Apple and Google Cave to Authoritarianism...Again

Russia forces Apple and Google to remove Navalny’s tactical voting recommendation app; election starting today:

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I read this today too and was deeply saddened to hear it (but not surprised).

With China, I get why the US and US companies do basically whatever they want. China is a HUGE market and supplies a lot of what those companies sell.
But why are we beholden to Russia?

(Obligatory: I know next to nothing about world politics, just concerned is all)

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Discussion on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28561941.

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It’s all business. Nothing personal :smile:.

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Maybe Russia doesn’t like outside meddling in their country election. I remember a similar case in the USA during the Trump election (but in the reverse).

Yes, but Navalny’s app is internal to Russia, by Russians, for Russians, so it would seem the regime just doesn’t like challenges to its power.

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That’s exactly what happens to “Russian” FB accounts. They al where from USA soil … Still managed from outside.
But maybe you’re right, I just don’t trust Navalny (racist) and do not understand why this guy is so popular in western media. Probably supported by NED (i.e. Victorya Nuland).

Does disagreement with a person on a topic amount to a good reason to distrust them in general? What if you find out that Purism architects/visionaries hold political/religious etc. views you don’t stand?

Do you mean she promotes him in the media? Or supports him financially?

Yes, that’s what NED does: promoting disagreement at countries and instigate regime change. Already forgotten the coupe in Kiev or the troubles in Hongkong?

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Me: tired of all this election bullshit, going to have some fun on Purism forum
Purism forum: “Russia forces Apple and Google to remove Navalny’s tactical voting recommendation app”
Me: …

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More analysis and reasons to doubt Apple’s assurances about the CSAM scanning:

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That right there is the real problem. Once the device manufacturer decides what you can and can’t run on “your” device, it is only a matter of time before someone outside the device manufacturer is also calling the shots.

This can’t even happen on an open platform - although no doubt some governments would give it a good shake (by blocking sites).

Ironically though, removing the app is outside meddling in Russia’s election. It just happens to favor the incumbent.

That isn’t really the point though.

If you don’t trust a candidate, or you think the candidate is racist, or you don’t understand why the candidate is popular (in the western media or wherever) … he still has the right to be a candidate and to campaign for election (and the right not to be eliminated via nerve agent).

Using “legal” means to prevent credible opposing candidates even from running is an early sign of a failing democracy. coughBurmacoughHong KongcoughRussiacough

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This is who is running most of the Western world now.

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It’s time to put power for the people again :man_farmer: :woman_farmer:. The focus is far to much on business profits.

What about this way to silence elected members of parliament: “Viktor Medvedchuk, the leader of the Opposition Platform - For Life party put for prisoner exchange.” (he was already a long time under house arrest)

This is a symptom of a much larger problem. When the cold war ended, the US put missiles right on the borders of Russia from Ukraine and other former Warsaw Pact countries, aimed in to Russia. How would we as US citizens feel if the Warsaw Pact put missiles on the Canadian and Mexican borders, aiming in to the US? Then people like no-experience Hunter Biden and several other politically-connected leaches come in to Ukraine and siphon-off a lot of that country’s wealth and breed corruption there. Then Joe Biden goes in and formally extorts Ukraine by promising to withhold one billion dollars in aid to Ukraine from the US if the prosecutor who is investigating his son and others being investigated there isn’t fired. Eventually Russia has to respond. Putin is no saint. But there is a war going on now. Russia is doing what they have to do to survive. If we really want to promote freedom in the former Soviet states, both Hunter and “the big guy” and many others from the US need to stay out of that part of the world and stop exploiting those people. When you quit exploiting and villafying your victems as has been done and is still in progress, they have less of an excuse to suspend human rights as an emergency response.

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This article and what you said are why Putin went into Ukraine.
ps://sputniknews.com/donbass-genocide-2014-2022/

https://sputniknews.com/donbass-genocide-2014-2022/

This thread is veering off-topic from the theme of tech giants enabling authoritarianism for the sake of their bottom line.

I’d appreciate it if those who want to discuss the political environment and what led to it, or the war in Ukraine, would branch off to a separate thread.

Thanks.

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I don’t see that we’re veering off topic here. American and other Western countries are selling technology in to oppressive regimes that allow hostile governments to spy on and punish protesters that oppose their respective governments’. When the United States and other Western countries stop giving this kind of oppressive technology out to our so-called enemies who are looking more and more like comrads in oppression in the West, then maybe these issues will become off topic. It doesn’t do much good to discuss the lack of privacy and other electronic freedoms without identifying who the oppressors are. When anyone points to Russia as the only villen as this thread appeared to be doing, at least half of the story has been ignored.

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