The multinational has removed dozens of apps, even though the Kremlin’s censorship body did not order the move. These services, half-permitted by the government, enable people in Russia to access social networks and independent media
Not familiar with iphones, can’t you just use plain wireguard?
Corporations. Are. Not. Your. Friend.
This message courtesy of corporations rent seeking on public infrastructure our economies cannot survive without.
The U.S. company — whose phones are still sold in Russian stores despite the firm officially leaving the market due to the invasion of Ukraine…
Apple taking a brave stand as ever.
Edit: This was not the smartest comment.
Apple left Russia but their phones are still making it there from China. What stand do you mean?
Apple could still easily release updates for their phones that prevent anyone from connecting to a Russian cell tower or connecting to a Russian IP address.
I thought about that, but it would affect iPhone users from outside Russia who are traveling in Russia, and Apple probably wouldn’t want that.
Is your expectation that Apple will send in troops to raid phone stores inside of Russia?
Maybe they expect them to stop China from selling them to Russia, bahahaha
I misunderstood and my comment wasn’t well considered. It was even dumb.
Suspicious!
You can use most VPN services via the Wireguard or OpenVPN apps though, or even via some of the protocols natively supported by iOS not requiring any third-party app.
Normies never heard about wireguard nor openvpn, this enough to deter a lot of ppl imo
Oh I’m not trying to imply otherwise.
The issue is 3rd party apps make it easier for non-techie people to subvert censorship. Raising the bar works bigly in the Kremlin’s favor.
side-loading in iOS has been possible for some time now
Hey just so you know apple and apple products suck and belong in the bin 🤷
Apple’s shareholders and BoD should be thrown off the highest building imaginable.
Nothing suspicious. Russia is openly engaging in a war of aggression and money laundering. They have a storied history of corruption, kleptomania, and deceitful diplomacy (HUR HUR AMERICA BAD TOO!). An American company is trying to
do the bare minimumput pressure on Russians.Absolutely, in addition to this, you can sideload apps as well without issue. I do it all the time
I see no mention of what they actually removed or how reputable they are. “VPN apps” are a reasonably common approach to spyware. (Common enough that literally Facebook has done it.)
You mean vpn apps deploy spyware?
They’re a good actual mechanism for spyware, because they see all your traffic.
Https means that they can’t see the actual contents without installing a root certificate, but they can see all the sites you visit and for how long. Reputable providers (at least the good ones) do not log any of this, but you should have a high level of trust in a provider to use their VPN, because they see a lot still.
That doesn’t mean that they didn’t ban legit VPNs. I don’t know. But it doesn’t really qualify as “reporting news” without at least a list of the apps that were banned, because they’re providing no information at all about the legitimacy of the apps, and it’s a category appealing to bad actors.
Why don’t they just disable iphones entirely from accessing Russian cell towers and prevent iphones from connecting to Russian IP addresses?
While I understand your idea, thats a level of censorship in the hands of a private company that is so cyber punk dystopian that it makes William Gibson cry.
Imagine your phone will start playing the Chinese anthem before it sends your dickpicks to your mother
No more dystopian than banning someone from Reddit. If you violate a TOS of any service provider, they’re usually within their right to terminate your access to the service. If Apple wants to truly shut down Russian usership of their products, they obviously have the power to do so. I find it more dystopian that there’s a multinational multitrillion dollar company that has the power to act ethically in this scenario but chooses to just remove apps from the app store, as if Russians aren’t already culturally inclined to look for hacks or workarounds.
Ofc they have the power to do so. John Deere did just that with stolen machines (incidentally underlining that you actually rent their machines) My point is that you buy the iphone hardware, and the use is not a service. And the possibility of bricking it at Apples, Samsung or Huawei whim is for me dystopian. Access to software, storefronts and internet pages is slightly different in my opinion.
Because then Russians would stop buying their phones.
Why are they selling iphones in Russia?
To generate profit.
Wah wah
thanks apple. putin is scum and the longer his goons enjoy a normal life the worse. make russian lives as bad as possible so we can have ukraine back.
The average russian citizen is not putin’s goon
Indeed, the goons don’t care, they use Russian services
keep telling that to yourself. just because they dont act like what you consider a goon doesnt mean they arent. we have this saying: if 9 ppl sit at a table and 1 nazi sits down with them and none walks away, bam, you have 10 nazis. so.
An entire fucking country isn’t a small gathering bro, are you high
This is a bad move. The more Russian citizens have access to outside information, the better chance they can learn what’s actually happening in Ukraine and the amount of damage the government is doing to their own country. The more Russians that have exposure to that information, it becomes more likely that the people will show their dissatisfaction. Without VPN, the people only have access to the internal propaganda.
like they did learn anything when it was open with Michail Sergejewitsch Gorbatschow. russians as a whole havent learned basic lessons of civilisation. your logic also failed in china.
make russian lives as bad as possible
Wasn’t that the Shock Doctrine strategy from back in 1996? Anyone remember what followed?
wrong year. making russian lives bad was before it successfully ended the terrible UDSSR regime.
That’s an incredibly curious reading of the Cold War. I’m going to run off and assume you thought the world economy was doing great in the 1980s except in the Soviet Bloc?
Whoops! Did they put them back I hope?
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Yeah, no. iPhone VPN apps aren’t the route that Russian hackers are taking.
