{"id":6385,"date":"2021-10-20T11:45:27","date_gmt":"2021-10-20T11:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=6385"},"modified":"2021-10-20T11:45:27","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T11:45:27","slug":"apple-shut-down-a-voting-app-in-russia-that-should-worry-everyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=6385","title":{"rendered":"Apple shut down a voting app in Russia. That should worry everyone."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“Apple and Google shut down a voting app meant to help opposition parties organize against the Kremlin in a parliamentary election in Russia<\/a> that\u2019s taking place over the weekend. The companies removed the app from their app storeson Friday after the Russian government accused them of interfering in the country\u2019s internal affairs, a clear attempt<\/a> by President Vladimir Putin to obstruct free elections and stay in power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Smart Voting<\/a> app was designed to identify candidates most likely to beat members of the government-backed party, United Russia<\/a>, as part of a broader strategy organized by supporters of the imprisoned Russian activist Alexei Navalny to bring together voters who oppose Putin. In a bid to clamp down on the opposition effort, the Russian government told Google and Apple that the app was illegal, and reportedly threatened to arrest<\/a> employees of both companies in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The move also comes amid a broader crackdown on Big Tech in Russia. Earlier this week, a Russian court fined Facebook and Twitter for not removing \u201cillegal<\/a>\u201d content, and the country is reportedly<\/a> blocking peoples\u2019 access to Google Docs, which Navalny supporters had been using to share lists of preferred candidates.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/recode\/22680010\/russia-apple-app-store-smart-voting-monopoly<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Apple and Google shut down a voting app meant to help opposition parties organize against the Kremlin in a parliamentary election in Russia that\u2019s taking place over the weekend. The companies removed the app from their app stores on Friday after the Russian government accused them of interfering in the country\u2019s internal affairs, a clear attempt by President Vladimir Putin to obstruct free elections and stay in power.<\/p>\n

The Smart Voting app was designed to identify candidates most likely to beat members of the government-backed party, United Russia, as part of a broader strategy organized by supporters of the imprisoned Russian activist Alexei Navalny to bring together voters who oppose Putin. In a bid to clamp down on the opposition effort, the Russian government told Google and Apple that the app was illegal, and reportedly threatened to arrest employees of both companies in the country.<\/p>\n

The move also comes amid a broader crackdown on Big Tech in Russia. Earlier this week, a Russian court fined Facebook and Twitter for not removing \u201cillegal\u201d content, and the country is reportedly blocking peoples\u2019 access to Google Docs, which Navalny supporters had been using to share lists of preferred candidates.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[764,91,431,660,761,763,315],"class_list":["post-6385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-apple","tag-censorship","tag-democracy","tag-dictatorship","tag-facebook","tag-google","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6385"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6386,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6385\/revisions\/6386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}