[jonrimmer]

I don't think your analogy is valid.

It's more akin to Best Buy telling me I need to visit the house of every customer who bought my widget and slightly break it, otherwise they'll stop selling said widget. And if I try to tell my customer "Best Buy is making me do this", that's "irrelevant".

[zepto]

How is this a good analogy for them asking for the names and addresses of individuals to be taken down because they are worried that these might be a call to violence against those indivuals?

Are we talking about a widget which contains a piece of paper with the names and addresses of some local policemen?

The analogy just doesn’t work.

[kelnos]

> How is this a good analogy for them asking for the names and addresses of individuals to be taken down because they are worried that these might be a call to violence against those indivuals?

Apple is making a moral judgment here, likely based on pressure from the Belarusian government.

Let's look at it this way. Let's say you agree that the current Belarusian president is bad news, and is trying to maintain power by invalidating free democratic elections, and suppress other candidates by arresting them on trumped-up charges. If you don't agree with that, fine, but let's say for a moment that you do.

In that case, Apple's requirement of Telegram is in support of a repressive regime. While I'm not a fan of violence, I will acknowledge that sometimes it is necessary to apply violence in order to achieve freedom.

But the overall point is that what people say on Telegram is none of Apple's business. Strong-arming Telegram's CEO into complying with Apple's moralizing is an abuse of Apple's market position, based on their OS's DRM that requires all apps to be approved by Apple. That's not a world we should have to live in.

[zepto]

I get the general idea, but I just don’t think it’s that simple.

“In that case, Apple's requirement of Telegram is in support of a repressive regime.”

It’s possible that this is at the request of the Belarusian government, but it’s also true that Apple does have its own terms against promoting violence.

Either way, it’s not obvious that preventing doxing supports the regime.

If individual policemen are targeted, it’s not a given that this increases support for the the pro-democracy movement.

I also believe that sometimes violence is necessary, but that doesn’t make it obvious that it’s the right thing in any particular case.

There’s no abuse of Apple’s market position as far as I can see.

Stores are generally restricted in what they can sell by the legal environment they operate in.

Now, I do entirely agree with you that we shouldn’t have to live in this world. I do want a platform where no entity can control what I can install.

I just don’t think that world has a lot to do with Apple.

Apple isn’t going to build it, no matter what we do, and Apple isn’t doing anything particularly different from any other corporation that sells any good.

If we want a freer platform we are going to need to build it.