Apple is famous for fighting anything which might associate the brand with a degraded user experience. So shipping an apple branded product which tacitly accepts censorship seems like tacit complicity, which is the most cynical type of complicity.

There is no alternative option for them that doesn't involve just not selling in China. If they want to sell in China (a huge population of people who love to buy devices), then they have to play by the Chinese government's rules. It's not like they can just sneak around and hope the government doesn't notice, because China will not hesitate to ban the sale of legitimate Apple devices if they feel justified in doing so.

Apple ships products that conform to local regulations and this is absolutely normal. Do you think entreprises should choose which laws they comply to and which they don't? Good luck financing your state with that because I'm sure they'll all opt out of tax regulations...

They shouldn't conform to local regulations that are contrary to their publicly stated company ideals. One way to do so is to not do business in countries where it's impossible to conform.

> One way to do so is to not do business in countries where it's impossible to conform.

Keep in mind that we're talking about China. If Apple pulls out, there's no shortage of Chinese companies that the Chinese government is buddy-buddy with who will happily go all-in on spying on consumers.

Apple obeys Chinese regulations, but it's reasonable to assume (based on their actions in the US) that they don't enjoy it. Which means they're not going to go out of their way to give the Chinese government more than they need to. This is potentially in contrast with the Chinese technology companies who would be more than happy to provide extra data to the government.

Apple is able to hold their position in China only because they comply with regulations, but in so doing they provide consumers with a better option than going through any of the Chinese government-friendly companies. Yes, it sucks that they have to comply, but in a scenario where Apple either chooses or is forced to withdraw from China it is the Chinese consumers who will suffer the most, because they will be left with only government-friendly alternatives.

It's an ages-old argument: "if I won't do this evil thing, somebody else will, and they will be worse at it". It also makes you complicit in and responsible for whatever you help with, though.

But I don't have a problem with Apple here, because they did exactly that - they're not providing their News app/service in China at all, rather than providing a censored version where they would be implementing the censorship. Yes, this means that local competitors will offer their own apps, likely censored even more. And it's up to Chinese citizens to hold them to account. But when it comes to American companies, it's our job to do so.

You may wish to re-read the article.

Apple is going above and beyond China’s legal requirements in censorship, censoring news voluntarily in their News app on US phones with US SIM cards when used in China-phones that can access normal news websites without censorship just fine outside of the News app.

This is a behavior specific to Apple’s new product, which has not launched for Chinese users at all yet.

Devil’s advocate here, but I think geolocation is more important than SIM card or place of purchase.

China doesn’t want certain information within its borders. If you could “smuggle” it via outside phone + outside SIM, it makes all protections worthless.

Same with Netflix: even though I pay with credit card from Europe, when physically (IP-wise) in US I can see the US catalog.

Except that's not how it works in reality (and the article covers this): if I go to China with my T-Mobile US SIM card in my phone, and connect to a Chinese telecom network, I will still be able to access Facebook, Google, and any news site, regardless of whether or not the Great Firewall would usually block it for Chinese citizens with Chinese SIM cards.

But Apple is censoring content on US phones with US SIM cards while they're physically located inside China, which is a huge departure from established practice, and isn't actually useful since the same non-Chinese phone can access all the same news sites via Safari.

Just to note, the uneven implementation and enforcement of their censorship laws is still a China problem, not an Apple problem.

The idea that Apple is controlling things here does not make sense. Obviously, if Apple had the choice they wouldn't censor Apple News at all.

Just like they don’t voluntarily censor the App Store in the US?

That's an issue, but it's a separate issue.

We know Apple isn't blocking Apple news voluntarily in China because if they were, they would choose to block it other places too. In fact, blocking it everywhere would be trivially easy and very cheap: they would simply not have a News app at all.

If you don't like Apple's publishing standards, then by all means object as vociferously as you see fit. Just don't get that confused with the Chinese government's control of information.

My issue isn’t with any single particular instance of censorship, but with Apple’s willingness to censor, regardless of market or local regulations.

This is exemplified by this above-and-beyond blocking, as well as their censorship of entirely legal content (e.g. nudity) in the US app store.

I would have much less issue with them if there were a setting to install an alternative app store on the iPhone; then it would simply be editorializing. As it stands there is no way for me to persist e.g. a gay porn app on my iPhone, and that crosses the line into voluntary censorship of legal content by Apple.

I don't think you know what China's legal requirements in censorship are. I think you're trying to infer what they are from the fact that the censorship of other content sources works somewhat differently. But these look like differences in implementation details.

> ...censoring news voluntarily...

That just doesn't make sense. If Apple wanted to censor their News app, there's no reason they would restrict themselves to China. They could "block" it everywhere, if that's what they wanted to do -- by simply not having a News app at all.

(it is widely believed that we cant change China's behaviour)

Also known as the Nuremberg Defense. Apple is Just Following Orders™ after all.

To say it another way, there are multiple parties doing multiple wrongs here.

It's stretching the Nuremberg definition a bit when you accuse a company of it when they try to have their products follow the laws of the countries where they sell them. I'm sure there's a line in the sand somewhere there but refusing to distribute outlawed publications is surely not over it.

The article is about iPhones for the US market, not about iPhones for the Chinese market.