<story><title>Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/technology/telegram-apple-russia.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jenga22</author><text>Apple has now entered dangerous territory.&lt;p&gt;Over the last month they seem to have banned apps because some government out there didn&amp;#x27;t like that app. To make matters worse, those very same governments weren&amp;#x27;t happy with the app being removed from their regional app store but they demanded it removed from all app stores.&lt;p&gt;The VPN issue was a wake up call for a lot of developers. These apps were on the app store for years and because China didn&amp;#x27;t like these apps one morning, they banned it and referred to some arbitrary clause in the app store TOS.&lt;p&gt;The thing is this script has played out before. Twitter also had a vibrant ecosystem of third party developers. Those developers made Twitter into a billion dollar company. Then one morning, they decided certain classes of apps were not okay. This back and forth went on for months until there were barely any apps left. Twitter eventua&lt;p&gt;The same thing is happening with Apple. Several founders I&amp;#x27;ve spoken to, all with big exits in the past, refuse to write apps first for Apple or Google because of the threat of getting &amp;quot;banned one morning&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Worse, VCs are now getting nervous in investing in startups where the app is the fundamental foundation of the business.&lt;p&gt;For any market to thrive, there needs to be transparency and stability. Just like Twitter, once developers are gone....they&amp;#x27;re gone. They won&amp;#x27;t come back and consumers will start wondering if the 1,000 dollar smartphone they purchased, with subpar apps, is really worth it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Telegram App Says Apple Is Blocking Updates Over Dispute with Russia</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/technology/telegram-apple-russia.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>JumpCrisscross</author><text>This is presently an accusation by Telegram, nothing more. Sample of reasons why Apple may be doing whatever they are doing:&lt;p&gt;1) Telegram is prevalently used by Syrian fighters [1]. (Why they chose Telegram over Signal beats me.) As the Syrian conflict winds down, these fighters are returning home. That creates a security imperative for many governments, including in the EU.&lt;p&gt;2) Telegram recently ran an ICO that, at the very least, probably runs afoul of American securities law.&lt;p&gt;3) All of the reasons any app gets held up in review that are not &amp;quot;the Russian government pressured Apple.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;TL; DR We have no evidence this is because of Russian meddling.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.huffingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;entry&amp;#x2F;isis-telegram-app_us_59259254e4b0ec129d3136d5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.huffingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;entry&amp;#x2F;isis-telegram-app_us_59...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>