That's not really fair; Apple's in a sticky wicket when it comes to the Chinese government, and they're not the only ones.

The Chinese government are debatably inhuman. They've literally censored the word "censorship." (Then they censored what people used euphemistically for censorship--"harmonious.") It's funny from the outside but also a miserable state of affairs in 2024.

It’s very fair, Apple has historically been very happy to be the sponsor of horrible human rights violations in their supply chain, only marginally paying attention to suicides in their factories when the PR got too bad.

Apples version of “human right” includes suicide nets as an alternative to treating people humanely. That’s why their stance is pure marketing - they have blood on their hands.

And guess what? You can’t use Google in China, and while Google isn’t by any means perfect, they aren’t Apple.

Oh come on, it’s not like Google is better. 1. Google isn’t available in China not because of some moral reason, and they were in fact available in the past and Google has attempted to go back to China as a search engine, etc. before. They aren’t available because China hacked into their systems and took code and got access to certain accounts, and at the time Google essentially decided it wasn’t worth offering services there. There’s no reason Google wouldn’t start working in China again on a moral level. 2. Google works directly with the US Department of Defense, so as much as Apple has blood on their hands, so does Google.

A) Google refused to censor in the mainland and that’s why they got blocked, B) Google employees had a walkout when they tried to go back to China. C) I’ve never seen an Apple employee protest anything.

Now, that happened under a different type of Google (I’m sure they’ll go back now that they torched the culture), but Apple employees who walk around SV like they are better than everybody else - which people on their privacy teams very much do - are pathetically deluded.

All the megacorps are evil, and while Apple likes to put on a holier-than-thou act, it’s just as much bullshit for them to claim they value human rights as it is for Google to say they value privacy.

They value money, that’s it.

Apple follows the law. First you need to get the Chinese government to respect those rights. The only other choice is to stop doing business entirely in the country.

A choice many companies have made. Apple is in China to make money, which is what a corporation is set up to do. My point is them claiming the moral high ground of a human rights defender is utterly laughable bullshit.