Apple stood up to the US government's requests to decrypt devices but capitulated to China's request to remove an image of another country's flag.
This is scarey.
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This is scarey.
Yes. While seemly small, removing the emoji is an instance of political censorship.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.