Apple Inc. has a good side and a bad side.
A strong work ethic, oodles of innovativeness, much neat technology.
But a taste for censorship and a willingness to abet the censorious efforts of China’s totalitarians.
One manifestation of Apple’s contempt for unfettered discourse? Its apparent threat to kick the Twitter app off the iOS platform now that Twitter is run by someone friendlier to freedom of speech than the previous management.
Obnoxious though this would be, it’s not half as horrible as knowingly facilitating Chinazi repression. Yet Apple has recently crippled the iPhone AirDrop feature that protestors in China have used to share files like videos of the surging protests against the government’s insane zero-COVID mega-lockdown policies.
Because of a new iOS update, iPhone users in China — and only in China — can now only send files to persons not on their contact list for just ten minutes, hampering the ability of protesters and others to evade Chinese government censorship.
The company’s officers read the news. If Apple really didn’t intend to do this, all it has to do is roll out another update pronto to restore full AirDrop functionality.
Reclaim the Net notes, however, that Apple has often helped the Chinese Communist Party conduct its censorship: for one thing, by removing thousands of apps from its Chinese store at their behest. The deleted apps include VPN apps that helped users evade China’s wide-ranging and determined censorship of the Internet.
Think Different, Apple, not in lockstep with tyrants.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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16 replies on “Rotten Apple”
I disagree with those who, like Milton Friedman or Mario Rizzo, think (or profess to think) that joint-stock companies should simply maximize profits. But, given that some firms will throw the Chinese under the bus if doing so increases profit, we should act to ensure that it does not, exactly by avoiding doing business with those firms.
Musk now says that he has been assured by Cook that Apple has no plans to remove the app.
Maybe Apple has no plans NOW to remove the Twitter app but that can change at any time. It should not be taken as a guarantee of freedom of access.
Power, without abuse, loses its charm.
_ de Roschfeucauld
Publishers and news outlets have always been biased in their opinions, and more recently in their reporting of the events of the day as well. This is not new or news.
What is being complained of and claimed to be new is the censoring of what is allegedly the public square.
Actually, it is a return to normal. With the advent of mass electronic media government censorship was accomplished by licensure systems. Print media was controlled via anti-trust laws. No one was to be allowed a voice and volume equivalent to that of the government.
It was beaten back by cable, the internet and streaming. There was a short and golden time of greater freedom and abilities to freely express one’s opinion.
That advancement was controlled by the elitists who actually do own and control the platforms.
No newspaper ever published every letter to the editors or gave space to every opinion or position. The internet and streaming did. That was, to the elitists and controllers, unacceptable.
To expect the nature of humanity to change and those who are capable of control not to exercise their power is sophomoric.
What is interesting, especially with the Twitter issue, is that there was no problem until It appeared that an owner would not conform with the desires of the government in what speech they chose to censor.
Broadcast licensure was justified to be necessary due to a limited signal spectrum, the internet and cable are not similarly constrained. Therefore the method and place of the repression is shifting.
There appears to be no Constitutional basis for regulating Twitter, You Tube, Facebook and their ilk by the federal government. That, however, will not discourage the attempts to do so.
It always makes me nervous when comments are made, as they are now almost incessantly, that the rights enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights are not absolute. If that is true they are but window dressing and do not exist.
The problem is not just in China. That there is clear repression in China and other nations should not be allowed to shift our focus from the efforts to accomplish the same here.
If Apple and their compatriots are willing to work with China, what level of cooperation should we expect they will grace the Federal government here.
Musk has broke ranks, has the history and proofs, and he is now the enemy because he is willing to reveal the governmental requests and the cooperation with them, and therefore their results.
That is, for those in power and doing the manipulation, not acceptable. As it appears the manipulations have thus far favored the progressives and Democrats it can be expected the new Republican House may react and bring some of the past abuses to light, at least until they determine that they have an equal opportunity to abuse and would like to preserve the power to do so.
The correct regulation, in the end, is none, except for strict adherence to the present Constitutional requirement of hands-off.
Bravo!
Your boys are going to jail!
“Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was convicted on Tuesday along with one of his subordinates of seditious conspiracy as a jury found them guilty of seeking to keep former President Donald J. Trump in power through an extensive plot that started after the 2020 election and culminated in the mob attack on the Capitol.”
And with what, exactly, are we — or at least some of us here — going to be charged?
I won’t deny the possibility that indeed you’ll get your wish, with laws effected to criminalize something ex post such that one or more of us is convicted and imprisoned. You can have your hopes and dreams. But, for now, what a totalitarian leftist would regard as eutopia remains an outopia.
We’re you there?
Pam, could you please explain what you meant to ask?
“Were you there?” Where? Where were our boys supposed to be, other than here, or in our respective towns and cities?
At the insurrection?
Pam, you reveal much about yourself when you respond in this way to an entry about Chinese protests that the Chinese state will misrepresent as an insurrection.
In any case, the commentators here weren’t at that silly Capitol demonstration that the corporate left misrepresents as an insurrection. If any of our boys go to jail or to prison, it will be because your boys have perverted the law about something else.
Your boys (Oath Keepers) are going to jail!
Pam, the Oath Keepers aren’t our boys.
in·sur·rec·tion
a violent uprising against an authority or government.
When you bring guns, bear spray, use force to disrupt the electoral certification, it is an INSURRECTION!
No, Pam.
An insurrection is not merely a violent uprising against the state, but an attempt actively to replace that state with another. As I have previously pointed-out to you, the BLM riots were violent uprisings against the state; they even set fire to government buildings; and some the demonstrators themselves did shoot people; but those violent demonstrations against the authorities still did not count as insurrections, because they weren’t attempts to replace the state.
Absolutely none of the 6 January demonstrators arrested were carrying firearms, and the only shot fired was by a police officer, into the body of a demonstrator. The protestors there with firearms weren’t using them.
Why do you repeat claims that have already been falsified, as if they won’t again be falsified?