PANews reported on February 7 that Vitalik Buterin (V God) posted on social media that he would respect Apple more if it publicly promised to withdraw from the UK market if it could not avoid breaking encryption. He emphasized that if Apple took this action, he would buy and use an additional Apple device (currently only owns AirPods).

Earlier reports said that the British government asked Apple to create a backdoor to allow security agencies to access encrypted iCloud backups of users around the world and prohibit Apple from notifying users that their data security has been compromised. At the same time, the US NSA, FBI and other agencies have recommended strengthening end-to-end encryption to protect network traffic, but the UK has not joined the initiative.