Just another reminder that you should never delude yourself into thinking these companies are a force for anything moral or ethical.
Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin
541–550 of 673 posts
Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin
#542Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where does the US MSM and social media refusing to cover anything about Hunter Biden put us?
> Where does the US MSM and social media refusing to cover anything about Hunter Biden put us? I'm not a huge fan of Joe Biden (as you can probably infer from my comments here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28550896 ), but the Hunter Biden stuff was a shameless distraction with no real substance. So to answer your question: if the US MSM and social media was required to run smears of a sitting president against…
>but the Hunter Biden stuff was a shameless distraction with no real substance.
Uh, that's really not a strong affirmative justification for taking active measures to stop people from using your platform to share a story. And of course the real problem is not simply that the story was suppressed, but that we all know that media platforms do not in fact have a blanket policy against reporting on "shameless distractions with no real substance", and that this sort of post-hoc rationalizing of obvious partisan bias is intellectually insulting.
Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin
#543Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely, they are incredibly biased and basically a rag outlet. In no way does that justify preventing me from sending true information relevant to a public figure in a chat.
I think it makes sense to block a known-unreliable news outlet because they are usually seen as sources of authoritative, correct information, and once they have proven they are no longer reliable, anything they say no longer holds the same weight of proper journalistic integrity (essentially losing the privilege of trust and perceived "authority"). If there is true, factual information they posted about, the same in…
Who decides what outlet is reliable? Should that be blocked from my text messages?
Should the standard be to only allow articles written by reputable outlets, which have been known to bury stories (such as those demonstrating war crimes by the US military)?
I just completely disagree with you I guess. I should be free to send whatever I want in private chat messages with my friends, even if it is politically unsavory.
Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fire your Russian employees. Then withdraw. Hurts but if history should learn us a thing or two one of them should be not to give in to dictators. The younger ones here are allowed to take a few minutes off to use their favorite search engine to look up the quote "peace in our time" by Chamberlain. Edit: It looks so simple the way I wrote it above. Please note that doing the right thing isn't easy. Telling lots of pe…
> Fire your Russian employees. More like move them to a better place if they prefer this to simply terminating the contract. Benefits are numerous - retain already-hired quality personnel, have a good PR campaign about being moral and holy and doing the extra mile with bureaucracy (which would be true), grow some extra hairy balls overnight. Or something similar.
Good points.
Russia unlike certain others probably won't torture their loved ones because of this.
Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin
#545Reuters 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…
If you build tools of oppression (not making it easy to use alternate app stores) they will inevitably be abused by those wishing to oppress.
Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin
#546Earlier quoted context omitted.
> as this very story demonstrates. This story is sufficient to demonstrate that Russia is a "sham democracy"? Does the fact that Twitter/Facebook/et al banned the NYPost in the run-up to the 2020 election as well as preventing people from sending links to NYPost articles in their DMs "demonstrate" anything about the US?
>Does the fact that Twitter/Facebook/et al banned the NYPost in the run-up to the 2020 election as well as preventing people from sending links to NYPost articles in their DMs "demonstrate" anything about the US? Not about its government, given that they did not demand (or even informally pressure) that the tech companies involved make this move.
So it's not a "sham" if large private corporations heavily tilt the scales on who gets elected? Only the reverse?
Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin
#547Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Casually suggesting that Apple should pull out from all authoritarian countries is both funny and naive
The benchmark here is employee threats. China does not threaten Apple employees located in their country, nor do many other authoritarian countries. I don't think it's unreasonable to pull out of countries that present clear and present dangers to your workforce.
Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin
#548Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmmm. Withdraw the app and you go to jail. Don’t withdraw the app and your Russian employees go to jail
Fire your Russian employees. Then withdraw. Hurts but if history should learn us a thing or two one of them should be not to give in to dictators. The younger ones here are allowed to take a few minutes off to use their favorite search engine to look up the quote "peace in our time" by Chamberlain. Edit: It looks so simple the way I wrote it above. Please note that doing the right thing isn't easy. Telling lots of pe…
It won't be worse for either Cook or Pichai though.
Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin
#549Earlier 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?
>Is it democratic that an unelected group of 9 people can unilaterally essentially decide the law of the land in the US? Are republican (little r) systems inherently authoritarian in your view? Do you actually fear that SCOTUS is going to start imposing some sort of autocratic control over American government? I'm not. You probably aren't either. There are institutional explanations for this.
I actually consider myself a staunch (little r) republican.
That said, Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy (a seminal republican text) was quite clear that republican mixed government does involve mixing a bit of democracy with a bit of authoritarianism/autocracy. I do think it is "authoritarian", but I don't think it is necessarily bad.
My question is merely: why can we extend this sort of support to mixed government in our country, but seemingly consider many of the other forms of mixed government in action as pure authoritarian tyranny?
Re: Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin
#550Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those are lawyers hired by Apple and Google, not employees.
They still looked unprepared. The inquirer asked basic questions like "who controls App Store" or "what is the relationship between local subsidiary and Apple Inc." They stumbled and mumbled looking lost. They looked like they didn't have clear defense line or strategy although the attack on Apple was absolutely on cards for years. I hope I'm wrong judging by a short video but it's a bad look for Apple. It's possible…
> I hope I'm wrong judging by a short video but it's a bad look for Apple.
Is it implausible that the lawyers were coerced into looking weak to provide a propaganda victory for the regime?