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Corporations. Are. Not. Your. Friend.
This message courtesy of corporations rent seeking on public infrastructure our economies cannot survive without.
Why don't they just disable iphones entirely from accessing Russian cell towers and prevent iphones from connecting to Russian IP addresses?
While I understand your idea, thats a level of censorship in the hands of a private company that is so cyber punk dystopian that it makes William Gibson cry.
Imagine your phone will start playing the Chinese anthem before it sends your dickpicks to your mother
No more dystopian than banning someone from Reddit. If you violate a TOS of any service provider, they're usually within their right to terminate your access to the service. If Apple wants to truly shut down Russian usership of their products, they obviously have the power to do so. I find it more dystopian that there's a multinational multitrillion dollar company that has the power to act ethically in this scenario but chooses to just remove apps from the app store, as if Russians aren't already culturally inclined to look for hacks or workarounds.
Ofc they have the power to do so. John Deere did just that with stolen machines (incidentally underlining that you actually rent their machines) My point is that you buy the iphone hardware, and the use is not a service. And the possibility of bricking it at Apples, Samsung or Huawei whim is for me dystopian. Access to software, storefronts and internet pages is slightly different in my opinion.
Because then Russians would stop buying their phones.
Why are they selling iphones in Russia?
To generate profit.
Wah wah
This is why you don't buy into closed-garden ecosystems like this. If you're on iOS, there's nothing you can do about it, you're at their mercy. Android has great support for side loading. There's really only one choice if you care about freedom.
You can side load on iPhone, it’s just not as easy. I have multiple side loaded apps.
So you're saying that Apple doesn't have great support for side loaded apps unlike Android.
Don't you have to renew them all the time though?
Not anymore if you use their new sideloading framework... which is only available in the EU
You still have to if you sign yourself. You still need a dev Account to sign for longer timeframe
The U.S. company — whose phones are still sold in Russian stores despite the firm officially leaving the market due to the invasion of Ukraine...
Apple taking a brave stand as ever.
Edit: This was not the smartest comment.
Apple left Russia but their phones are still making it there from China. What stand do you mean?
Apple could still easily release updates for their phones that prevent anyone from connecting to a Russian cell tower or connecting to a Russian IP address.
I thought about that, but it would affect iPhone users from outside Russia who are traveling in Russia, and Apple probably wouldn't want that.
Is your expectation that Apple will send in troops to raid phone stores inside of Russia?
Maybe they expect them to stop China from selling them to Russia, bahahaha
I misunderstood and my comment wasn't well considered. It was even dumb.
Suspicious!
You can use most VPN services via the Wireguard or OpenVPN apps though, or even via some of the protocols natively supported by iOS not requiring any third-party app.
Nothing suspicious. Russia is openly engaging in a war of aggression and money laundering. They have a storied history of corruption, kleptomania, and deceitful diplomacy (HUR HUR AMERICA BAD TOO!). An American company is trying to ~~do the bare minimum~~ put pressure on Russians.
Normies never heard about wireguard nor openvpn, this enough to deter a lot of ppl imo
The issue is 3rd party apps make it easier for non-techie people to subvert censorship. Raising the bar works bigly in the Kremlin's favor.
I see no mention of what they actually removed or how reputable they are. "VPN apps" are a reasonably common approach to spyware. (Common enough that literally Facebook has done it.)
