Bowing to censorship? Bowing isn't necessarily done happily.
Or maybe more ideas are also in play? Perhaps recognizing the existing power dynamics? Perhaps playing the game over a longer time frame?
Not all ethicists recommend "dying on your sword" so to speak. Sometimes it is useful to maintain influence and fight another day. These things are far from simple.
If you want Apple to push back on censorship in China, let's talk about the details. What would China likely do in return?
Remember how Tim Cook’s Apple handled HKmap.live¹, Telegram², and the Navalny app³. Maybe you shouldn’t fight every battle, but he fights none. The richest company in the world has at the helm a person who quotes Martin Luther King Jr on the importance of doing something for others⁴ yet he always kowtows to authoritarian regimes. He’s in a stronger position than most people in the world to make a stand but he never does. At a certain point he’s out of excuses. He fights for money, nothing more.
> Maybe you shouldn’t fight every battle, but he fights none.
All we know is what has been reported.
It would seem improbable what a multi trillion dollar company with it's manufacturing base in China wouldn't be dealing and negotiating with the Chinese authorities as part of day to day operations.
To say Tim Cook fights no battles seems unlikely. We cannot make that statement because the reality is that we just don't know what goes on behind closed doors!
Apple very publicly refused to unlock the phones of the San Berbardino shooters, and consistently refuses to back door their phones for law enforcement.
In a country with strong rule of law, where it's quite clear where the legality of this rests, and where they had almost nothing to lose by refusing to unlock the phone.
Yet icloud is dencrypted in China as soon as that's what the authorities want.
Standing up for things doesn't really mean much when you have nothing to lose. It's like the world cup players talking about LGBT rights and then stopping it as soon as they are threatened with yellow cards. That's boring cowardly virtue signalling, it's not standing up for something regardless of consequences.
Considering that China has the ultimate power over apple with Foxconn manufacturing their device in China. Apple makes a lot of money because of China, China can have a lot of influence over Apple. I'm not pro-China, pro-America, pro-anything, just stating this fact.
Foxconn does assembly and that is not a big cost of an iphone [0]. Like literally just a fraction compared to American IP, Taiwan CPUs, or Japanese cameras and the latter are all much harder to move compared to assembly.
Whatever the case is, Apple took their sweet time making changes. Microsoft, Google and even Facebook pulled out of China years ago, and Apple is acting like a storied history of human rights abuses is news to them.
> [...], Google and even [...] pulled out of China years ago
Wasn't the Pixel 6 assembled by Foxconn? And the upcoming Pixel 7 / foldables apparently also going to be assembled by Foxconn? That's not pulling out...
Foxconn isn’t even a Chinese company (unless you’re a “one China” person). They’ve been doing the assembly on the mainland and they have had to relocate a few times to keep labor costs low. The writing is on the wall for iPhone assembly in China and has been for some time.
Hmm, I see this sentiment often, but I am not entirely certain people go through it beyond the initial 'feels good' analysis. If there is one thing that US population probably should be aware of, it is that succeeding regime will not automatically be to one's advantage ( devil known kinda deal ). Say what you want about old age, but it does force you to recognize certain level of stability as desirable.
They could make that transition, of course. But look at all the countries that somehow got rid of dictators in this century. How many of those turned into stable, free, and democratic societies? Afghanistan? Iraq? Egypt? Lybia?
If you add ten more years, did it work out for Russia? Belarus? Ukraine? It did work out for Poland, Latvia and some others. But getting rid of an oppressive regime is the easy part of transforming an autocracy into democracy.
Take a look at Eastern Europe. Many countries were either directly or indirectly under the Soviet thumb, and dare I say, they are much better off now that they can rule themselves independently. At least any mess they make is of their own making, rather than centrally imposed.
I guess what parent is saying that for every Poland, we seem to have an Afghanistan ( the odds of favorable outcome are hit or miss ). One would hope people in charge in US are actually studying the whys behind the failures and successes, because even without access to privileged information one could infer some reasons for both. I would especially like to hope that we learn from our mistakes ( as those tend to result in much greater level of misery for all ; in the event of success everyone is just patting themselves on the back ).
Parent is likely referring to Apple's position in the market[1], where their profit - not revenue - alone ( 141b in 2021 ) dwarfs many nations' GDP[2] in the world.
Indeed. I'd suggest everyone in our industry study ethics, particularly with an eye towards its (i) philosophical foundations and (ii) cultural differences. If one of those underpinnings doesn't grab your interest, try the other.
There is a rich body of ethical writing around individual behavior. When that discussion starts to involve groups of people, ... yikes ... it becomes even more complex.
> To top it off, Mark’s vision of VR and how stubborn he is with the infamous Metaverse will really just push FB to bankruptcy. Unless an activist investor pushes them to fire him and change course.
Let's make this testable. Bankruptcy by when? Saying, e.g. "at some point" or "eventually" is very problematic to falsify.
I've noticed statements of this kind often have a lot of caveats; e.g. ...
> unless an activist investor pushes them to fire him and change course
... typically there are many other unspoken/unwritten caveats/exceptions as well. When this happens, the statement becomes unfalsifiable. In such cases, I treat the statement more as a normative criticism (here, "Mark's vision of VR and how stubborn he is") rather than a testable prediction.
Funny how you defend this company, you must work there and in denial, or a Zucker fan.
I don’t have time for all your arguments; will answer one of them:
Regarding timing for bankruptcy - META lost ~65% of its COVID-Driven valuation in one year. Mainly driven by investors not trusting Mark’s vision of the Metaverse.
Excluding COVID-driven boom, META has lost ~33% of its solid valuation based on its core product foundation in the past five years.
If we follow this trend, and nothing external happens as I previously explained on activist investors, or acquisitions, META could be filing for bankruptcy in as soon as 1 year or a as long as 5 years.
I have no idea. However, if you expect national intelligence agencies to only be interested in stuff that has been shown empirically, then I have some very bad news for you (to take one of the _funnier_ examples, the CIA spent nearly 20 years researching "psychic remote viewing", ie magic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project).
That said, you'd expect that this would work (the double-whammy disruption, that is, not the magician-spies).
Take the "Guccifer 2.0" example, for instance. "Guccifer 2.0", that is the Russian military intelligence agency, stole and leaked emails from the DNC, causing political disruption. It was then revealed, in pretty short succession, that Trump lackey Roger Stone had been in communication with "Guccifer 2.0", and that "Guccifer 2.0" was a GRU officer. This caused further political disruption, and didn't obviously cost Russia anything, so, really, why would they _not_ reveal it?
And it does seem to be a trend; it's not like this is the only example of Russia saying "we totally deny these claims [wink]".
Stargate: wow! With that kind of return on investment on $20 M, psychic readings for $10 a pop sound like a bargain in comparison. At worst, the readers are good at reading some signals hiding in plain sight and prompting some self reflection.
> Since I left AWS in 2020, I’ve been super-careful not to share things from behind the scenes. I can’t actually remember the details of the nondisclosure agreement, but I have strong feelings about the ethics. This story, though, doesn’t reflect poorly on anyone and I’m pretty sure nothing in it is material to any business plans at AWS or elsewhere.
"Can't actually remember"? Yikes.
"I'm pretty sure" ... based on...? Not working there any more?
"Strong feelings about the ethics?" Dude. Contracts are not about your feelings about ethics.
Mr. Bray doesn't have -- or didn't take the time to find -- a signed contract from two years ago.
I can't because stealth edits are not meant to be caught. I tried finding some on archive.org but their scrapping isnt usually fast enough.
I think some of the most noticeable ones tend to be on big political news. It happened fairly quickly with Truss. All "happy" headlines and smiling photos, to ugly photos and total lack of positive adjectives as the news of her departure became more obvious.
Sometimes they have done it on the same piece of content, a few hours apart as the narrative changed. The content of the piece was untouched but the photo and headline on the front page tell the opposite story all of a sudden.
My point? There are many incredible technologies, but not all are "secret weapons" that justify a seismic industry shift. Not all are suitable or able to upend existing technologies.
Fitness of purpose is contextual. Some of the most amazing innovations in computer science cannot be captured by one industry. Most do not lead to widespread disruption.
Or maybe more ideas are also in play? Perhaps recognizing the existing power dynamics? Perhaps playing the game over a longer time frame?
Not all ethicists recommend "dying on your sword" so to speak. Sometimes it is useful to maintain influence and fight another day. These things are far from simple.
If you want Apple to push back on censorship in China, let's talk about the details. What would China likely do in return?