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Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps by Ahmadiyya Muslims

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Re: Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps by Ahmadiyya Muslims

#161

Post by Dma54rhs »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #132
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Im sure they do sell ads in Pakistan and want in the future?

An independent state could strangle that business in many easy ways if that is their mission, therefor Google will eventually do whatever it takes to stay in the market.

Re: Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps by Ahmadiyya Muslims

#162

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

lordloki wrote: post #93
sofixa wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would they be free? A country like Pakistan could just as easily block any service that provides content they deem illegal ( as is the case here) via the ISPs( SNI sniffing, DNS blocking, IP blocking) that can't disagree. If anything, Google and Apple have more leverage than F-Droid or similar because Pakistan can't block them without significant backlash, and needs their cooperation, which is at least debated (…

Right now Pakistan is able to block any service they deem as illegal by getting Google and Apple to block it. They have two gates they need to close. If users could load any apps they want outside of the google and apple stores there would be many gates that countries like Pakistan would need to close. Not only more gates but new gates opening every day. Basically, it would be the old internet model, which is very di…

On Android it is relatively trivial to install applications from outside the Google Play Store.

Re: Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps by Ahmadiyya Muslims

#163

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #132
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They shouldn't and haven't taken global action against the developers. The apps remain available outside of Pakistan - you can find them if you search for "ahmadiyya muslim community quran".

Re: Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps by Ahmadiyya Muslims

#164

Post by ethbr0 »

FlownScepter wrote: post #109
ethbr0 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not available for purchase != not available. I understand the point you're trying to make: technologists undervalue national sovereignty when it's from a non-Western / less-democratic country. But try to appreciate parent's point as well: that there are technical qualities about the internet that make it censorship-resistant.

I don't think that point resonates nearly as well under a less-democratic country. There's a romanticism that's applied to the Internet as though it can buck any trend or speak truth to power in a way that other prior media hasn't or can't, and there is some truth to that? But that wasn't because of some innate superiority; it was because it developed primarily in the West, where freedom to express oneself is the def…

I think we're talking about two different things here: companies and code.

You're absolutely right in that companies, as legal entities, have to obey laws in whatever jurisdiction they operate.

But the "internet routes around censorship" folks are usually talking about company-less code (or information), in its pure sense.

That is effectively influenced by only two variables: the cost of copying and distributing it.

Digital technology has driven that number far lower than it's historically existed. And in that, it's a fundamental change.

To cast into concrete terms, we're talking about Facebook (company example) vs DeCSS (code).

Facebook cares if Pakistan or the US says something must be so. DeCSS doesn't.

Re: Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps by Ahmadiyya Muslims

#165

Post by DigiDigiorno »

username90 wrote: post #131
Veen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yet England feel way more secular than USA in practice, given how much Christianity seems to matter in US politics.

The highly religious nature of US settlers is directly connected to our secular freedoms. A lot of early settlers were pretty extreme practicers of their religions and faced persecution in Europe. They left to practice their religion in a place where they wouldn't be burned as a heretic. It's interesting that these opposing extremists were able to get along separately by agreeing to keep the government secular

Re: Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps by Ahmadiyya Muslims

#166

Post by FlownScepter »

II2II wrote: post #160
FlownScepter wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The main issue is how Apple and Google are able to profit from the decision. The only way I can see the situation being avoided is by not entering the particular market in the first place, or by not allowing corporations to get so large that their actions can be construed as political interference (whether it is intentional or not). Either way, the current decision is the consequence of earlier ones.

> The main issue is how Apple and Google are able to profit from the decision

I mean, they're going to do that anyway. They will enter all markets they are able to, and profit as much as they can. That's the entire point of their existence: generate value for shareholders.

I'm not saying I disagree that this situation should be avoided, and in fact super agree with you saying that this moment in history is a consequence of earlier ones more than anything else. However, there's a reflexive action where people are like "$corporation needs to make more ethical decisions" and I cannot overemphasize how ridiculous this view is. Corporations are not even unethical, they're aethical. Their decision making is entirely focused on maximum profit generation.

Now occasionally they'll do something ethical, but oftentimes this is solely because the negative PR from doing something else, or doing nothing, would cause too much damage to the bottom line, however relying solely on this mechanism to illicit change in said corporations is optimistic at best. Instead, legislate what must happen. If you don't want corporations to use child labor to mine minerals, then make that practice incredibly illegal, and make sure the costs to do it anyway are sky high compared to the ones to not. And do it with law, not protest.

Re: Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps by Ahmadiyya Muslims

#167

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jmull wrote: post #128
zupreme wrote: post #51

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…

The (rather massive) flaw in your reasoning is the idea that Google and Apple are the solution to the problem. If you live in a society without religious freedom, that's a big problem, but Apple and Google can't fix it. If you care about the problem, it's important to understand this. If you succeed in getting people to focus on symptom of the problem and not the cause, you will help prevent it from being addressed.

Apple and Google can't fix Pakistan. They can control how they respond, though. And how they responded looks pretty spineless.

Re: Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps by Ahmadiyya Muslims

#168

Post by FlownScepter »

ethbr0 wrote: post #164
FlownScepter wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that point resonates nearly as well under a less-democratic country. There's a romanticism that's applied to the Internet as though it can buck any trend or speak truth to power in a way that other prior media hasn't or can't, and there is some truth to that? But that wasn't because of some innate superiority; it was because it developed primarily in the West, where freedom to express oneself is the def…

I think we're talking about two different things here: companies and code. You're absolutely right in that companies, as legal entities, have to obey laws in whatever jurisdiction they operate. But the "internet routes around censorship" folks are usually talking about company-less code (or information), in its pure sense. That is effectively influenced by only two variables: the cost of copying and distributing it.…

> But the "internet routes around censorship" folks are usually talking about company-less code (or information), in its pure sense.

Is it company-less, though? Code is useless without the silicon that brings it to life, without the people that maintain that silicon, without the power grid that energizes it, and without the data links that connect it. Like I understand what you're saying, you're saying that the pure technology itself is the liberating part, and I agree with that about halfway. But code doesn't run on nothing. To run your code, you'll need a computer, either in your home or business. That computer is sold to you by a vendor, and it's connected to internet sold to you by a different vendor, and is powered by electricity sold to you by a different vendor. Ergo, your code is dependent upon the infrastructure to which you are in turn beholden to. And none of this changes if you use AWS or whatever, you're just adding more vendors and more middlemen, who in turn are buying the needed things from whomever else, etc. Ultimately, if whatever authority decides you must not proceed with what you're doing, that can be enforced in numerous ways, all of which mean that you will not proceed. Or at the very least, will make it much harder.

We saw this recently with the Parler fiasco.

> To cast into concrete terms, we're talking about Facebook (company example) vs DeCSS (code).

But DeCSS only works with DVD drives sold to you by manufacturers in PC's sold to you by manufacturers, running on electricity sold to you by a utility. The code, the information, that's free. But taking it and doing something useful with it, in this case decrypting DVD's, requires hardware, and if for whatever odd reason the U.S. State Department decided that nobody was ever going to use it in the States again, maybe they couldn't stop it entirely, sure, but they can make it infinitely more difficult to do so.

Re: Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps by Ahmadiyya Muslims

#169

Post by jariel »

bluejekyll wrote: post #95
jariel wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"These may seem fair to you" I don't see 'seeming fair' to most people. This is just yet another example of Google and Apple's monopoly preferences being leveraged by entities that have more leverage than them. It has to stop. Free The Apps.

It took me a second to get this argument, but it’s a good one. If there were thousands of marketplaces on iOS and Android, then Pakistan would have to negotiate the removal on all of this platforms, as opposed to only two. Spelling it out clearly like that, it makes me wonder if there are many governments that prefer to have monopolies to deal with, rather than many companies. It certainly makes regulation simpler.

I personally worked for a large tech company and was involved with 'content filtering discussions' with questionable regimes.

HN doesn't like such arguments, it's not an argument, just an experience.

It's common.

Pragmatically speaking, it's much harder for Pakistan to filter the entire web, than control international conglomerates which they generally can do.

We need diversity in search, and absolutely need to have 'many app stores' and 'direct downloads'.

The arguments for 'security' are rubbish, and the plebes supporting Apple's monopoly I don't think understand what's happening.

In US anti-trust cases, generally there has be evidence of 'harm to consumers' - well - these 'bans' absolutely represent harm. Bans of Apps (even unsavoury things like Parler) and unquestionably arbitrary controls on choice that harm consumers. Moreover, Apple's 30% cut is a pretty obvious harm once you do the economic calculation.

So Apple should be more like Google - and - just as the EU has proposed with search wherein you get to choose your vendor, not defaults negotiated behind the scenes - the same goes with app stores.

Once the regulatory action is taken - we will still have secure apps, and there will be greater opportunity. In hindsight it will seem obvious and actually kind of simple.

Re: Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps by Ahmadiyya Muslims

#170

Post by zo1 »

sofixa wrote: post #89
zo1 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments are wisening up. Tinfoil hat me says they're replacing "blasphemy laws" with more politically palatable yet more vague "Hate speech" laws that are ridiculously loose and can be applied how they see fit, including prosecuting blasphemy-like criticism of Religion. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country#So...

I don't see anything ridiculously loose about that law: > No person may publish, propagate, advocate or communicate words based on one or more of the prohibited grounds, against any person, that could reasonably be construed to demonstrate a clear intention to be hurtful,be harmful or to incite harm, promote or propagate hatred. [65] > The "prohibited grounds" include race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, eth…

That sentence you quoted is incredibly vague. What exactly does it mean to promote hate?

Or lets take that quote and pick one cross section of word salad that they can use as a potential cross-product with legalese:

"No person may [communicate] words based on [occupation] against any person that can demonstrate an intention to be [hurtful]." Yes occupation is a protected group in that law.

Its all fine and dandy while this law is used to prosecute anti-lgbt people as an example. But that law will quickly be used to shut down legitimate debate and civilian disagreement when they can reframe the group/person being hurt by words as a victim. Just look at the heated debate regarding immigration. Questioning large scale immigration would be "hate speech" under this law, whilst simultaneously not prosecuting "hate speech" against a closed-borders group of people. Its essentially legislating societal-level feelings as valid.

You know, instead of actually having a debate and putting it down on paper as law and as an absolute. E.g. If we want free borders or large scale immigration, then lets just make a law allowing it.

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