As if we were at the table of Risiko and not in the midst of a brutal conflict, for some hours Apple has changed the sovereignty of Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014. If you look for it now, Ukrainian is back on iPhones ( but if you are looking for it while you are in Russia it is still Russian …). As always, behind a seemingly trivial question there are complex problems. And fundamentally in this case, there’s a key question: Big companies, and in particular the big tech companies in Silicon Valley, who have also grown up waving the flag of a better world they would have helped to create, must only follow the interests of the profit or must they make political choices, for example in the name of human rights?
Why Ukraine is asking for help from Apple and Google
by Riccardo Luna
If the answer seems obvious to you, well know that so far this has not been the case. The most striking case is China repeatedly flattered by everyone with various bows in an attempt to open up that market. But alongside legitimate trade agreements, there were fearful choices such as when in 2019 during the repression of the Hong Kong protests, Apple and Google removed an app that helped protesters from their respective stores and Facebook removed pages suspected of supporting the cause of the independence.
Wikipedia’s challenge to Putin
by Riccardo Luna
With Putin it was not very different, as evidenced by Apple’s highly criticized decision to consider Crimea part of Russia since the end of 2019. Now backtracking: so there is not only a stop to the sale of Apple products in Russia, not only the exclusion of Russia Today and Sputnik from the stores apart from the Russian one, not only the blocking of Apple Pay, but also this very symbolic choice of virtually returning Crimea to Ukraine on the maps and also on the app that indicates the weather forecast . An answer to the question: should only profit guide our choices or are we willing to make a little less to defend human rights?