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Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin

reuters.com

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Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin

#101

Post by joconde »

Klaster_1 wrote: post #24
vbezhenar wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google obeys Russian laws. Of course they'll disclose any information they have given proper police request. They did that many times in the past. With Russia and with other countries. Do you expect Google to go partisan war against Russian government?

>Do you expect Google to go partisan war against Russian government? Expect? To some degree, yes, for example they do not remove "illegal" YouTube videos yet. Would like to? Absolutely.

Then Google employees would start getting arrested, and whatever would be left of Google in the country would comply anyway, achieving nothing but the imprisonment of more people. Google Russia's employees don't have diplomatic immunity.

Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin

#102

Post by mrtksn »

lovasoa wrote: post #95
mrtksn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google and Apple prevented the distribution of this app. The Russian government made them. Please don’t twist the causality chain to push an agenda.

The regime asked them to, and at that point, they had the choice between siding with the regime, or the people. They chose the regime.

How a company sides with people instead of the regime that governs the country? Describe please.

Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin

#103

Post by kurokikaze »

slim wrote: post #93
elephantum wrote: post #69

The thing is, that it's all very time-sensitive. And I expect pressure was unreasonably high. We have elections in Russia this weekend and Navalny app was used as a tool to coordinate protest voting. It is called "Smart Voting" by Navalny team and it is getting a lot of attention for upcomping elections. If Apple and Google would just be a little bit slower and complied next Monday :) Still there are more ways to coo…

It's not clear what does the app do? What is protest voting and how do you coordinate it ?

It's voting for the candidate most likely to win against the main party's candidates. The app's purpose is to concentrate protest voters on one candidate without spreading them over all of them.

Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin

#104

Post by amima »

viktorcode wrote: post #85

Reuters doesn't report this, but the government officials threatened the companies (Apple and Google) with jail time for their employees yesterday. After that the companies finally conceded. There's a short video fragment from the meeting of the government officials and the companies representatives. It's worth watching, especially if you come from a democratic nation. Letting your Russian employees be persecuted don…

The real threat came from the fine the government intended to impose on the companies. They threatened to fine not the fixed amount, as they did before, but to calculate it from the turnover values. Which could result in millions of dollars. The Russian government recently fined Booking with almost 18 million USD. For Google and Apple the fine could be even bigger.

The threat to employees on the other hand was not real one, there is no one to legally procecute in the Russian subsidiaries of the companies.

Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin

#105

Post by throw_m239339 »

tandav wrote: post #35

Money is money. Thats sad but predictable. The future web should be decentralized.

> Money is money. Thats sad but predictable. The future web should be decentralized.

The web is already decentralized, by design. It's just that people are all flocking to the exact same services and providers for "convenience". Nobody has to use Google services, or buy an iPhone and use iPhone apps. Google isn't the web.

What the web needs is to be distributed in order to be more resilient or even evade censorship. But users need to care first. Don't give all your private information to Google, don't use walled gardens like the app store...

Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin

#106

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

rubatuga wrote: post #56
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #50

It is time to ask Google and Apple if they were asked to actually remove Telegram from stores, when russian government was trying to ban it. It wasn't removed at the time, and all sources that Apple and Google were demanded to block it in Russia pointed to press-release on RosKomNadzor itself. I suspect that it is possible that all this Telegram block in Russia was a PR campaign coordinated with Russian government to…

Would be a historical coordination if true.

It wasn't really difficult on RKN part, if true. Just announce something and not act on it.

Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin

#107

Post by kurokikaze »

slim wrote: post #94
Grustaf wrote: post #78

How would people would feel if there were Chinese backed apps in the AppStore that were used for tactical voting in the US presidential elections? With the express purpose to aid a specific candidate.

Is navalny's app backed by a foreign entity ?

This is the main party line right now - "Navalny is Soros' agent and Smart Voting is election interference".

Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin

#108

Post by simonh »

Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #88
viktorcode wrote: post #85

Reuters doesn't report this, but the government officials threatened the companies (Apple and Google) with jail time for their employees yesterday. After that the companies finally conceded. There's a short video fragment from the meeting of the government officials and the companies representatives. It's worth watching, especially if you come from a democratic nation. Letting your Russian employees be persecuted don…

Pull out of the countries then. Participating in dictatorship is barely better than refusing to do so if that dictatorship will falsely imprison your employees.

Even Navalny and his supporters are not calling for foreign companies to all pull out of Russia. What makes you think you know better what is good for the Russian people and the opposition groups than Russians and the opposition groups themselves?

How many of Russia's Apple employees think Apple is "participating in dictatorship" by employing them? How many Russian citizens, including the political opposition, do you think blame Apple or Google for participating in dictatorship by selling them phones and providing them with services? Maybe a few take such an extreme view, but it certainly doesn't seem to be a common attitude for Russian opponents of Putin.

Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin

#109

Post by SmileIJP »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #50

It is time to ask Google and Apple if they were asked to actually remove Telegram from stores, when russian government was trying to ban it. It wasn't removed at the time, and all sources that Apple and Google were demanded to block it in Russia pointed to press-release on RosKomNadzor itself. I suspect that it is possible that all this Telegram block in Russia was a PR campaign coordinated with Russian government to…

They might just try different methods.

Also Telegram is deeply integrated into Russian infrastructure. Fair amount of the private companies use it as the main communication medium. Government entities use it to communicate the news. Lots of common non-political folks use it.

I would bet trade-off of upsetting non-relevant folks to the hit of the unfavorable party doesn't really pay off. Apple and Google may move their employees after these events.

Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin

#110

Post by pftburger »

lifty wrote: post #100
joconde wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to achieve nothing in practice. If Google and Apple leave Russia, then whatever replaces them will probably be even more compliant with the government. Of course, working in the country means paying tax dollars and "participating in the dictatorship" in that way, but that's not linked to app store restrictions. It's not as if they needed to get ordered to remove that app to realize they were working in a d…

I am sorry, but that's bullshit. Do you see Russia threatening Microsoft for not banning certain apps from Windows? No, because they can't. Apple and Google have build their ecosystem in such a way that they have full power over these decisions, and now they are forced to use that power. Edit: Google has a slight advantage here because people can still sideload apps on Android, but that's not possible on iOS.

This, right here. Centralization is the danger. In whatever form.

Even the web with single points of failure is prone to this.

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