[sneak]

Apple is in no position whatsoever to fight governments.

The amount of money and power they wield in the market and society is huge, but it doesn't even rank in competition to the power of the state. (For scale, the US, just a single country, has spent, only on the military, 4.3x the entire market cap of Apple ($2410B) since the iPhone was introduced.)

They have to do whatever the CCP tells them to do, as they are completely, inescapably beholden to the millions of people near the factories that produce 100% of the iPhones and iPads ever that hold machine guns (the PLA). Apple cannot exist without the consent and cooperation of the CCP; they will ban any emoji, text message content, camera content, VPN app, or protest coordination app that they are told to.)

(Yes, the 100% is slight hyperbole - Apple has started assembling a relatively small number of iOS devices in other places, but my point stands.)

Same goes for any large market, like Russia or the USA. If the state comes knocking, Apple and Google do not have a choice.

Even their options for public resistance are limited.

Remember, corporations are only allowed to exist or engage in trade with the consent of the state.

[yonixw]

While true, they (and other companies) do market themself heavy as liberal&young™ with all of theirs twitter logos (such as in pride month).

Given that, one would assume they are willing to take a hit in profit (by not selling & not cooperating) in places like Russia and China.

And as it seems, they prefer profit. Which kinda make all their marketing talk as purely virtue signaling.

[pjmlp]

Those that fool themselves with marketing fluff are the ones to blame.

"Do no evil" from Google, or "Think differently" from Apple, really, how naive one must be to think the end game isn't only about money and keeping the board happy about exponential growing sales?

[sneak]

> Given that, one would assume they are willing to take a hit in profit (by not selling & not cooperating) in places like Russia and China.

If Apple didn't cooperate with China, there would be no iPhones, and Apple wouldn't meaningfully exist. iPhones are nearly exclusively manufactured in China. All the chips in iPhones, iPads, and now the most important macs are exclusively manufactured immediately adjacent to China, in a territory claimed by China.

China is the iPhone.

[varjag]

Just say 'Taiwan' it's not hard. It's OK, HN is in America.

[sneak]

Taiwan is irrelevant to the point I'm making. As the Taiwanese people are acutely aware, if push comes to shove, that supply chain comes under the physical control of the CCP/PLA in single-digit hours (albeit in a nonfunctional state).

The CCP has veto power over the production of all iPhones and iPads (and soon Macs) in the whole world. This has little/nothing to do with Taiwan, other than their unfortunate proximity to China.

If Apple wants to continue existing in any meaningful form, they must presently do what the CCP wants.

This goes the same for selling their devices in any given jurisdiction, such as Russia, to keep this on topic for TFA.

[varjag]

Well you literally brought Taiwan into the point you were making.

(And no, Taiwan can not be taken in matter of hours).

[captainmuon]

The latent power of big tech is incredible. Apple is so awash with cash, they could probably just stop doing business in a country without taking much damage. I don't know how big the russian market is for them - but for many countries smaller than that, they could dicate terms. Imagine the CEOs of a couple of tech companies meet for brunch, and decide to do something about human rights in order to feel good. So they tell country XY, get your human rights affairs in order, or, lol, no modern cell phones for you. (China would surely step in after some time, but look how much trouble Huawei was having with the sanctions and without Google apps recently outside of China.)

Also, consider that Apple, Google, Microsoft essentially have a backdoor on every piece of consumer electronics. They can push updates and do anything they want. Granted, this is a one-shot thing and might be ruinous for the company if abused, but if I was a foreign government I would be terrified.

I bet there are a lot of beind the scenes power struggles going on - the US supplies a lot of critical software, the PRC lots of hardware, Tawian has TSMC, Europe has ASML (and this is just the tech sector). Nobody wants to use their nuclear options, but with every public development you see, these powers are priced in. Probably, Google and Apple had long conversations with the state department, and somewhere the decision was made to comply with the Russian government. But the result could have easily been different.

[raverbashing]

Agreed. Remember the "good old days" where corporation would fight governments tooth and nail for their interests?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company

[p49k]

Apple is most certainly in a position to influence government. They have a device in the hands of more than a billion people who spend hours per day staring at it.

They absolutely have a responsibility to fight for human rights and freedom. By your logic, no one would ever engage in any kind of civil obedience and no one would be able to effect change: the government, after all, is also more powerful than any individual protestor and many of them are risking their livelihoods or even their lives by protesting.

[sneak]

The most famous advocate of civil disobedience in the US got executed as a result of his prominence.

(In an ultimate irony, Tim Apple keeps a picture of him (MLK) on the wall in his office, alongside a picture of the guy who signed the order as Attorney General to have the FBI put him under 24/7 surveillance (RFK), which resulted in the FBI sending him (MLK) anonymous letters attempting to blackmail him into suicide.)

Apple knows which way the wind blows. Even if they wanted to engage in the maximum amount of resistance that is feasible/practicable, that's not really very much, especially when an organization friendly to the US military has literally every single rich/connected person and the entirety of the executive, legislature, and judiciary under bulk surveillance at all times.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20903613/apple-hiding-tai...

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/10/768841864/after-china-objects...

https://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/tim-cook-barack-obama...

https://gigaom.com/2014/09/18/apples-warrant-canary-disappea...

[hvis]

> They have a device in the hands of more than a billion people who spend hours per day staring at it.

Including 99% of Russian legislators. They're suckers for luxury.

To be fair, though, executing political pressure through this kind of means might raise certain red flags back in US, even if that only happens in Russia, one time.