Mentioning public attitudes as a focus for discussion is basically appeal to authority: just because some other group here or elsewhere thinks something is good or bad, doesn’t make it so. The ideas below that part stand just fine without talking about popularity of norms

I think it's more to highlight the fact that there are differing opinions, and American sensibilities shouldn't necessarily dictate what people in separate countries can do. I see no mention of popularity.

the site you are referring to in your last sentence is not funded by Chinese government, but by a previous governor of Hong Kong (Liang I believe).

Let's be realistic here. Why Liang would fund a site like that. Either one of the reason: CCP ordered that, or he wants to show loyalty and earn credit to CCP. Either case, it was as good as funding by CCP because CCP liked that to happened and didn't ban it.

And Liang is vice-chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. What it means is he is not officially CCP but a very trusted person to be included as decision maker of CCP.

I don't think I like the argument of "it was as good as funding by CCP because CCP liked that to happened". CCP is a party with 90 million members, so if you argue Liang act as a member of CCP, I think I am okay with that.

I don't know should we be 'realistic' or should we be 'accurate' when we make a point. This is a strange time.

It is an interesting point so I can discuss a little bit. Seems people didn't understand the implication of an autocratic government.

When people tried to avoid government funded software, let say a communication app, what is the reason? Because we want to avoid state-owned software violating user privacy and sent all my personal data for their profiling database.

You will trust a private company for that more, why? Because even a private company have to obey court order to disclose personal information to law enforcement, they usually have the right to deny it before the issue escalated to the court.

Now what is the case for autocratic government? Are there any real private company? Using China as an example, any person have to right to inform the government about secret information obtained, so China government have the right to get any information obtained from any Chinese private company without court order. In addition, any large organization including public company have to setup a party branch and have CCP member to oversee the organization. Including Huawei, claiming to be a private company.

So, using any product from any private Chinese company has equivalent disadvantage to a 3-letter agency funded VPN network.

Now back to the issue of if Liang is CCP or not. I won't quote unconfirmed source about Liang is a hidden CCP member. Just use the opened fact, Liang is a formal governor of Hong Kong, which means Liang has taking oath to CCP and CCP trusted this person to rule HK. Liang is currently a decision maker inside CCP's committee, and if Liang has conduct issue from CCP's point of view, then Liang can be secretly prosecuted by party order and put in jail in China.

Another example is Teresa Cheng, Hong Kong Secretary for Justice. For some reason she has been to UK but being taken back to China for investigating her conduct and possibility for applying political asylum by party secret police. She was then released and continued her work in Hong Kong. Detailed is not confirmed, but one thing is clear. Any Hong Kong official can be threatened by party secret police and they must do their job according to CCP plan.

But isn't the former governor pretty much a puppet of the Chinese Communist Party though?

nah they're still a person, the conversion to puppet proved more difficult than expected

ROFL

Is doxxing a police officer even unacceptable in America? There is very different standard of privacy between an average Joe and an agent of the state performing their duties.

If I've been reading the news correctly, the investigation into the terrorist plot against the Michigan governor was launched because someone was trying to learn the home addresses of police officers. Seems like that is not very well accepted in America.

Was this not simply about getting the names of masked secret police?

Also, the issue with getting the gome adresses of police officers in that case is that the intent was to bomb them, not getting their address per se, as that really is quite easily done and not something the state would notice.

But the whole point here is that this line of reasoning is limited. If Apple were indiscriminately ordering protestor channels to be taken down, we wouldn't accept an excuse that suppressing protestors is "considered more normal" in Belarus, or an argument that the unique context of Belarus means they have no choice but to restrict speech in ways America wouldn't. So if Apple has strong principles against doxxing people, should they really compromise on that just because it'd be good for the protestors if they did?

Apple is completely out of place meddling in Belarus' politics.

Not only that, the stance they are taking is with a dictator who stole the election ...

Apple absolutely shouldn't meddle in Belarus's politics. But if Belarusian users are using their platform to incite violence, as Apple says they are, don't they have a moral responsibility to try and do something about it?

They're using Telegram. Not Apple's platform. If Telegram was a Windows, or even a web app, should Microsoft be threatening to block Windows users from being able to access the app or even website?

I think this is probably the best argument against platforms with locked app stores- civil liberties. The only reason that Belarus can ask Apple to ask (force) Telegram to do this, is because there is no reasonable alternative for most people to get an application onto their phone. If I could easily install other app stores onto my phone, then government requests like this would not be effective.

I'm pretty sure that the most people are able to navigate to web.telegram.org and create a bookmark in their browser of choice. Overall it's an even simpler set of steps than any app store can provide you with, and you don't need to regularly download new updates for it.

And Apple continues to cripple progressive web apps in iOS (example: push notifications), unfortunately making this idea not as useful as on Android.

In some instances, like standing up to a violent, oppressive, and dictatorial regime violence is generally considered an acceptable form of political action.

Even if that's true - and I'm not going to get into that debate here - surely that doesn't mean that every company has to allow their products to become tools of mass violence.

The trick is that Apple is essentially a utility company and replacing it is a significant expense to the user. And it needs to be aware of it's power and act accordingly. Maybe a "device neutrality" law should be in order.

To throw a dumb example your electricity company is not policing you for how you are using your killowats.

Electrical utilities in many areas did routinely report excessive usage to law enforcement for investigation of suspected indoor marijuana farms.

I'd like to see such a law, but I'm not sure this particular situation can be solved that way. The Belarusian government would presumably just pass a non-neutrality law, and then we're in the same place as before where Apple has to decide based on moral and practical considerations.

Violence may be seen as legitimate, but it shouldn’t be seen as effective. In a study of over 300 movements, non violent protests are twice as effective. https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/file...

Non-violence is only effective where the oppressor is vulnerable to moral pressure. In many cases, the oppressor is not.

(Not stating my personal examples, too contentious, but I'm sure you could find your own).

If you had a study showing that in over 300 carpentry projects hammers were used twice as often as screwdrivers, would that convince you to hammer in a screw?

My point is that violence may not be a good fit for every situation, but that doesn't mean it never is. Gandhi was an effective non-violent protester, against the British in Africa when backed by large numbers. How effective would Gandhi have been protesting against the Nazis?

I don't know anything about Belarus, so I don't know anything about what is or isn't justified, it just seems wrong to me to suggest that violence is categorically less effective. Political violence is a tool and like any other has moments where it should and shouldn't be used.

As far as I can tell, though, unmasking isn't really coded as violent in the sense that the writer suggests.

Huh? Tell that to Ukrainian at first peaceful protestors. Which then turned into mildly violent, then hard violent (from the govt side largely) in the end, including what Ukraine now calls the 100 in Heaven ?

How ineffective was that protest?

Non-violent protests didn't work too well against the Nazis. There are exceptions to every rule.

Would nonviolent protest against Hitler have been twice as effective as the war?

> allow their products to become tools

This is precisely why lack of choice in app stores is so harmful. The phones belong to the people. Without the app store, the manufacturer has no grounds to allow or disallow behavior.

> .. don't they have a moral responsibility to try and do something about it?

Is Apple a law enforcing agency with jurisdiction in that region? If the answer to that is no, then the answer to your (rhetorical) question is equally no.

Even more, Apple might very well be the one legally at fault here, for assuming authoritative powers for which it has absolutely no legal mandate or justification.

So, if anything, it is rather Apple that is likely the one braking the law here, despite all the rhetoric about Apple having some kind of moral duty (absolute hogwash).

It isn't so much about meddling, but more about Apple assuming powers it should never have in the first place (legally speaking).

If there are violence, it is a civil war. Does apple like to meddle their hand in blood? Especially they are standing for the dictatorship, which does not put Apple in a good position even if they are going to get into the issue.