I think the headline is framing this wrong. Apple is not threatening to kill these services.
Apple is refusing to break their services just to accommodate broken, stupid laws written by a broken, stupid parliament.
I get concerned when companies like Apple uses the “We won’t break our application for demands of one country” argument as Australia, France, the USA and possibly other countries are either planning or already have similar legislation.
The right argument to have is the one that says “this is just plain wrong!”. That is a much tougher needle to thread though.
Careful there, expressing an honest take about an Apple decision instead of trying to spin it like it’s evil is a good way to piss a bunch of people off.
Considering Apple has no problem bending over backwards for dictatorships like China. Do you think they’ll do anything other than to server their finances?
People regurgitating company PR bullshit is fucking cringe.
this “careful, you might…” cliché makes you seem like you spend too much time online. Add something constructive to the discussion, rather than virtue signaling.
No company is looking after your best interests, except when it aligns with their financial interests. You take that out, they’ll sell you out to the highest bidder.
My brother in Christ, I don’t know who it was that hurt you but it wasn’t me. Being this emotionally invested in disliking a company is definitely not good for your mental health. Nobody here is even remotely suggesting that any company cares for anything other that maximizing profits. That doesn’t mean that there are no companies that maximize their profits by having a reputation for privacy and security.
If you don’t think my comment was valuable, downvote it and move on. Nobody wants to hear someone cry about how mean the big bad computer company is.
I rarely think Apple has done the right thing, but in this case they seem to be putting the privacy of their users above demands made by third parties, which is good.
Apple has a long history of being unwilling to bend the knee to govt requests.
I’m glad to see them taking a firm stance on this. I’m curious to see what the shareholders think if this happens, as one side of the coin is detrimental to their UK growth, but the other would result in their name being tarnished.
Time for a federation of messengers. The XMPP protocol is ready and waiting for you.
Good, as a UK resident I hope Apple, Signal, even WhatsApp stick to their guns over this issue. It’s the only way it will gain any traction with the public.
it will not make changes that it characterises as “a serious and direct threat to data security and information privacy” for users around the globe
That’s the thing right there. If Apple makes a back door for the UK, they would have difficulties keeping only UK citizens affected. Communications are global. Even if they restricted the back door to conversations involving UK residents, every private group chat that resident user enters becomes snoopable just by that user being there and the history could be made available from before the user entered. It would be like a privacy virus with UK residents as the spreaders.
