News organization Quartz tells The Verge that Apple has removed its mobile app from the Chinese version of its App Store after complaints from the Chinese government. According to Quartz, this is due to the publication’s ongoing coverage of the Hong Kong protests, and the company says its entire website has also been blocked from being accessed in mainland China.
The publication says it received a notice from Apple that the app “includes content that is illegal in China.”
I’ve been highlighting Apple’s and Tim Cook’s hypocrisy for years now, but I’ve always felt like a man screaming into the void. It’s interesting to see the media finally waking up to just how much their innate love for Apple and Tim Cook has allowed the wool to be pulled over their eyes.
They choose to do business in China and by doing that they choose to follow Chinese law.
Agreed. You can’t argue that companies should be apolitical and then turn around and complain that they’re obeying the laws of the jurisdictions in which they are doing business. Apple is right to do this, so long as they are doing business in China. The alternative, if they do not wish to obey Chinese law, is to not do business there.
darknexus,
That’s only half the story though. Apple may have been pressured to censor various apps in it’s store, and I don’t blame apple for that. However apple itself is clearly guilty of denying owners from having full control on the devices they’ve bought. This lack of owner freedoms on IOS is by design and clearly apple’s fault. Apple’s role in building censorship technology should not be overlooked because in all seriousness this is the most likely model for government censorship to expand in the future – right along the lines of corporate walled gardens just like apple’s.
If we all just sit back and green-light corporate walled garden restrictions on our devices, then we may as well sit back and accept government censorship too because it’s the same technology. Just as corporations are pushing to establish their control over our devices as acceptable & normal, governments will push to establish their control over our devices as acceptable & normal too. This is inevitably what will happen if we fail to stop corporations from controlling our devices. It saddens me to see this future approaching and yet the masses are hardly willing to do anything to prevent it now while we still have a chance.
I don’t want to defend Apple directly because in general I’m not a fan of their environment and walled garden approach. But the question I think that is relevant here is whether the users of Apple products in China are better off with the censored iPhone or no iPhone at all. I think it’s obvious.
Sure Apple wants to make some money in the Chinese market but Chinese people also want access to the products.
If you want Apple to pull out of China because they shouldn’t play ball with the Chinese government than you’re basically saying the US embargo of Cuba was a good idea.
DrJohnnyFever,
But how are you arriving at this conclusion? I think you’re mixing up my objections to apple’s walled garden restrictions with Thom’s objections to apple’s government compliance, He is the one suggesting that apple can/should ignore official government take-down requests in apple’s app store, and your post makes sense as a rebuttal to that. However my criticism is that apple’s self imposed walled garden restrictions were the catalyst for censorship.
Drumheller stated it clearly:
I wish that the media (including Thom) would connect the dots and criticize apple for voluntarily laying out the foundations for government censorship on IOS in the first place. They’ve set (and continue to set) a very bad precedent for owner restrictions on our devices, censorship is a direct and inevitable consequence of that.