I like that Apple does this. They're making it clear that "News" in China would be a watered-down version of reality; therefore, rather than giving people an imperfect experience, they turn you away completely and encourage you to find a complete source.
The problem is it appears Apple is doing on device censorship. So if you activated your phone in the US and saved Apple News articles for off-line reading even those aren't available in China. And apparently even if you have location services turned off somehow Apple knows where you are and disables you from being able to see anything in the News app. That's creepy especially coming from a company that makes such a big deal about user privacy.
When doing business in a country the rules of the country must be followed or else.
The USA doesn't set or enforce the rules in China.
On the other hand this just confirms my previous decision not to travel in China.
I have gone to HK and a web Email I sent to Au from the hotel lobby computer there was diverted and not received.
I know it was sent, because a BCC copy to the Email web site, my carriers in CDA, was received.
That diverted Email had the receiving site altered to a "bucket" somewhere else?
With all the travel around the world by China citizens, I find it very out of date for China to play such communication games.
I very, very much doubt this was anything sinister, although sending personal email from some random hotel computer in this day and age is just a bad idea in general. Could have even caught by a spam filter at several points, could have been accidentally deleted, could be various server misconfigurations, etc. Hong Kong is not behind the great firewall. There is no internet censorship in Hong Kong, and network traffic does not use the same exchanges as mainland China.
I was doing web Email on my carriers web site in Canada. The to address was altered to some site I didn't know.
Fortunately I had a Bcc to myself on my carriers web site, else I wouldn't know what had happened.
Yes I suspect the hotel's customer computer was being monitored by China.
This was several years ago and I can assure you China was already closing in on controlling HK. If you don't feel that was/is the case you are fooling yourself.
Sad to see that Apple support censorship. Tim Cook is all about human rights and values except when it comes to China. I wish American companies would quit letting China bully them around.
Companies like Apple have no choice but to follow Chinese law. The alternative is not to do business there.
The problem is it appears Apple is doing on device censorship. So if you activated your phone in the US and saved Apple News articles for off-line reading even those aren't available in China. And apparently even if you have location services turned off somehow Apple knows where you are and disables you from being able to see anything in the News app. That's creepy especially coming from a company that makes such a big deal about user privacy.
If the device has all radios turned off (full airplane mode), and the news app doesn't work, that would be "weird".
What seems to be happening though, is the source of a users traffic is what is being used as a filter. Location services has nothing to do with the source of your traffic over the Internet. If apples (or another providers) servers are inaccessible from a particular source, the particular error code could be sent (like a 404) and the device is just nicely telling you that, "due to region...".
Like someone else mentioned, once the source of your traffic is from behind the great firewall, yes, in a sense your 'location' is kind of known, but it's more likely that apple isn't then taking it upon themselves to not connect you to their systems; rather, they just can't.
It's much like the AI piece on apple maps, once in China. How once on a/any network behind the Chinese firewall, you essentially get different Apple maps server, ones that Apple has been given the OK to run, and has more data (POI and all) than other providers on China, data which is not allowed to leave their China Apple maps servers.
Why so sure that this is Apple's fault? Plenty of Western services don't work (or work badly) in China, because of the Great Firewall.
Because Apple is successful and successful companies are always at fault. Also, Steve died and left Tim in charge, and Apple is always suing Samsung because they invented the rounded rectangle and I hate walled gardens long live Google and cheap gadgets. /s
Virtually all Google's own apps that form the core of Android for most users are nonfunctional in China. By comparison, virtually all Apple's products and services work just fine. you can use iCloud mail, but not Gmail, Apple Maps but not Google Maps, iCloud Drive and iCloud photos, but not Google Drive or Google Photos.
I view that as an advantage to living in China. People generally shouldn't be using Google surreptitious services.
Sad to see that Apple support censorship. Tim Cook is all about human rights and values except when it comes to China. I wish American companies would quit letting China bully them around.
Companies like Apple have no choice but to follow Chinese law. The alternative is not to do business there.
Of course they have a choice. Many choices in fact. They could, for example license Foxconn to sell under their own account/label in China. They could CHOOSE not to support a repressive regime. They chose profit. Some people may be ok with that. Some people would have been OK selling Zyklon B to the SS.
Apple has done this before. For example Apple products sold in the middle east or perhaps some countries in the middle east don't have iMessage on them, nor can you install iMessage on them even if you are in the US.
There's a difference between restricting things due to broadcast rights/licensing and restricting things due to the government wanting to censor what their citizens see. I can't watch every baseball game on TV unless I have an MLB subscription. Same with the NFL. Is that really censorship? I don't think so.
A better analogy would be taking Apple to task for restricting child pornography on their devices. It’s against the law to publish child pornography here and the government is restricting their citizens’ ability to see it. In fact there are criminal penalties for doing so. Censorship? Technically yes it is.
Get off your righteous indignation hobby horse for once. You know exactly what predicament Apple is in here and by themselves they have little choice but to comply or stop doing business in China, period. While perhaps the courageous thing to do it would surely be corporate suicide. Investors certainly would NOT understand, competitors definitely WOULD take advantage, and the U.S. Government would let Apple twist in the wind all by itself. Hell, the U.S. Government itself looks the other way when it comes to China’s human rights history.
Demanding that Apple stand up against China on it’s own is ridiculous but that’s apparently what you want, right?
It's disconcerting, but it's also par for the course. When News is finally launched in China I fully expect it to be as filtered as the rest of the mainstream Chinese news aggregators. There are so many more useful Apple services not fully available in every country which Apple should focus on first, before trying to address a restrictive regime. (E.g. Building quality maps for central European countries.)
Certainly I don't agree with censorship, but I'm not naive enough to expect that a news aggregation app would have the ability to change policy or China's regime. The same locals who proxy/vpn tunnel to obtain foreign content and news, will continue to do so. Which is not unlike non-US users who proxy/vpn tunnel to get more TV/Movies content.
The problem is it appears Apple is doing on device censorship. So if you activated your phone in the US and saved Apple News articles for off-line reading even those aren't available in China. And apparently even if you have location services turned off somehow Apple knows where you are and disables you from being able to see anything in the News app. That's creepy especially coming from a company that makes such a big deal about user privacy.
Please, please tell us that you are divesting yourself of all Apple technology because of this latest ‘outrage’ and that we will never see your face on this forum, or any Apple centric forum again. Put your money where your mouth is. Vote with your wallet instead of castigating the company while still contributing to their ill-gotten, immoral gains with your hard earned money. Maybe if enough of you do this it will get Apple to pull out of China. Money talks and bullshit walks.
Sad to see that Apple support censorship. Tim Cook is all about human rights and values except when it comes to China. I wish American companies would quit letting China bully them around.
Countries have laws and Companies must comply with them, even if they don't agree with them. It's better to get no news from Apple than censored or sanitized news from Apple. What would you have them do? Stand up to China's bullying by getting banned from China?
Please, please tell us that you are divesting yourself of all Apple technology because of this latest ‘outrage’ and that we will never see your face on this forum, or any Apple centric forum again. Put your money where your mouth is. Vote with your wallet instead of castigating the company while still contributing to their ill-gotten, immoral gains with your hard earned money. Maybe if enough of you do this it will get Apple to pull out of China. Money talks and bullshit walks.
Clearly Apple must abide by Chinese laws or risk penalties or expulsion from the country. I don't mind Rogifan making his point, although I do disagree with this one. The forum would be poorer if he left it.
Clearly Apple must abide by Chinese laws or risk penalties or expulsion from the country. I don't mind Rogifan making his point, although I do disagree with this one. The forum would be poorer if he left it.
But his point was pointless and offered no solution, only empty complaints. If he wants Apple to change its ways he can either boycott the company or try to affect change from within as a customer, shareholder or such. Oh wait... couldn’t Apple and other U.S. corporations try doing the same within the confines of doing business in China?
I am outraged at the Rogifan types who spew their indignation while completely ignoring reality as if you merely snap your fingers and the Ozone layer is saved, CO2 goes away, the oceans recede, the glaciers grow again, and China becomes an open democracy? And what if Apple were to do the very thing he wants, namely ignoring the Chinese government’s censorship demands and getting kicked out of China all together, canceling their Chinese supplier contracts. How much would that influence the totalitarian leaders of China. Do you think they would give a damn about lost jobs from closed factories? Oh and Google DID get kicked out and we all know how that changed the Chinese government’s policies toward free and open exchange of information and ideas, right?
But his point was pointless and offered no solution, only empty complaints. If he wants Apple to change its ways he can either boycott the company or try to affect change from within as a customer, shareholder or such. Oh wait... couldn’t Apple and other U.S. corporations try doing the same within the confines of doing business in China?
I am outraged at the Rogifan types who spew their indignation while completely ignoring reality as if you merely snap your fingers and the Ozone layer is saved, CO2 goes away, the oceans recede, the glaciers grow again, and China becomes an open democracy? And what if Apple were to do the very thing he wants, namely ignoring the Chinese government’s censorship demands and getting kicked out of China all together, canceling their Chinese supplier contracts. How much would that influence the totalitarian leaders of China. Do you think they would give a damn about lost jobs from closed factories? Oh and Google DID get kicked out and we all know how that changed the Chinese government’s policies toward free and open exchange of information and ideas, right?
You're saying he can't express his opinion? If he's disappointed, why should he not be able to say so?
...they accept the logic and "justice" of how certain kinds of bits crossing national boundaries can be blocked due to legal limits specified by contracts...
You make a very valid point here.
The contracts (or plain stupid restrictions and oversights) are also getting in the way of full access, and, big time, that is.
E.g., when travelling in Spain, I can't download iOS apps from public transit companies SPECIFICALLY MEANT FOR TRAVELLERS, because my AppleID is not Spanish (but Belgian, which is also in the EU). (In fact, preventing the free flow of services in the EU is illegal). For those particular apps, I suspect the cause is an oversight (by the authors, but more likely by the AppStore rulemakers), but often, the reason of the blockage is because of media contracts involving authorship fees.
How provincial ! Please, AppStore, clean up your act !
Comments
The problem is it appears Apple is doing on device censorship. So if you activated your phone in the US and saved Apple News articles for off-line reading even those aren't available in China. And apparently even if you have location services turned off somehow Apple knows where you are and disables you from being able to see anything in the News app. That's creepy especially coming from a company that makes such a big deal about user privacy.
If I drive to Canada for the weekend will I not be able to use the News app?
When doing business in a country the rules of the country must be followed or else.
The USA doesn't set or enforce the rules in China.
On the other hand this just confirms my previous decision not to travel in China.
I have gone to HK and a web Email I sent to Au from the hotel lobby computer there was diverted and not received.
I know it was sent, because a BCC copy to the Email web site, my carriers in CDA, was received.
That diverted Email had the receiving site altered to a "bucket" somewhere else?
With all the travel around the world by China citizens, I find it very out of date for China to play such communication games.
I very, very much doubt this was anything sinister, although sending personal email from some random hotel computer in this day and age is just a bad idea in general. Could have even caught by a spam filter at several points, could have been accidentally deleted, could be various server misconfigurations, etc. Hong Kong is not behind the great firewall. There is no internet censorship in Hong Kong, and network traffic does not use the same exchanges as mainland China.
I was doing web Email on my carriers web site in Canada. The to address was altered to some site I didn't know.
Fortunately I had a Bcc to myself on my carriers web site, else I wouldn't know what had happened.
Yes I suspect the hotel's customer computer was being monitored by China.
This was several years ago and I can assure you China was already closing in on controlling HK. If you don't feel that was/is the case you are fooling yourself.
Companies like Apple have no choice but to follow Chinese law. The alternative is not to do business there.
If the device has all radios turned off (full airplane mode), and the news app doesn't work, that would be "weird".
What seems to be happening though, is the source of a users traffic is what is being used as a filter. Location services has nothing to do with the source of your traffic over the Internet. If apples (or another providers) servers are inaccessible from a particular source, the particular error code could be sent (like a 404) and the device is just nicely telling you that, "due to region...".
Like someone else mentioned, once the source of your traffic is from behind the great firewall, yes, in a sense your 'location' is kind of known, but it's more likely that apple isn't then taking it upon themselves to not connect you to their systems; rather, they just can't.
It's much like the AI piece on apple maps, once in China. How once on a/any network behind the Chinese firewall, you essentially get different Apple maps server, ones that Apple has been given the OK to run, and has more data (POI and all) than other providers on China, data which is not allowed to leave their China Apple maps servers.
Because Apple is successful and successful companies are always at fault. Also, Steve died and left Tim in charge, and Apple is always suing Samsung because they invented the rounded rectangle and I hate walled gardens long live Google and cheap gadgets. /s
Well, a lot of you suggested to not do business anymore because Apple wasn't compliant with consumer law.
I guess, you're just as opportunistic as can be.
At least, some companies have the guts to just say no
Virtually all Google's own apps that form the core of Android for most users are nonfunctional in China. By comparison, virtually all Apple's products and services work just fine. you can use iCloud mail, but not Gmail, Apple Maps but not Google Maps, iCloud Drive and iCloud photos, but not Google Drive or Google Photos.
I view that as an advantage to living in China. People generally shouldn't be using Google surreptitious services.
Sad to see that Apple support censorship. Tim Cook is all about human rights and values except when it comes to China. I wish American companies would quit letting China bully them around.
Companies like Apple have no choice but to follow Chinese law. The alternative is not to do business there.
Of course they have a choice. Many choices in fact. They could, for example license Foxconn to sell under their own account/label in China. They could CHOOSE not to support a repressive regime. They chose profit. Some people may be ok with that. Some people would have been OK selling Zyklon B to the SS.
There's a difference between restricting things due to broadcast rights/licensing and restricting things due to the government wanting to censor what their citizens see. I can't watch every baseball game on TV unless I have an MLB subscription. Same with the NFL. Is that really censorship? I don't think so.
A better analogy would be taking Apple to task for restricting child pornography on their devices. It’s against the law to publish child pornography here and the government is restricting their citizens’ ability to see it. In fact there are criminal penalties for doing so. Censorship? Technically yes it is.
Get off your righteous indignation hobby horse for once. You know exactly what predicament Apple is in here and by themselves they have little choice but to comply or stop doing business in China, period. While perhaps the courageous thing to do it would surely be corporate suicide. Investors certainly would NOT understand, competitors definitely WOULD take advantage, and the U.S. Government would let Apple twist in the wind all by itself. Hell, the U.S. Government itself looks the other way when it comes to China’s human rights history.
Demanding that Apple stand up against China on it’s own is ridiculous but that’s apparently what you want, right?
It's disconcerting, but it's also par for the course. When News is finally launched in China I fully expect it to be as filtered as the rest of the mainstream Chinese news aggregators. There are so many more useful Apple services not fully available in every country which Apple should focus on first, before trying to address a restrictive regime. (E.g. Building quality maps for central European countries.)
Certainly I don't agree with censorship, but I'm not naive enough to expect that a news aggregation app would have the ability to change policy or China's regime. The same locals who proxy/vpn tunnel to obtain foreign content and news, will continue to do so. Which is not unlike non-US users who proxy/vpn tunnel to get more TV/Movies content.
The problem is it appears Apple is doing on device censorship. So if you activated your phone in the US and saved Apple News articles for off-line reading even those aren't available in China. And apparently even if you have location services turned off somehow Apple knows where you are and disables you from being able to see anything in the News app. That's creepy especially coming from a company that makes such a big deal about user privacy.
Please, please tell us that you are divesting yourself of all Apple technology because of this latest ‘outrage’ and that we will never see your face on this forum, or any Apple centric forum again. Put your money where your mouth is. Vote with your wallet instead of castigating the company while still contributing to their ill-gotten, immoral gains with your hard earned money. Maybe if enough of you do this it will get Apple to pull out of China. Money talks and bullshit walks.
Countries have laws and Companies must comply with them, even if they don't agree with them. It's better to get no news from Apple than censored or sanitized news from Apple. What would you have them do? Stand up to China's bullying by getting banned from China?
Please, please tell us that you are divesting yourself of all Apple technology because of this latest ‘outrage’ and that we will never see your face on this forum, or any Apple centric forum again. Put your money where your mouth is. Vote with your wallet instead of castigating the company while still contributing to their ill-gotten, immoral gains with your hard earned money. Maybe if enough of you do this it will get Apple to pull out of China. Money talks and bullshit walks.
Clearly Apple must abide by Chinese laws or risk penalties or expulsion from the country. I don't mind Rogifan making his point, although I do disagree with this one. The forum would be poorer if he left it.
Clearly Apple must abide by Chinese laws or risk penalties or expulsion from the country. I don't mind Rogifan making his point, although I do disagree with this one. The forum would be poorer if he left it.
But his point was pointless and offered no solution, only empty complaints. If he wants Apple to change its ways he can either boycott the company or try to affect change from within as a customer, shareholder or such. Oh wait... couldn’t Apple and other U.S. corporations try doing the same within the confines of doing business in China?
I am outraged at the Rogifan types who spew their indignation while completely ignoring reality as if you merely snap your fingers and the Ozone layer is saved, CO2 goes away, the oceans recede, the glaciers grow again, and China becomes an open democracy? And what if Apple were to do the very thing he wants, namely ignoring the Chinese government’s censorship demands and getting kicked out of China all together, canceling their Chinese supplier contracts. How much would that influence the totalitarian leaders of China. Do you think they would give a damn about lost jobs from closed factories? Oh and Google DID get kicked out and we all know how that changed the Chinese government’s policies toward free and open exchange of information and ideas, right?
You're saying he can't express his opinion? If he's disappointed, why should he not be able to say so?
...they accept the logic and "justice" of how certain kinds of bits crossing national boundaries can be blocked due to legal limits specified by contracts...
You make a very valid point here.
The contracts (or plain stupid restrictions and oversights) are also getting in the way of full access, and, big time, that is.
E.g., when travelling in Spain, I can't download iOS apps from public transit companies SPECIFICALLY MEANT FOR TRAVELLERS, because my AppleID is not Spanish (but Belgian, which is also in the EU). (In fact, preventing the free flow of services in the EU is illegal). For those particular apps, I suspect the cause is an oversight (by the authors, but more likely by the AppStore rulemakers), but often, the reason of the blockage is because of media contracts involving authorship fees.
How provincial ! Please, AppStore, clean up your act !