It's nobody's job to do it.
They still potentially can fix the problem. Wouldn't it be great if they used their influence to help fix things?
I agree that there's a "choose your battles" aspect to this. Considering what Apple did with the San Bernandino case, this seems (ideologically) right, but the potential losses are pretty high.
What I read from that is that you do not think that it is a more appropriate role for, say, the U. S. government. If that is the case, we're just going to have to agree to disagree. My POV is that to a large extent the U.s government has that leeway because they don't have financial incentives/disincentives to steer their decisions (this falls apart when viewed in a larger economic sense, but bear with me). Instead, the government makes laws, decrees, and treaties that fit within a worldview of what benefits the country as a whole, and to some extent to cajole other countries who might have a different worldview (Iran or Russia, for example). Or put another way, we leave it to the government to represent our moral, ethical and economic views of how the world should work. Whereas Apple should represent a different view: the desires of those that own stock with the symbol "AAPL", and their desire to make money (where are the "fiduciary obligation" folks when you need them?) If AAPL happens to take a stand I agree with, hurray, I'll buy more of their products and probably more of their stock. If they mistreat workers, I'll dig in and find out if I still feel comfortable giving them my monetary support (personally, no worse than others, maybe a little better). But what I don't expect from AAPL is for them to instigate "regime change" or whatever else it is the NYT is expecting them to do.
Anyway, that turned out longer than I wanted, but that's where I'm coming from.
For example, the US government collectively is not particularly famous for 100% morally upstanding behavior. Granted, the US behaves often better than other great powers, and certainly it represents many ideals of democracy and liberty more than other contending powers. But consider the mess that was Iran-Contra affair or the various regimes ranging from unsavory authoritarianism to sheer terrorism (with "disappearances" and torture) CIA supported in Latin America in the name of anti-communism. (God forbid someone propose an idea of land reform in South America or advancing workers' and natives' rights against UFC, despite that's how numerous European countries avoided communism.) Did these actions (and various other questionable shenanigans the US government has been partial to) represent your ethical positions?
It's everyone's job to do it, and what any government does is only part of that. For example, you mentioned AAPL stock owners. According to any sane ethical system, the moral duty of any individual CEO or a member of board or stock owner as a human person with rights and corresponding duties to act ethically overrides their financial or legal duty to maximize corporate profits.
The US Government is supposed to represent the people, and thus must uphold that people's values. The US government is a moral agent.
A person is a moral agent.
Though many here are happy to concede the reality that Apple is comprised of individuals and that it exists as an organisation as a part of society, and just view it as a profit-maximising entity. This is perverse. A corporation is a moral agent, and when it's morality conflicts with it's profits, morality should win. We'd expect nothing less of literally everybody/everything else.
I otherwise agree, but I don't know if Apple is a moral agent - that discussion will into quite complex philosophical issues. But certainly each individual person making decisions at Apple is a moral agent.
I am not so sure that's true. If every agent is acting morally, then does the sum of those actions constitute morality? I think so.
Apple has some agents who are not moral agents. I suspect that all corps are like this.
Apple certainly does have agents that are not moral agents (e.g., automatons like Siri), but for a different reason than you suggest.
i m saying that the top brass making decisions are not acting as moral agents, because they don't feel the responsibility of any of the choices insofar as it increases the profit of the company.
We need to stop looking to corporations as doing the jobs our government should be doing.
"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does."
Chinese gov’t just recognized how much data has on its users.
Uh, did you miss the whole iPhone/FBI thing here. Not only did many of us in the US (and virtually all of us on HN) accept them telling us that our government was wrong and should change, we relished it! We were glad someone finally stood up to the US government and its surveillance overreach.
Could it be that many, perhaps most, Chinese would think the same way? I suspect so, given how many of them use VPNs there.
It's not hypocritical to say someone is wrong without mentioning all the other people are wrong. You can't list literally every bad thing that happens in every press release, and you can scope criticism.
Apple is playing by the rules, and this time decided that this is not the hill they want to die on. That's their prerogative. Don't like the rules? Then go complain to those that make the rules to begin with, not those that play by those rules.