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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

#131

Post by ethanbond »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #84
ALittleLight wrote: post #5

Very sad when not even the massively rich will bother to do the right thing. "Sorry, need a few more billion, so we're going to side with an oppressive regime against Democracy." Reminds me of a Dylan line "Will all the money you made buy back your soul?"

> Very sad when not even the massively rich will bother to do the right thing. This is so bizarre, what did people expect here? Apple has been complying with Chinese communist party demands for decades and who knows what Google did. But when it's the Russian government, it's where people on HN draw the line? These companies certainly want their phones/ecosystem to be sold or used in Russia, they only care about whate…

Apple gets lambasted for activities in China all the time by many of the same people

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

#132

Post by Closi »

ALittleLight wrote: post #5

Very sad when not even the massively rich will bother to do the right thing. "Sorry, need a few more billion, so we're going to side with an oppressive regime against Democracy." Reminds me of a Dylan line "Will all the money you made buy back your soul?"

> Very sad when not even the massively rich will bother to do the right thing.

The issue is Google and Apple isn't owned by one massively rich person.

They are owned by tens of thousands of shareholders, many extremely wealthy but most small, including both individual investors but also pension funds and hedge funds, and the CEO & Board are legally obligated to act in their fiduciary interest.

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

#133

Post by Omavel »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #111
seniorivn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is possible, but it's also true that telegram bot is the only platform of Navalny smart vote service that keeps working(aside text file circulating all over the internet)

I wonder why all modern hipsters ignore email as a platform. Like, Telegram on behest of Apple and Google repeatedly bans flibusta bots (a site with a great collection of pirated books), why don't they make an email bot? What would Apple do, ban their own mail app? Start censoring emails?

Many disadvantages comparing with realtime messaging

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

#134

Post by Grustaf »

kurokikaze wrote: post #107
slim wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I don't know about Soros, but e.g. the Swedish government is supporting him quite heavily.

Would you consider Smart Voting to be "interference" if Chinese backed activists promoted it in the US?

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

#135

Post by hnlmorg »

oleganza wrote: post #115
Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm no fan of political power in Russia (my home country) or anywhere else in the world, but come on with this double-standard bullshit. Every country does exactly the same thing. Just look at how much suppression of "alternative voices" happens in real time all over the world and what apps were banned, accounts closed etc. Jan 6 was painted as bad as 9/11, ffs. It may be staged differently so it's not the "governmen…

> Every country does exactly the same thing.

They don't though. Sure, there is some level of corruption and media bias in every country but few countries have dictatorships which will threaten imprisonment (or worse) of anyone who speaks out against the current government.

However I do agree with your secondary point that the solution isn't to create a tech vacuum, it's to create technology that can't be controlled by a single authority.

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

#136

Post by mikro2nd »

mithron wrote: post #41

China's too big of a market - companies have to comply with local authoritarian regime demands. Russia's too big of a market - companies have to comply with local authoritarian regime demands. It really helps that North Korea and Afghanistan are dirt poor.

  Russia's too big of a market
Russia's GDP: $1.710 trillion

Texas GSP: $1.9 trillion

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

#137

Post by Grustaf »

sfifs wrote: post #98
Grustaf wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they don't want people to use their devices for child abuse? Radical idea I know.

They can insist that if they are in the phone rental business and the ownership of the phone on their balance sheet, not if they're in the phone sales business. If you sell a product, it's pretty much illegal to control what people can and can't do with it. They can still control usage of iCloud which is a service they're renting out. Of course they don't care about CASM to switch their business model to do this lega…

Of course you can have terms of use for things you sell, I don't know why you would think otherwise.

In this case it IS linked to iCloud though, as you probably know. Images are only scanned on their way to iCloud, and they won't be scanned if you don't use iCloud.

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

#138

Post by serial_dev »

amima wrote: post #104
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 re…

Without knowing much about the specifics... A threat can be totally real, even if "there is no one to legally prosecute". In most countries (even in countries that most people would consider more democratic), if people in power want to "make a point", they will find a way.

I'm an immigrant who moved from Hungary to Germany, lived in Spain and Mexico, and I know many examples from all countries where people in power got their way through various ways, even if they had no legal way to enforce their will on others. Also do not forget, if you control legislation, the judges, the constitution, the police, etc, what is legal one day, can become illegal and prosecuted and persecuted pretty quickly.

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

#140

Post by Grustaf »

hypothesis wrote: post #81
Grustaf wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they don't want people to use their devices for child abuse? Radical idea I know.

If we’re engaging in straw-man arguments, why don’t they just force such detectors directly in safari? And in your camera feed? That should solve issue even faster, so why stop at half measures?

It's not a straw man to say that Apple is scanning for CSAM because they don't want CSAM. It may be naive or wrong, but it's not a "straw man".

The stated reason they do it this way is to protect privacy. Presumably a lot more people would complain if they scanned the camera feed.

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