Perhaps he dresses up as Batman and fights crime at night, I mean, who can say?

So basically your counterargument is a variation of the Conspiracy Fallacy. "The good actors are hiding the evidence for their goodness!"

(Or perhaps, that was your point!)

I think it's more that Tim Cook, and Apple, are innocent until proven guilty.

They are not 'hiding' anything, which implies they have more to hide.

Apple are a secretive company that does not tend to discuss their internal politics and supplier arrangements.

The internet could argue about this all day long, but my point stands that we just don't know!

But I get your point as well. Maybe I'm feeling generous towards Apple!

I'm not normally a fan of Mr Tim Cook! :-)

If you can point to a positive change that Apple have made, in this regard, under Cook's watch, then your argument has some merit.

If you can't then you'll have to rely on the "it would've been worse but for his efforts" but I doubt you're going to provide evidence for that.

What we do know is that Apple have repeatedly sided with censorship, I can certainly provide evidence of that.

Apple very publicly refused to unlock the phones of the San Berbardino shooters, and consistently refuses to back door their phones for law enforcement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...

In a country with strong rule of law, where it's quite clear where the legality of this rests, and where they had almost nothing to lose by refusing to unlock the phone.

Yet icloud is dencrypted in China as soon as that's what the authorities want.

Standing up for things doesn't really mean much when you have nothing to lose. It's like the world cup players talking about LGBT rights and then stopping it as soon as they are threatened with yellow cards. That's boring cowardly virtue signalling, it's not standing up for something regardless of consequences.