Pluralistic: Apple's unlawful evil (06 Oct 2025)

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Originally published at: Pluralistic: Apple’s unlawful evil (06 Oct 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow



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A squadron of four heavily armed riot cops with batons in their hands. They wear visors, Oakleys and gaiters. Their badges have been replaced with chromed Apple logos. In the background is an Apple 'Think Different' wordmark. Looming in the foreground is Trump's candyfloss hair.

Apple's unlawful evil (permalink)

Apple has removed ICEBlock, a totally legal app that helps people track the movements of the masked snatch-squads who illegally terrorize brown people in America's cities, capitulating to a warrantless demand from Trump's DoJ boss Pam Bondi:

https://www.404media.co/iceblock-owner-after-apple-removes-app-we-are-determined-to-fight-this/

In killing ICEBlock, Apple insists that it is only complying with lawful orders, which is patently untrue. Pam Bondi has no authority to order the censorship of this legal speech tool, which is likely why she didn't seek a court order and instead merely rage-tweeted about it. This was sufficient to get Apple CEO Tim Cook, the billionaire who moved Apple's manufacturing to Chinese sweatshops where working conditions are so brutal that they require suicide nets, to cave in.

Apple does not permit its iPhone customers to install software unless it is delivered via their App Store. They claim they do so in order to protect their customers from their customers' own bad choices about which apps to install. But time and again, Apple has shown that they exercise this control over their users to pursue their own ends, blocking:

  • A dictionary (because it contained swear words);

  • A game that simulated working in an Apple sweatshop;

  • An informative app that cataloged civilian casualties of US drone strikes;

  • The Tumblr app because some Tumblr blogs contained adult content; and

  • Working VPN apps for the entire nation of China.

Apple uses its app store control to extract 30 cents out of every dollar spent by its customers in the apps they use. That's a 30%, economy-wide, worldwide tax on news outlets and podcasts that collects subscriptions through apps, Patreon performers whose subscribers pay by app and games publishers who sell via the app store.

Apple also uses its app store control to block rival browser engines (every browser on iOS is just a reskinned version of Safari). Apple's own browser engine, Webkit, is riddled with longstanding, grave security vulnerabilities, and there is no way to distribute more secure browsers on iOS:

https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apples-browser-engine-ban-persists-even-under-the-dma/

Apple claims that it must be able to override its customers' choices about which software they'd like to run, lest those customers make foolish software choices and compromise their own security. Bruce Schneier calls this "feudal security," in which a digital warlord offers you sanctuary from the internet's roving bandits within the mercenary-studded walls of his impenetrable fortress. The problem is that when the warlord decides to attack you, the fortress becomes a prison, and you are rendered helpless:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

Normally, the safety problems of feudal security are digital, but with ICEBlock, they are very, very physical. ICE is kidnapping our neighbors and sending them to offshore and onshore gulags. Of the 1,600 people illegally detained in Alligator Auschwitz, two thirds cannot be located. They have disappeared:

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/9/25/alligator_alcatraz

In removing ICEBlock, Apple has deprived its customers of a vital tool for evading these kidnapping, murdering, masked thugs.

ICE moved from targeting "the worst of the worst" to targeting "people here illegally" to "people who look foreign" to "people who live in cities":

https://federate.social/@mattblaze/115323465203575305

You know who would have been at the top of that list? Steve Jobs, who died 14 years ago today:

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/10/05/remembering-steve/

Steve Jobs was "the anchor baby of an activist Arab muslim who came to the US on a student visa and had a child out of wedlock":

https://www.anildash.com/2025/09/09/how-tim-cook-sold-out-steve-jobs/

He is exactly the sort of person that Trump wants to deport.

Jobs isn't the only foreigner whose company is helping Trump round up and disappear foreigners. Google – co-founded by Soviet refugee Sergey Brin – has also killed ICEBlock. Google has also announced that they will nonconsensually update every Android device in the world to prevent their owners from installing software that Google hasn't approved:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/01/fulu/#i-am-altering-the-deal

When China hacked Gmail in order to target dissidents, Sergey Brin unilaterally pulled the company out of China, gripped by visceral horror of his platform being used for totalitarian oppression. Today, Brin is taking away his customers' best tool for evading ICE kidnappers on behalf of a self-declared "dictator." Hey, Sergey, one Soviet refugee's son to another, that's some pretty Vichy bullshit, landsman.

Under Trump's policies, neither Apple nor Google would exist today. These companies both claim that they have to "obey the law" but this isn't following a lawful order – it's going above and beyond the law to help a dictator kidnap their customers.

When China turned on Google's users, Google left the country. When the European Union ordered Apple to open up to third party app stores, Apple threatened to leave Europe:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/26/empty-threats/#500-million-affluent-consumers

But when Pam Bondi ordered Apple and Google to help her round up their own customers, Brin and Cook didn't even ask for a court order.

You could not ask for a better example of the failure of feudal security. Nor could you ask for a better rebuttal to the "Surveillance Capitalism" claim that Google is a "rogue capitalist" (because it spies on you for profit) while Apple is a good capitalist (because they extract money, not private data):

https://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

Apple spies on you, of course. And because they trap you in the App Store's airtight bubble, they block you from installing any software that would protect you from Apple's surveillance. And now, Apple has thrown in with the Trump regime's most violent, human-rights invading program: mass kidnappings and disappearances of thousands of our neighbors.

Truly, everyone's a "rogue capitalist" now. It's almost like the problem with companies isn't whether their business model is based on showing you ads or charging you money, but rather, whether they can abuse you for profit and get away with it.

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Ebook DRM that encourages identity theft gets a huge makeover https://web.archive.org/web/20051011041018/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004026.php

#20yrsago Alternate reality game turns online poker into tombstone parties in cemetaries https://web.archive.org/web/20130514004112/https://42entertainment.com/work/lastcallpoker

#20yrsago Reporter vows to fight DRM https://web.archive.org/web/20051210140945/https://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=1952

#20yrsago Library of Congress: Most sound recordings aren’t available https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub133/contents/

#15yrsago T-Mobile sneaks “rootkit” into G2 phones – reinstalls locked-down OS after jailbreaking https://web.archive.org/web/20101009072029/https://oti.newamerica.net/blogposts/2010/newest_google_android_cell_phone_contains_unexpected_feature_a_malicious_root_kit-380

#15yrsago XKCD’s Online Communities map, part 2 – the online world, visualized with loads of funny https://xkcd.com/802/

#15yrsago KILL THE DEAD: Kadrey’s grisly, hard-boiled sequel to SANDMAN SLIM https://memex.craphound.com/2010/10/05/kill-the-dead-kadreys-grisly-hard-boiled-sequel-to-sandman-slim/

#15yrsago Security company ad tricks people into thinking their houses were burgled https://copyranter.blogspot.com/2010/10/adt-shows-you-how-easy-it-is-to-break.html

#15yrsago Firefighters watch as house burns to the ground: owner had not paid annual firefighting fees https://web.archive.org/web/20101003021723/https://www.wpsdlocal6.com/news/local/firefighters-watch-as-home-burns-to-the-ground-104052668.html

#15yrsago Sky Marshals to lose their cushy first-class seats? https://web.archive.org/web/20160521034617/https://www.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703431604575521832473932878-lMyQjAxMTAwMDIwOTEyNDkyWj.html

#15yrsago Michael Swanwick writes a story about autumn on fallen leaves https://www.flickr.com/photos/54366973@N04/5035946705/in/photostream/

#15yrsago Why the copyright wars matter: a reply to Helienne Lindvall https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/oct/05/free-online-content-cory-doctorow

#15yrsago William Gibson nails my philosophy in life https://memex.craphound.com/2010/10/04/william-gibson-nails-my-philosophy-in-life/

#10yrsago Car accidents aren’t accidents https://www.wired.com/2015/10/stop-calling-daughters-death-car-accident/

#10yrsago How a romance-scam victim laundered $1.1M worth of other victims’ money https://www.wired.com/2015/10/online-dating-made-woman-pawn-global-crime-plot/

#10yrsago Snowden broke a nondisclosure EULA in order to uphold his Constitutional oath https://www.aaronswartzday.org/snowden-oath/

#10yrsago What it’s like to do a lockdown drill with kindergarten kids https://web.archive.org/web/20141029062211/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rehearsing-for-death-a-pre-k-teacher-on-the-trouble-with-lockdown-drills/2014/10/28/4ab456ea-5eb2-11e4-9f3a-7e28799e0549_story.html

#10yrsago Forget tidying: losing your precious possessions is the real “life-changing magic” https://medium.com/chrysaora-weekly/the-life-changing-magic-of-losing-shit-18122103f499

#10yrsago UK Chancellor: I must cut tax benefits for working poor to help them https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-low-paid-will-suffer-if-i-don-t-cut-their-tax-credits-says-george-osborne-a6679636.html

#10yrsago UK top government official: human rights no longer a “top priority” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/human-rights-are-no-longer-a-top-priority-for-the-government-says-foreign-office-chief-a6677661.html

#5yrsago Facebook's living will https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#dnr

#5yrsago Ad-tech is a bubble https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

#5yrsago The Internet is for End-Users https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#user-agents

#5yrsago Squeeze Me https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#disappearing-act

#5yrsago Why I love the Haunted Mansion https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/04/build-back-better/#grim-grinning-ghosts

#5yrsago Normal isn't enough https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/04/build-back-better/#post-pandemic

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

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Latest books (permalink)


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Upcoming books (permalink)

  • "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025

  • "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
    https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

  • "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

  • "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

  • "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

  • "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

  • "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE AND SUBMITTED.

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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