These discussions are pretty weird.<p>It's <i>China</i> that is censoring the news here. But for some reason we're mainly blaming Apple for it? It's makes no sense.<p>And what the heck does the API Apple uses to determine location have to do with it? If Apple had the choice, they would use <i>no</i> API to censor the news.<p>Anyway, for the people who really are worried about censorship (I am) it's worth understanding and acknowledging what's actually going on here. This problem is not an Apple problem and if you try to treat it like one, that's actually worse than doing nothing at all since it draws attention away from the actual problem.<p>(There are Apple problems, of course, but this isn't one of them.)
This is a big China problem.
> To accomplish this censorship Apple is using a form of location fingerprinting that is not available to normal applications on iOS. It works like this: despite the fact that your phone uses a SIM from a US carrier it must connect to a Chinese cellular network. Apple is using private APIs to identify that you are in mainland China based on the name of the underlying cellular network and blocking access to the News app.<p>Does anyone know if this claim is true? I would have assumed this is as simple as serving the not allowed response to any request from a Chinese address range, and it seems like it would be easy to test using a VPN.<p>(In general, while I don't approve of censorship this seems like an odd hill to die on — the problem is that a repressive government is still sovereign and there aren't exactly many options for a company with such extensive business ties other than complying with that government's laws within its borders)
China is their biggest market. Would be a bit stupid to get your products banned from your biggest market over something so simple.<p>Not that I agree with Chinese practices.
> Apple is using private APIs to identify that you are in mainland China based on the name of the underlying cellular network and blocking access to the News app. This information is not available via public APIs in iOS specifically to improve privacy for users.<p>Regardless of the merit of the argument of Apple censoring News in China, this is a stupid argument. For Apple, there is no private API: they wrote the thing themselves; for privacy they prevent third-party applications from accessing it. What would you like them to do, remove the API entirely or open it to third-party developers?
There's not enough information here to think this is a major scandal. Does Apple News respect your home region everywhere in the world except in China? Or is this just the typical international content licensing tarpit? I would blame copyright hell before I would assume Apple is kowtowing to China somehow. Given that China apparently allows foreign mobile devices an exception to the Great Firewall network blocks, it seems unlikely the Chinese government is specifically targeting the Apple News app for being blocked. I'm struggling to see how it makes sense to think of this as "censorship" rather than just "software and content licensing are both complicated and terrible".
Perhaps one day we can stop talking about "feature-gating" (and "geoblocking" for that matter) and just treat these censorship mechanisms as the attacks on the freedom on the web that they are.
They also censor or at least filter out content they are not comfortable sharing on their iTunes movie platform. I’m not sure how appropriate the word censor is here in this context. They are a private company that can choose which content they release in which area, or at all, especially to adapt to local customs or laws. Similar to how you can get rice and a chicken leg at McDonalds in Indonesia, but can’t in America.
Just noticed in the screen shot that the poster's wifi was on. In which case they had a Chinese IP and it wouldn't work. Did the OP test on cell network only?
I lived in U.S. for eight years and found out about this fact after I came back. It's deeply concerning, the fact they don't block news app but block news feeds in China is weird.<p>I used to use News App with U.S. sim card, but the restriction got tighter and tighter.
Google gets a whole different level of scrutiny on HN wrt their business practices than any other company it seems. Apple can do whatever the Chinese government asks, yet almost all comments in this thread are aimed at justifying their innocence using business and sovereignty arguments. However, the yet to launch dragonfly project gets huge opposition. Are there any other companies getting the same level of scrutiny.
Apple pisses when China growls. I personally think their claim of being privacy guardians is a bunch of PR & marketing BS. Didn’t they also handover the encryption keys for iCloud in China to the Communist Regime ?