> Just like how they removed all the gay dating apps in China yesterday (by request of the government of course).
Those apps have always been illegal in China. Of course, one could say Apple should not operate in China (and this is perhaps true), but they cannot both operate there and break the law.
Apple could choose to give the users of their devices freedom to run whatever operating systems and programs they choose. Then they could truthfully say that there is no way for them to control what people do with their devices once they leave the Apple store. If you put yourself in control of such things because it is profitable, you ought to take responsibility for the consequences.
It's not really about outsmarting them. Authoritarian systems of control rely on centralization. If you create an ecosystem where end users have lots of agency, of course most of them will go the path of least resistance, but the few who are willing to put in the effort to resist still can. Google and Apple tightening their grip over their respective mobile ecosystems is a very potent lever for authoritarian governments to pull.
They don’t rely on them. They successfully use them. In the Soviet Union every one horse village with unpaved roads had a commissar. No internet, no telegraph, no newspaper, no electricity but they held control just the same. Central control makes it convenient for them, but it isn’t the difference between them existing and not existing.
In a way. Basically yes any totalitarian regime will want to create a system where the people in charge have total control over everyone and everything. But my point is that Stalin was able to exert control over all parts of the Soviet Union without the internet, Facebook, WhatsApp, backdoored E2E messaging systems, email and email spying, parallel construction, etc.
The comment I was replying to is not wrong exactly but the better way to phrase that is that any unrelated but centralized system can and probably will be co-opted by a totalitarian regime and in the long run only helps the oppressor and not the oppressed.
Surely there’s a difference between hardware being a locked down appliance and… well, a more generic computation device.
I think the argument is that Apple or even any company that makes Android phones could choose to have an open bootloader (and maybe some driver stuff) and normally that wouldn’t really offend any government, while also giving the users more freedoms.
Otherwise, what’s next, PCs that only run Windows and only allow Edge as the browser and force the telemetry on?
Chinese people lives are getting better and they largely are on the same page. Meanwhile the US has DEI in the govt while the govt says DEI is bad. Minority authoritarian rule in the US with the Senate.
The US is a brutal dictatorship all the time.
China thankfully has a govt that is on the same page as the people.
Country with social credit, LLMs that have a seizure at "Tiananment square", Winnie the Pooh and Taiwan, Great firewall, cultural genocide of Uyghurs is a country where "lives are getting better" while US is a brutal dictatorship, my fucking sides.
Is that so? I have not surveyed the Chinese, but will not be surprised if the approval was higher than you'd imagine. If anything, the core ideas of communism have clear demand in the west and people are voting for them when they are shown with a lipstick on top.
> I have not surveyed the Chinese but will not be surprised if the approval was higher than you'd imagine. If anything, the core ideas have clear demand in the west and people are voting for them when they are shown with a lipstick on top.
Ask other dictatorships while you're at it. Systems so great one wonders why stupid democracies haven't adopted the model still.
You're weasling your way out of the core point. I'm in no way advocating for such ideas. Quite the opposite. I'm just saying unless you have data about this you shouldn't rely on your instincts. There are many nuances around this and economic prosperity can mask huge other issues.
> Ask other dictatorships while you're at it.
In fact, I have observed immigrants from certain failed states that you refer to as "dictatorships." In many cases they say they hate their government yet they vote for mostly the same policies when they are given the chance to do so in the West, so again, even surveying them directly with a lazy question "do you like the government in country X" won't get you to the spirit of the answer.
To wit, you also just fell for the common fallacy of assuming dictatorship is the opposite of democracy. They are much more alike than you'd think. Democracy isn't liberty.
Would they? Unlikely, given iPhone creates a lot of jobs there. But if iPhone becomes the de facto devices for Chinese citizens to access illegal content then the chance is none-zero.
(And of course they can make Linux illegal too. It's just harder to enforce than making iPhone illegal.)
Can you give me the source of where brazil made linux illegal? I am sorry but I tried to search and the only references I could find were of brazil banning twitter/X for some reason.
I am genuinely curious how someone can decide linux to be illegal. How would the ban even work out?
Brazil has what is known as the Felca law, which requires providers of app stores and "terminal operating systems" to do age verification and to provide secure auditable APIs that meet government standards for doing the same. Presumably, specific distros like Red Hat can go through a government approval process in order to be legal to distribute in Brazil, but without such certification and without providing such system-level APIs, a random distro like Debian will be illegal to distribute in Brazil.
It's delusional to think the default OS would be replaced by anyone more than a few percent of niche users.
It's your desire to have open OS just say so. Doesn't really tie into avoiding oppression by communism. The Chinese need to solve that problem at its root.
People on HN thinking Apple should get into some kind of dick waving contest with an authoritarian government that rules over 1/6th of the global population and that supplies the labor to build their products and the materials in those products by implementing your guy’s pet issues is the height of fucking delusion.
At least try to pretend like you guys are thinking about situations in the real world.
The iPhone is a Chinese product. China ultimately controls whether or not the iPhone exists. No place else on earth can manufacture 20,000 iPhones an hour, 24/7/365.
Making two hundred million devices of the iPhone’s complexity and quality is not a trivial matter, and takes tens of thousands of skilled (and experienced) workers. Almost all of those people are Chinese, in China, subject to Chinese law. Apple cannot meaningfully fight Chinese law.
“sit comfortably” is a big stretch here. I imagine it must upset him as much or perhaps more than it does you and I. We, after all, can speak publicly about how upsetting it is. He cannot.
> must upset him as much or perhaps more than it does you and I. We, after all, can speak publicly about how upsetting it is. He cannot.
Yes, he will just have to comfort himself by crying into his pillow made of solid gold bars on his California King-size bed made of a solid block of hundred dollar bills. Poor Tim Apple — the real victim here.
In seriousness, even if he feels (and is right!) that there was nothing Apple could do better, nothing stops him from resigning, and then publicly stating that he didn’t want to be a part of a company that had to collaborate with a brutal and inhumane government. He just would rather acquire more billions for some reason.
This is why, as a gay man, I give people a look when they ask why I still rant about gay rights "even though you guys have marriage and stuff now".
It's 2025, almost 2026 and we're still doing this shit. I don't care if you think I'm icky, I think other people are icky sometimes but I don't try to stop them from existing for it. People are entitled to be who they are.
Most hetero people will never (thankfully) know that pitted feeling of having to check your surroundings and environment every single day when you simply want to hold your partners hand, chat to a coworker, book a hotel reservation, or book a night out to celebrate.
Every single macro outcome like this only demoralizes gay people just wanting to wake up and not think about anything other than the stresses and excitement of the day ahead.
If anyone reads this and you think it sounds dramatic, it’s not. It’s a reality, and Tim Cook knows that..he should do better.
Untrue and defeatist. Tim Cook does influence Chinese policy, you can't pretend he's the victim here:
EU: Tim Cook will *leave your economic zone* if you fraudulently label him as a monopolist, okay? If your government doesn't change, Apple won't bless your economy.
China: There's just nothing we could do. When they asked to backdoor iCloud we couldn't make any demands from them. They constantly demand authoritarian control and *never* let us say a single word. We're being abused, someone help us!
I am a straight man and I feel like some communities just become scape-goats
We have this us vs them mentality which some people use to collect power and influence at the costs of them
Ultimately I think that it is a very foolish thing because I think that as long as nobody bothers on my freedom etc., I should be in literally nobody's business bothering their freedom
> It's 2025, almost 2026 and we're still doing this shit. I don't care if you think I'm icky, I think other people are icky sometimes but I don't try to stop them from existing for it. People are entitled to be who they are.
I agree 100% with this message.
But one thing I have problem with (on the straight side of things) is that I have seen occasionally some extremely feminist comments which do try to impeach or try to have this very fundamental skewed problem that man are ALL the problem and its all man's fault etc. and I have seen the same in masculinity cultures as well and I feel like both of them are just radicalizing people to seize power and influence or sell courses or feel better about themselves.
I think that we sometimes forget that people are people and we should treat others with the same courtesy and kindness that we expect to be treated with, I guess. maybe we sometimes don't treat them that way or didn't treat them that way and I guess we should just apologize or try not to do that ever again. Mistakes happen but as long as we still have a mindset similar to doing good, I feel like things would be hopeful.
I didn't know that tim cook was gay and here is one message from wikipedia I want to quote
> In June 2014, Cook attended San Francisco's gay pride parade along with a delegation of Apple staff.[85] On October 30, Cook publicly came out as gay in an editorial for Bloomberg Business, saying, "I'm proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me."[86] While it had been reported in early 2011 that Cook was gay,[87][88] at the time, Cook tried to keep his personal life private
I feel like Tim Cook should be a man of his words and try to actually help the community he is proud to be in but I am sure that investors might not be happy but that just goes on to show that maybe even some CEO's could be puppets of shareholders and can be forced to do things solely for profit where their heart might not lie.
I think that another point is that shareholders can also be puppets of CEO's in the case of Elon musk 1 Trillion $ deal shows that imo
I feel like we live in the times where morality can be side-lined for profit and be celebrated. The whole idea why even people can be puppets of each other could be because they get profits and power and influence because of it (basically money most of the times)
But what power do those CEO's have if they can't stand for what they think is right or educate themselves on these matters.
"No" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The things he could do would be very painful, maybe a Pyrrhic victory. Maybe they're worth it if the alternative is aiding an abetting authoritarian regime. I'm not casting judgment, just presenting the options. Which do actually exist.
So sad to watch a gay CEO just sit comfortably and allow his company quietly destroy his own “community”. Don’t get me started on SA either…