Apple news-churn app mysteriously stops churning news in China Apple's URL-redirect news app has stopped working behind the Great Firewall of China, it has emerged. Even articles saved by those who are too fearful of the world to venture outside the walled garden for their news have been blocked. The New York Times noted that Apple News users in China needed to convince Cupertino that …
Hats off to Apple for championing uncensored news over the state-filtered version, even at some risk to their penetration of the Chinese market in certain respects.
China has been doing this for years, starting with Satellite TV transmissions.
I was sat in a China hotel room some years ago watching the BBC news when a background piece mentioned Tiananmen 1989. Within 2 seconds the screen went blank. It came back after an interval sufficient to see a change of subject.
Whole bunch of key words and topics will trigger the off switch. Just guessing but presumably Taiwan (once upon a time). Tibet in certain contexts hence Dalai Lama. Falun Gong, etc.
On the one hand, Larry Salibra says
"the mechanism Apple uses to disable the News app and Apple Maps uses the location of the user to change the behaviour of their device"
having already said
"it was pretty obvious that Apple isn’t using location tracking and geofencing to shut down the News App, but is doing so based on the mobile network the phone connected"
Who is this nitwit?
"As soon as I connected to the network, the Apple News App would refuse to refresh or open any of the articles already displayed on the screen, showing the message “News isn’t supported in your current region”."
"At this point, it was pretty obvious that Apple isn’t using location tracking and geofencing to shut down the News App, but is doing so based on the mobile network the phone connected."
Ah, how nice for you to be using one of those satellite-based cell phones. The rest of us use cell tower-based connections. Which are planted in the ground of very specific locations, connected to specific networks, some of those clearly labeled "do-not-fuck" (with us).
The one that us Brits and amongst others can't get unless we make our phones appear to be owned by someone in the USA.
The app that has UK News publications all signed up.
AFAIK, Canada, the Rest of Europe and most parts of Asia are in the same boat.
Care to comment Apple?
Holy crap, you mean Apple aren't launching a service in the UK until it is ready and all the deals have been done. What is this madness?
If you really want it, join the beta program and download 9.1. Earlier in the beta the UK news coverage and updates were patchy but now it's pretty comprehensive.
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