221–230 of 515 posts
While I agree that banning religious apps is particularly objectionable, it's interesting to compare the response to Pakistan banning US apps and India banning Chinese apps.
How should multinational conglomerates like Apple and Google handle sovereign nation states that violate The Golden Rule? I think the best case scenario is to deescalate the situation while also minimizing the impact of the violation; I don’t have a clue how best to achieve this lofty goal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The gatekeeper is Pakistan, it's their sovereign territory. The Internet isn't outside of that reach, it only exists inside of a territory with the permission of the government that controls it. You might as well be talking about any of a zillion laws within 195 different countries that one might find objectionable, it's exactly the same 'problem.' What's the premise? Pakistan doesn't get to decide their own laws? Th…
Totally right. Remember that capital doesn't have a nation. Companies registered in the US have to comply with US laws. But a legal entity in Pakistan have to obide by those rules. And if it's profitable - they will. Replace Pakistan with any other country name, the argument doesn't change. It's the law in that jurisdiction. You can't really mix and match the legislation you like and don't like. No idea if the partic…
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…
You make a great argument for Governments that support religious freedom. Not sure I follow your logic to a conclusion that makes Apple and Google the villains here though. A&G have a binary choice - serve users in (Oppressive Country X) or not. There is no choice that involves serving those users but not following the oppressive laws of said country.
where are all the commenters who told us private companies are free to filter on private platforms as they see fit?
The other positive here is that one less religion in the world is promoted as being equal to all others. I'd rather only have to deal with 4 mass delusions than 5.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are hypocrites. They loudly proclaim how moral they are but when it is inconvenient/unprofitable their morality disappears.
Please cite sources showing Apple "loudly proclaiming how moral" it is.
Tim Cook “ At Apple, our mission has been and always will be to create technology that empowers people to change the world for the better.”
Pakistan's laws are clearly wrong, but Apple and Google do not and should not have the authority to bypass any country's laws.
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…
No, they really don't. If they 'chose' to publish an app that is banned by Pakistan, the ultimate end-move would be for Pakistan to simply disable the app stores completely.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Parler was not used by the rioters. Nobody who was arrested planned anything on Parler, but they did use Facebook and Twitter.
"But Facebook did it too" isn't a great argument for Parler. If anything, you're arguing for more legal pressure on Facebook, not for getting Parler their AWS account back.
>If anything, you're arguing for more legal pressure on Facebook, not for getting Parler their AWS account back.
I am arguing for consistency. Parler was accused of something they did not do. They were found guilty by Amazon, Google and Apple. It then came out they were innocent, but the real perpetrators (Facebook and Twitter) and not being punished.
If what Parler was accused of doing was so serious that removing them from app stores and AWS was the correct move then it seems like if people were consistent they would be calling for the same thing with the real perpetrators. I haven't seen any widespread support for removing the apps from the app stores.
The whole thing feels political and not real outrage which is what I was trying to convey.