[voidmain]

Apple could choose to give the users of their devices freedom to run whatever operating systems and programs they choose. Then they could truthfully say that there is no way for them to control what people do with their devices once they leave the Apple store. If you put yourself in control of such things because it is profitable, you ought to take responsibility for the consequences.

[BurningFrog]

China could also make that illegal, and probably has.

You're never going to outsmart the Chinese government with clever little tricks. They don't play like that.

[rpdillon]

It's not really about outsmarting them. Authoritarian systems of control rely on centralization. If you create an ecosystem where end users have lots of agency, of course most of them will go the path of least resistance, but the few who are willing to put in the effort to resist still can. Google and Apple tightening their grip over their respective mobile ecosystems is a very potent lever for authoritarian governments to pull.

[IgorPartola]

They don’t rely on them. They successfully use them. In the Soviet Union every one horse village with unpaved roads had a commissar. No internet, no telegraph, no newspaper, no electricity but they held control just the same. Central control makes it convenient for them, but it isn’t the difference between them existing and not existing.

[rpdillon]

I admit ignorance of a lot of this but just going off of your comment wouldn't the commissar be the system of centralized control in this case?

[IgorPartola]

In a way. Basically yes any totalitarian regime will want to create a system where the people in charge have total control over everyone and everything. But my point is that Stalin was able to exert control over all parts of the Soviet Union without the internet, Facebook, WhatsApp, backdoored E2E messaging systems, email and email spying, parallel construction, etc.

The comment I was replying to is not wrong exactly but the better way to phrase that is that any unrelated but centralized system can and probably will be co-opted by a totalitarian regime and in the long run only helps the oppressor and not the oppressed.

[KronisLV]

Surely there’s a difference between hardware being a locked down appliance and… well, a more generic computation device.

I think the argument is that Apple or even any company that makes Android phones could choose to have an open bootloader (and maybe some driver stuff) and normally that wouldn’t really offend any government, while also giving the users more freedoms.

Otherwise, what’s next, PCs that only run Windows and only allow Edge as the browser and force the telemetry on?

[sabatonfan]

Can china make linux illegal?

[BurningFrog]

Not only that, they can ignore their laws and disappear/kill you whenever they feel like it.

They're not killing their own people by the millions like in Mao's days, but it's still a brutal dictatorship when it wants to be.

[underlipton]

Oh, we do that, too. And we also don't protect our own in other countries.

[skinnymuch]

Chinese people lives are getting better and they largely are on the same page. Meanwhile the US has DEI in the govt while the govt says DEI is bad. Minority authoritarian rule in the US with the Senate.

The US is a brutal dictatorship all the time.

China thankfully has a govt that is on the same page as the people.

[wiseowise]

Obvious troll or just mentally sick.

Country with social credit, LLMs that have a seizure at "Tiananment square", Winnie the Pooh and Taiwan, Great firewall, cultural genocide of Uyghurs is a country where "lives are getting better" while US is a brutal dictatorship, my fucking sides.

[tgma]

Is that so? I have not surveyed the Chinese, but will not be surprised if the approval was higher than you'd imagine. If anything, the core ideas of communism have clear demand in the west and people are voting for them when they are shown with a lipstick on top.

[dhosek]

What makes you think they wouldn’t if they felt it would be useful? Or more likely, require a particular government-endorsed Linux.

[raincole]

They can make iPhone illegal.

Would they? Unlikely, given iPhone creates a lot of jobs there. But if iPhone becomes the de facto devices for Chinese citizens to access illegal content then the chance is none-zero.

(And of course they can make Linux illegal too. It's just harder to enforce than making iPhone illegal.)

[bitwize]

If Brazil can, China can.

[sabatonfan]

Can you give me the source of where brazil made linux illegal? I am sorry but I tried to search and the only references I could find were of brazil banning twitter/X for some reason.

I am genuinely curious how someone can decide linux to be illegal. How would the ban even work out?

[bitwize]

Brazil has what is known as the Felca law, which requires providers of app stores and "terminal operating systems" to do age verification and to provide secure auditable APIs that meet government standards for doing the same. Presumably, specific distros like Red Hat can go through a government approval process in order to be legal to distribute in Brazil, but without such certification and without providing such system-level APIs, a random distro like Debian will be illegal to distribute in Brazil.

[tgma]

It's delusional to think the default OS would be replaced by anyone more than a few percent of niche users.

It's your desire to have open OS just say so. Doesn't really tie into avoiding oppression by communism. The Chinese need to solve that problem at its root.

[sneak]

Then China asks Apple to blacklist prohibited apps via notarization revocation. This isn’t the gotcha you think it is.

[eptcyka]

If only you could run your own software on the computer you bought and paid for.

[zassy]

People on HN thinking Apple should get into some kind of dick waving contest with an authoritarian government that rules over 1/6th of the global population and that supplies the labor to build their products and the materials in those products by implementing your guy’s pet issues is the height of fucking delusion.

At least try to pretend like you guys are thinking about situations in the real world.

[eptcyka]

Allowing me to run my own code doesn’t involve the dick waving contest.