Yes, I think along similar lines there… but on the other hand, brands need not reflect underlying truths about reality, and in fact often do not. Suppose two ye

Yes, I think along similar lines there… but on the other hand, brands need not reflect underlying truths about reality, and in fact often do not. Suppose two years from now, it is revealed by a whistleblower that they were part of a special skunkworks team responsible for creating various backdoors in PCC in order to enable Apple to access the data, train new models on queries, or maybe respond to government requests etc etc, all of which which were subtle, complicated exploits. Maybe Apple denies and discredits, or minimizes, or issues some sort of limited mea culpa. To what extent would it affect Apple’s brand? How long would it stay in the public consciousness? Would people (writ large, not those on HN) care? Perhaps it impacts sales and the stock price, but for how long and to what extent? Obviously there would be some sort of cost to such an event occurring, but would it outweigh whatever benefits that Apple might gain in the meantime? Maybe those benefits have to do with avoiding the wrath of the federal government… who knows. There’s definitely a world where the amoral calculus suggests lying might be better, right? Maybe not ours, but it is plausible. Like you said, discernment is the only tool we have, and it’s difficult to really know what’s going on at the end of the day. Moscow rules and George Smiley’s tradecraft are probably the only real security… ha!