Apple tells secure messaging app Telegram to take down protestor channels in Belarus

Apple is requesting that Telegram shut down three channels used in Belarus to expose the identities of individuals belonging to the Belarusian authoritarian regime that may be oppressing civilians. Apple's concern is that revealing the identities of law enforcement individuals may give rise to further violence.

Telegram, however, would prefer to keep the channels open, but the company said that it feels it has no choice in the matter. These channels are a tool for Belarus' citizens protesting the recently rigged presidential election, but, with a centralized entity like Apple calling the shots on its own App Store, there's little the protesters can do about it, explains Telegram CEO Pavel Durov.

That's what happens when you're a company with zero morals and values, run by people with zero morals and values. We here in the west just accept that it's entirely okay for corporations to value money over human lives and our core democratic ideals of freedom of liberty, because we've been brainwashed that it's not just acceptable, but entirely desirable to sacrifice every shred of dignity at the altar of shareholder value.

Putting money and shareholders above all else is not a a law of nature, it is not a universal constant - it is a choice. Unless we all shed centuries of indoctrination about the sacredness of shareholder value - from the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the first shareholder-owned company and arguably the most valuable company in human history, and its institutional use of violence, exploitation, and slavery, all the way to Apple, the current most valuable company in the world, and its role in the Chinese surveillance state and thus the genocide taking place there - we will continue to sit idly by as our fellow men and women on the street in our neighbouring countries suffer and the world we live in gets destroyed.