the logical conclusion if you think they have blood on their hands .” It’s obvious that I am not saying they should be doxed. But sure - if people are just reacting to a few words without reading the whole comment or what is a reply to, then they won’t understand.

No, that doesn't explain. Why does blood on their hands make doxxing mandatory for everyone that believes that ? Nobody has said anything like that except you.

I never said doxing was mandatory for everyone that believes that. Misquoting me and exaggerating what I said isn’t going to lead to a better understanding.

However if you believe that doxing of individual law enforcement officers is justified because of their support for the regime, and you accuse Apple’s team of having blood on their hands for ‘enabling’ the regime, it would be logical to conclude that you support doxing Apple’s employees.

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

#610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the argument you're making "if you see someone doing something bad, you should not only call it out as such, but also be willing to do something bad to stop it"? That doesn't make sense to me unless there's really no other option to prevent a much greater evil. I think we're still at the point in this story where normal consumer and media pressure can be effective.

Normal consumer pressure can get out of the way of a nations internal affairs and nothing much else. The number one remedy people are asking of Apple is to back off and be more laissez faire. I, too, can cheer on HK, whatever that means...

Back off from what? Nobody has said they have even threatened anything.
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