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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 month

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The antitrust case against Apple

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT (Mar 22) in TORONTO, then SUNDAY (Mar 24) with LAURA POITRAS in NYC, then Anaheim, and beyond!

The foundational tenet of "the Cult of Mac" is that buying products from a $3t company makes you a member of an oppressed ethnic minority and therefore every criticism of that corporation is an ethnic slur:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Call it "Apple exceptionalism" – the idea that Apple, alone among the Big Tech firms, is virtuous, and therefore its conduct should be interpreted through that lens of virtue. The wellspring of this virtue is conveniently nebulous, which allows for endless goal-post shifting by members of the Cult of Mac when Apple's sins are made manifest.

Take the claim that Apple is "privacy respecting," which is attributed to Apple's business model of financing its services though cash transactions, rather than by selling it customers to advertisers. This is the (widely misunderstood) crux of the "surveillance capitalism" hypothesis: that capitalism is just fine, but once surveillance is in the mix, capitalism fails.

Apple, then, is said to be a virtuous company because its behavior is disciplined by market forces, unlike its spying rivals, whose ability to "hack our dopamine loops" immobilizes the market's invisible hand with "behavior-shaping" shackles:

http://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

Apple makes a big deal out of its privacy-respecting ethos, and not without some justification. After all, Apple went to the mattresses to fight the FBI when they tried to force Apple to introduced defects into its encryption systems:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/fbi-could-have-gotten-san-bernardino-shooters-iphone-leadership-didnt-say

And Apple gave Ios users the power to opt out of Facebook spying with a single click; 96% of its customers took them up on this offer, costing Facebook $10b (one fifth of the pricetag of the metaverse boondoggle!) in a single year (you love to see it):

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/facebook-makes-the-case-for-activity-tracking-to-ios-14-users-in-new-pop-ups/

Bruce Schneier has a name for this practice: "feudal security." That's when you cede control over your device to a Big Tech warlord whose "walled garden" becomes a fortress that defends you against external threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/08/leona-helmsley-was-a-pioneer/#manorialism

The keyword here is external threats. When Apple itself threatens your privacy, the fortress becomes a prison. The fact that you can't install unapproved apps on your Ios device means that when Apple decides to harm you, you have nowhere to turn. The first Apple customers to discover this were in China. When the Chinese government ordered Apple to remove all working privacy tools from its App Store, the company obliged, rather than risk losing access to its ultra-cheap manufacturing base (Tim Cook's signal accomplishment, the one that vaulted him into the CEO's seat, was figuring out how to offshore Apple manufacturing to China) and hundreds of millions of middle-class consumers:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-vpn/apple-says-it-is-removing-vpn-services-from-china-app-store-idUSKBN1AE0BQ

Killing VPNs and other privacy tools was just for openers. After Apple caved to Beijing, the demands kept coming. Next, Apple willingly backdoored all its Chinese cloud services, so that the Chinese state could plunder its customers' data at will:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html

This was the completely foreseeable consequence of Apple's "curated computing" model: once the company arrogated to itself the power to decide which software you could run on your own computer, it was inevitable that powerful actors – like the Chinese Communist Party – would lean on Apple to exercise that power in service to its goals.

Unsurprisingly, the Chinese state's appetite for deputizing Apple to help with its spying and oppression was not sated by backdooring iCloud and kicking VPNs out of the App Store. As recently as 2022, Apple continued to neuter its tools at the behest of the Chinese state, breaking Airdrop to make it useless for organizing protests in China:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/11/foreseeable-consequences/#airdropped

But the threat of Apple turning on its customers isn't limited to China. While the company has been unwilling to spy on its users on behalf of the US government, it's proven more than willing to compromise its worldwide users' privacy to pad its own profits. Remember when Apple let its users opt out of Facebook surveillance with one click? At the very same time, Apple was spinning up its own commercial surveillance program, spying on Ios customers, gathering the very same data as Facebook, and for the very same purpose: to target ads. When it came to its own surveillance, Apple completely ignored its customers' explicit refusal to consent to spying, spied on them anyway, and lied about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Here's the thing: even if you believe that Apple has a "corporate personality" that makes it want to do the right thing, that desire to be virtuous is dependent on the constraints Apple faces. The fact that Apple has complete legal and technical control over the hardware it sells – the power to decide who can make software that runs on that hardware, the power to decide who can fix that hardware, the power to decide who can sell parts for that hardware – represents an irresistible temptation to enshittify Apple products.

"Constraints" are the crux of the enshittification hypothesis. The contagion that spread enshittification to every corner of our technological world isn't a newfound sadism or indifference among tech bosses. Those bosses are the same people they've always been – the difference is that today, they are unconstrained.

Having bought, merged or formed a cartel with all their rivals, they don't fear competition (Apple buys 90+ companies per year, and Google pays it an annual $26.3b bribe for default search on its operating systems and programs).

Having captured their regulators, they don't fear fines or other penalties for cheating their customers, workers or suppliers (Apple led the coalition that defeated dozens of Right to Repair bills, year after year, in the late 2010s).

Having wrapped themselves in IP law, they don't fear rivals who make alternative clients, mods, privacy tools or other "adversarial interoperability" tools that disenshittify their products (Apple uses the DMCA, trademark, and other exotic rules to block third-party software, repair, and clients).

True virtue rests not merely in resisting temptation to be wicked, but in recognizing your own weakness and avoiding temptation. As I wrote when Apple embarked on its "curated computing" path, the company would eventually – inevitably – use its power to veto its customers' choices to harm those customers:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

Which is where we're at today. Apple – uniquely among electronics companies – shreds every device that is traded in by its customers, to block third parties from harvesting working components and using them for independent repair:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

Apple engraves microscopic Apple logos on those parts and uses these as the basis for trademark complaints to US customs, to block the re-importation of parts that escape its shredders:

https://repair.eu/news/apple-uses-trademark-law-to-strengthen-its-monopoly-on-repair/

Apple entered into an illegal price-fixing conspiracy with Amazon to prevent used and refurbished devices from being sold in the "world's biggest marketplace":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/10/you-had-one-job/#thats-just-the-as

Why is Apple so opposed to independent repair? Well, they say it's to keep users safe from unscrupulous or incompetent repair technicians (feudal security). But when Tim Cook speaks to his investors, he tells a different story, warning them that the company's profits are threatened by customers who choose to repair (rather than replace) their slippery, fragile glass $1,000 pocket computers (the fortress becomes a prison):

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/

All this adds up to a growing mountain of immortal e-waste, festooned with miniature Apple logos, that our descendants will be dealing with for the next 1,000 years. In the face of this unspeakable crime, Apple engaged in a string of dishonest maneuvers, claiming that it would support independent repair. In 2022, Apple announced a home repair program that turned out to be a laughably absurd con:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/22/apples-cement-overshoes/

Then in 2023, Apple announced a fresh "pro-repair" initiative that, once again, actually blocked repair:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

Let's pause here a moment and remember that Apple once stood for independent repair, and celebrated the independent repair technicians that kept its customers' beloved Macs running:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/29/norwegian-potato-flour-enchiladas/#r2r

Whatever virtue lurks in Apple's corporate personhood, it is no match for the temptation that comes from running a locked-down platform designed to capture IP rights so that it can prevent normal competitive activities, like fixing phones, processing payments, or offering apps.

When Apple rolled out the App Store, Steve Jobs promised that it would save journalism and other forms of "content creation" by finally giving users a way to pay rightsholders. A decade later, that promise has been shattered by the app tax – a 30% rake on every in-app transaction that can't be avoided because Apple will kick your app out of the App Store if you even mention that your customers can pay you via the web in order to avoid giving a third of their content dollars to a hardware manufacturer that contributed nothing to the production of that material:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

Among the apps that Apple also refuses to allow on Ios is third-party browsers. Every Iphone browser is just a reskinned version of Apple's Safari, running on the same antiquated, insecure Webkit browser engine. The fact that Webkit is incomplete and outdated is a feature, not a bug, because it lets Apple block web apps – apps delivered via browsers, rather than app stores:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

Last month, the EU took aim at Apple's veto over its users' and software vendors' ability to transact with one another. The newly in-effect Digital Markets Act requires Apple to open up both third-party payment processing and third-party app stores. Apple's response to this is the very definition of malicious compliance, a snake's nest of junk-fees, onerous terms of service, and petty punitive measures that all add up to a great, big "Go fuck yourself":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/#dma

But Apple's bullying, privacy invasion, price-gouging and environmental crimes are global, and the EU isn't the only government seeking to end them. They're in the firing line in Japan:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-down-on-Apple-and-Google-app-store-monopolies

And in the UK:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-wins-appeal-in-apple-case

And now, famously, the US Department of Justice is coming for Apple, with a bold antitrust complaint that strikes at the heart of Apple exceptionalism, the idea that monopoly is safer for users than technological self-determination:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline

There's passages in the complaint that read like I wrote them:

Apple wraps itself in a cloak of privacy, security, and consumer preferences to justify its anticompetitive conduct. Indeed, it spends billions on marketing and branding to promote the self-serving premise that only Apple can safeguard consumers’ privacy and security interests. Apple selectively compromises privacy and security interests when doing so is in Apple’s own financial interest—such as degrading the security of text messages, offering governments and certain companies the chance to access more private and secure versions of app stores, or accepting billions of dollars each year for choosing Google as its default search engine when more private options are available. In the end, Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple’s financial and business interests.

After all, Apple punishes its customers for communicating with Android users by forcing them to do so without any encryption. When Beeper Mini rolled out an Imessage-compatible Android app that fixed this, giving Iphone owners the privacy Apple says they deserve but denies to them, Apple destroyed Beeper Mini:

https://blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-moving-forward

Tim Cook is on record about this: if you want to securely communicate with an Android user, you must "buy them an Iphone":

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/7/23342243/tim-cook-apple-rcs-imessage-android-iphone-compatibility

If your friend, family member or customer declines to change mobile operating systems, Tim Cook insists that you must communicate without any privacy or security.

Even where Apple tries for security, it sometimes fails ("security is a process, not a product" -B. Schneier). To be secure in a benevolent dictatorship, it must also be an infallible dictatorship. Apple's far from infallible: Eight generations of Iphones have unpatchable hardware defects:

https://checkm8.info/

And Apple's latest custom chips have secret-leaking, unpatchable vulnerabilities:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/03/hackers-can-extract-secret-encryption-keys-from-apples-mac-chips/

Apple's far from infallible – but they're also far from benevolent. Despite Apple's claims, its hardware, operating system and apps are riddled with deliberate privacy defects, introduce to protect Apple's shareholders at the expense of its customers:

https://proton.me/blog/iphone-privacy

Now, antitrust suits are notoriously hard to make, especially after 40 years of bad-precedent-setting, monopoly-friendly antitrust malpractice. Much of the time, these suits fail because they can't prove that tech bosses intentionally built their monopolies. However, tech is a written culture, one that leaves abundant, indelible records of corporate deliberations. What's more, tech bosses are notoriously prone to bragging about their nefarious intentions, committing them to writing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Apple is no exception – there's an abundance of written records that establish that Apple deliberately, illegally set out to create and maintain a monopoly:

https://www.wired.com/story/4-internal-apple-emails-helped-doj-build-antitrust-case/

Apple claims that its monopoly is beneficent, used to protect its users, making its products more "elegant" and safe. But when Apple's interests conflict with its customers' safety and privacy – and pocketbooks – Apple always puts itself first, just like every other corporation. In other words: Apple is unexceptional.

The Cult of Mac denies this. They say that no one wants to use a third-party app store, no one wants third-party payments, no one wants third-party repair. This is obviously wrong and trivially disproved: if no Apple customer wanted these things, Apple wouldn't have to go to enormous lengths to prevent them. The only phones that an independent Iphone repair shop fixes are Iphones: which means Iphone owners want independent repair.

The rejoinder from the Cult of Mac is that those Iphone owners shouldn't own Iphones: if they wanted to exercise property rights over their phones, they shouldn't have bought a phone from Apple. This is the "No True Scotsman" fallacy for distraction-rectangles, and moreover, it's impossible to square with Tim Cook's insistence that if you want private communications, you must buy an Iphone.

Apple is unexceptional. It's just another Big Tech monopolist. Rounded corners don't preserve virtue any better than square ones. Any company that is freed from constraints – of competition, regulation and interoperability – will always enshittify. Apple – being unexceptional – is no exception.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/22/reality-distortion-field/#three-trillion-here-three-trillion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

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mywitchcultblr · 2 years

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I'm done with your purity

I'm fucking done with all of you westerners fucks who take your freedom for granted. AO3 was banned in china because pissy fans reporting RPF TO THE GOVERNMENT UNDER FALSE REPORT OF PEDO OR WHATEVER thus making life a living hell for Chinese writers and fans. ALSO LET ME TELL YOU that fanfic and AO3 is a safe space for many oppressed LGBT people outside of the west

I can't fucking say that I'm trans and bi without having people beating the shit out of me, but I can fuckin' write that I'm gay as fuck in fanfic or writing gay shit about my fave with fanfic

Imagine some people defending state wide censorship over fanfic, because they don't like icky fanfic, that's a sign that either you are brainwashed or fucking privileged and taking your freedom for granted. You know why Asian and other non western USA-European are more chill with fanfic and fandom?

Why we are less prone to make some stupid callout over fanworks?

Because most of us doesn't have the same information and expression privilege like the west, we take any freedom that we can have

That's in 2017... There's probably more than one million websites being censored rn. I cannot even buy pride pin here because NO ONE outside of internet selling it! The censorship always begin from "banning information to protect children and moral from nsfw" down to censoring Spongebob Squarepants

You don't like something? Just don't fucking read it, it wouldn't stop the author to write and when they do stop writing usually after they are harassed so bad to the point of mental break down or suicide. What the actual fuck...

Defending and supporting state wide censorship because you want to feel superior on the internet is beyond stupid and it showing your privilege... Also yah fuck you who defend china aggressive state wide censorship because adult x adult RPF icky or whatever, I like reading Tom Hiddleston x Reader, because I'm lonely and it's fun. Don't lie that you never thinking of marrying your favorite celebrities or dreaming about dating Gerard Way.

What the fuck you gonna do about it? Crucify my ass? So long you are not shoving it to the person's face, who give a fuck? It's not a justifiable ground to cheer for government mandated national wide censorship. A lot of westerners are so privileged and terminally online to the point their mind revolve around online discourse 24/7 I'm not saying discourse has no damn merits but you get what I said...

Some people particularly white westerners are so privileged they have the chance to goes back 180° and agreeing with conservative mindset they claim to hate so much... Also your kink critical bullshit and your bullshit crusading over dark stories? Yeah. Heavily influenced by TERF and conservatism. Newsflash...

I'm not a person who agree with all ship or stories, i don't claim any moral high ground. I was so scared of getting cancelled due to the hostile neo puritan fandom culture, but seeing people defending China great firewall and aggressive censorship finally broke something inside of me and I cannot stay quiet

I don't give a fuck about your fanfic discourse, If i don't like something i just wouldn't fucking engage with it and wouldn't read...

I'm done, I'm tired. Fucking tagging this shit as anti vs pro because i need to get the message out there and LET THE CHAOS begin

( When you want to escape your country censorship to the internet but then you see the supposed liberated westerners people wanting censorship because they want to feel moral. Yes there are even westerners who don't want to see anything even remotely 'problematic' example: they will attack Zutara or fuckin' Reylo shipper whatever. See? You are terminally online and so privileged... Congratulations... Here's your fucking medal and gold star)

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yuri-alexseygaybitch · 7 months

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ok so let me preface this by saying that i am chinese and am not trying to argue china bad, but i guess like, why is tibetan independence considered Balkan-zing china? Like this isn't some case of like old ass territory that was conquored by china a long time ago and now they've integrated with the rest of china, The PRC literally annexed Tibet in 1951. Shouldn't it be considered a good thing for Tibet to get independence? I'm not trying to gotcha you or anything i just don't understand why

Before Tibet was liberated by the PRC Tibet was a feudal theocracy run by monk kings and manor lords who would chop the hands of their tenants for owing debt. Almost all Tibetans in the Tibetan Autonomous Region speak their own language, go to classes taught in their language, continue their distinct cultural practices as one of the officially recognized ethnic groups of China, and have been lifted out of extreme poverty by the PRC's socialist development. The Dalai Lama is literally a hereditary feudal ruler (and p*do) who once owned child slaves whose entire purpose is to be a CIA-supported mascot for the supposed "peaceful, tranquil" independent Tibet that most credulous Westerners who are not familiar with the region's history have in their minds. The only reason you'd want Tibet to be "independent" is if you've casually swallowed State Dept. narratives about "China oppressing Tibet" your whole life, which I don't mean as an insult since that's the situation most people in the West (including me until a few years ago) find themselves in. And the reason why the US and its allies want Tibet to become "independent" along with Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan is precisely to weaken China and separate it into smaller states it can dominate through neocolonialism. In terms of comparing it to Palestine, you may notice the difference in that China hasn't built a giant wall around Tibet that it keeps Tibetans locked inside.

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totopopopo · 2 months

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They pointed a gun at Aaron. When there was a self immolation in December, the authorities spoke about it as if it was a form of antisemitism.

I have said it before. I will say it again.

It is an act of despair and feeling like nothing else you can do will be heard. Nobody burns themselves alive out of hatred.

Nobody.

I truly believe it was an act of grief. it was an act of fury. but i want to stress that it was not an act of hopelessness. like i said before, it was not just suicide, it was a calculated political act made by a determined man of sound mind and body who decided to use his death to send a message. he burned himself in front of the embassy in uniform because he knew that in the eyes of the US government, his life was worth more than the lives of Palestinians. His death was a deliberate attempt to call attention to the deaths of the thousands upon thousands of innocent people in Gaza. the point is that every death an inhumane brutal unconscionable horrific end to a real human life. the point is to disturb. the point is to be seen and heard and felt. he died screaming for Palestine.

like i said in another post, I took a class violent and nonviolent protests as an undergrad, and we talked a LOT about self immolation, and the work / thought / motives / grief / anger that goes into something like that. I’m gonna link a few articles if anyone is interested, I know it’s a really heavy subject but I also think its important to understand the role the act of self immolation has played in the history of protest:

this is about religious activists (both quakers and buddhists) who self immolated in protest of the Vietnam War

this is about the terminology we use to talk about self-immolation (specifically about the self immolation of tibetans in Protest of Chinese occupation) and about the objectives of political self immolators

and lastly, i am telling EVERYONE to read Weird John Brown: Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics by Ted A. Smith. it’s not about self immolation, but it is about the use of violence in systemic oppression and resistance and deals with the question of Who Defines What Violence Is (spoiler alert: the state defines what violence is, and the definition will always stretch to include the actions of the resistance and exclude the actions of the state). it is a really in depth and succinct examinations of the mechanisms of state sanctioned violence, and its HUGELY relevant to everything that’s been happening. PLEASE read it. everybody should read it. i don’t have a link to a pdf but im sure you can find one, or get it from a library or bookstore. it’s worth having, honestly. go read it.

#free palestine #self immolation #aaron bushnell #abolish the police #okay idc if you skim what I wrote in this post but it would b cool if u could reblog this post for the links cause i do want people to see #and maybe read the articles / check out the book even if they don’t read what i have to say #what i have to say isn’t actually as important

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lunarneo · 3 months

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If you think what is happening in Palestine is "too complicated" then you NEED to read this. The oppressive apartheid state wants you to believe it's too complicated. that is formulated propaganda.

Here are some clips that really stuck with me

please take the time to read this! it has VERY helpful and useful information. even if you think you know enough.

#palestine #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #Bisan recommends this article

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thatswhywelovegermany · 7 months

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October 9, 1989: The day the dictatorial GDR regime broke

Throughout the 1980s, discontent among the population of the GDR about the economical and political situation kept growing. Nonetheless, the ruling party SED (Socialist Union Party of Germany) upheld its role as the only governing part of the state, continuing the process of the "socialist revolution" in the state. People started protesting against oppression of dissidents.

The situation became explosive after the rigged local elections on May 7, 1989. People didn't have the choice between multiple options. Instead, there was only one list of the "National Front", which was automatically counted as "yes" as soon as the ballot was dropped into the urn. The only way to vote "no" was to strike all entries in the list through with a straight line. Although this was a tedious proces that could easily be traced by the Stasi officers in the polling stations, many people made use of this way of voting "no". For the first time, citizens gathered in the polling stations to observe the process of counting. Althouth this was explicitly allowed by law (§ 37 of the voting act), access was denied in almost all cases. Nonetheless, members of the church documented electoral fraud and made it public. This led to the first protests, which the Stasi and regular police forced tried to quench. Around the same time, a mass exodus through neighboring countries to West Germany started.

These protests attracted more and more people. In many cases, the demonstrations started after peace prayers in the protestant churches throughout the country. But still, the oppressive system of the state held the upper hand. On October 7, 1989, the police forces, workers' militia, and Stasi arrested thousands of protesters in Leipzig and arrested them in horse stables on the grounds of the agricultural fair.

This led pastor Christoph Wonneberger to publish a plea for non-violence, which was agreed to by some SED secretaries read out loud over the city's public announcement system (by Leipzig's Gewandhaus Orchestra's conductor Kurt Masur) and during the peace prayers. On October 9, 1989, the situation was tense as approx. 130,000 people took to the streets, marching past the Stasi central. A massive presence of state forces was also present, and people feared a "Chinese solution", referring to the violent Tiananmen Square massacre earlier that year. However, the plea for non-violence by the power of its wording kept both protesters and state forces from violent actions and the protests ended peacefully and without any arrests.

This was the first time the GDR authorities gave in to the masses of protesters. The word spread, and protests sprang up in more and more cities throughout the country, leading to state leader Erich Honecker's demise on October 18 and culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, which ultimately led to the German reunification.

#german history #october 9; 1989 #leipzig monday demonstrations

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ptseti · 1 month

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BLACK IN CHINA VS USA

Julian McCall moved from the United States to China when he was 15. He was expecting police to pull him over while running, wearing a hoodie, but he was pleasantly surprised at the freedom he experienced. According to him, Chinese people and their government don’t associate Africans with criminal activity.

Being an African in the United States, or any country involved in the European Slave Trade of African peoples, forces one to grapple with the legacies of slavery and colonialism, day in and day out. Living like this conditions people to believe prejudice and white supremacist policies are universal.

As he said in his Miami Herald opinion piece, ‘While slavery’s oppressive shadow still shapes American society 150 years after its dissolution, it simply never existed in China. Black people are not a fixture in Chinese history, so my skin generated genuine curiosity rather than suspicion. My Blackness was certainly still Othering but in a much more benign and tolerable way than in America.’

For more on his perspective, please read his 2022 article, ‘Sanctuary: Black in Beijing’ in the Miami Herald.

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yourtongzhihazel · 2 months

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hello, are you under the impression that there is a non-capitalist economic system that eliminates the problem of powerful people exploiting the less powerful? Serious question.

Also, thanks for being a communist, and by that, I mean thanks for being a fascist. Don't worry, though, you aren't pissing on the graves of anyone who's been starved or killed by the systematic failures of communism to provide for the economic needs of those who live under it. Oh, and thanks for being a westerner, because I know you are! Just ignore all the oppressed people in eastern Europe and Asia who had to live through communism. You, who have enjoyed the high living standards brought about by capitalism and have known nothing but luxury that my immigrant parents wouldn't have dared dream of. What immense, staggering privilege you must be speaking from. I'm sure that privilege hasn't affected your perspective at all, though. But hey, you gotta know better than all those dirty immigrants who come to the west specifically for its liberal democracy and capitalism, right?

I'm going to stop insulting you and start being serious. Please reconsider your politics. Please reconsider your social circles. Please understand that just because someone says one good thing ("trans rights are human rights!") doesn't mean that everything they say is good ("Capitalism is killing us!") Please stop supporting communism, an authoritarian ideology that people are still suffering from. You could get out there and do some real good. Maybe serve meals to homeless people? I do that once a month.

are you entirely fucking serious

Do i have to wear a big fucking sticker that says "I am Chinese, my family and I have benefited greatly from communism"

How in the god damn hell can anyone see my blog and NOT see this? Should I change my got damn pinned post or something unbelievable.

Luxuries brought by capitalism? an economic system does no work. Who made those luxuries? Where did they come from? Who shipped it? Why did they make it ship it to where it went? Who bought it from who? Who sold it? The answers to these problems is found in political-economy. If you actually cared about where 79 cent bananas come from and why people from Latin America can only go to the us to escape their poverty, you would find that it is the united states who keeps Latin America in perpetual subjugation. Need I remind you that every single country (except Cuba) in Latin America is capitalist? Why are their failures not a reflection on the capitalist system to you? The "migrant crisis" is imperialism's chickens coming home to roost.

The extreme poverty rate in east Asia has fallen from 1 billion in 1990 to 25 million in 2019. Where did this poverty reduction take place? The People's Republic of China. In 2021, the PRC entirely eliminated extreme poverty within its borders. The PRC evaluates extreme poverty on a higher and stricter basis than the IMF or world bank uses so the number of people raised above poverty according to the CPC is LOWER than reported by western sources. One of the families who benefited from this poverty reduction? MINE. 800 million people raised out of poverty in the past 75 years. There are no bread lines in China. There is one in every city in america.

You want to know what I do? Im a union organizer. I worked with the DSA and the Teamsters to unionize Amazon. I am now working with the UAW as a union maid and recruiter for graduate students. Your band-aid solution of hunger does nothing to actually treat the root cause of hunger. Your understanding of politics and the economy is shallower than a puddle.

Start becoming more curious about the material causes of poverty and stop being a class traitor.

#i fucking hate liberals #mmp

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mylight-png · 6 months

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You know what absolutely baffles me about the pro-Hamas/anti-Israel movement?

If you ask the people who consider themselves part of that movement whether they would ever choose to align themselves with the Taliban, ISIS, Al Qaeda or Chinese government, or Russian government, or North Korea, or Erdogan (of Turkey), or Maduro (of Venezuela) then the answer would be a resounding "No!"

Because all of those people, groups, and regimes are notorious for their violations of human rights. Everyone knows of how Russia treats queer people and their actions in Ukraine (and in history in general). Everyone, or at least most people, are aware of China's mistreatment of the Ughyrs. Most wouldn't hesitate to recognize and often condemn ISIS and Al Qaeda as violent terrorist groups with negative intent. Maduro and Erdogan (and Putin) are known to be problematic and oppressive and backwards. And do I even need to explain North Korea?

So I'm fairly sure we can agree, most reasonable people would not align themselves with these groups.

Well let me tell you something. Russia and China have shown support for Gaza/Hamas in the current war. Erdogan's regime siphons money to Hamas. There have been remnants of North Korean weapons found where Hamas has attacked, indicating North Korean support as well. ISIS has repeatedly helped Hamas, and their flag was found in one of the places where Hamas invaded. Hamas's attack on Israel has been repeatedly compared on the scale of 9/11 for a reason, the two groups share ideologies and goals as well. Hamas has established an Islamist state in Gaza comparable to the rule of the Taliban, going so far as having the death penalty for being queer.

I think we can all agree that those groups/governments/leaders are awful and horrible. (Gov, not people.)

So why are people who are always so quick to condemn those groups are also quick to support Hamas in the war against Israel? Even though Hamas literally goes against everything those people stand for?

I don't really have an answer, but I have a few guesses. Let's just say the main reason starts with "anti" and ends with "semitism".

Even if the people at the pro-Hamas rallies would never claim to be antisemites, their views are shaped by the antisemitism so constant in our culture. As I've said before, the propaganda we're seeing is nothing new, it's just been reworded to fit the modern political world.

It's the same blood libel and slander we've been facing since we've began existing.

And yet, I am still baffled by the willful and selective ignorance of those who oppose Israel right now.

I'll be honest, I will most frequently assume benevolent intent. These people often believe that they are actually doing the right thing, actually helping people. But they align themselves with groups and individuals who definitely do not have benevolent intent. And I find the willful blindness appalling and confusing.

#jewish #jumblr #judaism #jew #opinion #proud israeli #israel solidarity #discourse #hamas is isis #denounce hamas #am yisrael chai #fuck antisemitism #fuck hamas #antizionism is antisemitism

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hailmaryfullofgrace55675 · 5 months

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“Ashkenazi Jews don’t actually have Levantine genetic ancestry” has been floating around lately among naïve and conspiracy minded anti-Zionists, a problematic claim that undermines actually correct anti-Zionist principles and defense of Palestinian rights. This claim is

absolutely irrelevant, as “blood” originating on the “soil” does not grant anyone any right to an ethnostate on any land. Using area-native ethnicity to justify discrimination and mass killing is bad when it’s Yamato Japanese discriminating against Korean, Mainland Chinese, and Taiwanese minorities in Japan and it’s bad when it’s Celtic-Germanic descent Brits oppressing Celtic-Germanic descent Irish who they’re genetically undifferentiatable from. It was bad when it was Hutus killing Tutsis and it was bad when it was the Khmer Rouge killing Chinese and Vietnamese Cambodians. The actions of the Israeli state in immiserating and slaughtering non-Jewish Palestinians would be equally harmful and wrong if the diaspora had never happened and every Israeli could trace their resident lineage in an unbroken line back to the time of the Second Temple, because it is bad to destroy people’s homes, burn their crops, imprison them, and kill them.

incorrect, at least according to current scientific consensus. Most genetic studies seem to indicate that Ashkenazim are of majority European descent and also have ancestry in the Levant, that is: the Ashkenazi population had some Levantine founders and there’s been significant amounts of intermarriage over the hundreds and hundreds of years of the diaspora into Southern Europe and from there across Central and Eastern Europe.

irrelevant again because even if, through a combination of conversions, adoptions, intermarriage, and adulterous and out of wedlock pairings between Jews and local gentiles, the diasporic European Jewish population had become completely genetically indistinguishable from local gentiles, those Jews would still have been the children of Israel. They still would have learned to read the Torah and celebrate its festivals. They still would have learned, from their families and communities in an unbroken line, to pray “Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echad” (Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one) as the rabbinic sages of Roman Judea observed in the Talmud that they were commanded to do. They still would have spoken languages with Hebrew and Aramaic elements, and they still would have written them with letters recognizable in the Dead Sea Scrolls. They still would have had the same interests, affirmed daily and yearly, in the land that their people left so many hundreds of years ago.

One formulation of the claim is “Israel bans direct to consumer genetic testing because it shows that (Ashkenazi) Jews don’t have Middle Eastern ancestry”. The Israeli government does ban DTC genetic testing as part of a genetic information privacy and nondiscrimination law passed in 2000, before companies like 23andMe existed. DNA testing for ancestry can be interpreted and presented many ways, and the ancestry breakdowns given by DTC GT companies just do not correspond to the question “where, how, and through what migrations did this population originate?”.

Once again, Zionism is not bad because people residing in places their ancestors are not from is bad. That is fine. Zionism is bad because from its beginning the Zionist project has been one of violent dispossession and because that violent dispossession continues in and through this very present moment.

#jewposting #palestine #israel #antizionism

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adiscoveringsoul · 3 months

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I play roller derby.

I've seen countless arguments in the community, in which any single person with the jersey number 88 was hung out to dry as a Nazi. When Chinese skaters mentioned 88 as being an important number for them culturally the answer was "doesn't matter. It's white supremacist and antisemitic."

Those same people are now tearing down posters of innocent hostages. And defending rape and sexual assault as tools of the resistance. "They wouldn't have done this if they hadn't been oppressed. If Israel wasn't an apartheid state, the Palestinians wouldn't have to resort to a violent uprising."

Please, tell me all about how the number 88 has no place in derby because antisemitism is bad and in the same breath say that Israelis deserve what they got. Chant your genocidal slogans and tell me that Jews are oppressors, and that perhaps the holocaust was more about people who were *different* and not really about Jews.

Please continue to tell the people who have been the victims of ethnic cleansing for millennia that they are now practicing ethnic cleansing.

Please continue to tell people how #inclusive Roller Derby is. How anyone from any walk of life can be safe and be one of the community here. It'll fit in so well with the rest of your blatant lies.

#i hate it here #antisemitism #jewblr #jewish #roller derby #roller derby isn’t nearly as inclusive as you say it is

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workingclasshistory · 11 months

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On this day, 10 June 1907, the first edition of Tianyi (天義 – Natural Justice), a Chinese anarchist feminist magazine, was published in exile in Tokyo. It had been founded by He-Yin Zhen (何震 – He "thunderclap"), a leading member of the Women's Rights Recovery Association (女子妇权会). The Association advocated forceful resistance against oppression by men, as well as that by capitalists and the ruling class. It also forbade its own members from being subservient to men or becoming a concubine or second wife, while offering to come to the assistance of any member who was being abused by their husband, or under some other form of male dominance. He-Yin urged: "You women, do not hate the man: hate that you don't have food to eat. Why don't you have food to eat? Because you can't buy food without money. Why don't you have money? Because the rich have stolen our property and walk all over the majority of the people." Tianyi argued for a sexual revolution and the abolition of the family, which it believed gave rise to selfishness, patriarchy and private property. He-Yin also argued that women forming part of a government would be inadequate for the liberation of women, believing that while a few women might be able to join the ruling class, they would only join men in oppressing everyone else. And so liberation would only come with the overthrowing of both patriarchy and the state: "What we mean by equality between the sexes is not just that men will no longer oppress women. We also want men no longer to be oppressed by other men and women no longer to be oppressed by other women." In total, 19 issues of the journal published over the next couple of years. More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8210/Tianyi-first-published Pictured: A print of He-Yin by Han Lilin, made for the first Chinese language edition of our book, Working Class History: Everyday Acts of Resistance & Rebellion https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=641556841350868&set=a.602588028581083&type=3

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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Apple's business model made Chinese oppression inevitable

A month ago, a wave of rare political protests swept China, centered on Beijing, where Premier Xi Jinping was consolidating his already-substantial power by claiming an unprecedented third term:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/22/china/china-party-congress-overseas-students-protest-intl-hnk

Protest organizers in China struggle with the serious legal and extrajudicial penalties for anti-government activities, backed by a sophisticated digital surveillance grid that monitors and blocks online communications that might challenge government authority.

Though this digital surveillance network is now primarily supplied and serviced by Chinese tech companies, it can't be separated from western tech companies. The first version of the Chinese digital surveillance grid was built by Cisco:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ciscos-latest-attempt-dodge-responsibility-facilitating-human-rights-abuses-export

Tech companies like Yahoo went into China knowing that they'd have to censor the internet, and ultimately turned over their users' data to Chinese authorities, who subsequently arrested and tortured some of those users:

https://www.technewsworld.com/story/yahoo-charged-with-complicity-in-chinese-torture-case-57011.html

Google pulled out of China in 2010, after the Chinese government hacked and arrested Gmail users. But eight years later, Google was secretly working on Project Dragonfly, a censoring, surveilling search product designed for the Chinese market:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/12/19/138307/how-google-took-on-china-and-lost/

Apple plays a key ongoing role in Chinese state surveillance and oppression. Like most tech giants, Apple depends on access to low-waged Chinese factory workers with weak labor protections to hold down the wage bill for its manufacturing.

Apple also relies on selling phones and computers and services to the titanic Chinese middle class, a category that's loose enough that estimates of its size range from 350m to 700m - but even the lower figure is larger than the entire US population.

Apple's dual reliance on poor Chinese workers and rich Chinese consumers gives the Chinese state enormous leverage over the company. The Chinese government can order Apple to participate in its digital surveillance and dissent-suppression efforts and threaten the company with the loss of revenues and manufacturing if it balks.

But that's true of any western company that seeks to hold down costs and generate revenues through Chinese manufacturing and Chinese sales. What makes Apple uniquely vulnerable to Chinese state pressure is its business-model choices - choices that, ironically, are touted as a way to keep its users safe.

Apple's Ios platform is "curated." Ipads and Iphones ship locked to Apple's App Stores. Users aren't supposed to be able to install software unless it is delivered via the App Store. Apple describes this as a safety measure, a bulwark against the tricks that hackers and identity thieves use to lure users into installing malicious software.

But Apple also makes billions of dollars through this arrangement. The App Store is a chokepoint, and any software author who wants to sell an app to an Iphone owner can only do so if Apple approves of the transaction.

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

Apple can arbitrarily withhold this permission, if, say, it has a competing product and doesn't want to have to win out over a new market entrant in a fair fight.

Apple can also burden its competitors: if you want to sell media that competes with Apple Books, Apple Music or Apple Video, the company will charge you 15-30% on each sale, while its own offerings escape this charge.

That means that media stores that competes with Apple's own retail storefronts have to either charge more than Apple, or make less money, or not sell media via an app at all - instead, they have to implement a clunky two-step whereby customers buy their media on the web and they flip back to an app to download it.

Even when an app maker doesn't compete with Apple, Apple can turn it to its advantage: the company simply appropriates 15-30% of ever dollar that changes hands when Iphone owners buy software and media from app makers.

This is "feudal security." In a lawless realm of roving bandits, Apple offers us a high-walled fortress bristling with fierce infosec mercenaries who promise to defend us from the threats outside the walls. In return, Apple uses its control over the gateway to the outside world to extract a tax from everyone who brings us the things we need.

Apple has every incentive to make this fortress as impregnable as possible. From the lowest levels of its chip designs to its lobbying blitzes to criminalize jailbreaking devices, the company is fully committed to ensuring that Ios device owners can't make choices Apple disapproves of.

This is the source of China's extraordinary leverage over Apple. Apple can't afford to leave China, because that would mean losing manufacturing and customers. Because of this, the Chinese state can order Apple to take any measure that Apple is technically capable of delivering.

Because of its business-model choices, Apple has the technical capability to introduce defects in the apps on its customers' devices. It can order every software vendor in the App Store to break their privacy tools so that the Chinese government can spy on those customers.

If companies don't comply, Apple can simply block them from delivering software to Chinese users altogether. An absolutely foreseeable consequence of this product design is that the Chinese state will order Apple to neuter all the privacy tools available to Chinese Ios users, which is exactly what happened:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-vpn/apple-says-it-is-removing-vpn-services-from-china-app-store-idUSKBN1AE0BQ

Apple offers cloud storage to its Ios users. Because Apple can't afford to anger the Chinese state, the Chinese state can order Apple to introduce defects into the encryption on its cloud servers so that Apple customers can be spied on by the Chinese government. That's also exactly what happened:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html

Apple's business-model decisions reduce the consequences for betraying its customers. If defects in Apple's cloud product come to light, it can simply order all the other cloud services in the App Store to introduce similar defects, on pain of being kicked out of the store.

Last month's Chinese protests were coordinated in part thanks to a novel technological tactic, one that made use of one of Apple's most innovative technologies: Airdrop. Airdrop is an ad hoc, peer-to-peer file transfer protocol that lets two nearby Ios users exchange files with one another without identifying themselves.

Anti-Xi organizers used Airdrop to exchange forbidden protest literature. Because these files travel directly between Ios devices, they weren't visible to the censors and spies who monitor other digital communications tools in China.

This use of Airdrop is a canonical example of the ways that digital technologies can be part of human rights struggles, giving people new tools that give them leverage over powerful state actors.

Right on schedule, the Chinese government has ordered Apple to break Airdrop so that it can't be used to organize protests, requiring users to opt into receiving files from strangers every ten minutes, rather than letting them set their devices to publicly visible until they are ready to turn it off:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/11/apple-limits-iphone-filesharing-feature-used-by-protesters-in-china

Apple called this a "security update." It updates the security of the Chinese state from democratic accountability.

There's a strain of technology criticism that sees incidents like this as proof that digital tools have no place in human rights struggles, because they will always be turned against their users.

But no one forced Apple to launch its "curated computing" service, nor to design it so that its customers can't override it. Apple built a walled fortress in full knowledge that it might be called upon someday to turn that fortress into a prison.

The feigned outrage of tech companies when the weakenesses in their business-models are exploited by third parties is an obvious and shabby trick to deflect blame. Apple put the gun on the mantelpiece in Act I. It can't expect us to forgive it when Xi Jinping fires the gun in Act III.

Of course, this sin isn't unique to Apple. Google has designed a location-harvesting system that is impossible to opt out of, so that it can accumulate and sell access to a database of every movement of every person.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/01/you-are-here/#goog

Having assembled this database, Google doesn't get to act surprised when cops show up with "geofenced reverse warrants" that demand the identity of every participant in a Black Lives Matter protest (or the January 6 riot):

https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/5/22918487/fbi-geofence-seattle-blm-protest-police-guild-attack

Or take the scandal of Adobe customers' files being wrecked by the company's dispute with proprietary color system vendor Pantone. Pantone cancelled Adobe's license to use its technology and wants Adobe customers to spend $21/month to keep Pantone colors.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

But this doesn't just affect files created after the Adobe/Pantone split. Due to Adobe's subscription-based business model, which requires customers to pay monthly for software as a service (SaaS), Pantone can demand that Adobe break all the existing files its customers have created.

If you created a Photoshop file with some Pantone colors 20 years ago, they are broken now, and forever, unless you start paying Pantone $21/month, because Adobe has altered its cloud software so that all Pantone-colored pixels are rendered in black.

I've been corresponding with an Adobe PR flack doing damage control after the Pantone scandal broke, and as far as I can tell, she wants me to "correct" my article to blame Pantone for this mess, because it has Adobe over a barrel.

But Adobe built that barrel. This hostage situation was a completely forseeable consequence of redesigning its products to treat its users like hostages. Pantone are greedy scum, but so are Adobe - and it was Adobe's greed that exposed its customers to Pantone's greed.

The point isn't that having your Photoshop files corrupted is the same as being kidnapped and tortured by Chinese police. But both Adobe and Apple - and every other tech giant - has decided that the rise of networked computing is an opportunity to exercise ongoing control over their customers. All of these companies knew that this ongoing control could be hijacked by hostile governments or corporations at any time, and they did it anyway.

They have no business acting surprised now. Apple isn't responsible for Chinese state oppression, but it is knowingly, explicitly complicit in it.

[Image ID: A Chinese revolutionary poster depicting a marching army of peasant soldiers. It has been altered so that a man at the front of the column is carrying an Ipad. The image is surmounted by Apple's 'Think Different' wordmark.]

#pluralistic

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