Google, Apple remove Navalny app from stores as Russian elections begin

Reuters doesn&#x27;t report this, but the government officials threatened the companies (Apple and Google) with jail time for their employees yesterday. After that the companies finally conceded. There&#x27;s a short video fragment from the meeting of the government officials and the companies representatives. It&#x27;s worth watching, especially if you come from a democratic nation.<p>Letting your Russian employees be persecuted don&#x27;t amount to &quot;doing the right thing&quot;.

Apple’s acquiescence to the Russian government’s demand to remove this app was predicted when it first came to light. Exactly at the same time as Apple was assuring world+dog that it would never acquiesce to governmental pressure to extend and expand the scope of its CSAM scanning tool on user’s devices.

From Tim Cook’s twitter bio[1]:<p>&gt; “Life&#x27;s most persistent and urgent question is, &#x27;What are you doing for others?&#x27;” - MLK<p>Considering this, HKmap.live[2], and Telegram[3], he seems to be mighty confused about who “others” refers to in that quote.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;tim_cook" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;tim_cook</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;HKmap.live" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;HKmap.live</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.iphoneincanada.ca&#x2F;news&#x2F;apple-telegram-belarus&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.iphoneincanada.ca&#x2F;news&#x2F;apple-telegram-belarus&#x2F;</a>

The thing is, that it&#x27;s all very time-sensitive. And I expect pressure was unreasonably high.<p>We have elections in Russia this weekend and Navalny app was used as a tool to coordinate protest voting. It is called &quot;Smart Voting&quot; by Navalny team and it is getting a lot of attention for upcomping elections.<p>If Apple and Google would just be a little bit slower and complied next Monday :)<p>Still there are more ways to coordinate Smart Voting. Google Docs with recommendations are published. There are youtube videos where Navalny team reads whole list aloud. There&#x27;s a Telegram bot.<p>So I hope this action would just bring more attention to the matter.

Very sad when not even the massively rich will bother to do the right thing. &quot;Sorry, need a few more billion, so we&#x27;re going to side with an oppressive regime against Democracy.&quot;<p>Reminds me of a Dylan line &quot;Will all the money you made buy back your soul?&quot;

It is important to note, that in Apple&#x27;s case the problem is made worse by the fact that on iOS there are no ways to install the app bypassing the appstore.<p>That makes Apple&#x27;s cooperation with dictators and authocrats so much worse for their users. You know, the people Apple claims to care about and &#x27;protect&#x27;.

Previously, Google usually ignored such requests, but seems to have finally gave in. If they are willing to remove the app, what&#x27;s next, disclosing personal information to help the regime with repressions, preventing access from Russia to other Google resources, removing YouTube videos? The &quot;we comply with local laws&quot; clause effectively puts citizens of opperssive regime at a disadvantage. It&#x27;s not like I had an impression somebody else besides citizens of the country in question can help to fight the power, but sad news like this disillusion even more.

When watching this week&#x27;s iPhone keynote, it occurred to me that while they were showing all their environmental credentials, which seems to be given more prominence every time, what I&#x27;d really like to see is a slide on &quot;supporting freedom and democracy&quot;.<p>Apple do have the resources, influence and brand equity to make some strides here and it doesn&#x27;t have to be completely philanthropic either - it can make business sense to edge towards being better in some of these areas.<p>At the moment it feels a bit disingenuous to be so self-congratulatory on the environmental progress [1] when we&#x27;re constantly reading articles about the conditions in their supply chain (which they <i>do</i> have responsibility for, despite the often touted excuse of &quot;they&#x27;re not their factories&quot;).<p>[1] I don&#x27;t mean to talk down the importance of the environmental stuff - just that it&#x27;s only one part of a wide spectrum of ethical areas that I think Apple could be addressing.

It is time to ask Google and Apple if they were <i>asked</i> to actually remove Telegram from stores, when russian government was trying to ban it.<p>It wasn&#x27;t removed at the time, and all sources that Apple and Google were demanded to block it in Russia pointed to press-release on RosKomNadzor itself.<p>I suspect that it is possible that all this Telegram block in Russia was a PR campaign coordinated with Russian government to give Telegram a reputation of a messenger that doesn&#x27;t abide to tyrannical governments.

Notification from Apple: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ioannZH&#x2F;status&#x2F;1438750081402953728" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;ioannZH&#x2F;status&#x2F;1438750081402953728</a>

More context to why using apps, not websites or email:<p>Smart Voting website is hosted on Google App Engine (appspot.com). The Russian government had no ability to block it for long time without affecting other Google services, since ISPs could block mostly by IP and via DNS spoofing.<p>To block reliably by domain they would need to have DPI (deep packet inspection) hardware, and most ISPs had no DPI, since it&#x27;s expensive. Even if they had it, they could only block by domain&#x2F;ip, not by traffic signatures and reaction time was relatively slow.<p>Now they improved censorship infrastructure and basically building Great Firewall. As I understand government controlled DPIs are now installed on Internet exchange points. So it&#x27;s easier to block specific domains and protocols. Recently they:<p>- were throttling Twitter (and every website with t.co substring, yeah)<p>- blocked some opposition websites hosted on Appspot<p>- DNS over HTTPS (DoH) servers used in the app (Google, Cloudflare, OpenDNS)<p>- Bunny CDN, used in the app<p>- docs.google.com, telegra.ph (voting list was published there)<p>- DHT and BitTorrent<p>- started blocking some VPN providers and attempted to block Wireguard protocol<p>I think some of blocks (e.g. torrent) were used to test capability. Now that they can slow down websites and block more accurately, they have more leverage over tech companies.<p>Apps have more ways to avoid blocking than websites and PWAs. E.g. by getting endpoints&#x2F;data via updates, notifications, domain fronting. So the obvious next step was to attack app stores.<p>---<p>You could enter your email on the website, but some of the emails got leaked. Considering many people used personal email addresses, it was possible to combine it with other leaks&#x2F;DBs to get more personal information. Police visited some people registered on the website. So I guess people trust less giving their email addresses now.

This is absolutely different from removing Parleur from AppStore and Google Play, of course. Completely different. Apple and Google should immediately pull out of Russia!

China&#x27;s too big of a market - companies have to comply with local authoritarian regime demands. Russia&#x27;s too big of a market - companies have to comply with local authoritarian regime demands. It really helps that North Korea and Afghanistan are dirt poor.

Hmm, I fail to see the consequences of the Russian market from Google and Apple&#x27;s perspective. The Russian market is kind of inconsequential if Google, Apple lost the relationship for noncompliance with the Russian state.<p>You think maybe the US State Department told them to comply? There is probably a lot of user data that Google, Apple get from Russians by having access to that market.

A good case showing that centralized walled app stores are bad and reduce users’ choices

Here we go again, “AppleGoogle should stand up to the government!”<p>This is a very naive view of how these companies work. They are so massive that they have to figure out how to operate __lawfully__ under wildly different jurisdictions. When they operate in countries like Russia that have different values than the United States, people get upset and blame the company.<p>What we should really be doing is blaming the governments and try holding them to account.<p>The only other option, which is crazy, would be for these massive tech companies to acquire their own militaries so they can impose their values on the world.<p>Imagine an iPhone 18 commercial that touts privacy. It would show a fleet of Apple aircraft carriers with Apple bombers and Apple special forces teams standing by to coerce a government official that wants to search your iPhone to stand down.<p>It’s kind of a silly joke, but at some level that’s where we’re at.

Money is money. Thats sad but predictable. The future web should be decentralized.

Instead of asking Google and Apple to pull from Russia we should better think about ourselves pulling from them.

(Based on reading just one article, I&#x27;ve never seen or used the app) Seems like all the app did was serve as list of candidates, 225 electoral districts long, and a map from street address to electoral district.<p>Surely this can be trivially implemented as a website, in a matter of hours, no? It looks like the mistake Navalny&#x27;s team made was trusting one method of distribution of information. Even worse, trusting a method with a central and corporate choke point.<p>That aside, I&#x27;m disgusted, but not surprised, at Google&#x27;s actions.

This proves one thing - we need non-centralized application distribution mechaism which could not be censored. Neither Apple or Google or any 3rd party should control what I install on my phone.<p>I know that unlike iOS, Android users can install programs directly or via alternative app stores on their phones. Direct installation is burdensome and does not provide updates. Alternative app stores (e.g. Amazon) are also controlled by corporations. We need a trully distributed censon-proof app store!

Just another reminder that you should never delude yourself into thinking these companies are a force for anything moral or ethical.

They censor&#x2F;remove apps based on political viewpoints of whatever is currently en vogue all the time, even in the US. We have already accepted this slope while it was being used against one political faction in a recent election. Everything from not allowing legitimate news to be posted or deleting your post if you mention specific whistleblower names, to editing the contents of private messages, to banning individuals, to banning apps. You are either for censorship, or you are against it, and it&#x27;s not an a la carte deal based on your political leanings or an individual topic. As we allow, and cheer on censorship in some cases, I fully expect more and more to come as others look around and see how they got away with it, and it will eventually hit something you hold dear. But you&#x27;ll happily accept it because you were for censoring that other thing and you&#x27;re not a hypocrite, right?

There is obviously a conflict of interest here, but strategic voting scams are generally harmful to the political process. In particular they tend to concentrate power in the two incumbent parties over time.<p>You don&#x27;t need an app for strategic voting. The proponents of the scheme will tell you who to vote for.

Lots of chauvinism and nationalism here, pretty offputting really.

This was always the logical consequence when big tech companies started listening to various requests from random countries about their own domestic laws. One wonders what would today look like if they only enforced US law and told the other countries to fuck off and block them if it was really that necessary for national security or whatever reason they give.

Most arguments are against Apple and Google. Playing devils advocate here. If let’s say trump created an app to show how many people support him in USA and it shows 60% of voting population support him during election time, what would you want these companies to do ? IMHO meddling in countries’ election should be a strong NO.

Interesting they made an app in the first place, can they move the activity to a website, maybe multiple domains?

Do they have a PWA option? Or an ordinary web site?<p>The world needs to get away from closed stores and back to open systems.

We&#x27;re in a pandemic of cowardness.

Can you rely on businesses to be ethical or to not succumb to political pressure? The answer is no.

To bring a bit of perspective on everything, it&#x27;s good to remember that democracy, or what the West idealises as such, is not necessarily the ultimate regime that every country in the world needs to follow <i>right now</i> for its own sake.<p>Of course there are places when power is abused, taken, stolen from entire populations but not every society is fit or ready for what we&#x27;d like to think as the world standard of governance.<p>Cultural, historical reasons, micro and macro economies, ethnic groups, religions, resources... This kind of evolution takes time. Generations. Ages.<p>And to be honest, even if the grass looks greener in our pasture, the fundamentals of democracy are meant to evolve as well in the West. For the best I hope. Feels like it&#x27;s been taking hits when we entered the information age.

Government officials supposedly threated these companies employees with jail time. I&#x27;m mostly critical towards these corporations the only bad guy here is only Russia government.

While this is bad, yet I see this part as Russian deception in layers: While we are gasping on Google&#x27;s actions, few note that the results of the election were never in question.

Well, if their fault. None of this could happen if we have freedom on software distribution. The moral of this story is, don&#x27;t use non-free computers.

If people had been wiser, you could call out the removal of people from platforms. That ship has sailed because people weren&#x27;t wise...

In cases like this, why aren’t people using react native or even plain web apps?<p>Seems to me you could avoid that whole obstacle.

Some of my friends from ex-USSR countries (not Russia) are telling me it&#x27;s available there on Google Play.

But Apple and Google fight for progressive values and are working to ensure a better future by protecting our planet.<p>&#x2F;s

The most important thing for these companies is money.<p>Money above ever other consideration.<p>Money money money.<p>Human rights … whatever.<p>Politics …. Whatever.<p>Democracy …. Whatever.<p>Money money money money.

Is the functionality of the app not reproducible with perhaps Discord or similar?

There&#x27;s no way Apple or any company to act as an extralegal entity in another country. Every time something like that comes up, I&#x27;m baffled by the expectation that an American company will impose the American values or American laws in another country.<p>Back in the day when the internet felt like international thing not bound by any local laws, that was possible to some degrees but legislators caught up with it.<p>It is obvious that you don&#x27;t sell your crypto finance stuff to Americans, you don&#x27;t make anti-Putin stuff for Russians, you don&#x27;t give Saudis encrypted messaging, you don&#x27;t give Turks gambling apps, you don&#x27;t sell Nazi stuff to Germans etc. on the internet, unless you are ready to face repercussions. They can try to find a legal angle if they believe there is one and that it will benefit them more than harm them but often there isn&#x27;t one because gambling is illegal in Turkey, SEC has strict securities regulations in the USA, Putin has an absolute power in Russia and Saudis simply don&#x27;t allow it.<p>There is no way Apple or Google or any company facing the repercussions of not complying to the laws of Russia, therefore they will remove from the Russian AppStore whatever they are told to remove.<p>Allowing alternative AppStores also wouldn&#x27;t solve it but only delegate it to the people who run those alternative AppStores. Technological solutions to political problems work up until the politicians catch up. The more effective the technological solution the faster they catch up and take care of it.<p>StarLink for example, a swarm of satellites that can technically provide unrestricted internet to anyone on the planet, will obey the local laws depending on where the user is connecting from.<p>I know the technologist don&#x27;t like it but there&#x27;s no way around it. If you are in Russia, you are in Russia. Get rid of Putin, form a functioning democracy if you like to live in western-like country. No company is not going to provide you with the environment that people in the west built through struggles for generations.

Luckily, those who already installed the app can continue to use it.<p>Right?

Does this mean Google and Apple don&#x27;t believe in its success? It seems logical that if it actually succeeded the elected officials would protect Google and Apple from prosecution.

Sad times!

if Russians are OK with current regime, why corps should fight for them

Putin is the only president who spend many many months living in a bunker 24x7, hiding from the coronavirus. I rarely seen a more fearful person than Putin.

How is that different from Apple and Google removing apps of Trump supporters and social media companies closing their communication channels?<p>Is it democratic, as opposed to this case, just because companies did it without an official request from the government&#x2F;courts?<p>Here&#x27;s comes to mind the old saying: &quot;a King only has to think about something, and others will do it without him even asking. Smaller players will need to actually request and even use the brute force to get things done&quot;.<p>As a side note, Navalny is not a democrat, he&#x27;s a racist, but somehow gets labelled as democrat in western media just because he&#x27;s against Putin.

How would people would feel if there were Chinese backed apps in the AppStore that were used for tactical voting in the US presidential elections? With the express purpose to aid a specific candidate.

&quot;Specifically, officials say the four American firms named in the letter are supporting users to access the Smart Voting website set up by supporters of jailed opposition figure Alexey Navalny, as well as a mobile phone application used by campaigners. Navalny’s operations were branded a ‘foreign agent’ by the country’s Ministry of Justice over links to foreign funding, and his organizations were later deemed to be ‘extremist’ and banned by a court in Moscow.&quot; [0]<p>You can say whatever you want about how evil Google is or isn&#x27;t, but this article is super misleading when Google simply following the law of the land it&#x27;s operating in. It&#x27;s doomed if it pulls the app and doomed if it doesn&#x27;t.<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20210913070717&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rt.com&#x2F;russia&#x2F;534453-roskomnadzor-elections-warning-google-apple&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20210913070717&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rt.com...</a>