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.
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.
I mean we do have plenty of choice, many actually caring about security and their users.
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/business/international/ho...
Source?
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.