Apple is in a heap of trouble after new information has leaked.
The Chinese Communist Party asked for their help crushing freedom.
And Apple was more than eager to give them assist.
Many top U.S. corporations have been in a race with one another to suck up to the Chinese Communist Party.
They are doing this because China is a huge market with over a billion people, and access to that market is entirely controlled by the Chinese government.
If those companies want to take advantage of the revenue that’s available to them in China, they have to do as the Chinese Communist Party tells them to do.
Apple has taken that to a whole new extreme, and the ugly truth is now coming out.
According to a report from Yahoo, “Anti-government protests flared in several Chinese cities and on college campuses over the weekend. But the country’s most widespread show of public dissent in decades will have to manage without a crucial communication tool, because Apple restricted its use in China earlier this month.”
“AirDrop, the file-sharing feature on iPhones and other Apple devices, has helped protestors in many authoritarian countries evade censorship. That’s because AirDrop relies on direct connections between phones, forming a local network of devices that don’t need the internet to communicate. People can opt into receiving AirDrops from anyone else with an iPhone nearby.”
It’s clear why this is such a crucial tool for people who want to protest their oppressive governments. If the government turns off the Internet to try to shut down a protest, the protestors have a work-around by using AirDrop to communicate with each other.
But now Apple has turned to the dark side, and is doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party.
The article continues, “That changed on Nov. 9, when Apple released a new version of its mobile operating system, iOS 16.1.1, to customers worldwide. Rather than listing new features, as it often does, the company simply said, ‘This update includes bug fixes and security updates and is recommended for all users.’”
“Hidden in the update was a change that only applies to iPhones sold in mainland China: AirDrop can only be set to receive messages from everyone for 10 minutes, before switching off. There’s no longer a way to keep the ‘everyone’ setting on permanently on Chinese iPhones. The change, first noticed by Chinese readers of 9to5Mac, doesn’t apply anywhere else.”
It’s bad enough when a sports league such as the NBA ignores human rights abuses to cozy up to the Chinese government and downplay their horrific actions to oppress their people.
But Apple has gone a step further than that: they are actively working with the Chinese government to shut down protestors.
They have taken a side and chosen communism over freedom. They have become an ally of one of the most oppressive governments on the planet.
Consumers should remember this betrayal of freedom next time they are deciding whether to do business with Apple.