[HN Gopher] After USA Ban: Google Kicks Kaspersky Out of Play Store
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       After USA Ban: Google Kicks Kaspersky Out of Play Store
        
       Author : flykespice
       Score  : 41 points
       Date   : 2024-10-07 16:38 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.heise.de)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.heise.de)
        
       | nujabe wrote:
       | US tendency to respond with sanctions to every problem big or
       | small will be what brings down the empire eventually.
        
         | Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
         | What else can they do?
        
           | doctorpangloss wrote:
           | Why does the invisible hand of the market work out in every
           | case except this one?
           | 
           | There are a bajillion egregious things going on in the App
           | Store. Why draw the line for Federal intervention here? Is
           | there a sincere answer?
        
           | buran77 wrote:
           | Can? Anything that a mighty military, economic, and political
           | power allows.
           | 
           | Should? Maybe walk their talk? Too many times the US is
           | criticizing countries like China for doing something only to
           | turn around and do the very same thing but sprinkled with a
           | "feel-good" explanation.
           | 
           | This [0] will never get old.
           | 
           | [0] https://www.brokenfrontier.com/wp-
           | content/uploads/2020/03/ho...
        
             | horsebridge wrote:
             | Got any suggestions for this situation (invasion of
             | Ukraine)?
        
               | buran77 wrote:
               | Your unrelated question is posed as a challenge to what I
               | said, without actually challenging anything I said.
               | Worse, it suggests banning Kaspersky from the Google Play
               | Store is "a suggestion for the situation", whatever that
               | might mean.
        
               | mynameisvlad wrote:
               | Your points, while well and true, are not really relevant
               | in the current thread.
               | 
               | The US isn't "criticizing countries ... for doing
               | something only to turn around and do the very same thing
               | but sprinkled with a "feel-good" explanation." in terms
               | of the situation in Ukraine. Either show they are, or
               | provide a suggestion to _the thing we 're actually
               | talking about_.
        
           | barryrandall wrote:
           | Cyberbullying achieves its goals more often than sanctions
           | do, and the ROI is astronomical by comparison.
        
         | stackskipton wrote:
         | As a country, your option to respond to another country doing
         | something you don't like is either A) Sanctions or B) Military
         | Action. B used to be a ton more common so it feels like we are
         | improving, not getting worse.
        
           | buran77 wrote:
           | > doing something you don't like
           | 
           | I think people mostly aren't surprised that a country is
           | taking action against an enemy, that's expected in general.
           | What might raise an eyebrow here and there is when they're
           | doing it via the exact same means they classified as anti-
           | democratic, anti-free market, anti-freedom, etc. when their
           | enemies were doing it. It's the hypocrisy of the explanation
           | and the realization once you try to look beyond the veneer of
           | righteousness that those giving the explanation think their
           | own people must be at peak ignorance.
        
             | stackskipton wrote:
             | Sure, we make a ton of freedom noises. However, we also run
             | into paradox of tolerance problem where entities exploit
             | those freedom noises against us.
             | 
             | So yea, we have to break those rules against entities who
             | would use them against us.
        
               | buran77 wrote:
               | > Sure, we make a ton of freedom noises.
               | 
               | As I said, the hypocrisy of the speech and perhaps the
               | expectation that people will always swallow it (which
               | sets a low bar for the opinion about those people) are
               | what stands out, not that a country takes actions against
               | an enemy. Atomic bombs were dropped in the name of peace,
               | a minor phone app being banned can hardly be called
               | "aggression".
        
               | ozgrakkurt wrote:
               | Freedom or any ethical, moral thing is meaningless to any
               | state or corporation. It is a tool to be used to get what
               | they want. US or EU isn't strong and rich now because
               | they gave everyone freedom or treated everyone ethically,
               | it is the opposite
        
           | bagels wrote:
           | What of diplomacy and negotiations? Surely those two are what
           | happens when those processes fail, but those processes don't
           | always fail.
        
           | barryrandall wrote:
           | Groundhogs are better at predicting weather than sanctions
           | are at achieving their stated goals.
        
           | adrian_b wrote:
           | Besides the hypocrisy noticed by other posters, there is a
           | problem with the so-called sanctions of USA against China:
           | they are not sanctions.
           | 
           | True sanctions are associated with some political conditions.
           | For instance one can apply some sanctions against Russia
           | until it stops its war against Ukraine.
           | 
           | In the case of the so-called sanctions against China no valid
           | reason is provided for them and there is no "until".
           | 
           | Real sanctions against China would be tied to some explicit
           | requests, for example one could request from China to
           | recognize Taiwan as an independent country, or to provide
           | guarantees that they will not attempt to extend their
           | territorial waters, or to guarantee certain rights for
           | minorities, or whatever other changes in their current
           | behaviors that are criticized by USA would be deemed as
           | appropriate.
           | 
           | Instead of this, USA has not requested anything from China,
           | and the official motivations for the sanctions are
           | ridiculous. Many Chinese companies have been blacklisted
           | because they provide products or services for the Chinese
           | military forces. This is a normal behavior for any company in
           | any country. Plenty of the most important US companies
           | provide products or services for the US military. If all
           | these US companies would be blacklisted by other countries,
           | it is likely that the participation of USA in the
           | international commerce would disappear almost completely.
           | 
           | While some of the less important US sanctions have at least
           | this claimed purpose of weakening the Chinese military, even
           | if no explicit rationale is given for why this is a
           | legitimate goal, the most important US sanctions do not have
           | any other goal than to eliminate the competitors of some US
           | companies.
           | 
           | For instance the war against Huawei has begun exactly in the
           | moment when Huawei was on the verge of surpassing Qualcomm in
           | the production of chipsets for smartphones and they were
           | clearly demonstrating a superior capacity of innovation over
           | Qualcomm.
           | 
           | The second great wave of sanctions against SMIC and other
           | important semiconductor device manufacturers has begun
           | exactly when the Chinese were close to take a significant
           | market share for flash memories from Micron.
           | 
           | In both cases the US sanctions have succeeded to remove from
           | the market for consumer products the Chinese competitors of
           | the US companies, preventing thus a drop in the prices of
           | smartphones and SSDs, which would have been beneficial for
           | everybody in the world except for the shareholders of a few
           | US and Korean companies, but their effect against the Chinese
           | military is likely to have been close to null.
        
           | d0mine wrote:
           | "A" is just a foreplay for "B", to soften the target.
        
         | wsatb wrote:
         | This is quite sensationalist. There's a myriad of issues inside
         | America's own borders that will bring down the empire.
        
           | nujabe wrote:
           | When the US dollar loses ground on its reserve currency
           | status, it wouldn't matter what happens inside America.
        
             | wsatb wrote:
             | I think the empire has already fallen at that point.
             | 
             | But regardless, what's the alternative and how is it immune
             | to similar actions?
        
         | ladyanita22 wrote:
         | Not anytime soon, buddy
        
       | cynicalsecurity wrote:
       | It only took US three years of Russia-Ukraine war to kick a KGB's
       | spying app out of their stores. This is a disaster. This should
       | have been done on day 1.
        
         | kbolino wrote:
         | The KGB was dissolved, along with the rest of the Soviet Union,
         | over 30 years ago.
        
           | playingalong wrote:
           | You would think so. Whatever the name, whatever the legal
           | structure, I am pretty sure KGB persists. Or several factions
           | of it.
        
         | FlyingBears wrote:
         | Well, with enthusiasm like that it is no wonder China and
         | Russia banned all western social media and are actively trying
         | to replace these services with homegrown. China was first,
         | Russia late to the party, but working on it.
        
       | steamingpenis wrote:
       | dupe.
       | 
       | yesterday:
       | 
       | Google removes Kaspersky's antivirus software from Play Store
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41758475
        
         | elpocko wrote:
         | Hey, I know it's frustrating when this happens. However, there
         | are no comments on your post from yesterday. It's not helpful
         | to point out an older, empty, and ignored post.
        
           | meowster wrote:
           | I believe there's the ability for the moderators to implement
           | karma equity sharing, or maybe that was just someone's
           | suggestion I read a while back.
        
         | redbell wrote:
         | Welcome to HN, buddy, but your _username_ is too _vulgar_!
         | Please consider changing it.
        
       | kazinator wrote:
       | > _The company is investigating the circumstances of the problem
       | and exploring possible solutions to allow users to download and
       | update the software from the Play Store again._
       | 
       | They could ask their nephew in fifth grade who would tell them
       | about things like F-Droid and naked .apk files.
        
       | axegon_ wrote:
       | Good call. Ultimately kaspersky is nothing more than a self-
       | installed backdoor for the fsb if you have it.
        
         | elashri wrote:
         | Is there actually any proof that this is the case? or this is
         | just an assumption because it is a Russian company? and
         | wouldn't this logic apply to every company in the world no
         | matter what the country is?
         | 
         | I'm not trying to start a nationalistic war or a debate about
         | war, etc. I'm trying to ask what I think valid question.
        
           | Dalewyn wrote:
           | You do realize you are on a forum where the vast majority of
           | commenters vehemently detest the Western Big Data Industrial
           | Complex(tm) and Snowden is heralded as a prophet for calling
           | it out, right?
        
             | axpvms wrote:
             | yes, I know this place is full of morons
        
               | ThunderSizzle wrote:
               | It's full of European, Silicon Valley, and NYC wannabe
               | elites who think they are superior to the rest of
               | society. So yes, full of morons.
        
           | axegon_ wrote:
           | > russian company
           | 
           | There's your answer: coming from an eastern European, I
           | probably know a thing or two how things work in the communist
           | world. We saw what yandex was on the inside about a year and
           | a half ago - it'd be brutally naive, even to a westerner, to
           | think that a cyber-"security" company is any different or
           | rather worse. You can read the bios of all the people in high
           | positions in kaspersky - those are not ordinary entrepreneurs
           | but state-funded individuals that should stay far away from
           | windows if they decide to disobey a single order, whether
           | it's spying or donating their children's kidneys. But if you
           | wanna dive into it, yes, plenty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
           | i/Kaspersky_and_the_Russian_gove...
        
       | cvalka wrote:
       | I guess they haven't figured out anything about Acronis and Veeam
       | ;-)
        
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       (page generated 2024-10-07 23:02 UTC)