4 ms·

Just like iPhones.

epistasis 1y ago
I think it's a bit different, I never heard a story of iPhones being manufactured like this: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57124636 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57124636 However most of the "slave" talk these days comes from highly politicized sources, so it's hard to cut through to the truth. For example, it's not likely that there's enough Uyghur slave labor to be involved with "most" of the polysilicon even from Xinjiang, much less the entire world's supply. IMHO, like the cobalt getting mined by children from artisanal-scale mines in Africa, it's a very serious issue that gets trotted out more as a political football against the entire technology, rather than expressed as an earnest concern to solve the underlying problem.
- bdangubic 1y ago
  > I think it's a bit different nice to discuss the degrees of slavery, little slavery is cool, little more perhaps not as much…
  - vkou 1y ago
    Here in the US, the thirteenth amendment seems to think that a little slavery is cool. As I understand it, much of the rest of the world has similar views, but I'm sure this varies a bit from country to country. It's just that in the 21st century, we prefer to use some less-upsetting euphemism to refer to the practice domestically.
    - bdangubic 1y ago
      fascinating reading here on HN every now again someone taking a moral high ground on some random shit while actively using products and services of some of the most evil corporations in the history of mankind
    - rmunn 1y ago
      > Here in the US, the thirteenth amendment seems to think that a little slavery is cool. For anyone not familiar with the US Constitution, the 13th Amendment forbids slavery and involuntary servitude "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." Without that "except as a punishment for [a] crime" clause, being sentenced to N hours of community service would be forbidden by the Constitution, and the second-lowest penalty judges could impose (the lowest being a fine) would be prison time. So that clause was actually necessary to include in order to allow for more lenient sentences for crimes that deserve something more severe than a fine: lowest level of sentencing is a fine, after that comes being sentenced to community service (which most people agree is less severe than prison, even though it does count as involuntary servitude), and then after that come the more severe sentences like prison.
      - mattclarkdotnet 1y ago
        Most other countries seem to be able to have community service orders without labelling it “servitude”. Do you have a reference for why community service is defined as servitude in the US?
        rmunn 1y ago
        Are you saying that being ordered by a judge to perform work, without pay, and which you would not have done absent those orders, does not fit the definition of involuntary servitude? Because while the precise definitions of servitude do vary from dictionary to dictionary, and some define it more harshly than others, in general it fits. One definition I found online (with no reference to which dictionary it came from) defines servitude as "A condition in which an individual is bound to work for another person or organization, typically without pay." Another one (Cambridge dictionary) says it's "the state of being under the control of someone else and of having no freedom". I couldn't check the Oxford English Dictionary as it requires a subscription to look up even one word. Merriam-Webster lists two meanings, one of which applies to land. the one that applies to people is "a condition in which one lacks liberty especially to determine one's course of action or way of life". Now, being sentenced to community service is only a temporary condition of servitude, which ends as soon as a given number of hours have been served. And it might not fit the strict definition if the person being sentenced is allowed to choose the form their community service will take; I lack knowledge of what kinds of community-servitude sentences are commonly handed out. But if the person being sentenced does not get to choose the form his community service will take, but instead is told "Your community service will be served in the city clerk's office. Show up at 9:00 AM on Monday ready to make photocopies and run errands," then that counts as being under the control of another and lacking freedom during the period of community service. It's not a permanent state of servitude, but even a temporary state of servitude is forbidden by the 13th amendment (other than as a sentence for a crime), because otherwise people at the time would have argued "Oh, fifty years of involuntary servitude still counts as 'temporary', so I'm allowed to carry on with imposing debt peonage on my debtors." (I should also mention that I am not a lawyer, so perhaps US lawyers have already reached broad consensus on whether community service counts as involuntary servitude under US law; if someone knows whether that's true, I welcome being corrected on my point).
  - epistasis 1y ago
    Talking about degrees of slavery is decidedly not cool. If you have documentation of iPhone supply chain using forced labor like I linked to, please do share rather than trying to be morally ambiguous.
    - Teever 1y ago
      I wonder how much solar energy produced from these slave-built panels makes its way into iPhones.
    - nandomrumber 1y ago
      You linked to a four and a half year old news article from a highly politicised source. I wouldn’t call that “documentation”.
      - bdangubic 1y ago
        buuuut his source is bold enough to fake trump speeches - that takes balls https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/03/bbc-report-reveals-bias-donald-trump/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/03/bbc-report-revea...
        epistasis 1y ago
        The BBC is not the source, they are reporting on another study, directly linked near the very top of the article.
        nandomrumber 1y ago
        It actually links to rot. Try it yourself. Link rot.
- aeonfox 1y ago
  > IMHO, like the cobalt getting mined by children from artisanal-scale mines in Africa Not really an issue for solar battery systems as they typically use the cheaper LFP chemistry that has a much higher cycle count. The gravimetric density is a bit less, but that only really matters for high-performance mobility.
  - nandomrumber 1y ago
    You responded to a comment about cobalt with vague references to cell chemistry, cycle count, and energy density. What does any of that have to do with cobalt?
    - dgacmu 1y ago
      The post you're replying to didn't explain it well, but: LFP batteries don't use cobalt (or nickel). LFP production is starting to pass NMC (lithium + nickel manganese cobalt oxide). Slightly lower density but a lot of advantages in lack of easily catching on fire, longer lifetime -- and lack of cobalt. LFP (LiFePo4) is the battery chemistry of choice today for solar installations, where the longer lifetime and increased safety are a big win and the slightly lower density doesn't matter, unlike mobile applications.
      - aeonfox 1y ago
        I suppose I could have been clearer, but I figure it was an easy connection tom make from talking about chemistry to the question of whether cobalt is even relevant.

Just like iPhones.

I think it's a bit different, I never heard a story of iPhones being manufactured like this: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57124636 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57124636 However most of the "slave" talk these days comes from highly politicized sources, so it's hard to cut through to the truth. For example, it's not likely that there's enough Uyghur slave labor to be involved with "most" of the polysilicon even from Xinjiang, much less the entire world's supply. IMHO, like the cobalt getting mined by children from artisanal-scale mines in Africa, it's a very serious issue that gets trotted out more as a political football against the entire technology, rather than expressed as an earnest concern to solve the underlying problem.

bdangubic 1y ago
> I think it's a bit different nice to discuss the degrees of slavery, little slavery is cool, little more perhaps not as much…
- vkou 1y ago
  Here in the US, the thirteenth amendment seems to think that a little slavery is cool. As I understand it, much of the rest of the world has similar views, but I'm sure this varies a bit from country to country. It's just that in the 21st century, we prefer to use some less-upsetting euphemism to refer to the practice domestically.
  - bdangubic 1y ago
    fascinating reading here on HN every now again someone taking a moral high ground on some random shit while actively using products and services of some of the most evil corporations in the history of mankind
  - rmunn 1y ago
    > Here in the US, the thirteenth amendment seems to think that a little slavery is cool. For anyone not familiar with the US Constitution, the 13th Amendment forbids slavery and involuntary servitude "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." Without that "except as a punishment for [a] crime" clause, being sentenced to N hours of community service would be forbidden by the Constitution, and the second-lowest penalty judges could impose (the lowest being a fine) would be prison time. So that clause was actually necessary to include in order to allow for more lenient sentences for crimes that deserve something more severe than a fine: lowest level of sentencing is a fine, after that comes being sentenced to community service (which most people agree is less severe than prison, even though it does count as involuntary servitude), and then after that come the more severe sentences like prison.
    - mattclarkdotnet 1y ago
      Most other countries seem to be able to have community service orders without labelling it “servitude”. Do you have a reference for why community service is defined as servitude in the US?
      - rmunn 1y ago
        Are you saying that being ordered by a judge to perform work, without pay, and which you would not have done absent those orders, does not fit the definition of involuntary servitude? Because while the precise definitions of servitude do vary from dictionary to dictionary, and some define it more harshly than others, in general it fits. One definition I found online (with no reference to which dictionary it came from) defines servitude as "A condition in which an individual is bound to work for another person or organization, typically without pay." Another one (Cambridge dictionary) says it's "the state of being under the control of someone else and of having no freedom". I couldn't check the Oxford English Dictionary as it requires a subscription to look up even one word. Merriam-Webster lists two meanings, one of which applies to land. the one that applies to people is "a condition in which one lacks liberty especially to determine one's course of action or way of life". Now, being sentenced to community service is only a temporary condition of servitude, which ends as soon as a given number of hours have been served. And it might not fit the strict definition if the person being sentenced is allowed to choose the form their community service will take; I lack knowledge of what kinds of community-servitude sentences are commonly handed out. But if the person being sentenced does not get to choose the form his community service will take, but instead is told "Your community service will be served in the city clerk's office. Show up at 9:00 AM on Monday ready to make photocopies and run errands," then that counts as being under the control of another and lacking freedom during the period of community service. It's not a permanent state of servitude, but even a temporary state of servitude is forbidden by the 13th amendment (other than as a sentence for a crime), because otherwise people at the time would have argued "Oh, fifty years of involuntary servitude still counts as 'temporary', so I'm allowed to carry on with imposing debt peonage on my debtors." (I should also mention that I am not a lawyer, so perhaps US lawyers have already reached broad consensus on whether community service counts as involuntary servitude under US law; if someone knows whether that's true, I welcome being corrected on my point).
- epistasis 1y ago
  Talking about degrees of slavery is decidedly not cool. If you have documentation of iPhone supply chain using forced labor like I linked to, please do share rather than trying to be morally ambiguous.
  - Teever 1y ago
    I wonder how much solar energy produced from these slave-built panels makes its way into iPhones.
  - nandomrumber 1y ago
    You linked to a four and a half year old news article from a highly politicised source. I wouldn’t call that “documentation”.
    - bdangubic 1y ago
      buuuut his source is bold enough to fake trump speeches - that takes balls https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/03/bbc-report-reveals-bias-donald-trump/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/03/bbc-report-revea...
      - epistasis 1y ago
        The BBC is not the source, they are reporting on another study, directly linked near the very top of the article.
        nandomrumber 1y ago
        It actually links to rot. Try it yourself. Link rot.
aeonfox 1y ago
> IMHO, like the cobalt getting mined by children from artisanal-scale mines in Africa Not really an issue for solar battery systems as they typically use the cheaper LFP chemistry that has a much higher cycle count. The gravimetric density is a bit less, but that only really matters for high-performance mobility.
- nandomrumber 1y ago
  You responded to a comment about cobalt with vague references to cell chemistry, cycle count, and energy density. What does any of that have to do with cobalt?
  - dgacmu 1y ago
    The post you're replying to didn't explain it well, but: LFP batteries don't use cobalt (or nickel). LFP production is starting to pass NMC (lithium + nickel manganese cobalt oxide). Slightly lower density but a lot of advantages in lack of easily catching on fire, longer lifetime -- and lack of cobalt. LFP (LiFePo4) is the battery chemistry of choice today for solar installations, where the longer lifetime and increased safety are a big win and the slightly lower density doesn't matter, unlike mobile applications.
    - aeonfox 1y ago
      I suppose I could have been clearer, but I figure it was an easy connection tom make from talking about chemistry to the question of whether cobalt is even relevant.