In recent days, several US technology companies have taken action in response to the invasion of Ukraine. The latest to join has been Apple, which has suspended the sale of all its products in Russia, according to Mark Gurman (Bloomberg). In addition, those from Cupertino took measures to prevent the dissemination of propaganda, since removed Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik apps from the App Store in almost the whole world, except Russia. Finally, they turned off Apple Maps traffic and incident tracking in Ukraine.
At this time, you can check for yourself that the Russian Apple Store has suspended the sale of any product. In the purchase pages of all devices the message is observed “Currently not available”the same text that appears when there is no stock.
“Apple stands with all the people who are suffering as a result of the violence. Last week we stopped all exports to our sales channel in the country [Rusia]. Apple Pay and other services have been limited. We are supporting humanitarian efforts, providing aid for the refugee crisis being developed and doing everything possible to support our teams in the region,” the company said.
Regarding the “goodbye” of RT and Sputnik from the App Store, in various regions of the world it is still possible to download their applications. However, it is possible that this is due to a gradual withdrawal that will take effect in a matter of hours. Last February 27, the European Union vetoed both media to stop his wave of “lies and misinformation” during the armed conflict.
Google followed the same path, as they blocked the channels of Youtube from RT and Sputnik just a few hours ago. Of course, the measure is only in force in European territory. Twitter, for its part, now specifies that RT is a media outlet affiliated with the Russian government, while Facebook and Instagram restricted access to the profiles of such media throughout the European Union.
It is worth mentioning that, in the case of Twitter and Facebook, Russia responded to their actions by partially blocking them. It is possible, then, that they also act before the measures of Apple and Google.