31–40 of 209 posts
Where do you draw that line? What US laws are ok to break? Should Apple export other US laws like labor standards? If so, Alabama or California law?
Like it or not, globalism means that we're participants in a huge global community. Part of being in a community is respecting your neighbors, even when you disagree with them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple has most certainly taken a moral stance in the past as you point out. The galling part of the article to me was "The company has not fully tested its political and economic leverage in China." It is not Apple's job to take a political stance. They can if they want, as evidenced by the examples you laid out, but there is no requirement. If the NYT wants to talk politics and precedence, perhaps they should direct…
it's not their job to do it. It's nobody's job to do it. They still potentially can fix the problem. Wouldn't it be great if they used their influence to help fix things? I agree that there's a "choose your battles" aspect to this. Considering what Apple did with the San Bernandino case, this seems (ideologically) right, but the potential losses are pretty high.
What I read from that is that you do not think that it is a more appropriate role for, say, the U. S. government. If that is the case, we're just going to have to agree to disagree. My POV is that to a large extent the U.s government has that leeway because they don't have financial incentives/disincentives to steer their decisions (this falls apart when viewed in a larger economic sense, but bear with me). Instead, the government makes laws, decrees, and treaties that fit within a worldview of what benefits the country as a whole, and to some extent to cajole other countries who might have a different worldview (Iran or Russia, for example). Or put another way, we leave it to the government to represent our moral, ethical and economic views of how the world should work. Whereas Apple should represent a different view: the desires of those that own stock with the symbol "AAPL", and their desire to make money (where are the "fiduciary obligation" folks when you need them?) If AAPL happens to take a stand I agree with, hurray, I'll buy more of their products and probably more of their stock. If they mistreat workers, I'll dig in and find out if I still feel comfortable giving them my monetary support (personally, no worse than others, maybe a little better). But what I don't expect from AAPL is for them to instigate "regime change" or whatever else it is the NYT is expecting them to do.
Anyway, that turned out longer than I wanted, but that's where I'm coming from.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Chinese companies, however, have no such limitations, and will bend the rules all the time, often with minimal consequences. Do you mind point some examples?
Ya, for the big one, Baidu is the ultimate search engine for porn and health care scams, where they used to derive most of their revenue. Compared to Chinese Bing which is pretty clean with pretty effective porn filters (but also makes almost no money). Payments via AliPay and WePay were technically illegal before they were legalized post facto after they became popular. A western company could have never gone near t…
Huh. Sounds like a certain transportation company...
There is nothing Apple can do. In the name of profits, they have put their entire business in the hands of the Chinese government.
As much as I dislike Apple, they made the right choice here. While it may be easy to praise Apple's stance against FBI backdooring the iPhone's secure boot and condemn their compliance with removing VPN apps from the Chinese app store, the latter policy is completely unlike the former for several good reasons. With the Chinese market, you need to choose your battles. Removing VPN apps from the Appstore does not compr…
Agreed. I'll venture that it's still wrong to prevent access to VPNs (divide the blame up however you'd like) but likening this to the FBI backdoor request is an enormous false equivalence.
I'll repost my comment from the other thread that got flagged for being a dupe: They absolutely stake out moral positions on issues like this all the time. The difference is they only do it in the West where rule of law prevails and they can actually exert influence. They've done it with various anti-LGBT efforts that have taken place around the US, they've done it with the fight with the FBI and they're doing it rig…
Why does Apple get a free pass on this when Google has such a clear stance for free expression? [1] https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-chin...
[1] http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/207...
[2] https://www.theinformation.com/Google-s-China-App-Store-Talk...
I'll repost my comment from the other thread that got flagged for being a dupe: They absolutely stake out moral positions on issues like this all the time. The difference is they only do it in the West where rule of law prevails and they can actually exert influence. They've done it with various anti-LGBT efforts that have taken place around the US, they've done it with the fight with the FBI and they're doing it rig…
The big issue is that they'd actually have to shoot themselves in the head: they can't exist in China without giving into things like this. And Tim Cook can't keep his job if he decides to leave his 1st (or 2nd, depending on the quarter) largest market for moral reasons. I'm not really sure if its a rule of law issue (though China definitely has problems there). One problem is that western companies generally must fo…
Apple is free to criticize and standup to the american government because they are american
I'll repost my comment from the other thread that got flagged for being a dupe: They absolutely stake out moral positions on issues like this all the time. The difference is they only do it in the West where rule of law prevails and they can actually exert influence. They've done it with various anti-LGBT efforts that have taken place around the US, they've done it with the fight with the FBI and they're doing it rig…
Apple has most certainly taken a moral stance in the past as you point out. The galling part of the article to me was "The company has not fully tested its political and economic leverage in China." It is not Apple's job to take a political stance. They can if they want, as evidenced by the examples you laid out, but there is no requirement. If the NYT wants to talk politics and precedence, perhaps they should direct…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ya, for the big one, Baidu is the ultimate search engine for porn and health care scams, where they used to derive most of their revenue. Compared to Chinese Bing which is pretty clean with pretty effective porn filters (but also makes almost no money). Payments via AliPay and WePay were technically illegal before they were legalized post facto after they became popular. A western company could have never gone near t…
> Payments via AliPay and WePay were technically illegal before they were legalized post facto after they became popular. A western company could have never gone near that. Huh. Sounds like a certain transportation company...
I didn't bother talking about Didi because of Uber.