Apple’s Silence in China Sets a Dangerous Precedent
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
A global company needs to be sensitive to these political/cultural differences and accommodate them. Even in the US where "privacy" is part of law, the legal system recently ruled that Facebook can continue to track users online even when they're logged out. So pretending that the privacy issue is one of "morality" is just borrowing the emotional power of the "morality" label for something that is not a universal law on the planet ... not even within aspects of the US. It is not different from a middle-eastern global company offering christmas discounts for its products in western countries, or Amazon not selling banned books in the countries they operate, or selling books on witchcraft and sorcery as though the books were of the same standing as, say, Principia Mathemtica.
Permitted? Do. Not permitted? Don't. ... unless the goal of your company is to champion a particular political ideology. So, frankly, this NYTimes article is, from a global perspective, "politically incorrect".
If issues of privacy in China are very important to you electing officials who's foreign policy reflects that is a better idea.
Ok, argue it. Why should a company, as a member of the society it's based in, be above criticism for taking immoral actions just because they happen somewhere else?
And does that apply to any immoral action, or do you draw a line?
You're arguing in circles here. Immoral is in the eye of the beholder, culturally, so by defining something as "immoral" you're just labelling it as "bad" and asking somebody to justify decisions. That's a loaded question and a cheap rhetorical technique.
You could make an argument that since most governed people in China don't mind that they have limited freedom of speech, there is nothing immoral about it. It's not like there are riots breaking out in the streets often
It's not like there are riots breaking out in the streets often
That's a funny position. So if the people actually hated it, but the State's repression mechanisms kept them in line, it would be moral?
Apple is a business, not a governmental or civic institution. And to answer your question, of course Apple could do things that I consider morally abhorrent (even if they happen to be legal), but it is the public's and the respective governments job to set out the laws, it's not the job of Apple's CEO.
Or in other words, corporations should at all costs be faceless?
Is it wrong, then, that Tim Cook uses his CEO creds to rally for LBGT rights? Should companies stop meddling with politics by pushing back against encryption backdoors? Should companies use every harmful additive that's not yet illegal to please shareholders?
What happens if you make your displeasure with the CCP known publically?
In case your question wasn't rhetorical: nothing would happen. That is, unless you were a very public figure or made it your life's mission. Fun fact: China has a very low incarceration rate, about 15% that of the USA. It's not like people are getting thrown in jail right and left for opening their mouth.
I know, it's a hard pill to swallow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_China
I know, it's a hard pill to swallow.
Actually, far from surely.
That's not a good comparison. You would need to compare stats for number of people thrown in jail for speaking out against the government.
The US has the idiotic war on drugs and terrible recidivism driven by bad incentives to thank for its high incarceration rate.
So, I wonder if it's not all ignorance. I just don't see how anyone with access to uncensored history books can give credit to the CCP for the economic growth. Surely they could tell that Taiwan, also a Chinese country, has a far better track record when it comes to economic growth and the well being of their population (not to say that the Kuomintang has a squeaky clean record)?
The view that "Meh, it could be worse" is the one that's been most prevalent among those who I've talked to about the issue. As mentioned higher up in the thread, it's easy to look the other way when it comes to a couple of human rights crimes when your family has gone from starvation to owning cars and apartments in skyscrapers in less than a generation.
If you're Polish or even Russian you are far more likely to have a nice car, food on the table, a nice house, the ability to blog about whatever interests you, read what you want and even run for office than if you're a citizen of the PRC. So, again, it sounds like it's mostly ignorance, or expectations that democracies never experience setbacks.
This is literally restating this:
>the lack of political freedom in China is tolerable because that's just how Chinese culture is
Who decides when and where it is okay to disobey laws that restrict freedom/privacy? If not the modern day multi-nation states of corporations, who? Serfs?
They don't have any fear about that. The CCP is widely supported and deeply entrenched in Chinese society. This is just about preventing civil unrest/promoting a "harmonious society".
Political systems are in part products of their culture. Free speech is not part of the cultural or political history of China, as it is in the West.
You also haven't really put forward any argument that the Chinese value free speech - you can make a base argument that it's valued in some Western countries because they've codified it in their laws - most notably the FA in the US(it's questionable how much this "basic right" is respected in reality). Calling it a "basic right" is culturalism by your own definition, as you apply your own cultural values(whatever they may be) over the whole of humanity. What makes you think humanity as a whole values this "basic right"? Millions of people live in countries where free speech is not as important as religion, for example, and blasphemy laws exist.
By claiming there's some Universal Principal that's superior is basically saying that you're own beliefs and culture (presumably the one and the same as the proported Universal Principle) is superior.
This isn't mathematics where there's some objective truth.
You can give a name to anything, and call it a no-no, but that doesn't make it wrong. There are nuances, and there's also the matter of who gives the name, and under what premises.
>Because I am Chinese/Saudi/Russian etc. in no way implies that I, or my culture, does not value such a basic right as free speech
Actually it does. Many cultures value other things over and above free speech or individual freedom, like cooperation and social cohesion. Try selling the Japanese your "universal idea" of free speech in social situations for example...
It's funny how the "fundamental" rights projected to others as "universal" are often the rights and cultural preferences that are characterizing and championed by one's own culture.
"Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature." (G. Bernard Shaw, Julius Caesar)
And that has absolutely no impact on whether or not free speech is a fundamental human right. There's many examples of cultures with abhorrent traditions. It doesn't make them just and that's why many of those cultures reject those traditions today.
Or how the Arab Spring devolved into brutal civil wars.
It's not tenable to pretend that western values can be separated from western culture and exported to other cultures as-is.
It doesn't work.
...by force.
Only you don't get to decide what's a "fundamental human right" for others (something that's based on one's own culture and, when intervened and enforced, is often interpreted by their own national interests -- like "bringing democracy").
Not to mention that what's "free speech" is not clear cut, most EU countries for example have totally different laws than the US, and you can land in jail or be hit with a hefty fine for stuff that's considered as protected by "free speech" in the US, and they consider it totally fine.
>There's many examples of cultures with abhorrent traditions. It doesn't make them just and that's why many of those cultures reject those traditions today.
Well, until China rejects their traditions, it's not for other countries to dictate it to them.
If you accept the concept of "fundamental human rights", then it seems to me that they are rights that are derived from the simple fact of being a human, regardless of what your culture or rulers currently impose on you, and which you accept axiomatically. That is what makes them "fundamental", rather than just the (larger) set of normal rights afforded to you by your state.
I could easily see things like having the right to not be held as a slave as belonging to such a fundamental set.
> Not to mention that what's "free speech" is not clear cut, most EU countries for example have totally different laws than the US
I think the issue is more about how much trespassing on the freedom of speech is allowed by different jurisdictions. Even in Europe very few argue that holocaust denial laws, or blasphemy laws are not a trespass on freedom of speech. It is just that many accept them. And many, including myself, do not, because it has had a chilling effect of public discourse on many important issues.
This is not at all unique to Chinese culture - It is and has been the universal argument of dictators and oppressors worldwide. Putin uses it in Russia these days.
The claim is belied by Taiwan and Hong Kong, two indisputably Chinese places where free speech is highly valued. The idea that it's a Western value at all is belied by places like Japan, South Korea, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey (until recently) and endless more nations and cultures. Protestors in Iran and throughout the Mideast and into N. Africa in the Arab Spring risked (and many paid with) their lives for it. And very rarely does anyone with a choice vote to be rid of it.
It's widely considered a universal human value, and I think the evidence is overwhelming in support of that.
50 years ago we had less freedom than the Chinese have today. Then the tyrant died of old age, and the absolute monarch that succeeded him decided democracy was the way to go.
Latin American countries have the same cultural roots as Spain. They were part of Spain for more centuries than they've been independent; and even after independence the cultural exchange has been continuous. Today, some are free, and some like Cuba or Venezuela are tyrannies.
That fatalism about some cultures not being ready for freedom is too simplistic when faced with the details of reality. The Chinese of Hong Kong and Taiwan handled freedom no problem; one from within, the other "pushed on them" by the British.
The right to self determination for every nation is the bedrock of the international system that Europeans created after centuries of bloody religious strife. Not sure how Hong Kong is a great example, unless you're proposing to go back to the days of colonialism and Westerners imposing their rules and values by force.
Unreasonable cultural relativism would be something like, pretending that child sacrifice is ok.
There's no reason to believe that absolute privacy and absolute freedom are universal objective moral values.
And that's China's own problem (or lack thereof) as a sovereign nation, not something for Apple or the US to decide.
Not every country wants (or even works better) with a US style system, and interventionism has led to disastrous results in the not that far past.
One way to not have that problem is to let China has its own Apple - how's that for non-interventionism and non-colonialism?
In what possible way does it make it a US problem?
Besides, western companies make tons of money by selling arms, doing deals, and supporting all kinds of regimes, including the most abhorrent ones, from Pinochet's Chile to S.A.
Here, we're objecting to Apple's behaviour.
(I also wonder if they pay US taxes off any of these profits?)
This is a single country, with its own culture, history and tradition, minding its own affairs.
And blacks were clearly against apartheid and fighting fiercely for decades. Have you talked to many locals in China and found out they were against their regime?
Because (a) the whites were colonizers, where Chinese are at home in China. And because in apartheid it was whites against blacks, whereas in China it's not "chinese vs chinese" -- chinese in general LIKE their government.
The ones whose opinion would be interesting are in prison, or no longer locals.
There are whole bookshelves of books describing the wholesome family and city life people "on the right side" in Nazi Germany engaged in. They had their pleasures, their had their excuses, and I care not for either. The phrase "whitewashed tombs" comes to mind.
> blacks were clearly against apartheid
Blacks? Or "the blacks"? Because I'm sure I could find you Uncle Toms, there's always some. And since I also could find you people fighting against the Chinese regimes since Mao, the sentence "Chinese were clearly against oppression" would also be correct and we achieved nothing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1...
Really, the nerve. Did I ask the dead if they are against their regime?
Similarly, as a German I flat out don't care much for people from the GDR who aren't dissing it. I don't care if that was their "culture" (what a totally empty word, it's like a void pointer). They survived it with their blinders intact, and that says something about them, not the GDR. I feel the same way about "the West" before anyone asks, but that doesn't mean I find more backwards tyrannies cute. I don't need to borrow their blind eyes to see what I see, and if I have to be against thousands of them to be for those I HAVE to be for to not spit out when I look in the mirror, so be it. The more, the merrier.
I actually have. In fact, every single one that I talked with was against their regime.
The Chinese culture is not the victim here. The "evil whites" are not trying to mess with the eastern cultures in this case. Instead, the Chinese people are the victims, victims of the fascist regime that rules over them.
Free speech, privacy and access to a free press are part of the legal and constitutional/meta-legal framework for many democratic systems of government. In principle and in practice. There are laws in the US guaranteeing these freedoms, and hundreds of years of common law supporting and interpreting them.
Subverting those freedoms in the US, is subverting the US' system of government, and ilegal. There are (as they demonstrated) legal channels to defending their users' rights within the US' legal framework because they exist in the US' legal system.
There are philosphical elements to this, universal & inalienable rights and freedoms. But, these are philosophical. In the US, Apple acted at the legal level, with a legal argument not a philosophical one.
China is not a democracy. These rights are not a part of their system of government and there is no legal way to defend rights that are not recognized in that country. This is not some postmodernist or nihilist relativism. It's just recognizing that different laws and rights exist in different countries.
I'm not sure what you expect from Apple. They could pull out of China altogether, on the grounds that China's laws are too immoral. They could try to promote their idea of what a government should be and what rights citizens should have. This amounts to calling for a revolution.
I don't think this is a reasonable expectation of a company. I don't think it will lead to a good place either. Apple are a computer company, not a revolutionary movement (1984 ad notwithstanding). The revolutionaries need to be (or not to be) Chinese citizens, not foreign companies.
Oh wait, Apple still uses into end encryption in China for both of those so that the Government Camp spy on people.
Getting rid of VPN apps is part of staying in China. So the question you have to ask is which is better for Apple to do: stay trying out without VPNs but keeping their consumer products encrypted whenever possible, or keep VPNs in the store and get all their products kicked out of the country.
If Apple gets kicked out, the no one gets to use VPNs on their iPhones. They don't get to use iPhones at all. They lose the encryption of iMessage in FaceTime.
(and the board may not let them pull out of China to anyway)
But there's nothing wrong with staying in China to increase profits, it's their biggest market after all.
Both these facts are false according to the article we're discussing.
Global companies are instrumental in transmitting western values to the rest of the world. You can't antagonize host countries but at the same time you can't ignore the arc of the moral universe.
Domestically, a great example is the economic repercussion for southern states that tried to pass trans bathroom laws. Companies didn't worry about "respecting political/cultural differences." They did what was right.
They did what was popular. That it was right was a coincidence.
The trans bathroom laws are a good example. What makes your position "right"? The other position happens to go against some of your core values (presumably), but that doesn't make it "wrong." Maybe your core values are "wrong" or at least incomplete.
There's a lot of people that are trying to push their values on people under the guise of "it's right." Ironically, these people will say they want people to have the freedom to live the way they want. Trans bathrooms, homosexual marriage: well, maybe I don't want to live in a world where I have to put up with that. Too bad, I don't get a choice, because "it's right."
You'd better have concrete direction from the independent moral authority (i.e. God) if you're going to push your values on other people, because otherwise it's just intolerant. "I feel strongly about this" != "it's right"
That's a philosophical challenge but not a real argument. Obviously we can, we do, and we must make moral distinctions despite the handicap of our lack of omniscience.
One way we do it is by the use of reason, which separates humans from beasts and our current world from the Dark Ages. There are arguments against the universality of these values, but the one above isn't one of them.
If Chinese law required Apple to hand over names and locations of its users for mass executions, obviously the moral relativism argument wouldn't hold. The issue here is that VPNs are a less clear moral issue - obviously it would be better if Chinese people had free speech, but is it worth Apple fighting a battle for it? Another way to ask: Is it ok for Apple to sacrifice their rights in order to make more money?
I'll also point out that the values are not "Western", but universal. The people of Taiwan and Hong Kong strongly embrace these values. As do the people of India, Japan, South Korea, most South American countries, South Africa, all the protestors of the Arab Spring from Iran to North Africa, etc. The only people who say otherwise are the dictators and oppressors, who conveniently find that their cultures are not conducive to freedom (Putin is making the same argument these days - it's a universal value of dictators).
If you're still uncomfortable with this notion, ask yourself if you're okay with punishing (or deterring, or rehabilitating) murderers. If you answered "yes", then you believe that "murder is okay" is not a good value proposition, and "murder is wrong" is strictly better.
And no, you don't need a God for that. You can just say "I believe these values are better, as a matter of faith". You don't need to believe God or any other supernatural entities to have some moral axioms - case in point is The Satanic Temple, which has its tenets: https://thesatanictemple.com/about-us/tenets/ - but doesn't believe in supernatural.
Adding an objectively unverifiable external actor to whom you have ascribed the role a of moral arbiter and your belief that they feel strongly about a moral point to the equation doesn't really help anything compared to you feeling strongly about it yourself.
There's a universal declaration of human rights. It's a pretty decent attempt at a starting point for non-divine moral authority.
My family is from Bangladesh. My cousin, who is a woman, moved to Australia. She's way happier in a society that allows freedom and equal participation to women. She, in particular, had chaffed at the social restrictions imposed on women in Bangladesh. I don't need to invoke God to realize which way is better.
Bangladesh is an interesting example because it was founded on western principles: a secular democracy with freedom of religion, women's suffrage, etc. Over the years those ideals have been chipped away. In my view, people who equivocate on westernization, or apologize for the forces that oppose westernization under the banner of tolerance, in Bangladesh are doing something profoundly immoral. They take responsibility for depriving people of happiness and prosperity.
> [Timothy D. Cook] made clear that Apple would obey American law — but only after trying to shape the law.
In the case of China here, the law was already passed. Apple is just conforming to the law.
Because most Chinese users are perfectly fine with the rule and law. They would rather follow what CCP said and have an Apple product.
These companies don't follow required business practices out of a political sensitivity or an underlying respect for sovereignty, they do so because it is financially expedient and they demonstrate an eager willingness to modify those legislated business practices when presented a route to do so.
"Ideologies" are not equally valid; morality is a real, very serious and important thing. Some ideologies promote oppression or even mass murder. And the value of liberty is not the same as the value of Christmas discounts.
Freedom to pursue your own ideology (as long as it doesn't hurt others) is widely considered a universal human right. Let's not pretend we can't see why, even if some want to disagree.
You lost me there. Privacy is a human right. Would Apple be silent if China tortured gay people, too, because of "cultural differences" and just because it's trying to add an extra billion dollar to its balance sheet?
Now I can understand the argument that as a for-profit corporation Apple is "neutral" to the laws in various countries. But to take it much further say that privacy is not important - well, that's where I disagree completely. Some countries care about respecting human rights, others don't. That doesn't mean human rights are not important because some large economic powers don't respect them. Otherwise the US may have never abolished slavery either, if it was "all the same" and human rights didn't matter or were "relative" from the viewer's perspective.
What I find hilarious is people suggesting America or most american companies are in any position to export values to anybody.
> unless the goal of your company is to champion a particular political ideology
The "Eichmann pathology" is even worse than most ideologies, since the content of the ideologies can change, but the conformism does not. By that logic, the problem with making deals with, say, the Nazis, was that it was illegal during war, nothing else, and if a company requires acceptance of that to exist, I require that company to not exist.
> for something that is not a universal law on the planet
Yes, and? Is there a universal law "on the planet" that you should only act according to some imaginary universal laws? Is there an universal law that a company should not "champion an ideology", or that companies just have to operate globally? Why can't people be restricted to acting in circles they are accountable in, why is that such a crazy idea?
Removing VPN apps from the Appstore does not compromise the privacy of any Apple users, and does not prevent existing users of these apps from continuing to use them on their devices. I would imagine Cook fought pretty hard to protect the privacy of Apple users to get this concession from the Chinese censors. For comparison, on Android, China is forcing users in Muslim regions to install apps that scan for "terrorist content" and track user activity.
https://thinkprogress.org/china-muslim-surveillance-policy-c...
True. But China is doing both. It's only allowing VPNs that are compromised. So if you are somehow still surprised that you can use a VPN in China after the dust settles, you should know that VPN is likely compromised in China.
That's such BS. VPN apps are banned because they give users privacy. So it's logical that by removing them it hurts people's privacy in China.
> and does not prevent existing users of these apps from continuing to use them on their devices.
And that's a copout and you know it. As soon as people reset their phones or buy new ones they won't be able to "continue using them". Taking that as a "win" is absurd.
More importantly, China is planning to block VPN at the protocol level starting in February. Apple can't do anything about that, and if all the other reasons against taking a stand here didn't make sense on their own, consider how silly it'd be to take a stand for a technology that's about to stop working anyway.
China has been banning various VPN protocols since forever, all working VPN software I'm aware of uses their own homegrown circumvention mechanism. However, these still work with the OS level VPN integration to reroute all traffic. (At least on Android, I assume it's similar for iOS.)
Then Apple's not violating Chinese law by directly providing VPN's, instead they're removing themselves from a situation where they're in a position to be capable of enforcing Chinese law. The user is free to install whatever they want on a device they've bought.
To me, the more interesting question isn’t whether Apple should be selling its products in China, but rather whether Apple should continue to make the App Store the only way to install apps on iOS devices. A full-on “install whatever you want” policy isn’t going to happen, but something like Gatekeeper on MacOS could.
Keep iOS App Store-only by default. Add a preference in Settings to allow apps to be downloaded from “identified developers” (those with an Apple developer certificate) in addition to the App Store. In that scenario, the App Store is no longer a single choke point for all native apps on the device.
The App Store was envisioned as a means for Apple to maintain strict control over the software running on iOS devices. But in a totalitarian state like China (or perhaps Russia, next), it becomes a source of control for the totalitarian regime.
I don’t expect Apple to do this. They’d rather deal with the negative consequences of the App Store as a choke point than give up the benefits (including the profits) of maintaining complete control over all software on the platform.1 But if you’re angry about Apple’s role in this VPN crackdown in China, I suggest you direct your anger at the App Store as the single source for third-party software.
Security was not the primary consideration. iOS was a rushed project and it took them many revisions to implement security features. In iOS 1.0, all apps ran as root. iOS didn't have ASLR until 4.3. This was fine since mobile malware barely existed back then.
I would argue Apple's sideloading motivations are primarily monetary based and for "protecting the user experience" (typical Apple PR talk). Why though, does android allow sideloading? I'd say it is because Android was ~2 years behind iOS and they needed to catch up. Therefore they made it very easy to build apps for their platform and let any developer install/test apps without an Android Market account. Also Android chose to be open source and there is little stopping someone from building their own version of Android without sideloading restrictions.
Yes, "interesting" -- and completely predictable. Some of us have said this from day one of the closed garden app store.
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 right now in Australia [1], among others.
What they don't do is shoot themselves in the head in some misguided attempt at ideological purity.
Also this seems absurd to me:
>The company has not fully tested its political and economic leverage in China. It hasn’t tested the public’s immense love of its products. It hasn’t publicly threatened any long-term consequences — like looking to other parts of the world to manufacture its products.
If China's authoritarian regime is objectionable then do what countries have always done in history: isolate them economically, diplomatically or politically. Try to foment and support an insurgency or revolution or just invade them yourselves. I'm not sure anyone is willing to risk nuclear war to bring democracy to China but those are your options. Apple isn't a vessel for anyone's foreign policy objectives and it isn't a substitute for the state.
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2017/07/20/apple-talks-australian-...
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 follow the law in China because they are easy to make examples of while their lawyers won't sign off on anything "shady." 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?
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.
All the western companies pay income tax on private health insurance benefits, while all the Chinese companies don't, because the law is unclear.
Are you saying that Baidu was directing traffic to health care scams willingly?
Interesting remark on AliPay & WePay. I wonder what kind of agreements Chinese gov made with those companies after the fact.
Here's as good as any point to remember that a warrant canary disappeared from Apple's privacy text about a year ago. Before it was about "we will protect user's privacy".. then there was a big "privacy" announcement that had text about following the law etc. IMHO gov got to them and it's understandable - companies exist in frameworks set by governments. It's in Apple's best interest to comply with them. To suggest otherwise is a political stance, not an economic one.
China doesn't have rule of law, so everything is illegal but nothing is, if you can navigate that contradiction, then you just have to make sure your context isn't bad enough to be cracked down on. The same was true with Didi and anti-black cab laws (but Uber operates in the gray margins of those laws all the time, so there was no point in mentioning that).
China doesn't really care about your idealism. If you go against the government's interests, they will beat you down. This is one thing the Chinese companies get really well and allow them to play fast and lose with the law as long as they adhere to that one principal.
it is also highly laughable for your private health insurance joke. there is _no_ Chinese law requiring any company to provide _private_ health insurance to anyone. Public healthcare levy is required by the law, that is all.
Huh. Sounds like a certain transportation company...
I didn't bother talking about Didi because of Uber.
Something like that is nearly unthinkable in the US or Western Europe. It would be equivalent to Jeff Bezos spinning off AWS and giving himself 2/3 ownership of it, without approval from AMZN shareholders.
The heart of your argument is that a corporation is executing a transaction that could possible be illegal elsewhere: the US or Western Europe is better because this would not be possible here.
If that is your argument, I can think of two examples off the top of my head:
1. Goldman Sachs executive in 1MDB scandal 2. Banks offloading their mortgage-back securities positions by selling the directly opposite positions to their clients
Corporations executing shady transactions in the US or Western Europe is not as uncommon or "unthinkable" as you might imagine. Your argument stems from a enthocentric point of view and romanticizing one system over another by neglecting all the bad from one side.
I also fail to see how Chinese companies has anything related to my argument. Just because Chinese companies were involved doesn't weaken it.
You are seeing things through tinted shades before you even have the chance to analyze my argument. You are framing the argument as China vs US. I am pointing out the flaw in op's argument. See the difference ;). Your reply was rude.
[1] http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/081214/5-thin...
[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'd guess they'd downgrade security on clearly-identifiable devices. And that's okay. We lost the moral high ground on mass surveillance many years ago.
Apple is playing by the rules, and this time decided that this is not the hill they want to die on. That's their prerogative. Don't like the rules? Then go complain to those that make the rules to begin with, not those that play by those rules.
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.
We need to stop looking to corporations as doing the jobs our government should be doing.
"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does."
Chinese gov’t just recognized how much data has on its users.
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.
For example, the US government collectively is not particularly famous for 100% morally upstanding behavior. Granted, the US behaves often better than other great powers, and certainly it represents many ideals of democracy and liberty more than other contending powers. But consider the mess that was Iran-Contra affair or the various regimes ranging from unsavory authoritarianism to sheer terrorism (with "disappearances" and torture) CIA supported in Latin America in the name of anti-communism. (God forbid someone propose an idea of land reform in South America or advancing workers' and natives' rights against UFC, despite that's how numerous European countries avoided communism.) Did these actions (and various other questionable shenanigans the US government has been partial to) represent your ethical positions?
It's everyone's job to do it, and what any government does is only part of that. For example, you mentioned AAPL stock owners. According to any sane ethical system, the moral duty of any individual CEO or a member of board or stock owner as a human person with rights and corresponding duties to act ethically overrides their financial or legal duty to maximize corporate profits.
The US Government is supposed to represent the people, and thus must uphold that people's values. The US government is a moral agent.
A person is a moral agent.
Though many here are happy to concede the reality that Apple is comprised of individuals and that it exists as an organisation as a part of society, and just view it as a profit-maximising entity. This is perverse. A corporation is a moral agent, and when it's morality conflicts with it's profits, morality should win. We'd expect nothing less of literally everybody/everything else.
I otherwise agree, but I don't know if Apple is a moral agent - that discussion will into quite complex philosophical issues. But certainly each individual person making decisions at Apple is a moral agent.
I am not so sure that's true. If every agent is acting morally, then does the sum of those actions constitute morality? I think so.
Apple has some agents who are not moral agents. I suspect that all corps are like this.
Apple certainly does have agents that are not moral agents (e.g., automatons like Siri), but for a different reason than you suggest.
i m saying that the top brass making decisions are not acting as moral agents, because they don't feel the responsibility of any of the choices insofar as it increases the profit of the company.
It's not hypocritical to say someone is wrong without mentioning all the other people are wrong. You can't list literally every bad thing that happens in every press release, and you can scope criticism.
Uh, did you miss the whole iPhone/FBI thing here. Not only did many of us in the US (and virtually all of us on HN) accept them telling us that our government was wrong and should change, we relished it! We were glad someone finally stood up to the US government and its surveillance overreach.
Could it be that many, perhaps most, Chinese would think the same way? I suspect so, given how many of them use VPNs there.
That business and human rights are perpendicular issues. Actually it all started from the idea that free market causes a freer society. I think it is now clear that this causality is not true, but now proponents of unregulated free markets changed their stance to "Meh, that's the way we have done for decades, let's just keep that way."
My stance is that a global free-market is a good objective and should be encouraged, that borders should gradually disappear. However, encouraging goods and capital flow through otherwise tight borders is not helping reach that goal.
My theory is that 4 important things cross borders: goods, money, people and information. All 4 must have the same level of freedom. Imbalances should be addressed. For instance, China does not easily let people and information flow in and out of its territory, yet it lets funds flow and even subsidizes goods going out of it (Which is why Shenzhen to LA shipping can be cheaper than SF to LA). We should link these issues together. Either by funding and helping people and information cross these borders or, if impossible, by taxing goods and funds.
Actually a country that prevents people going out of it but let money go in and goods go out is the opposite of what the theory of democratic capitalism is about. It is a setup that allows outsourcing slavery. Free market in that case is not a perpendicular issue to this, but the very cause of the problem.
Thankfully, people around the world are waking up to the horror of neoliberalism like yours and rebelling against it.
This is historically terrible advice.
You're absolutely right, and you should follow this to its logical conclusion. Apple only does what's in its best interests. The company consistently acts to strengthen its brand whenever possible to make more money.
It's irrational to expect a corporation, whether it's Apple or any other entity, to act ethically. Every decision they make, from sponsoring LGBT events to pushing back against the FBI, is made carefully with their brand in mind. Imagine what would happened, for instance, if Apple hadn't pushed back against the FBI. Their customers would have been enraged, just as they are now.
The real question is this: What would you expect Apple to do as a shareholder?
They absolutely would not have. HN-types might have, but many of them were also enraged about many of Apple's business practices over the years including their App Store policies, not being "open", etc. And it hasn't had any measurable impact on Apple's success as a business.
The public at large wouldn't have cared just like they don't care when Apple complies with lawful orders for information as they do now [1].
[1] https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-guidelin...
Perhaps not. But Apple absolutely benefited from the overwhelmingly positive press coverage it received as a result of their decision to oppose the FBI. And when the FBI withdrew their request, Apple looked like the winner. So yes, I do believe they opposed the FBI in that instance to strengthen their brand.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/19/politics/donald-trump-apple-bo...
Remember this document? Apple was the last company to be subverted either willingly nor not. I'll bet it pissed Cook the hell of that Apple was even on this list. I believe they completely revamped their cloud architecture after that.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-...
People are always saying things like this, but we never really have any good data on what the alternative would have been. Just because you're in the black doesn't mean you haven't lost billions of dollars in additional profits.
Apple had the first mover advantage with the iPhone. There is a fair argument that they would still have the bulk of the market if they had been more open, instead of conceding the majority share to Android.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...
Apple's leaders take strong stances in those American political positions because those stances are against the tribal outgroup of the people who control Apple.
The tribal outgroup is, of course, American conservatives - especially social conservatives and Christians.
Of course any reasonable person would acknowledge that China's government is far more guilty of all the same wrongs as American conservatives, and many more. However, China isn't the outgroup of the tribe that controls Apple. They are a "far group" - just some people on the other side of the world doing terrible things.
What's more, they're non-white, which in the far-left view means the real moral responsibility for their actions must be traced back to the decisions of a white man some time in the colonial past. Ultimately all wrongs point to the true tribal outgroup - white male Western conservatives.
So Apple's leaders don't really care emotionally about anything China's government is doing. Because the tribal lines don't point to caring.
]Fighting against American conservatives is really rewarding, in self-image and social standing, and it doesn't cost or risk much business-wise, and it feels good to make them suffer because activists don't like them anyway. Fighting against China isn't rewarding at all, and costs a lot more, and people are trained to see them as hypo-agentic victims since they're non-white in the first place. That's the difference.
Apple is mainly selling a brand and not a product. Apple is archetypal emotional brand. It's intimate with its customers and it is loved.
As most global companies, Apple as a company has no morals. It takes moral stance when it's builds up the brand without hurting the sales. Only way to make Apple to sacrifice something is to threaten the brand and make Apple users feel dirty.
More stories like this. People must stop loving and identifying with brands. All brands.
I bet the author would take a dim view of a Chinese company refusing to obey an American law in America.
This canard is never an inviolate rule on how large corporations act. Each company acts differently in regards to so-called "fiduciary duty." Not all must maximize all opportunity to make money by sacrificing everything.
Is that too extreme? In this case, perhaps (or perhaps not!), but where is the boundary? We all remember how IBM helped implement Holocaust. I don't think anyone would argue that if someone wanted to do something like that today (say, use machine learning to identify closet atheists and gays in Saudi Arabia?), we'd just say "Oh well, they're just operating under these laws, and who are we to judge? It's all culturally relative anyway."
So, at some point we draw a line and say, "no, you can't do this, not if you want to be present in our society". Where is that line? And why shouldn't it lie at authoritarian government censoring political speech?
Do you have more details of this? I've never heard about it before.
What is it with tech people throwing potential fiduciary duty suits for management decisions around like they are a thing?
The suits themselves might be not-unknown, but it is very rare for one to succeed, especially if the company is profitable and the management hasn't broken US law.
Legally management has almost complete freedom to make management decisions - the "correct" course for shareholders to dispute that is either to buy more shares and try to get a board seat and fire management, or sell shares.
I'm not sure if Apple made the right decision here or not. But this "breach of fiduciary duty" argument is nonsense and it should be stopped.
Would you stop speaking local language because it helps the rulers communicate? Would you stop using the bank notes because it's issued by a dictatorship? You didn't because it's essential to run your business within the country.
The US is your own country, you have obligation to fix it, that's why you stand up against FBI. But not for other countries, they have to fix their own country by themselves.
- There are plenty of competitors in China and its people will continue to be well served by them should Apple choose to leave.
- The people of China aren't going to benefit at all from any Apple departure.
- Apple is a publicly traded company; its duty is to its shareholders. 20% of Apple's Q2 17 revenue came from China: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q2FY17DataSummary.pdf
So leaving is also not an option, an attempt to do so would be pointless and crater the stock so bad investors would revolt.
The article suggests a "public fight" but that seems incredibly naïve to me. China just doesn't work that way. The fight was lost when the GFW went up.
Obviously this is a loophole and not meant as a mainstream solution, but past solutions to getting around the great firewall (including VPN itself) have also been only for the technically informed and connected - often foreigners working in China. Basically it lets the technical elite have a way around the firewall to keep business running.
Personally I think it's unlikely these two bits of news are connected (upping testflight is likely about iOS 11), but still it may have a positive effect until it, too, is clamped down on.
TestFlight is as easy as getting an email, downloading the testflight app, and downloading the app you need. Its a trivial amount of steps, which makes it a powerful loophole.
>When Apple took a public stand for its users’ liberty and privacy, the American government blinked.
Nope. They got access via other means, and didn't need Apple's help.
>While American tech companies frequently criticize decisions by American officials, they appear loath to do so in China.
Do you also expect a Bulgarian company to comment on Sri Lankan politics just because they're doing business there? Its not wrong to feel for citizens of another country, but that is a personal matter. I don't see why a corporation should be meddling in the internal politics of another country.
To the author: Have the US tech companies stopped dealing with the NSA and the CIA? Has the CIA given up their backdoor access to Google/FB/MS/Apple/Oracle/etc?
I find it fundamentally strange that we expect our corporate overlords to do anything other than maximize their profits. I'd certainly like them to do more than that, but I don't have the expectation that they will. And expecting them to break the law, or leave the Chinese market, is simply just crazy.
It sucks that China treats its citizens in this manner, but I plan on abiding by Chinese law the next time I'm in China or I wouldn't go. Why should Apple be any different, and why is this somehow their fault?
There is difference between what we can realistically expect people to do (often, not much, and even after accounting for that, still disappoint) and what they should do and we should expect them do (do what is right).
To continue with the illustrative examples from fiction. Nobody expects Theoden to do much anything useful after listening to all that poison of pouring out of mouth of the Wormtongue. But is it what he should be doing?
There is nothing Apple can do. In the name of profits, they have put their entire business in the hands of the Chinese government.
That's just silly. Foxconn would do nothing of the sort.
The third shift is a real phenomenon for brands manufacturing in China even under good circumstances. I am simply extrapolating from that reality.
That's _all_ that this issue is about at the end of the day.
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.
If you ever have kids, why would you teach them some morals over others? Would you teach that some moral standard (pick any! say, "it's not generally okay to steal others' stuff") would just stop by the virtue that they just happen move to different jurisdiction where the government is not interested in e.g. property rights? Or it is okay that just the natives of Thiefmark have their stuff stolen by others? Can you go and take their stuff with you to Hobbiton, given they live in Thiefmark and King Thiofden is not going to punish you for that? What if the raiders of Rohan move to your neighborhood?
This is a different issue whether it makes sense or is productive in the long term to fight against the Chinese law in some particular way. But sensible ethical systems are universal.
There's obviously a line there. But a computer company isn't going to win against a police state.
That means censorship only will struggle when new tech arrives and deploys to fast. This means, most vital for the fight against censorship is actually the development of new tech that is censorship resistant. This means tech that is not of the walled garden variety- tech that allows users to chose other severs, circumvent the defaults, allows users to run a local service instead of a centralized server. Tech that allows to draw copys of softwar without central registration. Apple by beeing apple does harm to free speach right there. The VPN removal is just the cherry on top.
That's an interesting assumption, though one could argue otherwise. How did you come up with this reasoning?