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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

#21

Post by c3534l »

What does it say about the world we live in where blogs do more basic journalism than CNN? All that one would have had to do is read the report actually provided.

I don't think I'm being too extreme when I say that, apart from maybe PBS, there is no reputable source of news in America. If you don't believe me, pick a random story, watch it as it gets rewritten a million times through Reuters, then check back on the facts of the story one year later. A news story gets twisted to promote some narrative that will sell papers, and when the facts of the story are finally verified (usually not by the news themselves, but lawyers or courts or whoever), the story is dropped and never reported on again.

Again, if the only thing a reporter had to do was read the report to find the facts of the case to verify what is and isn't true, what the fuck is even the point of a news agency?

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

#22

Post by sp332 »

morgante wrote: post #19
sp332 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

First, it's on the same page. The discussion of Liam starts 3 lines below the number 2204.

Second, the video clearly states that the gold from iPhones is recycled. It would be clearer to say that the phone parts which happen to contain gold are put into refurbished phones. It's not extracting the gold at all, and that's why it's misleading.

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

#23

Post by jonathansizz »

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…

TL;DR

Per legal requirements (and at a loss), Apple recycles monitors and computers, but not iphones.

Summary-of-summary: 15 words. 5 seconds.

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

#24

Post by r3bl »

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…

I'm not in the US, but if it's anywhere similar to the situation I live in, media outlets will either:

1. Make a small apology for not sharing the truth that's not going to be very visible on their website.

2. Just ignore the facts. Their work is done, they're moving on to different stories and pretty much forgetting this one.

Now, if 1st case happens, and it happens very rarely, you can bet that the apology is not going to be read by as large amount of people as the original story was. Therefore, a lie will become a "fact" in the eyes of regular people.

Example: the most popular newspapers in one European country next to mine shared screenshots of a very popular porn actress's video, but claimed that it were porn videos of the (female) president of the country next to it.

Of course, this was a blatant lie, the head of that news outlet made a public apology (over Twitter for sure, not sure if he did it over his news outlet), but if you ask Regular Joe, that story still remains true, because the apology made nowhere near the impact as the original story did (as you can imagine).

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

#25

Post by trollingineeer »

bobwaycott wrote: post #20
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?

STFU, Bob! I don't want to read an entire article.

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

#26

Post by trollingineeer »

jonathansizz wrote: post #23
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…

TL;DR Per legal requirements (and at a loss), Apple recycles monitors and computers, but not iphones. Summary-of-summary: 15 words. 5 seconds.

Can we go shorter?

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

#27

Post by morgante »

sp332 wrote: post #22
morgante wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

First, it's on the same page. The discussion of Liam starts 3 lines below the number 2204. Second, the video clearly states that the gold from iPhones is recycled. It would be clearer to say that the phone parts which happen to contain gold are put into refurbished phones. It's not extracting the gold at all, and that's why it's misleading.

> First, it's on the same page. The discussion of Liam starts 3 lines below the number 2204.

And 2 lines above the gold it says 61,357,800lbs of total material, in a figure much more clearly connected than the ostensible paragraph.

When Liam is introduced on that page, Apple explicitly says it is "a line of robots designed to disassemble 1.2 million phones a year." Unless you think the average phone weighs 61 pounds, it's obviously not responsible for the total material recycling chart above.

Nobody could possibly read this report and come away thinking that Liam is recycling millions of dollars of gold.

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

#28

Post by adventured »

c3534l wrote: post #21

What does it say about the world we live in where blogs do more basic journalism than CNN? All that one would have had to do is read the report actually provided. I don't think I'm being too extreme when I say that, apart from maybe PBS, there is no reputable source of news in America. If you don't believe me, pick a random story, watch it as it gets rewritten a million times through Reuters, then check back on the f…

I think you're being too extreme.

Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and to a lesser extent the NY Times are all still reputable, even if they all still produce occasional junk. I don't believe there is a single reputable news source on earth, if the qualification is never producing junk articles.

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

#29

Post by uxp »

scholia wrote: post #10
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some of those reporters are contracted to write five or even 10 posts per day. It's not like a NYT or WSJ reporter spending three weeks or three months on one story. Also, because Google promotes blogspam without any regard for content quality (see the "freshness algorithm"), you lose money by spending longer on a post. It's the exception rather than the rule that somebody will come along several days later and hit i…

> Some of those reporters are contracted to write five or even 10 posts per day. It's not like a NYT or WSJ reporter spending three weeks or three months on one story.

Vice doesn't necessarily fall out of that category either. Smack dab in the middle is the statement:

"I still had outstanding questions, which I asked Apple ... The company has not yet responded."

The number of times I've read a developing story that has had that or similar in it is countless. Apple isn't known to have an army of PR representatives waiting for the next question to come down the pipeline, but it begs the question of how long they waited before publishing the story and just hoping they can update the story later while it's still getting pageviews.

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

#30

Post by efdee »

bobwaycott wrote: post #20
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?

Yes, how dares he provide an interesting service while pitching his startup on a startup related news aggregator.
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