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A comment on Apple removes first-party firewall exemption in macOS 11.2 beta 2. Parent comment

Re:Apple removes first-party firewall exemption in macOS 11.... by yorwba on Thursday January 14, 2021 @05:48AM (#25774846)
> ironically, most of these companies are out of China

Of the three companies named:

- Google's user-facing services (search, email, app store, docs, ...) are blocked, but Google Ads (which are censored) and Android (which comes without any content that would require censorship) are still sold.

- Microsoft: I'm not aware of any of their products being unavailable. Windows is the dominant desktop operating system in China, and I'd be surprised if the app store wasn't censored. Bing search results are definitely censored (they tell you so at the bottom of the page).

- Amazon isn't selling much that could run afoul of censorship, except possibly books (remember when Amazon used to be an online bookstore?) but in China their market is mostly targeted at the niche of high-end imported goods. (Note the country-of-origin indicators on https://www.amazon.cn/ )

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Re:Apple removes first-party firewall exemption in macOS 11.... by yalok on Thursday January 14, 2021 @07:06AM (#25775405)
Worse than this, and to the point of this post - you can’t offer comms service in China unless it has a way to be snooped by government. So some comm services like Skype have to offer a separate app, just for China, which affects all messages sent and received by users of this version of the app, even if it comes from a regular app.

I was telling my friends who moved from China and kept their iPhones, to just buy a new one... just in case...

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Re:Apple removes first-party firewall exemption in macOS 11.... by tssva on Thursday January 14, 2021 @07:56AM (#25775779)
Google doesn't certify devices in the Chinese market which run Android. Android is open source. Devices made for the domestic Chinese market run versions of Android created by the manufacturers and lack Google apps and services.
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Re:Apple removes first-party firewall exemption in macOS 11.... by yorwba on Thursday January 14, 2021 @08:24AM (#25775994)
The majority of Android phones manufactured in China are not intended for the domestic market but are exported, and do come with Google apps and services, which Google licenses to the manufacturers.
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Re:Apple removes first-party firewall exemption in macOS 11.... by confiq on Thursday January 14, 2021 @06:25PM (#25784524)
no idea why I thought facebook is on that list too... There is AWS in China, but you need to sign "special agreement"
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