Apple Removes Two Podcast Apps From China Store After Censorship Demands (theguardian.com) 22
Apple has removed two podcast apps from its Chinese app store, following government pressure to censor content. The Guardian reports: Pocket Casts and Castro were both pulled from distribution in China after the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) demanded that the apps stop allowing content that breached the country's restrictive speech laws. "We believe podcasting is and should remain an open medium, free of government censorship," Pocket Casts said. "As such we won't be censoring podcast content at their request. "We understand this means that it's unlikely that our iOS app will be available in China, but feel it's a necessary step to take for any company that values the open distribution model that makes podcasting special." Pocket Casts said it was contacted by the CAC through Apple "around two days before the app was removed from the store." Castro Podcasts said it was not given a specific reason for its removal, but that it thought it may have been to do with the promotion of Hong Kong's protests in its "discover" section.
Apple is China's Bitch (Score:3, Informative)
Apple will gladly support a tyrannical government for a fast buck.
Not really much more to be said.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Apple will gladly support a tyrannical government for a fast buck.
Apple is obeying Chinese law in China.
They obey American law in America.
They obey European law in Europe.
So does every other company.
This is not the same as what Zoom did. Zoom kicked Americans off their platform for something they did in America, at the request of China. What Apple is doing only applies to China.
Re: Apple is China's Bitch (Score:3, Insightful)
They obey a Democratic Republic in America.
They obey various free western nations in Europe.
So does every other company that wants to get money by helping brutal totalitarian regimes oppress their own people.
FTFY.
Why the false comparison? Did you get a desperately needed organ on a Chinese medical holiday?
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Apple is obeying brutal murderous tyrannical dictatorship in China.
So? Apple refusing to obey the law, and thus getting kicked out of China, would not make China less authoritarian in any way. It would likely make things even worse since Chinese people would have fewer options. It would just be pointless virtue signaling.
It is not the responsibility of Western companies to "fix" China. That is up to the Chinese people.
Re: Apple is China's Bitch (Score:4, Informative)
Its more likely because Apple is more invested in China than in any other country in the world. Apple is pretty much a Chinese company in American clothes.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-china-idUSKCN10R14G
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/09/apple-launched-china-clean-energy-fund-invests-in-three-wind-farms/
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/07/apple-launches-new-clean-energy-fund-in-china/
https://9to5mac.com/2017/03/17/apple-chinese-rd-centers-shanghai-suzhou-beijing-shenzhen/
These are all different investments in China, and none of them couldn't have been done in the US to help the US's future. It's all to help China's future at the expense of America.
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Its more likely because Apple is more invested in China than in any other country in the world.
iPhones are made in China and more iPhones are sold in China than in any other country.
In China, Apple is a prestige brand even more so than in America and the Chinese are much more status-conscious.
But most design and engineering is done in America.
These are all different investments in China, and none of them couldn't have been done in the US
Most of what you listed are clean energy projects. China's energy is twice as dirty as American energy per kilowatt, so any clean energy project is going to have twice the impact.
It's all to help China's future at the expense of America.
We all share the same atmosphere. Removing two tonnes of CO2 is better than remov
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By your logic it would have been ok to sell the Nazis poison gas
That is an idiotic comparison. China is not killing anyone with podcasts. A better comparison to the Nazis is ... Germany. Apple removes apps from the App Store at the request of the German government if they contain swastikas and other Nazi symbolism. Do you think that is also the same as selling cyanide gas?
Here are Apple's options:
1. Obey Chinese law
2. Pull out of China.
If you really think that economic isolation reduces authoritarianism, they please cite some evidence.
Here are two obvious data poi
Re: Apple is China's Bitch (Score:1)
Bullshit. We've been doing that since Nixon and done nothing but strengthen the scumbags in the CCP who are now strong enough to threaten their immediate neighbors and can afford to economically rape Africa, The smaller Asian countries, and parts of South and Central America.
After almost 50 years of engagement doing NOTHING to improve the human rights record in China it is past time to walk away. Better to not be responsible for their abuses by sup
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Bullshit. We've been doing that since Nixon and done nothing but strengthen the scumbags
The freedoms enjoyed by the Chinese people have expanded enormously since 1972.
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They don't have the freedom to criticize their own government.
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They don't have the freedom to criticize their own government.
You have obviously never been to China and listened to any public conversations. Complaining about the government is a favorite pastime.
Here is what Chinese are not allowed to do:
1. Question the legitimacy of the CCP.
2. Advocate separatism.
Many countries have similar bans. America has Title 18 USC 2385, which bans advocating the overthrow of the US Constitution. You can go to jail in many European countries for expressing unpopular viewpoints, as well as for "hate speech".
China is certainly more repressi
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I can advocate tossing out our current government all I want. That's called "election season". If you advocate replacing the tyrants in Beijing with people who aren't complete assholes, you go to jail.
I hope the fifty cents was worth it for your soul.
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It's a choice they made, along with Microsoft.
Google made a different choice, they don't cooperate with the Chinese government and so most of their services are blocked. They could make many hundreds of billions of dollars operating in that market, it's already saturated with Android phones that could adopt their services, but they choose not to.
Re: Apple is China's Bitch (Score:1)
Unfortunately (Score:2)
Slashdot Doesn't Remove Duplicates From Site After Deduplication Demands.
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What? This isn't different than https://apple.slashdot.org/sto... [slashdot.org] ?
It can't be a dupe - the other one is two whole pages away!
Thank goodness (Score:2)
I mean it's not like Apple ever promised to "Don't Be Evil"
After the Mac was introduced, they became a nameless faceless profit driven machine.
If you want to continue to support them, that's OK. I won't buy anything they make.
I did a lot of corporate business with Apple back in the day, but the Senior VP's that I met made me want to repeatedly use a sanitizing wipe whenever I had to shake their hands.
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I did a lot of corporate business with Apple back in the day, but the Senior VP's that I met made me want to repeatedly use a sanitizing wipe whenever I had to shake their hands.
That's a pretty typical reaction a most any Senior VP, regardless of their computer predilection.
Fuck Apple (Score:1)