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What is an influencer to do? Switch to Android, like poor people? Nobody who matters is going to boycott Apple. Apple will counter with a plausible narrative,
by hdjtkrnrn 6y ago
What is an influencer to do? Switch to Android, like poor people?
Nobody who matters is going to boycott Apple.
Apple will counter with a plausible narrative, "we didn't know, we cancelled contracts, ..." and everything will be fine again.
Oh, and a new woke diversity ad to show how much they care about muslims. And everybody will share and clap and feel good.
- api 6y agoYou're right, and that's why governments must step in. Markets are not configured or incentivized to address ills like this, nor are corporations. Asking a corporation to right large scale social wrongs is like asking the DMV to operate your military or walking into a restaurant and asking them to come fix your roof. It's just the wrong socioeconomic tool for the job. If you try to really pressure or force them to do it, they'll do something half-assed much as you describe. Boycotts can work a little, but a boycott large enough to be effective and overcome other market forces is very hard to organize and sustain. I'm not totally letting Apple off the hook, just pointing out that without the government doing something here any measures Apple or anyone else takes will be ineffective. Even if Apple starts pushing back on this, other manufacturers will fill the void and take advantage of that cheap labor instead. Apple might even find it tough to police this since Chinese companies may lie about where work is being performed or who is doing it. They're likely to demand that Apple pay more for different labor and then pocket the money and use forced labor instead.
- ryandrake 6y agoBoycott is a fine tool if we're talking about influencing the corner grocery store in a town of 100 people. You might actually put a dent in their business and cause them to change whatever you're boycotting about. On the other hand, boycotts are totally pointless vs GlobalUltraMegaCorps. If everyone on HN stopped buying from these massive companies, it wouldn't even be noticed. Apple sells roughly 200 million iPhones yearly. Do you think it's possible to get even 1% of those customers to act on a boycott?
- MaxHoppersGhost 6y agoExactly. No one is ditching their iPhone. It’s all about the blue text bubbles. If Americans would just switch to WhatsApp or something else like the rest of the world we could get past the Android stigma.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoIs the labor used to make an iPhone and different than any other phone? Or any other electronics for that matter? As far as I know, unless you stop consuming electronics completely, you’re not avoiding the labor abuses mining the necessary metals in Central Africa or the labor to manufacture it in Asia.
- corty 6y agoThere is e.g. Fairphone
- philliphaydon 6y agoWhatsApp is terrible and insecure. Facebook already knows too much about me.
- ficklepickle 6y agoIf that's what people care about, then humanity deserves what is coming to it.
- esarbe 6y agoWhy the downvotes? Too close to the truth?
- esarbe 6y agoApparently so! I take your downvotes with pride. Bring them on! Arguments for a productive discussion would be better though I don't seem to get any of these...
- dang 6y agoWould you please stop breaking the site guidelines? You've done that many times in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Buge 6y agohdjtkrnrn isn't downvoted. By the way, it's against the rules to comment about downvotes.
- mrkstu 6y agoSo, switch to an actual Chinese phone then? About the only 'safe' phone would be a Samsung phone, but the likelihood that some parts are still sourced from un-vetted Chinese parts supplier is high. Apple is far from perfect, but they do more than 99% of manufacturers. Even the most 'woke' fashion brands are now having to deal with the fact that much of their cotton is coming from Uyghur forced labor. I applaud this kind of reporting, to expose the practices of the Nazi-like Chinese/Industrial exploitation machine, but I'm leery of the tendency to apply 'Apple' to every such article, like Greenpeace was doing for a long while to drum up publicity.
- jjulius 6y ago>Apple is far from perfect, but they do more than 99% of manufacturers. Source?
- diebeforei485 6y agoSamsung is one of Lens Technology's biggest customers, according to the New York Times[1]. This is the company in today's report , so I'm not sure why you think Samsung is safe. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/business/international/how-zhou-qunfei-a-chinese-billionaire-built-her-fortune.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/business/international/ho...
- mrkstu 6y agoSo you're making my point for me? Even the most vertically integrated manufacturer, who tries to avoid Chinese dependencies for strategic reasons, can't avoid it.
- trevyn 6y ago>What is an influencer to do? Make a lot of noise about it. Use an iPhone and be very vocal about human rights abuses.
- cutemonster 6y agoWhat about Fairphone, https://www.fairphone.com https://www.fairphone.com?