[serf]

Maybe i'm bitter, or old, but my exclusion from a service is #1 reason to stay away from patronizing it.

It's my opinion that the excluded, Iranians in the case of this article, should be having hard discussions about how they could get away from the likes of Google and Apple, not talks about how to integrate into an ecosystem that appears hostile.

I understand the difficulty of that in practice, but integrating into a group that makes hostile world-changing decisions about groups of people based on geography and cultural differences seems to just empower that group further the next time they try to inject political maneuvering into their business -- making them an even larger threat to those it disagrees with in the future.

In other words : Second verse, same as the first -- vote with your dollar, vote with your participation.

[luckylion]

> Maybe i'm bitter, or old, but my exclusion from a service is #1 reason to stay away from patronizing it.

Sure, sure, but that's often not an option. If you're black and the only grocery store in town has a "no colored people" policy, you're out of luck.

With the internet getting more and more centralized to a few large US corporations, you're in a similar spot. Banned from using their services? There's no alternative, because everybody else relies on them and will have their contracts canceled unless they also not do business with you.

[arjmandi]

That's another part of the story. That part is going on, struggling with its problems, especially with the Apple ecosystem. On the other side, there are conservatives in Iran too, that will be happy to be disconnected from the world. Taking effective steps from Google and Apple side can strengthen the peace dialogue for both sides.