To me if BMW said "You can buy this car but you're not allowed to drive to to Compton Los Angeles". The answer should not be "If you want to drive to Compton buy some other brand". It should be "Those terms are Illegal"

Unlike Google, Apple claims total dominion over what apps you can run on your iOS device. They have that control over 1.3 billion devices. That the largest amount of censorship control ever in the hands of few people. Political apps are blocked. Sex positive porn apps are blocked. I get that Apple shouldn't be forced to carry those apps on their store but until they provide alternatives I think they're in the wrong.

People generally respond to this they want Apple to censor their apps. That's not an argument for not opening the platform. You are always free to install only Apple approved apps regardless of if the platform is open or not.

It’s worth pointing out that the BMW approved roads have much better fatality statistics than the unapproved roads, and there’s almost guaranteed to be an approved road that goes within minutes of where you want to go anyway. Oh and some of those approved roads are exclusive to BMW and they’re really well made.

Or you can get the Jeep Cherokee, which drives really well on that dirt track.

I could only see this argument if I was borrowing / leasing the car from BMW.

You'd have to change what ownership means for this to make sense.

And lest you think this is an absurd example, we're already heading down this exact path with drones, of which many now default to being geo-fenced from flying in restricted zones. It won't be long before these restrictions become nominally impossible for laypeople to switch off without some kind of security key.

This is a confusing stance.

The parent's statement was that Apple should be forced to carry the app, unless they're willing to open the platform so people can sideload their own apps without going through Apple's store.

This stopped being true some years ago. You can build any app you wish from source and Xcode will sign it and you can run it on your iOS device—no approval or payment required.

If you don't have a paid developer license it will silently be uninstalled after 7 days.

Who holds Googles and Facebooks feet to the fire for collaborating with PRISM, giving your nude selfies to NSA personnel? [1]

Is there a majority opinion this is okay if some amount of terrorism or "terrorism" (depending who you ask) is thwarted?

IMHO, the answer here is there‘s simply no easy answers here, and if there‘s just one thing to learn, it‘s that the world is a place with a lit of different opinions and values.

[1] https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/snowden-nude-sexually-compro...

Yes (but only begrudgingly). Saudi Arabia is a sovereign nation. That means within their borders they can do as they please, even if we don't like what they do.

We fought one of the most devastating wars in history (the 30 years war [1]) trying to control what other people think, and at the end everyone agreed that sovereignty is a great concept [2][3].

Using our influence over Apple and Google to project power against Saudi Arabia and try to force them to agree to different moral norms is in stark contrast to the idea of sovereignty and signals to everyone else that that kind of behaviour is ok. That's how you get cold and hot wars.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years'_War

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Westphalia

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty

On the other hand, not using our influence over Apple and Google to project power against Saudi Arabia and try to force them to agree to different moral norms signals that their norms (and the behaviour they cause and justify) are ok. And that's how you get millions of women horribly mistreated.

Sovereignty may be a great concept, but not when you use it to justify and normalize abuse. I feel like that should be condemned and not tolerated under any circumstances.

The former because the rights groups which criticize the corporations are the ones driving the supposed change and enforcing their own morality. Rights groups are probably better moral arbiters than corporations, on account of there being less conflict of interest. And the latter because, while the line can definitely be very hard to trace in various, more ambiguous situations, I really don't think this specific case is one of those. It feels like a slippery slope argument to me, specifically: "If we enforce this, what else are we going to end up enforcing?"

Freedom of speech is one thing. This app is _specifically_ created to harm women who want refuge.

If female genital mutilation "direct harm"? If yes, does the same apply to circumcision of males? If yes, is denying jewish people a religious practise (and thus potentially entry to heaven) "direct harm"? Different people will answer this very differently, even in the same country and culture.

More applicable to this case: Is it ok for parents to see where their children are? Is ist ok for parents to get an alert when their children cross a geofence? If in a culture the husband is viewed as the guardian of his wife, is it ok if the husband uses the same app for his wife?

Note that I don't endorse any of these things, I'm simply saying that "are people being directly harmed by this product" is sometimes a deep philosophical or psychological question that is arguably harder than rocket science.

If female genital mutilation "direct harm"? Yes.

does the same apply to circumcision of males? Not to the same extent, because the harm is less - despite using the same word, cutting off the foreskin is objectively less harmful than cutting off the clitoris.

However, this is an area where the prevailing opinion is shifting as we speak. Male circumcision used to be normal (in the US), now it's considered in most polite circles to be somewhere between antiquated and barbaric. The loudest argument in favor seems to be "it's my religious tradition!" but ask the mormons how that argument faired WRT plural marriage and excluding blacks. Public opinion shifts slowly but it's not hard to imagine a future where even religion doesn't cut it as an excuse for cutting off bits of a baby's junk. We may revisit this question in a few more decades.

Is it ok for parents to see where their children are? Yes. Parents in every modern society are granted extremely broad powers over their children.

If in a culture the husband is viewed as the guardian of his wife, is it ok if the husband uses the same app for his wife? No. Women are not property. That's the moral judgement of modern society. Cultures which violate this moral judgement should do so without our help.

These are not thorny issues or deeply philosophical problems.

If we look at African culture, which is the most common place for female circumcision, we find that male circumcision is quite different from what people might expect in both execution and purpose. The boys are much older, and the ritual is done in part to test the "warriors" ability to withstand pain. A boy who cries out in pain brings great dishonor to his family, and of course no sedative is applied. It is ritualized torture with religious attributes.

This does not make US and EU style of male circumcision more moral, but it does mean that when you say that "the harm is less" with circumcision of males, what we are saying is that ritualized torture is not as bad as cutting off the clitoris. I object to that. male circumcision in nations that practice female circumcision is one of the worst form of barbaric acts one human can do to an other human, and for the worst reasons.

Protesting the immoral behavior only by means that don’t really hurt your own bottom line is not actually doing much except cement the hypocrisy.

Sure, but no western agent is obliged to comply with the moral standards of Saudi Arabia, or any other country to that matter.

Apple, Google are complacent because they want to do business in Saudi Arabia. They're favoring profit over enforcing western morality within their operations abroad, and will continue to do so as long as they don't get too much scrutiny.

The argument is a neutrality one, essentially that Google and Apple should not be enforcing morality here or abroad.

Should we also just drop sanctions and ban exports to these nations while we're at it?

Sovereignty in its own right cannot be used to justify complacency.

The fact that you're talking in hushed tones of reverence about the glorious principle of sovereignty in a discussion of Saudi Arabia is really just the icing on the cake.

The GP comment (about the Peace of Westphalia) is bananas and the dementors might be a little uptight when it comes 'snark' but you're way past snark - 'lol, reading comprehension much' is not snark it's just crappy namecalling. You should edit it out.

You have even truncated my original quote to make it seem snarkier:

"to the point that you don't seem to be able to read any meaning into anything that seems a little snarky" -> "you don't seem to be able to read any meaning"

What I find tiresome is the overuse of the word 'snark' on HN to mean 'you disagreed with me but didn't show my arguments the hushed reverence of the drawing room'. As a result, every conversation at HN rapidly silts up with people straight-facedly raising disingenuous absurdities. We didn't quite make it to the Nazis, but seriously? "Apartheid-era South Africa should have been left alone because something something Westphalia."

You are exactly right: the comment is bananas. It is past due that it should be allowed to call a comment 'bananas' on HN without people crying out for teacher to come Save Them From The Snark.

This way they have complete control of praticing their own norms and policies on their platform without large foreign compines saying what they should and shouldn't do.

There’s a thing called human rights and we should all stand up for them.

I wish people could see injustice as unjust even if they are not in the targeted group.

I think South Africa is a good example because there were wide ranging trade sanctions against them during Apartheid which could have supported actions such as yanking government apps as a matter of international agreement.

Overall though I don’t think it’s a good idea for FAANG companies to unilaterally wade into foreign policy or cultural influence even more than they already do.

Other commenters have made some good points that the platforms are already very not neutral, pointing to adult apps and arbitrary TOS violations as app store death penalty.

I agree that this is true but I remain broadly opposed to the idea that we must stop others from running code that we don’t like. Overall it doesn’t seem like the right mechanism to do politics.

Would you be willing to make the same argument you're making for a similar app that allows parents to supervise their children? Would it depend on the age of the child in question?

And, for a more sticky question: even in the case of this app, does the consent of the supervised woman matter? Or are we willing to make the stronger claim that Saudi women are incapable of consent because they live in a strongly patriarchal society? Should we extend the same treatment to other instances of gender-specific religious and cultural practices?

Would you be willing to make the same argument you're making for a similar app that allows parents to supervise their children?

Parents get broad supervisory powers over their children. That seems pretty universal and uncontroversial.

Would it depend on the age of the child in question?

Of course. The exact age of majority is not agreed upon even among the most progressive societies. I think we can all agree that parents should be able to make travel decisions for a 12yo. A 17yo is more complicated.

does the consent of the supervised woman matter?

This is a specious line of argument, since the app is being used against women who do not consent.

Think about sex-related subcultures in Japan and, say, US.