The recent imbroglio (and one more for the account) between Apple and the China is watering his beard; after the release of the memorandum of Tim cook to Apple officials advocating banning the HKmap.live app, countless people reacted to the attitude of the Cupertino giant, including the Hong Kong legislator, Charles mok, as disclosed by Business insider.
Mok wrote a letter to the CEO of Ma explaining why her position offended the Chinese population. In support of the banned app, Mok argued that it existed to help users: Citizens avoid areas where pedestrians not involved in criminal activity can be subjected to police brutality.
The legislator also suggests that Apple review its actions on the basis of its values, not profits.
Today I wrote to Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, to tell him his companys decision to remove HKmap live app from Appstore will cause problems for normal Hong Kongs citizens trying to avoid police presence while they are under constant fear ofpolice brutality. Values ​​over profits, pls! pic.twitter/guaBfV8Pnf
– Charles Mok (@charlesmok) October 10, 2019
Today I wrote to Tim Cook, Apple CEO, to tell you that your company's decision to remove the HKmap.live app from the App Store causes problems for Hong Kong citizens trying to avoid police presence while under constant fear. of police brutality. Amounts on profits, please!
Elsewhere in the letter, Mok states that Hong Kong citizens will closely examine whether Apple chooses to “keep its commitment to freedom of expression and other fundamental human rights,” or if the company becomes “complicit in censorship and Chinese oppression ”.
As for the ban on HKmap.live, the lawmaker inferred that if Apple really wants to inhibit access to information about police activity in China, it should also ban social platform apps like Twitter and messaging like WhatsApp. which are also used to share similar real-time alerts there.
China's size for Apple
Mok was not the only legislator to criticize Apple for its ambiguous decision; the republican senator Josh Hawley also opined on the situation, asking: “Who is really running Apple? Tim Cook or Beijing? ”
Though retrograde, this commercially understandable question: Apple needs China. More than that, Ma has reached a point where most US tech companies have failed: almost every Web site and service on Google, for example, are blocked in mainland China, while Twitter, O Facebook and the Netflix has no stakes in the country, while Amazon has a minimal presence, as reported by Vox.
However, not having penetrated the Chinese market (as much as Apple) may have been a positive thing for these companies, according to the report. Vox. In addition to ethical concerns about the commitment to authorities in China to gain access to the country's billions of consumers, working there can be bad for the brand, as has happened with Ma, as inferred by the columnist. New York Times, Farhad Manjoo:
Working with China is not worth the moral cost. The country is a growing and existential threat to human freedom around the world.
But that's not how Apple sees its presence in the country. In 2017, Cook sent a letter to US senators in which he defended the company's participation there:
We believe that our presence in China will help promote greater openness and facilitate the free flow of ideas and information. We are convinced that Apple can better promote fundamental rights, including the right to freedom of expression, by participating even when we disagree with the laws of a particular country.
Inflates Apple TV +
This “importance” (as we call the relationship between Apple and China) crosses not only the company's moral issue, but also some of its products / services, such as the Apple TV +. The emerging platform of streaming The company's video record can serve as a weapon for the spread of opinions, and that is why Ma's high profile has decided to ensure that nothing bad about China is published in any of its original series, according to a new report from the BuzzFeed News.
That would have started in 2018, when Apple TV + productions began, at which time some company executives would have advised some creators to “avoid portraying China badly”. According to news agency sources, the "instructions" were given by Apple's vice president of software and services, Eddy cue, and also by Morgan Wandell, head of international content development at Apple.
Of course, the attempt to remove China's criticism from its original content is part of Apple's efforts to maintain a good relationship with Beijing and to prevent a malaise in 2016 from recurring when the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Cinema and TV of China has closed. the company's online movie and book store (iTunes Store) for allegedly being linked to the release of a banned movie in the country, which portrayed Hong Kong in a negative way.
Send who can, obey who has juzo but that is the case between Apple and China?
via 9to5Mac: 1, 2; Daring fireball
