Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong

> Removing an emoji from a keyboard is as scary as hacking all of someone’s personal data?

Yes. While seemly small, removing the emoji is an instance of political censorship.

I doubt Apple leadership is unbothered by the reality of censorship that some countries impose. Unfortunately China fully embraces censorship though. There is a lot of good done by giving another billion and a half people access to a non-privacy-invading mobile OS so balancing that against bowing to censorship is a tough decision.

If you think you disagree, please discuss your reasons.

Sure but there is obviously a difference in the effect.

Hiding an emoji is tiny, turning over all of someone’s files is much more intrusive, killing someone would be far worse again.

To say they are the same seems deeply illogical.

> Hiding an emoji is tiny, turning over all of someone’s files is much more intrusive, killing someone would be far worse again.

I think you need to distinguish between actions against society and actions against an individual. Censorship is almost always an action against society; turning over files is sometimes against society but often just against an individual.

> There is a lot of good done by giving another billion and a half people access to a non-privacy-invading mobile OS so balancing that against bowing to censorship is a tough decision.

> If you think you disagree, please discuss your reasons.

Because it's not going to work that way, since that "access" actually amounts to authoritarian leverage over the ecosystem. Apple feels it needs the Chinese market more than the PRC feels it needs Apple [1]. As a result Apple's already haded over the Chinese iCloud to a local company (state owned, I think), which will undoubtably hand over encryption keys to the authorities whenever it's asked. It's not inconceivable to me that the PRC may use its leverage over Apple further weaken the iPhone ecosystem (either for Chinese phones or worldwide).

[1] The PRC has many domestic manufacturers like Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo (~OnePlus), Vivo, etc. The domestic costs for them for banning a foreign maker with a sub-10% marketshare like Apple are approximately zero.

I have no inside knowledge but what I’ve heard is that Apple’s cloud generally does not hold any keys. Keys are derived from information available only on user devices including the user password, and do not leave the devices. There are exceptions for cases where required for some cloud based functionality but that would not include simple storage and retrieval.

However this may be different in China. Just saying it’s possible for the cloud to be kept in the dark in some cases and that’s what Apple supposedly does whenever they can. Yeah some weasel words there, I realize.

That’s a clearly false distinction.

If Apple turns over the files of one individual to the government, then whole society is vulnerable to that, and this is incomparably more oppressive than removing a one of the UI buttons that displays a particular flag.

The thing you're not getting is that removing an emoji at government direction for political reasons leaves the whole of society open to other things getting removed for similar reasons: such as books, movies, news reports, etc. That's nearly always oppressive.

Turning over files to the government can be a normal law enforcement thing, and many societies have figured out how to do that and preserve civil liberties. It can be non oppressive.

The thing you aren’t getting is that hiding a single emoji button for a flag in Hong Kong makes almost no contribution to changing the state of Chinese censorship and is enshrined in Chinese law, whereas intentionally undermining encryption on consumer products in the US At the behest of the government is both unconstitutional, unprecedented and a massive concession to authoritarianism.

You continue to make an absurd and indefensible false equivalence.

> You continue to make an absurd and indefensible false equivalence.

You're stridently insisting on your interpretation, when there's more than one way to look at it. I'm just asking you to not dismiss the emoji thing so easily.

I’m not dismissing it. I think it’s a problem.

I just think it is nowhere near comparable to the issue of giving access to someone’s personal data.