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Apple Removes NYTimes App in China, Shows How Far It Is Willing To Go To Please Local Authority (theguardian.com)
Apple has removed the New York Times app from its store in China after a government request, in an example of how far the company will go to please the authorities in its third-largest market. From a report: China operates what is thought to be the largest internet censorship regime in the world, blocking thousands of foreign websites viewed as a threat by the ruling Communist party. Google, Twitter, Facebook Youtube and Instagram are all inaccessible. Apple removed the English and Chinese-language versions of the New York Times app on 23 December, although it was not immediately clear why. "We have been informed that the app is in violation of local regulations," said Carolyn Wu, an Apple spokeswoman. "As a result the app must be taken down off the China app store. When this situation changes the app store will once again offer the New York Times app for download in China."
Whilst Apple and Apple fans love to portray themselves/the company as doing the right thing it's been very clear for a long time they are solely chasing after their bottom line. Their products have for years now been designed to please the largest share of the market with the least possible work or expenditure. The fact they are willing to do anything needed to please a government which could potentially block off a large portion of their market is to be expected.
Who reads NYT anyway..
Just another propaganda machine.. No better than most media outlets in China. We here learned that from the last election, didn't we!!
Like most companies, Apple follows the law in the places in which they operate.
Unlike Uber...
Their only other option would be to "make a statement" by not doing business in places whose laws they disagree with.
Apple, like any business, is going to do what they are required legally speaking in each of the markets they reside. It is not like they had any real choice since leaving it up would only mean that it would be blocked along with the entire App Store.... The dispute is between the NY Times and the Chinese government, it is not up to Apple to get NY Times unblocked.... it is up to the NY Times and the Chinese government.
1. That was Google's old Motto.
2. Google changed their motto to "Do What's Right" after turning into Alphabet.
Apple is making Gab jump through flaming hoops to get their mobile app published. They've repeatedly come up with new reasons that are utterly nonsensical like concern trolling about porn, abusive users, harassment, etc. despite a) allowing Twitter, Tumblr, etc. and b) those allowed services having notorious problems that are cheerfully ignored by Apple. In fact, Apple is all but saying "if your site doesn't work the way we want, your users cannot have an app." One of their responses.
Apple removed the English and Chinese-language versions of the New York Times app on 23 December, although it was not immediately clear why.
Maybe because the NYT was banned in China in 2012?? http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/26/world/asia/china-times-website-blocked/
and
From How the New York Times is eluding censors in China
Using apps: Articles are published on apps targeting the Chinese-language market that have often been ignored by Chinese censors for weeks or months at a time, before being blocked. Often these apps are openly branded with the “New York Times” name.
I'm not saying censoring them is right, but this crap they are peddling about not knowing why their apps were pulled from China is pure bullshit. They know exactly why: They were banned in 2012 by the Chinese government! China just never got around to asking for the apps to be pulled until now.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
How Far Apple Is Willing To Go To Please [ the shareholders ] is the real answer.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Their rules are law.
I would like to understand from Tim Cook why he feels privacy rights need to protected even in the case of terror investigation (I agree they do) but access to information and a free and independent press does not require protection?
Is he simply a legalist, we have laws like the 4th amendment here in the US that protect privacy, but China has no laws preventing the government from acting as a censor so it is fine? There are valid philosophical cases to be made on those lines but I did not hear that rhetoric from him around the time of San Bernardino.
Maybe he is a racist or a nationalist an Chinese people are simply less deserving of basic rights in his opinion?
Maybe his only real guiding principle is money and he simply says and does whatever the situation demands in order to make more of it?
Really though I don't want to dump on Tim Cook and Apple, I could ask the same questions and more of just about every company, and individual that does business in main land China. I think as Americans we need to be asking ourselves some hard questions about why we have been willing to prop up and do business with a nasty, oppressive, lawless, violent communist regime for the past 60+ years?
I think we need to ask not why we have a one China policy but why that one China is not the one with its capital in Taipei! As a citizen of the US I am damn tired about hearing about how great our role in the world is why we sit by and not only tolerate but enable the very worst actors! You can't claim to support freedom and human rights while shoveling money into the coffers of Communists and Islamists.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Aluminum machining for iPhone cases produces combustible metallic dust that can cause classic thermite reactions. This dust ignited in the Chinese manufacturing facility, turning it into a crematorium that killed four people.
Responsible management, union regulations, and OSHA largely make that impossible in the United States.
Apple should insist on higher standards. And this is hardly their only excess that has taken lives.
The world isn't a Saturday morning cartoon.
"Old man yells at systemd"
They had a real choice. They had, and have, a choice in almost every nation, and definitely WRT doing business in China.
If a country does evil, by law or custom, and further, makes you complicit in that evil, then you don't have to do business there (and you shouldn't, obviously.) The fact that you do means that you have decided that your own goals are more important than whatever the evil consists of. In this particular Apple's v. China v. people case, they want money a lot more than they want freedom of speech. They have laid those cards out quite plainly.
Also, speaking of Apple, they do plenty of "not in our app store" discarding / refusing various applications based on their own biases. This isn't in any way new behavior for them. The only questions really on the table are, (a) is a person aware of this? and (b) will a person tolerate it?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
should of said go our way or we will pull out the factory's
But they will not help the FBI unlock an phone maybe it's time for tim cook to go to trumps reeducation camp!
China has chosen a system where they have total central control over the population, media and economy.
Whoa choose? You mean a gang of violent oppressors kicked out a lawful elected government by the people the ROC, don't you? China chose the PRC in the same way you might choose to hand your wallet to someone pointing a gun at your head!
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Yes, I don't like that Apple is part of censorship like this.
But it is the law. It isn't upon request, it is surely under threat of action. I know everyone would like to indicate how they'd stand up to China but if Apple weren't to take this down then China would just kill the entire app store in China and then the app still would be down.
It is frustrating that Apple has no way to convince China to knock this off.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Apple Removes NYTimes App in China, Shows How Far It Is Willing To Go To Please...
...its shareholders, to whom it is beholden to make as much moolah as it can.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
and nothing of value was lost...
It's not really a billion person market. Most of those people can't afford anything that Apple produces. China's middle class is around 109M people (2015 numbers, but probably not changed by more than a few percent since then), which makes it a slightly larger market than north America (105M), but not a vastly larger one. The rest of the Asia-Pacific region in aggregate is much bigger (171M), Europe is around 194M.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yes, but that doesn't mean you have to be complicit in actively helping them do it. That is a choice.
In Montana, generally. ;-) But if you mean, do I think the US does evil with its laws and customs? Oh, yes. Absolutely. Deeply so. On a regular and profoundly impactful basis.
That would be flat-out awesome. They do a great deal of harm in general, and as a search engine, they are the largest driving force behind mediocrity in our society that I can think of, what with their popularity- and advertising-based search engine biases. Perhaps we should try to force them them to move to North Korea. Now there's a country, that if mediocrity were the driving force, would be uplifted. In the US, it just keeps the country down. Because while we suck, we don't suck as bad as almost anywhere else in a lot of ways (medical care, sexual sanity, and minding our own business notably excepted... we really suck at those things.)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I don't think that any assertion that Apple's app store promotes "information getting to China's citizens that normally wouldn't be there" holds up under even mild scrutiny.
Apple is not an information vendor; and its app stores (OSX/MacOS, iOS) in particular are notably lacking in freedom of expression. Those stores are terrible examples of freedom of any kind, generally speaking. Quite the opposite, in fact. If I wanted something pretty much guaranteed to have been filtered for content, looks and behavior for my computer (I do have a Mac) or my devices (I have an iPad, too), Apple's app stores would be the first place I'd look. But I don't want that. At all. So I don't look in those places. At all.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Google's old motto: "Don't, be evil" ... what's right?"
Google's new motto: "Duh
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Stop the sufferaging!
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The interesting thing about their new motto is that you don't even have to change it. What's "right" is really subjective. Is it "do what's right for the company", "do what's right for humanity"... it's ambiguous.
The NY Times is nothing but a liberal propaganda mouth piece, they have every right to ban it. The NY Times has done everything to hype up their is some HUGE conflict coming between the US and China, which there won't be.
They remove the app hoping there will be protest in china as well as in the "western world", so the government gets some pressure to stop the broad censorship (of apps).
Uber's flouting of medallion regulations is the same as Apple's refusal to decrypt the San Bernardino phone: asserting that their specific conduct is not infringing. Courts must ultimately decide whether this assertion is correct.
You're not even going to bother trying to defend or rebut any points, are you? You see what you're doing right now? That's called running away, APK. That's what you accuse everyone else of doing all the time. I'll accept your admission of defeat. You're free to call me whatever you want to call me, because nothing you say changes a single shred of reality. I can take your name-calling because I know that it's a defensive mechanism after you got your shit trashed and after I've made you realize that you aren't anything. Name calling is what you do when you have no argument. You lose. Again.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I've never claimed to write bug-free code, in fact I've never even claimed to be a good programmer. I don't make judgments like that about myself, other people who know me can comment on how good I am but I'm not the one for that. Even so, I talk about how much I get paid and you're totally bewildered. I talk about normal pay for a lead programmer with a lot of experience and you think it's not possible. That's why I think you're pitiful.
And by now you have totally abandoned all of your arguments and you've resorted exclusively to name-calling (but *I'M* the never-do-well, not some guy in his 50s with the emotional maturity and skills of a 12 year old who has nothing better to do than troll all day) . You won't even sign your posts any more. You've lost in every way that there is to lose.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Allow me to add copy-and-paste trolling as another example of why you're losing. You know what we call people who lose, APK? We call them losers. That's what you are. You are a mid-50s loser with no achievements to speak of who trolls all day, all the while calling other people never-do-wells. You are the picture of irony. Maybe instead of copying and pasting your stupid insults, you should go out and find some work. Maybe get something worth actually citing in the future instead of telling people how that one time 15 years ago you suggested some efficiency improvements to someone else's program, which then went on to almost win an award but didn't. Maybe update your resume so that the next time you're in some stupid pissing match of your own making you can actually cite something that someone else might be impressed with instead of crashing and burning like you do literally every time.
Or, be a loser and troll all day. It's really your choice. I bet I know which one you're going to choose, too.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Allow me to add copy-and-paste trolling as another example of why you're losing. You know what we call people who lose, APK? We call them losers. That's what you are. You are a mid-50s loser with no achievements to speak of who trolls all day, all the while calling other people never-do-wells. You are the picture of irony. Maybe instead of copying and pasting your stupid insults, you should go out and find some work. Maybe get something worth actually citing in the future instead of telling people how that one time 15 years ago you suggested some efficiency improvements to someone else's program, which then went on to almost win an award but didn't. Maybe update your resume so that the next time you're in some stupid pissing match of your own making you can actually cite something that someone else might be impressed with instead of crashing and burning like you do literally every time.
Or, be a loser and troll all day. It's really your choice. I bet I know which one you're going to choose, too.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black