Former Apple Executive Says Company Blundered by Firing Him After TikTok Video
wsj.com
wsj.com
I genuinely wonder if some of cancel culture is driven by foreign influence operations? Seems like a pretty effective way to attack an open society. Like this guy apparently was one of Apple's top negotiators with China... seems directly in the Chinese interest to get him canned.
Apple fires a top negotiator who have worked there for 22 years because someone somewhere is 'offended'. Most probably someone who at the outset was set on finding something to be offended about.
Yeah thats so much power that any foreign interest would be stupid not to attempt to use that influence.
And that influencer kid not even replying to the man..
What groups? Randos on the internet? What power? Boycotting?
> The outrage culture is insane.
Was there outrage? Seems like apple just prematurely cut him loose before anyone actually cared.
It sounds like you think there's some nefarious shadow league of extraordinary gentlemen who can bend the largest corporations to their will. They can't. Apple did what it thought would yield them the most profits in the long term, that's it. Apple could have instead just ignored this and it likely would have blown over in a day. That's not what they did.
>Mr. Blevins, 55 years old, said he stayed up all night trying to contact the TikToker
It was very clearly about this video, how does this have anything to do with profits?
Guy makes a joke while being filmed, not speaking for the company in any capacity, on his free time, and gets fired because the company was scared its image would be tarnished by being affiliated with the politically incorrect joke.
This is very similar to the problem that https://www.socialcooling.com talks about.
From that site: >If you feel you are being watched, you change your behavior.
>This could limit your desire to take risks or exercise free speech.
>Over the long term these 'chilling effects' could 'cool down' society.
>People are starting to realize that this 'digital reputation' could limit their opportunities.
Events like this create the situation where people are scared to speak freely in public about all kinds of things. So much good social progress in our society has come as a result of the ability to speak freely in public. If people are scared to say the wrong thing in the future, that is extremely bad for society.
> how does this have anything to do with profits?
Because apple is a publicly traded company and has a fiduciary duty to make all decisions with the profits of their shareholders in mind. If they didn't, they could be sued.
I agree that it is in the Chinese best interest to get this guy fired, but it's his responsibility to not say stupid stuff that might get him fired.
Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burnham#The_Managerial_R...
"Civil war is a deadbeat screaming, "tai hao le! tai hao le!" after the state _allows_ him to kill his wealthier neighbor and steal his property. You may resist the description because it doesn't fit your mental map, but you'd be wrong."
I agree. It wanders into conspiracy theory, but it's the only rational explanation. Who would "complain" over a non-viral video with a random Apple executive quoting a movie as a joke? No one. It was a targeted operation to take advantage of Apple's reactionary corporate culture. And in fact, there are most likely agents within Apple working towards exacerbating it for China's advantage.
If I were him, I'd sue for wrongful termination and demand to see the entire email/slack/whatever chain which lead to the decision. Who was involved? What are their relations with China? How did this come to anyone's attention within Apple, and why did they decide to take it so seriously rather than a simple explanation and apology? There is soooo much more going on here.
I refuse to believe in the narrative that this is political correctness gone amuck, or that this guy was targeted because he was a white, middle aged Southerner. Knee-jerk liberals are great for standing outside courthouses with signs (bless their hearts), but they don't run major corporations. I live in the Bay Area and have met and like all kinds of crazyish liberals (and consider myself among them), and this doesn't make any sense or pass the smell test.
"He talked about fondling boobs!!! Fire him!!!" This isn't a meme. Something else went on here.
And ffs! What is it with right wing posts on hn that lack simple critical thinking. I'm flagging this specifically because it lacks value, it's simple propaganda and rage baiting.
A senior apple engineer doing the same thing wouldn't get fired.
He didn't post it. Another tiktoker did, but the exec was in the video. I think execs should be more mindful of what they say, even outside of work because of the potential reputational damage to the company.
However, firing the exec for something like this is a bit much. Everyone makes silly, dark, sexual jokes privately - outside of work. They should have warned him and given him more training about conduct outside of work.
I've got a lot more confidence that a security guard at Apple HQ won't read my iMessage threads than I do that a security guard at Facebook HQ won't read my Messenger threads (that actually happened!). If the price of that security comes at the freedom of highly paid executives to make jokes on TikTok, then so be it. I guess Apple is ruthless. That's why I trust them to guard my personal data.
It is active exclusion. It might be justified as trading one exclusion for another. But the act of firing like that is exclusionry, and think that that is rarely acknowledged.
There is no consistency in "I tolerate all but intolerance." Rohan Atkinson has a wonderful speach on this.
"Rowan"
Public company figures can get fired for doing anything at all that doesn't feel right to their bosses/shareholders because that is the nature of their job.
Even if this wasn't a public platform post with his consent and someone broke into his home and caught him making a terrible dad joke, c suite or the board can say "nah, we don't want this guy representing us, he is goofy" and fire him. And for those that whine about how execs are paid too much, now you know one more reason why.
This is the very definition of the chilling effect people are worried about with cancel culture. Now that everyone has a camera in their pocket we all have to make sure any joke or movie quote we utter is censored and politically correct.
Do you really believe that every time someone has been cancelled that they were screaming the N word at Arby's? There's a massive list of people who have been cancelled for doing something far less egregious than screaming slurs in Arby's, making a bad joke, phrasing something incorrectly, phrases taken out of context are all examples of things that have happened to people who were cancelled. Most of the time these people who are cancelled very obviously do NOT have malicious intent.
There's an episode of Family Guy where Brian the dog gets cancelled for making a bad joke on Twitter, it very neatly demonstrates what people mean when they say "cancel culture". The death threats, calls for him to kill himself, "bigot", "fascist", harassment at home/work, though an exaggeration in the show, are all examples of things that happen in real life to people who have made mistakes I'm talking about.
I would be happy to list people who have been cancelled for saying the wrong thing, even when they obviously did not have malicious intent, though I think it's very easy to find using Google.
If you honestly believe that only hateful Nazis get cancelled please to tell me and I will respond with a follow up message listing people who are obviously NOT Nazis that have been cancelled.
I think it's pretty clear to say the person was not fired for this, but this was used as the reason for sacking.
What baffles me is the precedence, the signalling, that sacking person for something like this is not just a dark joke.
>In the early morning phone call, an Apple executive told him that he had to get the video removed immediately.
>Mr. Blevins, 55 years old, said he stayed up all night trying to contact the TikToker
I mean, they told him that this is why he was being fired. He thought that is why he was being fired, all the evidence points to that. How is it pretty clear that he was NOT fired for the video??
Of course he's going to exploit this given reason even if he doesn't believe it either because it's the best way to get attention and even fame. Quite a few people have become prominent alt-right figures after such situations.
But at least they take a stand on dumb movie quotes though...