Apple said it complied with orders from the Chinese government to remove the Meta-owned WhatsApp and Threads from its App Store in China. Apple also removed Telegram and Signal from China.
The New York Times similarly wrote that “a person briefed on the situation said the Chinese government had found content on WhatsApp and Threads about China’s president, Xi Jinping, that was inflammatory and violated the country’s cybersecurity laws. The specifics of what was in the content was unclear, the person said.”
“These apps and many foreign apps are normally blocked on Chinese networks by the ‘Great Firewall’—the country’s extensive cybersystem of censorship—and can only be used with a virtual private network or other proxy tools,” Reuters wrote.
“For years, Apple has bowed to Beijing’s demands that it block an array of apps, including newspapers, VPNs, and encrypted messaging services,” The New York Times noted yesterday.
Privacy. That’s iPhone.
Unless the government says otherwise. Because really we don’t give a fuck about you or your privacy.
Honestly, life on Android isn’t going to be much better.
The great firewall blocks Meta, Google, Signal, and Telegram’s sides. So no play store downloads, and no direct APK downloads.
Chinese users on iOS and Android basically have to pirate an IPA or APK, sideload, hope that shit wasn’t compromised by the state, and VPN out of the country.
Yea but at least with android you can download and install apks and find a way around stuff. Apple has their stuff locked down and they make it difficult to do that sort of stuff.
True. That stuff can hamper curb peer to peer distribution, which Chinese citizens have been know to do, since it can bypass ISPs.
That said, if you’re pirating stuff in China and fucking with VPNs already, you’re probably tech literate enough to side load an IPA. It’s not too hard to do without jailbreaking these days.
You can at least modify Android to get rid of crap. You can’t do that with Apple.
Yup. If you want more customization flexibility, Android is the way to go.
That said, let’s not fool ourselves into thinking the CCP isn’t also aggressively trying to censor and monitor communication options for Android phones. Apple is only 15% to 20% of new phone sales in China. Android is the priority for the CCP.
And simply loading up your favorite private VPN and downloading an APK is not the same in China as it in the western world.
Chinese VPNs are monitored by state regulators, non Chinese VPNs can get thrown behind the great firewall, western sites that post their own APKs for direct download get firewalled, etc.
…what? Use a VPN -> download the APK. Not hard.
APKs are signed so you can easily know if they were tampered with.
My point being, the CCP has already thought about this.
First you need to find a non Chinese VPN that isn’t monitored by the state and or blocked by the great firewall. And searching for great VPN options isn’t exactly great, because search engines like Baidu are monitored and censored.
What would be the point? If they don’t remove it, do you imagine they’d still be selling iPhones in the country?
Only way I can see around this is to buy an android and load your own non-backdoored rom.
What would be the point? If they don’t remove it, do you imagine they’d still be selling iPhones in the country?
Actually - yes I do. Any action against Apple would be a huge blow to both the Chinese and American economies. I’m sure China wants to do that, but right now they cannot do it.
Do you think anyone has ever criticised X Jinping in iMessage? Obviously the answer is yes - and yet iMessage is allowed while every other major (foreign) social network has just been banned. iMessage is now the only major foreign messaging platform allowed in China. That’s not a coincidence - it’s because so many iPhones are manufactured there.
It’s also pretty clear Apple is transitioning to manufacturing elsewhere. They’re on schedule to manufacture a quarter of iPhones in India by some time this year (up from zero not too long ago) and are dipping their toes in South American manufacturing as well. Banning iPhone sales in China would rapidly accelerate those plants.
Apple’s contribution to China’s economy is substantial - those manufacturing plants are huge and have hundreds of thousands of other companies supplying them. Also the workers are very well paid (for a factory job in China).
I assumed the Chinese government had a back door in that version of iMessage.
I’d be glad to be wrong.
Correct. There is no Play Store in China, and although some of these apps have APKs that are hosted on the web, I’m imagining that the great firewall is going to block that eventually, if it’s they’re not already being blocked.
So, yeah, you’re going to have to side load APKs and IPAs if you want these apps in China. And hopefully you’re not installing a binary that has been compromised by the state.
The point isn’t what they did or do. It’s what they claim. They claim to care about you and your privacy but comply with governments.
If they really care about privacy, they would allow sideloading of apps to circumvent bans. But, in fact, they created a walled garden where the walls follows the governments requirements to maximize the profits at the cost of the privacy.
This just in - companies that want to continue doing business in country must follow country’s laws. More at 10.
If the US bans Tiktok, expect China to retalliate against Apple. China is Apple’s most important market.
…they enjoy the profits from making Apple products and they do have a legal system over there, so your suggestions is dubious at best.
I don’t think they’d actually respond. Also TikTok is only partially Chinese owned.
That said the US would probably have to make a strong case TikTok is being used to convey Chinese propaganda in a way that’s irrevocable or uncontrollable.
If only the phone operating system allowed you to load applications from somewhere other than the official app store. Someone should make a phone that does that.
Yes, but play that tape forward as someone living in China. Lets pretend you wanted to use Signal
- you can’t download Signal’s APK directly from their site. It’s behind the great firewall
- you can’t VPN to their site or services via popular local VPN services. Chinese VPNs are regulated and monitored by the state.
- western VPN services get thrown behind the great firewall and or obscured from search because the government censors Baidu.
Etc etc.
There a ways to pull it off, but China does not make it easy. Android is over 80% of phone sales in China. Censoring comms on Android is the state’s priority.
Yes, use an Android phone (which you can sideoad apks on), preferably with a custom ROM and Tor, if you have to be in China for whatever reason.
Doesn’t matter where you are. Side loading is a must have for any device, especially phones because a lot of their functions require installing applications. This is like saying privacy is only important if you have something to hide. People are under the assumption that just by enabling side loading they’ll open up their phones to viruses or something. If you don’t need to just stick to your regular app store but having the option is important. If everything you do on your phone is connected to a single company then you aren’t private, it’s only an illusion of privacy.
Oh, certainly I would advocate using Android anywhere, but especially China.
Just be careful if the trusted download sources also get blocked.
I know sideloading is a big concern for the folks over at Signal. They’ve been worried about compromised APKs floating around.
Yeah, Signal is a funny one. Claim to be about privacy and then don’t put their app on F-Droid.
They had a reasonable argument a long time ago. They didn’t want fdroid to sign their app. They wanted to sign their own app. But now fdroid supports reproducible builds where the app developer signs their own app. So that argument has been addressed and they still haven’t done it.
I think The signal leadership is still emotional about the big debate at the time
I will be here to remind folks when US bans TikTok that china did it long ago
Chinese TikTok is Douyin & it’s not banned there. They wouldn’t ban something that they can use for control or else WeChat wouldn’t exist now.
You completely missed what I was referring to. China already banned most of US apps and websites. Some never even were allowed at the start. Like Twitter, Google, Facebook. They blocked those and just ripped them off (copied) for their own. They also have different version of TikTok as you said. Wonder why
You cannot access contents in tiktok in douyin, nor is tiktok.com accessible in China, which can be tested here: https://www.comparitech.com/privacy-security-tools/blockedinchina/
Hence I believe it is reasonable to say tiktok is blocked in China.
App stores were a mistake. We used to get software from its developer or from a source we chose. Now that we expect there to be a central app store, it can be used for censorship.
No they aren’t. Locked down restrictive app stores are the problem. App stores can provide visibility to apps that might not get it otherwise. Or help developers reach an audience through a central deployment platform. They can promote better security as well. Making updates easy and prompt. They’re more or less at the heart of every Linux/BSD platform for a reason.
Let’s be honest. How frequently do you check for updates to every program you installed manually? Even if the program itself notifies you. Are you going to navigate to the website immediately. Find the download link and promptly install for every, single, one. App stores and repositories are literally one of the greatest software inventions of the last 30+ years.
Being locked to a specific store or repository is the problem. Which is why everyone but apple tends to provide solutions. Whether it’s side loading, flatpack, app images etc.
This is why I also mentioned “a source we chose”. On GNU/Linux package managers and F-Droid I can add additional package sources which can be managed by the developer.
Point is, it shouldn’t be a thing that Apple or Google or anyone has this kind of power.
