If I had an app for sale in the App Store, I’d make it unavailable in Saudi Arabia.
The private sector — that’s us — can impose our own sanctions on repressive, outlaw regimes.
@brentsimmons FaceTime was (is?) unavailable in the UAE (for « business » reasons) and the only people it inconvenienced were us average joes. Also, most people in the region already buy in the US store ... I’m all for principles, but don’t confuse who the target is.
@brentsimmons (2) also the BlackBerry first, then the iPhone, have brought tremendous changes in the social fabric, especially in young people. Not selling in the App Store is playing right into the Gulf regimes’ hands.
@brentsimmons To build on what @seishonagon said, this is not a situation like apartheid South Africa, or Israeli occupation of Palestine, or even Iran (where there are semi-democratic elections), where sanctions/boycotts affecting a broad segment of society can be just and effective because that society is responsible for voting the regime into power and is empowered to vote it out of power. Those solutions work in democracies and places where the people have the ability to force a change in government via riots or revolutions. The Saudi people don’t have this power. They can’t get rid of the regime. The legions of non-Saudis living in the country, also to be affected by any such sanctions, certainly don’t have that power. The only people who can get rid of the worse-than-usual actors are the al-Saud themselves, so the better, more just course of action here is something like the Magnitsky Act, globally applied, to hit the Saudi royals (and whomever else was involved) directly, where it hurts. (That said, a palace coup resulting from infighting among the al-Saud princes is not a guarantee of a better result in anything beyond the immediate situation.)