151–160 of 515 posts
Pakistan's laws are clearly wrong, but Apple and Google do not and should not have the authority to bypass any country's laws.
So may I ask your opinion of this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...
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Censorship I don't like...
If you argue against censoring Republicans on HN, you'll get downvoted. We should oppose censorship of any form. We have a legal framework to deal with terroristic threats, child porn, and libel / slander. This year has shown the incredible power FAAMG yields with deplatformization, but they've been using their power to cave to authoritarian regimes and belittle minority populations for awhile. It all has to stop. Bi…
I'm against this whole concept of people feeling entitled to access to a platform just because that platform is big and popular. If you have a problem with what they are doing then stop using them and stop promoting them. They have power because they are popular, so take that power by making them unpopular. If you are unwilling to take even these small steps then clearly you don't even care that much about the issue, so why should anyone else?
And I also personally reject the idea that these places [1] should be 100% uncensored. I've seen what the uncensored places look like and extremely few people really want that. There is a reason those places are not popular. I will not accept any argument predicated on the idea that all censorship is bad, which is pretty much entirely the argument against Trump deplatforming.
[0] Only because they are not a monopoly, no matter what people claim. The fact that there are so many big players in internet communication is testament to that.
[1] That is, communication channels not owned by the government. The government has to respect the 1st amendment, no one else is beholden to it.
For those defending this practice, consider carefully the implications of what you are advocating. On one hand you have a government deciding who can and cannot refer to themselves as adherents of a particular religion (by declaring that Ahamadis cannot call themselves Muslim). On another hand you have Google and Apple, yet again, being the complicit chokepoints of “free speech”, with regard to app developers. These…
Pakistan has a constitution. Appstores operate in Pakistan and comply with their government. There is no free speech analogy to countries with a different constitution.
You use the phrase "free speech" as if it referred only to a legal requirement, and not also an ethical principle.
Pakistan's laws are clearly wrong, but Apple and Google do not and should not have the authority to bypass any country's laws.
Also, I found it disingenuous that Google plays "it's the law card" when it spends millions of dollars a year lobbying in the United States to get laws changed. Now, it may be much harder to get the Pakistan government to change its mind around the inclusion of "Muslim" for online content for this group - but I doubt Google has bothered to try...
There is more than a country's law to consider, there is international law and war crimes tribunals. Nothing maybe for Google to worry about yet, but what if Pakistan passes a law is passed that requires Google to give up all search data on this minority population in order that the government can monitor, imprison or kill them? I'd like to see how Google's legal team would respond to that. I'm guessing comply and cover-up, but I'd like to be wrong.
Note it doesn't even have to be an international law, it can be a better, future Pakistan, perhaps one with an Ahmadiyya leader - as inconceivable as that seems now. Germany for example, is charging an old lady with aiding and abetting murder (10,000 times!) for her secretarial work as a minor in a concentration camp. Pakistan is bigger than Germany and Google is good at doing things at scale... so let's hope Google leadership leads.
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I wouldn’t say that I’m defending the practice. It’s a bad decision and I wish Pakistan wouldn’t censor these apps. But it really does seem like the responsibility lies with Pakistan here. The article suggests Google’s trying hard to keep these apps up, and has indeed kept some up despite government pressure. At the end of the day, their options to resist legal demands are limited, and it’s hard for me to see an argu…
> At the end of the day, their options to resist legal demands are limited They're really not. Google is not based in Pakistan, and they don't have offices or datacenters in Pakistan. Why should they take _global_ action against developers who are _located in the US_ on the request of someone who does not have jurisdiction over them? It's interesting how this plays out in reverse to the typical copyright fights - peo…
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And, increasingly, their own banking and internet routing infrastructure as well.
FYI, Pakistan's biggest banks are owned by Ahmadis. Quite a number in India too.
For those defending this practice, consider carefully the implications of what you are advocating. On one hand you have a government deciding who can and cannot refer to themselves as adherents of a particular religion (by declaring that Ahamadis cannot call themselves Muslim). On another hand you have Google and Apple, yet again, being the complicit chokepoints of “free speech”, with regard to app developers. These…
This isn't censorship, this is just a private company deciding who is and isn't allowed on their platform. All Ahmadiyya muslims have to do is start their own company to make mobile phones and probably their own search engine as well.
This fits the definition of censorship. Maybe you meant to say this isn't governmental censorship?
Edit: Poe's law
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Perhaps is more companies refused to do business in a country due to diabolical laws, people would start voting against politicians that create diabolical laws.
So it's up to Google and other international companies to decide which laws are diabolical, which laws are bad and which can be tolerable? Why not going all the way down and let those companies write beautiful laws and also enforce them, everywhere in the world?
Why not? If they can decide which speech is tolerated on their platforms and which isn't, then why not this?
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> Pakistan is not a secular country, unlike England or the USA It's a minor quibble, but England does have an established national Church, so it's not entirely secular in the way the US is. 26 CofE Bishops sit in the House of Lords, the Lords Spiritual. The head of state is also the head of the Church.
It is so fascinating how fascinated all these Germanic kingdoms in Western Europe were with emulating the Romans
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Agreed, but this also raises the question: what should their course of action be? The course of action they followed implicitly supports human rights violations, in order to continue operating within a given country. Note that I am not saying the action itself is a human rights violation. They certainly have the right to choose what to publish and they are limiting the scope of their actions to the laws of the countr…
> Agreed, but this also raises the question: what should their course of action be? To comply with the law. No, I don't like it either, but I also don't like the idea of corporations having the ability to flout the laws of sovereign nations because they disagree with them. > The course of action they followed implicitly supports human rights violations This is not a "course of action" anymore than not committing a cr…