Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016
I thought the HackerNews crowd could do better than &quot;Google&#x2F;Apple&#x2F;X is offering something censored &#x2F; is complying with local laws &#x2F; local government requests in China&#x2F;Russia&#x2F;X so it must be bad and they must stop&quot;.<p>Don&#x27;t be so naive.<p>1. In order for US&#x2F;international companies to survive in China&#x2F;Russia&#x2F;heavily censored countries or regions, they have to comply to local laws. Otherwise they are blocked or shutdown completely.<p>2. Despite having to comply, most of the times these large global companies have some power to fight back, negotiate and find middle grounds.<p>3. Having a presence is critical for the sake of the local people to seek information. Having Google censoring the search results would be 100x better than having Baidu willingly fake it. Having Apple fighting for all the information requests is 100x better than having local giants like Tencent and Huawei willingly building monitoring and censoring capabilities for all users.<p>Without the presence, the people in these regions and countries have no choice. They don&#x27;t have ways to access even censored information or knowing about the censorship at all. They will be fed with much more twisted information. Companies like Apple are doing their best negotiating and fighting back. Maybe they have to comply with 10% of demands, but the local alternative will do 100% in a blink of eye. And ironically they are the target of blame in both China and the US. It is not fair to them.<p>Would you rather have someone fighting for the people, or would you want them to be like North Korea where nobody outside can get in?