Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/31/chekhovs-revenge.html
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I wonder if package distribution could happen via blockchain and bittorrent. A distributed blockchain database for torrent hashes. I bet you could write a module for APT…
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Apple won’t allow that. That would enable developers to add features that Apple doesn’t approve.
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I’ll be interested to hear Apple’s excuses for banning the updates globally. Even as I find their blocking the app within Russian deplorable, I understand why they’d have to do it there. However, the Kremlin’s anti-dissent campaign shouldn’t have an impact on iPhone users in countries that aren’t bullying autocracies.
Distribution isn’t the main issue – what you describe just gets the packages past Russian censors in unaltered form. The real problem is that, while there are ways to install packages that aren’t authorised by the control freaks of Cupertino, doing requires a lot of effort and better than average tech skills even with a jailbroken iPhone.
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I’m tired of Apple, and their anti-user bullshit.
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I wonder if package distribution could happen via blockchain and bittorrent.
We don’t need heroic measures or new technology to distribute files over a network. It’s just a download. We need companies like Apple to allow the minimum standard of decentralization: “let customers install software they want on the hardware they own.”
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This seems like a business problem, not a technology problem. Instead of struggling to update their existing product, why not discontinue the existing version of Telegram, then release a new app that does all the same things? And that new app includes an auto-updater for your existing Telegram app. They could call the new app Telegramz, or Telegram XTREME, or t3l3gr4m l33t, or Telegraph.
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Apple has to approve all apps so that is a risky move and Apple certainly won’t allow auto-updater anything.
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Well, then leave the auto-updater out. At this point they have no choice but to abandon the existing app.
The new app would meet Apple requirements if it is unavailable to the prohibited countries, right?
I’m most certainly assuming there’s more to this issue than “Apple is bad”, considering who’s posting it.
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Would it? Who knows? If their current response to Russian demands is to keep it available but not allow updating, that IMO doesn’t bode well for such reasonable solutions.
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I am a Pragmatic Polly with many years’ experience of learning that pretty much everything posted here is of a tabloid nature and that there’s more to the story. Just curious as to what the rest of the story is, which is quite different than being Negative.
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The story is relatively young, and from the articles I’ve seen Apple’s PR department is still scrambling to spin up an excuse for why the app’s updates are blocked outside Russia. If Apple is smart they’ll apologise to the developer citing some plausible BS excuse for the delay and then stop blocking the app in countries that are more secure about allowing dissent.
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Probably at this point, Telegram is too much of a headache for Apple to deal with. In February they were yanked from the Apple store because people were using it to transfer child porn, and last year Telegram had to create a special team of moderators to deal with ISIS problems in Indonesia. Not to mention that Trump’s administration uses it to circumvent the Presidential Records Act. To Apple, this probably looks like bad business.
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OTOH, is it overly optimistic to hope it might spur those other people to care about people living under autocracies when they’re made to share a modicum of their oppression?
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Overly optimistic, I think. If you’re aware enough to know what’s going on in Russia and see yourself as more likely to be the oppressed than the oppresser then this doesn’t change a whole lot.
Meanwhile, I’m sure there are American rubes who’ll respond to this with “well, if you’ve got nothing to hide…”
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This violates apples store policy, and would result in the apps removal.
I’m always skeptical of that kind of accusation, especially when child porn can be teens sexting with each other.
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