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

Apple tells Telegram to take down protestor channels in Belarus

iphoneincanada.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

611–620 of 634 posts

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

#611

Post by dontcarethrow2 »

mswtk wrote: post #537
stefan_ wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what particular hellhole have I even landed that we are now using the terms of a Twitter fight to discuss brutal, indiscriminate suppression of protests? Applying "doxxing" rules to police on the job in public must be the most absurd perversion of the term ever. Why on earth would we grant privacy to public servants entrusted with the force monopoly?

It really is one of the most egregious examples of a cultural echo chamber I've seen on HN. We're talking about a brutal police force serving a corrupt and delegitimized regime, that is involved in extrajudicial detention, torture, and murder of peaceful protesters. This unit, the OMON, was specifically established to serve as Lukashenko's beatstick against the opposition. Now, the overwhelmingly peaceful protest mov…

Well, goldenboy Apple has been caught yet again in its own hypocrisy. These mental gymnastics the fanboys are pulling are worthy of some gold medals.

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

#612

Post by croissants »

zepto wrote: post #553
croissants wrote: post #367

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.

You edited this a lot since my previous comment, but it still doesn’t seem obvious this it’s relevant.

Is "this" my parent comment ("Is the argument you're making...")? I edited that immediately after you added more text to your parent comment ("Are you planning to dox Apple employees?"), but not after your other comment ("I don’t know why you would think it’s my argument.").

Anyway, if I understand correctly your position is that if people here believe that Apple's action is wrong, then they must believe that protestors doxxing Belarusian law enforcement is justified. Therefore people here should also believe that doxxing Apple employees is justified.

My response is that any question of "relative badness" changes drastically in the immediate presence of real physical violence. If Belarusian law enforcement is out on the streets cracking demonstrators' skulls, it's more plausible that doxxing is a lesser evil (though of course, I have no idea how credible this doxxing is) -- direct physical violence just makes every response more acceptable.

Apple's response may have the downstream effect of increasing physical violence, but only through a more diffuse chain of events, so it's possible to think that Apple's action is bad but, unlike direct physical violence, not bad enough to warrant doxxing its employees (which, anyway, doesn't seem anywhere near as effective as doxxing Belarusian law enforcement -- how many Apple employees have the power to affect this policy?).

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

#613

Post by dikaio »

fsflover wrote: post #543
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/ .

Nice TY

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

#615

Post by zepto »

croissants wrote: post #612
zepto wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You edited this a lot since my previous comment, but it still doesn’t seem obvious this it’s relevant.

Is "this" my parent comment ("Is the argument you're making...")? I edited that immediately after you added more text to your parent comment ("Are you planning to dox Apple employees?"), but not after your other comment ("I don’t know why you would think it’s my argument."). Anyway, if I understand correctly your position is that if people here believe that Apple's action is wrong, then they must believe that protest…

Helpful explanation. I agree there can be a scale of culpability.

Two points I question:

You assume that doxxing Belarusian law enforcement is effective.

You also imply that Belarusian law enforcement have the power to affect Belarusian policy.

These seem like very much unjustified assertions.

You also seem to ignore the possibility that doxing Apple employees could affect Apple’s policy which is what people want when they criticize Apple.

I am not arguing for doxxing. I’m against it.

However if one believes it would be effective at changing Belarusian policy, it raises the question as to why it would not be effective in changing Apple’s policy?

There is also the point made by the parent that Apple’s people have “blood on their hands”, and are “enablers of violence”.

From your statement about the relative badness, I presume you don’t agree with the parent comment about this.

So it doesn’t seem like your view is representative of the one I was replying to.

I stand by my original comment.

If someone thinks Apple’s employees have “blood on their hands”, then it is logical to assume that by the same reasoning they support doxxing of police, they would support doxxing of Apple employees because they equate what Apple employees are doing with violence. That’s what it means to say that someone has blood on their hands.

The fact that you don’t actually think that what Apple is doing is so bad, changes nothing about the original comment. I was replying to a comment that was far less moderate than the opinion you have just expressed.

You just don’t share the views of the person I was replying to.

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

#616

Post by mswtk »

sjwright wrote: post #596
mswtk wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is one of the most egregious examples of a cultural echo chamber I've seen on HN. We're talking about a brutal police force serving a corrupt and delegitimized regime, that is involved in extrajudicial detention, torture, and murder of peaceful protesters. This unit, the OMON, was specifically established to serve as Lukashenko's beatstick against the opposition. Now, the overwhelmingly peaceful protest mov…

Sure, but for Apple to change its policies specifically in this case is for Apple to take sides in a political conflict/civil war. I don't think that's a viable outcome either. Apple doesn't have any good options here; I think their strategy of a toothless demand with no follow through might well be the least worst option for Apple, and for Telegram.

I wasn't really commenting on what Apple should or shouldn't be doing, just on the tone of the conversation in this thread. That said...

Apple have a really good, straightforward option: Don't police user-generated content in iOS apps. Or, at the very least not the ones intended specifically for communication. They aren't listening to people's phone calls or reading their messages in search of ToS-breaching content after all.

It simply shouldn't be any of their business what Telegram's users post on Telegram's platform. Telegram should be able to independently make the decision what it wants to permit therein.

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

#617

Post by [deleted] »

zepto wrote: post #610
threatofrain wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#618

Post by dane-pgp »

sjwright wrote: post #597
dane-pgp wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple could still retain the capability to delete malicious apps from phones (even apps that weren't installed via the App Store). Presumably Belarus would then make a demand that Apple delete Telegram from people's phones as it is "malicious", but I'd hope that forcing a company to delete things from someone's phone is legally harder than forcing them to hide things on their own servers.

And that capability would be trivial for Belarus to side-step.

Presumably you're imagining some sort of cat-and-mouse game where Belarus release a new version of the app, and then Apple add that app to the blacklist (which iPhones would update daily from Apple's servers, and broadcast via AirDrop).

Rather than blacklisting the app's name or hash, Apple would probably have to blacklist the Developer ID, which it would be hard for Belarus to generate quicker than Apple could blacklist.

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

#619

Post by cheph »

whimsicalism wrote: post #403
cheph wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt Apple fanboys even know about Belarus, after all the media is pointing them everywhere but where actual tyranny, injustice and oppression occurs.

Weird usage of what’s happening in Belarus to seemingly try to minimize some domestic issue you don’t like?

Pray tell, what domestic issue that I don't like am I trying to minimize? And in answering that, try to not assume the only two places in the world that exists is Belarus and USA.

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

#620

Post by Dylan16807 »

zepto wrote: post #609
Dylan16807 wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> it would be logical to conclude that you support doxing Apple’s employees.

But your comment didn't just say such a person would conclude it's justified. You said the logical conclusion would be them participating in the doxxing. Those are very different things. The list of actions that I think are justified but don't participate in is enormous.

(And by "mandatory for everyone that believes that" I meant that logic would mandate it, which is the same as it being the logical conclusion.)

But even with your new version, just talking about it being justified, well that's not necessarily the logical conclusion. One reason is that their participation is at a different level, so the justification might not extend to them.

And if you go by the motive in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24738218 then identifying the police is being done for a very direct purpose to level the playing field on the ground. Someone might reasonably feel that this reason doesn't apply to Apple employees, even while saying that Apple employees have blood on their hands.

Post reply on HN