6 ms·

Why were people protesting Google doing business with a democracy, and nobody is protesting Apple obeying to a dictatorship?

• kamikazeturtles 2y ago
  I don't think things are as simple as democracy or dictatorship. That democracy, you're referring to, has a pretty bad human rights record. We have to hold everyone accountable
  • TiredOfLife 2y ago
    Compared to China????????!!!!!!??????
    • qzx_pierri 2y ago
      For a lot of Apple fans, the company can never do any wrong. And I say that as someone who owns a Macbook, iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad.
    • miramba 2y ago
      What are you comparing China to? Seriously, it‘s not mentioned in the parents.
      • 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin...
        • mc32 2y ago
          It’s not only that, but how they don’t observe civil liberties for their own pop, don’t tolerate their own dissidents, etc. They are harsh on their own civilians.
          • jedimind 2y ago
            [flagged]
      • fernandotakai 2y ago
        i would recommend reading on censorship inside china https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_China they literally block any discussion on things like... you know, democracy movements.
      • Scharkenberg 2y ago
        Israel.
      • MarkSweep 2y ago
        The unnamed democracy is Israel. The protest referred to was a couple of Google employees protesting a cloud computing contract with that country. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/south-bay/protests-expected-to-continue/3511496/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/south-bay/protests-exp...
        • jedimind 2y ago
          [flagged]
          • legolas2412 2y ago
            [flagged]
• coldcode 2y ago
  Go to China and violate a serious law. Do you think they will ignore it? Or someone from Mainland China who comes to the US who violates a serious law here. Will they be arrested and possibly convicted? Every country has laws that others find terrible. Every multinational business has to deal with laws in multiple countries that may be incompatible with others. Take, for example, all the issues between the US and the EU regarding privacy and control of personal information. It had to be negotiated for each side to agree. China may not be interested in negotiation, but that is their business. If you want to do business in such a country, you must find a way to deal with it. If you abandon every country where you might have issues, you have a US-only business (and you might not like some of our laws either). Imagine a foreign business wanting slavery instead of employees in the US; they might be fine with it, but we aren't. Should they do it anyway?
  • mschuster91 2y ago
    > Every multinational business has to deal with laws in multiple countries that may be incompatible with others. Indeed, but why should Western countries allow Chinese companies access to our markets when China offers absolutely zero reciprocity? It's one thing to operate in an economic/political sphere that shares a reasonable set of common political and economic values, and deal with the relatively tiny differences (tax codes, data protection laws, content moderation, advertising restrictions, ...). Hell even with larger differences (EU GDPR vs US laissez-faire), US megacorps can still freely operate in Europe. In contrast, it's a completely different thing to operate in China - either you are outright banned (Meta, Twitter, Google, ...) or you have to have a corporate entity where the foreign party must be below 50% ownership, and in some cases you have to install a parallel governance structure of the CCP [1]. [1] https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-the-role-of-chinese-communist-party-committees/ https://thediplomat.com/2019/12/politics-in-the-boardroom-th...
    • Dalewyn 2y ago
      >why should Western countries allow Chinese companies access to our markets when China offers absolutely zero reciprocity? Money. China knows that the only thing the west (and arguably humanity) ultimately cares about is wealth, and so China's playing that game far better than anyone else. We are literally funding our own demise, hoisting our own petards, hitching our own nooses. I find the coming Pax Sino era terrifying and how well they play the world like a flute astonishing.
• deleted 2y ago
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• azangru 2y ago
  If the alternative is having to pay fines or leaving the market, why shouldn't Apple obey? It wants access to the market.
  • deleted 2y ago
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• jedimind 2y ago
  "Why were people protesting Google doing business with a fake democracy that denies 2 million of its second-class citizens equal rights and is currently on a genocidal rampage having murdered 15000+ children, and nobody is protesting Apple obeying to a dictatorship? Fixed it for you. [0] Nation-state Law Essentially Establishes Apartheid Regime - https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2020-12-22/ty-article-opinion/.premium/a-cat-guarding-the-cream-of-self-determination/ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2020-12-22/ty-article-op...
• deleted 2y ago
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• _heimdall 2y ago
  People protest all kinds of things, what aboutism doesn't really explain why a company wanting to do business in a country wouldn't follow the countries laws. If any company wants to do business in China they have to deal with strict CCP censorship. Sure you could argue that Apple should SCT on principle and just leave the Chinese market, but play that strategy out to the end. We would have every company moving towards only doing business in their home country. I don't expect that's what most people in the west want and when anything related to tariffs, onshoring manufacturing, etc comes up it gets thrown out as nationalist BS (or MAGA if you're in the US).