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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

#481

Post by irae »

oliwarner wrote: post #253
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…

Except that by this point, all this is expected behaviour. If companies don't want to be complicit in these crimes, they need to extricate themselves from the country and cut all ties. If they do want to put profit ahead of everything else, then whatever, but you don't get to defend them as doing the right thing for their employees. They're enabling the whole situation. [Edit to bring in a sister question] "Why don't…

I would believe this is way more complicated, even if set the profit apart.

Arguably having access to technology is important for the regular citizen, even under less democratic countries. There is the privacy angle, and also if you have an Android monopoly it becomes easier for the government to exploit/enforce what they want. You don't help people to understands the benefits of participating on a democracy, or even fighting to have a democracy by withdrawing and hiding what democracies around the world are able to produce and manufacture. Withdrawing the apps as required by government censorship is just one of the battles lost, but not the entire benefit Apple presence has.

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

#482

Post by oliwarner »

travisgriggs wrote: post #445
pigeonhole123 wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you have to draw the line somewhere is not an argument for not drawing a line somewhere.

Indeed. Can you say that the parties involved do not have lines? Everyone has lines, they’re just not always visible. My point that the observe-eval-withdraw loop is difficult to terminate is not meant to argue we shouldn’t run the loop, but rather how difficult it is to code the withdraw conditions. As I tried to allude to in the second paragraph, you have to balance out the withdraw conditions with the pragmatic ne…

How about using the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a score sheet? 30 Articles there. I doubt there are many countries that score a perfect-30 but is Russia even in double-figures?

I agree, there's some arbitrary hand-wringing to be done to work out where to draw the line, but doing nothing while you're paralysed trying to decide what pencil to use, seems just as bad as going along with the acts in the first place.

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...

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

#483

Post by mindslight »

oliwarner wrote: post #253
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…

Except that by this point, all this is expected behaviour. If companies don't want to be complicit in these crimes, they need to extricate themselves from the country and cut all ties. If they do want to put profit ahead of everything else, then whatever, but you don't get to defend them as doing the right thing for their employees. They're enabling the whole situation. [Edit to bring in a sister question] "Why don't…

All this is certainly expected behavior. If companies don't want to be complicit in these crimes, then they need to remove themselves from keeping remote power over devices that are purportedly sold to end users. Dell doesn't get flack for what Debian chooses to put in their repositories. And when Debian itself gets bullied (eg decss and other video codecs), even-less-exposed organizations can create another repository that coexists with the main one.

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

#484

Post by whimsicalism »

lovecg wrote: post #474
whimsicalism wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not convinced that we can tell black from white. I also think that there ought to be a certain level of relativism when it comes to judging political systems. Is it democratic that an unelected group of 9 people can unilaterally essentially decide the law of the land in the US?

How is the US constitutional system remotely relevant in this discussion?

Because every political system has elements of "authoritarianism"/decisions being made by unelected officials.

For instance, we often criticize Iran as being authoritarian, but compared to many of our allies elsewhere, Iran is actually relatively democratic, even if they have authoritarian "checks" just like we do with the Supreme Court.

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

#485

Post by whimsicalism »

ipaddr wrote: post #255
gman83 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Google did pull out of China, did that improve the situation in China? Meanwhile Apple makes billions in China and barely anyone says anything. If you're Google you're looking at that like a raw deal.

Yes Google pulling out instead of censoring search results and spying on users for the government made things better for people in China. Apple scan your photos. Tells you what apps you are allowed to install and charges you extra for all of that. Whatever type of person is left on the platform is more likely to be going through stockholm syndrome and wouldn't be in a situation to make a political statement.

> Yes Google pulling out instead of censoring search results and spying on users for the government made things better for people in China.

Did it? In what way? Does Google not censor results in the United States at the behest of the US government? Does it not spy on users at the best of the US govt?

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

#486

Post by jacquesm »

nzmsv wrote: post #363
jacquesm wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes. But for Russia's former satellite states things definitely improved.

I think you cherry-picked here. You are thinking about the Baltics and forgetting about places like Uzbekistan (now broke) and Kazakhstan (rich but authoritarian). And even if you say these are former republics rather than satellites, think of the mess that is Serbia. The fall of the USSR may have been overall a good thing and even inevitable, as with any huge disruption it was not an unequivocal good thing for every…

East Germany, Baltics, Poland, Romania and many others.

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

#487

Post by tablespoon »

a123b456c wrote: post #429
tablespoon wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they do want to put profit ahead of everything else, then whatever, but you don't get to defend them as doing the right thing for their employees. They're enabling the whole situation. IMHO, cooperating with an authoritarian regime in this way should be illegal, sort of like a sanctions violation. Cook and Pachai should go to jail for this. That consequence might clarify their thinking a little.

Define "authoritarian regime"

> Define "authoritarian regime"

A simple rule of thumb definition (that could probably use some refinement) is regimes that are either explicitly anti-democratic or a sham democracy. Russia certainly falls into the latter category, as this very story demonstrates.

In most cases, it's not that hard.

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

#488

Post by ALittleLight »

Closi wrote: post #132
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.

I don't believe that for a second. Fiduciary duty prevents corporate officers from enriching themselves at the expense of the company. Fiduciary duty does not compel cooperation with dictators in the suppression of their people.

Can you provide a single example of a civil or criminal charge over something like this?

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

#489

Post by __alexs »

mbesto wrote: post #476
Aunche wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of moral framework that creates cancel culture. Pulling out from Russia will decrease many Russian's standard of living, but will have zero impact in stopping them from rigging elections. If everyone cuts trade for moral reasons, then there's no incentive for us not to point nukes at each other again.

> This is the kind of moral framework that creates cancel culture. Cancel culture means a lot of different things to different people. You might want to clarify your interpretation here. > Russia will decrease many Russian's standard of living, but will have zero impact in stopping them from rigging elections. Wow, this was a mental leap. So by giving into already established corruption of government officials in Rus…

> If everyone cuts trade for moral reasons, then there's no incentive for us not to point nukes at each other again.

I don't agree with OP but this is actually a pretty common talking point around the benefits of globalization. If you depend on some other country for some essential resource (e.g. natural gas) you're less likely to want to go to war with them because it would be quite inconvenient to suddenly have half your population freezing in the winter.

Here's some research from Cato that shows that trade interdependence generally promotes peace https://www.cato.org/research-briefs-economic-policy/does-tr...

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

#490

Post by whimsicalism »

racnid wrote: post #423
QuarterReptile wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tell that to Apple in China, a country that is literally using slave workforce from concentration camps. Source?

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/departme...

> Federal statute 19 U.S.C. 1307 prohibits the importation of merchandise produced, wholly or in part, by convict labor, forced labor, and/or indentured labor under penal sanctions, including forced or indentured child labor

I'm confused how this is distinguished from the conditions of domestic textile workers in the US?

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