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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

#91

Post by throw_m239339 »

okamiueru wrote: post #83
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?"

Usually, we would sanction countries that did this. Maybe time to sanction companies? Otherwise, why do anyone expect them to do anything other than what is the most profitable? Its even illegal not to.

> Usually, we would sanction countries that did this. Maybe time to sanction companies? Otherwise, why do anyone expect them to do anything other than what is the most profitable? Its even illegal not to.

Sanction for what exactly? Sanctions against nations don't work. USA has been sanctioning Cuba, Iran for half a century, no regime change whatsoever, it only hurt the population in these countries. USA are sanctioning Russia right now, is Putin gone? No.

And you want to sanction Apple or Google for what? under what law? Isn't the whole argument made all the time now that these "private companies" are free to censor whoever they want for whatever reasons and they don't have to respect the concept of freedom of speech on their platform?

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

#92

Post by PartiallyTyped »

yawaworht1978 wrote: post #42
ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #4

Apple’s acquiescence to the Russian government’s demand to remove this app was predicted when it first came to light. Exactly at the same time as Apple was assuring world+dog that it would never acquiesce to governmental pressure to extend and expand the scope of its CSAM scanning tool on user’s devices.

Have they ever explained why the csam would be implemented? Apple bends just fine if the government is powerful enough and the marketplace is big enough, see China.

Presumably to protect children.

The cynic in me believes this was either or both of these:

---

- Marketing ploy. The new iMessages app allows for scanning of the sent and received pictures for nudity and notifies parents if parental controls are enabled.

This is supported by the very large order of iPhones apple made for this year, roughly 90 million iirc.

- Bending the definition of E2EE, that is, enabling them to bend to governments "without breaking" their privacy "stance". Meaning that it is entirely possible to scan for content provided the government targets without losing E2EE. Effectively creating a special class of back window, where one can take a peek without the ability to execute arbitrary code.

It should be noted that given that the model is fast and can run with minimal impact (thank god for accelerators on SOCs /s), it could in theory run in realtime as part of the display pipeline, further removing restrictions like requiring that the content is downloaded with the images and iCloud sync is enabled.

---

But all of that is pure speculation from a random netizen.

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

#93

Post by slim »

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 ?

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

#94

Post by slim »

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 ?

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

#95

Post by lovasoa »

mrtksn wrote: post #89
lovasoa wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are fixing it themselves. And in the process of fixing it, they made an app. Google and Apple prevented the distribution of this app.

> 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.

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

#96

Post by joconde »

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.

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 dictatorship, they knew it beforehand.

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

#97

Post by martin_a »

Grustaf wrote: post #75
yawaworht1978 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they ever explained why the csam would be implemented? Apple bends just fine if the government is powerful enough and the marketplace is big enough, see China.

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

Don't stop there! What about terrorists, drug dealers and the organized crime?! We need to stop those, too!

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

#98

Post by sfifs »

Grustaf wrote: post #75
yawaworht1978 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they ever explained why the csam would be implemented? Apple bends just fine if the government is powerful enough and the marketplace is big enough, see China.

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 legally... And their valuation will crash if their balance sheet expands so much and management would be fired.

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

#99

Post by lifty »

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…

It's hard to maximise profit and have consistent internal moral principles. As the other child comment mentioned, I would have preferred if Apple doesn't collaborate with these regimes and build their systems in such a way that they can't stand in the way of people doing what they want. But when you try to maximise profit, you have to interpose yourself as the gatekeeper, so you can extract as much value from the flow. And that of course makes you vulnerable to these kind of regimes.

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

#100

Post by lifty »

joconde wrote: post #96
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.

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.

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