Suppose the wifi radio on a phone or computer is powerful enough to transmit/receive signals up to 100 feet away with a direct line of sight, and 50 feet away through walls. In a dense urban environment like Beijing or Shanghai, I bet a topologically connected mesh network across everyone's phones and computers could become quite large. It would be completely un-censorable.

The network graph wouldn't even always have to be topologically connected; devices jumping between disconnected subgraphs of the network could cache content while attached to one subgraph and dump the cache when in range of another subgraph. This would be impractical for real-time messaging or large media content, but would likely be sufficient for a Twitter-like microblog service.

The main challenge with setting such a system up would be decentralized distribution of the app that would run it. It is impossible to sideload apps on iOS, and tricky enough on other platforms via fully decentralized means (e.g. P2P wifi or Bluetooth connection) that I doubt you could reach a level of saturation for a mesh network to be practical. At best, it could probably function like a relay — the app would detect when you're close to someone else who also has the app and automatically exchange cached content between devices that you each don't yet have.

This needs to be done for the day we get hit by a bad solar flare. But it never will, as humans are incredibly poor at planning.

Apple was forced to disable this feature by an authoritarian government.

The same can be said about encrypted iOS backups, and maybe we’ll see forced CSAM scanning return.

Why is anyone expecting a corporation to be an activist and not obey the laws of the countries they operate in?

The image of Apple employees turning the metaphorical noose tighter around the Chinese is interesting to entertain as it says something about the human condition.

Given that it doesn’t seem to be grounded in any kind of reality, what it says about the human condition must refer to the minds of those who conjure it up.

Apple pushing an update to prevent people from talking about burning alive during zero Covid seems somewhat grounded…

They didn’t push an update to prevent people from talking about ‘burning alive’ during zero covid.

That’s insane fantasy, utterly disconnected from reality.

However, they were compelled by the CCP to disable P2P file sharing between iOS devices, to limit the spread of dissident messages.

That’s certainly oppressive, but note that the oppressor is the Chinese government.

If they market themselves as a human rights defenders, which they do, I increase my expectations in that regard and they need a justification.

Problem isn't solved that way either, but at least a bit of honestly and maybe integrity would remain.