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Apple Wants to be Everywhere. Even Autocracies Like Russia and China

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Apple Maps app screenshot showing "Simferopol, Crimea, Russia"

Screenshot via BBC

Protestors take to the streets. Their home in Hong Kong is under attack. The mainland Chinese government is looking to push an extradition bill through their government. The bill would blur the lines between Hong Kong and mainland China, making Hong Kong’s citizens under the constant threat of crimes in China. Democracy, freedom of speech, and other ideals we enjoy elsewhere in the world exist only in one bastion in China: Hong Kong. This bill would change that. So they fight back. They use a protest method to be “like water.” They disrupt traffic, but disperse to allow emergency vehicles through. Then they disappear and reappear elsewhere in the city for another protest. This allows them to evade police and keep violence to a minimum. Violence that, until police laid siege to a college, was solely on the police’s side.

They used apps to help communicate and organize. These apps helped keep citizens safe from the police’s military-like crackdown on the peaceful protests. Apps like HKmap.live kept protestors safe. Police were beating people, breaking bones intentionally, they shot out a woman’s eye, and they fire so much tear gas that Hong Kong citizens perfected treatment and avoidance of the acrid weapons.

Then Apple removed the HKmap.live app from the App Store at the request of the mainland Chinese government. Apple, like many other companies, does a lot of business in China. They have their manufacturing plants there. They needed the support of the Chinese government. So they caved.

Now, in Ukraine, Crimea, specifically, Apple has caved to an autocratic and expansionary country again. In Russia and in Crimea, they’ll find the Ukrainian peninsula defined as Russian territory. Just as Vladimir Putin requested.

Is this just the cost of doing business in the 21st century?

What the Map?

Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. The expansionary move took place in amid an ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine is fighting for its very existence against Russia, and relying on support from Europe and the United States. You may have heard something about this due to the United States president, Donald Trump, being impeached for withholding aide to solicit a bribe from Ukraine’s president to benefit his own political career.

Governments around the world to don’t recognize Russia’s claim on Crimea. However, companies, have they have done with China, have caved to pressure from the Kremlin. Twitter verified a Russian account for tourism to Crimea. Now Apple has made a similar concession.

From elsewhere in the world, your Apple Maps app will show Crimea as unclaimed territory. However, from Crimea or from Russia, it’ll show the Ukrainian peninsula as part of Russia. This is in response to Russian mandate. If Apple wants to do business in Russia, they’ll have to follow Russia’s rules.

So? Abandon Russia

Comic showing a reporter and a man in a tie. Reporter asks, "How do you explain your company's latest human rights violation? Businessman responds, "I'm tired of this." Reporter, surprised, asks, "What?" Businessman responds, "Money. The reason is money. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. Glad we had this talk. Peace."

Comic: Martin Rosner, Hot Paper Comics

Apple abandon Russia? Not going to happen. At the end of the day, Apple doesn’t care about their “values” as much as they care about the value of their company. The bad public view of Apple for doing business in Russia after they annexed a part of another country pales in comparison to the lost sales if they abandon Russia. You’re not going to stop buying Apple products over a dotted line on a map, even if it represents countless deaths.

If not for the law, Apple would do business in North Korea. They already do business in mainland China, where an unknown number of Uyghur Muslims suffer in Nazi Germany-style concentration camps. They’re subjected to torture, rape, humiliation, forced to eat pork, are sterilized, and kept in horrible conditions. Their captors might have had iPhones in their pockets.

At the end of the day, Apple’s going to do what they have to do, within the confines of the law, in order to do business abroad. In China, this means ignoring human rights violations that mirror the Holocaust. It also means caving and removing apps used by Hong Kong protestors.

Outside of Russia and Crimea, Simferopol doesn't have a state or country listedIn Russia, doing business means pretending Russia has the right to occupy Ukrainian land and call it their own. Apple reportedly didn’t want to do this. Apple wanted to leave Crimea as “undefined territory,” as it appears outside of Russia and Crimea. However, they had to choose between making money in Russia but doing right by Vladimir Putin or not making money in Russia but doing right by the Ukrainian people. They chose money.

Google currently shows Crimea as undefined territory, but uses the Russian spellings for locations instead of Ukrainian. Russia may force Google to do the same as Apple, though they haven’t yet.

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