Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#241

Post by celticmusic » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #182

yters wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does 'continue buying unethically sourced cobalt' improve the state of things? Ideally, it is a dual solution of don't buy the unethical kind, and set up an alternate ethical supply chain to the same region so workers can switch to a better work place. But, if the latter is not possible, one can at least help decrease the market for unethical cobalt by ceasing purchase. Plus, it is not a matter of seeming morally…

In what situation? In the case of Cobalt it probably doesn't. In the case of rubber the big companies do provide better jobs for the families they employ than anything else, ensure the family gets modern medical care (as opposed to "witch doctor" care anyone not working for them gets), and the children do go to school and so have the ability to get a better job latter. The companies looks the other way in harvest sea…

This is a discussion about child labor that is resulting in their deaths.

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#242

Post by jcranmer » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

turc1656 wrote: post #152

Ignoring the overall ethical issue for those employing the child laborers and looking purely at the lawsuit, it seems to have no merit and appears to be designed specifically to create a bad PR campaign for these companies and to draw attention to the issue. I suspect more drawing of attention than the bad PR, but still probably both are goals. IANAL, but it seems very obvious from both the article and the lawsuit th…

18 USC § 2 says:

> (a) Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.

> (b) Whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another would be an offense against the United States, is punishable as a principal.

That does give some more leeway to charge people with crimes here, but I don't think it is enough to sustain the claims of 1581 and 1584, since it seems to be meant to be read as "I'm not doing the dirty deed myself, but I'm telling my henchmen to do it."

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#243

Post by homonculus1 » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

dls2016 wrote: post #208

hnburnsy wrote: post #181

This feels like the episode of the The Good Place where they figure out the point system to get to the good place doesn't work because today's world is complicated... >Michael uses the example of someone buying roses. A man hundreds of years ago got a lot of Good Place points because he grew and picked his own roses to give to his grandmother. However, when another man got roses for his grandmother, he lost points. I…

In other words, there’s no such thing as ethical consumption.

What is the point of this slogan? Are we all supposed to feel guilty for not reverting to disconnected hunter-gatherer tribes? It's not an insightful ethical standard, and I reject it.

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#244

Post by celticmusic » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 7:11 PM UTC

solidasparagus wrote: post #201

shantly wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mandating that companies stop buying cobalt from suppliers who don't document things well is absolutely a legitimate, non-pie-in-the-sky way to effect change. The idea is that demand for documented cobalt will go up, prices for it will also go up, poorly-documented cobalt producers will have lower demand for their product and their profits will be harmed, the ones capable of fixing their shit so they can sell more-ex…

That is not a new idea, even in the DRC and it has been an abject failure. Conflict gold, diamonds and coltan still flow out of DRC despite efforts to not buy undocumented minerals. In highly corrupt and impoverished places, documentation doesn't mean anything. One bribe of a few hundred dollars and your Congolese conflict mineral is now clean, documented Rwandan mineral.

You're asking the wrong question.

The question isn't "have we completely stopped blood diamonds", the question is "have we lowered the demand for blood diamonds".

If the answer is yes, then the strategy is legitimate and worked. We may have more work to do, but the argument that we must wait for perfect before attempting to make improvements is asinine.

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#245

Post by celticmusic » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 7:22 PM UTC

FussyZeus wrote: post #189

solidasparagus wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just unrealistic. Here's a challenge - cut cobalt out of your life. I'll bet you can't. Until you can do that, offering 'stop buying' as a solution is a waste of time.

> It's just unrealistic. Here's a challenge - cut cobalt out of your life. I'll bet you can't. "Realistic" is determined entirely by the values of the overarching system. The fate of the people at the long tail of the supply lines isn't valued. That's the single, solitary reason that this shit is still happening. Change that, and the system will adapt. The mines will get better, or they will be replaced with other mi…

> If we can mine coal in the United States without children and with relative safety, they can mine Cobalt in the same damn way. Cobalt doesn't by virtue of being cobalt need to be pried from the Earth by children.

oh you didn't know? The blood of the children is what christens the cobalt such that it works in computers...

/sarcasm

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#246

Post by dv_dt » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

philipkglass wrote: post #232

dv_dt wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commodities are more trackable with detailed analysis then anyone might casually think. e.g. oil is a commodity but the signature of oil from certain regions is pretty visible by chemists, and one can force oil supply from trade restricted sources to at least try to mask the signature by mixing with other sources. Not perfect but you can raise the difficulty bar on commodity sourcing.

Cobalt has only one naturally occurring isotope, so I don't think you can use any tricks from chemistry or physics to track it back to the source after it has been separated from ore. Instead you need tamper-resistant supply chain documentation all the way back to the actual mine.

I'm not familiar w/ cobalt, but materials are rarely 100% pure. One might look at non-cobalt materials associated with the pure material and what ratios they're in? Again not perfect but something.

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#247

Post by celticmusic » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 7:25 PM UTC

EncryptEntropy wrote: post #161

FussyZeus wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not some arcane magic here. This is making companies responsible for the vetting of their suppliers. Do you know how hard it would be for Apple to check out a mining operation? A plane trip and a few days of a couple people's time. That's fucking it. That is NOTHING to a company like Apple, it would barely be a rounding error in their budget. And if the mine is in the midst of a warzone and you can't be sure…

You seem to know the answer but are you currently in Africa doing anything? Do you sit there and post from a computer/phone/ use these companies services? Magic is all you’re speaking. Social media virtue signaling while you are not solving the problem. Arguing just to argue. If it was so simple as just hop on a plane and/or just don’t buy from there then the companies worth billions would have already done that.

Why do you need to be in Africa to start changing US law and regulations?

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#248

Post by celticmusic » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 7:26 PM UTC

dv_dt wrote: post #220

dehrmann wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The mineral supply chain in that part of the world is ridiculously hard to track Commodities, in general. They're fungible, so cobalt from one supplier looks like cobalt from another supplier.

Commodities are more trackable with detailed analysis then anyone might casually think. e.g. oil is a commodity but the signature of oil from certain regions is pretty visible by chemists, and one can force oil supply from trade restricted sources to at least try to mask the signature by mixing with other sources. Not perfect but you can raise the difficulty bar on commodity sourcing.

Not only that, oil companies share these lines. They know exactly what % of the oil flowing through that pipe is company A vs company B.

I know because I worked on some of the accounting software they use.

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#249

Post by celticmusic » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

sharpneli wrote: post #176

celticmusic wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think this makes much sense. Let me see if I can put it into terms you can understand. They prosecute people who look at child porn. Not because those people abused the children, but because those people create the demand that causes the producers to abuse children. You decrease the demand, you decrease the abuse. Or in another form. If you really want to stop illegal immigration, you go after the people em…

Banning cobalt alltogether? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt#Applications You’d literally make usage of an element illegal due to that. For me it sounds bit of an overreaction. Also it would be more than tad unfair for the cobalt mines not in DRC to have to close up.

this is a strawman and you should be ashamed of yourself. You cannot find any posts by me on this forum in which I've advocated banning Cobalt all together.

Find a better response.

Re: Tech giants sued over deaths of children who mine cobalt

#250

Post by microtherion » Wed, Dec 18, 2019, 7:29 PM UTC

FussyZeus wrote: post #106

vinniejames wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason "they know your shoe size" is because you carry around a $1000 phone that tracks your every move and spend all your disposable income through their platforms. The same cannot be said for the poor Cobalt miners, so no they can't just will that info into existence simply because they "want to know"

This is not some arcane magic here. This is making companies responsible for the vetting of their suppliers. Do you know how hard it would be for Apple to check out a mining operation? A plane trip and a few days of a couple people's time. That's fucking it. That is NOTHING to a company like Apple, it would barely be a rounding error in their budget. And if the mine is in the midst of a warzone and you can't be sure…

I think it's a bit harder than that. But Apple is already doing it (or claims to be doing it). The latest Supplier Responsibility report claims that 100% of their Cobalt supplies is audited: https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2... And Apple claims to regularly remove suppliers for violations.

Up until a few years ago, Cobalt was specifically called out as being a problematic resource, with incomplete audits and widespread violations. Now, Apple claims to have this under control. Either Apple is lying or misguided, or the initiators of the lawsuit are.

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if the initiators of the lawsuit were wrong. It seems that Apple often gets lumped in with other tech companies' labor and supply practices, regardless of whether their specific policies are actually more strict than common industry practice (cf Mike Daisey's "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs")

Disclaimer: I work for Apple, but don't shop for their Cobalt, so I have no firsthand knowledge of the actual situation.