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Apple bows to authoritarian regimes, claims activist group

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An activist group claims Apple's alleged App Store censorship in Russia and Hong Kong attacks "fundamental rights" of its users worldwide.

The group, Great Fire, has previously accused Apple of censoring LGBTQ+ content on the App Store, allegedly in order to appease various worldwide governments. Now it's issued a pair of reports related to the group's stated aim of "keeping Apple accountable globally."

"The fundamental rights of millions are impacted when Apple does business with authoritarian regimes," says the group in its announcement of the reports. Issued under the collective name of AppleCensorship, one report details apps such as VPNs that have been removed in Russia.

"In the name of profit, Apple censors millions of users from all aspects of society," said Benjamin Ismail, AppleCensorship project director, "from activists and political figures to members of vulnerable minorities such as the LGBTQ+ community in Russia or religious and ethnic minorities in China."

"Apple's content curation policies represent a denial of the company's stated principles and values and show a lack of respect for privacy and the protection of users' rights," continues Ismail. "In Russia, Apple has enabled censorship of vulnerable communities while promoting apps that are used by the government for surveillance purposes."

Apple has previously been accused of hindering protests in Hong Kong by rejecting a voting app. Apple, and Google, also removed an opposition app in their Russian app stores.

However, Russian regulators have also complained over Apple's removal of the VKontakte social media app in the region. Apple also halted all online sales of its own in Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

Historically, Apple has said that it is complying with the laws of the country in which it is operating, when it faces accusations of censorship in a country. Apple has not responded to Great Fire's reports.

18 Comments

DAalseth 7 Years · 3293 comments

You do business in a country, you abide by the rules of that country.
Sure it would be nice if Apple just stopped doing business in countries and regions that did not align with it’s values. If it did it would be the biggest technology company in the San Francisco Bay area only. Heck, there are parts of the US that are dramatically at odds with Apple’s core values, but Apple is still there, following local laws. (South Carolina and Texas for example.) To do anything else would violate the core business value of Apple, and every other corporation: To Be Profitable. 

Basically you can have a big Apple that is profitable and has the resources to develop great stuff, and have somewhat of an impact on improving things worldwide, or you can have a small local company that sticks by its core values above all else, but nobody ever heard of. You can’t have both. 

Apple Bows to Authoritarian Regimes 
Yeah, so does every other multinational corporation on earth. It’s the nature of the beast. 
What else is new. 

5 Likes · 0 Dislikes
22july2013 12 Years · 3830 comments

DAalseth said:
You do business in a country, you abide by the rules of that country.
Sure it would be nice if Apple just stopped doing business in countries and regions that did not align with it’s values. If it did it would be the biggest technology company in the San Francisco Bay area only. Heck, there are parts of the US that are dramatically at odds with Apple’s core values, but Apple is still there, following local laws. (South Carolina and Texas for example.) To do anything else would violate the core business value of Apple, and every other corporation: To Be Profitable. 

Yes, that's all true, but there are times when the public gets so upset about something, that worldwide boycotts can force companies to care about social issues and stop doing business in certain countries. For one example, apartheid ended in South Africa largely because of worldwide boycotts of companies that did business with South Africa.

I wouldn't mind if people boycotted companies that did business with dictatorships, like Saudi Arabia or China, but right now public consciousness is all about the environment, not about human rights. Maybe if we pointed out that China is horrible on the environment, (eg, they open 8 gigawatts of new coal powered electrical generation plants every 3 months) we could get the public to boycott any companies that did business with China.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Emb_44G0tqk <---

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-coal-plant-approvals-surge-energy-security-trumps-climate-greenpeace-2022-07-20/ <--

1 Like · 0 Dislikes
xbit 10 Years · 408 comments

About ten years ago, I worked for a company making a children's atlas app. I naively thought that it wouldn't be a particularly controversial product but it got removed from various local app stores several times due to what it did or didn't include.

We had to make some significant changes for the Chinese market in particular. None of this is new.

2 Likes · 0 Dislikes
DAalseth 7 Years · 3293 comments

DAalseth said:
You do business in a country, you abide by the rules of that country.
Sure it would be nice if Apple just stopped doing business in countries and regions that did not align with it’s values. If it did it would be the biggest technology company in the San Francisco Bay area only. Heck, there are parts of the US that are dramatically at odds with Apple’s core values, but Apple is still there, following local laws. (South Carolina and Texas for example.) To do anything else would violate the core business value of Apple, and every other corporation: To Be Profitable. 
Yes, that's all true, but there are times when the public gets so upset about something, that worldwide boycotts can force companies to care about social issues and stop doing business in certain countries. For one example, apartheid ended in South Africa largely because of worldwide boycotts of companies that did business with South Africa.

As I’ve said for decades, there is no such thing as Business Ethics. Apple and every other corporation will follow the money. They are in these countries because it’s more profitable to be there than not. If the backlash against them doing so hurts their bottom line they will reassess. In that respect South Africa is a good comparison. 


In that vein it should be noted that Apple is moving more and more of its manufacturing out of China. They are however not doing it for any ethical reason. They have just discovered the risk of relying on just one country. It impacted profitability so they are acting. 

2 Likes · 0 Dislikes
mike1 11 Years · 3490 comments

So, their preference is to not do business at all and deprive the billions of Chinese or millions of others worldwide the opportunity to enjoy Apple products and perhaps even mildly empower the people in those countries. The all or nothing attitude is stupid.

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