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Google removes ICE-spotting app following Apple's ICEBlock crackdown
- antfarm 1y agoI already lost all remaining respect for Tim Cook when he kissed the ring in the oval office. I wonder how Steve Jobs would have handled the current political challenges.
- cs_throwaway 1y agoExactly the same.
- argsnd 1y agoAmericans elected a mob boss to their highest office and he also appointed many of the judges in the legal system. As a corporation your choices are to give in or to get crushed.
- stefan_ 1y agoYes, they all conveniently gave in the moment after. Google just paid another $25M. Is this the lawful order defence?
- davidw 1y agoGiving your lunch money to a bully all but guarantees they'll be back for more.
- nerdponx 1y agoThis is literally how extortion by organized crime works. It's the same mechanism. Of course they'll be back for more, but if you don't give them your money, they will beat the shit out of you and then come back for more anyway. You know what's expected of you, and the alternatives are generally much worse. Incidentally it's also a textbook presentation of the Manufacturing Consent Propaganda model, except it's not only propaganda, it's an outright authoritarian coup.
- thrance 1y agoExcept Apple and Google are incredibly powerful, and the Trump administration has shown they mostly fail to follow on their threats (yet, at least). If some entities are able to stand up against the nascent fascist regime, it's them. But as we all know, corporations and fascism are like peanut butter and jelly.
- argsnd 1y agoI think the Trump administration has been rather good at following through on their threats. US import tariffs are insanely high right now and he's been able to successfully fire whoever he wants. All Trump has to do to destroy eg. Apple is get rid of the exemption from the tariffs they've been given for electronics manufactured in India.
- davidw 1y agoI mean, Jimmy Kimmel won and Apple is way more powerful with far deeper pockets. This admin isn't all powerful, as much as they try and project that image. Apple and I think Google have a pretty big reservoir of good will among the public at large. These folks won't be in power forever, but the cowardice of people like Tim Cook will always be remembered.
- nerdponx 1y agoIt looks OK on the surface, but it gets worse the more you look into the details. It doesn't really matter that the administration keeps losing in federal court, because the justice department doesn't really care and keeps doing the thing they were told to stop doing anyway, because there's nobody to enforce the ruling. The executive branch is being actively purged of anyone and anything that is not aligned with and loyal to Trump and the vision of Project 2025, and the institutions that might be used to halt or reverse the damage are being specifically targeted and attacked. Not only that, but all the other major industry players have already bent the knee and kissed the ring. You don't want to be the only one who doesn't, otherwise you will get singled out and targeted for extortion or worse. Several very powerful law firms were successfully targeted for political extortion by executive order. Major universities have conceded to demands. Conservative news media is in lock step with the administration and can push any narrative at any time. Threats might've already been made privately to begin antitrust enforcement, for some other form of targeted corporate punishment. Moreover, it's obvious that one of the goals of this administration is to destroy consumer protections and employee protections, creating an environment where powerful corporations can do whatever they want in the name of profit. As the CEO of a large corporation, you might be actively under pressure to cooperate and collaborate. So there is a large downside to resistance, and a large upside to playing along. Tim Cook will be remembered as one of dozens and dozens of cowards, but only in private whispers, because if they say it in public they will be blacklisted or worse.
- watwut 1y agoNah. They are the most powerful members of a society. It is ridiculous how they get treated with less expectations then anyone else. They have choices and they are consciously choosing this.
- jordanb 1y agoCorporations and especially Silicon Valley were pushing hard for Trump because they were furious about Lena Khan. Don't let them pretend that they are innocent in all of this. They're all polishing their jackboots right now.
- argsnd 1y agoOh I have no sympathy for them. I understand their behaviour but to me it's just a reason to avoid patronising American companies. I also think there's a little bit of quid pro quo happening here - in exchange for giving into Trump's whims and kissing the ring they've had antitrust investigations watered down and patent disputes solved.
- mdhb 1y agoI think the world’s richest company could have at least attempted to push back. They aren’t some helpless victim here.
- b00ty4breakfast 1y agoHe'd probably be up to his eyeballs in magic crystals and antivax nonsense by now
- chvid 1y agoLol - exactly - why do people expect the politics or broader principles of Steve Jobs to be any good?
- Workaccount2 1y agoThe dude literally tried to cure his cancer with fruit. There would probably be an RFK edition iPhone.
- howieburger 1y agoGiven what has been learned through neuroscience, how ossified and normalized for life most become, it feels like a good argument can be made much of the elder cohort is stuck in a pseudo religious and pseudoscience middle ground of thought. Most > 50 were born into a more traditional and religion-centric life and only adopted technology. The first generation educated along vaguely scientific lines. In the US at least, born after 1980 is roughly when opinions begin to veer into favor of empiricism and less "anything goes" new age woo and post world war extravagant capitalism due to being the only functioning manufacturing economy after the war.
- 93po 1y agohis reality distortion field became too powerful and backfired on himself
- arcatech 1y agoThis might give you some insight: https://www.anildash.com/2025/09/09/how-tim-cook-sold-out-steve-jobs/ https://www.anildash.com/2025/09/09/how-tim-cook-sold-out-st...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- alexandre_m 1y ago[flagged]
- buyucu 1y agoSteve Jobs was the kind of person who would do anything for more money. He would have kissed the ring even harder.
- Waterluvian 1y agoIs it illegal for Americans to track their authorities or are the corporations all doing this quite voluntarily?
- nsxwolf 1y agoIt’s perfectly legal, but also perfectly legal for a corporation to choose not to sell or distribute a particular software application.
- codedokode 1y agoIn a free market the consumer always has a choice between companies doing censorship and companies doing censorship.
- nsxwolf 1y agoHow many times are we going to re-litigate this? Until there’s a law requiring side loading options, you have the web. Everyone here was totally fine with the “gay cure” apps being pulled.
- Amezarak 1y agoMost people also seemed to celebrate Parler and Gab being pulled/denied. It was perfectly obvious that the same logic could be used to do things like this, but many people seem to be totally surprised or oblivious.
- myko 1y agoThe difference is the government's hands in such actions
- Amezarak 1y agoWe've had multiple leaks and reports that the government was directly involved in these censorship cases prior to January 20, 2025. So no, that's not the difference. On this very forum, people (not you) argued it was perfectly acceptable because the government was only "asking", not requiring. Unfortunately, the civil libertarians have been drowned out for years by people who believed that it was right to do whatever it took to shut down right-wingers/misinformation/disinformation/hate speech/Russian propaganda/conspiracy theorists/Hunter laptop posters/whatever. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, they are shocked and outraged, even as they built the tools, institutions, mechanisms, and political support used to do this.
- nsxwolf 1y agoI don’t understand what anyone was expecting.
- K0balt 1y agoSome people are still under the impression that they live in a democratic republic under a constitutional doctrine of permissive freedom and the rule of law.
- nsxwolf 1y agoA nuisance app that generated zero revenue for these app stores was used in a murder. It’s a PR no-brainer to simply remove it just as they constantly remove other apps for all sorts of reasons.
- StopDisinfo910 1y agoA perfectly legal application was arbitrarily removed from distribution without any due process because it displeases those in power. Funny how perspective on things can change depending of the amount of boot licking people enjoy.
- K0balt 1y agoUnfortunately, somebody figured out that if they put cocaine in boot polish, people kneel and lick easily.
- fulafel 1y ago> Google told 404 Media that it didn’t receive any warning from the DOJ, but that it “bans apps with a high risk of abuse” Seems to be something else in this case.
- GoblinSlayer 1y agoIt's just a monopoly.
- kread 1y agoHappened in 2019 in Hongkong: https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/10/20907596/apple-hong-kong-protests-app-removed-china https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/10/20907596/apple-hong-kong... In 2025 in USA?
- ants_everywhere 1y agoI've wondered for a while if the experience with protesters organizing on apps was what made China prioritize TikTok more. TikTok's initial rise predates the protests by about a year. But it explodes and overtakes other social media apps starting in 2019 and into 202.
- jmclnx 1y agoCouldn't someone port that to a WEB interface ? Then you access it via Firefox. Maybe a PITA to use compared to a app, but at least it could not be banned.
- tdeck 1y agoDespite how shitty Google and Apple are being, this is probably the best way to accomplish the project's goal in a reasonable timeframe.
- netfortius 1y agoGitHub (while it still works)???
- captainkrtek 1y agoHmm how different is this fundamentally from the ability to report police locations (speedtraps) in Google Maps?
- nerdponx 1y agoYou know why...
- greesil 1y agoNo I think the parent is saying why not use Waze or whatever in an off brand way.
- blfr 1y agoThere were no terrorist attacks on traffic cops lately.
- xracy 1y agoGosh, was I asleep and missed a new terrorist attack on ICE agents? How did you know they were ICE agents, did they identify themselves?
- jayGlow 1y agothere was one a few weeks ago, with a shooter targeting an ice facility. https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/09/24/dhs-issues-statement-targeted-attack-dallas-ice-facility https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/09/24/dhs-issues-statement-tar...
- xracy 11mo agoYou mean the guy who only hit people in ICE custody? [1] And didn't hit any ICE agents? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Dallas_ICE_facility_shooting#Victims https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Dallas_ICE_facility_shoot...
- K0balt 1y agoI’d say this is a perfect candidate for a web app / PWA.
- howieburger 1y agoGovernment will just hijack the domain as they have with torrents and other things they don't like Am working on a mobile app that requires in person keygen/sharing via Bluetooth, syncs selected data between devices once keys exchanged and new local IP is shared (over something like Signal; discovery is hard/expensive so I am going with a low tech manual option to notify peers how to reconnect) Flood the field with alternatives to keep The Man on his toes and distracted. The main problem with hyper normalized and streamlined society is it just makes it easier for The Man to spot and squash dissent. What is dissent when the people are peacefully not following orders by making passive surveillance difficult.
- K0balt 1y agoWhile I’m down with the spirit of your idea, What keeps your app from being banned on the App Store as well? As an unbannable alternative, Make the web app trivially hostable, and use IPFS as a data backend maybe?
- hedora 1y agoThat sounds like a nice setup for decentralization. I've long thought people should just fork DNS. This already sort of happens with ad blocking commercial services, but I'm thinking it might be time for something that runs over a mix network, where devices have multiple trust roots for DNS services, and run a quorum computation when there's disagreement. Ideally, disagreements between the roots could be escalated to a web browser UI.
- subscribed 1y agoIt's forked since..... at least mid-90's? Not that the alternatives have any real reach.
- financetechbro 1y ago
- ath3nd 1y ago"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power" Is a quote often wrongly attributed to Mr. Fascism Benito Mussolini himself, but whoever said it had made a damn good point. Be aware that what you are seeing now fits the exact and precise definition of fascism. It's amusing seeing the US descend so quickly in pure unadulterated fascism and the amount of denial and attempts to sugar coat it or window dress in places like HN. Then forums like this will go dark, and next thing you know, the brownshirts from the modern Gestapo/Stasi/ICE would be knocking on your door. Make no mistake about Google and Apple: moderating anti fascist apps or content is abetting fascism (that applies to HN mods as well).
- tdeck 1y agoThe more it's fascism, the less you're allowed to call it that.
- Wowfunhappy 1y agoFrom: https://onefoottsunami.com/2025/10/03/iceblock-blocked/ https://onefoottsunami.com/2025/10/03/iceblock-blocked/ > Gosh, it’s almost like Apple serving as the exclusive gatekeeper for what software can be installed on the iPhone (and iPad, and Apple TV, and Apple Watch, and Vision Pro) is a bad thing that creates a single point of failure which can be abused by increasingly authoritarian governments. Apple should not be able to decide which apps their customers are allowed to use. It's one thing to make decisions about which products are allowed in your store, and quite another to unilaterally ban software from what is many people's primary computer. There should have always been a side-loading switch. It doesn't have to be easy to find, it just needs to be available in the event of an emergency. Any possible security arguments to the contrary pale in comparison to the importance of maintaining a free society. We live in a digital age, and software is a form of free expression. We would not (I hope) find this situation acceptable for eBooks, and we should not find it acceptable for software. I am horrified that Google has decided to move in the same direction on Android, and I urge them to reconsider before it's too late. Right now, these apps can still be sideloaded on Android phones, so to be honest I don't care that much what Google does with the Play Store. But what happens next year?
- GoblinSlayer 1y agoIf phoneposters cared about that, they would buy a general computer. And yes, situation with ebooks is the same.
- Wowfunhappy 1y agoPlease direct me to the general computer in a phone form factor that isn't some fiddly Linux gadget. What e-reader doesn't allow side-loading books?
- savolai 1y ago”The 15.18.5 update is also having an adverse reaction to sideloaded books. If you deliver a book using Send by Email or copy it to your computer via USB, a critical issue may arise, where a pop-up appears with an ‘Invalid ASIN‘ number. The new DRM system is attempting to locate the book in the Amazon store to decrypt it, but since it can’t find it, it reports that the book is invalid. Amazon claims they are working on the issue, ... ”https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45393505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45393505
- qwerty_clicks 1y agoCould a web app be as secure and useful?
- Blackthorn 1y agoCowards.
- EdiX 1y agoHopefully this will give people pause the next time they think about linking to https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/.
- myko 1y agoWhy would it? The key difference is businesses / people making choices and the government coercing businesses / people to make choices the government wants. One is a first amendment violation, one is exercising the first amendment.
- mindslight 1y agoA company with significant coercive power (through sticky market effects) is much better thought of as a governmentesque censoring entity rather than some mere group of individuals exercising their individual speech. What you're describing is not a virtue of the first amendment, but rather a shortcoming of its implementation and a subsequent failure to properly regulate corporations/LLCs/etc. OP is right - people's ready embrace of corpo-authoritarianism when it lined up with their social mores set the stage for where we are at now. That comic has always been a low point of Munroe's.
- myko 1y agoThis is a long winded way of ignoring the fact that this is government coercion, something the 1st amendment was designed to prevent. What you're talking about is _not_ something the 1st amendment was designed to prevent.
- mindslight 1y agoNo, I am most definitely not ignoring or downplaying that. > What you're talking about is _not_ something the 1st amendment was designed to prevent. Yes, in fact I explicitly acknowledged it as a "shortcoming of its implementation". What I'm taking issue with is your whitewashing corporate censorship as "exercising the first amendment" in your first comment.
- raffael_de 1y agoNeither ICEBlock nor Red Dot are OSS. Seems a little hypocritical. Why not provide the code on GitHub? Why not offer alternative download sources?
- ajross 1y agoThat there isn't a free software implementation here is indeed bad. Trying to fight about software liberties at this moment when the apps are being de-facto banned is Just Not the Time. But absolutely start a project under a permissive license. That's a great idea.
- Y_Y 1y agoSeems to me like it would be a great opportunity to make a list of subversives, judt by exfiltrating their identity via the "app". Cooperation from the developer is optional. There's precious little reason to distribute as an app, except for exploiting the user. If all you wanted to do was show things on a map then the web is already well set up for that. In fact the apps are probably just embedding a web browser anyway (haven't checked). I'm no fan of ICE, but I wouldn't trust these developers either.
- tdeck 1y ago> There's precious little reason to distribute as an app, except for exploiting the user. This is a very Hacker News centric perspective; most of us probably use the browser on our phone for hours every day. But a lot of normal people simply don't - if it isn't an app, they won't really use it. I find it strange, but I've seen this over and over again.
- subscribed 1y agoThis app wasn't even the safest, see here: ICEBlock handled my vulnerability report in the worst possible way | https://micahflee.com/iceblock-handled-my-vulnerability-report-in-the-worst-possible-way/ https://micahflee.com/iceblock-handled-my-vulnerability-repo...
- tdeck 1y ago> “removed apps that share the location of what it describes as a vulnerable group after a recent violent act against them connected to this sort of app" Apparently armed, masked thugs covered in body armor dragging people off the street for the federal government count as a "vulnerable group" now?
- 0xy 1y ago[flagged]
- valiant55 1y agoHow many ICE officers were shot?
- thrance 1y agoA mentally ill right-winger 4chan edgelord shooting at immigrants, to be precise. No ICE officers were harmed in this hatecrime, don't you worry.
- axus 1y agoI think that attack was independent of the app. Everybody is "vulnerable" to bullets, perhaps they should ban the guns instead of the app?
- myko 1y agoYes, more extremist rightwing violence that targeted vulnerable people (immigrants ICE were treating as subhuman)
- 1970-01-01 1y ago"vulnerable group" Google, name your non-vulnerable groups. Could those being taken away be considered a "vulnerable group" or a non-vulnerable group? This is pure hypocrisy in the wild.
- tdeck 1y agoThe right wing's long-cultivated victimhood narrative is reaching its natural climax. Nowadays you can literally be the boot stomping on a human face forever and also be a victim because you stubbed your toe.
- buyucu 1y agoIf you needed a reminder for how awful Google's new sideloading restrictions will be, then this is it. These restictions will give governments total control over what apps you can run on your phone.
- myko 1y agoThis is awful. The US is rapidly declining.
- pmdr 1y agoSo... we're building the most secure devices ever, so secure that only two megacorps have final say on what we can and can't install on said devices (if we want a usable device). Browsers are heading the same way, we sure enjoy our Manifest V3 security. The CEOs were all there at the inauguration. Is anyone really surprised that they're taking orders from this administration?
- cmxch 1y agoPerhaps this should have been thought about when devices started to be secured completely from the user.
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoEarlier source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45468219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45468219