For those defending this practice, consider carefully the implications of what you are advocating.
On one hand you have a government deciding who can and cannot refer to themselves as adherents of a particular religion (by declaring that Ahamadis cannot call themselves Muslim).
On another hand you have Google and Apple, yet again, being the complicit chokepoints of “free speech”, with regard to app developers.
These may seem fair to you, but that may be because these practices have not negatively affected you...yet.
But consider: Would it be fair if England declared Catholics “unChristian” and banned their use if the term? Or what if the USA declared hasidic jews “Unjewish” and banned their use of the term. Or what if Apple caved to pressure theoretical from Israel to ban Jehovah’s Witnesses from using the term “Jehovah”?
What next? Government declaring who is and is not “white”?
You make a great argument for Governments that support religious freedom. Not sure I follow your logic to a conclusion that makes Apple and Google the villains here though.
A&G have a binary choice - serve users in (Oppressive Country X) or not. There is no choice that involves serving those users but not following the oppressive laws of said country.
> A&G have a binary choice - serve users in (Oppressive Country X) or not
I've said this before, but if you only do the ethical thing when it doesn't cost you anything, you aren't actually an ethical person. You're just an opportunist.
Companies that say they have to do the unethical thing because otherwise shareholders will get mad or fire them, well they're doing the same thing, but it's avoiding personal costs (risking their cushy job) by doing the unethical thing. Doing the wrong thing because your boss will fire you if you don't doesn't mean you didn't do the wrong thing.
Context for anyone who doesn't know: Apple, by law, operates iCloud/iMessage servers in China in the physical control of the CCP (presumably enabling wiretapping and censorship on-demand) to be able to offer those services to iPhone users in China.
No matter what the PR departments of these corporations would have us believe, when push comes to shove it's always about the money. These corporations are fair-weather activists at best.
I think Larry and Sergey still basically control the thing. They both have far more money than they know what to do with. Why would they compromise that much when the money makes no difference to them?
Honestly, I didn't know that specific thing. I was speaking generally.
The first time I said it was to someone who told me that while they personally have no problem with people of other races, they could never hire someone "like that" to work and their business because the racist town they lived in wouldn't like it, and it would hurt business.
This person was totally against racism, unless it would hurt them financially.
Taking an ethical stand when it doesn't hurt you isn't taking an ethical stand.
That's called "finding a justification for unethical behaviour".
"Well overall it's better if I do the unethical thing because when you think about it REALLY it's for the best- and yes, I'll make some extra money this way, but that's unrelated to why I've searched my soul for any reason to make this okay".
Google et al aren't denying information to oppressed people. Their governments are. The companies have to decide whether they will be complicit or not.
I'm from a developing nation who has a good tech career. I give a lot of credit to YouTube and Google for that. Denying that option to me is very costly. I'd rather have a censored version to nothing. It's just a pragmatic choice. However if Google is able to arm twist the government and remove the censor, nothing like it.
If you think "the ethical thing" is to undermine governments which don't conform to our values... do you vote for the most hawkish candidate in every election? Are you joined up with the armed forces? Why not? America could bring the whole world to heel on "freedom & democracy," and yet even people who think of themselves as righteous, don't want to. Why?
Could it be that cost is actually a good argument?
Could it be that trying to impose your own system of morality on the whole world is not actually a moral act?
Notice that Debian wasn't forced to take down any apps, which shows choice 3: Do not place themselves in the position of arbiters of what apps their users may run (either by technical locks, such as Apple, or by making alternatives extremely inconvenient, such as Google).
It sure seems additive in this case. Google & Apple can choose not to do business in regulatory regimes that are oppressive in nature. That obviously comes at a direct cost of lost revenue from abstinence. It is a deliberate choice to do business anywhere at all. The simple fix here as you say, would be to stop doing business when forced to enact business practices that further oppression.
Make no mistake, it is monetary greed that drives the choice to assent to this.
If they choose not to do business will that fix the problem? Will that make these oppressive regimes go away?
Monetary greed might be good or bad, they might or might not be doing business there for greed, but it's not the question.
The question is how does oppression algebra works. An oppressive regime is oppressive, by definition, nomen es omen. In this instance we likely agree that forcing private companies to selectively deny service to a minority/vulnerable group of the population is textbook oppression.
How withdrawing from that country/jurisdiction decreases sum-total-oppression?
(I mean the usual argument is that a trade embargo helps people realize that things are bad! Plus it prepares the economy for war, so no one will be surprised when their supplier/distributor/buyers become unavailable due to blockade/bombardment/etc.
In case of selling weapons and surveillance systems the math seems to be simple. But it seems in that case the oppression is again in the name of the game. Rarely oppressed people buy tanks to stand up to that same oppression.
So if a service provider is coerced to provide data about vulnerable/minority groups, that again seems a very textbook case.
In this case maybe the analogy is that Apple/Google is supplying water - for money - but this oppressive regime uses it to waterboard people. Does shutting down the service helps?)
Oppressive regimes even of the most extreme order still need to deal with reality and the choices of other parties that aren't fully within their control. If Google/Apple were to take a stand here and walk away, it would put tremendous pressure on Pakistani government, and make this a hot button issue. Imagine the entire nation waking up one day to find that their apps no longer function because their leaders made choices that they likely weren't even aware were being made. It would certainly cause the constituents of these regimes to reconsider their support of the leaders. Pakistan is a democracy, however broken it may be, and you can sure bet that other political parties would step in to fill this role.
> In this case maybe the analogy is that Apple/Google is supplying water - for money - but this oppressive regime uses it to waterboard people.
I mean no, that's definitely not the analogy. When Google/Apple remove these apps from their stores, they're directly taking action to further the oppression. It's not some innocent bystander thing, they literally have to write code or take other actions to make this happen. Remember, the status quo is that the apps stay in the store today. An explicit action is required to change that.
China did it. Many countries routinely block Google stuff.
> It would certainly cause the constituents of these regimes to reconsider their support of the leaders.
How can we be certain of that? I think many people drastically underestimate the number of people who a) don't care b) are invested in the regime c) gullible d) care, but won't do anything because they don't want to rock the boat, e) care, want to rock the boat, but won't because protesting is still not without some danger.
Yes, sure, other political parties would do whatever they do. Does that work? Not really. (Maybe over long-long periods of time.)
> When Google/Apple remove these apps from their stores, they're directly taking action to further the oppression.
Agreed. Yet it's close to meaningless to look at it in a vacuum. Their choices are a) comply, don't even put up a fight, b) comply, try to exhaust legal options, b) stop doing business there.
I'm asking how to weigh those. What's best for the people of Pakistan. What's best for this particular vulnerable/oppressed group? What's best for all people?
> In this case maybe the analogy is that Apple/Google is supplying water - for money - but this oppressive regime uses it to waterboard people. Does shutting down the service helps?)
Judging from posts here, many people are trying to get off Google. So a better analogy instead of water would be nicotine.
I recommend everybody to do so too. But not for this direct moral reason. (Which I'm honestly and sadly too ignorant and uncertain about.) I think there's room for smaller/niche providers, a subculture of self-hosters.
I am not sure if it is that simple, and I think companies have little choice but to be greedy, because if they choose not to be greedy, another greedier company is all but guaranteed to prevail. I suppose it could be argued that companies the size of Apple and Google are not bound by the same constraints as smaller companies. But if they choose to stop doing business in Pakistan, what would become of all of their existing customers? What about all the people who would be deprived of Apple and Google products/services?
> But if they choose to stop doing business in Pakistan, what would become of all of their existing customers?
What happens to Pakistani users of Debian, if Debian doesn't do business in Pakistan? Nothing. Those users are fine. iOS users would be in a bind only because Apple chose to create a system where users are left high-and-dry if/when Apple decides to no longer do business in any country.
It's not selling physical hardware that binds Apple here; it's having an app store that requires the cooperation of national government to process payments. Pakistan could forbid Apple from opening Apple Stores in Pakistan, but Pakistanis would likely still be able to purchase apple products through resellers and/or black/graymarkets. And if iOS were not locked to Apple's authoritarian app store, oppressed ethnic minorities in Pakistan could distribute software through through their preexisting covert channels.
Both choices seem terrible to me: either stop serving swaths of users or take part in removing their freedom. If Apple and Google fostered a strong community of alternative app stores, they wouldn't have to make this choice at all.
It depends on how you measure "worse". I gather you're alluding to the moral argument, and I completely agree: Google leaving Pakistan is my gut reaction to this.
But public companies have shareholders that demand the company optimize for revenue, so I assume they are balancing that as well. This means they are weighing value systems against one another.
I was trying to highlight an opportunity to encourage other app stores to reconcile this tension to some degree. Allowing/encouraging other app stores will no doubt impact revenue to some degree, but perhaps not a great degree, since it mostly acts as an escape hatch in cases like this (convenience seems to dominate user behavior). But it would also allow Google/Apple to continue to serve users in Pakistan, some of whom might not agree with their government's position.
The subtext here is that I fundamentally disagree with the argument that users should be disallowed from installing apps of their choice from sources of their choice on devices they purchased. I know this is a fringe opinion, so I was eager to point out how it might help in this situation.
For one, not being able to use Google or Apple products would be such a hit to the modern way of life that people might become less complacent. To be very clear, I am not blaming the people in any way for the situation they are in, but it makes sense that people would be more likely to stand up to tyranny when something very important to them is swiftly taken away. Even the simple act of taking a stance against these practices might inspire people to fight for their freedom.
Now, of course, all of these are small chances and all the ususl caveats of revolutions apply, but surely G&A continuing to do business there benefits nobody but themselves?
"To be very clear, I am not blaming the people in any way for the situation they are in"
Perhaps you should blame the people, if by the people you mean the Pakistani populace. I say this as a Pakistani. The issue of discrimination towards Ahmedis is something that has widespread support among the populace. From uneducated masses to university professors, poor to rich. Very few people actually oppose the discrimination towards Ahmedis.
And those who speak up to support Ahmedis have to be very careful. The issue with Ahmedis is always pretty closely linked to the issue with blasphemy and of protecting the "Prophet's honor" in Pakistan.
Many people have been killed over the blasphemy issue and even those who would say that blasphemy laws need to be revised were killed.
You can look up the murder of Salman Taseer, the chief minister of Punjab (one of Pakistan's 4 provinces, and the largest province by population). Taseer was killed by his own bodyguard for saying that blasphemy laws should be reviewed.
Honestly, I don't know the first thing about the situation over there, so I wanted to make sure it didn't sound like I was blaming the oppressed people for being opressed and not fighting for their freedom hard enough.
But if there are indeed large parts of the population that supoort this kind of oppression, then that might actually support the argument for not doing business with them. In that case, not only do you anger the victims to revolt, but also maybe force the oppressors to reconsider if oppressing whatever group of people is worth losing access to so much of modern technology over.
Of course, the possibility is that the oppressors just lash out and make things worse for the victims, or find other ways of hurting them, but despite that possibility, I'd still argue it's more moral for G&A to refuse their demands and leave the country if they have to.
Why are Pakistani people dismissive of arguments for support for Ahmedis? Sure, it might be ultimately their own making, but how much of that is the product of brainwashing by certain rival groups trying to gain power? It seems the people are just as much trapped in this, even if they don't realize. (Like the QAnon cultists in the US. And there's a very big political party in the US basically cheering them on for very-very-very short sighted goals.)
People ought to know better, people have the responsibility to better themselves, their thought patterns, their reasoning, refine their worldview ... but if their ability to do so is already thin, it's hard to blame people, since - it seems - they had very little power to act responsible.
The best analogy I could give you is the Mormons in the 1830s, or Jews for Jesus if the Orthodox Jews were in charge of enforcing penalties on the books for "epikoros"
Apple is in a self imposed category of only legit legal way to install software on users devices and is thus morally keeping users from practicing their religion.
The logical thing is to make Apple decide between servicing the entire American and European market and caving to repressive regimes.
>thus morally keeping users from practicing their religion
Many religions actually predate iphone apps and thus may be able to get on without them. I think Moses himself got by with basic html though I may be wrong on that.
You probably wouldn't allow Comcast to filter out all catholic content for subscribers even though the internet hadn't been thought of when the religion was founded.
Apple Google are villains because they control what and how app installs by having the app store. If it was like Windows pc it wouldn't be like this. They chose this method, in applied case a walled garden that only they can control, so must be responsible.
So american companies will compromise on their own freedom, an important american value and principle, for the sake of pursuing profit in foreign countries. They'd rather obey a foreign dictator than lose their business.
french secularism is beautiful. all are equal under law. and freedom FROM religion. if your friend and his friends had this thing where they chopped of skin from their babies genitals. would you be ok with that? why is it ok when religious people do it? clearly following dogma in this case over reason is the symptom of mental illness or damage. religions are much more oppressive if you ask me. they function without a state or government. they are a low evolved form of government used to gain power.
Not sure if what you're talking about is French secularism, but I definitely agree with it up until the "mental illness" part. That part is where things become dangerous. Sure, churches and religions aren't special and they should follow the exact same rules as any other group of people and/or legal entity. But the moment you start mandating how people should think/what they should believe, even if their beliefs are ridiculous, you're going down one hell of a slippery slope.
In his defense, religious belief has a history of sliding down that slope at full speed in most cases when left to its own devices. I feel that religious extremism is often treated much less harshly than secularist abuses. One example of that is how various Western countries reacted to that French teacher being beheaded: they were more immediately concerned with discrimination than with the actual murder and its implications.
Definitely, but if you start treating religion as a mental illness like OP suggested, you ought to also consider flat earthers and conspiracy theorists the same. And what is the line between a conspiracy theory in the usual sense and simply a yet-unproven theory that a conspiracy actually exists? That the government is spying on us all the time might've sounded like a conspiracy theory before Snowden, so should all the people who believed it have been committed to mental hospitals? Obviously this is a slippery slope argument in and of itself, but it illustrates the possibilities for abuse.
But yes, religion seems to be a bit of a get-out-of-jail-free card these days - people and organizations get away with a lot of shady stuff under the disguise of religion and something really needs to be done about it.
It's a bit circular because mental illness is societally determined. If enough people deem something to be an illness or no longer one, then so it shall tautologically be.
>But yes, religion seems to be a bit of a get-out-of-jail-free card these days - people and organizations get away with a lot of shady stuff under the disguise of religion and something really needs to be done about it.
Well that was my point: secularist impulses are often rejected, especially in the anglosphere. The people who could do something are often prevented from doing so, while religious orders are free to leave broken lives in their wake.
France doesn't understand freedom of religion, a fundamental human right which they have pledged to uphold. Take the french school headscarf ban or the stupid outrage about the Burkini
They believe in not forcing people to follow a state religion. That’s not the same as letting people do whatever they want because “religion”.
It’s not like most religions believe in freedom of religion anyway. The same people who argue for the right to wear certain headwear belong to a religion that prescribes the death penalty for apostasy.
Perhaps freedom from religion is a fundamental human right.
Perhaps there are valid concerns that many women are being forced to cover themselves against their will, but are unable to do much about it. I havent studied this spesific issue enough to say either way, but I am not clear where your certainty is coming from.
As an indian, I have to somewhat disagree. I find the idea of secularism beautiful and necessary for a democracy but the french way of implementing it uncomfortable and some what extremist (but understand their historic roots).
Secularism in India is certainly inspired by US and European democracy (especially France), but is not similar:
The Court also discussed the concept of "Indian Secularism", which was said to be based on "equal tolerance of all religions". Indian Secularism was distinct from Western Secularism as it is not anti-religious. It gives to all its citizens equal freedom of conscience and religion.
In practice, this means that the state doesn't believe it has to compete with religious ideas for its existence.
So it doesn't mind if you display your religious identity in a government office or in public schools. So unlike France (and some other European states) that would frown on a Christian or a Hindu or a Muslim displaying their respective Gods or religion's symbols or even praying in government office, all these practices are quite common in India.
One of the idea behind this is that people tend to view the unfamiliar with suspicion and distrust.
And religion also introduces certain cultural beliefs in a society. Thus, in a multi-cultural and multi-religious country like ours, restricting cultural practices can create intolerance - people are generally more accepting of each other when they are exposed to each others culture, including religious ones, and understand it.
Thus, not being "anti-religious" is especially helpful for the majority to understand the minority, and the minority to be comfortable in the society because everyone is encouraged to treat differing beliefs with tolerance (if not acceptance).
Another reasoning is that the state understands that every human also aspires to spiritually develop. (The state doesn't consider spiritual development as necessarily religious in nature, but recognizes that it is the majority practice). Thus, indian secularism focuses on inclusiveness and equality by treating everyone as a spiritual being, and thus eschews being anti-religious.
Instead of forcing any religious reforms from the top, it encourages reformists to work with the respective section of society for the changes they seek. Only when they have gained a certain momentum do they start considering it as political issue which needs legislative intervention. (Over the past 100 years, this is how Indian society has slowly done away with retrograde religious practices). This slow approach is necessary to make the reforms more acceptable and lasting in society.
We could use the Guillotine too, but look at Turkey now after its staunch secularist leader who enforced secularism using state power, passed away ... if secularism doesn't come from society, it cannot survive. We in India too are now facing the same issue as the political party in power tries to push a religious identity on to our country and make many think that the ideas of secularism is not needed in India.
India is not secular, and whatever goes on in India in the name of secularism is the exact opposite of it. Rights are sanctioned and denied based on religious identity.
In case you want to know how bad it is, the ones the most oppressed and poor are the lower caste hindus, and even now, it's illegal for a lower caste hindu to open and run school exclusively for lower caste hindus even with his own money. It's not just that state won't do it, but it has made it illegal for individual citizens to do it as well. Remember these are the folks with no money, no land and no connections. Their only means for social mobility is education. Meanwhile, a christian or muslim does it, he/she gets state funding, and the upper caste hindus are well off and connected. It's just caste system with extra steps.
Of course this is well supported by upper caste hindus, muslims and christians - the old elite class.
Aside from that, hindu temples and institutions are managed by the state and taxed, while other religions gets absolute freedom to run their institutions however - taxfree. Again, this is relic of colonial briton who really wanted to control the hindus as the main opposition to the raj came in the form of hindu nationalism.
It's a religious apartheid state against the poor hindus - a relic of colonialism happily continued by the Indian elites who wielded power once the british left most likely because they hated the poor hindus even more than the british themselves.
> hindu temples and institutions are managed by the state and taxed,
Due to the real danger of right-wing religious fundamentalism in India, the constitution of India does dictate that the government administrate some of the major religious institutes of the majority.
The reasoning is simple:
1. They can only administrate and not interfere in the religious affairs of the institutions.
2. This prevents the hijacking of the institutes by religious fundamentalists who can divert the huge funds donated, for political purposes.
3. India being a majority Hindu country, will always have majority Hindus in power. Thus, the religious institutes will always be managed by a Hindu.
4. Part of the funds donated to such religious institutes are ear marked for charitable purposes. People expect this to be fairly used, and trust the elected government to oversee this with strict rules and regulations.
5. Minority religions too have similar government administrative oversights to ensure that their donated funds are not misused in any manner. However, their religious institutions are rightly allowed to be run by members of their own community.
So why are the majority religious right-wing in India pissed by this? For them, the only right Hindu eligible to manage temples is a Hindu approved by them. And they hate the fact that government appointed secular Hindus prevent them from taking over the religious institutes and (mis)using them for political purposes.
I love how you glossed over like 95% of my comment and latched on to temples and institutions. Anyway, let's see.
>Due to the real danger of right-wing religious fundamentalism in India, the constitution of India does dictate that the government administrate some of the major religious institutes of the majority.
and there is real danger of religious fundamentalism among muslims, christians, sikhs, parsis.. you name it. In fact, if you look at instances of religious fundamentalism, both christian and muslim fundamentalism vastly outnumber anything from everyone else combined. It's nothing but bigotry that you justify discrimination based on religious identity. Especially when your argument is "fundamentalism" - given you want to discriminate all hindus based on the expectation that some would be fundamentalist? This is pure bigotry, and your own religious extremism that wants to discriminate every single hindu. Remember it's the lower caste hindus who are not only poor, but discriminated and oppressed for good thousand years, and you want to discriminate and oppress the more? because some hindus might be fundamentalist? what kind of bigoted thought is that?
anyway, let's look at the rest of the arguments.
>. They can only administrate and not interfere in the religious affairs of the institutions.
You cannot administer temples without interfering in religious affairs - as they are for only religious purposes. But that's not it. It's fundamental right - every where in the world - to be able to run your own religious affairs. Secondly, government oversight and management leads to plunder of Hindu religious institutions and temples by those appointed by the government. Almost every single major temple has lost it's lands and wealth. Wealth that should have been used to start schools, hospitals and colleges - things that are useful for the devotee base. The political appointees are given exorbitant salaries while temple affairs are ignored (hell in 2018, tamilnadu priests had to approach the high court to increase their monthly salary from RS 20 - almost a third of a dollar - https://www.thehindu.com/society/faith/petition-on-temple-pr...)
>2. This prevents the hijacking of the institutes by religious fundamentalists who can divert the huge funds donated, for political purposes.
I already covered this in my first para. Use this logic on your own religious affairs and see how you feel. It's nothing but bigoted excuse for religious discrimination.
>3. India being a majority Hindu country, will always have majority Hindus in power. Thus, the religious institutes will always be managed by a Hindu.
Nope.Patently false. The temples and institutions are managed by state governments. Almost every tamil nadu, kerala goverments have been openly inimical of hindu affairs. True for current Andhra government too. Sometimes the appointees are not even hindu. In fact the last government put a christian in charge of Tirumala affairs, and had to change it after public outrage. So, just not true.
A hindu politician in power means nothing to me as a lower caste hindu. Again, it doesn't matter. It's a fundamental right - anywhere in the world - to be able to manage your own religious affairs. I also want to address the "hindu majority" part - organized minority always wins against unorganized divided majority. The upper caste were minority. The hordes of islamic invaders who committed unspeakable horrors on native Indias were minority. The british who colonized entire India were minority. The europeans who conquered and genocided the natives in the Americas and Australia were minority. Also, Hindu community isn't monolithic. It's thousands of languages, millions of gods, even more traditions that wary within a few kilo meters, even more sacred texts - all collectively given a name. Hindu, Sindhu, India all have the same linguistic root. Viewing all of that with a single collectively identity is the work of Christianity and Islam - non Indic thoughts. It's like calling everyone on earth "people".
I also want to address your majority/minority thing. Why do you view everyone through the prism of religious believes/identity? Why not left handed person vs right handed ones? coffee lovers vs tea lovers? football vs cricket? Just because religious believes and identity is important to you and you view the world through the prism of religious believes doesn't mean the world should run based on it. It definitely shouldn't mean laws should be based on that. The only reason i speak on behalf of hindu rights is because the poor lower caste hindus who were oppressed for a millennia are discriminated even now based on their religious identity. Otherwise, who cares? Keep your religious believes to yourself and let others have theirs.
>4. Part of the funds donated to such religious institutes are ear marked for charitable purposes. People expect this to be fairly used, and trust the elected government to oversee this with strict rules and regulations.
Again, upto every single institution to prioritize things important to them. What is priority for your community maynot be what is priority for others. If you think government oversight is so good, do it for everyone. All I am asking is for equality. No discrimination. If I donate to a temple, I am donating to that temple/deity. This is not charity. Again, maybe different for you, but that is fine. Don't generalize and apply your worldview on others. That's the literal definition of religious fundamentalism - that even others live your religious code.
>5. Minority religions too have similar government administrative oversights to ensure that their donated funds are not misused in any manner.
No they don't. I know instances of Sunday masses and mosque committees openly campaigning for chosen political candidates. Article 29/30 gives you absolute freedom to run religious institutions and affairs however you want. Then you have article 25, NCMEI, and a slew of local bodies. Not saying it's good or bad, but this is what it is.
>So why are the majority religious right-wing in India pissed by this? For them, the only right Hindu eligible to manage temples is a Hindu approved by them. And they hate the fact that government appointed secular Hindus prevent them from taking over the religious institutes and (mis)using them for political purposes.
Ahh yes. Every hindu voicing about discrimination is because he is "right-wing". Never mind it's oppressing the ones who were already oppressed for good thousand years. Never mind overwhelming majority of the Hindus is impoverished. Never mind the only means for social mobility for vast majority of them is education, and these bigoted discriminatory laws prevent opening schools. I want you to look at your own sentence and replace "hindu" with your religious identity.
I also want to address a few points mentioned in your other post.
1) secularism is a function of state. Individuals aren't secular. In India, it's just code for non hindu, or a hindu that isn't religious.
2) caste schools - if you are so concerned, why not minority status for the lower caste hindus?
3) 50% - patently false. There are islamic schools where i am from that is 100% muslims. Schools which start at early morning and ends at 6 PM evening. Schools that kids young as 6 year old go in purdah. I want to know where you got the 50% from?
4) Hindus are allowed to operate schools - yes, but making it practically impossible with article 25, 29, 30, RTE and 93rd amendment. Also, as a dalit who escaped the system, it's ILLEGAL for me to start a school for impoverished and ignored dalit kids, as RTE forbids me in screening kids. Now if you argue this is to prevent upper caste only schools, then the same must be applicable to Muslims only schools and Christians only schools. Also, read point 2. Do the same exceptions for lower caste hindus.
I want to end this long post by saying that if you want to discriminate based on religious believes/identity, then you are a bigoted religious supremacist. No two ways about it.
See, this is where the whole argument falls bunks and your ignorance becomes apparent - You believe, wrongly, that the indian constitution only permits the government to "interfere and manage" the affairs of only the majority Hindu religion.
That is a false propaganda spread by the right-wing because the indian constitution also permits the government to oversees the administration of even the minority religious institutes by framing laws and regulations. And they do so. (Some states even have a whole ministry and their own state laws added to it).
E.g:
- Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee - This organisation is governed by the Chief Minister of Punjab (an elected politician) and is entrusted with the security and maintenance of all Gurudwaras and religious places of importance of the Sikhs. Delhi Sikh Gurdwaras Act, 1971 defines how Sikh's religious institutes can be administered in the Delhi union territory.
- Waqf Act (1954 and 1995) and the Central Waqf Council of India: The religious and charitable institutions of muslims are administered by Waqfs (Trusts). The Central Waqf Council is headed by a Union Minister, along with 20 other members appointed by the Government of India. They oversee the administration of all the musim waqfs in India, creating the rules and guidelines and advising the state bodies. (By the way, there are now 30 government run Waqf boards in 28 states and other UTs in India).
- Indian Church Act, 1927 - Till it was repealed in 1960, it dictated the rules on administration of Churches. No new law replaced it. One of the reason being that that Christians forms less than 3% of the population and they often choose to register their movable and immovable properties under the the Societies Registration Act, and not under the Religious Endowment Act or The Charitable and Religious Trust Act, 1920. Thus, many of them come under the more stringent NGO laws in India, voluntary, and are managed more professionally. (After a recent scandal on misuse of church funds and properties in Kerala, the Kerala government plans to introduce a law to oversee their activities more stringently - https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/kerala-draft-bill-regu... ).
So understand clearly that such arguments and propaganda of the right-wing that only Hindu religious institutes are governed by the Government of India is an absolute lie. Their real anger is with the fact that they cannot take-over the Temples and manage and misuse it for their political purposes. It has nothing to do with "secularism".
In fact, with The Religious Institutions (Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1988 the government even clearly defines what it considers to be illegal in any religious institute.
All the rest of your arguments that you believe and are just plain lies of the right-wing, without an iota of truth in them (some are facts that you have been misled into believing is wrong). I can point out the actual facts to you if you cite your sources for them.
You are both breaking the HN guidelines egregiously. Religious and nationalistic flamewar is not welcome here, neither are personal swipes, and we don't want tedious tit-for-tat spats.
Please don't do anything like this on HN again, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.
I was discussing how secularism is defined in the indian constitution, and how it functions with respect to the related laws guaranteeing minority rights. It doesn't have anything to do with "nationalism" but was a reply to another post (by a french?) in the hopes of discussing how secularism works in India and other democratic countries.
But it was hijacked and derailed. As I have pointed out to you before, it's a tactic of the right-wing online to deliberately generate controversies on ideas they don't like and then abuse the reporting tools to get it removed if they can't browbeat the original poster.
I mention this not to pick an argument with the mods here but to make you recognize this pattern.
You were part of the hijacking and derailing. Please stop perpetuating flamewars on HN, no matter how right you are or feel you are. It's not what this site is for.
If other comments are egregious, flag them and/or let us know at hn@ycombinator.com and we'll take a look.
I can see how one can conclude that. But I replied to a post with honest intention (it hadn't been flagged, and I assumed secularism was a "safe" topic :). But it wasn't certainly on the topic, and I'll keep that in mind from now before contributing.
Hilarious how you compare symbolic government representatives on waqf and gurudwara committe to be like government administration of temples.
1) in the case of temples, the money to run it comes from devotees, but the complete administration is done by the government. This means government hires and fires the employees, decides the salaries, have complete oversight of the money incoming and outgoing, decides what to do with the money. All of this is funded by the temple devotees.
I don't know much about gurudwara, and by own admissions, church act is null and void, but i can speak for waqf and mosques. Mosques have zero external interference. It's run by mosque committees formed of the local Muslim community elders. How is this even comparable?
As for waqf comitte, let's see. Sure they have namesake goverment appointee. But he does nothing in terms of setting the agenda on the waqf properties and institutions' administrations. They are completely decided by the Muslim community leaders who form bulk of the committee. They not only have complete independence on administration, in some cases (for eg: in kerala) their salary comes from state exchequer. So just to reiterate, temples are completely run by the state government with the funding coming from Hindu devotes, while the exact opposite is true for Muslim religious institutions, and you want to say both are same? Temple priests had to go to court (Indian courts that takes decades to settle a case) just to increase their salary from 20 rupees and you say they are same type of interference? That's a whole another level of gaslighting and bigotry.
To quote waqf kerala state website (first link on state waqf board google search):
"The State Government appoints a Chief Executive Officer for the Boardin consultation with the Board . Also the Board is empowered by the Act to appoint such number of officers and other employees as may be necessary for performance of its functions in consultation with the State Government under section 24 of Wakf Act,1995. All the employees of the Board are deemed to be public servants within the meaning of Section 21 of the IndianPenal Code(45 of 1860)"
2) Now let me address this doesn't even remotely address the main point that i was making. Waqf plays no role in the administration of educational institutions.
Things matter here are:
article 29(1), 30(1), TMA Pai judgement, Art 15(5) through 93rd Amendment, RTE.
You can read about these on your own. The tl;dr of it is that, Muslims/Christians/Jains/Sikhs etc have absolute freedom to create and run schools with complete autonomy with the magical "minority status". Also, in case of Muslims/Christians/Jains/Sikhs as opposed to linguistic minorities, there is this thing called NCMEI who will automatically grant the status to a new institutions if the state does nothing on the application for the status. These institutions are run with complete autonomy on hiring/firing teachers, failing students, expelling students, some of the curriculum (that allows such human rights violations as a christian school forcing a non christian student enrolled to attend bible classes, or parading the students for political causes etc.). The schools can screen 100% of students on whatever criteria decided by the management setting whatever tuition fee. The teachers doesn't have to be SET/NET qualified. In some cases (aided schools), the funding comes from the government. These aided minority colleges are exempt from quotas (for poor, SC/ST etc) that are applicable to fully unaided Hindu run colleges.
For a Hindu run school, no screening allowed, teachers have to be SET qualified, at least 25% of the seats have to be reserved for government, students can't be expelled, and a lot more.
3) Then there are things like MSDP, hunaar haat, scholarships, subsidy for religious pilgrimages, salaries and pensions for priests and scholars and lot more that the Indian state discriminates massively on religious identity - which you ironically call "secularism".
You can't make your arguments by forever shouting right-wing after every sentence. There is no right or left wing. It's a meaningless adjective to shutdown any discussion to dehumanize the other.
There are authoritarians and religious fanatics. I argue that everyone must be treated equally irrespective of their religious believes or identity, and you want to discriminate others based on their religious identity and believes.
You are both breaking the HN guidelines egregiously. Religious and nationalistic flamewar is not welcome here, neither are personal swipes, and we don't want tedious tit-for-tat spats.
Please don't do anything like this on HN again, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.
"We poor majority Hindus are being marginalised by the minority in India in the name of secularism."
(Note that in India around 80% of the population is Hindu, and the minorities are less than 20%).
The sophistry of argument is interesting here when it is claimed that lower caste Hindus cannot setup their own exclusive schools, while the minorities can (the right-wing claims this as "discrimination" introduced in the name of secularism). Funnily, such demands for a caste-exclusive institutions have always come from certain upper-caste dominated religious right-wing in India, who actually look down on the lower caste in India and don't socially interact with them unless they absolutely have to. They yearn for the days were every caste was educated by their own community, thus "preserving the purity" of the caste system (which is part of the Hindu religious system).
With such a mindset, it is quite understandable why they would like to set up "exclusive and pure" schools that is only for their caste community. Caste discrimination continues to be a huge problem in India, and it should be thus quite obvious why the government of India has no interest in allowing such exclusive caste-based schools - it can lead to caste ghettoization that would just prolong and make the evils of caste discrimination worse.
Hindus can absolutely setup their own private schools and colleges in India, but it cannot be "exclusively Hindu" or some "caste exclusive" only institution. But this is true for minority run institutes too - they can only allocate 50% of the seats to students of their community, while the remaining 50% has to be filled with students from other community.
Apart from this 50% seats for their own community, they are also given more autonomy to run their institutions.
Why are they so allowed?
The indian state believes that minorities rightly have a concern that they can be deprived of educational opportunities as the majority hugely outnumber them. Thus, to allay this fear the constitution grants them the protection and privilege of running their own institutions which can be exclusively for their community to a certain extent, with more autonomy (which implies less interference from a "majority" run government).
Since any Hindu can start and run a school or a college, and thanks to the nature of India's population, it is guaranteed to be filled with more than 50% Hindus, we can rightly guess that the real issue that the Hindutva right-wing have is:
- They can't run castiest schools.
- They have issues with the "extra" autonomy granted to minority run institutes.
I have already addressed why India doesn't allow castiest institutes. On autonomy in minority institutes, it should be clear that this constitutional guarantee of autonomy is what prevents those in power from interfering in the affairs of minority run institutions (and was added in the constitution for precisely such a purpose - to protect the minorities from abuse by an unsympathetic majority in power).
This kind of fair balancing of the rights of the minorities, which the majorities are expected to defend and uphold, is what is attacked in the name of "flawed secularism".
Obviously our colonial history has had a huge impact on our psyche, and influenced our democracy. As for "traditonal hindu values" or "native traditions", these are clever bogus arguments used by the current right-wing to do away with the indian secularism envisioned and enshrined in our constitution.
Actually there is. Don't set up physical presences in oppressive countries. Architect your software to not rely on singular chokepoints like centralized servers.
We've seem to have forgotten this, because it's not economically expedient. But we shouldn't give these companies a pass for having set themselves up to be instruments of totalitarianism.
According to the article, Pakistan (along with China, Vietnam, Germany, Nigeria, and Russia among others) requires physical presence and data localization in order to do business.
Or what? A physical presence is one of the only leverage points they'd have over you. If you don't accede to that, what are they going to do?
Obviously I'm describing a much different tack than Google and Apple have chosen, and switching between the two isn't easy. But the point is that Google and Apple could have set themselves up this way, likely with the full blessing of the State Department. They chose not to and now predictably find themselves being used to implement totalitarianism.
Their situation is a bit stickier being hardware brands, but that just illustrates why they shouldn't have built in digital restrictions to their devices. I doubt Asus is finding themselves under such pressure, because they simply don't have the technical capability to control what users run on their computers.
> Their situation is a bit stickier being hardware brands,
I agree with your general point but not this part. Apple products still find their way into countries with no Apple Stores. I don't think selling physical products really makes the situation much sticker. If Apple chose to be a pure hardware company and refused to do any business in Pakistan, Pakistanis could still purchase Apple devices through the usual resellers and/or [black/gray]markets. Pakistan would have no leverage over Apple, as you point out, and Apple would not be a participant in the implementation totalitarianism (as they presently are.)
As it stands, as someone from one of those countries that's recently managed to reign in companies without such physical presence, there's a lot they can do.
It typically starts from automated ISP/NSP level blockages of assigned IP spaces, then an import / licensure ban and typically even extends to full ban on payment outflow (or automatically enforced surcharges).
To effectively fight against this, the company has to be prepared to lose access to its entire userbase in that country. As we've found more and more often recently though, not many are.
Eh, it does not sound like you thought this through. I would prefer my medical data to reside in my country, so that its governed by privacy laws I vited for.
The whole blockclain free-for-all ungovernable banansa has it's place, but its not for everything.
It sounds like you live in a country that is not Pakistan, where it's likely to make more sense for tech companies to operate within the system rather than staying outside of it. Even so, it would ultimately be up to you whether to trust any specific company with your "medical data", with one of the factors being whether they were bound by your country's legal system or not.
And who mentioned anything about blockchain? The philosophy of routing around censorship and end user empowerment is much older than blockchains, and that you're pigeonholing the ethos as "blockchain" just shows how much we've forgotten.
The (rather massive) flaw in your reasoning is the idea that Google and Apple are the solution to the problem.
If you live in a society without religious freedom, that's a big problem, but Apple and Google can't fix it.
If you care about the problem, it's important to understand this. If you succeed in getting people to focus on symptom of the problem and not the cause, you will help prevent it from being addressed.
Apple and Google put themselves in a position where they became a part of the problem. If they ran open platforms where they don't have to power to ban apps this would never have happened.
>Apple and Google put themselves in a position where they became a part of the problem. If they ran open platforms where they don't have to power to ban apps this would never have happened.
In this particular case, what problem would open platforms solve? The laws in Pakistan still exist and the social problem is not addressed. Or are you implying that Apple and Google should be on the hook for solving religious problems in other countries? If so, I think wanting companies to engineer social behavior in other countries is a dangerous path bordering on the unethical (IMO).
But having said all that, whats stopping a country from simply blocking their hosting servers? Ultimately, the app has to be downloaded from somewhere. Okay, so then you move to a P2P system, so then the get their ISPs to block that,etc ,etc. It's just whack-a-mole.
You can make the same arguments for bribery. Nonetheless it is illegal for a US company to bribe people abroad and US companies end up selling off their holdings in banana republics.
Why is this law good? The US has a long history of corporations owning too much in banana republics and bringing the US into pro-dictator political positions.
> Nonetheless it is illegal for a US company to bribe people abroad
IANAL but this is only partially true from what I understand. It's legal if the bribe is "grease money". (Grease money is paying a public official to do their job properly and promptly, while regular bribery is paying a public official to do something they shouldn't. But the distinction between the two seems subjective or ambiguous in many possible scenarios.)
"...US companies end up selling off their holdings in banana republics."
Do you have a source for that? I have run across instances of US companies using various schemes to avoid the appearance of bribes (usually involving paying a "consultant" a large amount of money and paying no attention to how the consultant gets the business done), but I know of none getting rid of their businesses in other countries.
Chiquita/Columbia/FARC after Sept 11, AFAIK the actual crime they were fined for was the bribery (past payments to govt side), though they had the new problem of terrorist lists (any future payments to FARC side).
I think you are saying companies should break US laws regarding a topic (religious discrimination) while abroad in order to honor foreign laws if that is necessary in order to operate in a country.
I think they should not consider operating in that fashion. They can push for regulation themselves if on their withdrawal they want to prevent an advantage to less ethical US competitors who stay.
I don't get it. Why would any government allow a business to operate if they don't respect local laws. Would the US allow that?
On principle, I sort of reject this notion that a giant corporation(s) should be encouraged to meddle in the internal matters of other countries. I think these kinds of moves will be perceived very differently by the locals. The famous line "They will welcome us as liberators with open arms..." (paraphrased) comes to mind :)
I think it is far better to promote your ideas peacefully using other means, rather than by forcing a government to adopt your views because you threaten them with economic consequences by pulling out of the country.
Finance is the peaceful other means if you enforce laws on the people you can in order to keep it peaceful.
US companies won't be running Uyghur reeducation camps in China even though that is lawful in China and may be their best way to source the right labor.
Is everything happening anyway and with more cost by keeping a separation between US companies/nationals and crimes under US law? Sure. Is it still better? Mercenaries that come back having done "legal" things in foreign countries are a social plague and their connections to groups the US considers criminal are problematic.
To not pick only on China, any US national who works with spyware for the Saudi regime is a criminal under US law, and that is important because they need to be watched when they return to the US to prevent them from assisting in assasinations in US/Canada. Does it matter if the crown prince made their actions in Saudi Arabia legal?
For a US company to do business in another country, if they are unable to conduct business without breaking US law, then the answer is clear. They simply cannot do business without incorporating separately as a new entity in the foreign country. In the case of a national, they may have to change their citizenship if they wish to take up that job, etc. Yes, it totally sucks that the world cannot agree on certain basic principles, but I believe we must promote change peacefully without threats/force.
In any case, I think we're way off topic here, trying to solve the worlds problems in the comment section. The last word is yours :)
If it was easier for people to sideload apps, or there were many competing app stores, then people could get around theses bans more easily.
For example, if I could go to any website, on an iphone, and install an app very easily (Assume I choose to do so, via some setting), then it wouldn't matter as much if Apple banned the app from the app store.
> whats stopping a country from simply blocking their hosting servers?
They could do that, but if it was easy to install apps on a phone, then it would be very difficult for a country to block every website that hosts the app.
> . Okay, so then you move to a P2P system, so then the get their ISPs to block that
Governments are not infinitely powerful. An efforts to get around government internet censorship, sometimes work.
And the more methods there are of circumventing government censorship, the easier it is to do so.
Censorship has an effect. But it is not perfect. There is a spectrum of behavior, where it can be easier or harder to get around censorship.
You can't reasonably expect a government to welcome a business into their country, while the business is working against the interests of said government. Apple and Google are businesses who operate in various countries with the objective of making money.
I still don't see why a tech company in the US should be in charge of engineering social behavior around the world. In my opinion, this is a dangerous path.
> Because they made a mistake once, they should make it twice?
What I am saying is that you are suggesting an extraordinary measure. In the same way that banning all PCs is an extraordinary measure.
Such a measure would have wide reaching consequences, and large costs. Most governments are not completely irrational. They respond to incentives, and if something is very difficult to do, then they are going to be less likely to do it.
And making all phones illegal, sounds like something that would be more difficult to do, than banning a couple app stores.
> No, I don't think that.
Ok cool. So then if the phone manufactures made it so their phones were all unlocked, which is what I am recommending that they do, then you would not say that this is going down a dangerous path.
Got it. You agree with my original position that they should sell unlocked devices.
I don't think its an order of magnitude. Blocking CDNs that host APKs and P2P traffic is fairly easy to implement. Most firewalls will let you do this. The more wide-scale you want to deploy your app, the easier it will be to detect (more asymmetry) and block the hosting source.
Anyway, we're far far away from the main point now. I believe the best approach to the problem is solving it bottom-up rather than top-down. Practically speak as well, its going to be seen as a US company forcing "western morals" on a developing country.
They can block the hosting servers, domains, etc. They can also block you from searching the name of the app, etc. There are multiple tools of censorship that are available to governments. Banning the app is the easiest.
Just as we have laws that prevent US organizations from giving or taking bribes even in countries where bribes are legal (FCPA), and US laws prevent US individuals from overseas sex tourism which would be illegal on US soil, what prevents us from requiring US organizations not to participate in religious oppression, child exploitation, and other such acts?
Would this not just lead to a fragmentation of whatever industry? e.g. if google / apple can't legally do business in Pakistan or some other countries because of these laws, presumably someone like China will step in and provided the missing products or services. Not that this is necessarily a bad situation ethnically anyways, but there are consequences.
You would further have to require US organizations not to do business with other organizations that participate in oppression, etc., transitively. And have to have a way to enforce that.
You're right that if they ran open platforms where they don't have the power to ban apps this never would have happened: someone else who made a basically malware-free experience for phones would be in that position instead.
An "open platform" where every inexperienced user can install whatever they want on their device is a world where most every phone has several remote access malware/spyware packages installed on it.
Centralizing these functions is good, in some respects.
How come would that not happen? Apps come from somewhere and they are installed on someone's platform. The government can simply ask the provider of those apps to stop providing them and/or the provider of the platform to stop allowing for them to be installed. Your only choice then is to comply or stop doing business in that country.
So the only reasonable complaint I could see against these companies now is "maybe they should have stopped doing business in that country" which would allow them to take the high moral road. Ofc that wouldn't necessarily result in better freedom for the people in the country, just fewer services than the rest of the world but it is a possible choice.
> provider of the platform to stop allowing for them to be installed
The fact that this is possible (worse on iOS) is the architectural and political tragedy of these app stores. A "provider of the platform" should have no power to have any say in what apps are installed on a user-owned device, in which case it would be impossible to coerce them into banning this or that.
> A "provider of the platform" should have no power to have any say in what apps are installed on a user-owned device, in which case it would be impossible to coerce them into banning this or that.
What if end users who buy the device WANT the manufacturer to have that power, to keep their device malware- and spyware-free?
Do you think Ahmadiyya Muslims in Pakistan want Apple and the Pakistani government to forbid them from installing the software they like? Do you think they feel safe because of this? It is common for totalitarian systems to cite user/citizen safety to justify themselves. I encourage you to see past this bullshit.
Apple doesn't give one without the other. I think they could though; software could be sandboxed without an American corporation exerting authoritarian control over the distribution of software. But Apple has no interest in providing something like that, they like money too much.
Does Pakistan force Microsoft to bar the installation of Ahmadiyya software on Windows? I expect not. Windows, closed source as it is, is open relative to iOS and consequently is less vulnerable to this sort of pressure.
If the provider of the app has no footprint in the oppressive country, and Apple and Google have control because they have open platforms, then the apps will continue to be available.
What about the iOS users? AFAIK, it's more likely the Ahmadiyyas have iPhones since they are a relatively well-off community compared to the rest of Pakistan (or the Muslim world in general).
I can tell you none of my cousins over there who belong to that community had an iPhone last time I saw them, they were busy making fun of an old iPhone I had brought to sell compared to their Androids
>The (rather massive) flaw in your reasoning is the idea that Google and Apple are the solution to the problem.
What makes you say that?
I see nothing in their comment which implies Google and Apple could or should solve the problems of oppressive countries.
If a criminal who wants to commit murder asks me to sell them a gun and I decline, it would be absurd to think that implied I thought I could solve the problem of murder.
Rather, I would simply be refusing to be a conscious, direct enabler of murder. It would be nakedly malicious for me to reason "well, if I don't sell them this gun, someone else will, so I might as well make some money."
Leave out the word religious. Lack of religious freedom usually comes along with a lot of other rights being trampled on.
We must admit that there are people in this world who do and say things we do not agree with. However the same system which expands from trampling on religious rights to other rights is no different than a system which tramples on another right and eventually tramples religion.
Corporations have little choice when faced with government intervention and we cannot seriously hold these corporations accountable for bowing down to political pressure elsewhere when we allow our own government a free pass for doing the same or turning a blind eye to it.
To change how businesses operate abroad we must change how our government operates. We should hold both to the same standard but government must lead because it has the courts, the arms, and the laws, to pressure one but the other has little it can do to pressure it
Me? I think they should close any facilities they have in Pakistan, tell Pakistan plainly that they're not going to do that, and keep making the app available. (Of course, I don't own any stock, so it's kind of painless for me to have that opinion.)
The thing is, neither Apple nor Google wants a future where the only apps available are those that lie in the intersection of what is legal in 180 different jurisdictions. (I mean, Myanmar just blocked Facebook. What if they demanded that Google and Apple remove the Facebook app from their stores?) The alternatives are to have a different store for each country (do-able technically, but a lot of work, and I don't like it on freedom grounds), or to just say no to some countries' demands that some apps be removed.
Specifically Apple: You had the "1984" Super Bowl commercial. Are you now going to be on the side of the censors? Or are you still on the side of freedom?
Leaving Pakistan means shutting down their Pakistani App Store, so the app still won't be available.
(Someone could, say, put the app on the US store and Pakistanis might be able to figure out a way to get it from there... but they can do that either way.)
> ...The alternatives are to have a different store for each country
OK, I guess you don't know this yet, but that's the way it is and has been the whole time. Different laws, different stores. We already aren't stuck with the intersection of what's allowed in 180 different jurisdictions.
> Leaving Pakistan means shutting down their Pakistani App Store, so the app still won't be available.
If Apple chose not to exercise totalitarian control over iOS users by making their App Store essential to installing software on iOS devices, then Apple would not have to collaborate with the totalitarian Pakistani government. Pakistani religious and ethnic minorities could distribute software through whatever covert channels they've already established to resist their oppressive government.
And the (rather massive) flaw in yours is the idea that "fixing" and "not fixing" a problem are the only two possible outcomes.
Would Apple and Google condemning this policy and refusing to comply "fix" the problem? Probably not. Is it the right thing to do? Of course! One certainly shouldn't help enforce an unjust law. This action lends a huge amount of credibility to an immoral policy.
We're focusing on this mere "symptom" of the problem because it's Apple and Google. Our laws govern those companies. Our (seemingly theoretical) ability to control them means we are partially responsible when they do bad things.
Ultimately "refusing to comply" means exiting the Pakistan market (and accepting arbitrarily harsh fines and criminal punishments for their employees until they do).
> One certainly shouldn't help enforce an unjust law.
The law is being enforce on them. Your moral responsibility for a situation is proportionate to your power over that situation. Apple and Google have some sway due to their size, but it seems to me it's limited. I suspect that in a direct sense they largely suck money out of the Pakistani economy rather than pump money in, which really blunts their influence.
> Our laws govern those companies.
In Pakistan, Pakistani laws govern those companies. The US (and other nations) could impose economic sanctions on Pakistan for this (which would affect the business Apple, Google and others from do there). If that's what you want then you need to be lobbying your politicians.
I'm confident we only disagree on the threshold of injustice. Surely there is a point where exiting the market is the only moral thing to do? Or does the responsibility-proportional-to-power argument justify subjecting your business to literally any law?
To me, this law is past the threshold where it is morally acceptable to continue to do business in that nation. For you, that threshold is somewhere else, but I'm confident that you have one. Which of the following semi-hypothetical laws would it be acceptable for an American company to enforce, rather than ceasing business operations in the country?
1. Take-down of apps used to propagate what the state considers blasphemy
2. Take-down of apps used to advertise the democratic candidate of the party opposing the party in power
3. Requirement that the location data of all users of a certain set of apps, e.g. Grindr, be actively provided to state officials
4. Requirement that the location data of all users be provided to state officials with a court order
5. Same as 4, but without a court order
6. Requirement that the state be given the ability to arbitrarily adjust the prominence of web search results
I could go on, but you get the picture. I'll bet there are things on this list that you would be uncomfortable with your employer, or an American company whose services you used, helping to enforce. There are also probably some things on the list that you think are futile for individuals or companies to resists, even if you wish the law wasn't that way. I think that's is all there is to our disagreement: That we draw the line in a slightly different spot.
> Surely there is a point where exiting the market is the only moral thing to do?
Agreed.
But I don't think this case is it. Mainly because exiting does pretty much nothing to prevent Pakistani persecution of Ahmadiyya Muslims. It's like you see a bully picking on a kid every day at the park and you just decide to go to a different park. Maybe you feel a little better about it yourself, but it doesn't help the kid.
This can be done on a larger scale, which will have a strong impact. I'm talking about economic sanctions via the UN or at least the US, where certain kinds of business are not allowed or restricted. In theory these kinds of sanctions could force countries to liberalize. But the reality isn't always that great. The general population ends up bearing the economic misery while the people in power, who make the decisions, do not. The general population tends to get resentful of the west, not adopt its values, and the people in power keep enjoying their power anyway. It seems these sanctions can turn countries inward, not outward, becoming more extreme and less liberal. North Korea, Iran, Russia.
> It's like you see a bully picking on a kid every day at the park and you just decide to go to a different park. Maybe you feel a little better about it yourself, but it doesn't help the kid.
I think this is a really good analogy if you flesh it out completely.
Eve is bullying Alice, and says that anybody who plays with Alice will be chased from the park. Alice asks to play with Bob, and now Bob has a choice to make.
Bob thinks, "If I play with Alice, it won't last long. Eve will force me from the park, and Alice won't get to play anyway. And I won't be able to play either! At least, not at this park."
So Bob decides the right thing to do is to continue playing with the other kids at the park, but never Alice.
I think Bob made the wrong call here. The alternative was not merely "deciding to go to a different park", it was standing up for Alice. The cause of his departure, and the fact that it was Eve that forced him, is important. It's not just Bob who "feels a little better about himself", it's Alice.
"exiting does pretty much nothing to prevent Pakistani persecution of Ahmadiyya Muslims"
Theybare direvtly enabling it in a way pakistani government would be unable to without them. And they are not going to give up smartphones if both Google and apple refuse.
Surely if hypothetical bazis asked Google and Apple for location of all jews, you would not be like "well, they can't loose business over this"
> The (rather massive) flaw in your reasoning is the idea that Google and Apple are the solution to the problem.
Nor should they even attempt to, because the moment they get involved in policy making you have an army of HNs complaining how large corporations influence politics.
No one asked for them to get involved in policy making. They're referring to making their platforms more open such that neither Apple nor Google have complete dictation of what is downloaded and installed.
Especially in Apple's case, this would be a useless ban if they let people download apps outside of the App Store.
> Try not to shoehorn something that has no consensus into every legal issue.
Issues can be moral, legal, neither, and both. Presuming an issue is strictly legal can preemptively invalidate efforts to address moral aspects of the issue.
If the moral aspect of an issue has universal consensus, there is little to discuss. This criteria shuts down meaningful discussion of ethics.
Edit: Laws follow from values, especially in democracies. As values change, eventually laws change, including the constitution. The gp was raising ethical considerations for us to consider. To me it seems like you discount and trivialize these concerns.
The person I responded to made arguments that were primarily about hypothetical legal capabilities of western countries, in a bid to make us empathize on an ethical issue. Their argument failed because their analogies would have actually have to look at what legal route each country individually chose to accomplish their censorship. Which means looking at how Pakistan accomplished this censorship first. Pakistan has a constitution that supports this and requires the rulers to be arbiters of what is and isnt represented as muslim.
The reality then is that I did not comment on an ethical issue at all because my comment was not about that and won’t be, because there is no mystery about the legal authority of Pakistan to do that and the path to consensus of changing that is so high (big assumption that I would care to do so or care about that discussion) that it is far outside of the scope of this particular discussion.
Usually, the assertive arguments on non-technical ideas are difficult to address.
It's easy to identify the fundamental misconception in the argument. But the proponent is always very fervent on that point from the very beginning. That makes the debate more ideological and less rational.
That's the conundrum of such debates. The balance heavily favors the first one who claimed the high ground, regardless what value that one actually stands for.
So rational arguments have to be based on the foundation that either or both of the opposite sides can and should change thoughts based on the information exchanged during the conversation.
Assertive non technical argument usually is based certain belief(s), which are often obviously wrong outside it's narrow scope.
But these arguments are held by people actually believe in them with a conviction that is clearly based on emotions therefore by definition irrational.
So when someone engaged in such argument and tries to argue otherwise, the discussion has to be like try to mold a steel cylinder with a bear hand. Sure you can wear down a steel cylinder with bear hand, through enough patience and time. But in the span of a discussion, that's impossible.
Thus, the one who stick the steel cylinder first is bound to win, or at least not loose, for example, the counterpart decide to stick their own cylinder and 2 sides appear no longer engage, until the circumstance requires the clash or some random side wire that causes the clash.
People disagree on the ethical principle of free speech, and arguing that Google or Apple have a duty to that ethical principle begs the question of the ethical principle itself.
I wouldn’t say that I’m defending the practice. It’s a bad decision and I wish Pakistan wouldn’t censor these apps.
But it really does seem like the responsibility lies with Pakistan here. The article suggests Google’s trying hard to keep these apps up, and has indeed kept some up despite government pressure. At the end of the day, their options to resist legal demands are limited, and it’s hard for me to see an argument that this relatively small instance of censorship is so important they should shut down operations in Pakistan over it.
> At the end of the day, their options to resist legal demands are limited
They're really not. Google is not based in Pakistan, and they don't have offices or datacenters in Pakistan.
Why should they take _global_ action against developers who are _located in the US_ on the request of someone who does not have jurisdiction over them?
It's interesting how this plays out in reverse to the typical copyright fights - people violating US intellectual property law in Pakistan (or wherever) are often litigated under those US laws; here they're litigating against Americans based on Pakistani laws.
They shouldn't and haven't taken global action against the developers. The apps remain available outside of Pakistan - you can find them if you search for "ahmadiyya muslim community quran".
Im sure they do sell ads in Pakistan and want in the future?
An independent state could strangle that business in many easy ways if that is their mission, therefor Google will eventually do whatever it takes to stay in the market.
Indeed, in the final appeal that failed in Pakistan against these laws (Zaheeruddin v. State) the Supreme Court bench cited the Coca-Cola trademark as an example
>"Would it be fair if England declared Catholics “unChristian” and banned their use if the term?"
I assume you know that happened all the time during the Reformation period with Henry the Eighth starting it, with a contrasting bit in the middle where Bloody Mary persecuted non-Catholics instead.
They were bored and the internet hadn't been invented yet.
Once kings and queens weren't in charge, things got a lot more relaxed in that area.
> Would it be fair if England declared Catholics "unChristian" and banned their use if the term?
I think it's slightly more nuanced than that. For example, England should be able to declare whether a given group of people are members of the Church of England (organization). Wherever a centralized authority exists, that authority should have the power to declare whether or not someone is a member of the organization. The Catholic church should absolutely be able to declare some rogue sect that claims to be Catholic "unCatholic".
However, you are absolutely right, where no centralized authority exists no one should be able to classify others' high level beliefs. Whether someone is Jewish, Christian, Islam, Atheist, etc. is not up to anyone but the individual adherent. If you believe in Jesus Christ and believe you are following his teachings, you are a Christian and no government or conglomerate of sects should be able to say otherwise. If you believe in Mohammed and the tenets of Islam, no government or conglomerate of sects should be able to say you are not a Muslim.
Not everyone agrees with any given central authority. In religion especially this is often over relatively complex reasons that outsiders probably aren't in a position to try and navigate. You need only to refer to religious history and it's many wars to see this: the tri-part nature of Christ, the exact date of Easter, the shaving of heads in early English history, etc.
Nor should we start allowing the Church of England to press Google into service putting it's agenda forward. We recognize that dissent is an important part of free speech!
> England should be able to declare whether a given group of people are members of the Church of England (organization). Wherever a centralized authority exists, that authority should have the power to declare whether or not someone is a member of the organization. The Catholic church should absolutely be able to declare some rogue sect that claims to be Catholic "unCatholic".
They should have the power to declare whether or not they consider someone to be a member of an organization. Nothing more. This goes beyond simply declaring whether or not they consider Ahmadis to be Muslims. The Pakistani government is using "anti-blasphemy" laws to silence anyone who objects to their declaration.
The fundamental issue with the argument you're presenting is that Pakistan is not a secular country, unlike England or the USA. An example of a country that bases their government on a particular religion allowing citizens to freely declare whether they're adherents of that religion even if their practice differs significantly compared to established orthodoxy would significantly strengthen this assertion.
> Pakistan is not a secular country, unlike England or the USA
It's a minor quibble, but England does have an established national Church, so it's not entirely secular in the way the US is. 26 CofE Bishops sit in the House of Lords, the Lords Spiritual. The head of state is also the head of the Church.
The highly religious nature of US settlers is directly connected to our secular freedoms. A lot of early settlers were pretty extreme practicers of their religions and faced persecution in Europe. They left to practice their religion in a place where they wouldn't be burned as a heretic. It's interesting that these opposing extremists were able to get along separately by agreeing to keep the government secular
> They left to practice their religion in a place where they wouldn't be burned as a heretic.
Not true, at least in the obvious case of the Pilgrims of Plymouth. They were perfectly free to practice their religion when they lived in the Netherlands. They moved away because they wanted to create their own strict theocratic colony. The Netherlands, in their eyes, had too much religious freedom.
Even that specific example is a bit of a gray area imo. They were persecuted in England and tried to live in the Netherlands but found life hard to adjust and were also wanting to keep their English identity. So, it is more of persecution by the Church of England that pushed them away.
The Netherlands do get a point here for tolerance imo.
It's an interesting piece of American history worth drilling down on.
The Virginia Statue of Religious Freedom originated from one of the Southern colonies, which tended towards more English mainstream religion (Jefferson himself was raised in the Church of England, but considered himself a Deist). It served as a sort of "non-aggression pact" between the religions, since the various sects of the Northern colonies had quite a bit of political power by virtue of concentration of their adherents and isolation from traditional European religious power.
Yes, and that’s related to the formation of the Church of England too. The religious settlements in the reign of Elizabeth I and others aimed to bring Catholic-leaning and Protestant-leaning believers together in one broad church, but it couldn’t accommodate every sect, so some were excluded from the national church, persecuted, and eventually left. You can still see the division today in high and low Anglican churches.
Is it ok to sell weapons of war to a country engaging in ethnic cleansing, and if not - why not?
After all, the country is allowed to decide it's own rules and laws. If it decides ethnic cleansing is allowable, we should follow that right?
Of course not! Just because a country decides some action is legal doesn't make it moral or ethical - and knowingly aiding an unethical act is itself unethical! We do and should absolutely shun and punish countries engaging in things like ethnic cleansing - even if they're assisting a country that has deemed it legal.
Why in the world would religious prosecution be some kind of special case?
> On another hand you have Google and Apple, yet again, being the complicit chokepoints of “free speech”, with regard to app developers.
And how is that detail is pertinent to this discussion?
If it wasn't Google or Apple it would be other companies. Even if it wasn't large companies it would be 100 smaller companies and all those 100 smaller companies would have to comply (even more so because they have fewer resources to fight a government deciding things in their own country).
Smaller companies might not have as much commercial exposure in Pakistan - i.e. if they have no formal business presence there, what would be the consequences for them not complying? For example, if these "apps" were traditional Windows executables instead who would the government on Pakistan lean on to get them blocked? The best they could do is attempt a "great firewall of China" style block on internet traffic itself.
Citation? You'd think they'd be being boycotted like Shezan was then. And the claim about India is even more out there. Are you sure you're not thinking about Memons like Adamjee?
2020 was the year of HN's eternal September, facilitated by the behavior changes brought by c19. If you can recommend a similar forum that still retains a culture of objectivity I would be very interested.
The PTA isn't stopping at walled-garden App Stores; Google and Apple are just one of the few countries large enough to have a physical presence Pakistan can threaten. They also threatened a handful of US-based web hosts who are basically prohibited from seeing their families until they censor this sect.
(And yes, I'm using the word 'censor' here. It is entirely appropriate under even the narrowest definitions of the word, as the decision to remove content was made with the force of law. The US has similar provisions known as the 'state actors doctrine'.)
It took me a second to get this argument, but it’s a good one. If there were thousands of marketplaces on iOS and Android, then Pakistan would have to negotiate the removal on all of this platforms, as opposed to only two.
Spelling it out clearly like that, it makes me wonder if there are many governments that prefer to have monopolies to deal with, rather than many companies. It certainly makes regulation simpler.
You can look at how many governments have managed to keep websites they don't like down. Thepiratebay and tons of other illegal sites are still available today in most places of the world even where they are illegal.
If we didn't have the free open web and instead just had appstore like gatekeepers none of those sites would be allowed to exist.
I personally worked for a large tech company and was involved with 'content filtering discussions' with questionable regimes.
HN doesn't like such arguments, it's not an argument, just an experience.
It's common.
Pragmatically speaking, it's much harder for Pakistan to filter the entire web, than control international conglomerates which they generally can do.
We need diversity in search, and absolutely need to have 'many app stores' and 'direct downloads'.
The arguments for 'security' are rubbish, and the plebes supporting Apple's monopoly I don't think understand what's happening.
In US anti-trust cases, generally there has be evidence of 'harm to consumers' - well - these 'bans' absolutely represent harm. Bans of Apps (even unsavoury things like Parler) and unquestionably arbitrary controls on choice that harm consumers. Moreover, Apple's 30% cut is a pretty obvious harm once you do the economic calculation.
So Apple should be more like Google - and - just as the EU has proposed with search wherein you get to choose your vendor, not defaults negotiated behind the scenes - the same goes with app stores.
Once the regulatory action is taken - we will still have secure apps, and there will be greater opportunity. In hindsight it will seem obvious and actually kind of simple.
Evidence of Apple's monopoly are actually baked right into that rate. They are price-setters, not subject to the whims of the market, and adjust their prices given non-market forces (press, threat of regulation etc.)
It's a high enough number that it absolutely changes outcomes, meaning at minimum less choice for consumers and higher cost, and implicitly, a whole host of lost opportunity.
In particular, there are tons of Enterprise apps that can't feasibly operate on Apple due to issues concerning Apple wanting to take the entirety of their profit.
As a small operation, in the corner of the economy, it doesn't matter, but this is unfolding like the Edison/Tesla/Westinghouse battles of the last century and we know how that ended up.
> In particular, there are tons of Enterprise apps that can't feasibly operate on Apple due to issues concerning Apple wanting to take the entirety of their profit.
False. Apple doesn’t take a percentage from enterprise distribution.
Also, you didn’t provide a counterfactual, which is exactly my point. The 15% on its own is indicative of nothing.
Apple absolutely takes 30% of Enterprise services, depending on how they are paid for, and as they gain more power, they will absolutely lever that power into other sectors.
"Apple is demanding 30% commission from Airbnb and ClassPass. That's because the pair have shifted to selling virtual, online classes during the pandemic. It has threatened to remove Airbnb from the App Store if it doesn't comply." [1]
How risky is it now to create a startup, used by anyone in a situation of 'individual buyers' that involves any kind of service?
Apple is threatening to take 30% of most of the US services economy.
If it 'happens on an iPhone' - they want 30%.
For small companies, it's 15% - but the difference is irrelevant because they are 'price setters' in a monopoly setting, and those prices cause consumer harm.
You cannot currently upgrade Spotify or Netflix using an iPhone - that is a fairly radically obvious example of Apple stupidity/consumer harm.
And finally the 15%/30% charge are material because they drive that consumer harm - were there no such charge, you'd be able to a range of other services.
" you didn’t provide a counterfactual, which is exactly my point." - yes, I did. A 30/15% tax causes material harm. The 15% is evidence of price setting. You can download apps for 0% all over the Android universe.
> Apple absolutely takes 15/30% of Enterprise services, depending on how they are paid for.
This is complete bullshit. They charge 15/30% for delivery of digital content through their actual platform.
Paying for services is done through Apple Pay, which has fees in line with any other credit card processor.
Yes, it’s true that there are some fucked up cases where Apple is classing certain digital content in a way that seems to violate this. Yes, we should be pressuring them to be sane about that.
But let’s not spread bullshit like ‘Apple charges 30% for “Enterprise Services”’ in some general way. That’s just misleading, and false.
Seems you have no understanding what Ahmadiyya standing for, let's clarify something first, one morning an Orange start calling herself Apple, should we start calling this Orange apple? should to Orange get offended if we still call it Apple? well we have to call the Orange Orange based on our well established understanding of the characteristics of a na orange and what makes it different, Ahmadiyya is widely considered non longer muslims amount the islamic world and islamic scholars, same fore Durouz in Lebanon for example, Ahmadiyya is against one of the main pillars of islam that prophet Mohamed is the last one but this movement founder declared himself a prophet and that god talks to him in english, this was established in 1889 during the British colonialism to India, islam consider people from other religions as infidel and it dose not seem to be an issue to christians or Jews how they are being seen by islam, and same thing goes to Christianity it dose not consider muslims as christians and I am sure muslims are happy not getting offended by not being Christians so I don't get it why this definitions are an issue while it comes to Ahmadyya, also I don't get your point of free speech while Ahmadyya are free to call themselves what they want and Muslims are also free to describe Ahmadyya the way they considered it right
Funnily enough the Ahamdis don't consider normal Muslims to be Muslims too!
Statements of Mirza Basheer-ud-Din, Ghulam Ahmad’s son and successor, including what he wrote in his book Ayena-e-Sadaaqat (p.35):
“Verily, every Muslim who does not pledge allegiance to the Promised Messiah (Mirza Ghulam Ahmad), whether he heard of his name or not, is a disbeliever and outside the fold of Islam!”
He is also quoted in the Qadiani periodical, Al-Fazl (30th July 1931) as reporting from his father, Ghulam Ahmad himself that he said:
“We disagree with the Muslims in everything: concerning God, the Messenger, the Qur’aan, prayer, fasting, hajj and zakaah. There is a fundamental difference of opinion between us in all of these things!”
Like Jinnah, Mirza Basheer said a lot of things at one time and a lot of diametrically opposite things at another. Punishing people who aren't dead for something someone who is dead said is a bad idea, so is predicating citizenship rights. Do you think I asked for who my parents were? Do you think it's fair they couldn't even register their marriage in Pak and could only give Nikahnama to American embassy on the way out?
The point was aimed at the classification of Ahamdis as not being Muslim and how the founder and main leaders of the Ahmadiyya even seen their movement as radically different to mainstream Islam. I haven't seen any statements of them opposing these views.
Regardless, I wasn't advocating or defending their persecution.
Are you talking about the below National Assembly where it couldn't be decided by him whether mainstream Muslims are Kaafir according to the widely published statements of the founder?
I keep thinking about infamous Telegram 'war' with russian cenrosship agency, RosKomNadzor. Telegram was blocked via russian ISPs, but was never removed from Russian sections of Google Play and Apple Appstore.
We now see that Apple and Google, time after time, easily submit to the will of local governments and remove questionable apps. Yet, Telegram was NOT removed. Russian media agencies claim that RosKomNadzor asked Google&Apple to suspend the app, but the source for all media publications was always the same press-release by RKN. So it keeps me thinking: what if the world was played and all this 'blocking' scandal was just a publicity stunt to raise Telegram's profile as a service that does not give up data to authorities?
Does anyone know if we can confirm via Google & Apple that they were asked to remove Telegram from play stores (and refused), or... they weren't really asked at all?
A country's law can be bypassed by not doing business there, an option that Google is already familiar from its 2010 decision regarding China. Pakistan is a large country, but I don't think it is a big market for Google - certainly much smaller than China.
Also, I found it disingenuous that Google plays "it's the law card" when it spends millions of dollars a year lobbying in the United States to get laws changed. Now, it may be much harder to get the Pakistan government to change its mind around the inclusion of "Muslim" for online content for this group - but I doubt Google has bothered to try...
There is more than a country's law to consider, there is international law and war crimes tribunals. Nothing maybe for Google to worry about yet, but what if Pakistan passes a law is passed that requires Google to give up all search data on this minority population in order that the government can monitor, imprison or kill them? I'd like to see how Google's legal team would respond to that. I'm guessing comply and cover-up, but I'd like to be wrong.
Note it doesn't even have to be an international law, it can be a better, future Pakistan, perhaps one with an Ahmadiyya leader - as inconceivable as that seems now. Germany for example, is charging an old lady with aiding and abetting murder (10,000 times!) for her secretarial work as a minor in a concentration camp. Pakistan is bigger than Germany and Google is good at doing things at scale... so let's hope Google leadership leads.
I'm not sure exactly what the correct set of actions for Apple is in the Pakistan case, but I don't feel these two are all that similar.
In that case Apple broke no laws. The FBI very likely did not have the legal power to compel Apple to break the phone’s encryption. The FBI issued orders to Apple, Apple legally disputed the orders. Apple's actions in disputing unjust orders is allowed under US law.
Versus this case where the Pakistani government does, unfortunately, have full authority to pass and enforce this law as harshly as it wants.
Providing tools (strong encryption) isn't really the same as managing a whole market and dictating who can and cannot participate based on random whims.
If they were giving the FBI backdoors but not the UK or Pakistan, then it would be a different story.
I would argue that Google, Apple, and any other group or individual should have the choice to ignore laws. When immoral laws are flaunted to promote the common good, it's called civil disobedience. Likewise, governments are free to investigate and punish those people. Also likewise, the population is free to form their own opinions about the "criminals" and government.
That's society. We shouldn't throw our hands in the air and blindly follow all laws just because there's no objective truth.
I don't think FAANGM having control is a technical solution -- it's a political solution too, albeit with a (semi-) public company in the position of power.
Agreed, but this also raises the question: what should their course of action be?
The course of action they followed implicitly supports human rights violations, in order to continue operating within a given country. Note that I am not saying the action itself is a human rights violation. They certainly have the right to choose what to publish and they are limiting the scope of their actions to the laws of the country question. The decision is entirely reasonable if the context of those laws is ignored. The decision is also entirely reasonable when you consider that Apple and Google are large enough entities that not operating within that country or doing so in violation of their laws could rightfully be considered as exerting political pressure.
I doubt that there is actually a good answer to the question. There is only a lesser-of-evils answer, where they probably made the right choice even though I find their profiting from that choice disgusting.
> They certainly have the right to choose what to publish
No, they really don't. If they 'chose' to publish an app that is banned by Pakistan, the ultimate end-move would be for Pakistan to simply disable the app stores completely.
Nah. The Pakistan's ruling class would not want their phones not to function because it may rule over a country with goat herders that pray multiple times a day, but it lives like the top 1% of the West.
If Google or Apple wanted to squeeze Pakistan or any other country such that they would simply stop providing any services there or to any phone that has been located in Pakistan at any point. Within weeks, the app stores would be restored.
> Agreed, but this also raises the question: what should their course of action be?
To comply with the law.
No, I don't like it either, but I also don't like the idea of corporations having the ability to flout the laws of sovereign nations because they disagree with them.
> The course of action they followed implicitly supports human rights violations
This is not a "course of action" anymore than not committing a crime is a public service. Enforcing human rights laws is not Apple or Google's job, full stop. They are corporations who's goal is to make money, and that's it. Enforcing human rights is what Governments are for.
Instead of asking "why aren't Apple and Google helping activists in Pakistan?" ask "why is Pakistan allowed to abuse it's citizenry in 2021?"
The main issue is how Apple and Google are able to profit from the decision. The only way I can see the situation being avoided is by not entering the particular market in the first place, or by not allowing corporations to get so large that their actions can be construed as political interference (whether it is intentional or not). Either way, the current decision is the consequence of earlier ones.
> The main issue is how Apple and Google are able to profit from the decision
I mean, they're going to do that anyway. They will enter all markets they are able to, and profit as much as they can. That's the entire point of their existence: generate value for shareholders.
I'm not saying I disagree that this situation should be avoided, and in fact super agree with you saying that this moment in history is a consequence of earlier ones more than anything else. However, there's a reflexive action where people are like "$corporation needs to make more ethical decisions" and I cannot overemphasize how ridiculous this view is. Corporations are not even unethical, they're aethical. Their decision making is entirely focused on maximum profit generation.
Now occasionally they'll do something ethical, but oftentimes this is solely because the negative PR from doing something else, or doing nothing, would cause too much damage to the bottom line, however relying solely on this mechanism to illicit change in said corporations is optimistic at best. Instead, legislate what must happen. If you don't want corporations to use child labor to mine minerals, then make that practice incredibly illegal, and make sure the costs to do it anyway are sky high compared to the ones to not. And do it with law, not protest.
Easy solution is to not have monolithic gatekeepers like Apple or Google that can be pressured into doing stuff like this. A website is way harder to shut down than an appstore app, so normalizing appstores is a huge problem.
Of course I disagree with religious or any other intolerance, but, if you want to do business in Pakistan, you have to follow their rules.
It isn't a case of 'caving to pressure', but of 'complying with the law', since the apps are available in other countries, just not in Pakistan, where they are deemed blasphemous, according to their laws.
Perhaps is more companies refused to do business in a country due to diabolical laws, people would start voting against politicians that create diabolical laws.
So it's up to Google and other international companies to decide which laws are diabolical, which laws are bad and which can be tolerable? Why not going all the way down and let those companies write beautiful laws and also enforce them, everywhere in the world?
>So it's up to Google and other international companies to decide which laws are diabolical, which laws are bad and which can be tolerable?
Why not? They, like anyone else traveling or doing business internationally, should decide which countries should be avoided. They can use whatever opinions or judgements they want. It is possible for a huge international corporation to have some sway on a country by not doing business there. But that's not always a bad thing. I'm more afraid of bad governments never suffering from bad decisions than this slippery slope.
They're private companies. They're free to decide which countries to serve in. That is very different from dictating the laws in the countries. In one case, they're sacrificing profits for company values. In the other case, they're forcing others to follow their laws. I honestly wouldn't care if a conservative Christian software company decided not to do business in California because they thought the state had immoral laws. That doesn't mean they're forcing their laws on us.
I think if a law goes against your company values, such as egrariously stomping on human rights, you should have a principle and a backbone and not sacrifice those value to make money.
There are basic human rights, that when breached by a law, make the law a crime. 2010 Google left China for those reasons. Much have changed since then.
Yes, but Google are not cooperating in that. If you are witnessing a crime that you cannot stop, does it mean that if the criminal gives you a thousand or even a million dollars, you will help them because the crime will happen anyway?
When you make a moral call, do you not forecast a fork in the road where you might choose the morally superior destiny? Or does one merely move moral words without the corresponding conviction to move moral results?
Not OP. But are you telling since Google's course of action didn't had any impact of altering actions of Chinese government, they (Google) should have stayed put.
If you see a man being killed, would you go to the killer and say: "This guy is already dead and nobody can prosecute you because there are no sheriff in the county, but if you pay me, I'll help you with your laundry."? Because the question is not if Google can transform CCP, but if it would take part in its crimes. Unfortunately, there is no God or well-supplied jewish conspiracy that sits above us, knows everything, and can deliver direct consequences for our actions. So, we have a choice to make: to act in our direct interest or act against it and bet on a vague conjecture that a collective sacrifice will deliver a better future for everyone. So, asking if the choice of one changes anything is the wrong question in this case.
Of course, all things above are not simple. There is the prisoners dilema "if not me, then someone else will do it", and "if it is me, I can prevent even worse from happening", but there is also the "slippery slope" where making small concessions leads to more and more concessions. So, everyone make there choices and we all leave with the consequences.
I'm going to disagree with you there. Have civil rights in China improved or worsened? Could they be even worse if Google hadn't left.
You're right that this is beyond the scope of Google in the same way that it's beyond the scope of any individual. But together humans can slowly influence other humans and doing the right thing might be a tiny influence but eventually these might add up.
It's always worth remembering: Google couched leaving China in 2010 in humanitarian / ethical terms, but the reason they left was extremely clear: they got hacked internally by Chinese agents using physical access to the intranet. While Google got their security house in order, the most prudent course of action to protect their own company (including their employees) was to cut that physical access.
Google restarted business in China around the same time it was able to bring the BeyondCorp initiative online.
I agree that Google needs to follow the law where they operate. I do think they should have challenged the demand in court, however. That would show that they at least tried to stand up for their app developers.
Sure, but if the users could side load applications then even if the government would demand the giants to remove X app or book the user could find a way. People were listening to forbidden radio stations in secret and this was possible because DRM did not exist on the radio and TV equipment.
Yes, Android allows side loading but in fact it depends on the company that makes the device. Apple makes the OS and the only iOS devices so they control everything.
On one hand you have a government deciding who can and cannot refer to themselves as adherents of a particular religion (by declaring that Ahamadis cannot call themselves Muslim).
On another hand you have Google and Apple, yet again, being the complicit chokepoints of “free speech”, with regard to app developers.
These may seem fair to you, but that may be because these practices have not negatively affected you...yet.
But consider: Would it be fair if England declared Catholics “unChristian” and banned their use if the term? Or what if the USA declared hasidic jews “Unjewish” and banned their use of the term. Or what if Apple caved to pressure theoretical from Israel to ban Jehovah’s Witnesses from using the term “Jehovah”?
What next? Government declaring who is and is not “white”?
Oh wait......