kidney_stone
Christina WarrenKinda wild Apple will kick ICEBlock out of the App Store on safety grounds but the Saudi government app that lets men track women (their “property”) and control their travel is fully allowed even after the Human Rights Watch AND members of the Senate begged them to ban it.
Peter Cohen
Cyndi Lauper - Money Changes Everything (Live)
@flargh totally. But also just come oh and say “we bow down to the whims of whatever governments we deem important” and spare me the lies about how independent they are.
Karry
Gabriel Viso Carrera@film_girl Google is also trying to protect ICE as a vulnerable group https://www.404media.co/google-calls-ice-agents-a-vulnerable-group-removes-ice-spotting-app-red-dot/
@gabriel oh I don’t doubt it! Both are extremely gross.
@film_girl It's quite upsetting, not sure what feasible alternative can be out there.
�@gabriel @film_girl on mobiles? i admit there is only stuff for techies. whereas on the computer? hell linux is so mainstream that i switched to BSD
@utf_7 @film_girl I am used to custom ROMs, but they're not going to be mainstream unless we keep on this path for decades.
As Google is going to restrict sideloading on commercial Android, this is concerning because group safety like the one addressed by ICE Block / Red Dot is not going to work if only people on Graphene OS or-the-like can install the app.
TobyBartelsAt least you can sideload on Android. Unfortunately, Red Dot doesn't have a direct link to the APK on their website https://www.red-dot.app/ ; in fact they still have the links to the app stores, so hopefully they'll fix that.
Daniel Quinn@gabriel @film_girl a decent alternative would be a web app. It's easy to pull an app from your store, but a normal website is a lot harder to block, especially if you're flexible with domain names.
petterroea 
@gabriel @film_girl how nice now that they also want to stop sideloading
Ozzelot 
Finn Smith@film_girl what, really? That's pretty crazy
@mrfinnsmith https://www.npr.org/2019/02/12/693994447/apple-google-criticized-for-carrying-app-that-lets-saudi-men-track-their-wives app still exists. Both Apple and Google refused to remove it.
@film_girl well, that's horrible.
"The app, called Absher, was created by the National Information Center, which according to a Saudi government website is a project of the Saudi Ministry of Interior."
Nick Heer@film_girl Thanks for the reminder.
Michael Gemar@film_girl Cook has really not risen to the times. It's hugely disappointing.
(I'm just waiting for Trump to demand the Rainbow Stage removed from Apple Park.)
Justin M@michaelgemar @film_girl Remember kids corporations are not your friends. They will always side with whomever they think will make them the most money
Leander Lindahl@Jam123 @michaelgemar @film_girl so maybe stop using products and services from companies you deem unethical.
Ilka 🌐@leanderlindahl @Jam123 @michaelgemar @film_girl exactly this!
The only thing that works:
buy what you can ethically support, stop buying from companies whose ethics you do not support.
The only thing that works:
buy what you can ethically support, stop buying from companies whose ethics you do not support.
@Jam123 @michaelgemar @film_girl I must have bought at least 30 Macs (laptops, minis, towers) and countless iPods/iPads/iPhones and software and cloud etc. Never used anything else throughout my life. As apple fan boys come, I was a pretty big fan boy. But after the 24k gold incident its #Fairphone w #eOS and Ubuntu Linux and NextCloud / pCloud, proton mail. 0% Apple.
Kevin Russell👆 👆
Seven thousand boosts promoting this above great post exposing the Apple corporation in coup cooperation in both America and Saudi Arabia.
it's B! Cavello 🐝@film_girl @schwa Wow, I had not heard about this (even tho I later worked for Senator Wyden)!
It looks like the app is still there, but unclear if the travel control is still in effect.
https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/apple-and-google-accused-of-helping-enforce-gender-apartheid-by-hosting-saudi-government-app-that-tracks-women-and-stops-them-leaving-the-country/
It looks like the app is still there, but unclear if the travel control is still in effect.
https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/apple-and-google-accused-of-helping-enforce-gender-apartheid-by-hosting-saudi-government-app-that-tracks-women-and-stops-them-leaving-the-country/
@b_cavello @schwa it is. The app is a function of the government website explicitly setup to to just this thing. This just helps them digitize the tracking and travel permissions 🫠
@film_girl @schwa Yuck. Thank you for the added context!
Terminally shyOregon Democrats could not care less about women's rights.
Oregon is one of a few states in the U.S. that leave women, as women, out of all hate and bias crime laws.
The African American lesbian head of the bias crimes unit for then Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum invited me to celebrate the fact that men who claim to be women were newly included in Oregon's bias crimes laws. Without apology, she admitted I and all other women were still excluded.
Race and sexual orientation (e.g. lesbian & gay) -are- included in Oregon's bias crime laws.
As is religion. So a religion that is specifically male supremacist, such as the Catholic or Mormon religions, are protected by bias crime laws, but the women who are excluded from any representation in those religions' governments, are not.
Glup Shitto of bsky
Joshua Dunham@film_girl Yeah I have no faith in big tech going against fascist/racist/sexist government actions anymore. They are bowing to the emperor.
Steve's Place@film_girl My take is that Tim Cook, another goddamned billionaire, is MAGA. I'm sorry I was ever in R&D there.
JaseT@film_girl apple makes me sick
AC@film_girl @Gte Tim’s too focused on saving us from avalanches and angry bears to worry about saving us from government agencies that appear to ardently want to kill people in out-groups.
Bullet-riddled corpses can’t send him glowing emails about how the watch saved their life with a notification.
Christopher Snowhill@film_girl Safety of the people in the established position of power.
realcaseyrollins ✝️@film_girl #ICEBlock is a doxxing platform. f you’re running a platform that censors content, it’s the exact type of content that should be blocked.
JacobRPG❌👑
slash@film_girl I think this exists at the interface between the online world, and the physical world. Governments still imagine "sovereignty" is something inherent and inalienable. It doesn't (possibly it *can't*) exist online.
Right now, they are trying to control it. National "cut-off" switches, back-doored encryption, and on-demand filtering of "objectionable" sites. They can't win in the long run, but we live in that part of the timeline where the war between these worlds is being fought.
Daniel Gomes@film_girl Tim is really scared of Donald by the looks of it.
@dfgomes @film_girl or is a right wing fucktard like everybody else
wyngman@utf_7 @dfgomes @film_girl From the "coming out of the closet is OK.... after you've made your first $10 billion" point of view, I think he sees more common ground between himself and Peter Thiel than anyone else.
fatlazycat@film_girl as long as it makes Apple money they don’t care.
@film_girl I didn't know of the Saudi app. Here is a link for the lazy: https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/05/06/saudi-arabias-absher-app-controlling-womens-travel-while-offering-government
Saudi Arabia’s Absher App: Controlling Women’s Travel While Offering Government Services
In Saudi Arabia, citizens and residents can use Absher, an online government platform, to access Interior Ministry services. Absher comes as a mobile app available for iPhones and Android phones, as well as an online portal. It offers e-services including renewing passports, applying for ID cards, paying traffic tickets, applying for or renewing migrant workers’ visas, and obtaining hajj (pilgrimage) permits. But with every Saudi woman required to have a male guardian, the guardians also use Absher to grant or deny permission for women and children to travel abroad and obtain a passport under a subsection on “dependent services.” Saudi employers and citizens who sponsor foreign nationals living in Saudi Arabia can also use Absher to approve or reject requests to leave the country.
Steve Holden@film_girl One vs law for the rich … quite literally!
🔏 Matthias Wiesmann@film_girl maybe they should publish the app from the EU, then they would have better recourses because of the Digital Service Act…
Phil Dennis-Jordan@thias @film_girl I doubt it would change anything with regard to being allowed on the App Store, and as far as I’m aware, Apple allows only narrowly-defined “EU users” (EU Apple ID, device has physically been inside the EU for a certain amount of time not too long ago, etc.) to install non-app-store apps.
@pmdj @film_girl if the publisher is in the EU blocking an app would amount to moderation, so Apple would have to offer the reasons for the moderation, right to appeal (article 20) and dispute settlement (article 21).
@thias @film_girl Would that apply to app sales in the US though? Realistically 99% of the market for that specific app.
@pmdj @film_girl interesting question, at the very least it would force Apple to block an app in the US and not in the EU and explain why.
@pmdj @film_girl and people in the US should probably learn to use VPNs…
@thias @film_girl Generally not a bad idea, but in this case unlikely to help. I’m pretty sure it uses the GPS location, not IP address geolocation for identifying EU users. From what I remember, traffic to certain Apple services always bypasses any VPN enabled on the device as well. I don’t know if that’s changed since I last looked at this though.
@thias @film_girl More generally: if the OS vendor itself is the threat, the only solution is to drop the OS. And yeah; that doesn’t leave us with much realistic choice on the mobile side.
@pmdj @film_girl I think there is the technical side and the political side, forcing Apple to state that they block stuff explicitly in the land of the free and not in the EU would matter politically.
Plus such an app could well be implemented as a web page - web pages are better than apps is probably not a message Apple likes.
Apple only gives a shit about huge profits.
Boycott that creepy misogynist trump supporting company ..
Rob WilliamsonWhy are they "begging", not commanding on pain of revoking Apple's license to exist as a corporate entity in the US? Is this some bullshit about corporations having "rights" again?
@film_girl I guess 3 things come together: no one threatened Tim Cook about it, didn't promise him goodies either & and he just doesn't care about women.
xs4me2Unacceptable…
Christian Berger DECT 2763@film_girl Well capitalists and fascists tend to work together. It's just more profitable.
Mr. Lance E Sloan (IRL) 👤@film_girl
Could the Saudi gov't app be used to track #ICE? For example, one could label ICE their wife, then track them.
I guess what I'm trying to ask is…
CAN I MAKE ICE MY BITCH‽
Steven Barnhart@film_girl @gruber is this true?? Wow you need to call them out.
Lance (Thank you for 11 Views)@film_girl When money is at stake, these big tech companies will always choose to obey in advance.