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Apple Removes WhatsApp, Threads, Telegram, and Signal from China App Store, says it complied with orders from the Chinese government (arstechnica.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Apple said it complied with orders from the Chinese government to remove the Meta-owned WhatsApp and Threads from its App Store in China. Apple also removed Telegram and Signal from China.

The New York Times similarly wrote that "a person briefed on the situation said the Chinese government had found content on WhatsApp and Threads about China's president, Xi Jinping, that was inflammatory and violated the country's cybersecurity laws. The specifics of what was in the content was unclear, the person said."

"These apps and many foreign apps are normally blocked on Chinese networks by the 'Great Firewall'—the country's extensive cybersystem of censorship—and can only be used with a virtual private network or other proxy tools," Reuters wrote.

"For years, Apple has bowed to Beijing's demands that it block an array of apps, including newspapers, VPNs, and encrypted messaging services," The New York Times noted yesterday.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

What would be the point? If they don’t remove it, do you imagine they’d still be selling iPhones in the country?

Actually - yes I do. Any action against Apple would be a huge blow to both the Chinese and American economies. I'm sure China wants to do that, but right now they cannot do it.

Do you think anyone has ever criticised X Jinping in iMessage? Obviously the answer is yes - and yet iMessage is allowed while every other major (foreign) social network has just been banned. iMessage is now the only major foreign messaging platform allowed in China. That's not a coincidence - it's because so many iPhones are manufactured there.

It's also pretty clear Apple is transitioning to manufacturing elsewhere. They're on schedule to manufacture a quarter of iPhones in India by some time this year (up from zero not too long ago) and are dipping their toes in South American manufacturing as well. Banning iPhone sales in China would rapidly accelerate those plants.

Apple's contribution to China's economy is substantial - those manufacturing plants are huge and have hundreds of thousands of other companies supplying them. Also the workers are very well paid (for a factory job in China).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I assumed the Chinese government had a back door in that version of iMessage.

I’d be glad to be wrong.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yeah you'd be wrong. Apple is very open about how the security model works - which is similar to Signal and fully encrypted. The only way to decrypt a message is with physical access to one of the sender/recipient's devices.

Their claims about how it operates have been confirmed by open source developers reverse engineering the protocol (e.g. Beeper).

There is one workaround — device backups can be accessed and depending how you backup, your message history is likely in there (you can do encrypted backups, but that means data loss if you forget your password or an attacker changes it on you which would happen, lots of money in a ransomware attack like that). However even then – all your other devices show a popup message if you restore from a backup - warning that a "new device" has access to your messages.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

I'm sure Apple was dragged, kicking their feet and screaming all the way, into banning all the competing services too...