[deleted]
Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
281–290 of 730 posts
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Multinational companies conforming to local laws and customs isn't scary, it's status quo. You are missing my point. The fact that it is status quo is the scary part. I do not accept that companies should be let off the hook for empowering and enriching oppressive reigns because of "local laws and customs". I do accept that companies should be let off the hook for destroying environments and ecosystems because of l…
It's also neither local laws or customs to hide the Taiwanese flag as OP claims.
Wut. China compelling foreign companies to remove references of Taiwan in China is established policy? Even mainland Chinese companies HK/Taiwan offices occasionally get in trouble for missteps.
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#283What's it take for an engineer in the US to actually do something like this? If my boss/product manager wanted me to do something like this, I'd be calling them out for shitty politics, and telling them they need to find a new engineer because I'd quit immediately - and likely incite others to come with me. Maybe I have a higher sense of morality than others, but I'm no shill for China's power over Taiwan. I can use…
Apple is based in Cupertino, which is at least half Chinese, and is a heavily staffed with Chinese overall. You assume they have Western political sensibilities. Edit: latest demographic data from Wiki, from 2010, says 63% Asian and 26% Chinese
People from Taiwan are probably counted as Chinese in the demographics.
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think censoring facts is ever anything but black and white. The fact that Taiwan exists, Hong Kong exists, Falun Gong, Tibet... These are all real things. There shouldn't ever be a reason to hide the fact that they exist no matter if todays reality wasn't todays reality.
Facts are rarely black and white. Look at USA reporting about Venezuela or Cuba. It's factual, yet it also implicitly takes sides. Which facts? How are they presented?
You are confusing perspective with facts. A cup is filled with water, you can say its half empty or half full. The cup has water is a fact. Whether its half empty or half full is perspective. But at the end of the day, there is still water in the cup.
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps that engineer had a baby on the way and was terrified of losing health coverage, or was in the United States on an H1B visa and was afraid they'd be deported... I'd probably have made the same decision as you (I'm fortunate to have a safety net), but many people don't have that luxury.
With the amount that engineers get paid in the bay area it's ridiculous that having a safety net isn't trivially easy. The real estate situation here (and everywhere) is ridiculous - it isn't right that the price of housing seems everywhere to be a little bit too much for anybody to afford.
About 8 years ago at breakfast I told my GF I had a book idea. I'd make millions on it!
Live Flat Fucking Broke in San Francisco for only $250 a Day
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
We should still blame the engineer, but they shouldn't shoulder the majority of the blame.
Maybe if all engineers quit with the first immoral request by the management, it would actually pave way for more morally ignorant engineers to replace them. We only see what has happened, not what has not happened. What if the iOS engineers do in fact have moral values and have declined some of the management's more immoral requests many times, but this particular request seemed the lesser of two devils? Maybe those…
well hypotheticals without a concrete example are not much use, I'm left to speculate that they told the engineer either we shoot and eat this baby, or you hide the flag and they heroically hid the flag.
But until I get a confirmation on this unselfish act I'm gonna go with probably didn't think much about it and took the next ticket on his list.
Which hey. I'm not on a high enough horse here to berate the guy, but not on a low enough horse to speculate how noble he must be in secret. (excuse the gender specific pronouns)
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#287My understanding is that we should expect private embedded backdoors and weakened security on firmware for certain regions, and that the rights will be molded to the each local region.
That’s just the great power of influence over an American company, in spite of the clear position from its own government regarding Taiwan.
Say goodbye to all those ideals of universal rights and freedom in the cyber world as it was once long ago theorized. Somehow what sci-fi cyberpunk became almost true without bionic implants nor anarchy in the streets.
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#288Apple and others also changed the pistol/gun emoji to a squirt gun (https://emojipedia.org/pistol/). It seems like these big tech companies generally want to make cultural/intellectual/political choices and impose their mindset/influence. This is exactly why large tech platforms should not be trusted with managing (read: censoring) speech broadly across society behind the veil of protection as private entities.
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#289What's it take for an engineer in the US to actually do something like this? If my boss/product manager wanted me to do something like this, I'd be calling them out for shitty politics, and telling them they need to find a new engineer because I'd quit immediately - and likely incite others to come with me. Maybe I have a higher sense of morality than others, but I'm no shill for China's power over Taiwan. I can use…
#iamveryvirtuous
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#290What's it take for an engineer in the US to actually do something like this? If my boss/product manager wanted me to do something like this, I'd be calling them out for shitty politics, and telling them they need to find a new engineer because I'd quit immediately - and likely incite others to come with me. Maybe I have a higher sense of morality than others, but I'm no shill for China's power over Taiwan. I can use…
You say that as if they wouldn't just easily find someone to replace this engineer without any qualms about doing this. The number of people that don't care about things like this because it doesn't affect them on a personal level is still far to large for a personal protest like this to have any impact.
Really, the pressures should be on Apple and on China, not some low level engineer who had to write the code for this.