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Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

motherboard.vice.com

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Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#11

Post by knowaveragejoe »

FreedomToCreate wrote: post #2

This hits the nail on the head in calling out news reporting sites who don't fact check or truthfully report a topic. Its incredible how far from the actually story the Apple recycled gold headline deviates and really makes you wonder if citing so called reputable sources is even valid in some cases.

This is ironic considering Vice routinely bends the truth in favor of outrage porn themselves. In this case, the author doesn't appear to know exactly how much of the waste in the 90 million pounds figure was actually Apple products, though based on the rough calculation that CRT monitors make up the vast majority of e-waste weight he estimates that it is very little. That appears to be the meat of the controversy here. It's not that no e-waste recycling occurred, it's that the $40 million in gold figure is dubious-at-best. Apple paid the companies to perform electronics recycling, which the article itself says is a non-lucrative business and in large part exists solely because manufacturers pay for these recycling programs. I'm not sure if there's a real issue here(other than perhaps the media taking something and running with it for clicks).

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#12

Post by jlarocco »

johansch wrote: post #4

Apple misled media. I hope media learns from this.

Haha! The media reporting this doesn't care as long as they get page views, and this isn't going to affect page views.

If they learn anything here, it will be that they can do less verification on the rest of their stories.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#13

Post by abhi3 »

Summary:

Various media sites claimed apple recycled $40 million worth of gold from iphones, they were dead wrong.

What actually happened is that Apple is under statutury obligation to recycle a certain weight of e-waste depending on it market share or weight of electronics sold (depending on state laws). The e-waste doesn't have to be of the manufacturers own products.

Apple paid third party recyclers to recycle mostly CRT's and PC's (iphone have hardly any gold and are much more valuable refurbished, In fact, phones and tablets often don’t count toward the overall recycling requirements in many state laws.) and probably incured a loss rather than a 40 million windfall as claimed in news articles.

Original Article: 1500 words (~8 minute read) Summary: 114 words (less than a minute)

The articles goes in to some more detail and analyzes the mandatory recycling laws deeper as well. There is also some commentary of how many other sites got it very wrong and overview of the e-waste recycling industry. Reading recomended if you want gain more knowledge on this.

If you'd like such summaries for all articles before you read them check out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11535695

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#14

Post by __jal »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #3
FreedomToCreate wrote: post #2

This hits the nail on the head in calling out news reporting sites who don't fact check or truthfully report a topic. Its incredible how far from the actually story the Apple recycled gold headline deviates and really makes you wonder if citing so called reputable sources is even valid in some cases.

That's the problem with 24/7 news and the Internet. 1: Someone breaks a story 2: People get interested and share it with their friends 3: Other sources want a piece of that action so they bandwagon and cite the original piece for their own version. I am often struck at how our modern communications framework, going all the way back to the telegraph, has allowed so much misinformation to be spread.

I wonder if there's a publicity effect here.

Much in the same way that police abuse has been going on forever but didn't get attention until everyone got a camera in their phone, I think bullshit "news" stories have always been with us. The net makes it much easier to debunk these, and for the news of the debunking to spread in the same way the original story did.

That's not to say the insatiable, screwed up incentives to publish on the net before fact checking aren't problematic. I just question whether shoddy/misleading/outright false "news" has actually gotten worse, or whether we just notice it more because corrections and factchecks in some cases become news in their own right (like here).

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#15

Post by ck2 »

Not that I would confuse CNN as actual journalism with investigative journalists but how many times a day does CNN say "we have not been able to independently verify" about a story, yet doesn't bother with stuff like this?

How can these places claim "freedom of the press" without having to prove they are "press" or what "press" even is?

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#16

Post by sp332 »

morgante wrote: post #6
johansch wrote: post #4

Apple misled media. I hope media learns from this.

Where is evidence of Apple misleading media? Apple certainly never said they were making money off recycled gold.

Apple announced a robotics project last month called "Liam". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYshVbcEmUc It recovers "cobalt and lithium", "gold and copper", "silver and platinum".

The number "2,204 pounds of gold" comes from page 17 of this PDF https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_Re... which prominently displays Liam on the cover page.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#17

Post by jrochkind1 »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #11
FreedomToCreate wrote: post #2

This hits the nail on the head in calling out news reporting sites who don't fact check or truthfully report a topic. Its incredible how far from the actually story the Apple recycled gold headline deviates and really makes you wonder if citing so called reputable sources is even valid in some cases.

This is ironic considering Vice routinely bends the truth in favor of outrage porn themselves. In this case, the author doesn't appear to know exactly how much of the waste in the 90 million pounds figure was actually Apple products, though based on the rough calculation that CRT monitors make up the vast majority of e-waste weight he estimates that it is very little. That appears to be the meat of the controversy he…

I'm not sure if there's any 'controversy', the OP article doesn't seem to neccesarily think there is one, or that Apple has done anything wrong.

The OP article just says that the thing everyone's saying about 'Apple harvests gold from iPhones and makes $40 million" just isn't true.

It's not a question of 'controversy', it's a question of understanding what's actually going on in the world regarding our resource consumption and waste generation and where the costs of such are borne -- something we probably need to be more familiar with if we want to keep living on this planet.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#18

Post by retox »

wklauss wrote: post #5

These kind of stories are useful to understand to what extent the media has turned into an echo chamber. Everybody has to have (or comment on) the same stories than everybody else has, so fast copying (with or without attribution) has become a de-facto practice in every news outlet out there. Good for Motherboard to wait and check. Unfortunately this means we will see this article now in all the outlets that publishe…

>we will see this article now in all the outlets that published the previous one

Don't hold your breath

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#19

Post by morgante »

sp332 wrote: post #16
morgante wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is evidence of Apple misleading media? Apple certainly never said they were making money off recycled gold.

Apple announced a robotics project last month called "Liam". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYshVbcEmUc It recovers "cobalt and lithium", "gold and copper", "silver and platinum". The number "2,204 pounds of gold" comes from page 17 of this PDF https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_Re... which prominently displays Liam on the cover page.

Mentioning two different facts about their recycling programs on completely different pages of a holistic report about their environmental responsibility now constitutes "misleading the media?"

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#20

Post by bobwaycott »

abhi3 wrote: post #13

Summary: Various media sites claimed apple recycled $40 million worth of gold from iphones, they were dead wrong. What actually happened is that Apple is under statutury obligation to recycle a certain weight of e-waste depending on it market share or weight of electronics sold (depending on state laws). The e-waste doesn't have to be of the manufacturers own products. Apple paid third party recyclers to recycle most…

Hey, can you cut it out with the summary advertising crap?
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