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A comment on Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps by Ahmadiyya Muslims. Parent comment

Re:Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps... by d1zzy on Friday February 05, 2021 @01:43PM (#26039726)
How come would that not happen? Apps come from somewhere and they are installed on someone's platform. The government can simply ask the provider of those apps to stop providing them and/or the provider of the platform to stop allowing for them to be installed. Your only choice then is to comply or stop doing business in that country.

So the only reasonable complaint I could see against these companies now is "maybe they should have stopped doing business in that country" which would allow them to take the high moral road. Ofc that wouldn't necessarily result in better freedom for the people in the country, just fewer services than the rest of the world but it is a possible choice.

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Re:Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps... by jjav on Friday February 05, 2021 @03:20PM (#26040707)
> provider of the platform to stop allowing for them to be installed

The fact that this is possible (worse on iOS) is the architectural and political tragedy of these app stores. A "provider of the platform" should have no power to have any say in what apps are installed on a user-owned device, in which case it would be impossible to coerce them into banning this or that.

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Re:Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps... by sneak on Friday February 05, 2021 @04:31PM (#26041465)
> A "provider of the platform" should have no power to have any say in what apps are installed on a user-owned device, in which case it would be impossible to coerce them into banning this or that.

What if end users who buy the device WANT the manufacturer to have that power, to keep their device malware- and spyware-free?

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Re:Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps... by LiberatedLlama on Friday February 05, 2021 @04:40PM (#26041571)
Do you think Ahmadiyya Muslims in Pakistan want Apple and the Pakistani government to forbid them from installing the software they like? Do you think they feel safe because of this? It is common for totalitarian systems to cite user/citizen safety to justify themselves. I encourage you to see past this bullshit.
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Re:Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps... by sneak on Friday February 05, 2021 @05:59PM (#26042307)
I am talking about my own telephone, also from Apple.
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Re:Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps... by LiberatedLlama on Friday February 05, 2021 @06:59PM (#26042741)
Apple doesn't give one without the other. I think they could though; software could be sandboxed without an American corporation exerting authoritarian control over the distribution of software. But Apple has no interest in providing something like that, they like money too much.
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Re:Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps... by LiberatedLlama on Friday February 05, 2021 @03:45PM (#26040952)
Does Pakistan force Microsoft to bar the installation of Ahmadiyya software on Windows? I expect not. Windows, closed source as it is, is open relative to iOS and consequently is less vulnerable to this sort of pressure.
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Re:Google, Apple cave to Pakistan pressure to take down apps... by readams on Friday February 05, 2021 @02:00PM (#26039903)
If the provider of the app has no footprint in the oppressive country, and Apple and Google have control because they have open platforms, then the apps will continue to be available.
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